The “appalling” album that Britt Daniel gave to Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox
Spoon leader Britt Daniel has pulled from across multiple different genres to craft the signature sound of his indie rock act. Whether it’s the art rock stylings of BODEGA or the thunderous rhythms of Bo Diddley, Daniel’s favourite artists help inform his style, even if Spoon doesn’t quite sound like any of them.
But one of Daniel’s favourite albums scandalised a fellow indie rock lifer. That would be Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox, who received Prince Buster’s 1968 rocksteady classic Wreck a Pum Pum as a gift from Daniel for the former’s birthday. For someone like Cox, the album landed somewhere between a gift and a practical joke, but Daniel was fully on board with the LP.
“I found out about this record in 2009, I think, maybe 2010,” Britt told Far Out in our ‘Doctor’s Orders’ feature. “And I’d never heard rocksteady music before it filled in a lot of blanks for me.”
He added: “But I guess to carry on with your theme, this record does just set me in a good mood. Every single song is a good time. I think every one of them, or maybe not every one of them, but pretty near every one of them is about sex.”
With a one-two punch of ‘Wreck a Pum Pum’ and ‘Wreck a Buddy’, the same lascivious song written from a man’s and a woman’s perspective, respectively, Wreck a Pum Pum kicks off with lines like “And if she’s ugly I don’t mind / I’m feeling fit and fine to wind / so I want to grind” and only gets worse from there. If you’re not ready for some of the horniest songs ever made, Wreck a Pum Pum can certainly come as a bit of a surprise.
Buster was on the cutting edge of rocksteady, but the evolution of Jamaican music was happening at a rapid pace. By 1973, just half a decade after the release of Wreck a Pum Pum, Buster had largely retired from music. The emerging styles of reggae, along with the increased presence of the Rastafari movement, pushed Buster out of the public favour until the 2-Tone ska movement of England reintroduced the singer to a new generation.
Perhaps Cox didn’t quite know what he was getting into when Daniel gifted him the LP, but the results weren’t pretty. “I gave this record to Bradford Cox for his birthday, and he was appalled,” Daniel remembered. “I think he said, ‘How can this Prince Buster take the melody from something like ‘Little Drummer Boy’ and turn it into this perversion?’ [Laughs]. Bradford’s sensitive though.”
Check out ‘Wreck a Pum Pum’ down below.
