No innuendo for underground market

There were many ribald Jamaican songs before Fab Five put out Shaving Cream, Lloyd Chalmers, Max Romeo and Prince Buster among the performers, the last doing Wreck a P...m P...m. However, there was a difference in subtlety with Shaving Cream. Grub Cooper says ,"The influence was there, but no Jamaican band had done that, the double entendre."

So, Cooper says, "Those songs went to an underground market" - while Fab Five's did not, getting play in 'polite' company as well as in sessions.

Performers have, since then, Baby Cham chanting "que sera, bumper cart" (while the audience normally roars along the outright Jamaican curse words), Wayne Marshall pledging to "marry Juana" and determined not to go to "Uranus" and Lovindeer chortling over "happiness in the park" about the Emancipation Park statues.

Like Shaving Cream, Cooper says, their soca song Good Buddy is loaded with double meaning and the video had to be reshot because of a scene of Cooper from the feet up as he gyrated. And Cooper points out that the song had nothing to do with any genitals.

Guessing game

Then there was Don't Wear None, which many guessed had something to do with an item or two other than what it was really about - make-up.

There is a song based on a very familiar melody and working with the theme which will be released shortly. Later this week, a Jamaica Association of Vintage Artistes and Affiliates album will be released, on which Cooper has penned Irie Feeling, which expands on the "Everybody feels irie" jingle which he did for IRIE FM when it was just starting up in 1990. Cooper also plans to do a special, based on the song, about the establishment of IRIE FM.

He told The Sunday Gleaner that he had also done the "my radio dial stuck pon IRIE FM" jingle, Gem Myers handling "Irie leads the way ... ."

Cooper said his connection with IRIE came when a mutual friend passed on the late Karl Young's invitation to check out the studio in Ocho Rios, St Ann, which Cooper did.