I Am Not The Beatles

Aurra are currently funkily liking ‘it’ a whole lot more than a little bit and a little bit more than alot - and, in a coincidence that is both lucky and startling, it turns out this is also the totally precise amount of likiness that Aurra actually like to like.

Indeed, when you consider the vagaries of the initial description given for their preferences of ‘it’, and the resulting various disastrous outcomes which could have thus prevailed (it is possible, for example, that they could have ended up only liking ‘it’ a little bit less than a lot or - heaven forbid - a whole lot less than a little bit) this is really something of a coup and is an excellent result you should be very very proud of.

An excellent result I should be proud of ?

Absolutely.

After all, the ‘it’ they are referring to is you… and your incredible sexual prowess.

Really ? I’ve only ever received written complaints about my performance before, so to hear a compliment via the medium of song is certainly a bit of a morale booster.

Then consider yourself well and truly boosted - as both members of Aurra are mightily thrilled with the outcome of your physical indulgences and, in short, consider you to be a bit of a shagmeister.

Errr… both members of Aurra..?

Yes.

Miss Aurra first tells us precisely how your sweet love has certainly kept her satisfied (which, although a sadly staid description of her orgasm, is an orgasm nonetheless and is thus still definitely worth shouting about) as she puts this satisfaction mostly down to the fact that deep inside… she can feel your vibes…

Ah yes, well, that will be my much vaunted vibrating penis trick. It took me years to perfect the exhausting rapid buttock clenching muscle control needed to pull it off successfully, so I’m glad it’s worked out.

Vibrating penis or not - it is, she claims, exactly like she likes it.

Mr Aurra is also very glad that you were magnanimous enough to give him your love too. In a rare moment of extreme frankness, he says he particularly likes those tantalising moments… when you show it.

Well that’s the joy of sexual expectation for you… particularly if it is already vibrating uncontrollably the moment it leaves my pants.

If it does do such a thing at that moment then it seems you have judged your target audience perfectly, as this is just as he likes it too.

In fact, so successful have you been at satisfying both members of Aurra independently, they now intend to join forces and ménage à trois you to a rather sticky end - as they are expressing an insatiable desire to spend all their love on you… til the end of time.

Which, depending upon how they are using the word ’spend’, sounds like it may well be advisable for you to plan ahead and take some pretty frequent showers - as it could be a rather messy experience.

Which is precisely like I like it.

Oooh, Aah - Do you like Aurra just a little bit?

Yes I do.

Just a little bit.

Ooh, Aah - Do you think it might be possible for you to like them just a little bit more ?

No, definitely not.

They are not the ones I’m searching for.

What’s The Best Little Bit ?

The main keyboard riff - but only because the keyboard sound they have chosen to convey it with sounds exactly like the terrified cries of a small bee being waterboarded in the Apoidean equivalent of Guantanamo Bay.

Tell Me A Whole Lot More Than A Little Bit More

I’ll do my best.

This sexually liberated twosome are the impressively named Starleana Young and doesn’t - my - name - sound - like - I - should - have - been - a - stand - up - comedian, Curt Jones. They had both previously been in a much celebrated oh so funky band I have never heard of, called Slave, and they then left to form Aurra in 1979 - but still used various members of Slave to play on the actual songs.

The full story is long, complex, and more than just a tad tedious. So here are the edited highlights :

1/ Steve Washington, the shadowy figure who propelled Aurra to the giddy heights of international total lack of success, eventually fell out with Starleana and Curt because they accused him of stealing their money as they never received any royalty cheques from the record label - despite the fact, of course, that they didn’t really have any hits.

2/ Steve, with no apparent trace of irony, refers to himself as “The Fearless Leader“.

3/ In a band overpopulation explosion that would shame even I’ve Got The Bullets, Aurra once numbered a frankly far too many 18 members.

4/ Aurra were eventually forced to change their name by Steve as he said he owned the copyright for it. They thus changed it to Deja because, with disturbing echoes of President’s Smash Hits debacle, “Starleana was looking through a dictionary and she stumbled upon the term ‘deja vu’, then came up with Déjà.”

5/ Starleana eventually married the lead singer of Kool & The Gang, whilst Curt most definitely didn’t.

Want to read a little bit more than alot more ? It is, I warn you now, an in depth article :

http://hem.bredband.net/funkyflyy/salsoul/aurra.html

Where Aurra they now ?

