I Am Not The Beatles

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

‘This,’ claims June Montana - vocalist for the most presumptuously named band in the known universe - ‘is a man’s world,’ and, in an apparent attempt to prove that this is most definitely the case, she seems to be entirely incapable of making this record without a load of men doing all the complicated stuff on her behalf.

Two of them (named, according to the back cover, Youth and Jimmy Cauty) first do all those manly tasks women can’t do like play the actual instruments and program the sodding computers ; whilst the other three (with the surnames of Stock, Aitken and Waterman) are then gainfully employed to fiddle with all of those confusing sliders, set up the effects in the studio and produce the whole thing. And what does June choose to do amidst all of this extreme masculine productivity… she stands around in front of them all looking pretty and singing a bit.

In essence then, June has quite blatantly put the least effort into the whole let’s record a song process - but by then putting herself forward nonetheless to be the band’s frontwoman is still aiming to get most of the adulation. She didn’t even have to write the bloody song - as even that was written by some bloke ages ago.

It’s feminism gone mad, I tell you.

You also get the feeling listening to this song that if the world was anywhere near as much of a man’s one as June suggests then they wouldn’t have allowed her to sing the thing in the first place - and the most exciting involvement she would have had with it all was doing the washing up in the studio kitchen as the men popped down the pub for much needed refreshment after a particularly strenuous piece of soft reggae creativity.

June doesn’t let this rather salient fact get in the way though, moaning on as women do :

‘But he would be nothing without a woman or a girl,’ - and to try and prove that this is true too, she has decided to create a Real Man’s Man’s Man’s World under laboratory conditions by getting Youth and Jimmy to scuttle off and write a B-side which is totally devoid of any vocals ie with no female input… whatsoever.

What An Interesting Experiment !

It certainly is.

So Which Is Better ? A World With Or Without A Woman Or A Girl ?

Well, the resulting track is certainly well named, entitled as it is Crash The Car and… it is an utter car crash of an effort.

If there are any James Spader or Debra Unger wannabe paraphiles in the audience who are finding the idea of a car crash involving a younger Youth and a sexually alluring Jimmy Cauty all too exciting for words, then I am sorry to report that the music in question doesn’t remotely resemble a really juicy and traumatic car crash involving things like broken misshapen limbs and the sudden brutal death of all of your immediate family - nope, it is instead a really boring crash : a bit like watching your Dad reverse his car into a bollard in the car park.

Want to hear it ?

Fussy feminists who are now revelling in the knowledge it has now been scientifically proven that the world is generally a slightly better place with women and girls shouldn’t get too carried away however, as the one serious attempt to create a fully fledged Girl’s World on I Am Not The Beatles wasn’t exactly an overwhelming success either :

http://www.iamnotthebeatles.com/?p=383

Are Brilliant… Brilliant ?

The most brilliant thing about Brilliant is the fact that this record bizarrely influenced shitloads of other stuff - from Jason Donovan to Pulp. We start our investigations by reading this interview with Pete Waterman in The Guardian :

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2005/dec/03/popandrock

“We did a record with this band called Brilliant, the reviews were phenomenal and it got to 58 in the charts. I remember saying to the guys, fuck that for critically-acclaimed music, you can’t pay the fucking rent with that.”

OK, so it isn’t exactly a resounding endorsement of this song’s charms but it does heavily suggest that by producing it Stock, Aitken and Waterman were forced into a radical rethink of their production style. It must thus follow that without June grumbling on about those overbearing masculine types we may never have been given the marvellous hi-energy version of Bananarama , the soft camp of Brother Beyond or - and there is no polite way to say this - Sonia.

Even more importantly, it is possible that you would also never have known that certain sections of the younger generation generally preferred to Jack than Fleetwood Mac - which I am sure you agree would have been a total fucking travesty.

http://www.stockaitkenwaterman.com

The only other person who remembers this record enough to comment on it is the A&R man who signed Brilliant in the first place - but I warn you now, he isn’t really that complimentary either :

“I signed a band called Brilliant, who I worked with, we worked together, and it was complete failure. Artistically bankrupt project. And financially deaf. We spent £300 000 on making an album that was useless. Useless artistically, useless… commercially.”

