"Oh great Caesar, could you come and let Cleopatra dance this dance? Dance Cleopatra, dance," Prince Buster commands, and the Egyptian queen obeys, to a simmering set of songs drawn from the rocksteady and early reggae era. That includes Madness and Al Capone, HRH's ska hits, now deftly recut for the new musical climes. The former is positively sultry, the latter appears in a five-minute-plus extended extravaganza. No longer a brass showcase, the horns now have to share the stage with flashy guitar, although Val Bennett grabs the spotlight for a solo at one point. The new loping rhythm is superb, the musicians in top form, with Buster excitedly the gangster king gunning the listener down one more time. Not content with covering his own hits, the singing producer also versions others. A trio are grabbed straight from the Jamaican charts -- a splendid western-flavored take on Hopeton Lewis' Take It Easy, a less successful stab at the Paragons' On the Beach, and a magnificent cover of Desmond Dekker's 007 (Shanty Town) boasting both brass and surf guitar. And in keeping with the rudie theme of that latter number, Waiting for My Rude Girl, is an inspired version of Lee Dorsey's classic chestnut Ya-Ya. Of the Prince's compositions, the stand-outs are the RB-flavored Sounds and Pressure, the funky Move Over (mistitled More Over on the set), and the sizzling, brass-driven instrumental Cincinnati Kid, although all the tracks are worthy of note.

1		Dance Cleopatra
2		Madness
3		Take It Easy
4		Oh Love
5		Times to Risk
6		007 (Shanty Town)
7		Come to Jamaica
8		Cincinnati Kid
9		Move Over
10		Sounds and Pressure
11		On the Beach
12		Al Capone
13		Waiting for My Rude Girl