Curt, allegedly, is a wedding singer :

http://www.myspace.com/curtjonesmusic

And recently released an album called 360 Degrees :

http://www.soulexpress.net/curtjones.htm

Meanwhile Starleana, it is claimed in quite a few places, jointly owns a ‘beauty parlor’ with her sister in law - although if this is true, I can’t find it’s internet page anywhere.

Apart from that, the only other thing I can tell you is that their bass player’s name is Wayne - yet he refers to himself, fascinatingly, as Buddy :

http://www.buddyhankband.com

Can I Buy Some Key Aurra Stuff ?

You certainly can :

http://tinyurl.com/63vy3s

You can also buy Aurra’s double CD called Anthology if you wish - although, disappointingly, it doesn’t contain Like I Like It :

http://tinyurl.com/58n54r

It is considered a controversial release in so far as, for a band who weren’t particularly very famous, some people feel two CD’s may be a tad overdoing it.

The best review from someone who actually claims to like them ?

“I WENT TO THEIR CONCERT IN SAN DIEGO AND LOVED THEM.. BUT I DONT FAKE THE FUNK.. THEY HAVE THE NERVE TO RELEASE A 2 CD GREATEST HITS.. WHAT A JOKE.”

I repeat : He doesn’t fake the funk.

Well, who would ?

Money Update

Cost : 8 Pence

Current Value : 1 pound and 83 pence. This is, I had entirely forgotten, a ‘remixed version’ and… it isn’t worth as much as the original. Incidentally, did you know that the word Kia-Ora is Māori for “be well/healthy” ? I didn’t :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kia_ora

Don’t care ? Just want to watch the advert ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LvLn9PWln8

Something else totally useless I learnt today : the reason why Kia-Ora claims to be too orangey for crows… is because crows are apparently intolerant of citrus fruit. Want to learn more about man’s coexistence with crows in, errr, Japan ? It is more interesting than you would perhaps think…

http://www.airies.or.jp/publication/ger/pdf/07-02-11.pdf

Current Profit : 190 pounds and 95 pence. We’re going up again, Hurrah ! OK, it’s only by an increment best described as a tiny bit more than a little bit and one fuck lot less than alot, but up is up - and up… is like I like it.

Supporting Cast Update : Kool & The Gang; Slave

Click above for big pictures, click below to play me…

If the apparent intention of the song you are writing is to try and make people both dance and laugh, then it’s probably worth noting it shouldn’t remind the listener of a plague outbreak which killed 260 people in a small Derbyshire village during the 17th century – as this can really rather ruin the jovial atmosphere.

As Boys Don’t Cry have ignored this simple rule, however, we must instead concentrate on the main similarities of the two situations - and these are that firstly neither dying of the plague nor listening to this record are particularly pleasant experiences for anyone involved, and secondly that the Derbyshire village in question and this song have annoyed me intensely with their stupid nonsensical lyrics.

Who The Am Dam Do You Think Eyam

The plague was pretty much entirely confined to cities in the south of England in 1661 so, when it arrived in the small village of Eyam, it found the villagers suddenly twitching around the place like multiple Mick Jaggers grimacing their way through an ill-fated Jacksons comeback tour. ie In a State Of Shock.

It arrived there randomly via an imported piece of cloth riddled with plague ridden fleas – and, when it became obvious the village was now infected, the residents all faced the not exactly pleasant choice of either ambitiously attempting a Slade… or resigning themselves to a Shakespear’s Sister.

Unfortunately trying to Run Run Away from the situation wasn’t really much of an option, as not only would the plague then inevitably spread all over the entire north of England and Scotland thus making the villagers entirely responsible for the deaths of innumerable unnamed others – there were also apparently no firm mechanisms in place which would guarantee any of the participants actually see seeing any chameleons lying there in the sun and this, argued the highly influential vicar of the parish, surely rendered the entire enterprise utterly pointless.

This carefully thought out pop-rock music rationale thus persuaded every single one of the villagers to (ahem) Stay, making the momentous decision to cut themselves off from the outside world until the last one of them most definitely dropped dead.

The plague then did it’s worst, totally ravaging the newly introverted village and decimating desperate families. In one particularly cruel 48 hour period, 6 members of a 7 person household were all killed one by painful one – leaving just the wife and mother to personally dig grave after wretched grave in a field at the opposite end of the village, drag each dead loved one there in turn, and bury body after tear soaked body all on her own.

18 long months later and 260 people lighter – after the plague itself had slowly died its own perfectly natural death – the few remaining villagers emerged blinking into the surrounding countryside having saved the lives of thousands of people they would never meet, none of whom would ever know the details of the heroism that had saved them… or even perhaps that they had ever been saved at all.

