KEN TOWL went along to where much-missed vinyl record store once was, and found more great beats at the heart of Croydon
Hot line: the Beats and Eats gang at the EP launch last week. Photos by fluid4sight
My invitation said, “Join the Beats and Eats team for our Love Cronx EP release party, featuring a live performance from our featured artist, Big Nate.”
I tried to picture Big Nate. I failed.
Better to go along and actually see Big Nate, I thought. Breathlessly, the invitation went on: “… and an exclusive screening of a 90min music documentary based on the greatest south London band that you may have never heard of”.
“May have?” I thought. I was pretty sure that I would never have heard of them. “Still,” I thought, “Sounds like an interesting night.”
As it turned out, it was.
The venue was The Venue, just off Surrey Street on Middle Street, once the site of Croydon institution, Beano’s Records.
Beano’s was a Croydon treasure, the largest second-hand record shop in Europe; we let it slip away from us in 2009 because we stopped buying music on vinyl. They stocked a few CDs in the latter years but that wasn’t enough to save Beano’s. Nowadays, it’s all downloads and live music.
And so to Big Nate. He introduced himself to the audience and seemed very hesitant. He transformed when he began to perform. He sang/rapped over a backing and suddenly everyone was listening. It was fast and melodious at the same time and built to a refrain that I missed at first and then heard what I hadn’t expected.
Big Nate was “autistic and proud”. As is the way with music and, indeed, refrains, this was repeated , hammering home a defiant and powerful message. Now the words of Nate’s producer before the performance had more resonance. When he had made a short speech explaining that the song had been written by Nate in response to “the haters” who had chosen to attack him online, it sounded to me like making something out of not very much at all. Don’t all musicians get negative reviews sometimes?
Clearly, this was more than that. In fact, it was a triumph of talent over negativity. Big Nate presents as an engaging presence and so, when he performs, you find yourself listening to him.
I was a little disappointed that, given that the event was marketed as “an EP launch”, we only got to hear two live tracks. EPs, for those too young to have shopped at Beano’s, were “extended play” from the vinyl era – usually the size of a single, a 7-inch, but with four or more tracks squeezed on to them.
Sound choice: Big Nate inspired the audience at The Venue – what used to be Beano’s
I didn’t have much time to wallow in this because, in short order, the film started and the identity of the band that I probably hadn’t heard of was revealed.
Cymande, a south London jazz/soul/funk band that originally lasted for three heady years from 1971 to 1974, were, it turns out, pretty much ignored in Britain but toured extensively and exhaustingly in the United States and were so good that no one believed they were British, and did not fit into anyone’s idea of what sort of British music should be promoted.
Doors were closed to them. Their music was progressive but not prog. The hard slog of touring America finally did for them and they broke up and made barely a living individually as jobbing musicians, more or less broke.
The documentary (Getting It Back: The Story of Cymande, released February 2024) features a lot of their music and the words of Steve Scipio, their highly articulate (both when speaking and playing) bass player.
It centres on the pivotal moment when the Fugees stole… sorry… sampled the guitar riff off Cymande’s The Dove on their 1996 release The Score.
Much of the background music of the documentary features The Dove, with its almost hypnotic repeated guitar, bass and drums motifs. The bassline irresistibly danceable. Much of this music is all about the bass.
This is a band that, like Big Nate, had to struggle to get their voice heard. The music industry turned a deaf ear to their difficult-to-classify music for decades. In America, they were able to appear on Soul Train to promote their records into the outer reaches of the Billboard 100, but they were never considered suitable for Top of the Pops.
It was left to cognoscenti like DJ Craig Charles, record producer Mark Ronson and bands such as The Fugees to keep the flame alive and ensure that, at least in some rarified quarters, Cymande would be heard.
In fact, Cymande have been sampled so many times by so many artists that they have compiled a Spotify playlist of songs that sample their work.
Or you can listen to the originals here.
I won’t reveal how the film ends – I don’t want to do anything that would discourage anyone from watching for themselves. But let’s say it is bittersweet, offering, in equal parts, sadness and hope. Seek out their music. Just like Big Nate, Cymande’s timeless music needs to be heard.
The Beats and Eats Love Cronx EP Part 1 also features Tubby Boy, who they bill as “a Croydon hip-hop legend and mentor”. His track Take Notes is “a direct message to young people, impeccably delivered with his usual brand of hard-hitting word-play”.
YC is a talented 16-year-old rapper from Croydon who has been working in the studio over the past six months as part of a local youth empowerment programme. His track Dream Big highlights some of the issues faced by teenagers in the borough.
All the tracks are now available to stream and download on Spotify and iTunes respectively.
And Beats and Eats say, “As you can see from the EP name, this is ‘Part 1’ and we are currently working on Part 2 which we hope to release in December, featuring even more Croydon artists.”
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
- For more information, visit www.say-youth.org
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Cymande is a great band. Lucky enough to see them in The Oval Tavern about 15 years ago.
They’re incredible (and have been used quite extensively in movie soundtracks, most memorably Spike Lee’s excellent 25h Hour, specifically ‘Bra’), but although I knew they were British, I never realised there was a Croydon connection.
Thank you Inside Croydon for the great review ❤️