Kid Creole and the Coconuts "Tropical Gangsters" [1982]

Every time you book a beach vacation, you fantasize about all the trouble-free bliss you're going to have -- but once you arrive there's always this one charming local in a Panama hat who fucks up your good time by flirting with your wife and offering to take her to all the popular tourist sites. Now imagine that guy with his own pop-calypso band and then consider how much you're going to hate Kid Creole and the Coconuts' "Tropical Gangsters." As if music fans in the early 80s didn't already have enough to contend with -- between the Boy George-led second British Invasion and Michael Jackson's "Thriller" coup still in blitzkrieg stage -- here comes a jive-ass Cab Calloway Jr. in Miami Vice pastels. Tempting as it is to call the sound of "Tropical Gangsters" simply Prince at Club Med, it's actually a lot less sexy and a lot more petty than that. Ripping off a "1999" beat to sing a song about other people ripping him off, Kid Creole clearly has a lot of nerve calling the kettle high-yella. Besides which, his grooves (if you can call them that) and his raps (which absolutely can't be called that) do a good job of making Huey Lewis & the News sound funky. What the Coconuts offer to the act must be in their no-doubt campy-as-hell live show (meaning they probably all have big tits, otherwise they would have been named something else), because they don't bring anything to this album the Pointer Sisters sleepwalking couldn't manage. Easiest way to tell this is a band of hack frauds, however, is to notice they're not even from the islands at all -- they're New Yorkers who have to take the 6 Line like every other schnook.