Guys and Dolls: Krispy 3 - We Don’t Go Pop Like Bubble Gum (22 May 1993)

 

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I’m so pleased that this blog’s 1000th post coincides with the return of the wonderful Krispy 3, who released We Don’t Go Pop Like Bubble Gum as a precursor to their second album, Can’t Melt the Wax.

Krispy 3 were always at their most entertaining when they were singing about the music industry and their own quest for artistic purity inside a business which either failed to recognise their genius or tried to persuade them to peddle pap for profit. Inevitably, they would stick to their principles and then bemoan the fact that lesser acts - both in terms of talent and integrity - were cleaning up financially or being promoted as cultural game changers, when they were doing nothing more than maintaining the status quo. The Can’t Melt the Wax album features a brilliant track called Who Ya Know, which rages against the fact that, in the music industry, contacts trump talent 9 times out of 10. I’m surprised that Peel never played it, especially given that his name comes up in the track.

What makes We Don’t Go Pop Like Bubble Gum so interesting is the conflict that runs throughout it. Krispy 3 always seemed keen to emphasise that, as far as they were concerned, rap music lived over here and pop music lived over there, and never the twain shall meet. Take the dripping disgust with which they read the headline Pop king is king of rap at the start of Don’t Be Misled as an example. Even though their own material was quite clean and positive by the standards of what rap music was considered to be i.e materialistic, violent, defiant etc, they were adamant that just because they used humour in their lyrics, they were first and foremost, a rap group - not a pop-rap confection. And yet, listening to the names and scenes dropped into the track by the Finlayson brothers and George Gueye, it ends up coming across as a bit of a love letter to pop music. Although the cover photo to the Can’t Melt the Wax LP featured a generic photo of the three of them, they could have used the cast list they assemble in We Don’t Go Pop Like Bubble Gum to make their own version of the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band instead.

Based on what I can hear, and I may well have missed some other references, the cover would have included:

Sounds of Blackness

Dionne Warwick -  Walk on by like Dionne. And they may very well have thrown in Dion, for good measure, too.

Meat Loaf - A dead ringer.

The Champs - Tequila

Rupert Holmes - Pina Colada

Tone Loc - Funky Cold Medina

Glynis Barber and Michael Brandon - I make peace like Dempsey* is one of the best lines in any track I’ve heard since I started doing this blog.

Pat Morita - I love you Sensei.

Lou Rawls - Your love is hard to find, like my man, Lou Rawls, so I keep my head high and my head on my balls.

Fred Williamson - Black Caesar

Lucille Ball - I Love Lucy

Judy Garland - Skip to my Lou

Vernon Buckley and Gladstone Anderson  - Little Boy Blue**

Wings - Mary Had a Little Lamb***

Sonny Greer - Just a sec, hold on, wait a minute, Mr Sonny G’s gonna play a beat innit…

That would be a row or two or sorted out, I think. 

Here’s to the next 1000!

Video courtesy of zitterfinger.

*Given Dempsey often solved problems by pulling out a gun, this might be less peaceful than initially thought.

**Buckley and Anderson recorded as a duo, Verne and Son, releasing their version of the nursery rhyme in 1971.

***So, Paul & Linda McCartney, Denny Laine, Henry McCullough and Denny Seiwell.