By admin 
In 1983, JoBoxers were riding a wave brought on by a few successful singles from their debut album, Like Gangbusters, before it all came crashing down. What should have been a preliminary step toward greater achievements became that tired cliché in the music business, the one about internal strife within the record label that almost always sounds the death knell for any hard-working band.
The British band had good reasons to pin hopes on a follow-up. Their debut signaled a turn on the new wave pop front; a judicious mix of soul, blues, rock, and pop, the band managed to deliver their package with humor, punch, and a whole lot of swagger. Charting singles like “Boxerbeat” heralded not just a distinct sound (a dockyard-stomping beat and Motown harmonies) but also a particular look. Dressed like Depression-era doffer boys ready for a fight, JoBoxers caught the eye of the public who took “Boxerbeat” to the number three spot on the UK Singles chart in 1983, just behind David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” and Duran Duran’s “Is There Something I Should Know?”
Maintaining the drive and stamina when hot iron is struck, the five members (American vocalist Dig Wayne, bassist Chris Bostock, drummer Sean McLusky, guitarist Rob Marche, and keyboardist Dave “DC” Collard) were already at work, writing material for what should have been their second and third albums. “We took a blow in 1984 and ’85,” says Bostock of the subsequent issues that would plague the band a year after the release of their debut. “It was all down to bad business.”
“After the success of the first album, Like Gangbusters, our A&R person, Jack Steven, who was the Head of A&R at the label, left to work for another major label. Jack was our champion, our support at the label, and his departure left no one rooting for us. This is common; A&R execs and scouts want to sign their own acts. Then, a rift formed between the label and our management at the time. [It was] over a contractual issue, meaning nothing was released for 18 months.”
The release that the band was working on came to be titled Skin & Bone, now included (along with their debut, a partially recorded third album, and live material) in a CD box set, JoBoxers: Just Got Lucky – The Complete Works 1983-1986, released by Cherry Red Records. Shelved by RCA Records for decades before Bostock rescued it from the vaults, their sophomore effort built upon the swaying soul and new wave rock that made up their debut.
A deeper refinement of the soul they explored on Like Gangbusters, Skin & Bone finds JoBoxers in fine form. An even tighter focus on the rhythm section secures their efforts for more dancefloor-oriented grooves. Still trading on the influences of 1940s jazz swing that made numbers like “Just Got Lucky” hits stateside during the band’s heydays in the ‘80s, the album retains much of what gave JoBoxers their charms.
“The early songs were very spontaneous,” says frontman Wayne. “Lyrically, I was having fun, enjoying my love of poetry, and exploring all the possibilities that being in a hit pop group can present. Girls, parties, being irresponsible…Later, I think the music became more complex, which was a good move. I became more introspective in my writing. Less defensive, maybe.”
“I chose to use some analogue guitar effects on many later recordings, so that we could hopefully move away from our early sound,” guitarist Marche explains of the band’s progression. “I believe that we would have remained relevant through Britpop and beyond, with the possible only blip being surviving the late eighties/early nineties techno horror show, when bands like Madness and many others nearly packed it in – until things changed for the better after 1993.”
JoBoxers attempted to push their sophomore effort in 1985. Intended as the first single for Skin & Bone, “Is This Really the First Time” re-introduced the band (with a new image that dispatched with their doffer look for more Chapin-esque duds) with a sound that deep-dived into splashier Northern Soul. Despite the solid production and musicianship, it didn’t hit.
“I’ll be perfectly honest with you,” Wayne says. “The look we moved into with ‘Is This Really the First Time’ was misguided. We knew we had to change it up, but it felt phony to me. We all committed to it, but it didn’t work. I look like a goddamn Big Top Circus Ringmaster in that video. I should be cracking whips at lions and tigers. A bloody wildcat tamer…Innit?” He laughs. “We took the advice from my girlfriend at the time, a designer – a brilliant talent, nevertheless. You can’t always hit the bullseye!”
