UB40 | Babylon Circus

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UB40
B40 formed in 1978 in Birmingham, England. Since then, the band has had more than 50 singles in the UK Singles Chart, and has also achieved huge international success. The band has been nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album four times, and in 1984, were nominated for the Brit Award for Best British Group. One of the world’s best-selling music artists, UB40 have sold over 70 million records with their hit singles including their debut “Food for Thought” and two U.S. Billboard Hot 100 number ones with “Red Red Wine” and “Can’t Help Falling in Love“. Both of these also topped the UK Singles Chart, as did the band’s version of “I Got You Babe”

On 2nd September, 2013, UB40 will release their new album ‘Getting Over The Storm’, the reggae stars’ 20th studio album, and their first since 2010’s ‘Labour of Love IV’. Like many of UB40’s previous albums, the group’s original material is complimented by a smattering of cover versions and interpretations. Interestingly, amongst the five original UB40 songs, the covers recorded for ‘Getting Over The Storm’ were originally written and/or recorded by country music artists. Knowing that country music is loved by Caribbean audiences, UB40’s sax player Brian Travers said, “We’ve all spent a lot of time in Jamaica, and country music is very much part of the fabric. It’s an honest music, just like reggae. The two genres really sit together well.”
www.ub40.co.uk




BABYLON CIRCUS:
Never Stop? All right then, but rewind, as teenagers used to do with the cassettes they swapped like a blood oath. You give me rock and I’ll give you reggae – and vice versa. As so often in the music world, Babylon Circus were friends long before they became a band.

The two singers David and Manu have known each other since high school. It was the late nineties in Roanne in central France and what else was there to do in a small town in decline than to hang out and smoke joints, watch the lorries go by on the main road and dream of being somewhere else? No mention of Babylon Circus back then, just the Stones, Bob Marley, and The Clash. They couldn’t even make it to gigs by Bérurier Noir, OTH and La Mano Negra. It’s worth pointing out that although they never came to blows over music, Saint-Etienne-born Manuel Nectoux had been surrounded by reggae from an early age and made regular trips to see his father, who lived in the Jamaican part of Hackney in London, while David Baruchel was born in Grenoble and listened to the same music as his mum and her little brother, whom David calls his “substitute father”. The non-conformist uncle was frontman for various alternative punk bands, had lots of experience of smoky bars and derelict factories, and took David as a singer and guitarist on a busking expedition to Lille in the late eighties. Early, you say? Not for someone whose mum gave him his first 45-rpm single Argent Trop Cher/Au Coeur de la Nuit by Téléphone at the age of five, before he started to worship his two holy trinities: the Stones/The Clash/The Police on the one hand and Renaud/Higelin/Gainsbourg on the other. As for Manu, he got two Bob Marley & the Wailers cassettes at the age of 10 and they sealed his fate. He built up a personal pantheon with, at the top, the great Bob’s song Punky Reggae Party about the contemporary punk bands during his London exile in 1979. Never stop.
www.babyloncircus.net



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