SOUNDS OF NORTH AND SOUTH

SOUNDS OF NORTH AND SOUTH

LETTER FROM BRITAIN

by Cynthia Rose

Ska, rock steady, reggae, lover's rock, soca, merengue, salsa, highlife, kwelaLondon's ever-enlarging love affair with ethnic musics lured the largest crowds ever to her 17th annual Notting Hill Carnival. Originally a pre-Lent festivity with calypso roots in the Trinidad of the 1780s, Carnival's two days of parades, costumes, toasting contests, open-air concerts and street dancing provide one of the vear's most populer celebrations.

For the black community who organize its events round North London's Ladbroke Grove area, it s a source of great pride—an extroverted contribution to the life of the city to which white revellers are also welcome. In 1977, police-precipitated riots left the streets of the Grove shattered and charred, but at this year's Carnival raindrops were a bigger threat than police batons; only 23 arrests were made.

Even the usual atmosphere of heavy dread down All Saints Road (home of the long-embattled Mangrove Restaurant and unofficial community center) was articulated mainly through the huge sound systems lining the street. There's a costume theme for each band, however, and the "Mangrove Freedom Fighters" wore sharp khaki fatigues to man theij 'pans,' the three-octave drums which make up the Grove's steel bands.

King of the Carnival was Medusa-locked Crazy, who flew in from Trinidad to headline two jump-up calypso concerts alongside Dominican expatriate Roy Alton, lynchpin of the UK's domestic soca scene. Another out-of-town star was Relator, 1980 Calypso King of Trinidad. Both were backed by the Metronomes Steel Orchestra —which provided the link to street steel and pans—and by Lenny Haddaway's exuberant 15-piece, the Marabunto Soca Band.

Carnival-goers stuffed themselves on the usual roast ears of corn, plaintain and Jamaican patties, guzzled tins of Red Stripe brew, and followed their ears through the tantalizing streets, which were shaking with sound and sweet with the smell of ganja. By night, a few whites even braved the "blues": local parties where a host-for-the-evening relieves you of a few quid at the door, then leaves you free to dance your ass off and make the acquaintance of his apartment.

This year another community festival— in South London—directly preceded and complemented Carnival. It was held at the New Albany Empire ("new" because the theater had to be rebuilt after the fire set by a National Front splinter group levelled it) and headlined by the great South African pianist Abdullah Ibrahim, aka Dollar Brand. There was an impressive roster of support: Nigerian drummer—and London resident for 12 years—Gasper Lawal, whose lower-profile gig at the Gold Coast Club the same week saw a block-long queue turned away; former Specials sidekick Rico, the venerable JA trombonist; London's top salsa band, Cayenne; Jazira, the homegrown highlife ensemble; and Steel 'n' Skin, whose London-African drumming incorporates calypso rhythms.

The last three participants all boast big band lineups—Cayenne is a 15-piece Steel 'n' Skin a nine-piece, and Jazira, who perhaps best exemplify this town's exhuberarit new ethnic populism, is composed of five Ghanaians, a Sierra Leonean, two Englishmen and a pair of European women on saxophone.

Carnival '82 could even boast a mainstream sex symbol of its own, in the form of Gregory Isaacs, "the lonely lover with the velvet voice". Isaacs' "Night Nurse" single and his solo LP backed by the Roots Radies was cannily released by his new label Island just in time for festivities. Unlike "Night Nurse," on radio—Island are marketing Isaacs as a Smokey Robinson for the sistem, building on his previous successes like "Front Door," "Permanent Lover" and "Confirm Reservation." And this image got approval from The Voice,

"London's First Black Newspaper," which launched its inaugural issue in Carnival Week.

Within a day of The Voice hitting newsstands, the editor had been sacked, the picture editor walked out, and managing editor Alex Pascall (who compares a radio chat show called "Black Londoners") found his postion "still to be defined." Ironically, it was all a bit like the state of play in the U.K.'s most "happening" white music scene—which right now is located once more in Liverpool.

