Largely forgotten today, Reggae Regular were key figures in UK Reggae in the mid-Seventies, with a brace of great 12-inch singles on Greensleeves.

These guys had a special place in my heart because they were the first band I ever interviewed for Sounds, earning me my first byline in the music paper in 1977.

I went with a photographer to an estate in Harlesden where we did the chat and the pics. A week or so later, up at the Sounds office in Covent Garden, the photographer gave me a black-and-white contact sheet and asked me if I wanted to choose any particular shots.

I looked through them and decided, being at journalism college at the time, that the one with me in the foreground, holding an enormous spliff, would not go down well with my tutors.

Consequently I marked that shot with a black ‘X’ with the felt pen he gave me. I then did the same for some shots of the band trying to give one member’s car a push-start on the estate, largely because it looked to the uninformed eye as if the vehicle was being stolen by a gang of young black men.

I then handed the contact sheets back with the fateful words: “Any except these ones.”

Imagine my joy, then, when my first ever double-page spread appeared in my favourite music paper with a half-page photo of me smoking a spliff on one side, and another half-page photo of some youths apparently stealing a car on the other. I must have it in a drawer somewhere.

And from that day on I knew how to mark a contact sheet with pictures approved for publication.

Anyway, this band seem to have been largely forgotten but they were actually great, writing most of their own material, and easily the match of some of their better known UK contemporaries. Sadly they never managed to get a major record deal and disbanded after a couple of excellent singles on Greensleeves, namely Black Star Liner and this one, Where Is Jah?