UB40, Best of British

Advantages: must for your collection
Disadvantages: listening to "Red Red Wine"

...I have followed UB40 since i first heard the single "Food for Thought" and i been a fan ever since. The best of UB40 is a brilliant Album and i think their best one. It has some great tracks on it especially all the early stuff, which in my opinion is when they were at there best.. It has singles on it like "King",....."1 in 10"....."Food for Thought",... ..."Rat in my kitchen"......"..."Dont Break my Heart" and "Red Red Wine" which is the only UB40 record i really dont like, i think they sold out a bit when they made that record. But saying that the lads from Brum are a top class act and if you are fan you got to have this Album in your collection. UB40 has a percussion section which is rare nowdays and the Cambell brothers have a very distictive vocals....

fireman1 12.12.2000 · Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Review of Best Of UB40 Vol.1, The - UB40

I Don't Like Red Wine But I DO Like Red, Red Wine!

Advantages: one of my all time favourite bands
Disadvantages: Ali Campbell has left

...UB40 is probably the UK's most successful reggae band in history having released music spanning 3 decades. I have been a great fan of UB40 since the early 80s. They formed in Birmingham in the UK in 1978 and have had many a famous single in the UK charts throughout their career. EARLY DAYS AND INFLUENCES The band got its name "UB40" from the form that was used for unemployment benefit claimants (Unemployment Benefit Form 40) which has now been replaced with the more friendly JSAG (Job Seekers AGreement form). UB40's earlier songs and influences were very much related to unemployment and racism in varying forms. The band members grew up in the same area and when they got together initially they weren't expert musicians, just a bunch of guys who loved reggae and had been influenced strongly by this genre of music...

anonymili 03.07.2008 · Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Review of UB 40

Your Invited On A Journey

Advantages: 20 years of Pleasure
Disadvantages: Things are getting quiet

...One of the greatest bands ever known to me and the world for sure. I’ll always remember growing up, standing in front of the TV, my mum would put on UB40 and I’ll stand there shaking hips and moving my lips doing my own little bop-a-long version. All through my childhood I’d find my ears surrounded by their drop-beat reggae sounds. I always enjoyed singing their songs and always will though hell I can’t sing, want to hear a sample at all? The Band - UB 40 How It All Started..... ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ UB40 formed in their home town Birmingham where the 8 members grew up together in central Birmingham. Reggae music dominated the central scene from the middle of the 70’s and played on every street corner and in every local pub. In the Summer of 1978 got together and started to make themselves heard...

chunka 12.12.2002 (18.12.2002) · Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Review of UB 40

Brummie Reggae

Advantages: Great songs, great music, serious message
Disadvantages: Some of the songs have lost their context

...of the country where there was a large black population and thus London and Birmingham were natural breeding ground for this music. London gave us the short-lived Black Slate and the longer lasting Misty In Roots and Aswad. Birmingham gave us notable acts such Steel Pulse and UB40. UB40 were distinct from most of the rest in that they were a multiracial outfit consisting of 8 band members led by the two Campbell brothers Ali and Robin. Their sound was also a distinctive blend of the heavy reggae drum and baseline with Ska influenced brass section and melodic ballads. They are probably the best example of what some in the music press labelled misleadingly as 'White Reggae'. 'Signing Off' released in September 1980 is their debut album. It came about on the back of supporting 'The Pretenders' on tour and live exposure on the John Peel Radio One...

Mauri 11.05.2005 · Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful
Review of Signing Off - UB40

FREE DVDs

Advantages: Free trial, large choice, post included,new realeases
Disadvantages: see review

...I like movies and I like freebies, so when you get offered both in one swoop you?re bound to accept! I used my two week free trial with this company and remained with them for a couple of monthsbefore moving on to try many other companies free trials (and winning a new DVD player on Tesco DVD rental site on their free trial offer). I then had an email from DVDs 365 asking me to go back, and offering me a free DVD if I did so. I had just left Tesco (with my new DVD player) so I chose to go back with them. ∆◊◊ THE SERVICE THEY OFFER ∆◊◊ Basically it?s like going to a video shop and hiring films on DVD, except you don?t pay for each film you chose ? rather a monthly fee for which you can watch as many movies as you can fit in, for us this is usually around 8 a month (2 a week usually weekends...

dabmim 15.11.2004 · Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Review of dvds365.com