The new Liverpool scene has little to do with major labels and even less to do with that city's illustrious '60s past. (When Hamburg's Star Club—now the "Salambo Erotic Sex Theatre"—recently opened its doors to the first live act since the Beatles that glory claimed for the UK not the Merseysiders, but by a rough and ready garage band from Kent called the Milkshakes) .

No—Liverpool's new music scene is a Chinese fire drill of personnel combinations which accrue at school or, for the lucky, through the coveted day job or night shift. Most of the musicians who figure in it (like the members of the most nationallyknown, China Crisis) share an affinity for

Bowie-style electronics and Enoesque soundscapes. China Crisis came to national attention through the success of their single "African and White" (a dreamy, synth-ridden reveriw which bests "Ebony and Ivory" at its own conceits), picked up by Virgin Records from Liverpool independent label Inevitable.

Eddie, Gary and Dave donated their first-ever tape of "African and White" (recorded on "a very summer day" in their day" in their living room to a local cassette magazine, Quest. In similar spirit they helped local lad M.A. Kane—met when he suppported them on tour singing to backing tapes—filch 14 hours of studio time; enough for him to lay down all the vocals and play all the instruments for "Landscape 1 + 2," his debut cassette has one-man operation The Project.

Inevitable Records, the indie which backed China Crisis, have a current hit on their hands with the Pale Fountains' "We Have All The Time In The World." And, though CC have an LP and single due Out on Virgin in mid-October, the Pale Fountains (another of Merseyside's many trios) are "dead happy where we are." The day we spoke "the fellas from A&M" had rung up Fountains' songsmith Michael, "and you could tell they were right fat bastards, callin' me 'Mike'...'The world's your oyster now Mike' they kept saying."

Pale Fountains deal out a sort of roughstrummed MOR, where trumpets (trumpets are big now in Liverpool; even Teardrop's Dave Balfe is eager to claim the first use of trumpets) support a vocalist who flings out his v/oice like one of the luminous necklaces you used to buy at large concert venues. And, like many others on the new Mersey front, the Fountains prefer John Barry and Burt Bacharach to New Order or Bauhaus. Their favorite (and favored) cover is Dionne Warwick's "Walk On By."

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"You can go either way," says Michael. "Write a good song with the melodies and all the trimmings, or write a good dance song; you very rarely get both in the middle." (Though the trio feel ABC came close with "The Look Of Love" and like to fancy their "A Long Shot For Your Love" as a similar contender).

The major labels' big mistake was passing over Liverpool lot the Wild Swans. A headily existential threesome who called up swelling melodies round singer Paul Simpson's deep-throated angst ("tell your sorrows to a bottle/scrape each barrel that you find"), Spandau-level young 'n' beautiful sentiments occasionally held the Swans back. But their sound could be dark and full, sweet and thrilling.

Arista Records was listening seriously, but they listened too late. The Swans' manager incurred some rather substantial debts in his alter ego of freelance publicist, and he stopped answering his phone just at the crucial moment. Singer Simpson decided to "terminate the practices," and the Swans split; keyboardist Gerard Quinn for a holiday and guitarist Jerry Kelly to join the eight-month-old Jass Babbies.

Now that he's replaced a guitarist with overtly Heavy Metal tendencies, the Jass Babies sound like they might bear out Kelly's hope of achieving "a lot more depth and a more adult audience" than the Swans. Their debut tapings of "Birthday Card" and "Tap Tap Tap Of The Rain" offer neat-edged pop with a strong rhythm section and a nice dynamic.

Equally drum-propelled (and again, trumpet-driven) is the synth-pop of Liverpool's newer Glass Torpedoes. An energetic female vocalist might mean that better numbers like their "Caught On Film" catch the national ear; something other new Mersey bands like Heart of India won't accomplish with their undersea-style instrumentals.

China Crisis say they may call their album "Different Shapes And Passive Rhythms." Put that together with the Jass Babies' sentiment that "there's something in this thing called love" and you'll get the mini-idea that is the Mersey's current soundscape. Synthesizers and drum machines have replaced echoes of Pete Best from the Cavern. And up-and-coming monikers like 'Blue Poland' or 'Icicle Works' give you some idea of the temperature deference between the ethnically hot spot that is Britain's capital, and those regions up North where the first chill of autumn is already in the air. ^