Comments on: 10cc – “Dreadlock Holiday”

By: Mark G

Mark G — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 22:42:28 +0000

It only occurred to me recently, the girl in the last verse is not a prostitute but a ganja dealer. “My harvest is the best” and all that, c’mon!

By: richard thompson

richard thompson — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 18:46:15 +0000

I always thought it was something hotter not something harder

By: inakamono

inakamono — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:41:36 +0000

As someone who’s only recently discovered Popular, and getting to this a long time after the discussion ended…

but my take on this song has always been fixed in my mind by a moment in a pub in Oxford late that year, when this was followed on the jukebox by probably the best of the pre-No.1 singles by a band that will be commented on Popular a couple of years down the timeline, when the public gets what the public wants.

While the ‘boring old farts’ were wimping off about a stolen necklace and running home to the safety of a hotel swimming pool and a prostitute — in real life it smelt of pubs and Wormwood Scrubs, with his life swimming around him and drowning.

A cheap holiday — do it today…

It’s a moment that stands out really clearly in my mind: how utterly distant the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ had become. And the difference in their reactions — the one running away and seeking pleasure, the other consumed by anger and an urgent, infectious refusal to accept.

It’s a moment that stands in my memory close to the first time I heard “Anarchy” a few months after it came out, something I can only describe as a Taoist moment of understanding. It wasn’t about different types of music; it was about a different way of living.

By: Damon

Damon — Thu, 14 May 2009 12:12:42 +0000

I’ve recently discovered that this song was by 10cc which suprised me as I am more familiar with stuff like “I’m not in love” (all a bit before my time sorry!). Intriguing song – certainly different to all the safe, generic pap that’s released these days. Came across this article while trying to find out about the song after arguing with my partner about which band it was (I didn’t believe it was 10cc at first).

By: Mark Wadsworth

Mark Wadsworth — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 08:59:28 +0000

May I point out that this song has a ‘truck driver’s gear change’ half-way through, i.e. it shifts up a key totally unnecessarily at the end of the middle eight?

By: Billy Smart

Billy Smart — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 13:17:36 +0000

Incidentally, the date for this entry is still wrong, I note pedantically.

By: Conrad

Conrad — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 12:45:15 +0000

79, Smash Hits initially presented itself as primarily a place where you could read all the songwords to the latest hits. So, as a songwords mag, there wasn’t a great deal of editorial to begin with.

And it was also monthly to start with – both these things changed quickly.

By: wichita lineman

wichita lineman — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 11:57:44 +0000

Ob La Di Ob La Da was big in Jamaica. I’d say it’s the Beatles’ most common Jamaican pressing, having never seen another Jamaican Beatles single.

It’s worth picking up because the b-side is Sexy Sadie, a unique and intreeeging pairing.

Of course the question is… is it reggae?

By: Waldo

Waldo — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 10:55:06 +0000

Yes, correction. Dread was the first white artist to have a major REGGAE hit in Jamaica.

Sorry.

By: Mark G

Mark G — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 10:34:46 +0000

92, I somehow doubt this, this’d mean that no Elvis/rock and roll/Beatles etc had any kind of inroad into Jamaica.

By: mike

mike — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 10:25:09 +0000

So, it would seem that “Dreadlock Holiday”, Boney M’s “Rivers Of Babylon” and Judge Dread were all Big In Jamaica. Where’s the JA version of Everyhit when you need it?

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 09:59:41 +0000

[Judge Dread was] the first white artist to score a major hit [in Jamaica]? Really? I’m amazed!

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 09:59:32 +0000

#87 – 2000AD was well over a year old by this point – started in February 1977.

By: DJ Punctum

DJ Punctum — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 09:55:03 +0000

I always loved it when Jimmy Savile came across a Judge Dread disc on his Old Record Club: “and this guy geezer decided to be very rude and so it was banned and I SEE-NO-REEEEEEA-SONNNNN why we should play it and howzabout that then?”

Dignified Don: “skrlrlgrglmrglkrnklskrlkmmngskrl Jim.”

By: Waldo

Waldo — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 09:47:07 +0000

“The Winkle Man” was blinding. You can see where Dread’s going with this without even having to hear the record, which you certainly would not have done on Radio One.

By: DJ Punctum

DJ Punctum — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 09:16:42 +0000

“Big Seven” also sampled on “Ludi” by the Dream Warriors.

By: Snif

Snif — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 09:05:51 +0000

And Judge Dread’s name appears (in slightly different guise) to this day in every weekly issue of 2000AD, which had only just recently started at this stage…?

By: Waldo

Waldo — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 07:56:46 +0000

# 70 – Dread (Alex Hughes) had also been a minder/roadie to the Stones before his own career took off. He was indeed huge in Jamaica, in fact the first white artist to score a major hit there. He was simply enormous in my area where he was feted in the rasta community as practically one of their own. He cultivated close friendships with many of reggae’s great names and left this world (albeit far too early) as he surely would have wanted to, keeling over from a dodgy strawb having just walked off stage at the end of a show.

I think I recall the “monkey music” incident but wouldn’t have remembered it was Simon Bates, who, let’s face it, had the personality of a roll of wall-paper. The listener must have conveyed this despicable comment over the phone. It’s not even worthy of comment and if Bates’ silence was deliberate, I feel that that was far better than going into one about how ignorant this bastard clearly was.

By: wichita lineman

wichita lineman — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 23:20:40 +0000

I remember everyone straining at the leash to write about 1978 a few entries back… now look at us, thinking about the early Smash Hits heyday when they’d print the lyrics to New Face In Hell… what ’78 were people looking forward to? I am kurious.

Malice, surely 10CC’s reputation was shot? No hits for Stewart or Gouldman after this apart from Bridge To Your Heart some years later. Even though Sunburn deserved better.

By: Malice Cooper

Malice Cooper — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 18:59:24 +0000

This even got a release in Jamaica and sold well so I don’t think they found it racist or offensive. It isn’t like anybody got shot in the song.

By: mike

mike — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:21:14 +0000

Brother D and the Collective Effort, yes! Thank you for unlocking that memory, as I’ve been trying to remember who sampled “Got To Be Real” for the past couple of hours or so, and the closest I could get was the original 1986 Source/Candi Staton version of “You Got The Love”, which didn’t.

“Um the quinn, um the quinn, um the quinn of the reppin sin” was sort of great, really!

By: o sobek!

o sobek! — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:02:39 +0000

“unfortunately”?????????????

By: Mark G

Mark G — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 15:15:20 +0000

Yep to you both.

Although, the pre-rap part of the song was one of the few ModRo songs I thought was OK. Perhaps because it was short.

By: DJ Punctum

DJ Punctum — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 15:11:34 +0000

“Got To Be Real” unfortunately was also the musical inspiration for Modern Romance’s 1982 #37 smash “Queen Of The Rapping Scene (Nothing Ever Goes The Way You Plan)” though I much preferred its use on “Dibidibidize (How We Gonna Make The Black Nation Rise?)” the same year by oh God what was their name again? Brother D and the Collective Effort, or similar…

By: mike

mike — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 15:05:40 +0000

#78: Mark, I’m talking about the first three or four issues only, which I think were still monthly at that stage. The cool specialist alternative coverage hadn’t started yet, and the mag was more like a glossied-up Disco 45.