venta

It's Friday, and it's about 3 o'clock. It's time to go underneath the covers (with the lights out).

I always recommend listening to a cover version without knowing what or who it is, so click on the link and don't look at your media player too carefully...

Link to cover version expired.

Black Box Recorder covering Up Town, Top Ranking, originally by Althea & Donna.

I have to admit, I'm mostly only in it for the fun of hearing someone with Sarah Nixey's cut-glass, upper-class accent voice trying to say "and ting" with conviction. Attempting to fake a Jamaican accent would have been disastrous; accentuating the BBC-ness of her voice and saying the worlds straight works brilliantly.

Many cover versions are deliberately jokey. They know they're messing about with style, and playing out of their own genre, and they invite you to laugh along. I love this for its utter, deadly seriousness, as if reading the lyrics of an upbeat reggae classic over a vaguely ambient background were a matter of deeply scholarly musicianship and cultural significance. I think it's the most po-faced cover I've ever heard.

This version of Up Town, Top Ranking appears as an album track on England Made Me, which is a very fine record in its own right. I saw the recently-reconstituted Black Box Recorder live last year, and they were great. I do hope rumours of a new album come to fruition.

Incidentally, if people like playing the guessing game, would they prefer that I take the track info out so media players can't display name/artist ?