You’d Better Pass Me That Paper Bag… Quick

Despite this harrowing tale of the ultimate self sacrifice for the greater good, however, Eyam makes a really shit tourist destination.

After all, everything you actually need to know about Eyam I have just already told you so, as you walk around the village peering in a slightly embarrassed fashion at the very much alive families currently living in houses where people once horribly died - all with dreadfully heavy handed names like Plague Cottages and Someone Also Died Here Villas – the visitor can feel rather like some sort of Plague Porn Voyeur.

Indeed, as you mix with the current residents who eye you suspiciously as they go about their day to day lives, you start wondering if they are half expecting you to pop to the public toilets for a quick plague related wank – and then, worse still, when you do furtively utilise the conveniences later in the day for a perfectly legitimate poo break before the long journey home – find yourself pondering further if this is also the reason why they have put no locks on any of the cubicle doors.

In fact, wandering around the village can make you feel like you are participating in a peculiarly grisly remix of The Court Of King Caractacus - as you go to see the gravestones … of the people… from the houses… from the village… who all perished of the plague… before eventually noting that you have certainly got there too late as they have all most definitely already passed by.

If all this were not enough, you are then asked to visit the Eyam Plague Museum where you are forced to relive the entire – totally worthy and breathtakingly brave – yet by now reallyrathergettingonyourfuckingnerves story….all.. over…again… only this time with the help of some tastefully lit mannequins arranged in various badly recreated scenes of near death.

And it was here, as I attempted to negotiate these exhibits at a speed I hoped passed for reverent, where my thoughts eventually turned to Boys Don’t Cry.

Stick It Up Your Back, Say What ?

Looking out of the window, I noticed the village school just down the road which had the following famous phrase very ornately and very expensively carved into it’s gates :

Ring a-ring o’ roses,
A pocketful of posies.
a-tishoo! a-tishoo!
We all fall down

which certainly seemed like a curiously brave inscription to pay shitloads of money for, as there is absolutely no evidence that this verse has absolutely anything to do with the plague whatsoever.

Indeed, an increasing number of people who know such things now believe that this rhyme is in fact a nonsense poem created in the 1850’s which has simply had meaning grafted onto it by unsuspecting generations.

And you get the feeling that this meaning plastered over nonsense was precisely what Boys Don’t Cry were also trying to recreate with this song, with it’s ever tedious references to spin dryers and thinking you’re bloody every self – although unfortunately for them they mistakenly believed they were coming across sounding like Talking Heads, when the reality was actually Black Lace.

What The Am Dam Does Who The Am Dam Do You Think You Am Think It Am ?

Wacky.

In fact, so incredibly wacky is this record by Boy’s Don’t Cry it even has a b-side called… The Cure.

Which, I am sure you agree, is absolutely totally fucking hilarious.

Who The Am Dam Do The Band Who Sang Who The Am Dam Do You Think You Am Think They Am ?

Underrated.

Everywhere you look you get the distinct impression they feel they should have much bigger than they actually were – and this is despite the fact that they were bigger than pretty much everybody else on here, as their song I Wanna Be A Cowboy charted highly in the US in 1985 and was even quoted by Madonna as being her favourite song of the year. Want to see the video on Brian’s (the keyboard player) website ?

http://www.brianchatton.com/movie.html

Want to watch the follow up ? It’s called Cities On Fire and it will make you giggle… alot :

http://www.brianchatton.com/movie-1.html

Want to know everything else ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boys_Don’t_Cry_(band)

Iyam Intyrested In Eyam

Then you could do a lot worse than reading all about the - truly fascinating - story here :

http://www.cressbrook.co.uk/towns/eyam.php

And look at those mannequins here :

http://www.cressbrook.co.uk/eyam/museum/

Although I’ll be buggered if I’m going to click on those and relive the entire bloody experience.

Oh, last but definitely not least, if all that stuff about nursery rhymes interested you then a good place to start is listening to this :

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4933345

And then reading this :

http://www.rhymes.org.uk/

Money Update

Cost : 8 pence

Current value : It is one of those moments when you know it’s worth something – but no one is selling anything… which leads to the ever disappointing… minus 8 pence. Oh well, want to hear The Court Of King Caractacus ? If you haven’t heard it for ages, or even at all, then I warn you now it is insanely stupidly brilliant :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-Lw1bDdwgs

Current Profit : 189 pounds and 20 pence. That 200 pounds is suddenly looking really rather far away…

Supporting Cast Update : Jacksons, The ; Slade ; Shakespear’s Sister ; Harris, Rolf ; Talking Heads ; Black Lace ; Madonna

Incidentally, I am a little bit behind on all that supporting cast silliness, but if you’ve never read it then it’s still worth a look – just click on the link immediately above. If nothing else, you get to see what Hazell Dean is up to these days which can only be A Good Thing.

