SKANK YOUR ENTHUSIASM (13)
By:
November 15, 2025
One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, analyzing and celebrating our favorite… ska records! PLAYLIST HERE. Series edited by Josh Glenn.
In the 1972 Jamaican picaresque The Harder They Come, our hero Ivan arranges a photo shoot for himself, posing in his flashiest threads while waving a six-shooter in each hand. Played by real-life ska and reggae artist Jimmy Cliff, Ivan is a poor Jamaican country kid fighting to make it in Kingston. He quickly earns a name for himself as a budding radio star and even greater notoriety as a cop killer. Ivan hopes some good publicity shots will escalate his fame as a kind of Blaxploitation-era Rude Boy. The music blasting as Ivan postures for the camera is “007 (Shanty Town),” by OG Rude Boy Desmond Dekker.
That 1967 cut is a savvy pick choice at that point in the narrative. Just as Ivan is working towards his big break, it was Dekker’s “007” that broke ska big outside of Jamaica and in the United Kingdom, where it became a No. 14 hit (just as The Harder They Come soundtrack itself would help propel reggae onto the worldwide stage a few years later). A key to Dekker’s British success with “007,” and with his even more successful and memorable 1969 single “Israelites,” was its novelty: Dekker’s melodic hooks used Jamaican patois — he describes the rebelling Rude Boys as “dem a shoot, dem a loot, dem a wail,” — and his ska rhythms were somehow fidgety and tranquilizing at once. Years before the rise of UK ska revivalists like The Specials and the Selecter, Dekker’s hit had connected the music to black working-class rebellion, to poor black kids fighting the law.
Nearly six decades later, what strikes me more immediately about Dekkers’ hit is how its UK popularity was eased by the Rude Boy identification with English and American pop culture. Out of the gate, the record’s guitar riff is a skanked-up lift of the one American rock and rollers the Dovells had used their signature hit, “Bristol Stomp.” And when Dekker enters his “Shanty Town” rhymes obvious James Bond reference with one to the Rat Pack: “Oh, oh seven / at ocean 11.” Jimmy Cliff as Ivan striking poses to “007” calls to mind Decker’s “Israelites,” too, with its namechecking Bonnie and Clyde, who had been seen posing with their weaponry a couple of years earlier in Arthur Penn’s film about the outlaw duo.
All of Dekker’s Rude Boy heroes — not in possession of a license to kill, but still willing to break the law — read as class-conscious and aspirational. Identifying with suit-and-skinny-tie rebels while on the poor side of town, Dekker’s anthem is for all the working-class kids who are fighting racism and poverty but who want to look sharp, be admired, and dance while they do it.
SKANK YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn | Lucy Sante on Margarita’s WOMAN COME | Douglas Wolk on Millie’s MAYFAIR | Lynn Peril on Prince Buster’s TEN COMMANDMENTS | Mark Kingwell on The [English] Beat’s TEARS OF A CLOWN | Annie Nocenti on Jimmy Cliff’s MISS JAMAICA | Mariane Cara on The Selecter’s ON MY RADIO | Adam McGovern on The Specials’ GHOST TOWN | Josh Glenn on The Ethiopians’ TRAIN TO SKAVILLE | Susannah Breslin on The [English] Beat’s MIRROR IN THE BATHROOM | Carl Wilson on Prince Buster / Madness’s ONE STEP BEYOND | Carlo Rotella on The Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ THE IMPRESSION THAT I GET | Rani Som on The Bodysnatchers’ EASY LIFE | David Cantwell on Desmond Dekker’s 007 (SHANTY TOWN) | Francesca Royster on Joya Landis’ ANGEL OF THE MORNING | Mimi Lipson on Folkes Brothers’ / Count Ossie’s OH CAROLINA | Alix Lambert on The Specials’ TOO MUCH TOO YOUNG | Marc Weidenbaum on Dandy Livingstone’s RUDY, A MESSAGE TO YOU | Heather Quinlan on Fishbone’s MA & PA | Will Hermes on The [English] Beat’s WHINE & GRINE / STAND DOWN MARGARET | Peter Doyle on The Skatalites’ GUNS OF NAVARONE | James Parker on The [English] Beat’s SAVE IT FOR LATER | Brian Berger on The Upsetters’ RETURN OF DJANGO | Annie Zaleski on The Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ SOME DAY I SUPPOSE | Deborah Wassertzug on The Bodysnatchers’ TOO EXPERIENCED | Dan Reines on The Untouchables’ I SPY FOR THE FBI.
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