As novelty records go, this is a pretty good one. Definitely up there with the works of "Weird Al" Yankovic.
You take Prince Buster's touring band, add Alton Ellis's half-brother on vocals, market them to the skinhead youth who were buying up every JA import they could find, and you get Symarip, aka the Pyramids, aka the Bees, aka Seven Letters. You ask them to write topical songs about said skinhead youth, throw in a slightly-altered Lee Hazelwood classic, and somehow you end up with a classic one-off. Is this a purely British phenomena, the knock-off record? I see some parallels between this record and the "faux punk" records of Alberto Y Los Trios Paranoias or F.U.2. They're all proficient and memorable and existed (initally) to fill a void in the marketplace.
In retrospect, it's the Philligree production that really seals the deal for me. Graeme Goodall ran Doctor Bird, Sioux, and Pyramid Records, as well as helped found Island Records. Along with Phil Chen, Goodall gets a bass-heavy, skankable sound that just jumps out of the speakers. I listened to this all the time in 1995 & 1996. It was "the heavy, heavy monster sound", in the parlance of the time.
A double disc set, including the "Monkey Business" compilation, came out in the UK in 1988 and was the first CD release of either record. There's a really nice 2xCD Symarip discography that contains every cut they recorded during their initial tenure; you can probably cop one for less than $15.
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