10cc – “Dreadlock Holiday”
On one level the ‘plot’ of “Dreadlock Holiday” is hugely important to any judgement of it. On another, not at all, but let’s recap anyway. The narrator is a tourist in Jamaica – he gets mugged for his silver chain and returns to the comfort of his hotel where a woman tries to sell him weed.
Nobody comes out of the story well: the song’s parent album was called Bloody Tourists, and the narrator is a simp, trying and failing to fit in (“concentrating on truckin’ right”) and then fleeing to the hotel at the first sign of trouble. But the island isn’t exactly a welcoming place either, and the message seems to be that if you’re a white tourist, any approach is misguided and nowhere is entirely safe from the scary dark other looking to hustle you at every turn.
This, to my mind, makes for a rather mean-spirited song, a lose-lose game whose main purpose is to make 10cc seem clever and cynically realistic. I haven’t ever been a great fan of 10cc, precisely because I feel there’s this callous smirk behind a lot of their music, and “Dreadlock Holiday” crystallises the feeling for me. That makes me dislike it more than whatever racial or cultural politics might or might not lurk underneath the song: I am sure an extensive comments thread will tease them out!
On the other hand, “Dreadlock Holiday” is often superlative popcraft: that shimmering, unmistakable percussion intro that makes the song a sampler’s or mash-up act’s dream, and the massive chorus – seized on out of context by Sky Sports for an effect darkly comic enough that I’m sure the band enjoy it greatly. Even here, though, the cynicism runs deep. The song, light reggae which slides skilfully from awkward bounce to clammy paranoia, is an inversion of the lyrics’ theme: if you want to be a tourist, it says, stick to the studio and you can happily steal stuff from them. “Dreadlock Holiday” is in some ways the unpleasant opposite of 1978′s other reggae-related #1, “Uptown Top Ranking” – a wiser, crueller denial of its open celebration. Impressive work in its way, but it leaves a nasty taste.
4
Tom in FT /Popular • featured content/Pop • 5,543 views
Whatever their intentions it’s a perfect example of why middle class smarty pant white boys should stay away from trying to make clever jokes about race or even play with reggae (Paul Simon did a better job with ‘Mother and Child Reunion’, what’s 10cc’s excuse?), it just falls flat on its arse. I can forgive a song a lot if it has a good tune and is well made but this doesn’t quite overcome its problems, even at 15 when it came out I thought it was a bit dodgy.
It’s a long fall from “I’m Mandy, Fly Me” to this.
sure, maybe they didn’t care AND they they didn’t consider the lyrics. but i’m disputing the connection from one to the other in general. both that you would only consider the lyrics if you cared for the music, or that you couldn’t both care and not consider the lyrics.
(i have to say i look back on my year-zero self with a mix of pride — so spunky and determined to CHANGE THE WORLD! — and horror — so incredibly ignorant!)
I echo this sentiment! As a by-product of hanging out on this blog over the last few weeks (from “No Charge” onwards, basically), I’ve had to stare quite hard at my own Year Zero teenage self, and it has been a revealing process.
Another vote for “one mad” here. I like the tune, wince at the execution – like many above.
10cc are playing the Mick Jagger Centre, five mins walk from my house, in October. Well, I SAY 10cc; the flyer makes pointed mention of Graham Gouldman and no one else. Anyway, I thought I might as well pop along, until I looked at the damage – 30 quid!
Mark, you’re thinking of City Limits.
Re. 1978 radio, Blackburn in particular spent most of his time ranting against the Callaghan Government, strikes etc. though the likes of Travis and Edmonds were still very much in Radio Tip Top/ignore the outside world/It’s All Fun denial mood.
At the opposite end of the ’78 pop telescope – “(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais” by the Clash whose protagonist goes out in search of “real” roots culture, finds glamorous cabaret instead and ends up crouched in a corner realising he understands nothing; it’s one of the loneliest of all pop records.
no i’m not actually marcello — CL didn’t exist yet, and there was a london-only rock-and-listings paper which has got lost in history’s shuffle (the only “name” writer i can half-think of who had cachet was called iestyn something; i’ve never read a word by him, but penman and savage BOTH rate him/her) (even if not each other!)
(if i wasn’t at work i could look it up)
Marcello @ 30: Time Out was still Time Out in 1978. City Limits splintered off in about 1983-84.
Iestyn George maybe?
1981 according to wiki (sad little stub of a wiki article)
street life it was called, and idris walters is who i’m thinking of, not iestyn george
Presumably this was a different Street Life from the excellent and sadly shortlived national music paper bearing the same name, which ran a superb extended feature on dub reggae in, ooh, I’m guessing early 1976?
‘What’s On In London’ maybe? I just about remember that one.
Edit: never mind.
haha ok i think it turns out i may mean “london-only” in the specialist technical sense of “impossible to find in shrewsbury”, mike — i imagine that IS the one i mean, but i never saw a copy and only know it by repute (did it close bcz it didn’t achieve the countrywide distribution it needed?)
this is is the first song i have clear memories of actually being at number one, watching as a five year old the video on that bit of swap shop where they counted down the pop charts at the same time as the swapping vimto for spangles board. i liked it a lot at the time, probably because it all felt very exotic and adult and also perhaps because the narrative of being out of your depth in a world you don’t quite understand and can’t do anything about is quite a familiar one at the age when you’re just starting school. i’m sure, being a child of the seventies, i also thought the comical jamaican were a big plus point. and if push came to shove, i’d still have to say it was my favourite rascist reggae song.
one thought, was “safe european home” in some way an answer record to this (or even the otehr way round) and is it not in any case just as reductive?