JoBoxers’ Pop, Refined
With Cherry Red’s reissue of these lost songs, it is a perfect document of a band stretching its talents into quarters that challenge each member’s songwriting abilities. The results are undeniably satisfying, the band’s pop sensibilities refined to an even sharper point. Catchy and impossibly glossed numbers like “I Confess”, “Don’t Drop My Name”, and “One in a Million” hint at the wider Stateside popularity that their Top 30 hit, “Just Got Lucky”, from their debut merely promised. Bright brass arrangements and sing-along choruses nakedly express their pop proclivities, and the band works in even stronger tandem to create a live-band style of club music.
“Some songs were just fun, like ‘Don’t Add Up’ and ‘My Best Friend’”, Collard says. “Catchy tunes. ‘Cry Uncle’ and ‘Talking to Joe’ have that fun element, but they were technically a bit more demanding and influenced by jazz and blues. The songs I wrote back then were quite diverse – I was definitely growing as a songwriter – but somehow still felt like a natural progression and development of our sound. So much unrealized potential…”
Included in the box set is also what was to be JoBoxers’ third album, Missing Link. The would-be album is even more adventurous than its predecessors, taking in influences that reach over the British pond to include the etchings of American funk-inflected pop. The title track, “Missing Link”, is a revelation of imaginative songwriting, with Bostock providing a vigorous, thrumming bassline and McLusky finessing a smart and strutting drumbeat. It sounds ten years ahead of its time (the song was recorded around 1984) and proves that the band had much more fuel in the tank long before the spark plugs were pulled.
As McLusky notes, JoBoxers were familiar with the vibrating energies emitting from the clubs around the UK at the time, and the inspiration from those energies fed into their songwriting for their follow-up albums. “I suppose our generation was all listening to the same stuff when we went out to the more discerning nightclubs,” he says.
“My stomping ground of Mud Club, Dirt Box, Club Left, Bat Cave, and Language Lab in London was playing a menu of funk, electro-funk, electro-disco, Northern Soul, jazz, and hip-hop. I think there was a pocket of hipsters in most towns at that point, like at Berlin in Manchester, and that club in Basildon that Depeche Mode used to go to.”
“We were an analog band as much as possible,” Wayne adds. “I believe it was Dave playing around with a synth and came up with that sort of helicopter blade sound [in the song]. That caught my ear and became ‘Missing Link’.”
“It was so different than anything we had done. Chris’ dum-de-dum-de-dum-de-dum repeated bass line started to pull it together. Rob’s tremolo effect guitar brought a mysterious aspect to it. Sean just hunkered down with a rudimentary bass and snare, boom-tap-boom-tap, to ground it and we were off.”
“I can’t tell you what it’s about, but I just liked the sound of the words ‘Big Bandstand’, so that launched me into something abstract. Ultimately, it’s a love song. I always meant to write another verse, but I never got around to it. Guess it’s too late. I love the sexy originality of that tune. It’s like nothing else I’ve ever heard. Still ahead of its time.”
The disc of live material in the box set also reveals a crack band at the height of their powers. Recorded at a show at the Phoenix Theatre in 1983, JoBoxers perform with equal amounts of discipline and abandon, driving all their energies onstage to the breaking point. Already in a transitional phase at that point, the band was working toward material that would push beyond the roguish, good-humored qualities that first got them attention.
Sadly, it was all cut short. However, thanks to Bostock’s undying belief in the band (long after he and the other band members had moved on to various other projects) and his painstaking search for the original masters of the lost albums (including a look through singer Sade’s attic), those albums now see the light of day.
“Once the rift with the record company was resolved, we recorded the albums,” Bostock says. “But there was bad blood, and although we hadn’t stopped writing and reflecting on our experiences of the time, we had been off the scene for too long. [Those albums] were pulled from release by the record company at the very last moment, and all the music we had lived and breathed for over a year was gone.”
“Now the world can hear all the lost tracks from those two albums. They continue our story and have never been heard before, and I hope they will bring joy and inspiration to writers, players, and music lovers for many years to come.”