It's one of the great joys of having a large record collection. I constantly find myself listening to wondrous albums that I've never picked from the shelf and given a spin. This evening Fresh Fruit In Foreign Places, the album Kid Creole & The Coconuts released in 1981 before they broke globally gleefully and particularly in the UK with the release of Tropical Gangsters the following year,
Fresh Fruit In Foreign Places is a fabulous record. A fresh terrain. A place where integration rhymes with misegenation. You get the sense that The Jets are meeting the Sharks in pitched battle any moment. Half Broadway Musical, half extended conga down Manhattan, Miami, New Orleans, Havana or the exotic desi\tnation of your choosing.
It's concept and musical travelogue so naturally I pick up the Oddyssey as another possible narrative reference point. Helen of Troy is mentioned in the opening song.It's tight and just right. It got to # 40 in the Swedish Album Charts. Elsewhere it got critical garlands but the Kid and his Coconutsdidn't hit the cash tills until Tropical Gangsters,
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