And who is this strangely articulate A&R man ? It’s only Bill bloody Drummond who then went on to form The Jamms and The KLF with one member of this band he met through this recording… Jimmy Cauty. So, again, if Brilliant had never existed it is entirely possible that you may well never have heard the words Justified and Ancient in the context of some silly dance music and the tardis may never have been doctored.

Youth is also a well known chap to some of course - being a member of a band I know absolutely nothing about, Killing Joke. You can find out all about them and their music - like I just did - here, and it all seems perfectly pleasant :

http://www.myspace.com/killingjokeofficial

http://www.furious.com/PERFECT/killingjoke.html

So that only leaves June, who went on to be in a band with Jimmy Cauty’s wife Cressida which they called Disco 2000 - which means that once again without June meeting Jimmy and his wife, Pulp would probably have never written a song of the same name.

In a review in the NME at the time Barbara Ellen described Disco 2000 as:

“…two raucous, wicked, hideously beautiful she-cats with diamonds for brains…. For men, Disco 2000 must be like sex without the draggy chat-up scenario, Mae West without the lard, Madonna staked out in a jacuzzi looking anything but helpless.”

If you want to know what a lardless Mae West could possibly sound like, then why not try the supremely bouncy Uptight - it’s all rather reminiscent of  listening to an equally lardless Bananarama in the middle of a wind tunnel :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIsgBb144XI

Where lovely June is now though… I have no idea… but interestingly Jimmy Cauty has recently formed a band with 16 alleged others whose music will never be recorded or performed, so all you (and 16 of your friends) can ever do is recreate it yourself from the music scores they produce. Just click on the ’scores’ link at the website below to see if you think it’s worth your while :

http://www.the17.org/

Did Men Really Invent Everything In This Song As Claimed ?

The more recent claims seem entirely valid but others are, at the very least, slightly scurrilous. Whether you believe the assertion that Noah invented the boat, for example, is pretty dependent upon whether you interpret the bible as Godlike Historical Fact or Mortal Metaphor - and if you belong to the latter group, then you might want to get pissed off on The Phoenicians behalf for this so-called Noah bloke stealing their thunder :

http://phoenicia.org/wreck.html

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

Similarly the oldest toy on record - which June claims were all made by men for their children - is about 4000 years old… and in a bid to show that nothing has really changed since, rather depressingly it looks a bit like Barbie :

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=588&art_id=qw1091703241764B234

Importantly however, although we can make assumptions that these were made and/or carved by men we have absolutely no definitive proof.

So Is It Really A Man’s World ?

And it is these assumptions we make that some feel are causing just a little bit of hassle.

Warren Farrell, for example, in his Camille Paglia recommended book The Myth Of Male Power claims that neither sex was ever truly subjugated more than the other, but were instead given very specific - now historical - roles within which to maximise their wellbeing. He claims more affluent societies suddenly lurched from what he terms a Stage 1 society - based purely on survival - into a much more comfortable and leisurely stage 2 society, and thus both historical roles now need to be changed and expanded upon.

However, he argues, society is only currently readdressing the balance in one direction : through the extremely worthwhile changes brought about by feminism - and we make an assumption when we interpret historical roles as subjugation, and the male role as power:

http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Male-Power-Warren-Farrell/dp/0425181448

Whatever your views, it is a fascinating read even if, like me, you don’t agree with quite a lot of what he is saying - as it definitely challenges your preconceptions. In fact the only time my preconceptions were challenged so utterly since, was when listening to a soft reggae version of an old James Brown song - which challenged my preconceptions of what perfectly intelligent human beings were capable of believing maybe a really good musical idea.

Money Update

Cost : 8 pence

Current Value : 3 pounds and 15 pence. Considering who was involved, not exactly Brilliant.

Current Profit : 215 pounds and 81 pence. Want to watch the video ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odbI_-SsaXM

Supporting Cast Update : Barbie; Donovan, Jason; Brother Beyond; Noah; Brown, James; Farrell, Warren; Paglia, Camille; Banarama; West, Mae; Madonna; Ellen, Barbara; Pulp; KLF, The; Jamms, The; Drummond, Bill; Sonia; Reynolds Girls, The; Spader, James; Unger, Deborah; Dad, Your.

