Chart entered : 27 May 1989
Chart peak : 63 ( 57 in a re-mix in 2001 )
Another sixties survivor waved goodbye to the charts here.
The Equals had scored their biggest success in 1968 when "Baby Come Back" reached number one and had a string of subsequent hits up to 1971 when Eddy was felled by a serious heart and lung infection. Eddy's response was to quit the group and concentrate on writing and production at his home studios. He set up Ice Records in 1974 and returned to recording himself the following year. A string of solo singles, including the original version of "Walking On Sunshine " failed to make any impact until 1979 when the lurching electronic reggae of "Living On The Frontline" made number 11 in the UK. Thereafter he became a regular in the singles chart with a number of hits that stuck very closely to the "Frontline" template. In 1982 he moved to Barbados and scored his biggest success with the "Killer On The Rampage" album which spawned the UK number one "I Don't Wanna Dance" and US number two "Electric Avenue". Eddy never sold many albums; his 1988 LP "File Under Rock" failed to chart despite containing a Top 10 single in "Gimmee Hope Jo'anna".
"Walking On Sunshine" was released to promote a compilation album. The song had been a big dance hit for the studio collective Rocker's Revenge in 1982. Tim Simenon was brought in to remix it and does little but clutter the song with electronic polyrhythms. It's a good song about taking things easy with some great brass parts but this version does it no favours at all. It didn't seem to do the album any harm which reached number 20.
The nineties were a lean time for Eddy. His next album "Barefoot Soldier" sounds up to standard. "Talk About Love" seems a likely hit and his venture into Country and Western "Sweet on the Road" has novelty value if nothing else . However it went nowhere. Two years later it was re-packaged with some adjustment to the tracklist as "Paintings Of The Soul" but the result was the same.
In 1993, he changed musical tack with an album of fifteen classic calypsos "Soca Baptism" with top bandleaders. To my untrained ears it does sound a bit samey. At the end of the year he started talking up a new rhythm "ring bang". Musically it seems to consist of electronically tweaking Caribbean rhythms whether reggae, soca or calypso to achieve some form of universal synthesis but whether it really exists outside of Eddy's head is questionable. A number of Barbadian artists have recorded supposed ringbang tracks but all on Eddy's label and of course he's trademarked the term.
His next album was "Hearts and Diamonds" in 1999, an under-produced set with diversions into jazz and folk-rock. There are numerous lyrical references to ring bang as if just talking about it could conjure it into coherence. One or two tracks could have been developed into decent songs but overall its leaden and dreary.
Eddy did enjoy a renaissance in 2001 when his ringbang remix of "Electric Avenue" ( adding extra electronic rhythms to the song ) reached number 5 in the UK as a trailer for a new compilation album. I never liked the song anyway, a guy singing about violence in Brixton from his beachside mansion in Barbados and a moronic football chant for a chorus. The album went platinum and reached number 3 in the charts. Another remix of "Walking On Sunshine" then reached number 57.
Eddy didn't capitalise on this with new material and it was 2006 when his last album to date,"Reparation" came out. The title track expresses Eddy's support for the reparations movement to compensate for the slave trade. That has some bite and there's another bizarre foray into another genre with the gospel track "Jesus Got A Face" but elsewhere there's little of interest just very pedestrian old school reggae. There's the odd hint of a good tune as on ( yawn ) "Ringbang Man" but you get the sense that Eddy's got fingers in too many other pies to invest enough time in his own music these days.
A couple of years later he put out another compilation in the UK "The Very Best of Eddy Grant Road To Reparation " to coincide with his appearance at Glastonbury. It reached number 14 and is his last chart entry to date.
I do have a warm memory of a holiday at Butlins (Ayr) around the time "Gimme Hope Jo'anna" was released and dancing and singing along, despite being totally oblivious to the sentiment or even what Apartheid was - perhaps a sign of how effective it was a pop song first and foremost.
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