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Published on 8/5/08
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Compass Point was set up by Island Records’ Chris Blackwell in 1977, and though the studio was in the sunny Bahamas, it wasn’t long before it helped to define the sound of NYC nightlife. Many of the tracks included on Funky Nassau—“My Jamaican Guy,” “Padlock”—will be familiar. Others, like Set the Tone’s “Dance Sucker,” have largely been lost to the clubland ether. But the allure of all these tracks, most produced by Jamaican studio gurus Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare, was such that they were as likely to be played at the new-wavey Danceteria as they were at the Paradise Garage. That’s a tribute to the low slung, wilted-by-the-heat funk that oozes from these songs, whether it’s the reggaefied chanson of Lizzy Mercier Descloux’s “Sun Is Shining” or the polyrhythmic disco of Talking Heads’ “Born Under Punches.”
It’s exquisite stuff, but Funky Nassau’s appeal is jacked up by the LP’s edifying (and, at 7,000 words, detailed) liner notes from music scribe David Katz. One passage, for instance, details how “Adventures in Success,” a minor 1982 hit from Will Power (a.k.a. photographer Lynn Goldsmith), resulted from a booze-fueled Compass Point evening with Goldsmith, Blackwell, Marianne Faithfull, Joe Cocker and Robert Palmer, and was later fleshed out in a recording session with Sting. Who knew?
—Bruce Tantum
