MUSICAL YOUTH – "Pass The Dutchie"

And with this song we come to the happiest days of my life. From the start of October 1982 to the middle of June 1983, I was working as an English language assistant at a lycée in Vannes, on the southern coast of Brittany, teaching English to pupils who were not that much younger than me. It wasn’t always a ball – there were problems with accommodation that lasted until Christmas, and I arrived in the middle of the wettest autumn they’d had in Brittany for fifty years (and believe me, that is wet). But even on the worst days, a walk through the beautiful medieval centre-ville and around the ramparts that made the town look like an enormous castle were enough to restore the spirits – I was only going to be there nine months and was determined to enjoy it.

Following the chart suddenly got a lot harder – in those days, reception of British radio in southern Brittany was pretty poor, and beyond tuning in for the chart rundown on Tuesday evenings I kept to local stations, which (apart from major global acts such as Bowie) were still two or three months behind the UK chart – so Dexy’s and Yazoo’s summer hits had new leases of life. That meant I was a bit unfamiliar with new acts in our chart – in particular a band that had me going “Cadge a what?” as I struggled to pick up the name above the interference. Very few French hits were likely to go the other way, although I did pull off a coup writing to a friend in October saying that I’d heard a song which could be a UK hit – FR David’s “Words” was number 2 here six months later. Chapeau!

Anyway, I remember thinking that “Pass The Dutchie” was the kind of song that would make me want to leave the country if it ever made number one – and it hit the top in the chart that was announced a few hours after my ferry left Weymouth. Like you, Tom, I’ve had something of a change of heart – when I saw an 80s video compilation recently, this one had me smiling from the off at its vivacity, good humour (even if it is about peeps with no food) and sunshiney nonsense.

And really the song’s about driving from Belgium to Germany avoiding Luxembourg, innit? You go through Alsace and pass the Duchy ‘pon de left hand side… I’ll get me coat.

Like Tom, this is one of the songs on Popular with which there is the most disparity between my boy and man reactions.

Musical Youth certainly recieved saturation publicity in October 1982. As children suceeding in a grown-up world, they were loved as a heartwarming success story by both grown-up and childrens’ television, explaining for the umpteenth time what a dutchie was, with a regularity that was grating to all but Musical Youth fans.

In all honesty, my annoyance with this was more due to cultural unfamiliarity than anything else, which is ironic as this was the first hit single made by my peers. Despite growing up in South London, my primary school was almost entirely white and all reggae and rasta culture was beyond my comprehension and slightly threatening to me – something to remind me that I wasn’t in Blackheath any more when I went to Lewisham! This wasn’t helped by the fact that I couldn’t follow any West Indian accent until I went to secondary school – any black person who talked to me as a child must have thought me a very vague and wary boy.

I find all of this embarrasing to recollect, but not shaming.

Anyway, I wasn’t going to like Musical Youth, because I was never going to be able to get a handle on them at that age. Now I can see just what funny and agreeable single this is, but I’ve learnt that rather too late in the day!

Loved it at the time – probably a bit excited that they were kids/noticeably younger than any pop I’d encountered so far (was too young to remember St Winifred’s choir mercifully) and got a similar feeling from a young US boyband a year or so later. The appeal didn’t last long tho – certainly not something I ever returned to after it’s peak of popularity. Feels like the reggae-based #1s of the 80s have this sense of naffness that’s hard to shake off – probably just down to the timing (me going into the 90s as a young teenager unimpressed by the inoffensive sunny simplicity) from my pov. Too hard to hate now and wouldn’t want to.

Reissued in the early nineties as i recall (Now 26? Now 27?) The first time I heard it was with my mate Danny Dutton who excitedly informed me that a dutchie was a spliff. I remember thinking they sounded a bit young to be tokin’ de herb…

…but it wasn’t a load of bollocks a Dutchie (Dutch pot) is a Caribbean cooking-pot – they changed it from “kutchie” (sp?) which was the ganja

I seem to remember (and heavens, is it really more than twenty-five years because it scarcely seems twenty-five minutes) always knowing that the song was about passing dope – either a spliff or some kind of pipe. What I don’t know is whether I assumed this in my cynicism or whether I heard it from somebody more authoritative than I. There was lots of authority on the subject of illicit substances in the Arbury/Kings Hedges area of Cambridge where I was living at the time – a district which the fingers of the University seldom penetrated.

