Fabulous Five - Shape (1999)

Jamaica's Fabulous Five Inc. have produced a number of hits since their foundation in 1970. They have performed nearly ever genre of popular Jamaican music, including standard reggae, ska, and soca, and have proven to be right at home in all of them. Among their hits is 1999's Shape, a soca-dancehall party tune, which can still be heard in dances today. However, the rest of the Shape album seems to have been largely forgotten.

The back cover warns that some people may consider the album's ongoing theme to be 'male chauvinism,' but it's really not that bad. Only Sexy Girls and the aforementioned Shape could really be described that way. The rest of the songs are a bit different. Mango is a standard double-entendre song in the calypso vein, much like something Count Lasher would have done in the '50s. Viagra pokes fun at men more than anything, as the guys in the song need to pop pills in order to get anything done. Woman Is A Problem and Woman's Anthem are celebrations of womanhood - the first being about the fact that men cannot live without women, and the second being a cautionary tale about how women might take over the world by the year 2000. (They may have had a point.)

Unwind is a typical party song and probably one of the more forgettable tracks, though there's nothing really wrong with it. It's followed by one of my favorites from the album, Miss Bonfield, a tale about an unfortunate woman who does everything right but still can't seem to get a man. By the end of the song she resorts to taking home the most unappealing man imaginable, only to find him dead in the bed the next morning! Lyrically, its message is a bit different from the rest of the album, but it sticks out in a good way. Finally, The Puss He Giving and Womanising are contributed by Lovindeer, and that tells you pretty much all you need to know. Though he doesn't sing them (he does deejay on Womanising though), they are both excellent and exactly the sort of material he'd include on his own albums.

The album came out on vinyl and CD from VP Records. The front cover suggests it should be available on the Jamaican Stage label as well, but that doesn't seem to be the case. The CD doesn't include any additional tracks, so I'd recommend the vinyl. Despite being quite new for a vinyl record (which is usually a bad sign when it comes to reggae, as new pressings tend to be quite bad), my copy sounds excellent. Of course, it wouldn't be a reggae record without some kind of error: one of Lovindeer's tracks is mistitled as The Pass He Giving on the label, and the liner notes are a grammatical mess. But these are hardly reasons to ignore the album - Shape gets a pass from me.

Tracklist

Side A:

1. Shape (Glenroy Samuels)

2. Mango (Grub Cooper)

3. Viagra (Grub Cooper)

4. The Puss He Giving (Lovindeer)

5. Womanising (Lovindeer)

Side B:

1. Woman Is A Problem (Lovindeer)

2. Woman's Anthem (Grub Cooper)

3. Unwind (A. Campbell / Grub Cooper)

4. Miss Bonfield (Louis Mariott / Grub Cooper)

5. Sexy Girls (Grub Cooper)