Click above for big pictures, click below to play me…

This record was a hit !

No it wasn’t.

This record ! It was a bloody hit I tell you !

No. It wasn’t.

This is the tantalisingly toe tappy, fascinatingly finger clicky, funny noises in the second versey Mary’s Prayer isn’t it ?

It certainly is.

This record was a hit !

No it wasn’t - I think you’re getting it confused with another record called Mary’s Prayer.

Absolutely not, I would recognise this record anywhere. This is Mary’s Prayer as performed by - the not quite one hit wonders but pretty much as close as you can darn well get as the accurate definition of a one hit wonder is of course someone who has a number one single then fucks off and is never heard of again but Mary’s Prayer actually reached number three and also now I come to think about it they later had a smaller hit a few years into the future with the equally toe tappy The Second Summer Of Love all about the emerging rave scene which they recorded like it was a folk song and this was quite a clever thing to do I realise now in retrospect but this doesn’t really matter anyway as this second chart appearance no matter how lowly makes the definition of them being even remotely approaching a one hit wonder entirely meaningless so I don’t know why I even bothered mentioning it in the first place - Danny Wilson.

Absolutely correct.

It was released on Virgin wasn’t it ?

Yep.

Catalogue number VS934 ?

You certainly know your stuff.

This record was a hit!

No it wasn’t.

Yes it was. It was a huge hit, and I therefore declare this whole I Am Not The Beatles malarkey to be a total sham because there is no way you could have bought this record for 8 pence - for the very good repeatable reason which I am now going to repeat again for the very good reason that it is so very stupidly repeatable : This. Record. Was. A. Hit.

No. It. Wasn’t.

WHY NOT ?

Well… although just about every other totally identical record called Mary’s Prayer with the same cover, the same catalogue number, the same mix, very possibly even from the same pressing all later joined together and made a jolly decent group effort to become the huge international hit you speak of - this very particular record was never invited to take part in all the festivities and, as such, feels a bit left out by it all.

This is because this is the first release of Mary’s Prayer which was - from memory - released a few months beforehand and… it completely failed to chart. Indeed, by the time all that hit stuff turned this song into the kind of track milkmen absentmindedly whistled as they drove their ever-clinking milkfloats around seemingly never ending - but actually very soon about to end for all eternity - milkrounds, I had already bought this record for the frankly bargainous sum of 8 pence about 12 weeks previously.

How exciting !

Unfortunately, however, there is a dark side to this story.

This is a record whose frankly extensive family of identical brothers and sisters all went on to become much more successful and posh than it could ever dream of. So when it does meet those identical versions of itself at surprisingly frequent family get togethers, it very often gets rather down about the whole thing and wonders if it’s own failure to chart is simply down to the fact that it just didn’t try hard enough.

To be fair, this isn’t really helped by the rather snobbish attitude of all those other Mary’s Prayer’s who also suspect deep down that this is very probably the case - despite the fact of, of course, that they are all exactly the same.

If it is identical in every single way as you claim, why doesn’t it just pretend that it was a hit too ? No-one would know, surely ?

Because I blew it’s cover ages ago.

So amazed was I to discover that a record I owned was, a few months later, actually becoming bizarrely popular I decided to display it prominently in my bedroom so when my friends came around to visit they would notice it and exclaim “Oh, you’ve got that quite good song Mary’s Prayer by Danny Wilson… I quite like that.”

I would then respond with a detached calm smugness, which I hoped was not entirely unlike the air of a louche Edwardian gentleman sitting in his smoking jacket and vaguely gesticulating towards some obviously ludicrously expensive jewels on the dressing table, absentmindedly stating… “What that old thing? Oh, I’ve had that for months…”

You Twat.

It wasn’t, it turned out, the best reaction to the situation this poor record found itself to be in and was actually an extremely selfish move on my part - as quite soon this record started to get just the teensiest bit depressed. I first noticed a problem when it’s personal grooming habits ceased and my bedroom stopped heaving with the usual acceptable smell of excessive teenage masturbation, and was instead replaced with the distinct whiff of failure.

Then, one day, this record got so upset about it’s slightly shitty social status it tried to commit suicide.

Bloody hell, really ? What happened ?

It threw itself onto a windowsill at the height of summer and tried to warp itself to death.

What a sad story.

It is.