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

Do you remember Tommy ?

Of course I do. How is he these days ?

Tremendously well… he’s got himself a good job.

Really ? What excellent news. It’s been ages since he was sacked from the Ealing branch of Homebase for beating up the coloureds.

I beg your pardon ?

Obviously beating up the coloureds wasn’t enough to make him lose his job at Homebase in itself – oh no, he had to spend a good afternoon beating up the queers as well in order to ensure anything like that occurred - but… anyway, what am I talking about… that was years ago and we’ve all moved on since then. So what is this new good job that Tommy has now ?

Errr…

Yes ?

Well, now…he walks around Belfast…

Yes ?

…beating up the coloureds and beating up the queers.

Oh.

Are those the kind of people skills that can get you gainfully employed these days ?

Apparently yes.

Gosh, the job market really has changed since I last looked– still, he did have a particular penchant for it if I recall the local newspaper headlines correctly, so it’s nice that he’s found his niche. Is he happy ?

Absolutely – he fucking hates coloureds and queers so he’s having a great time.

What about coloured queers ?

Sorry ?

I already note that his job description obviously relates his tremendous propensity for beating up coloureds and queers in total isolation of each other – but what if you happen to be both ? Is this something Tommy can help with ?

Well, he’s only been doing the job for a couple of weeks so I suspect he needs to hand off those more complex and sensitive cases of integrated colouredyqueerness for his senior officers to deal with… but if I know Tommy as well as I think I do, it won’t be too long before he gets promoted so he can beat them up all by himself.

Good for him… I doubt I’d be very good at his good job though - after all, I rather like coloureds and queers.

What? All Coloureds And Queers ?

Well no, obviously not all coloured and queers – a certain percentage of the human race, as I assume you are suggesting, are always bound to be utter wankers – that’s just a fact of life. Indeed, I was at a dinner party with a friend of mine just the other day and during one of those embarrassing moments where the conversation briefly dried up the hostess turned to him and cooed “Oooh, you should meet Jonathan.. he’s black and gay too…”

How did your friend respond ?

“ I am sure he is, but he may also be a twat. ”

Good point.

I thought so.

Is There Anything Queer About This Record?

Yes there is.

Firstly the record label, you will note in the gallery, is marked not as A and B but as side C and side D - and secondly this poor unloved record doesn’t even have it’s own record sleeve to cover it’s fragile nakedness, which means it’s all gone a bit crackly. The only sad conclusion we can draw from this is that it used to be part of one of those new fangled doublepacks - even if I can’t find out for the life of me what the other record may have actually been.

In a way though this doesn’t really matter as, in a bizarre implementation of fascist segregationist policy, Tommy’s Got A Good Job has obviously been ripped heartlessly from the bosom of it’s immediate family by the record shop owner and then thrown naked and alone into an anonymous pack of 12… before almost being suffocated to death in clingfilm.

Is it, we must openly question, because it is black ?

Tell Me About Light A Big Fire

A few people rate Light A Big Fire alot - and on the strength of this song alone I don’t really blame them. Some claim they are the best Irish band of the era. I unfortunately can’t tell you about every single person involved in the band for the very good reason that I have no idea who most of them actually are, but two people have certainly emerged smiling eagerly from the ashes :

a) Their drummer is a chap called Mark Sheppard - who has also played drums for Robyn Hitchcock and Television Personalities in his time. He has since given up drumming however, has moved to Los Angeles and become an actor - seen most recently with Michelle Ryan in Bionic Woman:

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

b) The singer and songwriter in Light A Big Fire is one Thomas McLaughlin and he is now a playwright - although he also composes music for theatre, rather poshly is a board member of the Irish Playwrights and Screenwriters Guild and, just like Mark, has even been known to tread the boards himself :

http://www.irishplayography.com/search/person.asp?PersonID=1695

Incidentally his play The Way The Buffalo Went looks really rather fabulous, based as it is on the life of a lady called Sarah Winchester. Just read this fascinating blurb… she was the

“widow of the inventor of the Winchester repeating rifle which played a leading role in the annihilation of Native Americans. Following her husband’s death, Sarah’s guilt drove her to a medium who advised her to protect herself by always living in a remote house that was always in a state of construction. When she died thirty years later, Sarah Winchester left behind a house containing 160 rooms, 10,000 windows, 467 doors, 47 fireplaces, 40 staircases, 6 kitchens and 3 lifts.”

