I Need Me a Naffi Sandwich --- Yum!

From the murky, clandestine shadows of Tamworth Street, Earlestown, came a new sound. It rose in the stillness of the dark air & drifted ghost-like towards Market Street. Bemused passers-by breathed it in, the music revitalising their bodies like a breath of fresh air. Stray dogs pricked up their ears & stealthy cats paused to take in the magical sound.

Paul Catchpole (aka Captain Catchpole, aka Bomber McBain) - electronics, drums, & vocalist, Gerry Kenny (aka Freddie Viaduct, aka Minister of Noise) - guitarist & bassist, & Brenda Kenny (aka Polly Rithim, aka Brenda & The Beachballs aka Brenda Ray) - multi-percussionist & vocalist were Naffi or Naffi Sandwich or Naafi Sandwich, depending on which mealtime you caught them, I guess.

Naffi Sandwich derived their name from the Navy, Army, & Air Force Institutes (NAAFI), an organization that provided goods to the British armed forces. A 'Naafi Sandwich' is a sandwich with no filling, just two slices of bread with margarine.

The work the threesome created together reflected the humor suggested by this branding. They tended to indulge in offbeat humour while at the same time striving for homespun expansiveness.

The group came from Earlestown, a small town on the border between Merseyside & Greater Manchester. A sleepy, docile, post-industrial typical English town. They came about through humble beginings... a studio behind an old barber shop. Yet Naffi Sandwich went on to receive coveted plaudits from John Peel, supported Julian Cope on a three night run in Liverpool. They drew rare praise from Nico after she witnessed them play in Manchester during her early 80s tenure in the city.

The Naffi Sandwich crew, particularly core vocalist Brenda Ray, propagated an exuberant DIY pop primitivism that smirked & made strange faces, contorting & disorientating its sound into an ecstatic dazzle of Dub abstraction. What distinguished both Naffi & solo Brenda Ray was an ability to tap into a Dub future as yet unrealised, one that was otherworldly but daft; an interplanetary music brimming with nonsense & absurdity.

The first Naffi Sandwich was Rum 1. (rum one or rummun is a Norfolk [north England] expression meaning strange, odd, different, peculiar. "Tha's a rummun ent it"). It's a fitting title for sounds so skewed. A self-published cassette which bore the doctored image of an armed forces drill sergeant on the cusp of an officiously enacted goose step, this is Naffi Sandwich at their most esoteric, blurring grainy DIY dub & recondite novelty exotica.

On Rum 1, Naffi Sandwich are: Captain Catchpole - drums, fx with melos echo unit, & contact mike; Freddie Viaduct - guitar, bass, & cornett; Polly Rithm - alto saxophone, cabasa, cowbell, guiro,melodica, triangle, vibraslap, bell tree, flageolet, & claves. 

 

Naffi Sandwich - Rum 1 cassette, Naffi Productions rum 1, 1979.
all decryption codes in comments

Side A -
Muvva Dubber
Lee Street Bounce
Uranium Geranium

Side B -
Skank Rank
Hoochie Pooch
& not listed on tape, but included here -
Yum Yum 

 

 

 

The band's first single followed the same year on Manchester's Absurd Records, a place where Naffi's enshrouded Dub mischief would be right at home. After all this was the label that had in the same year put out Gerry & The Holograms - The Emperors New Music.

Naafi Sandwich - Slice 1 / Slice 2 7", Absurd Records ABSURD 8, 1979.

Side A -
Slice 1

Side B -
Slice 2

 

 

 

Fast forward a few years.

Yum Yum Yum Yum Ya was released on the Liverpool ARK label in 1982. Early on in this debut LP  the band present the Naffi misfit manifesto "Krazee Music" suffused with prolonged waves of reverb, delivered with an exaggerated, self-parodic style that seemed to sum up what Naffi had been about all along:
      "Well if you need it baby this is what you gotta do/You gotta let the world know that you're krazee too/Krazee/You got me krazee too/Have a krazee time, playing krazee music for you…"

By the end of the album, they come full circle & end with "Krazee Version", a nod to both their ethos & their love of Dub. 

 

Naffi - Yum Yum Yum Yum Ya, ARK DOVE 1, 1982.

Side 1 -
The Scream
Krazee Music
Space Alligator
More like Beans
Every Day Just Another Dream
Slow Train to Viaductsville
Yummy Yummy Ya
Moroccan Roll

Side 2 -
Ain't No Doubt about It
Take Me in Your Car
Blues for Toxteth
Don't Forget
Moonbeams
I Don't Understand
Krazee Version

 

 

 

Jump to a new Century. 

 

Brenda Ray gone solo. Having held dear to her love of Dub & reggae, Brenda had hooked up with Roy Cousins. Roy had been lead singer of The Royals, who had recorded for Duke Reid, Coxsone Dodd, & Joe Gibbs in their heyday. Roy had produced Prince Far I's final recording (see Spear of the Nation post here.

Cousins later funded his own labels, Tamoki Wambesi & Uhuru. Cousins emigrated to Liverpool in the aftermath of Prince Far I's murder. He set up a record shop in Wavertree by the name of Cousins Cove. Roy was a prominent presence within the Liverpool scene of the time. Roy & Ray inevitably crossed paths. Brenda helped Cousins out with reissues from the Tamoki Wambesi back catalogue. This led directly to Walatta. The two took existing master tapes from the label's vaults, riddims that featured the likes of Scientist (a reimagined "Rejoice for the New Born" in the form of "Dreamin"), Prince Jammy (a reimagined "Negus Dub" in the form of "Another Dream") , or Prince Far-I ("Sweet Sweet Wine" is a touching tribute to Prince Far I, who's gravel-rich 'Voice of Thunder' is integrated into a surprisingly cohesive duet with Ray).

They then reimagined the riddims in typical Naffi style. The results is a curious marriage of tough repurposed Dub & avant-pop that Forced Exposure called "slices of psycho-Dub/doo-wop/jazz-fusion/exotica music". 

 

I hope you are ready from some truly special Lover's Rock.

 

 

Brenda Ray - Walatta, Tamoki-Wambesi-Dove TWCD1036, 2006.

Star Light
D.i.z.z.e.e.
Sweet Romance
Sweet Sweet Wine (featuring Prince Far I)
Dreamin'
Lend a Helping Hand
Hearts Entwine
Swirlin' Hearts
Another Dream
Perfect Choice
Please Be Mine Tonight
Everybody's Talking
Love's to Share
Keep on Rollin'
Rollin' Down
Sweet Sweet Wine
Vision-Dreamin'

Enjoy,
NØ