Sugar Minott

Lincoln Barrington "Sugar" Minott led started his vocal career in 1969 at the young age of 13 as part of the African Brothers, a Jamaican vocal harmony trio also featuring Tony Tuff and Derrick Howard.  Following the dissolution of the African Brothers Minott worked at one of the great learning grounds in Jamaican music- Coxsone Dodds Studio One, where he eventually released two albums of material in 1979- "Live Loving" and "Showcase" (and the later 1982 release, "More Sugar").  Following the success of two further albums, "Ghetto-ology" and "Black Roots", released on West London labels Trojan and Island respectively, he spent some of the early 80's living in the UK.

Portobello Road Songs

The Groove Grove Graphics exhibition features the hive of activity in West London music scenes, and Portobello Road is certainly one of the most referenced streets in the area.  Portobello Road has changed a lot since I first remember it in the 80's and has witnessed even more change with layers of gentrification from the 1950's (the period Groove Grove Graphics starts with) to the present day.  The front page protests outraged with the chain store All Saints moving into the antique area of the market showed the determination people have to preserve a traditional idea of Portobello Road.  But that idea will always be quite subjective.  The ten songs I've selected express an idea of the street, and all explicitly name check Portobello Road in the lyrics or the titles (hence the recent Blur single release, although it describes a walk down portobello road, is excluded). 

Top 5 West London Street Name Anthems

1. The Streets of Ladbroke Grove - Delroy Washington On Delroy's I-Sus album which was recorded at Basing Street Studios. Mr Washington was heavy on the West London scene in the 70's playing shows regularly.

2. I Spy - Pulp The band originally from Sheffield signed to West London label Island in the early 1990's and recorded this song for their album Different Class and had the lyrics:

Take your year in Provence and shove it right up your arse.
Your Ladbroke Grove looks turn me on, yeah.
With roach burns in designer dresses
And thousands of tiny dryness lines
Beating a path to the corner of your eyes
And every night I hatch my plan, it's not a case of woman v man.
It's more a case of haves against haven'ts and I just
happen to have got what you need, just exactly what you need yeah

Gorillaz Gall Grant

It's all over the news that Eddy Grant is furious with Gorillaz. He claims "Stylo", released by Damon Albarns cartoon supergroup is a "blatant rip off" of his 1982 track "Time Warp". Grant and Gorillaz both share their publishing company, EMI. "I am very angry that this was not picked up by our mutual publisher EMI's administration division."