About time I did another one of these.
Download: (If You Think) You’re Groovy – P.P. Arnold (mp3)
Download: Teenage Rampage – The Sweet (mp3)
Download: I’m In The Mood For Ska – Lord Tanamo (mp3)
Download: I’m Beautiful Now – Girls At Our Best! (mp3)
Before rap became the designated voice of black youth — or “the black CNN” as Chuck D called it — the black experience in England was best expressed through Reggae, particularly the records of poet Linton Kwesi Johnson who read his angry rhymes in a heavy patois over skanking music provided by producer Dennis Bovell’s Dub Band. Unfortunately the black experience in England wasn’t all that great.
If you were a young black man in England during the late 70s and early 80s you probably felt like you were living in a police state instead of Jolly Olde Blighty. The hated “Sus” law gave the police the power to stop and search anyone they suspected of having committed a crime (or be about to), a power they mostly used to hassle young black men on the street time and time again. Also notorious were the uniformed thugs of the Special Patrol Group, a “elite” mobile unit of the Metropolitan Police whose idea of combatting crime and civil disorder was smacking people about with their truncheons (or killing them in the case of Blair Peach.) No wonder many Reggae songs of the era referred to England as “Babylon.”
Download: Inglan Is A Bitch – Linton Kwesi Johnson (mp3)
The combination of this heavy-handed policing with chronic unemployment made England’s inner cities pressure cookers that could blow at any minute. There had been a riot at the 1976 Notting Hill Carnival where the police had to defend themselves with dustbin lids from a hail of bricks and bottles thrown by black youths (which inspired The Clash to write “White Riot”) but far worse was to come. The shit really hit the fan in 1981 when Brixton exploded into one of the worst riots the UK had ever seen. Over a weekend in April cars and buildings were set on fire, the police were attacked with petrol bombs (the first time those had ever been used in England) and fire engines were attacked when they tried to put out the flames. By the end of it the place looked like a war zone.
A school friend of mine who joined the police force told me he was on duty in Brixton during the riot and had to spend the night in a police minivan parked near the “frontline” on Railton Road. When he woke up some of the other coppers had written “NF” in the condensation on the windows (but backwards so people outside could read it.) Lovely bloke, the good ol’ British bobby.
It wasn’t so much a race riot (white kids joined in the action too) as an anti-police, anti-state “uprising” fed by anger at the state of the nation: 2.5 million unemployed, crumbling inner cities, poor housing, and a Prime Minister who gave speeches about the country being “swamped” by alien cultures while giving the police a huge pay rise.
Download: Di Great Insohreckshan – Linton Kwesi Johnson (mp3)
1981 turned into a a long, violent year as riots broke out all over England, from Handsworth in Birmingham, to Toxteth in Liverpool (that was a bad one), and Moss Side in Manchester as well as smaller incidents in other cities. I remember one night back then news went round that a riot had broken out in Fulham where I lived, it just turned out to be some kids having a fight outside McDonald’s but it shows how on edge the whole country was. In one of those rare moments of pop culture capturing the zeitgeist The Specials “Ghost Town” got to number one in July that year, it’s eerie sound perfectly reflecting the tense, nervous state of the nation:
This town, is coming like a ghost town
Why must the youth fight against themselves?
Government leaving the youth on the shelf
This place, is coming like a ghost town
No job to be found in this country
Can’t go on no more
The people getting angry
It happened all over again in 1985 with more riots in Brixton and Toxteth, but the worst was at the Broadwater Farm estate in North London where a policeman was hacked to death. Race relations in the UK have improved in lots of ways since then, but as the Stephen Lawrence case showed, the more things change the more they stay the same.
Buy: “Bass Culture” (album)
Buy: “Forces of Victory” (album)
Buy: “Independant Intavenshan: The Island Anthology” (album)
I almost posted “Silly Games” by Janet Kay when I wrote about school discos the other week but it came out in 1979 and by then I was already hitting the pubs and clubs of London so I was a bit beyond forlorn nights pining over schoolgirls in dingy classrooms. Instead I was spending forlorn nights at nightclubs like The Best Disco In Town at the Lyceum Ballroom or chrome-plated meat markets in the suburbs with names like Tiffany’s and Cheeky Pete’s where I’d still be pining over girls but at least I could drink and smoke (two newly acquired habits). But this track is such a classic anthem of it’s time and place I felt I had to post it anyway.
