Ub40 labour of love ii zip movie#
Ub40 labour of love ii zip professional#
Ub40 labour of love ii zip series#

To make comparisons with the originals is to miss the point. What may appear to be a simple form of escapism has in fact galvanised this band, snatching them out of their increasingly confined introversion and seemingly opened their eyes to bold new horizons. Labour of Love is an album of songs that touched and inspired UB40 in their formative years and you know something? It's beautiful. In Melody Maker Colin Irwin expressed his irritation at his fellow journalists' insistence on bringing up the band's left-wing political views in articles about them, saying, 'UB40's mode of escape from these glib cliches is to make their own highly specialised version of Bowie's Pin-Ups or Ferry's These Foolish Things. Reviews of the album in the UK were generally positive.

Ub40 labour of love ii zip professional#

Fortunately, on their return the band liked the concept and we went ahead.' Critical reception Professional ratings Review scores As Ansell recounted to Classic Pop magazine in 2017, 'We pitched the idea to Virgin of creating an illustration for each song so that as and when they were released as singles we would have ready-made images. It was the first time that UB40 had not had any input on the artwork on one of their albums, but they were on tour in the US at the time and Virgin Records, the parent company of UB40's DEP International label, could not afford to wait until they returned for the sleeve to be designed. The album's cover art was created by Ken Ansell of the Design Clinic and featured two collages of images that illustrated each of the songs on the album (the five songs on side one were illustrated on the front cover, and the five songs on side two on the back cover).

Ub40 labour of love ii zip movie#

Rose would go on to direct music videos for Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Bronski Beat before becoming a Hollywood movie director. The film featured songs from the album as its soundtrack, and the music videos for the singles 'Red Red Wine', 'Please Don't Make Me Cry' and 'Cherry Oh Baby' were lifted directly from the film. The plot focused on the rivalry between two brothers (played by the band's Ali and Robin Campbell) trying to win the affections of the same girl (played by keyboard player Mickey Virtue's real-life girlfriend at the time, Bernadette McNamara). The story followed a fictional version of the lives of the band members, their relationships with family and girlfriends, and their jobs in a junkyard, with all roles in the film played by the band and their friends. It was directed by Bernard Rose and written by Rose and the group's saxophone player Brian Travers. The album was accompanied by a 30-minute film shot in black and white, also entitled Labour of Love and released on VHS video.

Ub40 labour of love ii zip series#

We commercialize our music all the time it's been a series of compromises.' Labour of Love film But if we came straight out doing that, it would never have gotten on the radio. That was our intention.' His brother Ali added, 'What we want to do is play heavy dub reggae. Robin Campbell said, 'We actually set out in the first place to popularise reggae. The band defended their decision to make an album of cover versions, stating that they had always wanted to make reggae for a wide audience. He sang it.' The album and 12' version of 'Red Red Wine' included a toasted verse by Astro, later copied and included by Diamond in his live performances of the song. Ali Campbell told Billboard, 'Nobody was as shocked as we were to find out that Neil Diamond wrote 'Red Red Wine'. The group were apparently unaware during recording that the most famous track on the record had not originally been a reggae song.

We experimented with several things like LinnDrums and synthesised basslines. UB40 had recently opened their own studio, the Abattoir, and Campbell spoke about how the combination of not having to write songs and having their own studio in which to produce them had resulted in a happy environment during the album's recording: 'We could relax with this there wasn't the pressure of it being our own material. Why we recorded them was because they were part of an era for us, what we were into.' In another interview with Melody Maker, drummer Jim Brown explained that the band were being pressured to deliver a new album, but didn't have enough original material completed, so it seemed an ideal time to revisit the idea of making an album of cover versions. We'd wanted to do it for years, we wanted it to be our first album. Campbell told UK music magazine NME, 'It's a collection of songs we knew as reggae songs. Guitarist Robin Campbell drew up a list of possible tracks which were then whittled down to a final choice of ten following discussion among the band members. The album consists of cover versions of ten of the group's favourite songs by reggae artists from the period 1969 to 1972.