Ub40 Tickets

Details of Ub40 and the Ticket Luck value

Ub40
Pop-reggae band, UB40 -- named after a British unemployment benefit form -- was formed in 1978, with its multiethnic lineup reflected the working-class community. The band merged its street credibility with political topics engaging the dissatisfied youth and got an encouragement from fans of the waning 2-Tone ska-revival movement.

Brothers Robin (lead guitar) and Ali Campbell (guitar, lead vocals) were the key-members, apart from bassist Earl Falconer, keyboardist Mickey Virtue, saxophonist Brian Travers, drummer Jim Brown, percussionist Norman Hassan, and toaster Terence Astro Wilson.

The band purchased its first instruments with compensation money Ali Campbell received after a bar fight, even though few members knew how to play them.

UB40 caught their first break when they caught the attention of Chrissie Hynde who provided them with a chance as a support act to her band, The Pretenders. UB40's first single, King/Food for Thought was released on Graduate Records, a local independent label run by David Virr. It reached No. 4 on the UK Singles Chart in 1980 and was the first record to reach the UK top ten without the backing of a major record label. This marked the beginning of a long streak of chart appearances. Signing Off and Present Arms were big sellers in Britain, if not America, and addressed the political issues of the day in songs like One in Ten, a Top Ten hit blasting Margaret Thatcher for the country's unemployment rate. Labour of Love released in 1983, gave the group its first chart album in America and first no#1 U.K. hit with Neil Diamond's Red Red Wine. The group's biggest hit was a Top 30 cover of Sonny and Cher's I Got You Babe featuring the Pretenders' Chrissie Hynde.

In 1988, the group performed Red Red Wine at a Nelson Mandela tribute concert, and a Phoenix radio station played the single a second go-round, resulting in an increase in listeners and fans and Red Red Wine re-entered the charts and went all the way to the top. UB40 launched another covers album, Labour of Love II, which produced Top Ten singles with versions of the Temptations' The Way You Do the Things You Do and Al Green's Here I Am (Come and Take Me). The group scored a huge hit in America with Elvis Presley's Can't Help Falling In Love, which was initially featured in the Sharon Stone film Sliver and remained for seven weeks at no#1.By this time, UB40 had largely discarded its traditional left-wing politics and was concentrating more on perfecting its reggae oldies covers than its original material; however, the gimmick has thus far resulted in huge sales figures in both the U.S. and U.K., with Promises and Lies reaching number six and number one, respectively.

In the spring of 1998, UB40 released Presents the Dancehall Album in the UK. A third Labour of Love collection followed a year later. In fall 2002, UB40 bounced back with yet another collection. The Fathers of Reggae, which appeared on Virgin in November, highlighted the band's roots in reggae in a selection of classics.

In 2003, the band scored a major hit in the U.K. when their version of the spirtual Swing Low with the multi-cultural choir United Colours of Sound became the official anthem for the 2003 English Rugby Team. The song was featured on the 2003 album Homegrown. As their 2005 album Who You Fighting For? was being released an announcment was made that the band would be working with Birmingham's Repertory Theatre to stage a new musical in Spring of 2006.