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On a Wednesday night in the fall of 1985, UB40 gave a concert in New Haven, Connecticut. After the show, Brett Kavanaugh, then undergraduate at Yale, retired to a neighborhood bar, worshiped for his bargain pitchers, where he was later charged with having iced his drink from another customer. His precise motives remain obscure; He may have mistakenly thought the other man was UB40 singer Ali Campbell. (The incident also raises another, even more compelling question: Did Brett Kavanaugh put ice in his beer?) As the country tries to determine what types of personality traits are desired or required by a judge of the Supreme Court, it is tempting to search the anecdotes. about Kavanaugh's life for clues to his temperament – for any further indication of what kind of guy he is. The ice throw, I do not know. UB40, it's interesting.
The group was formed in Birmingham, England in late 1978, and is still most often referred to as a reggae band. Am I personally totally comfortable with this characterization? Not really! I think most critics will agree that reggae is more than just a rhythm, but there is nevertheless an institutional assertion: UB40 has been nominated for the Grammy Award for best Reggae album four times. The gang was multiracial and took its name from the government's form for claiming unemployment benefits. He released his first full album, "Signing Off," in 1980.
Campbell has since said it was not him at the bar that night. (In interviews prior to the release of the police report that night, Campbell called America "the world's most segregated and most racist country in the world" and observed that children Americans, perhaps under the spell of hop, "all wear hoodies and argue." In the same room, Campbell describes reggae as "good music, so if you're drinking "This is the place to start," which may seem odd to anyone familiar with the deep political and religious roots of reggae, or even with the early records of UB40, who have expressed strong concerns about about Margaret Thatcher's conservative politics, the rise of the National Front in the UK and the invading and destructive unemployment of her country.The band's first single – which was among the first to feature in Britain's top 10 without support of a major label – s e consists of two sides A: "King", about the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. ("King, where are your people now?" / Chained and pacified / I tried in vain to show them how / and why you died, "and" food for thought ", a rather macabre indictment of the hypocrisy of the Christmas holidays, in which Rich Christians ignore their charitable obligations and let their compatriots continue to suffer ("Politicians argue over sharpening their knives / making bargains, exchanging babies' lives"). In a particularly daring way, the band also picked up "Strange Fruit," a lynching song made famous by Billie Holiday in 1939 – a performance so definitive and breathtaking that it's hard to imagine the nerve needed to try to match it.
In the early 1980s, UB40 had more commercial aspirations. In 1983, he published "Labor of Love," a collection of covers including a reggae cover on "Red Red Wine," which was originally a hit for Neil Diamond, in 1968. The UB40 version is much less desperate than Diamond's, which represents alcohol as a useful way to self-annihilate in the face of a heartbreak: "Do not let me love," begs-t- he in the chorus. Perhaps to alleviate this grief, Astro, trumpeter and second singer of UB40, has added a couplet – a "toast", borrowing a little reggae jargon, in which he reiterates the many delights of wine You rock me all time / red wine red you make me feel so big / I feel a million dollars when you're in my hand ").
"Red Red Wine" was a huge success for the band – it finally reached the top of the charts for Billboard Hot 100 and UK singles. The curious and enduring popularity of reggae (and reggae-influenced acts) among white American students has long been a puzzle. In 2005, the Onion Skilfully parodied the affiliation, offering a supportive quote from a freshly resurrected Bob Marley: "I appeared to my brothers in the fellowship to tell them to be strong. . . I want them to realize that many people may not hear the cries of oppressively rich white kids, but Bob Marley hears them. "Even now, the bond continues – it's hard to imagine a fraternity house without a Bob Marley curling." Scotch Scotch poster to a wall.
It also seems safe to assume that it's "Red Red Wine" and not "Strange Fruit," which brought Kavanaugh to the Palace Theater in September. Kavanaugh, himself admitted several times, appreciates the palliative effects of a cool drink. Maybe the lyrics of the song now talk about what alcohol did for him:
All I can do, I'm done
But memories will not go away
No, memories will not go away
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