Britain has always had a fascination with music from the Caribbean. After the Empire Windrush signalled the arrival of a more modern, vibrant and much cooler Britain, it wasn?t long before Britons were bowled over by Lord Kitchener?s calypso and his orchestra.
Kitch’ returned the favour, going so far as to sweeten us all with the wonderful ?London is the Place for Me?. Lord Beginner swiftly followed with an ode to that most English of sports ? cricket ? before delivering a damning indictment on racist attitudes with the ace ?Mix Up Matrimony?.
Along with this new and exotic music, the culture of the Caribbean grew in popularity and cemented further with the birth of the Notting Hill Carnival in ?59 which painted on much needed vibrancy in a Britain still coming down with a dose of the wars.
However, it didn't take long for all this music to turn ugly, with the British deciding that this Caribbean music looked too easy – so easy that we could do it. And so, cod-reggae began to take its first horrible steps.
While a number of white artists tackled calypso, the first notable dross from these shores was Bernard Cribbins with his ?Gossip Calypso?, which paved the way for the likes of Peter Andre and, most recently, Alexandra Burke with her wearily catchy ?Start Without You? which goes as far as sampling another favourite cod-reggae track of us Brits, ?Hooray! Hooray! It's a Holi-Holiday? by Boney M.
Cribbins? Caribbean flavoured track came out in the same year as Jamaica earned independence and, to be honest, on hearing that you wonder if they felt if it was all worth it. With freedom comes great power… and novelty records it seems.
A few years later saw Millie?s mighty ?My Boy Lollipop? hitting the British charts, riding a wave that included Prince Buster and later, John Holt, Ken Boothe, Desmond Dekker and Jimmy Cliff. From these great moments in British chart history, one of the most awful sub-genres, loomed. Calypso required huge bands and great skill, but reggae was much easier to recreate to the ears of the uneducated. Reggae sounded like two chords, a jaunty bassline and required a singer to pipe ?dat? instead of ?that?, just like Robert Mitchum did on his charming, but ultimately peculiar Calypso LP.
However it was 1968 that really doomed us all to a world of faux-reggae and lolloping-ska and we look toward The Beatles, specifically, Paul McCartney and his dreadful tribute ?Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da?, along with the cheekier b-side ?You Know My Name?. This opened the floodgates for a British obsession with a tawdry by-product of all things reggae. Marmalade managed the impossible by making ?Ob-La-Di? even weaker and taking it to number one.
Before long, we had 10cc?s ?Dreadlock Holiday?, Led Zeppelin?s agonisingly dismal ‘D’yer Ma?ker?’ and unbelievably, Paul Nicholas with his shocking ?Reggae Like It Used To Be?. The late ?70s and ?80s didn't let up either. 2tone and punk made a reasonable fist of recreating the energy of the genre in its own cack-handed little way. Before we knew it, Boy George?s Culture Club where hamming it up with ?Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?? which sounds like something from a Lilt commercial.
Of course, it was around this time that UB40 started to peddle their woeful version of version. After making some great British equivalents, they slowly drifted into the arena of the sickly and wan, fading into a horrible stadium beige, producing howlers like ?I Got You Babe? with Chrissie Hyde, who despite being in one of the most overrated groups in history, probably flagellates herself daily to cope with the memory of making such a vapid record. Sonny Bono probably crashed into that tree whilst skiing on purpose after hearing the abomination.
Yet still, the British public lapped it up. Homegrown artists couldn't produce cod-reggae fast enough, which saw millions of people guzzling up Boney M records like gulls around a trawler. Even Blondie delved into reggae with their take on ?The Tide Is High?, which of course, was later taken on by Atomic Kitten, signposting that the British obsession with reggae-lite wasn?t going away anytime soon.
Then came the ?90s, which saw cod-reggae really getting the hooks into the British public, with records so awful that a recent government report stated that 9-in-10 British adults felt the need to to mince their own ears throughout the decade.
Possibly.
The big guns of pop-cod-reggae rolled out hit after hit, soundtracking the dry heaves on the waltzers. Ace of Base?s ?All That She Wants?, ?The Sign? and a cover of Aswad?s ?Don't Turn Around? sold hangarfuls, while Peter Andre gave us the flaccid pectoral muscle that is ?Mysterious Girl? which was in turn, unfathomably bettered (in terms of really butchering the reggae sound) by Eastenders? Sid Owen, again with an Aswad cover, this time, ?We've Got A Good Thing Going?.