Nemesis Of Thatcherism

Advantages: Brilliant musicianship, great songs
Disadvantages: None

...It was 1980 and Britain was celebrating, if that is the right word, the 1st anniversary of the Thatcher government. There was one particular phenomenon which was affecting the towns and cities of Britain at that time and that phenomenon was mass unemployment. Not the mass unemployment which had risen above 1mn during the previous Labour administration but levels of 3mn plus. It would have registered at over 4mn if the Conservatives had not continually changed the method of counting unemployment. To receive unemployment benefit at that time you had to complete a UB40 form and it was this that gave the name of UB40 to a band of young men from Birmingham. For their first album ‘Signing Off’ they even used a mock UB40 form as the cover. The influences of UB40 were from protest songs and the medium they used for the broadcast...

polydeuces 16.09.2001 · Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Review of Signing Off - UB40

Approaching perfection

Advantages: Excellent tracks, faultless playing
Disadvantages: None

...After the excellence of their debut album Signing Off UB40 faced the test of the tricky second album with the confidence to do it all again. Recorded in early 1981 the album featured only UB40 compositions and only utilising the production skills of Ray Falconer whose brother Earl played bass in the band. The overall quality of the songs improved over Signing Off but Present Arms saw UB40 move away from the simplicity of pure ska or bluebeat reggae to something which was altogether slicker. As a reggae purist I prefer my reggae warts and all in the style of the Jamaican bands which recorded their brilliance in one-take 3-minute masterpieces. They would find it difficult to recognise true roots reggae in this album. That this is an excellent reggae album cannot be denied. UB40 exude a true love affair with the music style. The problem...

polydeuces 24.09.2001 · Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Review of Present Arms - UB40

Dole queue reggae with a message

Advantages: British reggae at its best
Disadvantages: A bit too serious for their own good

...Most of the 2 Tone era bands were hyper energetic dance bands, deeply ingrained with a love of Ska and Bluebeat and stomping the night away. Dexys Midnight Runners at one end of the spectrum, fronted by the EGO of Kevin Rowland were avowedly a soul band, with passionate romance in their hearts (Searching for the young soul rebels, indeed) before they became gypsies with Come On Eileen. Over on the other wing, there was the dub and loping, smooth reggae sounds and political comment of Birmingham?s UB40. Even the name was a STATEMENT writ large of a band who cared, in a deeply passionate way for their fellow men. They cared less for the intense fashion sense and front of many of their friends and colleagues and were pretty faceless and anonymous, but they managed to carve out a lengthy career in the charts, even though a lot...

dave27 19.10.2000 (05.07.2004) · Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Review of Signing Off - UB40

Fighting Talk

Advantages: Great songs, strong message
Disadvantages: Less focused

...If you're a regular reader of my reviews you might have guessed that I've been going through my old record collection lately! After a previous review of UB40's debut album 'Signing Off' I thought I'd take a look at their second offering 'Present Arms'. After the huge critical and chart success of 'Signing Off' multiracial Brummie Reggae outfit UB40 had a difficult task in producing a worthy second album. Coming from a an area of the country that had been decimated by unemployment and racial unrest caused or at least made worse by Tory government policy UB40 taking their name from the then unemployment form clearly nailed their political colours to the mast. Signing Off was a fierce attack on Thatcher and her policies and 'Present Arms' broadly speaking carries on where the debut album left off. The main themes are once again...

Mauri 13.05.2005 (14.06.2005) · Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Review of Present Arms - UB40

Are you UB40's 1 in 10?

Advantages: Free service to job seekers and employers
Disadvantages: Just because it's free doesn't mean it's any good!

...it was a possibility so had gone out and looked for jobs to pre-empt the redundancy so I had another job to walk straight into. This time I was in shock and had to go to the job centre (now called Job Centre Plus) to sign on and get help with my mortgage. The first time I went in I thought how different it looked to how I remembered it all those years ago (well for starters it was in Ealing where I went to sign as opposed to Chiswick). The staff were now called Personal Advisors! And as a job seeker I was now called a client. The form you took along with you every week as ID was now called a JSAG (job seekers agreement) as opposed to a UB40 (unemployment benefit form 40). It was felt that calling it unemployment as opposed to job seeking was rather negative hence it was changed. I had to sit in a queue to pick up some forms to claim...

anonymili 22.09.2006 (30.09.2006) · Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful
Review of Job Centre