— Pat Sharp
It was July and our year in England was slipping away — though given my lethargy at the time, you'd hardly know it. The novelty of spending weekends in a host of British cities and towns had worn off and if I never saw another full English breakfast again I would have been a happy twelve-year-old. I didn't want to leave the UK but I didn't especially want to see any more of it either. I wanted to spend weekends at home watching the telly and listening to music — even if it happened to be in our uninspiring little hovel in Laindon, Basildon.
We had neighbours who we could see and/or hear quite easily. My sister and I would spy on an amourous couple across the square from us and noises of varying volume were easy to listen to. The bedroom we shared was separated by a thin wall with teenagers we never met but whose tastes in music dovetailed with our own. It was during this scorching summer that they came home one day with "Back to Life (However Do You Want Me)" and put it on their hi-fi. We nodded approvingly and didn't complain when they promptly put it on again. And again. And again. It didn't stop. Had it been a lesser song, we would've gotten sick of it.
"Back to Life" was unavoidable that summer. In my memories of those waning days before our return to Canada in August, it soundtracked everything. Shops played it, pub jukeboxes had it on an endless loop, schoolmates sang it as they pranced around the playground. Almost everyone seemed to love it and those that didn't still couldn't avoid it. The song of the summer a year earlier had been "The Only Way Is Up" by Yazz but I only became aware of it as it as sliding down the charts; I wasn't about to miss out this time round — and, indeed, its ubiquity ensured that there was no danger of that happening anyway.
Soul II Soul were seemingly a 1989 creation but they were sowing the seeds of their success a year earlier. Their debut single didn't exactly storm the charts on a national level but it got a good word-of-mouth and people in the know were impressed. "Fairplay" must have seemed too relax to fit in longside acid house and techno but it did well enough for a first try. Rose Windross gives a charming vocal performance and her girlish "Okay!" near the beginning never fails to put a smile on my face. It did so well that its slightly inferior follow-up, "Feel Free" with guest vocalist Do'reen, did about as well on the charts. While not as good, it set the London collective up for a big year ahead.
Caron Wheeler subsequently came aboard for third single "Keep on Movin'". It wasn't a big favourite of guest reviewer Pat Sharp but itdid well enough to give them a Top 10 breakthrough and it was even able to linger on the listings for longer than your average hit single. Relaxed but active enough to become a dancefloor staple, it was like Chic's "Everybody Dance" but for a generation more accustomed to the more chilled out Second Summer of Love (and all its requisite drugs) than to coke-fuelled Studio 54 disco vibes. With a better song and a stronger promotional push, there was every reason to expect that the next single would continue the upward trend.
But is "Back to Life" that much better than "Keep on Movin'"? As pairings go they were not unlike fellow label mate Inner City's outstanding one-two punch of "Big Fun" and "Good Life", albeit in vastly different forms. In both cases, leaders Jazzie B and Kevin Sauderson created a unique sound with their first hit singles and then replicated them beautifully for their respective follow-ups. (It didn't hurt as well that Wheeler had returned for "Back to Life" just as Paris Gray was on vocal duty for "Good Life"; Soul II Soul had always dubbed themselves a "collective" but having the same singer on back-to-back records suddenly made it seem like they were a proper group) Inner City, however, amped up the pop hooks but minimized the subtleties that helped make "Big Fun" so glorious; Soul II Soul refined the swaying dancefloor cool of "Keep on Movin'" into something even more extraordinary.
Tom Ewing likes "Back to Life" a lot but he can't quite muster the same kind of enthusiasm for it that he has for Massive Attack's phenomenal 1991 single "Unfinished Sympathy". I can see what he means but I respectfully disagree. While the Bristol trio would smartly tap into indie angst in order to bridge it with the ascending trip hop movement, Jazzie B and co. invited all into their diverse realm without barriers. Everyone seemed to love "Back to Life", even baby boomers who normally wouldn't have had anything to do with such stuff. And it still sounds great to this day (though, in fairness, so does "Unfinished Sympathy"): the easy answer would be to say that it has aged well but I suspect that the world has never aged out of it. Jazzie's promise of a "happy face and a funky face for a loving race" should have been cringe-inducing but it's something we all still need.
A few months after "Back to Life" had its memorable four week run at the top of the British charts, I was back in Canada. The song wasn't all over the place but it had successfully crossed the Atlantic and it even got played on the debut episode of the Will Smith sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. By this point, I had given up on the current music scene in my homeland and I was content to simply relive the previous year by listening to my collection of tapes from the UK as well as a handful that I subsequently picked up. One was Keep on Movin' (retitled in North America because Club Classics Vol.1 wouldn't do in a land that typically didn't have much use for British dance music). I had previously only been familiar with their two hit singles and this was my introduction to Jazzie B's world of house music, funk, jazz and world beat. I was impressed by much of it (and I love it even more now) but the stripped down, acapella version of "Back to Life" proved to be a disappointment. The thrill of those strings, that beat and that tune that refused to exit my brain was replaced by a shell of the song's "However Do You Want Me" section. This wasn't the "Back to Life" that I knew and remembered and I didn't want to have anything to do with it. But that's what makes this amazing record even more of a triumph: Jazzie B cobbled together parts of songs, samples and a Reggae Philharmonic Orchestra backing track into something utterly remarkable and addictive. An easy Single of the Fortnight, Single of the Year and, hell, Single of the Century. Any century.
~~~~~
Also Reviewed This Fortnight
The Beautiful South: "Song for Whoever"
The Housemartins were by now long gone but The Beautiful South had taken their place. So, was the music scene jubilant? Not especially. Fans cried out for ver Martins and Paul Heaton's newest band reacted back in drunken vengeance. It would take another five years before people fully began to accept The Beautiful South — by which point they had already begun to decline creatively. "Song for Whoever" still did well as people either enjoyed the joke or for whatever reason became convinced that it was a sincere statement. A backlash was already brewing but it was one ver South managed to thrive under. The Housemartins would quickly become Heaton's second best band no matter what the nay sayers claimed.
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