Such was the world's obsession with cod-reggae, even Jamaica fell for it, producing the utterly dismal Chaka Demus & Pliers and Inner Circle with the dubious ?Sweat (A La La La Long)?. Then Snow came along to provide a chorus that has quite possibly never been sungalong with properly by anyone other than the artist himself and Mark Lamarr(apart from the ?licky boom boom down? bit).
And just when you thought it was over, along came the Vengaboys with their brand of Euro-reggae, with gaspingly terrible tracks like ?we're Going To Ibiza? and ?Uncle John From Jamaica?.
Terrible these tracks may be, but there's an insatiable appetite in Britain for cod-reggae. Lately, X Factor winner, Alexandra Burke, provided yet more reggae-lite, even going to the lengths of sampling Boney M, to make the whole thing fold in on itself. ?Start Without You? has currently been at number one for a whole fortnight (okay, that's not a huge amount of time in comparison with some of the big guns in the pop annals, but still) showing that the British appetite for watered down reggae is as huge as it ever was. Even the woman currently sat on pop?s throne ? Lady GaGa ? got in on the act with the package holiday friendly ?Alejandro?.
It goes beyond the pop charts too. Like tins of Del Monte fruit chunks, we see cod-reggae in the most unlikely of places. The QI theme tune feels like it ought to be a piece of playful classical music, instead, we've got this car-crash hybrid of classical and cod. The genre has managed to make its way into cookery too. The first place you'd naturally look toward is Levi Roots, but nothing he ever did matches the abject misery of Jamie Oliver‘s ‘Lamb Curry Song’.
So why do we keep lapping it up? It's not like there isn't a wealth of ?The Real Thing? out there. Britain embraced Toots and the Maytals, Althea and Donna, Horace Andy (mainly for his work with Massive Attack, granted), Desmond Dekker and the like, but nothing captured the imagination of the British public quite like Ace of Base did. Even reggae?s most famous son, Bob Marley, only hit paydirt with an intentionally ?whiter? sound (although it is something of a stretch to suggest Marley was an exponent of cod-reggae, but it sure would be fun to argue that as the case down the pub on a Friday night).
Comparatively, it didn't take Brits long to fall head over heels in love with hip-hop. Wu Tang Clan and Jay Z hold as much sway as more commercial artists such as 50 Cent and Kanye West. After stumbling around cod-hop like ?Holiday Rap? by MC Miker G and DJ Sven and comedy records like Liverpool FC?s effort in the late ?80s, it didn't take long before we all embraced Run DMC, Eric B & Rakim and De La Soul and started to roll around in genuine article.
Yet somehow, we're still avoiding Real Reggae. Bounty Killer may well have guested on a No Doubt track and Basement Jaxx gave us ?Jump ?n? Shout?, but for the most part, Caribbean music is kept at arm?s length in favour of something more bubblegummy.
And that of course, is entirely the point. we're a nation with a sweet tooth. Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall may want us to care about free range hens and MOJO magazine may want us to embrace the back catalogue of John Martyn but really, the collective ?we? seem to prefer chewing penny bubblies and chomping in-time to the latest cod-reggae summer hit. Or, in the case of the latest leak, Rihanna‘s new Christmas single, which reeks of cod. Even the festive season is getting on-board. There is no escape.
Reggae has always been a simple genre to dissect, and it's this reason that people still want to dance to Carly Simon?s ?Why??It's access to an imagined holiday where you can still smell the coconut in the sun cream… and, in the case of Jamie Oliver and Sid Owen, you can still taste the sangria vomit in your mouth too.
So with such throwaway pleasure, could you argue that cod-reggae is the most pure form of pop music around? It's upbeat and catchy and, most importantly, devoid of the cynicism that has crept into every other genre to date.
What a chilling notion.
Gilbert Wham says
To be fair, put a shit breakbeat behind that Cribbins number & you’ve essentially got the Streets.
Jackson Wylde says
Great stuff. However, any serious analysis of cod reggae needs to include the Jonathan King produced ‘Johnny Reggae’ by The Piglets.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrt0syQr9Tc&feature=related