(#392: 15 July 1989, 1 week)
Track listing: Keep
On Movin’ (featuring Caron Wheeler)/Fairplay (featuring Rose Windross)/Holdin’
On/Feeling Free (Live Rap)/African Dance/Dance/Feel Free (featuring Do’reen)/Happiness
(Dub)/Back To Life (Accappella; featuring Caron Wheeler)/Jazzie’s Groove
Did you watch, or listen to, the BBC Proms Grime Symphony
last night? Fantastic, wasn’t it? Justification in itself for the licence fee,
I’d say (together with the earlier and equally fantastic
Boulez/Ravel/Stravinsky programme). There they all were; established giants
like Lethal Bizzle (whose orchestral “Pow!” is one of this millennium’s
greatest musical moments thus far, as succinct and direct in its way as Michael
Mantler and Pharaoh Sanders’ “Preview” was forty-seven years ago), Wretch 32
(when “Something” finally makes it to record, he should do it like this) and
Krept and Konan, who recently and narrowly missed out on a number one album
(but this blog has its ways), together with newer names like Stormzy,
Lewisham’s superb Fekky (a slightly more placid Giggs) and the sensational
Little Simz (“ROYAL ALBERT FUCKING HALL MAKE SOME NOISE!!”). Throw in guest appearances by Shola Ama and Kano, plus
Jules Buckley’s brilliant orchestrations (like Todd Levin if he’d meant it), and
somebody called Chip who turned out to be the long-lost (and dramatically
revitalised) Chipmunk, and the whole was pretty unassailable.
Of course there will be the purists – who when it comes to
black music are invariably middle-aged white men – who will argue that last
night’s music was not “true” grime, not like in the golden 2003 days, but
frankly, sod them; Puritanism should have died with Cromwell. We know from the
past how awkward these musical meetings can sometimes be but there was nothing
awkward about last night’s music, which represented the consolidation of the
long march which British black music in particular has had to undertake.
At such a point it is salutary to remember where it all
started. I sat looking at another example of what some music writers still
refer to as “landmark albums” – and if you’re going to call your debut album
anything (if it’s a calling card, which it should be) then call it something
like Club Classics Vol One; to hell
with kow-towing disguised as self-deprecating modesty! – and wondering how I
was going to write about it. I know that absolutely nobody is going to welcome
another opportunity to gather round and listen to Grandpa Punctum telling you
another story about the good old days and how great they were and how terrible
things are now, because that gets nobody and nothing anywhere.
Still, what do I
say about Soul II Soul that you can’t find out for yourself in the Wikipedia
entry or in the sleevenotes to the 10th Anniversary Edition of Club Classics? If you want a detailed
examination of the multi-threaded socio-political history which led to “Keep On
Movin’,” read Paul Gilroy’s absorbing The
Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness but agree with its
central point that Soul II Soul, and “Keep On Movin’” in particular, represent
the moment when British black music started to answer back and influence what
was happening on the other side of that ocean.
You could argue that the story of Britfunk and British soul
remains the secret story of the eighties. The explosion presumed with the
emergence, in and around 1981, of the likes of Light Of The World, Beggar and
Co, Incognito, Imagination, Central Line, Junior Giscombe and Linx - supple,
rhythmic and utterly relevant - never really came to pass, despite the best
efforts of the Norman Jays and Paul Wellers of that world, and by the
mid-eighties the "movement" as such had dwindled to a hardcore
fulcrum on which balanced the likes of Loose Ends and I-Level. Although the
former in particular were a group of rare power and originality - "Hangin'
On A String," though produced by the American Nick Martinelli, remains one
of the greatest and most startling soul records ever to emerge from a British
studio - the fluffier teenpop variant of Five Star was the preferred mainstream
option.
But the story, though relegated to the background, remained
a vital undercurrent; both Camden's Soul II Soul and Bristol's Wild Bunch
developed an awesome reputation through their sound system DJ all-nighters,
utilising their love for the undertold story of eighties pop - an eighties of
Odyssey's "Inside Out," Evelyn King's "Love Come Down" and
Thelma Houston's "You Used To Hold Me So Tight" which still hasn’t
received its just dues (think of Dennis Edwards’ “Don’t Look Any Further” as
the movement’s very own “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”) - and mixing it with
the residue of spirits from dub and post-punk to work towards a mix which could
rightly be claimed to be their own art, their
music.
