Signing Off is the debut album by British reggae band UB40, released in the UK on 29 August 1980 by Dudley-based independent label Graduate Records. It was an immediate success in their home country, reaching number 2 on the UK albums chart, and made UB40 one of the many popular reggae bands in Britain, several years before the band found international fame. The politically-concerned lyrics struck a chord in a country with widespread public divisions over high unemployment, the policies of the recently elected Conservative party under Margaret Thatcher, and the rise of the National Front party, while the record’s dub-influenced rhythms reflected the late 1970s influence in British pop music of West Indian music introduced by immigrants from the Caribbean after the Second World War, particularly reggae and ska – this was typified by the 2 Tone movement, at that point at the height of its success and led by fellow West Midlands act The Specials, with whom UB40 drew comparisons due to their multiracial band line-up and socialist views.

At school, Julian was an odd kid I knew at school in the early 80’s who had older brothers and even then he’d wax lyrical about how great this record was.

Julian and I were among 4 boys who were the first males to take “Home Economics” over woodwork at school. To this day I am a great cook but cannot do DIY to save my life. Julian was a precociously political and this would have been around the time of Saturday Night Live and The Young Ones. It went without saying we all hated Margaret Thatcher.

This is such a great sounding record though and recorded on an 8 track in a bedsit at that way back in 1980.

They kind of lost this particular edge rapidly but they helped a lot of Jamaican artists get paid properly for the first time with their covers.

Julian wound up in Australia I think.