Reggae's Bulgarian Acrobats

By JAY COCKS;

No, no, no, it just doesn't happen this way. Smash Brit band, bedecked with hit singles and platinum albums from abroad, storms U.S. shores in 1983. Plays some concerts, manages to squeeze one hit onto the low midrange of the singles charts, then goes back home. Modest hit single, which had reached the No. 1 spot in twelve other countries, expires from widespread Stateside indifference.

Band turns out more albums and singles, which are smashes everywhere but the U.S. The States remain puzzlingly obtuse about UB40's charms. Is it the band's slightly arcane name (which comes from the code number on a British unemployment form)? Is there some possible alphabetical confusion with another, even more successful band of Irish lineage? Or does America just not cotton to the trim reggae beat and keen, often politically pointed lyrics that UB40 handles so smoothly?

No matter. Not anymore, now that UB40 finally has its breakthrough American record, a splendid, island-tinged version of Neil Diamond's 1968 Red Red Wine. This is the same song UB40 couldn't put over five years ago. By one of those odd combinations of luck and fluke that make the music business so curious, + J.J. Morgan, a deejay at KKFR-FM in Phoenix, played the tune during a show in May, and, he reports, "within 24 hours, Red Red Wine was our most requested song. We didn't intend to make it a hit. It just happened."

Very confusing. UB40 has a typically excellent new album out, titled simply UB40, but Red Red Wine is on another, older album, Labour of Love, which is giving the newer record stiff sales competition. There was some thought among the eight band members that their record company, A&M, should have backed their recent work more strongly. "It all seems a bit strange to us," says lead guitarist Robin Campbell. "But we can't be choosy. Any hit record is a hit record. For us, it's kind of a vindication."

Nice timing too. In fact, Diamond's song is a fine introduction to UB40's sun-splashed funk, as long as listeners follow its affable lead and plunge into such originals as Sing Our Own Song (on the 1986 LP Rat in the Kitchen) or Dance with the Devil on the most recent album. It is on those tunes, righteous and rhythmic, that the band really proves itself. Red Red Wine may be a good song to hang your hat on, but on a UB40 tune like Sing, a band could proudly stake a reputation.

"Our drums and bass lines are exactly the same as those in Jamaica," says UB40 vocalist-trumpeter Astro. "But our melody lines are different. They're influenced by English pop and Motown." Adds Campbell, who also provides vocals: "From the time we were kids together, we all only really listened to reggae. I hardly listened to anything else, apart from Motown, Stax, Sam Cooke, Otis Redding -- and Jackie Wilson. He was my favorite." All the members of UB40 have known one another since their shared childhoods in Balsall Heath, a predominantly black neighborhood near the center of Birmingham. "It was a slum," says Campbell, but Brian Travers, who plays sax and acts as de facto spokesman, cautions, "Don't get the idea that we grew up poor, because we didn't. We didn't go hungry and have holes in our shoes or anything."

Though Balsall Heath is far from flash, the musicians still live there, within three miles of one another -- "in nice houses," as drummer Jimmy Brown puts it, "because we've earned the money." UB40 takes a strong hand in its own management and general direction, and the band is careful to keep tight ties with the old neighborhood. "I remember when everyone in this band wet themselves as kids," says Travers. "No one dares behave like a star. The ^ rest would just laugh. So we give ourselves away as being very plain. Like Bulgarian acrobats."

What set the UB40 boys apart, however, even in the early days, was their unblemished self-esteem. "We didn't think for a second that we weren't absolutely brilliant," Travers says. They would rehearse all day in a cellar, and sometimes paint the wall with their signatures, practicing autographs for the day they hit it big. They also lighted on what Travers calls a "master plan to conquer the world." They would play their hometown only once every six weeks. They told everyone they were too busy touring to appear more often, when, in fact, they were squirreled away in their rehearsal room, limbering up on their instruments and letting loose with the spray paint.

It wasn't until its first British chart success, King/Food for Thought in 1980, that the band's momentum started to keep pace with its self-propulsion. Now that UB40 is sweeping the colonies, it looks for all the world not only like a terrific band but also an eight-man self-fulfilling prophecy. The band, which still acts like an extended Birmingham family and is run like an informal commune, has only one strict rule: "Do what you do easiest." Brian Travers explains that it means "you can do it best if it comes from you." Finally, then, UB40 can rest easy.

With reporting by Elizabeth L. Bland/Atlanta