One constant in Marcus's evolving career was his continued love of playing vinyl records as a DJ. He was always attempting to start 'Reggae nights' at various pubs and venues, keeping the name 'Hot Bomb Hi-Fi' alive and using his DJ name of 'Marcus Downbeat.' This opened doors for him to be offered guest DJ slots at various larger events and Reggae concerts. 

Two of his friends - Denny and Nigel - were promoting live Reggae and Ska concerts, and ran regular events at The George Robey pub venue in Finsbury Park. They organised a major event at Brixton Academy called 'The Ten Commandments of Ska' where they featured a series of  Jamaican superstars on the bill including Prince Buster. Marcus was invited to play as one of the Djs at this event alongside the legendary Duke Vin - the pioneer of UK sound system culture. 

Marcus was overjoyed to make acquaintance with more of his musical heroes, and relished every moment of the experience. 

A short time after that the two promoters arranged for a show in Cardiff with Prince Buster and Desmond Dekker headlining the bill with Duke Vin and Marcus as Djs.  It was on this road trip that the crew were jokingly applying the 'Ska' prefix to various words such as calling Cardiff 'Skadiff' etc. 

Marcus then coined a new nickname for Nigel the promoter, calling him 'Ska-V-Goldsmith' - a play on the name of promoter Harvey Goldsmith - which Nigel took on board and used from then onwards as his own promoters nickname. 

This event led to Marcus forming a close friendship with both Duke Vin and Prince Buster, and both legends would attend Marcus's Reggae nights at his regular spot at the VIP Bar in Harrow. They also attended Marcus's fortieth birthday party. 

These fortuitous events would later lead to the recording sessions of a new Prince Buster album project which was organised to take place in Damien Korner's studio in West London, to which Marcus was invited to attend the regular sessions.

This was another dream come true for Marcus - not only to be present at the recording of a new Prince Buster album but to be involved in contributing to the production. 

Marcus arranged for Rico to attend the recording sessions, and he was also able to introduce his friends from The Cosmics to the proceedings; Dave Fulwood on Trumpet, and Richard Doswell on Tenor Sax were added to the lineup of Delroy Williams' Junction Band who had been hired as the backing musicians for the album project. 

The sessions went on for several weeks. Track after track was recorded filling tape upon tape. 

Marcus was invited to sing over some of Prince Buster's rhythm tracks, and he wrote two original versions, singing on one and toasting over another with Prince Buster's words "we're building a garden with many beautiful flowers" as the basis of the toasted lyric.

Over the course of several weeks Marcus estimates that Prince Buster must have recorded "around sixty or seventy new tracks, there was a pile of two inch tapes in the studio that must have numbered twenty or twenty five tapes, each containing three or more tracks. Buster was working like it must have been back in his Jamaican heyday - like a production line. It was awesome to witness." 

To this day not one of those tracks has ever been released, and Marcus has no idea why, or where the tapes ended up. 

Several years after the recording sessions in 2008 Damien Korner the studio owner passed away, and after the sad death of Prince Buster in 2016 it appears that we may never find out. 

Rest in peace the great Prince Buster.