BOSSANOVA PRESENTS

UB40

RARE DANCE HALL PERFORMANCE || CELEBRATING 45 YEARS

Get up close and personal at this limited ticket engagement. UB40 just does not appear in often venues this size, so don't miss this show!

SPECIAL GUESTS

SUNDAY JULY 16TH, 2023

DOORS AT 630PM

21+ ONLY

UB40

With worldwide record sales of 70 million-plus and a staggering 50 UK singles chart hits – including their stellar double A-sided entrée ‘Food For Thought/King’, it’s virtually self-evident to say that UB40 are much loved. Perhaps more pertinently for the group, they are synonymous with British reggae and pop and have done more than any other act to popularise that particular sound. Having been around since 1978 to the present day, with a few key changes in personnel the boys from Birmingham captured the zeitgeist when they named themselves after the signing-on document for unemployment benefit, although it’s safe to say they’re in a position where they don’t count their royalties – they weigh them!

The story of UB40, and how this group of young friends from Birmingham transcended their working-class origins to become the world’s most successful reggae band is not the stuff of fairytales as might be imagined. The group’s led a charmed life in many respects it’s true, but it’s been a long haul since the days they’d meet up in the bars and clubs around Moseley, and some of them had to scrape by on less than £8 a week unemployment benefit. The choice was simple if you’d left school early. You could either work in one of the local factories, like Robin Campbell did, or scuffle along aimlessly whilst waiting for something else to happen.

By the summer of 1978, something else did happen, and the nucleus of UB40 began rehearsing in a local basement. Robin’s younger brother Ali, Earl Falconer, Brian Travers and James Brown all knew each other from Moseley School of Art, whilst Norman Hassan had been a friend of Ali’s since school. Initially, they thought of themselves as a “jazz-dub-reggae” band, but by the time Robin was persuaded to join and they’d recruited Michael Virtue and Astro – who’d learnt his craft with Birmingham sound-system Duke Alloy – the group had already aligned themselves to left-wing political ideals and forged their own identity, separate from the many punk and Two Tone outfits around at that time. The group had nailed their colours to the mast by naming themselves after an unemployment benefit form. Their political convictions hadn’t been gleaned secondhand either, but cemented in place whilst attending marches protesting against the National Front, or rallies organised by Rock Against Racism.