To appreciate the full impact of "Keep On Movin',"
the third Soul II Soul single but the first one to cross over into the Top 40,
you really needed to have ambled through the imposing terraces of West London
in that enlightened spring of 1989, since the overwhelming impression given by
the record is one of elegance - an unhurried walk through the patience of
reason. It slowed pop back down, made it breathe again rather than
hyperventilate, even if the "keep on movin', don't stop" motif had
social directions in mind; it was the perfect soundtrack for an idle wander
around the outskirts of the Circle Line on an empty, cloudy Bank Holiday
Monday, but much, much more as well.
But the story of Soul II Soul is specifically a North-West
London story; Jazzie B is from Hornsey via Antigua, and it all came together in
Camden. “Keep
On Movin’” makes me think of Camden as it once was, and indeed the number 24
bus you took to get there (and beyond, to the threshold of Hampstead Heath).
Unlike now, when the 24 is just another anonymously corporate red bus, the eighties
24 had art; it came in shades of turquoise and dark green. It didn’t look like any other bus and it could
take you from the centre of town in a matter of fifteen minutes.
In those days Camden
was a place worth going to; Compendium Books, almost directly across the road
from Rhythm Records, and so many others (you can find them elsewhere if you dig
a little). You’d travel there of a weekend with absolutely no idea of what
you’d find or where you’d find it. And so when I hear Caron Wheeler singing, delicately,
“Yellow is the colour of sun rays,” I not only think of the black gold of
Rotary Connection but also what it felt like getting there, and coming back, on
the 24 bus (in fact, taking Jon Savage’s atmospheric sleevenote into account,
one could consider Saint Etienne’s Foxbase
Alpha as a very belated parallel to Club
Classics, albeit using a partially different series of reference points).
Those of us who were present at the time recognised how
important these first two Soul II Soul singles were going to be. You couldn’t
walk through London
in 1988 without hearing “Fairplay” or “Feel Free” blaring out through
somebody’s car stereo or on an elusive pirate radio station. Even if you don’t
think you know them, you do; one listen to Rose Windross’ “Bay-BAY! Bay-BAY!
Bay-BAY!” on “Fairplay” should uncloud your mind (I can think of at least one
other long-term resident of Hampstead and Highgate, and of Then Play Long for that matter, who was knocked out by that
record). Meanwhile, “Feel Free” plays like a virtual blueprint for what the
early Massive Attack would practise; ominous Reggae Philharmonic Orchestra
strings, hip-hop beats which don’t have to bang on your head to prove their
nowness, a direct and hugely disturbing vocal, as though threatening to shatter
complacent glass forever (“Every day I look into the mirror and I see
my-SELF!”), by Doreen Waddell, whose awful and entirely avoidable end can be
looked up on Google. Unplayed on mainstream radio, unmentioned in the music
press (though not in the fashion press; Soul II Soul sold clothes as well as
club nights and records) – you either knew about these things or London wasn’t
for you, much as the crowds at the Albert Hall last night enthusiastically sang
along with, and knew every word of, joints which as of now exist only as
downloads. This was the triumph of the music played at the back of the bus.
But “Keep On Movin’” was different,
even (or especially) from the rest of what then constituted British soul or
hip-hop music. “Don’t stop like the hands of time,” warned the song. “Click,
clock, find your own way to stay” (the whip is in the grave, as The Band once
sang; the world is now yours); “Why do people choose to live their lives this
way?”
Those Oriental strings out of Chic. The courteous chutzpah
worthy of imperial phase Prince. “The right time is here to stay,” “I hide myself from no one.”
It was black Britain’s
“Anarchy In The U.K.” except it had something more to offer than nihilism.
Sure, one major purpose of this group and record was to promote
a clothes shop. Wasn’t that the case with the Sex Pistols?
Indeed, you could propose that Soul II Soul demonstrated the
only successful example of British popular music crossing over into business
and making a go of it. Remember all that mock-corporate talk in the early
eighties; Rhythm Of Life tinned peaches and what have you? I think some of
these New Pop people wanted a piece of the action, really. Well, Jazzie B went
ahead and did it, and maybe the Soul
II Soul story is what Thatcherism should always have been about; the little
person building up something from nothing and thriving instead of surviving.
The trouble was that the other side
of the coin – the one which talked about giving something back to your
community once you had become successful, rather than keeping the profits for
yourself – was, and for the most part continues to be, disregarded.
