Ex-Principal Edwards types collaborate with Tony Hannaford
Label: Cobra
Year of Release: 1980
As the eighties dawned, refugees from previous decades frequently tried their hardest to adapt to the dominant new trends of the day. Nirvana's attempt at going New Wave is one of my favourite examples of how well seasoned musicians and songwriters often adapted to what (on the surface) felt like some very radical changes to the musical landscape.
In truth, things were seldom as clear-cut as that. Frequently these were the very musicians who set up the younger innovators who followed, whether anyone was prepared to acknowledge that or otherwise. In 1974, for example, the white reggae group GT Moore And The Reggae Guitars signed to Charisma and combined reggae rhythms with the slick pop sounds of the day far ahead of the likes of UB40. While their sound was never especially deep or heavy, they picked up admiration from authentic reggae fans while supporting the likes of Jimmy Cliff on tour.
More crucially still, understanding the essential principles of the genre put vocalist and drummer Tony Hannaford in an incredibly good position to act as a key part of any aspiring ska or reggae inspired New Wave act in 1980. So it proved with this act, Electrotunes, but let's not kid ourselves that the rest of the group were naive young street urchins either - both Geoff Nicholls and Nick Pallett were previously members of the hippy performance art and rock collective Principal Edwards who John Peel signed to his Dandelion label at the height of prog.
While all this probably made Electrotunes seem somewhat long in the tooth to anyone in the audience wearing Prince Charles check trousers, their sound is solid and convincing; clearly influenced by The Police rather than The Specials, but skanking confidently and pushing the pop chorus hard thanks to Hannaford's songwriting experience. "If This Ain't Love" could easily have been a moderately placed chart hit, but sadly didn't make the grade and no follow-up releases were forthcoming.
If you're confused about how the hell the rural witchiness of Principal Edwards managed to get us to here of all places, don't worry, so am I. Like all other human beings, though, sometimes the CVs of musicians go in some deeply unexpected directions.
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