Janet Kay, Silly Games

 

 

Greyhound's user-friendly Moon River was when reggae and Trojan Records properly came onto my radar, not having appreciated at the time that My Boy Lollipop was in any way from any other 'culture' but it was in the late 70's that reggae became comfortably a part of pop music in Britain.

I don't think 'Lover's Rock' owed all that much to Island Records breaking Bob Marley to a worldwide audience beyond the cognoscenti. Waiting in Vain was a paragon example on the first reggae album I ever bought, in Boots on Northgate Street, Gloucester, that den of the subversive underground, when Exodus was released and we all caught up quickly from then on.

The pop music market being what it is, though, it doesn't take long for those who know what they're doing to make their move into new territory. Some of those moves are more convincing than others. The usually immaculate Fleetwood Mac thought they ought to acknowledge punk but could do no better than Tusk; we were told that The Knack were the USA's idea of punk rock, seemingly having forgotten so soon that they had invented it with the New York Dolls from which the Sex Pistols had been copied.

But an expert will get it right and, having found a singer, Dennis Bovell gave Janet Kay Silly Games to give her such a good start that she couldn't maintain it, so perfect and extraordinary were her performance and the record that was made of it.

History will have her down as a One Hit Wonder and maybe even a One Trick Pony but none of that distracts from her having done this much.