Want to see the ridiculously large house ?

http://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/press.html

Want to see the ridiculously large factory where the guns were made ?

http://www.winchestercollector.org/guns/w-history.shtml

Can You Tell Me About Beating Up The Coloureds And Beating Up The Queers Of Northern Ireland Please ?

Errr… kind of…

I would recommend a quick squizz at Divided Society - Ethnic Minorities and Racism in Northern Ireland :

http://tinyurl.com/5ztyrs

which is very interesting as it essentially suggests that because of that whole Catholic/Protestant stuff any other religious/ethnic minority rarely gets a look in - and, when you’ve read that… why not note that, in 1999 at least, gay men in Ulster were 30 times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual counterparts mainly due to bullying :

http://news.ulster.ac.uk/releases/1999/168.html

whilst homophobic attacks in Northern Ireland apparently doubled in 2004 :

http://tinyurl.com/5ouoz7

All of which isn’t - I will admit - exactly uplifting reading.

I Am A Bit Depressed Now. Can You Tell Me About Some Fantastic Ways To Light A Big Fire Of My Own ?

I would recommend undertaking such an exciting endeavour with either just a Coke Can and some chocolate for company… or a 9 volt battery and some steel wool :

http://tinyurl.com/4jaqd8

Which all looks rather fun.

Any Big Conclusion To Relight My Fire With ?

Yes.

This song is one of three live recordings on this record and, seeing as it was the bit of a package that was supposed to be free with something else, no real one song is the A side as such. I chose Tommy’s Got A Good Job because frankly, it is obviously utterly brilliant - despite the inherent scratchiness. After all, a little bit scratchy is precisely what I would be feeling like if I had been lying naked in a box for twenty years too… so I can feel it’s pain.

If you want to hear the original version of this song then follow the next link - I warn you though after hearing the superfast rough and tumbly live version, then the slightly slower Official Studio Version can seem a little too polite in comparison :

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

Still, you might get a chance to see it live for real soon… as there are nine Light A Big Fire songs to listen too at Youtube - and a comment left at one of them by somebody who claims to know, says an imminent reformation is due… in November.

So this is our bread today, but that maybe our jam tomorrow.

Money Update

Cost - 8 pence
Current Value - An orphaned record with no sleeve that was supposed to free and attached to another bit which I never had ? You’ve guessed it…Minus 8 pence.
Current Profit - 195 pounds and 68 pence. Definitely not a good job.

Supporting Cast Update : Television Personalities; Hitchcock, Robyn

‘Where three balalaika players meet, the fourth one ought to be a communist.’
Vladimir Lenin

‘Where three communists meet, the fourth one ought to be a guitar player.’
Woody Guthrie

‘We are in… united state,’ this record asserts in its chorus – and the importance of the exact phrasing of this seemingly innocent sentence cannot be overstated.

For it is not saying we are in a united state, in the same way that we obviously all live in a mindbogglingly large and very possibly invisible yellow submarine. No, it is more subtle than that - as there is no ‘a’ as a prefix – which rather worrying for The Lift means that we are in… united state in the same way that we are in… deep shit.

Are We In… Deep Shit ?

We are certainly in some really weird shit, as this record starts off sounding like a drunken ‘A’ level politics student doing his best ABC impression at an end of term party in an increasingly shrieky attempt to impress the girls… and then ends up wanting to be that one crossover record ravers request at 4:50 in the morning when both their E and the sun is rising.

Does It Make You Feel Lift-ed ?

Not really.

The problem here is this is a song which concerns itself with the possibility of us all being in some sort of theoretical united state which we may wish to try and experience at some point in some sort of theoretical future, and it therefore follows that this is categorically not a song designed to create the atmosphere necessary to actually put us in some sort of united state in the first place - whether socialist or hedonistic, and as such it kind of misses the point.