Lovers Rock was an offshoot of Reggae that came out of South London in the 1970s which was more laid back and soulful than the seriously heavy roots sounds of bands like Culture, The Upsetters, and Burning Spear who were always banging on about Jah and Babylon over thick bassy riddims. That stuff was very hip with the Rastas and Punks around Ladbroke Grove but didn’t mean a whole lot to a Soul Boy from Fulham. I don’t know how big it was outside of London but round my way it was very popular indeed, at my school there was a conflict between the Soul Boys (who were mostly white) and the Reggae-loving West Indian kids about whose music was the best — a battle often fought over the Youth Center record player — but Lovers Rock was the one thing they both liked. More importantly, girls loved it and anything that could get you in with them was good.
“Silly Games” is about the most beautiful Lovers record ever made (that I’ve heard anyway) and was the biggest hit the genre produced, getting to No. 2 in the charts. Written and produced by Dennis Bovell (who went on to work with The Slits and Orange Juice) who was trying to emulate the sweet sound of Minnie Riperton and got Janet to record the song because she was able to hit the same really high notes as her. (at times on this she reaches notes only dogs can hear).
This is the long 12″ version with the spacey Dub section at the end that was compulsory on all Reggae 12″ singles at the time. Even after all these years it sounds as lovely as ever.
Download: Silly Games – Janet Kay (mp3)
Buy: “Reggae Love Songs” (album)
My American wife loves watching 1980s teen movies like “Pretty In Pink” and “Sixteen Candles” (she was at school herself during that era and I think she wanted to be Molly Ringwald) and what always strikes me watching these films is what a completely different universe an American school is compared to English ones. U.S. schools seem to be more like social clubs ruled by the good-looking and the athletic that revolve around dating, sports, being popular (the most important thing) and events like Prom and Homecoming dances which have a life and death significance in kid’s lives.
We don’t have Proms or Homecoming in England, what we had – if we were lucky – was the occasional School Disco. They weren’t the elaborate affairs that Proms are, with kids arriving in limos all decked out in tuxedos and ballgowns to be entertained by live bands and professional DJs. At my school the couple of discos we had were held in one of the classrooms with the music provided by some kid in the corner with a record player and a pile of 45s. There may have been some orange squash in paper cups for refreshments too but I’m not sure we even had that extravagance. In many ways this perfectly encapsulates the differences between the two countries (at least back then): you have the rich, glamourous Americans with their confidence and perfect teeth, while us Brits were a bit shabby and pathetic, making our entertainment out of old Cornflakes boxes and sticky-back plastic.
I went to an all-boys school which meant we were also missing one vital ingredient for a good disco – girls. They had to be invited over from the local girls school and they arrived as these exotic, alien creatures that we’d heard a lot about but had no idea how to communicate with. So the picture above shows exactly how the evening always ended up, the girls dancing together on one side of the room while the boys just stared at them from afar, too scared to cross the terrifying No Man’s Land of the room and talk to them. Occasionally there was a boy with the front to actually go and chat one of them up and you always hated/envied those confident, jammy bastards.
If I’d had the bottle to actually ask a girl to dance I might have a “special” school disco record to remind me of that moment. But I didn’t so there isn’t one. Reggae was always very popular though, you’d have to be a total spazz not to be able to singalong and dance to something like “Uptown Top Ranking” by Althea & Donna. This got to No. 1 in 1977 and was a massive favourite with everyone apart from the some of the West Indian kids at school who were into heavy dub and pooh-poohed this sort of light, pop-reggae (they even called Bob Marley “white man’s music”.) That dusty, skanking beat always reminds me of those days and in my head it’s playing on a tinny record player in the corner of some dingy classroom and I’m standing there all alone with a paper cup of warm orange squash in my hand, too scared to go and ask Jackie Bolton to dance.
Download: Uptown Top Ranking – Althea & Donna (mp3)
Buy: “Young, Gifted & Black. Vol.1″ (album)