Luckily I got to it in the nick of time and prevented a life threatening catastrophe by administering expert first aid in the form of piling lots of heavy books on top of it in a dark and cool cupboard under the stairs. Thankfully, the resulting fact is that it is still playable and this means we can at least ponder the one interesting question this record raises.

And that is ?

If I say ten Hail Mary’s do you think it might be remotely possible for someone to leave a light on in heaven for me ?

It seems unlikely.

God’s a bit of an environmentalist these days - which is fair enough when you think about it, as he did actually invent the environment in the first place - and up in heaven everything is currently wonderful, being there is - rather obviously - heavenly, and every single day everything is free.

With this in mind, I doubt he’s going to allow any eternal souls to put His perfection in jeopardy by replicating your frankly selfish behaviour which has totally fucked up His beloved earth just because you’re a bit scared of the dark.

The last thing anybody wants is global warming in the afterlife.

What’s This Song Like ?

Oddly, it bears an uncanny resemblance to a very famous and perfectly pleasant hit song called Mary’s Prayer by a band called Danny Wilson - and, if you give it a fair listen rather than just sit there thinking ‘Oh, it’s that’s perfectly pleasant song called Mary’s Prayer by Danny Wilson,‘ it might just be a little bit better than you do perhaps remember it.

Unless you fucking hate it of course, in which case you’re buggered.

Where Are Danny Wilson Now ?

The back cover very helpfully informs us Danny Wilson are Gary Clark, Kit Clark (his brother) and a chap called Ged Grimes, and they are all hopelessly easy to track down - even if, like this record, some are now much more successful than others.

Ged is very successful indeed, as he went on to initially produce music for people like Natalie Imbruglia before finally settling down to writing music for computer games. His music has appeared in famous computer games I have never played such as Earth Worm Jim 3D, Amplitude and Enter The Matrix - and has also been recently used in trailers for two films I have also never seen called The Bourne Supremacy and The Fast and The Furious. In fact he is so incredibly successful he is apparently “one of the most highly respected figures in today’s digital entertainment industry.”

Or, at least, he is according to himself.

On his own website :

http://www.myspace.com/gedgrimes

Gary, the vocalist and writer of this song, had a solo career before eventually becoming a very successful music producer. He has produced loads of people including Liz Phair, Lloyd Cole and Rachel Stevens :

http://www.myspace.com/garyclarkmusic

Kit meanwhile has been in a quite incredible number of bands - one, perhaps unwisely, even involving somebody else who used to be in Deacon Blue - and you can hear a selection of them all at his website. I highly recommend All Wrong Now by Silver Suits at the link below - as it takes samples which were in tracks by Pop Will Eat Itself and Daft Punk (although I have no idea where they were originally from) and makes something different and really rather lovingly pleasant :

http://www.myspace.com/kitclarkmusic

What Actually Is Mary’s Prayer ?

In the moments before she was rather unpleasantly executed by having her head chopped of with an axe Mary, Queen Of Scots chanted the repeated prayer ‘In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum,’ quietly under her breath.

This means ‘Into your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit’ - and was also presumably what this very record chanted in the moments before it’s death defying dive onto that aforementioned very hot windowsill.

Whereas Mary’s Prayer was saved by a quick thinking me, however, poor old Mary Stuart wasn’t - as the first blow missed the neck and cut instead into the back of her head. At this point she was apparently heard to whisper the words ‘Sweet Jesus’, which is certainly less than I would have probably screamed at the top of my fucking voice in such an axe in the back of my head scenario. It then took a two further amateurish swings of the axe before her head was finally severed.

Which must have hurt.

http://www.marie-stuart.co.uk/

Money Update

Cost : 8 pence

Current Value : This is tricky, as none of the records advertised state whether they were a full blown hit… or slightly depressed ever suicidal failure. I have therefore made the editorial decision to retain this records dignity and record a perfectly acceptable 8 pence. It is the same as it always was - and, sometimes, there’s nothing wrong with that.

Supporting Cast Update : Phair, Liz; Imbruglia, Natalie; Cole, Lloyd; Stevens, Rachel

Click above for big pictures, click below to play me…

“Miracles, in the sense of phenomena we cannot explain, surround us on every hand: life itself is the miracle of miracles.”

George Bernard Shaw - Preface to Androcles and The Lion

It’s a crazy life isn’t it ?

In fact, say Beggar & Co, there’s nothing stranger - and when you initially consider the laughably remote likelihood of you ever existing in the first place, relying rather heavily as it does on every single one of your ancestors from the past few million years first ovulating and then randomly ejaculating into each other at stupidly precise and terrifyingly exact moments, it can be hard to disagree.