Indeed, after all the initial excitement at the beginning where we take it in turns to try and figure out exactly which bit is the chorus, I suspect the only united state we all as listeners will commonly attest to is one of vague detached bewilderment as we desperately reach for a calming and reassuring glass of chardonnay.

What Sort Of Song Is United State ?

Any perceived failure however should be tempered by the fact that The Lift have attempted to write that most tricky of tunes, the we-are-song and pretty much all attempts at such an endeavour usually end in abject and totally embarrassing we-are-most-definitely-not type failure.

When Rod Stewart, for example, tries to convince us that no matter how landlocked our lives may appear to be geographically and/or socially we are actually in a very deep sense always metaphorically sailing home across the metaphorical sea, the only response most sensible music lovers feel is a desire to very sensibly metaphorically vomit overboard.

Were The Lift Shaft-ed ?

Well this song wasn’t a hit if that’s what you mean, and – in a shocking turn of events - if you listen very carefully you will note that so unsuccessful was this song the snare drum used within it is actually a sample of the single gunshot fired by Magnet record executives into the head of the man that signed them.

This disturbing fact however is quite literally just about all I can tell you, as nobody has this successfully jumped off the planet never to be seen or heard of again since the dark days when Level 42 jammed with Scott Walker, Death and the ever lovable… Steve Carlton.

In quite a pleasing episode though, this does at least mean that both members of The Lift are currently in a very united state indeed – even if it is only the United State Of Total Disappearance.

Oh Well. Have You Found Any Other Interesting Lifts Instead ?

I certainly have.

Here are pictures of some of the world’s most amazing lifts, as well as a few videos of people travelling inside them. Please take a peek, as just the look of some of them may well make you poo your pants a little :

http://deputy-dog.com/2007/10/02/interesting-elevators

Meanwhile, here is one interesting lift the above link doesn’t mention - at a place called the Dom Aquaree in Berlin. Brilliantly, it takes you right through the middle of a stupidly large indoor aquarium :

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrys/63665332

And if you think that’s odd, how about this for an idea : The Space Elevator. I must state here that this truly is a Very Serious Project and is in no way taking the piss…

“For a space elevator to function, a cable with one end attached to the Earth’s surface stretches upwards, reaching beyond geosynchronous orbit, at 21,700 miles (35,000-kilometer altitude). After that, simple physics takes charge…”

http://tinyurl.com/12v2

Is There Something You Probably Shouldn’t Mention But Just Can’t Help Yourself ?

Yes.

The B-side of this song is called L.I.F.T. - and here it is :

After enjoying United State please play this and stick with it until you at least hear the ‘If music be the food of love…’ bit, because that scary eyed chap on the front cover who I am presuming is the vocalist - and who is stamping his heels on the heads of the general populace below him as if to show what would really happen to you and I in any so-called united state if he ever got even the slightest whiff of power - does

a) A few overrexcited raps

b) One or two manly Huh’s for good measure, and

c) Despite the fact he probably hails from a small village in Wiltshire or somesuch, he does both a) and b)… in a not very close approximation of an American accent.

This horror is made all the more poignant as, in a sad echo of the A side’s fatality, the snare drum used within this B-side isn’t actually a sample at all - but is the sound of a gun being passed around Magnet record executives as they slowly shoot themselves in the head.

One. By. One.

Money Update

Cost : 8 pence

Current Value : 1 pound and 15 pence. We are in… solvent.

Current Profit : 194 uplifting pounds and 79 united pennies. Not a bad state to be in.

Supporting Cast Update : ABC; Stewart, Rod; Guthrie, Woody; Lenin, Vladimir

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

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

As opening lines go, ‘Mum and Dad and Danny saw the passing out parade at Puckapunyal’ isn’t exactly the catchiest.

But then this isn’t trying to be the catchiest song in the world, deciding instead to make a pretty decent stab at being The Most Bloody Serious. Now I can see no reason why, like the still surprisingly muscular Two Tribes before it, a song about the futility of war can’t be both stupidly catchy and brilliantly serious - but any possibility of this occurring is quickly blown out of the water like an unlucky soldier in an ambush, thanks to the vocalist having the unnerving bad habit of repeatedly indulging in Very Oversincere Talky Bits.

