Kitchen Table Kibitzing 8/31/19: The greatest progressive rock band you never heard of

I first encountered Latin Quarter when I was in my early 20’s, working as a cashier in what department stores used to call their “record” department. Someone had returned, opened and used, a cassette called “Latin Quarter—Modern Times,” a common occurrence which normally required its return to the manufacturer. Following the unwritten code of conduct governing record department cashiers, however, I opted instead to steal the cassette and take it home. Otherwise I would never have had the opportunity to hear one of the most unique, thoughtful and melodic expressions of rock music that, sadly, went largely unnoticed, ending up as barely a footnote in the titanic Lexicon of Rock. 

The group Latin Quarter was formed in 1983 by British guitarist, lead singer and co-songwriter, Steve Skaith, and lyricist Mike Jones.  Its original performance lineup was (somewhat unusual for rock groups at his time) both multi-racial and multi-sex, comprised of three men (excluding  Jones who strictly wrote the words) and two women: Skaith, Richard Wright (not that Richard Wright, Pink Floyd fans) on guitar, Greg Harewood on bass, Yona Dunsford on vocals and keyboards, and Carol Douet on vocals and percussion. Their music can best be described as tight, very catchy rock melodies with strong bass and guitar lines, and an intensely direct, leftist political slant focused on current events and social justice. 

The original band “officially” split up in 1990 after releasing three studio albums, but various incarnations of the group continued with six more studio albums to this day, still with Skaith as frontman and still including many songs with Jones’highly sophisticated and erudite lyrics. They only had one top-20 hit in the UK, Radio Africa, and while they received positive reviews from the likes of Rolling Stone, the band never achieved any significant commercial success.  Skaith has also released solo works from his home in Mexico as the Steve Skaith Band, with Mexican musicians.

One reason for this lack of recognition was obvious: they chose the wrong name for themselves. The “Latin Quarter” is a section of Paris famously and historically known as a  hotbed of political, artistic and intellectual pursuits, dating back centuries. But to the record-buying public overall, well, everyone assumed it meant they did “Latin” music (they do not), which was hardly a strong draw for rock fans.

The other reason was probably their timing. Both Skaith and Jones were former members of Big Flame, a UK political group described in Wikipedia as "a revolutionary socialistfeminist organisation with a working-class orientation."  Their highly progressive political sensibilities were thus rather out of step for an America that had just elected Ronald Reagan and a Europe turning conservative as well.  Although Jones himself stated in a cogent essay about the group’s truncated fate that they never experienced direct censorship (Modern Times was released by Arista), their status as a “commodity” to be marketed quite simply flummoxed the record companies:

[W]hat we experienced was not ‘censorship’ as the direct prohibition of the expression of a political, moral or spiritual belief, rather, what we were forced to learn was that in a system of commodity production for profit any aspect of a ‘proto-product’ that that is deemed to reduce the chances of profitability will be shorn off or compromised in some way by mechanisms that are concerned only with the maximisation of profit not with the intentions of composers. In a sense this is ‘blind censorship’, almost a fail-safe device that neutralises ‘political’ content simply because it does not complement the demands of the profit-system.

The fact that they did not achieve much commercial success, however, does not detract one iota from the quality of their music. Their first album, “Modern Times” dealt with such diverse subjects as resistance to Apartheid in South Africa, the evils of colonialism and  imperialism,  hypocrisy of “tell-all” book writers, the McCarthy Era witch hunts, the gross disparity of wealth distribution, the impact of PTSD on returning soldiers, and last but not least, the true (and in Skaith and Jones’ eyes, truly ugly) nature of America.

And unlike many “socially conscious” bands such as U2, their lyrics were not oblique or amorphous. They were quite direct.

The music of Modern Times (1985) is slick and has a bit of an “80’s” feel to it, but only in part, and it still holds up very well today. This is Radio Africa, which incorporates elements of Reggae (partial lyrics below):

Their second and third albums, Mick and Caroline (1987) and the aptly titled Swimming Against the Stream (1989) delved into similar political waters—nearly every song on these albums deals in some way with topics of social justice. All of their songs are relentlessly melodic as well.

But my favorite, and the most musically complex of their albums is called Long Pig (a term cannibals in the Pacific islands used to describe human flesh). The title song describes what the world in the future will be like once the effects of global warming begin to be fully realized.

Long Pig (partial lyrics):

It's so lush and so rank here in this English swamp
And sanctuary? Sanctuary is hard to find
Ever since the sky fell foul of delinquent chemistry
And what holds us together began to unbind
And I know why we tore up the trust
The long pig is human but he's no friend to us.

And all that we could ever hope for
All that we could ever hope for
All that we could ever hope for
Is almost eaten by the long pig now

Skaith/Jones

From Latinquartermusic.com, the authors describe the song’s meaning as follows:

Human flesh, say those who have eaten it, tastes like pork, therefore “Long Pig”– the cannibal’s name for human flesh. Humanity is devouring the world – cooking it on the flames of global warming. Soon Northern Europe will resemble the Tropics.

Additionally, Long Pig has the distinction of being the only album I’ve ever heard of that includes both a song harshly critical of Abraham Lincoln, and a song praising Phil Ochs’ relentless, even self-destructive integrity in the face of rampant commercialism.  The Phil Ochs video is below:

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YouTube Video

Phil Ochs (partial lyrics; emphasis supplied)

Here comes Phil Ochs shovel on his shoulder
Trailing a hoe along the Ho Chi Minh trail
But the trail is on Bleeker Street
And Phil's on his uppers
It's the mid-nineteen seventies and its not looking too good
For a man with a mission and a man with a passion
When you run out of fashion
And it don't come crawling back

Here comes Phil Ochs, he's got a chip on his shoulder
They can't cut his jacket to cover it up
When one war is over but ten are beginning
And the movement's gone missing because they all just moved away
Oh they moved into property, they moved off into futures
They moved into ads, and that's as sad as it can get

(Skaith/Jones)

The band’s website is here. As you can see, they continue to actively play together.

Lastly, I have a favor to ask if anyone is able. Because I post pseudonymously I can’t really send a link to this Diary to the Latin Quarter FB page through my Facebook account. But maybe one of you who reads this can.  The link is below:

www.facebook.com/…

Feel free to comment on any other progressive bands that you feel have been lost to the sands of time.

Thanks everybody!