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Incidentally, I was recently trying to remind someone how Hurt Hurts starts via some na na na's only to be met with 'Isn't that Never Bite The Hand That Feeds??'. Again, could suddenly see where they were coming from too.
It is a bit of an impossible task for white men to do reggae and Geldof must have known to some extent that the Rats would be criticised for coming up with some 'reggae lite' sound. There seemed to be a bit of a vogue in the early eighties to produce reggae style songs with some of the punk bands eg Clash and yes Watching The Detectives follows that pattern too.
Geldof was a fan of Costello and maybe used Watching The Detectives as a loose template for Banana Republic, not the melody but the reggae beat which pervades Costello's song. Banana Republic works for me but I'm glad the Rats only did one song in this style. We can call it an homage to reggae, and the sound suggests itself to songs about islands anyway, whether near or far away!
While I disagree with the Smash Hits reviewer who said the song sounded like the soundtrack to some Caribbean ginger ale ad, or something similar, that review did make me smile. The fact that Banana Republic was a big hit shows Geldof's gamble worked, and in many ways can be seen as brave. I would imagine some might have advised Geldof to play it safe and not go with such a radical departure- even Geldof himself must have thought the same. It could have been a failure, glorious or otherwise.
