The Comedy of Errors: The Inspirations - Take Back Your Duck/Culture - Babylon Big Dog (13 June 1992)

Buy The Inspirations on Discogs

Buy Culture on Discogs
Two crackingly good slices of reggae, which in my original listings were separated only by a mix of The Shamen’s L.S.I that I have been unable to track down.  It was basically this one but with the vocals taken out.  However, the radio edit of L.S.I will be turning up here soon enough, which is a treat to look forward to, isn’t it?  So in the meantime, I thought I’d do the decent thing and bring these two tracks together in a double bill.  Plenty of intelligence, not to say genius, in both of these cuts.  Not much love though and the sex is strictly business.

Take Back Your Duck was recorded by The Inspirations for Joe Gibbs in 1969.  It was getting fresh exposure in 1992 as it featured on a compilation album called Explosive Rocksteady - Joe Gibbs’ Amalgamated Label 1967-1973 which both Peel and Andy Kershaw had been getting plenty of mileage out of on their playlists.  Peel had started from the beginning of the album, Kershaw had gone from the end and now they had met in the middle.  Indeed, Kershaw had played Take Back Your Duck on his show, the previous weekend. Now it was Peel’s turn.  He suspected that the lyrics had
sexual connotations, which I make him correct on.  But, the sentiments within the track appear to be
every bit as sour as the last track from this LP to have featured on this blog.  Despite the catchy melody, the lyrics are spat out with the ferocity of a john rejecting the services of a prostitute because she’s too old to raise money or interest.  Indeed, rejection and contempt for the cougar is stamped through this track to an almost frightening degree and highlights an uncomfortable truth that women don’t come out well as the subjects of reggae/Rocksteady tracks.  They are either regarded as commodities to be exploited or find themselves being ignored by the male protagonists due to their obsession with money/religion/ganja.

Certainly, the vagaries and complications of business and small time capitalism appeared to be racking Joseph Hill’s mind in Babylon Big Dog, taken from Culture’s seminal 1982 album,  Lion Rock.  It appeared to be a track that Peel was fond of playing judging by his comments after its airing on this show: “You may recall that this is the song where Joseph Hill appears to tell us that he hasn’t got a dead man laying down in his car.  I think I must have misunderstood that though.”  Not quite though, John.  If you listen carefully around the 55 second mark, Hill indeed  says that he doesn’t have a dead man lying down in his car boot.  While there are crime stories going on throughout this track, it’s clear that Hill isn’t playing at being a Rastafarian Jimmy Cagney.
In the Culture tracks that I’ve heard, Hill tended to sing as two personas depending on what the track was about.  On the one hand, he could be the wide-eyed, joyful Everyman who took in the world and all its wonder in tracks like Life.  But then he could swing into an exasperated, vaguely comic, Stressed Eric persona, which could address big issues of injustice and corruption in tracks like Want Go See, but was more likely to be used when singing about everyday irritations in life.  The small things that conspired to stop him being able to relax, smoke his weed and do his thing.  The irritations were generally caused either by other people or by prevailing attitudes which were contrary to how Hill felt things should be and which caused him nothing but disruption.  I’ve not heard a misogynistic track by Culture (yet) but part of me wonders whether they ever could do it.  Whereas the Duck so bitingly dismissed by The Inspirations might be expected to slink away in tears, one suspects that she would haul off and belt Hill if he was ever so rude towards her.  In this persona, you feel Hill suspects it would play out that way too.
There’s no misogyny at play in Babylon Big Dog though it uses a classic reggae trope as its starting point: boys from the country coming to the city and attempting to make their fortune, but in Culture’s worldview, the streets are not paved with gold but rather, frustration.  This comes through in several ways ranging from the perception that he and his friends are thieves given that they are outsiders in the city right through to Hill’s biggest bugbear of all: sitting on mountains of ganja, growing all around them but prohibited from being able to enjoy it freely.  Either due to the law or more likely, other criminal gangs wanting their cut and protecting their stashes.  In the brutal reality of a (Babylon) dog eat dog world, Hill is eventually driven to declaim the one thing he has left:  “I have got my credentials as a human being”. One of the great “impotently howling into the void” lines, I’ve ever heard.
Backing this up as evidence as to why this would be an essential track to keep on a mixtape is the “runna-runna-runna-chase-I-round-with-your-dog” chorus line that becomes an  ear worm within the very first hearing of it and some wonderfully ostentatious Moog synthesiser work which dominates after every chorus.

Videos courtesy of 1468inhouse (Inspirations) and StrictlyRasProphecy (Culture)