Listen: It Ain’t What You Do… / The Fun Boy Three & Bananarama
It Ain't What You Do... / The Fun Boy Three & Bananarama

Maybe this parallel is way off base, but The Fun Boy Three were always what Big Audio Dynamite claimed to be, as I recall it at least. Their whole idea seemed to focus more on marketing themselves as a politically correct, multi cultural amalgamation than actually sounding like one. Unfortunately Don Letts’ worthy musical taste as a dj/radio presenter never spilled into Big Audio Dynamite’s music nearly enough, despite being a member.

Meanwhile, The Fun Boy Three jungled along, actually basing their sound around a consistent tribal rhythm. Even when dragging the overkill fashion conscience vocal church mice, aka Bananarama, into the mix, they still managed to pull it off.

Covering Ella Fitzgerald’s 1939 calypso based hit, ‘It Ain’t What You Do, It’s The Way That You Do It’, proved an educated song choice and an astute career chess play, providing them with their biggest UK chart placing ever, #4 in ’82. It continued the band’s authenticity, first started via their debut single ‘The Lunatics Have Taken Over The Asylum’.