I liked it at the time and I like it now. It has the sense of having an enlightened music teacher behind it, although I don’t know if that is in fact the case. If it is, it makes a good contrast with the St Winifreds train crash. Either way, it sits at some considerable distance from the Caribbean roots music I’d become familar with a couple of years hence.

Rosie at 16: I seem to remember that from the word go (ie from when it first entered the charts) that it was common knowledge that they’d toned it down (as kids were singing it) ie changed the lyrics from a spliff to a cooking-pot. It was just mentioned in passing in the tabloids/the music press… not as I remember as a ‘shock horror’ or anything.

Andy # 14 & Mark # 15 – Yes, I should have qualified what I said with regards “kouchie” and “dutchie”. The lyric was indeed changed to fit the innocence of the song for release, “food” for “weed” etc. But from the word go, there were always questions asked about what it was REALLY about, usually from people who knew only too well. Cooking pot and food for presentaion, yes, but pot all the same. To make matters even more absurd, I encountered my own “Dutchie” on a stand at a food fare in Eastbourne once. It turned out to be an inordinately large hot dog. Bloody bizarre.

Was there something uniquely golden in the Autumn light of October 1982? It seemed so somehow.

Anyhow, didn’t know what to make of this at all when it jumped from 26 (I think) to Number 1. It was quite a shock, and not at all what I normally listened to. I really enjoy its good natured vibe now.

Very much enjoyed its lemon-and-lime summeriness at the time, and its easy appropriation of the Jackson Five vibe. Can’t remember the follow-up, but Never Gonna Give You Up from the following year was equally charming.

Re 22: It must have been a crisp autumn because I’d have laid good money on this being a late summer hit. I associate it with watching (the rather dire) Tucker’s Luck.

As for Zoom, I couldn’t get past the awful lyric (“All of a sudden we were on the moon, flying high in a neon sky”). If it was a parody of moon june spoon, Jonathan King did it better on Everyone’s Gone To The Moon, but I think Fat Larry’s were just trying to sound icky-sweet.

24, The Yooot of Today – a really good follow-up.

23, I think Billy lists the studio appearances of acts on TOTP, as opposed to their representation on video.

I’m sure the “Pass The Dutchie” video would have been shown the week it entered at 26 (though I don’t remember it at all).

Erithian, some great disco/electro in the chart at this point. Loved “There It Is” and bought the “Friends” album on the back of it. Also, you had such choice items as “Do You Wanna Funk” and “Love Come Down”.

I thought Tucker’s Luck was an interesting attempt to do something Boys-from-the-Blackstuffy in yoof TV – straight out of Grange Hill and onto the dole, hanging around grim shopping precincts all day long – but this is based on a hazy memory of 1st episode only, and yes, interesting rather than ‘good’

Without getting too nostalgia-fest, can anyone remember the name of a series from around this time featuring two boys, once called Johnny leaving school & signing on, one of them eventually becomes a moderately successful musician writing songs about the other one’s dead end life: featuring a rather jaunty song that went something like “Johnny gets the post every monday morning / he’s hoping things are gonna get better / like waiting for a lover who’se a long time gone / to send you a begging letter”? Also fairly dire, but one likes to nail these memories down if one can

I was 12 or 13 and just old enough (or, put it another way, had a big brother old enough) to have heard Musical Youth on John Peel and to know they had had a single out on 021 records (home of the Au Pairs! I liked the Au Pairs). I also had a nascent indie-ist’s sense of the importance of something being cool and real/proper.

So I was kinda sorta wary of the naff elements of the way MY were presented (why did they have to colour code the lads?) but their having grown out of something which fell into the “cool” bucket gave me an excellent excuse to think this record was good. That was a result, because I really liked it, and still do.

this is super lovely. i haven’t heard it for a while so i might be imagining this, but isn’t part of why it sounds so summery and cheerful because it uses that great staple of 80’s kids tv, the steel drum, in a way that most (even pop) reggae doesn’t really. (conversely i may be imagining this lack of steel drum use in most reggae).

