UB40 evoked feelings of love,joy, jealousy

Feb 27, 2008

AS lent prescribes, I fasted and saved money for the poor. I did not have to look far. The Lord sent me eight old men from the UK looking for a retirement package. Their name was very funny; UB40, sounds like a Ministry of Justice number plate, doesn’t it?

AS lent prescribes, I fasted and saved money for the poor. I did not have to look far. The Lord sent me eight old men from the UK looking for a retirement package. Their name was very funny; UB40, sounds like a Ministry of Justice number plate, doesn’t it?

That is how I found myself in a sea of human flesh, pushing and shoving to enter a needle’s eye, something I must blast MTN for. How could you expose the doctor, and all other honourable revellers, to such torturous means of entering to enjoy what they paid for? Very poor organisation! It is something we last did in the ‘80s whenever SC Villa played Express at Nakivubo Stadium because customer service was a stranger in these areas.

Think of all those bones we trampled, my wife and I (who cannot be described as small people), as we made our entrance. If I were them, I would sue UB40 before they spent the millions they made that night.

On a positive note, however, the UB40 wazee still had a lot of salt in them, their music was superb and ... no need; the show has been described in many fora — you can get the details.

For every man at the show, there were three females! It is sad, my dear countrymen; where were all the men? Don’t they hang out any more or are we about to be called upon to take another two wives each? I am getting scared!

Apart from the gender census, it was baffling to see how so many people could sacrifice their cuddling hours to cause a stampede in the terribly narrow Lugogo doors to watch unromantic old men singing romantic songs. Maybe the era of live bands without queen dancers and kimansulo is finally here.

Or was it about making history: “I saw them with my very eyes!” As many, especially those who were not there, are narrating.

But for many of us, it was about memories. As the songs perfumed our atmosphere, I caught myself several times becoming jealous because my wife was rather quiet and thoughtful. She looked like she was calling to mind somebody she would rather I didn’t know. Proof? I was doing the same.

For us who were born those days when slim was a praise word for popular slender girls, UB40 used to accompany us through our plunder of the gold in naked Karamoja and diamonds in virgin DR Congo. My old buddy, Paddy, would steal a radio cassette from his uncle’s bedroom for us to host secondary school girls with Red Red Wine.

That time, there were only seven radio cassettes in the whole district (they were a status symbol) and about five of them were only played when hired at parties or pinched by Paddy and company. It was easy. I would keep the uncle’s wife busy with KB as Paddy climbed over the bedroom wall, (there was no ceiling) where the cassette player was.

He would leave another radio in the place of the cassette player, and replace the covering cloth. Both the uncle and wife never discovered that the covered radio was kiwani before we would return their cassette. We had all agreed that Red Red Wine was a romantic song and, because of that, so many girls got ‘squeezed’! We only sang those three words and the stay close to me in their ears even if we had to stand on our toes like Bush whispering into Kagame’s ears — a tall order.

Later, when I discovered Red Wine was just liquor, something in me still insisted the song was about some red wine we all wanted to stay close to us — if you know what I mean.

My thoughts would be interrupted by yet another song: Cherio Cherio Baby. My wife would scream and I would feel this urge to enter her head and see for myself which bloke squeezed her in some dark corner! I decided to let her wander on as I dug deeper into my own layers of history.

The strategy worked wonders. For she shot down the proposal to top up the fun elsewhere at Obligatto and just wanted us to retire and let the memories open floodgates.

By morning, I had forgotten how Arsenal had lost the previous day. I did not care how many goals Man U had scored. All I wanted to know was; when is UB40 returning to town?

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