Romantic tunes played a big part in British reggae charts in the late '70s and early '80s as a new generation of aspirational, British-born black kids abandoned roots reggae in favour of our first indigenous black pop style—lover's rock.
Many of the tunes were nothing more than insipid cover versions of UK pop or US soul hits, but the movement yielded a clutch of genuinely moving songs such as Sharon Forrester's "Silly, Wasn't It?" (incidentally, Melody Maker's reggae single of 1974) and Janet Kay's 1979 Top 3 hit "Silly Games", both featured here.
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Accompanied by bassist Jimmy Bond and drummer Albert "Tootie" Heath the 24-year-old Simone works her way confidently through a program of 11 numbers, every aspect of her highly personal style already in place at the very start of her career. The album includes her hit version of "I Loves You Porgy", the track that drew Colpix to sign her up for the early-'60s.
Like everyone else, if I crave the society of other adults, I'll have to pretend this is abhorrent. (Really, it's just so-so). Yet, if the Beeb had had the balls to spotlight the rebels in the camp instead of pushing the show into a karaoke niche none of the kids fancied, it could've been more grotesquely compelling than Big Brother's Jade in her porcine pomp. Ainslie, for one, had it in him to be an irritating iconoclast of some pluck, and even the toothsome David was drunkenly bitching like a trouper till he twigged he was actually going to win the thing and played safe.