Indeed, as systems go for guaranteeing your own bafflingly brief existence many years into the unknowable future, human reproduction is pretty darn precarious and - rather insultingly for you I fear - almost seems to have been actively designed to try and prevent you from ever being here at all.

And yet, despite the ridiculously long odds of these totally random acts of nature occuring one after the other in order to eventually produce the human being that is you… amazingly it turns out you are actually here and this is, of course, very strange indeed.

Given life’s tenacious propensity for finding ways to exist in the most unlikely of situations however, there is one possibility that would be much stranger than life : and that is absolutely no life.

I am not talking here about your own disappointingly imminent rather sad and poignant death by the way - as this is obviously only going to painfully occur because you were given life in the first place and, as such, should really only be considered as a subsection of it.

Nope, what would have been even stranger is if this entire reality had gone to all the unhesitating hassle of actually suddenly creating itself from absolutely bugger all, filling an apparently infinite space with itself, dotting itself with an infinite number of planets and stars and breathtakingly beautiful nebulae… only to then rather selfishly not let anything live within it and have a good look.

This would be a situation akin to Pink going through all the stress of ensuring she is most definitely going out, only to then start absolutely no parties whatsoever.

And that would just be silly.

What crazy things happen in Beggar and Co’s Life ?

In the first verse the singer becomes aware of a girl living in his vicinity, but doesn’t yet know her name.

So, in an attempt to find out this information, in the second verse he very successfully asks somebody else who knows the answer to his question… and they tell him.

It’s fucking madness I tell you.

That’s not really very crazy at all is it ?

Errr… no it’s not - but that event, apart from the singer also helpfully describing the lady in question as a bad girl - is quite literally all… that… happens.

Why is she bad ?

Oddly, she apparently likes to have sex… with men.

He believes a strong individual enjoying her sexual freedoms and who is thus in total control of her own sexual expression, makes a grown woman a bad girl ?

Yes.

Despite this unrelenting viewpoint, however, he would - if possible - really quite like to have sex with her… proving once and for all there there is nothing stranger than misogyny.

What’s The Strangest Bit Of This Record ?

It’s pretty strange that this record exists in the first place - but to then go and put a silly rap in it ? Well, that’s just plain crazy.

What’s Happening In Beggar and Co’s Life Now ?

You’re going to have to concentrate here as it’s all rather complicated.

On this record they are three chaps called Breeze McKrieth, Kenny Wellington and David Baptiste and - rather confusingly - they were all in both Beggar & Co and another band called Light Of The World seemingly pretty much simultaneously.

http://www.myspace.com/beggarandco

Interestingly, whilst Breeze, Kenny and David were in those two bands they also played on Spandau Ballet’s Chant No.1 and then had a vague hit with their own Chant No.2 then - when Light Of The World eventually split which, incidentally, they seemed to do with quite alarming regularity - three other original members of Light Of The World went on to form the much admired band by many, Incognito.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incognito_%28band%29

http://www.incognito.org.uk/

These days Light Of The World is still going but - and prepare yourself, as this is where it all gets really confusing - they don’t actually seem to have reformed as such, everybody else just slowly appears to have left at some point… and it therefore contains absolutely no members of the original band at all.

So, in an apparent attempt to regain the initiative (and also to play some gigs in memory of Paul Tubbs who is another original member of Light Of The World- and, rather sadly, one who’s own life came to an end in 2007) Breeze, Kenny and David have now reformed another Light Of The World - who are thus the original Light Of The World - and are now also playing under this name.

Want to get even more confused ? Worryingly, both of their websites are exactly the same…

http://www.beggarandco.co.uk

http://www.lightoftheworldmusic.co.uk

Can I Look At Some Beautiful Nebulae And Then Learn About Life’s Tenacious Propensity For Finding Ways To Exist In The Most Unlikely Of Situations Please ?

You certainly can.

Here is a lovely page of nebulae :

http://www.biochem.szote.u-szeged.hu/astrojan/nebula1.htm

And these are a couple of fascinating but stupidly long indexed articles looking first at the desert environment, and then polar biology :

http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=2815

http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=2820

What Are The Odds Of Me Actually Having This Life ?

