FLAVORS

-- unknown, 1991

Words: Dave Seaman

You'd be forgiven if you thought Green Gartside and his "free floating conglomerate" Scritti Politti had collected all their earnings and disappeared to some exotic retreat never to be heard of again, but you'd also be wrong! Back in no uncertain terms, Scritti's first single for 4 years, a cover of the Beatles' 'She's A Woman', is hard, exciting, features Ragga King Shabba Ranks and is unashamedly danceable. But this isn't another contemporary big name artist jumping on the dance wagon.

"Scritti have been making the equivalent of dance records for a long time," defends Gartside. "If you think back to records like 'Wood Beez', that topped the American Dance Charts for months and lots of my early work had reggae references. So fooling around with reggae is nothing new to me.

"If there's going to be any criticism, I think it's gonna be 'Scritti are emasculating the ragga sound' and Shabba will probably get some too for guesting on a sugary pop record. All I can say to that is 'BOLLOCKS!' in very big letters (your wish is our command - Ed). I think anyone who expresses this criticism would be profoundly missing the point and showing a very narrow minded, reactionary, unromantic idea of what black dance and pop music should be." His words may be hardhitting but they're delivered in an unaggressive well spoken way without really raising his tone at all. You see, although he will defend himself, he doesn't seem to care either way. The hardened Gartside is passed caring what the critics say.

"You can't keep all the plates spinning and after a while you realise that it's fairly juvenile aspiration to do so. You go through the phases I did of being an NME darling for a while and then they don't like you for signing to a major and making some slick R&B influenced Top 40 stuff, so you get a hard time."

Having been almost exclusively into hip hop during the making of the last album (even though there was "no direct evidence on the record"), he then got into swingbeat for a while ("Teddy Riley is a fuckin' genius!") before belatedly discovering house.

"I didn't like house originally. In fact, I was anti-house. I thought it was lame and unfunky, but I've been converted. It's a case of keeping open minded and excited which, thankfully for me, isn't something I've got to work at. I think a lot of people, especially as they get older, find it difficult to stay on top of new things so they retreat to buying Q Magazine and other such things that keep them reassured and comfortable. None of that has ever appealed to me."

If there's one musical genre Green is totally on top of though, it's ragga. It was certainly his main listening diet when he finally returned to the studio late last year to record this single along with two other tracks.

"It was the only musical force that kept me interested and excited for a while. I'd got into being away from everything in Wales and just travelling to London and Bristol to satisfy this craving for ragga vinyl. It was Martyn Ware from B.E.F. who tracked me down and got me into the studio again to contribute to their next 'covers' album. I'd never really entertained the idea of doing a cover version before, I thought of it as a bit naff. But when he said Tashan and Lalah Hathaway had agreed, so did I!

I did Stevie Wonder's 'I Don't Know Why I Love You' for them and then managed to persuade them to let me do the two other ideas I had for covers while I was in their studio. I chose the Beatles' 'She's A Woman' and Gladys Knight's 'Take Me In Your Arms and Love Me' (the second single featuring London ragga star Sweetie Irie) because they were good vehicles for combination singjay (half sung/half rapped) style covers and they worked. In retrospect, I've left it far too long to do something along these lines, I should have been productive with this kind of style a lot earlier."

With that and a lot of Green's other views and philosophies, I wholeheartedly agree.