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P Allen
Fisherman / Fisherman (version) - 7"
Ponko Dread - 1986
Michael Panontin
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Peter Allen's 'Fisherman' may not be the best reggae record to come out of this country. But its dirge-like synthesizer intro - not the first use of the instrument in the genre but still quite novel - and the fact that only a handful of copies seem to have survived make it certainly one of the more interesting. Add to that the fact that the Jamaican ex-pat recorded the song at Herman Chin-Loy's Aquarius Recording Studio and its holy grail status becomes a little easier to fathom.
"My dad wrote and produced this record 1984 in a Jamaica Studio in Kingston," Allen's daughter, Toni Yolanda, wrote in a YouTube post. "He then later migrated to Canada bringing a copy, there he created multiple copies of vinyls. Throughout the many moves, all his vinyls disappeared."
Allen self-released 'Fisherman' on his own Ponko Dread label in 1986 and in true indie fashion shopped the record around the stores on Toronto's Eglinton Avenue West (then the epicentre of the city's thriving Jamaican community). But for whatever reason - a roots reggae record at the dawn of the digital age, perhaps? - the single failed to sell and eventually settled into the dank recesses of those same record shops.
That is until cratediggers started unearthing it some twenty-five years later.
Copies started showing up for sale on Ebay around 2011 and have since skyrocketed in price (with one selling for a whopping 521 USDs in 2014). Aussie reggae-obsessive Chris Flanagan, who had relocated to Canada and spent more than a few hours of his own digging through those dusty cellars, managed to clean up 'Fisherman' and reissue it on his own Shella Records, with a swell version on the back side, in 2018.
Allen actually arrived in Canada with an entire album's worth of tunes, recorded back home with a backing band called Food Clothes and Shelter. But those tapes were sadly lost in a basement flood, and 'Fisherman' is the only tune of his to have survived. Allen also seemed to have disappeared, until the sleuthy Flanagan managed to track him down to a location east of Toronto, where we are told that the elusive singer "drives a school bus and still loves to sing".
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