Say what you like about dodgy lyrics or musical quality, they guaranteed themselves a play at every single Australian BBQ for the next 20 years, quite the feat in itself…
vile song on every level
Is it really racist? It’s just a song about a gormless prick who goes on holiday and gets himself mugged wandering around the backstreets, isn’t it?
Maybe it was John Lydon who mugged 10cc – the mad face, a brother from the gutter etc. he was in Jamaica at the time, after all…
Chalk me up as another vote for the four-faced man interpretation.
I first heard this as the opening track on my Dad’s 10cc best-of CD and for a while I loved it. But now I can’t even stomach the “good” 10cc records, let alone this one. Even ignoring the vocals entirely, the music sounds very slack and off-the-shelf, like some sort of library music for commercials. Although that percussion in the middle is good, but not enough to save the song.
Their previous single was the creamy ballad People In Love, a blue-eyed soul/Macca confection which featured a spectacular bagpipe-guitar line that sounded HUGE on AM radio in ’77. It got plenty of airplay (anyone else remember it?) and sounded like a shoe-in for the Top 5 (well, if Good Morning Judge could make it…).
So maybe the abject failure of one of their loveliest songs led Stewart and Gouldman to roll up their sleeves and go “RIGHT….”
Dreadlock Holiday has always made me cringe. I always thought the final verse was about a prostitute. Bloody sex tourists.
I’m with Rosie in refusing to be outraged by it.
Didn’t get outraged by the – much more prominent – cod-French accents on One Night in Paris from The Original Soundtrack, so in the interests of consistency I can follow the narrative here with impunity.
Real reason I liked this was the way “I don’t like cricket” (zzzzzzzzzz) resonated with me; I clearly managed to screen out the “I love it” addendum. In fact, I was always singing, “I hate it” in my head.
It definitely came to mind when I was mugged by a man and two women combo in Rio 25 years later!
And I don’t like reggae.
I’m grateful to Marcello for his reasoned opinion on this. I personally was ready for a long-anticipated handbag-swatting session with him over this one. Instead I find myself nodding my head at parts of what he says. What must be added, though, is that anyone who would fain unfettered outrage at the tale this song is telling ought to get out more. I wonder how the same people might react to somebody like Aswad doing a pastiche about one of them wandering around Glyndebourne, getting robbed of his bling by” four faces” called Rupert, Giles, Mason and Marmaduke, nervously professing to his attackers a love for croquet and Mozart before “hurrying back to the tennis court” to sink glasses of Pimms with a girl called Annabelle, who offers to open her legs as a bonus. I’m pretty confident that there would not be a problem with this amongst the same critics. Quite the contrary, in fact.
And let me assure you, there certainly was not a problem with “Dreadlock Holiday” back in the day. Alas, Political Correctness has a mighty backward reach. Unless I am mistaken, it was voted “Best Single” at the embryonic British Rock and Pop Awards, now the Brits. Quite right too, as it was just sooo good. Pure class in a glass, for me, and it was very gratifying to see it just make the top either side of two long-staying chart toppers, both of which would have definitely seen it kept at bay as one of those truly tragic number twos (eg: “Jean Jenie”, ”Vienna”). This track has the mark of quality stamped all over it, as do the band performing it, and for me, at least, it is quite simply one of the best records of the decade.
Perhaps as an addendum, I might remind those in the thread who disagree with me on this of two popular tracks by London born and bred reggae artist Smiley Culture from 1984: “Cockney Translation” and particularly “Police Officer”. This second track is hilarious, Smiley jumping effortlessly between Jamaican patois and an exaggerated cockney dickhead accent to outline an exchange between himself and a copper who had stopped him in his car for possession. On eventually recognising him, the star-struck Plod lets Smiley go for the price of an autograph. This record is wonderfully funny and not offensive at all, as (on the other side of the coin) was much of the offerings from Judge Dread, who was enormously popular in Brixton and Stockwell but whom would no doubt raise a few eyebrows in this day and age from those who have a bee in their bonnets about DH thirty years after the event.
Hey Waldo,
Have a bit of a dicky tum this morning, and was feeling sorry for myself after a disturbed night.
“I don’t like croquet” was a fantastic pick-me-up!
Cheers.
As for the “I don’t like cricket … I love it” I always thought there was a touch of coercion in between the two phrases, making our tourist even more of a wimp than maybe he really was.
Waldo – spot on there lad!
My pleasure, Anne. And thanks, Rosalind!
Even ignoring the pitfalls of PC, this piece of Graham Gouldman social commentary doesn’t REALLY hold a candle to Look Through Any Window, Bus Stop, or No Milk Today.
“Bus Stop” contains that charming line: ‘One day my name and hers are going to be the same’, which usually prompted Tracy to turn to her boyfriend and say: “I REALLY love you, Wayne, but I REALLY don’t want to be called Wayne!”