Keep On Running

Freddie McGregor

Not much has come out of Penthouse so far this year. But anything by Freddie McGregor on this label is always worth waiting for, the trademark glossy, classy Penthouse production approach being perfectly suited to the glossy, classy vocals of the great Freddie McGregor.

Be warned. Everything about this record is infernally catchy. Once you hear it, it will get into your head and you won't be able to get it out. If there were any justice in the world, or if reggae music were properly promoted, this record would be a sure fire No. 1 in the pop charts. It boasts an infernally catchy female chorus that swells and rolls behind the vocal with all the weight of a full size gospel choir. A jaunty synthesised keyboard pipes cheerfully away.

An insistent Penthouse rhythm, a suave lovers lyric ...in other words exactly the kind of record at which Freddie McGregor has always excelled and of which the best known and best loved example to date is Push Comes To Shove from back in 1986. But while Freddie McGregor makes music with a light touch, he doesn't make lightweight music, as any selector who draws Push Comes To Shove in a dance will tell you. There's more than enough steel in his voice and raw power in the bass line to give this record a rootsy feel that is distinctively Jamaican. It cire out for popular success, but it's not pop.

In traditional Jamaican style the flip of this record is marked "version". However, as has become increasingly the practice in reggae over the last decade, it is a remix of the vocal rather than a full drum and bass dub workout. However this works very well, as Penthouse remixes usually do, with the vocal dropping out gently from time to time to reveal a little discreet reverb and that jaunty Penthouse rhythm pounding away, even more infernally catchy than it was before.

Another cut to this rhythm, No More Lonely Days by ARP, is also available.