— Sylvia Patterson
When it came to board games, it always seemed like everyone else had a better selection of them than we did. We had an ancient edition of Monopoly in which the bank notes had all turned brown with everything kept in a box that had been taped up. We also had Scrabble which no one ever played (my parents would eventually become enthusiasts but not until they got a much nicer set), Trivial Pursuit which no one ever played and Mille Bornes which I could never understand (or even pronounce correctly — and I did French immersion in school!). One year someone gave us Sorry! for Christmas which we played once and then never touched again. No, we weren't a game night kind of family. (When we did, we generally just played cards; I seldom got anyone else interested in joining me for a few rounds of the Canadian cult game Crokinole which I still love)
Sorry! apparently goes back to India, along with several similar games. Parcheesi, which always seems to get mentioned in American movies and TV shows in spite of the fact that no one seems to play it, is descended from it, as is the British game Ludo, something I had never heard of until reading this review of Sylvia Patterson's. And so, it seems is Ludi which inspired this typically wonderful, silly and pointless tune from Toronto's Dream Warriors.
Now, by 'pointless' I do not wish to disparage it. (The fact that I also described it as 'wonderful' in the same sentence should've been the first hint that I wasn't knocking it) "Ludi" just doesn't have much to do with the game. There's not even all that much to it, with the opening verses being about Dream Warrior Capitol Q's mother ("or is it the other one?" as Patterson asks on behalf of everyone) and how this song is dedicated to her and everyone else in his family and the good people of every Caribbean nation and/or territory which he proceeds to list. He later tries to go into the details of the game but quickly gets sidetracked by giving a positive assessment of his rap skills and how much he misses his mum back home. To the extent that it's about anything at all, it certainly isn't about playing Ludi.
Patterson's review of "Ludi" represents a refreshing change of pace for the way ver Hits dealt with hip hop. I have discussed at length about the way other critics took great pains to praise a rap single by emphasising what wasn't there. The obnoxious, boastful rappers of the past had been supplanted by a new generation of much more thoughtful types like De La Soul, Redhead Kingpin and Monie Love. This is something that would have made me roll my eyes even if it had only been brought up the once but for it to have used repeatedly was really straining the point. To be certain, Dream Warriors were very much aligned with the new school (musician and writer Bob Stanley included their brilliant Top 20 hit "My Definition of a Boombastic Jazz Style" on the Ace Records compilation The Daisy Age which also includes many of their colourful hip hop contemporaries) but they weren't above bragging about how wonderful their raps were. While I initially had them pegged as a welcome antidote to both the admittedly tiresome 'aren't I great?' branch and the self-righteous 'rap has a message' gang, I now am able to recognize that there was more than a little of both in them. Luckily, they also had humour, playfulness and a way with jazz and reggae influences to make them stand out.
It's a pity that "Ludi" lacked the hooks of predecessors "Wash Your Face in My Sink" and the aforementioned "My Definition..." since its charms weren't quite sufficient to give them a third nice-sized hit in the UK, only just nudging its way into the Top 40 for just a week. Nevertheless, their debut album, And Now the Legacy Begins, quickly followed and it sold well. (It's strange to think that there was a time in which a group could put out three singles before even releasing the LP that featured all of them) They even had critical acclaim with a ten out of ten review for And Now... in the NME.
The success they had in Britain contrasts with how they were received back home. While "My Definition..." and "Ludi" were played a lot on Canadian cable channel MuchMusic (I have no memory of "Wash Your Face..." getting much attention at the time, though that may have been down to us not having cable in the first half of 1990), they were taken as a comedy act with none of their singles managing to make the Top 40. With all that hip hop coming from down south, Canadians had trouble recognizing that some of their own were capable. Maestro Fresh Wes proved to be relevant enough but he never seemed quite like the real thing. Kish's "I Rhyme the World in 80 Days" was cringey and he seemed to lay the groudwork for Snow's huge but ghastly "Informer" at the end of 1992. Barenaked Ladies were gaining traction in the early part of '91 and it seemed like Dream Warriors were the rap equivalent.
That Canadian sense of self-loathing isn't as strong as it used to be so it's high time my fellow citizens appreciated Dream Warriors and even acknowledged them as a point of pride. Where else are you going find a rap duo with odes to tissues and West Indies board games? Name another country that would produce an iconic gameshow theme that would be sampled for an iconic hip hop single, one that would later be adopted for the iconic Austin Powers movies? (And I had always assumed that Mike Myers had borrowed it from Dream Warriors, that's the kind of silly young Canadian rube I was)
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Also Reviewed This Fortnight
Dannii Minogue: "Love and Kisses"
Kylie had a nice smile, Dannii had a nice smile. Kylie played the tough but lovable Charlene in Neighbours, Dannii played the tough but lovable Emma on Home & Away. Kylie was rolling along with some of the finest pop hits of the era, Dannii...well, she was also a pop star of sorts. With her big sister going all pervy, it probably seemed like a good idea for young Danielle to be a girl-next-door but it mattered little when her pop songs were so pitiful. Just like Kylie's stuff from three years earlier only much worse. It says a lot about the state of the charts in 1991 that there was an appetite for such awfulness. And so the Dannii era had begun: lots of Smash Hits covers, loads of exposure she didn't deserve and a metric ton of horrible music. And to think people thought that Kylie wasn't much of a singer.
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