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.
Score: 4
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Following close and intense study, I can confirm that 10cc are the only act in this list in the running for the titles of both the best and the worst number ones ever. The reason for their decline is unclear. By 1978, 10cc were only half the band they used to be; Godley and Crème had left in 1976 to pursue their own paths, commencing with the testing but not unenjoyable triple concept album Consequences – not quite the British Escalator Over The Hill (not even in the same cosmos, let alone the same postcode), though it does contain some intermittently inspired verbal improvising from a sloshed and stoned Peter Cook – before diverting into videos, Proper Hits and Trevor Horn. The remaining duo of Stewart and Gouldman specialised in artful but rather studium-filled AoR, and a crucial element to 10cc’s music had been lost. However, this was the same duo responsible for “I’m Not In Love,” and there had been a history of other suspect tracks like “Oh, Effendi” from 1974’s Sheet Music, so “Dreadlock Holiday” is less easily explicable.
Let us attempt to bend over backwards to be completely fair to the song; it is highly possible that “Dreadlock Holiday” is a barbed commentary on the endemic ignorance of cultural tourism (note the possible double meaning of the album title Bloody Tourists) – the holidaymaker who’s come to Jamaica because he read about Marley in Harper’s and Queen’s, who immediately gets held up by four muggers for his silver chain and attempts to wriggle out of his predicament with cringe-inducing, well-meaning but dumb touristy quips (“I don’t like reggae – I LOVE it!”). He escapes back to his hotel swimming pool “sinking Pina Colada” and encounters a woman prepared to give him “something hotter,” prompting the ejaculatory exclamation “Don’t like Jamaica – I LOVE her!” – the idea presumably being that our accidental tourist can only abide the surface glamour and not the coldly rationalist reality (“Don’t you walk through my words, ‘cos you ain’t heard me out yet”), so the scenario isn’t that far from the Pistols’ “cheap holidays in other people’s misery.” Also, the marimbas and distant, Coke can popping open organ ripples are a remarkable precursor of what, through Alex Sadkin’s work with Grace Jones and others in the early ‘80s, would briefly become pop’s lingua franca.
None of this hides the essential ghastliness of concept and execution of “Dreadlock Holiday,” which in attempting to be well-meaning and sardonic actually comes across as hugely patronising (“I saw four faces, one mad, a brother from the gutter”) and finally contemptible – the unlistenable cod-Jamaican accents and patois which Stewart and Gouldman adopt throughout the song. Bearing in mind that we are now less than a year away from discussing *** ******, “Dreadlock Holiday” could be presumed a premonition of other trends to come. But that Economy Size Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum-package carrying trio, even at their most absurd, at least made a game and serious attempt to grapple with and develop the elements which influence their music, while the 2-Tone movement, which would also explode into public view in the following year, would end up making things like “Dreadlock Holiday” – in the year of Steel Pulse, the Anti-Nazi League and Rock Against Racism – instantly antiquated and crass. Apart from a minor hit with an acoustic reworking of “I’m Not In Love” in the ‘90s, “Dreadlock Holiday” was to be 10cc’s last British hit single, and an unfortunate end to a generally remarkable chart career.
It’s a shame as I really like the music – does the three note intro take it’s cue from anything specific? There’s always the Destiny’s Child mash-up I suppose.
At least it doesn’t make a Jamaica joke, which to be fair would have fit in with the rest of the sorry tale. Always liked the tune as a kid, but on obtaining a 10CC Best of (bundled with a Godley & Creme retro too) the failings of DH became overly clear. I think its quite a good example of how you can overstep a mark, both by trying to be too clever, and actually being not clever enough.
This is why I’m glad I rarely pay attention to lyrical content! I am happy to remain blissfully ignorant and enjoy this jaunty tune Which Is About Cricket Er Yes. I’d like it equally (not more) if it was an instrumental.