i really can’t remember whether i liked it at the time though. biddly bong was certainly a big playground catchphrase, and i probably liked the fact they were also from birmingham (though to be honest, to nine year old me in solihull, aston may as well have been the moon), but i have a feeling that i didn’t really get reggae. certainly later, even until i was in my late teens, reggae was pretty much the only musical genre that i flat out didn’t like. it was a beautiful thing once i realised that it wasn’t reggae that was boring and plodding and dull and fatuous, it was BOB BLEEDING MARLEY (and particularly pretty much everything on ‘legend’).*

but anyway, did john peel break them? certainly the inner sleeve of the album features a great bash street kids style cartoon telling the story of the yoot, in which he features heavily (in a predictably avuncluar role).

when we were horrible teenagers we thought the band members’ sundry burglary convictions were hilarious and used to sing the chorus as “pass the telly on the left hand side”.

finally, i’m not sure whether no one’s mentioned this until now because it’s so obvious or because it’s crazy talk, but isn’t the “thiiiiis generation” intro (nicked from U-roy, btw) sampled to great effect by public enemy on ‘fear of a black planet’?

*er, possibly this view is not universally held.

Re 25: 26 to 1, that’s right. I think Happy Talk went from 33 to 1 just weeks earlier, which may still be the biggest bound to no.1 in chart history*. Previous record holder was the Beatles’ Hey Jude which leapt from 27 to 1 (not wanting to re-re-stir a hornets’ nest!).

*Also seems to have only spent three weeks in the Top 10, two at number one, which was surely a uniquely quick rise and fall prior to the nineties when it became the norm.

Re 35: Another Bob Bleedin Marley sceptic here. I genuinely don’t get his legendary status, compared to an innovator like King Tubby – is it purely marketing? If it’s down to his making reggae better known around the world, I don’t see how that makes him any more significant than Bill Haley (who was surely more innovative). Happy to be enlightened. And I do love much of the Wailing Wailers album.

Bunny Wailer “Blackheart Man”. One of my favourite albums of all time. An absolutely beautiful record.

I don’t mind Bob, but agree he gets a disproportionate amount of coverage.

The Marley-sceptic could check out the 1975(?) “Live at the Lyceum” album, as much for the raw energy and gusto of the band as Marley’s vocal performances. Much more to enjoy than on some of the too-nicely-produced studio recordings of the same period.

no 34: if that’s the “thiiis generation” which is followed by “rules the nation” it was sampled on a few hardcore tracks too – and all ths time I never realised it came from Musical Youth – I haven’t heard this track since about 1983 though!

Bob Marley’s not my absolute favourite either but it may be that some of the sceptics underrate his best work as a reaction to his legend status (and the fame of some of his less-great stuff)?

Some of those late ’60s / early 70s recordings with Lee Perry were important chunks of early reggae; he was there or thereabouts as reggae slowed into roots and hit its broadest Western audience; also purists may not like but the mid-late 70s period stuff with the slightly rocky overtones was the birth of “international reggae” as I believe it’s known.

I think Pete’s right about his status as a liberation icon, and that surely counts towards a lot of people’s fondness for him. The other thing is, the guy was an absolute, slam-dunk, charisma-packed *star*: it’s surely true that there were greater innovators in Jamaican music during the period but comparing BM to the great King Tubby (as I think Wichita does upthread, not meaning to be fighty) is maybe a bit like saying “I don’t get why Mick Jagger is this huge legend when Joe Meek was much more innovative…” The star thing is important, I think.

Lastly: Bob’s highest-profile work has not always been kindly treated by remixers over the years.

45 – johnny jarvis, yes. thanks crag. and 2 minutes of wikiresearch suggests a tucker’s luck link, in that mark farmer who played johnny jarvis was also in grange hill. (I can’t for the life of me imagine why everyone else is discussing bob marley rather than this sort of thing)

Re 46: Kinda sorta… but always easiest when it’s a combination of zeitgeist originality and star quality (eg Jagger w/Satisfaction). I was dangling the baldy, t shirt wearing King Tubby in the air as a floating stalking horse, and yes I agree w/Meek comparison. But that still doesn’t reeeeally explain Marley’s appeal beyond the cartoon student smoke haze and the odd great pop song (eg Is This Love). Must’ve been lots of better singers (from my vague knowledge) who would have been equally well positioned at the start of the 70s, politically and artistically.