Cancel Culture Club #10: Dreadlock Holiday

And so we arrive at the final edition of the Cancel Culture Club, a worthy experiment, but one that has become more and more tiresome as time has gone on, because with a few worthy exceptions, I (and the majority of the committee) don't actually believe in Cancel Culture, even for the most offensive of old records. "Different times," as Mark Radcliffe often remarks, and we can probably leave it at that.

Still, it was fun while it lasted, and I've been impressed, humbled and immensely grateful to all the contributors for taking time out of their busy schedules to give me their opinions. You're all amazing, proof - and believe me, proof is needed on a daily basis - that it's not quite time to cancel the human race.

Our final tune then, comes as a special request from my "brother from the gutter", Ernie - although I did already have it on my longlist. Let's go back to 1978 when this Ode to the Gentleman's Game by Stockport's finest was at the top of the UK charts... 

I was going to say that we'll kick off today... but that's not an appropriate metaphor, is it? Instead then, here's Walter from A Few Good Times In My Life to make today's first delivery...

10cc had a real hit with this song. Criticism has been levelled at the song for using too many stereotypes of Caribbean people in the lyrics and for linking their dialect directly to crime. We all know that generalisations are inaccurate. However, I doubt that Mr Gouldman intended it that way. Should it be ‘cancelled’? No, because there are too many songs whose content can be misinterpreted if one so wishes.

I started with Walter because his comment pretty much sums up the general consensus regarding, if not this particular song, then certainly the series as a whole. There are indeed too many songs whose content can be misinterpreted if one so wishes, and we've only scraped the surface of them here. But all good things must come to an end.

The Police - Roxanne

From Germany then, we jump up to Scotland to hear from Alyson and her Jukebox Time Machine. So Alyson, Dreadlock Holiday... What's It All About?

I had a look at the lyrics to Dreadlock Holiday last night and although I didn’t think of it back in the day, they are not particularly complimentary about the Jamaicans the tourist met along the way. Also, a white band from the North-West of England singing a reggae song would just not happen today. 

Perhaps not, but it's amazing how many British bands jumped on the reggae bandwagon back in the day, isn't it? From the Police to The Clash... and if we were happy to let those guys do it, we can hardly chastise 10cc for the same cultural appropriation, can we?

The Clash - Bankrobber

Sorry, Alyson - please continue...

BUT, like nearly every song we’ve explored in this series, it was written when the thinking about such things was not as highly evolved, so I’m not particularly blaming Graham Gouldman for having done so. He himself admits he wouldn’t write that song today although at the time most of the lines in the song were taken from real-life conversations he and Eric Stewart had whilst on separate holidays to the Caribbean. So, like nearly every song we’ve looked at, I’m going to give it a pass. The world was a much smaller place back in 1978 with travel to far-flung places only for the well-heeled. Globalisation has meant we now know about people from all over the world and we no longer make jokes about their perceived idiosyncrasies - they are often real people we know in our day to day lives. We now just need to get the warmongers off the global stage and life would be far less scary.

Hear hear! Though I'm not sure we're any more evolved these days - we just have a greater awareness of cultural sensitives. Well, some of us do anyway. Although there is a strong contingent desperate to turn back the clock to times when it was "OK" to be racist or sexist or homophobic - perhaps the white male elite who feel threatened that their patriarchal grip might be slipping... 

Like with many of the other songs we’ve looked at, although I’m giving it a pass, I don’t really want to hear it on the radio anymore and I can’t say I have for a long time, so job done.

Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers - Egyptian Reggae

We'll stay in Scotland for our penultimate contribution today - and check out what The Vinyl Villain himself has to say about 10cc's Jamaican odyssey. What do you think, JC? 

One thing worth remembering is that 10cc were a highly-regarded musical act, critically as well as commercially, as can be see from the run of hit singles and albums they enjoyed in the early-mid 70s.

There was often a bit of the theatrical about them, with them trying to perhaps show themselves up as being better than their peers, and to be fair the sounds/music that came with the 1975 ballad ‘I’m Not In Love’ were quite unlike anything many of us had heard before

The splintering of the band in 1976 saw the more avant-garde and creative duo of Kevin Godley and Lol Creme go one way, leaving Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman to keep the band name and lucrative record deal.