Isn’t she offering him “something harder”, to rhyme with “Pina Colada”? No matter. I zoned out on this when it was a hit, simply because it struck me as bloodless and smug, a cheap joke crassly executed, and a really, really poor approximation of reggae rhythms. It hasn’t aged well – apart from the aforementioned Destiny’s Child mash-up, which was quite good fun at the time (and which we can freely discuss at a much, much later date).
Cricket in 1978, we’d won the ashes in Australia and were having a nice summer against Pakistan (Botham took eight wickets and scored a century).
Mm, this is the one instance where I do approach the song as a guilty pleasure; I love the pop craft of it, while finding the narrative regrettably racist (though Marcello makes a valiant effort to show how it could be a well-meaning song, this is certainly not the impression that it’s ever left me with)
I’ve already learned two things from this thread that I didn’t know. I have always heard that line as “four faces, one matt”, which is admittedly worse! I’ve also always assumed that the woman who appears in the last verse made the narrator a sexual offer (a prostitute?), rather than marijuana, which seemed to be saying to me “these blacks may be muggers, but at least their birds are fit”. As twists in tales go, it seemed to add another layer of offensiveness.
The afterlife of this song has been surprisingly prolonged. In the early years of 20-20 cricket, I lived a mile away from Edgbaston and used to hear “I don’t like cricket!! I love it!!” blaring unbidden through the skies every time that somebody hit a six throughout summer days. Then I ill-advisedly went to an eighties disco and saw a lot of undergraduates respond to this with delighted recognition a couple of years ago.
stevem – that image must be the back cover of the sleeve, surely? You can tell by all the small print at the bottom.
(I like it though)
You’ve got the date wrong, I note pedantically.
that shimmering, unmistakable percussion intro that makes the song a sampler’s or mash-up act’s dream
NOOOO I still have horrid memories of 2ManyDJs desecrating Destiny’s Child by “mashing” this “up” with ‘Independent Women Part 1’
I always heard it as “four faces, one man” and assumed that the fellow in question was there with three women, which still makes a sort of sense, to me.
Hmm…my tactic when preparing these responses is to:
a) listen to the record and take down the lyrics in shorthand whenever audible/intelligible;
b) check with Gary and Mary’s indispensable No 1 Lyrics site and use that as a base;
c) listen to the record again to double check for lyrical mistakes.
So it could well be “four faces, one man” and the “mad” was Freudian/wishful thinking on my part. The only other possible explanation is that all four of 10cc were being mugged which I find unlikely if there was only one mugger, especially with big man Kevin Godley to hand…
Not going to get embroiled in the politics of it. As a song I like it, at least a 6, possibly a 7 from me. It’s an enjoyable, summery song as far as I’m concerned, and well-executed with it. I’ll leave the exegesis to others and I’m refusing to be outraged by it.
Sometimes the commentary feels a little like those politicians who conveniently decided that The Satanic Verses was unreadable (it isn’t.)
I read The Satanic Verses all the way through and thus came to the informed conclusion that it was tedious, puffed-up Hampsteadian slash fan fiction.
Ah, well, Marcello, we’ll talk about it some more when we get to the station
I also hear it as “One mad”, and DJP, remember they didn’t have big Kevin Godley to look after them by now, as he had departed along with Lol Creme (wonder if he regrets that name now, lol)
This was typical 10CC, tieing themselves up with their own cleverness. They claim the song was based on actual events, and it appears they had about four different ideas which they wanted to include, so rather than having more than one song, they tried to cram them all into this one track, with the result that, whatever you think of any underlying racism/sexism, the song is clumsy as a whole (a bit like this sentence). It’s been suggested earlier that it was all done with the best of intentions, but Stewart and (esp) Gouldman should have seen that it wasn’t working and put some more work into it. The cod-Jamaican accents in particular we could have done without.
