Kid Creole and the Cocoanuts - Fresh Fruit in Foreign Places
#276
By Brian Kushnir
Kid Creole and The Coconuts
Fresh Fruit in Foreign Places
Genre: Latin Nuyorican Funk Dance Party Cabaret
Allen’s Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Brian’s Rating: 4 out of 5
Highlights:
Going Places
Animal Crackers
I Stand Accused
Musica Americana
I Am
Table Manners
This Kid Creole is a bolt from the blue and totally my jam for these fuck-it-all-let’s-drink-rum-and-have-a-dance-party times.
It’s a sex-packet of extreme good-times grooves made by the supremely talented amped-up offspring of Ricky and Lucy after they discovered Calloway, Zoot Suits, Charo, Nuyorica and Fab Five Freddy.
Drop the needle on Fresh Fruit at your next swanky cocktail party and catch even your most sophisticated friends nodding, toe tapping, rump shaking, teasing up their hair and stroking their goatees approvingly to the lush musical rhythms of this fully orchestrated latin big band, as they take you for a full circle trip around their musical world.
And awaaaaay we go with “Going Places” setting the tone behind a slinky tiki bar groove where someone is mixing umbrella drinks in the corner, you may be hoping to get out of NY, but really you're just going deep into the mad mad mind of August Darnell, the toast master who embodies the Kid Creole persona, along with his cohorts Coati Mundi (Andy Hernandez) and Adriana Kaegi.
“In The Jungle” brings a barrel of cuica monkey drums and has you swingin’ on a vine. “Animal Crackers” is ska with weema-woppas and a list of food you can’t bring through customs.
In the middle there’s a solid Lennonesque slow jam “I Stand Accused,” with sweeping strings and lost-love emotions, but besides that it’s funky funny through and through with tongue planted firmly in cheek (and other NSFW places). Case in point this opening verse from “Latin Music:”
“I'm so confused
This latin music's got me
So, so bemused
The accents worse than Cockney
I'm not amused, it's killing me”
Going down from there we have “Table Manners:”
“If the pretty girl has it figured right
And the handsome guy has an appetite
She provide the plate, she provide the tail
When she give the wine, she will take the cake”
Kid Creole and the Coconuts were ahead of their time and as a multi-ethnic, multi-gender band shifting from Spanglish, to Italian and even a sprech of German they foreshadowed today’s polycultural mainstream. Prince hung out at their shows and later recorded and collaborated with them. They influenced Fishbone. Morris Day and The Time, Tom Tom Club, Digital Underground, No Doubt, Pink Martini, and many many more.
It would have been the bomb to see them live in 1981 - a huge amount of grooving musicians and singers on stage, packed with all kinds of percussion including a full on marimba y’all front and center, choreographed moves, costumes and such sui generis style. Lucky for us who missed it, there's a video of the fantastic live ‘musical’ version of this album that Kid Creole and The Coconuts staged in 1981 NYC so make yourself a dirty mojito, put on your dancing shoes and get down with your grande persona.
Fresh Fruit in Foreign Places Live at the Ritz NYC https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLetxnQcJAJg9yF85n9aEqwB5QUUD
