I Come In Rocking, I Come In Sweet

I've been traveling a bit recently. That meant an interruption to the regular posting schedule I had promised myself I would stick to. It also meant new records of the sort I don't usually find in Munich. I was in Hamburg for a week on work, and then New York City for two weeks on vacation.

Pompey - "Vampire" / "Rockin' Calypso" (Rix Records, 1985)

I picked up this record at Gimme Gimme records in NYC. Obviously, I pulled it out of the bin because of the cover, but I bought it because the songs are great. I regret that I didn't pick up This Is Soca, which was sitting next to it in the bin and is listed on the Pompey discography.

Pompey, as far as I can glean from the internet, was a Barbadian soca/calypso band of the early 80s. These tracks are arranged by Ed Watson, the producer credited with creating the soca sound—a sound most well known from "Hot Hot Hot" (yeah, the song Buster Poindexter covered).

Up until now, the only calypso I've owned/heard has been cheapo LPs of the stuff I imagine was (is still?) played in Barbados hotel lobbies. In fact, I think a couple of the LPs I have even advertise on their sleeves that they are from true hotel-proficient bands. It's good stuff, but it's not as grooving as this record. "Vampire" sounds like a weird mixture of the lite calypso I'm used to and early 80s digital reggae; except it's missing any sense of the bravado cool of such reggae. Plus it's about Caribbean calypso vampires. Best idea for a movie. (Has that movie already been made?)