I do think there is an element here, also shown on the album “Bloody Tourists”, of Stewart and Gouldman trying to prove something to the other two and/or themselves. There are quite a few songs on the album which are just too clever for their own good – “Shock on the Tube”, and “Anonymous Alcoholic” being the two which spring to mind. 10CC always used humour in their lyrics, even in the later (four man 10CC) albums like “How Dare You” and “Deceptive Bends”, but here it was forced, and stilted – it was disppointing to have a 10CC album where the lyrics are not a strong point.
Then to cap it all, they refused to release the most obvious single on the album, “From Rochdale to Ocho Rios”, but as it was a light-hearted calypso, maybe they felt they would be typecasting themselves.
All in all, 10CC’s third best #1, and I would agree with Tom. probably a 4.
So was there any real controversy or objection to this song at the time in the press, or among DJs voicing opinion on air?
I am intrigued by the contrast between pleasant music (it may sound bloodless but from a tehnical pov it seems to tick all the basic boxes) and unpleasant sentiment/context here. I wonder if we will have other examples of this to come on Popular that seem quite so stark.
i always heard “four faces, one man” but it makes no real sense thinking it through – sorry Tim. that’s what I get for not thinking about the overall meaning.
still weird that only the mad-faced leader of the 4 indeterminate ppl would look like a brother from the gutter. were the others more well to do? i guess he was only focussed on the confrontational chap, hence only saw the others as faces.
I wonder if you could defend ‘Dreadlock Holiday’ as being a work of magical realism?
It would, at the very least, explain the hydra-headed mugger.
or it was a man with four faces, like the cherubs of Ezekiel!
my raw memory of the chronology of these times is distressing unreliable, but surely by this point in 78, virgin frontline had hired j.rotten as its reggae ambassador and ferried him off, with viv goldman from sounds to document and promote, to jamaica itself to meet some of his heroes, and make (good) decisions who they should release LPs by? (there was a lovely sounds feature competely with pasty lydon disporting himself happily on the beach: this was NOT tourism, one-and-all concluded, bcz of his role making good reggae available to the world) (i’m not being remotely sarky either — lydon is someone i have a LOT of time for)
chris salewicz — another well-informed commentator — had run a two-part piece in nme on the reggae greats
so in the rock press a line was certainly being drawn between the cognoscenti who “got” dread; and useless lightweights who were faking it (not necessarily a reliable line — haha i know which side i would have placed myself on emotionally; i was rather patronising towards my college chum P when he became a big reggae fan 18 months later, even tho — with hindsight — he totally put the legwork in and bought and listened to a TON of records, whereas i as so often contented myself with having read about it all beforehand)
in fact i think the 10cc split had very much already left the ones stuck with the name the moral losers — for a triple concept LP, consequences got an unusually concerted attempt at fair judgement from punk know-it-alls (=me) (and even peelie ircc); and i think the “other two” def didn’t get any kind of benefit of the doubt pointed their way… there were Important Battles to be Fought and they were useful as an Awful Moral Example in all kinds of ways
(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!)
SteveM, I’m pretty sure there was no controversy at the time. Most radio DJs back then just played nice tunes and didn’t really care for the music enough to consider the lyrics.
Also, 10CC were rather a clean-cut bunch of chaps and it probably wouldn’t dawn on anyone to have a look at their lyrics.
However, if Bernard Manning or Jim Davidson had recorded it…
i think vinylscot is correct that there was no fuss to speak of in the World of Grown-up Papers and Radio (let alone TV), which (quite apart from being apolitical in the terms we’re discussing) was fairly passive towards pop back then — i wasn’t in london yet so i can’t answer for the relics of the bohemian press (time out still in 68er agit-prop mode; the one i’ve never seen copies of, penman loved it — was it called “in the city”?), but i would be startled if they hadn’t copped attitude; and yes, the rock press were by now largely parti-pris and pro a strictly-roots take on reggae — melody maker a lot slower on the uptake as ever in those days
“didn’t really care for the music enough to consider the lyrics”
i would dispute this generic connection/construction!
Alan, I did say “most”. Certainly not all, but do you really think DLT, Noel Edmonds and the like spent much time actually listening to music?
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!”