It is, of course, complicated :

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=53425

” Life ? Don’t Talk To Me (anymore) About Life… “

I’m not going to… but Wikipedia is - both generally

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life

and meaningfully :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meaning_of_life

Money Update

Cost : 8 pence

Current Value : Just about every website about Beggar & Co seems to deny this record was ever released - but Gemm doesn’t lie : 2 pounds and 87 pence… which is a crazy price. Incidentally, if all of the above band swappy roundy madness has left you all a bit wide eyed and disoriented, then I suggest you could do alot worse than calm down to the soothing sounds of Kenny’s solo album ‘Kind Of Black’ : http://www.myspace.com/kennywellington

Current Profit : 189 pounds and 28 pence. Want to know more about George Bernard Shaw’s Androcles and The Lion ? Want to actually read Androcles and The Lion ? Can’t be arsed, but quite interested in that preface? The only online version I found was basically unreadable, so I’ve shoved a copy here.

More importantly than all of this however - is it just me or are you starting to get just a little bit excited about the possibility of … 200 pounds ?

Supporting Cast Update : Spandau Ballet ; Pink; Shaw, George Bernard

Click above for big pictures, click below to play me…

Patrick Kane would really rather prefer it if you didn’t call him a mother.

As in motherfucker ?

No… as in mum.

So it’s OK for me to call Patrick Kane a motherfucker ?

Well, he doesn’t specifically rule against it - but I warn you now, your desire to describe Patrick in such interfamilial shaggy terms is what an old female friend of mine describes as permission by omission and, as such, reminds me of both her and the copious amounts of anal sex she has indulged in.

I beg your pardon ?

Anal sex. It means ‘up the bum’.

Yes, I understand that - but what the hell are you talking about ?

My friend was, shall we say, put in a difficult position - as she

a) Was deeply religious, and
b) Desperately wanted to have sex.

Not believing these two seemingly completely opposing facts to be entirely irreconcilable, she carried out a thorough reading of all the relevant Bible passages. This research showed that penetrative vaginal sex was definitely, and rather obviously, frowned upon by God and was therefore immediately ruled out… and it was also noted by her that anal sex between two men was similarly outlawed.

It was at this point though that she spotted the loophole she wished to exploit, as absolutely no reference whatsoever is made in The Bible to the very specific subject of anal sex between a man and a woman. Indeed, the very possibility of such congress doesn’t even seem to enter into God’s otherwise omnipresent, and therefore at least partly filthy, mind.

Making the reasonably fair assumption that if God felt it not worth mentioning in his own book then he probably wasn’t really that bothered about the situation anyway, she immediately granted herself permission by omission… and spent her single days having her bible merrily bashed by all and sundry.

When she told me this a few years ago and I suggested that it certainly seemed possible to me that her interpretation of God’s words - or, indeed, the complete lack of them - wasn’t perhaps entirely as He had intended them to be understood, she cryptically replied

“God doesn’t ever come into it.“

Which certainly seemed, I suppose, at least physically true at the time even if I, unlike her, wasn’t entirely sure how to take it.

What a fucking warped story.

Well, this is one fucking warped record.

In what way ?

The record. It’s physically warped - it is, essentially, buggered.

If the record is warped as you claim, how am I managing to hear I Refuse at this very moment ?

Well, luckily for you, Hue and Cry obviously foresaw the precarious nature of long term vinyl warpage and therefore very helpfully provided a much more forward thinking format - a free cassette - to go with this record, so it is the version of I Refuse from the cassette which is featured here.

It’s a cassingle ! How exciting !

It certainly is… and it certainly is.

No matter how exciting this turn of events is, however, the downside of being forced to use the cassingle is that it only has the extended version of I Refuse upon it… and, as you are no doubt already discovering, this does rather unfortunately mean you have to sit through a ludicriously long intro before anyone utters a single bloody word - let alone starts to refuse to do anything.

So what exactly are Hue and Cry refusing to do ?

In their endlessly brave and perhaps ultimately foolhardy fight against The Power Of The Sexual Stereotype, Patrick and his brother Gregory (the keyboard player and co-songwriter) have decided not to have any children and never join the armed forces. This heroic stance means neither of them will ever be either a Sweet Madonna or a Pistol Packin’ Son right up until the moment they apparently die - although from that moment on, as Graham Parker discovered, everything will be pretty much up for grabs.

It is worth noting here that as a title I Refuse is a bit of a misnomer, as whenever Patrick sings those two seemingly simple words what he really means is : We Should All Refuse, Can’t You See ? It’s Bloody Obvious. This not exactly subtle Brechtian didacticism means he is actually telling all of us not to get our eggs fertilised and all of us never to enrol as a soldier.

Ultimately however, Patrick’s Egg and Soldier argument is rather overcomplicating matters as pure logic dictates that if we really do all stop having children then all war will undoubtedly end pretty darn quickly, because there would be absolutely no army to join for the very good reason our species has just ceased to exist - and this does perhaps seem like a short lived and rather trivial victory.

