1/16/07: The Controllers: “Do The Uganda” (1977)

Fresh off Forest Whitaker's Golden Globe win for Best Actor, it's looking like The Last King of Scotland has a shot at a few Oscar nominations. The tale of Ugandan ruler Idi Amin is certainly worth seeing. We’ll farm out the review, however, to Kyle Smith’s critique from the New York Post. He’s done a fine job of summing up the film’s right-wing content—starting with the character of a young Scottish doctor who befriends Amin:

Nicholas is a metaphor for blind liberal idealism, the excuses made for Africa’s culture, the demands that we send more aid to its tyrants. He thinks he’s a humanitarian, but his real motive is rage. He has such contempt for all things established and English that he’s driven to their opposites, much as today's leftists hate American Christianity so much that they denounce it more vigorously than Islamofascism.

There’s a scathing and brilliant scene in which Amin faces the press. The liberal reporters want to know more about the masses of dead bodies, which aren’t even being buried but fed to the crocodiles. So Amin starts stroking their pleasure centers. He cites British colonialism, then South African racism. In minutes, the whole room is purring like kittens and batting around playful questions about whether he'd like to date Queen Elizabeth. If Amin hates all the stuff they hate, how bad can he be?

As for the trash element, don’t forget that Idi Amin has also been portrayed onscreen by the likes of Yaphet Kotto and former Bond villain Julius Harris—who replaced Godfrey Cambridge after the comedian died during the filming of 1975’s Victory at Entebbe. The evil Amin actually had the bad taste to goof on Cambridge’s death. At least Harris lived to read Amin’s obituary.

But is this is a posting about The Last King of Scotland? No, we’re throwing in even more content by plugging the song that should’ve played over the film’s closing credits. The Controllers were a great ’70s punk band out of Los Angeles, and they were originally burdened with a reputation for being racists.

Songs like “Killer Queers” also made it hard for them to play San Francisco. The Controllers even had to put up with rumors that the band name was a nod to fascism. In truth, it was a tribute to the agents of Get Smart. (A later spin-off band would be called KAOS.) The L.A. punk scene never got more tolerant, either. As leader Johnny Stingray commented in a recent interview, “Today, we would be subject to all kinds of hate from every misinformed jerk on the planet.”

Anyway, “Do The Uganda” is a stomping song with a message that foreshadowed The Last King of Scotland. The crowd wasn’t so busy pogoing—or whatever the hell they were doing in L.A.—that they couldn’t get scandalized by this immortal verse:

        Get VD
        Know what I mean
        Wanna be black and look like Idi Amin
        Do the Uganda
        Do the Uganda
        Do the Uganda
        And the joke’s on you

Today, of course, “Do The Uganda” is a beloved classic to certain aging punks. Not so much then. Maybe the band should’ve gotten their black female drummer to handle vocals on that one.

Make it your own: The Last King of Scotland is still in theaters, while The Controllers’ finest moment can be found on this fine compilation—and it’s kind of nice that the band is still around.

 

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