The hits did still come via ‘I’m Mandy Fly Me’ and ‘The Things We Do For Love’ and then in 1978, came ‘Dreadlock Holiday’.

It sold in huge numbers…..spending three months in the chart between mid-August and late November, and laying the foundation for the parent album ‘Bloody Tourists’ to hit #3.

But it came at the expense of the critics turning on the band.  And rightly so as Dreadlock Holiday is a stupidly cheesy piece of music, almost akin to a novelty record, with a lyric that was in some places cringey and toe-curling and in others horrific for stereotyping Jamaicans as having two loves in life – watching cricket and mugging white holidaymakers.

And let’s not forget that some of these lyrics were delivered in a faux-accent that nowadays would, rightly, be called out as racist behaviour.

It was, of course, a different time and I’d never dream of calling Stewart or Goldman racists – there was so much of that going on across ‘popular’ culture of all sorts, including some of our most watched television programmes.

Times, thankfully have moved on.  It’s best that we bury Dreadlock Holiday in a vault and do our best to forget it ever existed.  

The thing I like the most about JC's wonderfully considered response is the awareness of time, of effectively judging the song twice, once by the standards of the day, and once through more contemporary eye-glasses. We've had to do that a lot as this series progressed, and it's made me aware of how much the lens we view the world through changes. Not just society's lens, but our own individual lenses too. This may explain why we might now have friends who were radical lefties when they were young, but find themselves swerving towards Farage in later life. That swerve might be the result of a subconscious belief on their part that the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction. Or it may be that we're all destined to become Daily Mail readers in our dotage. I do hope not.   

Paul Nicholas - Reggae Like It Used To Be

All of which brings us to today's final contributor, someone who I can't ever imagine turning to the dark side like that, even though he's sat out most of this series due to a "live and let live" liberalism which is most admirable. But when something does get his goat... watch out!

Andy Fairweather-Low - Reggae Tune

Take it away, Ernie from 27 Leggies...

I'll start by saying that as much as I dislike the record I wouldn't cancel it. It is easy enough to avoid these days. That said I do really, really dislike it. 

My main problem isn't with the dodgy accents in the choruses. They are clearly a bad thing and hopefully wouldn't be repeated if heaven forbid the song was recorded today, but to an extent you can use the "it was of its time" argument that has appeared in earlier editions of the CCC.

My problem is the lyrics. To illustrate my point I will make a comparison with another well-known example of dodgy Caribbean accents from the 1970s - "Barbados" by Typically Tropical.

Typically Tropical - Barbados

Take away the dodgy accents from "Barbados" and what you have is a harmless song about a man in a dull job looking forward to his holiday. This perhaps comes through more clearly in the Vengaboys' classic remake... 

The Vengaboys - We're Going To Ibiza!

Take away the dodgy accents from "Dreadlock Holiday" and what you have is something which is unpleasant, sneering and has nothing positive to say about the country at all. It trots out all the worst Jamaican stereotypes and the only Jamaicans to appear in the song are muggers and pushers.

It is hard to imagine the Jamaican Tourist Board will invite 10CC to the island in 2028 to celebrate the record's 50^th anniversary, as happened to Typically Tropical in Barbados last year.

(Ernie sent a link to this, but I couldn't get it to open. You may have more luck.)

Graham Gouldman has claimed in interviews that "the idea was to take the mickey out of a white person trying to emulate West Indian cool", which sounds distinctly like what a professor of logic might describe as a load of post-hoc bollocks. If that was really the case then there must be plenty of ways of doing so without portraying Jamaica in an entirely negative way - unless of course Graham thinks mugging and drug-pushing are cool (they're not kids!). And it certainly wouldn't necessitate calling the locals "brothers from the gutter" (Graham has at least had the good grace to disown that particular line).

We live in a world of post-hoc bollocks though, don't we? Trump has made that the predominant language of the world... I'm not sure we'll ever go back now.

In the same interview Graham says that "every West Indian person I’ve spoken to about it has said they love it".  While it is good to know that some of Graham's best friends are black, I still don't like it. Oh no!

Ooh - claws out at the end there!

Thank you, Ernie... and thank you to everyone who contributed to this series over the past nine months. I'm not going to belabour the conclusions we've arrived at... but neither am I willing to flog a dead horse.

Except... there will be a postscript tomorrow that may or may not be of interest. Until then - don't you cramp me style, don't you queer me pitch.