In this respect, Club
Classics plays like a travelogue of late eighties London, a Camden Duck Rock, if you will (Jazzie B’s
occasional pronouncements throughout the record do remind me somewhat of
McLaren, but the Zulu musicians are far more subtly deployed, particularly in
“Holdin’ On”); through its (just under) forty-five minutes you hear Deep House,
hip-hop, the influence (though not the presence) of reggae, jazz (flautist
Kushite has a ball on “African Dance”) and flashes of what else was good about
those times (the staccato brass fanfare samples dotted throughout “Feeling
Free”). The prototype of “Back To Life” is mainly Caron Wheeler and backing singers,
but the tension keeps subtly building up, and when the deep beat bursts in it
feels like a moment of liberation, of profound release, as well as immense
exultation. Jazzie B himself brings proceedings to a close as he talks about
the history of Soul II Soul and where he’d like it to go.
I listened to the cassette of this album on my Walkman all
over London (I
still have it, and it still plays perfectly). But you have to go to the 10th
anniversary edition CD (which I found – and it was only right to find it there
– in a charity shop in Hampstead) for the single of "Back To Life," which
represented Soul II Soul’s moment of eternal summer. Despite the lyric's urges
of "back to reality" and "back to the here and now" (yeah)
there seems something wonderfully unreal, something evocatively 1967, about the
record's straight delineations; as with "Time Of The Season" the
absence of a musical centre - no guitars, hardly any chords or harmonies except
for the occasional and thoroughly relevant interceptions of piano - widens the
song's emotional space. For large stretches there is nothing to the record
beyond Caron Wheeler's sublime, expansive lead vocal, a bassline and a drum
program, but its movement remains sultry, decisively carnal but sociologically
generous, coloured in at precisely the right moments by those Oriental strings –
again, brilliantly remembering their Chic - drawing watery lines of art across
the song's benign canvas. Wheeler, too, is patient: "However do you want
me, however do you need me" - she both wants and needs her Other, but she
is prepared to wait, smiling and welcoming (despite her "Let's end this
foolish game" asides), until he's fully ready to embrace her spirit.
Of course, such references as "take the
initiative," "make a change, a positive change" and "I live
at the top of the block" (though the piano chords accompanying that line
are the record's punctum – keyboardist Simon Law is the album’s unsung hero) suggest
a wider agenda. It may well be that Club
Classics succeeds so well because of the elegant (there’s no other word to
describe it) programming work of producer Nellee Hooper - the far from missing
link between Soul II Soul and what was about to evolve from the Wild Bunch into
Massive Attack - whose intimate and instinctive understanding of space and
structure helped lead to the latter's string of masterpieces, starting with
Neneh Cherry's startling "Manchild," also a top five hit that spring
(a co-production by Hooper and Cameron McVey, who between them paved the way
for New Pop Mk II). But "Back To Life" stands tall as the last great
number one of the eighties, summer seeping through its grooves like honey
through a brightly coloured ladle of hope.
Me? I think that art in whatever way you want to frame or
describe it is markedly better in London
now than it was back then. And the centre of things may have shifted eastwards
from Camden to
Shoreditch. And London
may on the face of things resemble a
less friendly and open place than before. There are no Soul II Soul shops now –
Camden has basically been reduced to a tourist trap – but their clothing
imprint (“Funki Dred”) can be found at Harvey Nichols, just down the road from
the Royal Albert Hall, and that must signify a real achievement, something
better than what came before. And as far as Camden record shops are concerned; well,
there’s another one which should be mentioned – Rock On, just next to the tube
station exit (and also now long gone), to some people about as unhip as late
eighties record shops could get, but I found some good things there. Once I
came in and bought a copy of the theme tune to Fireball XL5 (which I note was sung by the man who is currently
Russell Crowe’s father-in-law) and I was wearing a suit (because I liked
bright, colourful suits in the eighties), though was certainly dangling no car
keys. I know for a fact that Nick Hornby was a regular customer at Rock On, and
that the shop in High Fidelity was in
large part based on Rock On. In the book the main protagonist says this about a
customer who comes in and buys the theme tune to Fireball XL5, wearing a suit:
“Do I want to be like him? Not really, I don’t think. But I find myself worrying away at that stuff about pop music again, whether I like it because I’m unhappy, or whether I’m unhappy because I like it. It would help me to know whether this guy has ever taken it seriously, whether he has ever sat surrounded by thousands and thousands of songs about … about… (say it, man, say it)… well, about love. I would guess that he hasn’t.”
You might want to think of my fifteen or so years of online
and printed music writing as an extended response to, and pronounced negation
of, that rhetorical question.
