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Epicurus.com - Labour of Love
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List Price: $11.98
Our Price: $8.97
Your Save: $ 3.01 ( 25% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Virgin Records Us
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 0077778641223
Label: Virgin Records Us
Manufacturer: Virgin Records Us
Number Of Discs: 1
Publisher: Virgin Records Us
Release Date: 1997-03-11
Studio: Virgin Records Us
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Editorial Reviews:
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UB40 are not great innovators, but they are great imitators, and, in a sense, Labour of Love made them the Pat Boone of reggae. Featuring a handsome and clean-cut (by reggae standards) white singer, Ali Campbell, UB40 covered Jamaican standards and turned millions of Americans and Europeans on to another form of black music. Interestingly enough, the album's smash hit, "Red Red Wine," was a cover of a rocksteady cover of a Neil Diamond track. Being that UB40 had the pick of the reggae litter, Labour of Love is chock full of stellar material. From Jimmy Cliff's "Many Rivers to Cross" to the Melodians' "Sweet Sensation" to Johnny Clarke's "Keep On Moving," Labour of Love still serves as an excellent reggae starter kit. --Bill Crandall
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Fifty-Fifty
Comment: Yeah, it's fifty-fifty, but the better half of the album make it worth four stars. There is some of the pop b.s. that UB40 have been criticized for, but then there are tracks like "Keep On Moving", "Please Don't Make Me Cry" and "Sweet Sensation", which more than make up for the annoying tracks (Guilty and Version Girl). Besides, if you are a chick then you will like "Red Red Wine" also! I am not however, but the album is still worth having.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Unpretentious reggae covers.
Comment: The negative reviewers have it all wrong. This LP is simply a collection of reggae covers by a bunch of guys who love reggae. The songs are done enthusiastically and without any pretense. These songs derive from a time when reggae was dance music - before it was politicized. Enjoy it for what it is.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Laboured and Lost
Comment: A tatty, strangled old moggy of an album.
It will become apparent that I am not a fan of UB40. I hastened to dismiss them after the atrocious `King' and the even worse `One in Ten', but in terms of abject dreadfulness, this is on another level entirely.
Oh so working class! Oh so socialist! Oh what a load of old cobblers. And oh, what a scandalous assortment of shabby, flabby, crabby reggae covers presented to the world with no energy, no warmth and no strength of emotion.
Sometimes when you're reviewing music from the past, the time elapsed tempers your initial hostility, but my anger towards 'LoL' ( ha ha, that's cheered me up...a bit.) has probably increased as the years have gone by. My resolve to detest this abomination into all eternity, seems to have strengthened not diminished.
Apart from the glaring lack of ANYTHING, 'LoL' is so conservative. So safe. So secure in it's cowardly insularity. So distant from any spirit, or fire these songs may once have had.
It definitely corrupts the originals. This torrential pounding of even the best songs will eventually depreciate them. They are, as now, not-what-they-were.
What we have here is the unpleasant drone of economics. UB40 (and isn't that name still disgusting after all this time?) tired of being (or at least they PRETENDED they were being), right on and principled, decided to bin all their proletariat ideals in exchange for the capitalist millions that are to be effortlessly made by throwing this appeasement sub-sewage at the ignorant masses. Don't even need to break sweat.
They're not on their own. Stewart, Manilow and co, are all mining the same seam, but, importantly, you don't get the stench of hypocrisy from them. They never claimed they were gonna change the world, content just to milk it.
And the music? God it's bad, I honestly can't think of much that's worse. From any period. Scratchy background clicking, toy-town brass and the singing is keyless and whiny. I know things could be better in Brum, but are they really THIS grim? Bad times indeed.
In it's way I suppose it does make some sort of statement about the condition of the culture which bore it, but even there it must fail as a dynamic. The focus behind it, it's drive, seriously flounders amid the snail-pacing and the insulting quasi-dialectal free-loading. In other words, 'LoL' can't be defended as any kind of abstract, in any forum, on any level.
But crucified, it (deservedly) shall be. Come worship at the altar of the latter day 'aint's' (sorry), be party to the doom of a culture. It worries me sick that there are people out there in the world, with jobs, with children, with LIVES, that like this stuff. Will accept and consume, without question, something that is clearly, unapologetically insufficient.
1983 vomited out some awful albums; 'Let's Dance' `Southern Death Cult', 'Inarticulate Speech of the Heart' 'Rant and Rave with the Stray Cats', a monstrosity by King Kurt called 'Ooh Wallah Wallah'(!) but 'LoL' beats them all into a cocked hat.
I'd recommend this cd only to masochistically curious people, who are wondering what it'd be like to actually sit down and listen to the worst music ever recorded.
But please, pretty please with bells on, don't make me do it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Inspiring and pulsating regae beat
Comment: OK, these songs are mainly covers but they are really done well, with UB40's own special beat added to the reggae brew.
Look how Neil Diamond's Red, Red wine is changed into a regae-disco song with Red Red, Wine.
then there is the upbeat love song, Cherry Oh Baby, the redone Bob Marley song, Keep On Moving, the sad love song Please Don't Make Me Cry, that cover of the super Jimmy Cliff hit, Johnny Too Bad, with it's inspiring and pulsating regae beat, as well as the cover of another smashing Jimmy Cliff hit, Many Rivers to Cross, and the love song Guilty.
This is actually my favourite UB40 album, from the heady reggae days of the early 80's.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good Enough
Comment: I'll admit it: I just wanted "Red Red Wine."
What I got was about 40 minutes of 80s reggae. I think that about sums it up: Plinkety-plonk synths meet the slow boom-chaka-boom-chaka rhythms of reggae. There's nothing wrong with that, though. It's a good listen, and it would go well at a party. The songs were all alright in their own way, I suppose, but the one that caught my attention was "She Caught the Train." It's stunted rhythms seemed so of-their-time that I just couldn't help liking it.
And, of course, it's got "Red Red Wine."
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