What’s the best bit ?

I quite like gaps and - after you sit through all the excitement of a camp and nonsensical middle eight - there is a particularly fine example of The Gapper’s craft.

Indeed, if you listen very closely you can actually hear the sound of a bra being burnt within it and absolutely nobody getting shot whatsoever.

It is a beautiful moment.

Do Hue And Cry Really Deny Inhibition ?

Gregory doesn’t seem to, as he doesn’t even has his own website - and this is surely about as inhibited as it is possible to be these days. Even his wikipedia entry is just one sentence long, so we will presume he is The Shy One of the two.

Patrick, however, most definitely does Deny Inhibition - for example he was Rector of The University of Glasgow for three years, only to be succeeded by… errr… Johnny Ball :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Kane

He is also very proud of his book, The Play Ethic - and has even referred to himself as a creative and organisational consultant with regards to it :

http://www.theplayethic.com

Don’t forget to go and say hello, he seems very nice :

http://www.patkane.com

What is The Play Ethic ?

http://www.theplayethic.com/images/Scotland_on_Sunday_piece_on_PE.doc

Can’t be bothered to read that but want a brief I Am Not The Beatles summation ? Ok, here’s an attempt :

75% of the workforce in industrialised nations do repetitive (not necessarily manual) tasks which will eventually be done by modern technology. Rather than frowning upon this by dwelling upon our imminent mass unemployment as a bad thing and pointlessly trying to find people other work to do (as there won’t actually be any other ‘work’ to do in the traditional sense of the word), we should accept this as a matter of fact of our evolution. As such, we should use this as an opportunity to be more creative and play more - not hedonistically and individually, but as communities. If we do not accept this realignment of both the human condition and the way communities will now be forced interract with each other… we may very well end up, frankly, dead.

Which, although ludicrously easy to take the piss out of, is actually quite an interesting point.

Gosh. Do Hue and Cry Really Escape Definition ?

Absolutely not.

Some like them, some hate them but everyone seems to have an opinion. My favourite review of them is over at Amazon and is written by a chap called Kenny, concerning their Greatest Hits CD :

“Buy it,” he states menacingly… “make yourself a better person“.

And I suppose if you did happen to buy it, and then played it - not hedonistically to yourself of course you selfish bastard, but with your whole community also able to participate in the hearing of it… becoming a better person may actually happen for everyone involved.

Either that, or your next door neighbours will be knocking seven shades of shit out of your adjoining wall demanding you turn that fucking racket down before they call the police.

There’s Been Something Bothering Me About Patrick Kane For Years… Did He Ever Actually Find Linda ? Sometimes I Lie Awake At Night Fraught With Worry About This. Can You Help ?

Yes I can.

When they played Looking For Linda live Hue and Cry apparently sometimes added in an extra verse towards the end which explained that, yes, Linda was eventually found after much of that aforementioned looking and that, yes, she was essentially fine all things considered.

They never released this version of the song as a single however, so you would have to be a pretty hardcore Hue and Cry fan to have discovered this vital piece of Linda related information - and if you weren’t, well…. you may well have been left on tenterhooks for the rest of your natural life.

Hang on… Patrick Kane knew ? And he never told me ?

Errr…. yes.

The Motherfucker.

Money Update

Cost : 8 pence

Current Value : I never stopped looking… but I never found anything. I am not saying it’s worth absolutely nothing, but I can find absolutely nobody who is selling one. The rules then very sadly clearly state this is A Refusal and I must record…. a very disappointing minus 8 pence, which I am neither satisfied nor pseudo satisfied about. Incidentally, some of you may recall I Refuse reaching the lower echelons of the top 40 - but that was actually a re-recorded and utterly different version 2 years later. The one here was apparently Hue and Cry’s first major single and got pretty much nowhere. Want to watch the video ? If nothing else it lets me say ‘Look At Our Tints’ again :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyFURJFv6Bw

Current Profit : Easy ? I knew it was never gonna be easy… but not this hard : 186 pounds and 41 pence. Oh well, want to watch Labour Of Love in the company of lots of mysteriously floating blocks of wood ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gxMvb9VrzY

And finally, are you interested in what Hue and Cry are up to now? They have done jazz, some notjazz and some err… drum and bass since you last probably looked. There are even wild(ish) rumours of a new album in 2008…

http://www.hueandcry.co.uk

Supporting Cast Update : Brecht, Bertolt ; Ball, Johnny