Guns In The Ghetto - UB40

Labour Of Love Vol.1 - UB40

Labour Of Love albums were some of the groups most successful longplayers, spurning a selection of hits in the eighties and nineties. Who are they: Birmingham based UB40 , have a strong reggae sound to their music. Lead vocals from Ali Campbell, who left the group a couple of years ago to pursure his solo career. He was replaced by Maxi Priest. On this album: The obvious choice would be to head for Red Red Wine which is a slow and tender number with luscious vocals from Campbell. The gentle rhythm seems to echo a bottle of wine being poured. It is the kind of track you could slow dance to, or play quietly at a dinner party. The track has dated, but there is ...

Labour Of Love Vol.1 - UB40

The creation of entire albums of music from other artists is nothing new. It has been done to great effect by David Bowie, Bryan Ferry and many more. When UB40 followed up their first 2 albums which contained their own material with an album drawn from favourite reggae songs from their youth. Having established themselves as the conscience of 80s youth with their socially aware lyrics about unemployment and social injustice it could have been seen a s a commercial sell-out and perhaps ultimately it was. It was also, however, a very fine album. That it must have been a labour of love can be heard in the loving way the songs are crafted and every track reproduces the ...

Signing Off - UB40

would have registered at over 4mn if the Conservatives had not continually changed the method of counting unemployment. To receive unemployment benefit at that time you had to complete a UB40 form and it was this that gave the name of UB40 to a band of young men from Birmingham. For their first album Signing Off they even used a mock UB40 form as the cover. The influences of UB40 were from protest songs and the medium they used for the broadcast of their protest was reggae. Reggae had long been an emblem of protest through people such as Bob Marley and Linton Kwesi Johnson but UB40 used it in the context of a multicultural Britain and its problems. Their first single ...