Indie Number Ones — UB40 — “Food For Thought”
As a coronavirus Network Time Killer, I’m going to write about and rate every song that hit number one on the UK indie charts starting in early 1980 with Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart” and working our way towards the present day.*
This is a total and utter rip-off of the great Tom Breilan’s “Number Ones on Stereogum”, where he writes about every number one on the American Top 40 charts. Which is itself admittedly a rip-off of Alan’s Popular write-ups of every UK Number One on their charts. If, for some unknown reason, you have lots of spare time these days, both blogs are totally fun ways to pass the time.
While most of the number ones are songs I know and love, sometimes this exercise will force me into learning about bands like UB40 — driving me and you towards learning about genres and music and stories that otherwise we wouldn’t have any insight into, or dug into of my own accord.
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What comes to mind when you hear the name UB40?
If you grew up in the 80s your memories are no doubt clouded by the monolithic saccharine successes of their white boy reggae covers of “Red, Red Wine” and “Can’t Help Falling In Love”. Both were in heavy rotation on MTV back when the channel was living up to its name.
I’ll rephrase the question:
If those two songs take up the bulk of the tiny part of your noggin dedicated to the name UB40, how many synonyms for ‘cheesy’ do you pass before landing on the adjective, ‘indie?’
Answer: Quite a damn lot.
Did I think in the year 2020 I’d be stuck at home writing 1000 words about UB40’s early roots music approach to reggae circa 1980? No. God no. But here we are, not a goddamned jetpack or vaccine in sight, and I’m listening to reggae (really, really not my favorite) in quarantine and trying to write interesting things about a band best known for soundtracking Sharon Stone psychosexual thrillers that weren’t Basic Instinct.
Wellllll, ok then. Let’s hit the double isosceles triangles and zip backwards to the band’s origins in working class Birmingham, England. Growing up on the council estates (think a more multicultural projects), it’s easy to see how Robert Campbell and his mates would fall in love with reggae.
First a touch of British music history:
Post WWII, England had an influx of Caribbean immigrants who brought their music with them, and helped popularize it in their new home, giving reggae a much deeper and more lasting impact on the charts than in the US. And it wasn’t just Bob Marley’s Legend — the sine qua non of pot smoking college dorm rooms — that sold. Starting in the late 60s with Desmond Dekker’s “The Israelites” hitting number one, reggae was a commercial and critical mainstay on the British charts.
In the late 70s, as the original punk rock acts lost some of their luster, bands like the Clash, the Jam and the Specials began incorporating ska, dub and reggae into their sound. (Cultural appropriation? Perhaps, but Bob Marley recorded his “Punky Reggae Party” in approval.)
In fact, the Specials hit the overall UK number one spot for 2 weeks in February 1980 with “Too Much Too Young”, so it wasn’t out of the imagination for this sort of multicultural, yet largely white working class music to be massively successful.
Besides chart success, the ethos of Rastafari had an impact on young working class Brits looking to make their way in an unfair world — fighting racism, poverty and injustice at a dismal time in the country’s history, as Thatcherism’s rise lead to massive unemployment and widespread civil unrest.
So, believe it or not, UB40 started off as social justice warriors,
spilling out of their Birmingham estates as a bunch of working class stiffs looking to change the world while playing the music they loved.
With no decent job prospects, the band took their name from the form you needed to get on unemployment in the UK — Unemployment Benefits Form 40.
They started playing reggae because they loved it. It’s just as simple as that. It’s kinda hard to be mad at early UB40 for getting consumed by that passion and firing off passionate protest songs -all on a shoestring budget.
Legend has it that they recorded their first album in a tiny bedsit apartment, a place so small that they had to record the keyboards outside in the garden; you can hear birds chirping if you listen closely to the synthy bits.
“Food For Thought” was the first single off their first album Signing Off, a lilting ska number with a killer sax line that manages to sound both celebratory and sad. (It was the 80s. Sax heroes were a thing.) Besides that horn line, the rest of the band lay down a simple dub reggae bed that wasn’t too far from what the Police had hit number one with on ‘Walking on the Moon’ in December 1979.
The sax and lilt bely a deeply bleak lyrical view of African hunger and European disinterest and callousness, a proto-take on what Bob Geldof would later use as the conscience of Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas”:
Skin and bones is creeping, doesn’t know he’s dead
Ancient eyes are peeping, from his infant head
Politicians argue sharpening their knives
Drawing up their Bargains, trading baby lives
Honestly, “Food For Thought” is great fun if you elide both the lyrical darkness and the chance that “Red Red Wine” might pop up next on your playlist. Sweating to early UB40 in an underground club with all your mates had to have been a really special feeling: ready to change the world, but also ready with a condom in your wallet just in case the saxline got any girls really horny.
Seeing the band in an underground club was absolutely special (so special): Chrissie Hynde heard UB40 playing in a pub and subsequently signed them to open for the Pretenders on their ’79 UK tour.
(The Pretenders — “Brass in Pocket” hit number one in the UK charts in January 1980 around the same time “Food For Thought” hit the top of the Indie charts. Chrissie would later guest on UB40’s cover of “I Got You Babe” which went to number one overall in 1985. The former is a 8/10, the latter a 1/10.)
“Food For Thought” hit the Indie Number One spot on the 8th of March, 1980 and stayed there for 12 weeks, while crashing the UK Top 40 and rising all the way to number 4. In doing so, “Food For Thought” became the first independently released song to ever make it into the Top 10.
“Food For Thought” is a 5/10.
If, as the judge instructed, Red, Red Wine was stricken from the record, I might squint my eyes and render a final verdict of 6/10.
Agree/Disagree? Post your rating in the comments below.
Next up: Crass — “Bloody Revolutions”
