Crazy - Jump Leh We Jump (1991)

"Crazy, the lovable lunatic, the madman; call him anything, but never call him sane. Crazy is the most sought after performer today. No Soca Fete in the world is complete without 'The Lovable Lunatic'; he never fails to tantalise and mesmerise his audience driving them into hysterics."

– Sleeve notes of Jump Leh We Jump

One appealing thing about a lot of international music is there are artists who do stuff you could never get away with in Britain. Can you imagine a national mega star whose image, whose stage name, rests on the idea that one is a good-time nutter and a total one at that? Oh, I know we've had our Buster Bloodvessels and Captain Dreads, but to call yourself 'Crazy, The Lovable Lunatic' (that's his subtitle!) you'd be imprisoning yourself, or at least people's perception of you, through a thousand winks and all the arch riff-raff, always at perhaps several removes. Crazy is no such thing, and he genuinely is a lovable lunatic. I don't suspect he is one of genuine pop madness, not as we know it (Bill Drummond, say), but nor is he a novelty act. Rather, he was one of the most popular musicians in Trinidadian music, and his large audience throughout the decades was seeing him and his easy lightness of approach eye to eye.

He made his mark as a calypsonian in the mid-1970s and soon signed to Eddy Grant's Ice (as established in my Grant piece an innovative, perfectly realised label ripe for rediscovery), with whom he released some early soca ("Parang Soca") whilst competing annually in National Calypso Monarch events. The people of T&T took to his natural bonhomie and he regularly graduated to the finals. He was also one for the Carnival Road March, for whom he wrote anthems like 1982's semi-synthesised "Uncle Crazy" (whose bloopy steel drum break would feel like pop-avant territory in any British record), the same year he made his UK debut at the Pickett's Lock Centre. To distant ears like mine, 1984's brilliant "Soca Tarzan", also written for the March, corners towards Kid Creole territory and makes a mockery of Tight Fit and late Modern Romance with its balance of blatant urgency and instrumental workouts. The album under discussion came seven years later but the intervening years saw no great sea change; he had long been happily adhering to his tight but rewarding schedule throughout the years and Jump Leh We Jump is one product of this.

Now, I'm far from an expert or even proper connoisseur in this area of music, and at least historically know of no outlet closer, after all, than the Notting Hill Carnival, which is held 110 miles away, but I think many readers will agree its appeal is instant, and the days of me singing (or trying to) "Hot Hot Hot" at a family' friends karaoke when I was six or seven probably set up my taste for soca and calypso as much as the Caribbean Uncovered compilation that introduced the even younger me to other Caribbean styles outside of reggae and ska. But I digress... Jump was Crazy's tenth album and only contains four proper songs plus two versions and thus to some may appear rushed or compromised on the surface, especially given how quickly he went through albums, but its considered one of his best (and fastest) records not least to Bryon Lee's typically masterful production, who retains Crazy's essential tinny cheer while feeding the arrangements (an inherited mix of digital and live) extra subdued detail when required. As it turns out, four songs and two versions is all that is necessary.

As he would with any of his records, Crazy commences with a song (in this case one that is barely a song at all) to re-announce to the unwary new listener (along with that back cover blurb) who he is and what he does, and so uses the unfailing rhythmic template of "Leh We Get on Bad" as a sailcloth on which to adlib and toast, crack laughs, deliver the occasional verse when he's in the mood and engage in call-and-response with his oddly pocketed, backing soprano singers. All this cocksure geniality ensures the cartoon irony in the title and refrain (but then again, he is crazy/a lunatic/etc.) as the record is as undeniable as Super Blue's "Flag Party". He also takes the unusual decision to include a fully instrumental version (save for the response vox) just two tracks later, confident enough that even though he's barely on it, the album's magnetising appeal won't suffer for it at all (and it doesn't, not least because it allows a different way into the music and you can better notice how often new accents appear, like in one uncluttered instance some squidgy, almost Zapp burbles of 1980 synth. No detail goes unnoticed but they all cohere).

The more melodically-inclined, but no less heated, counterpoint is the terrific "Scoogie Woogie"; gleaning the nonsense popsteak of the title alone you may think this a song about getting it on, but then you hear it and it's actually the pet name for a woman who is admired for her charisma by everyone in the town from his friends to his parents, highlighting (through its admittedly odd focus) a communal attitude we don't so much have in 'our' pop (and thus 'we' don't have many songs like this; it feels an oddly twee and 60s from a UK/US pop perspective). The mirror version later on with toaster D.J. Flathead is one of playful Cutty Ranks-style romancing (and thus closer to the Jamaican ragga that in a few years would be embraced by the British public). In fact this version is pretty daring in its minimal design, frequently leaving Flathead to speedily toast formless shapes over only the tightly-knotted beat which, reliably charged enough on its own, only infrequently looks to hook up with other instruments.

It must be said that, typically for soca records, the music does not hustle the listener with its obvious fervor and trusts they will want to get involved on their own terms (like for instance coming to see the show or joining the carnival, where surely participation is inevitable). The invitation is nevertheless of course always there and this is particularly identifiable, "no matter what is your class, creed, or colour", on "Mas in Jamaica", practically designed (in usual Crazy style) as a component of the carnival, in this instance the one launched in Jamaica by Byron Lee himself the previous year (with, of course, the traditional masqueraders, hence 'mas'. You can practically hear the multihued fabric set pieces of the procession). It should be pointed out the album was recorded in Kingston's Dynamic Sounds, used of course by Tosh, Tubby, Cliff, Perry, Marley and plenty others, but which was also founded by Lee, while released specifically to UK, US, Canadian and Caribbean audiences by the studio's house label.

The record ends with "Fools" slowing the tempo ever so slightly and Crazy reminding you who he isn't as much as who he is. Crazy, yes. A fool, no. Fools, says Crazy, are racists, murderers, corrupt governments, the inventor of the nuclear bomb, Saddam Hussein, destroyers of nature, greedy money spinners and others. As always, it's all delivered in party style with his endearingly contrasting backers and I can get down with its flippancies. And even more so knowing that, though not mentioned here, fools also include homophobes; "Penelope", a song Crazy released the following year, advised listeners who "can't get a woman" to "take a man", and became a LGBT anthem in Trinidad and Tobago, a country whose law makers would rather such people didn't exist and, as author Wesley Crichlow pointed out, was a massive middle finger in the fact of the permeating homophobia in a lot of local music. Crazy? Brave, sure, but he's far too smart to be crazy or a lunatic. Still lovable, of course.