I must point out that I have nothing against Very Oversincere Talky Bits per se - the intro of It’s Raining Men where The Weather Girls explain what unlikely but really rather spectacular news they have to impart is a particularly fine example - but with Redgum it is a little disconcerting to hear the singer successfully plaster a melody onto that unnecessarily overcomplicated first line, only to then apparently give up searching for any other discernible tune to go with it and start Oversincerely Talking by the second line of the entire song.

Indeed, such is the devastating non-impact of this Singy then Talky situation, if you are vaguely distracted when the song begins you would be forgiven for absentmindedly daydreaming a particularly mellow DFS radio advert over the top of it :

‘ (singy) Mum and Dad and Danny went to DFS today to buy a sofa
(talky) Sale now on… open 9 ’til 6…’

What’s The Funniest Bit ?

When he sings, “Then someone yelled out ‘Contact’ … and the bloke behind me swore” as if swearing in a war zone with the constant threat of a pointless and painful death forever surrounding you in the stinking filth of your existence is kind of rare, and this instance of it is therefore worth highlighting. One can only assume that each time someone yelled out ‘Contact’ previously, the bloke behind him just emitted a slightly camp “Oh piddly twiddley widdlesticks.”

Of Which Lyric Is He Most Proud ?

He’s pretty bloody proud of all of it - although you get the feeling that when he wrote the line “Frankie kicked a mine the day that mankind kicked the moon”, he probably had to go for a quick lie down on the sofa with some particularly strokable cats - so overcome was he by the literary juxtapositional excitement of it all.

Unfortunately he still manages to cock this bit up though by throwing in yet another Oversincere Talky Bit immediately after it - mumbling ‘He was going home in June…’ in a voice so quiet and deadpan it sounds like he is in the corner of a pub with his mates, and this is the whispered offensively filthy punchline to the dirtiest joke in the world.

Tell Me About The Redgum Tree

The Redgum is a eucalyptus tree prevalent in Australia and famous for it’s honey. Interestingly, the eucalyptus species used to have petals coyly covering the parts of it that required pollination - but then dispensed with them ages ago in the name of evolution and now relies purely on it’s uncovered colourful sex organs alone to attract bees to it. Despite this now rather blatant sex show, the name ‘eucalyptus’ derives from the latin for ‘well covered’ - which means that when this name was conceived it either still had petals dangling rather enticingly over it’s privates, which seems a bit unlikely, or somehow people knew that it definitely used to.

Just as interestingly, the name of the eminently shaggable but sadly mythological greek nymph Calypso has exactly the same derivation (in this case ‘I Will Conceal’) and she thus has the same heady mix of beauty, sexuality and concealment. The difference here though is that Calypso had to cover up her sex organs for the sole reason that she was a woman and if she didn’t, the myth rather misogynistically seems to suggest, she would be asking for it - the dirty minx.

Anyway, these aforementioned Red Gum tree sex organs certainly are a very nice colour and the wood therefore makes some very sexy furniture.

Tell Me About The Redgum Song

To understand it’s full argument we must now visit another myth - not of Calypso but of The ANZAC. Essentially, in 1914 as part of the first world war, the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) were sent on a mission to Gallipoli. Unfortunately it all went utterly wrong and ended in defeat. It is widely acknowledged though that this defeat was a pivotal moment in Australian history giving rise to the first feelings of true independent nationhood.

From here the ANZAC myth grew to become an aspirational masculine stereotype for Australian men as whole - involving an extreme masculine physical beauty, nobility of bearing and a bonding with each other known rather Neighboursly as ‘mateship’.

http://www.awm.gov.au/dawn/empire/index.asp

http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/stories/s281903.htm

So important was this shift in Australian culture, the landing date of the Gallipoli mission is celebrated each year with the laying of wreaths, the playing of the last post and - most importantly of course - everyone gets the day off :

http://www.awm.gov.au/commemoration/anzac/anzac_tradition.htm

Meanwhile, what does Turkey do when all this is happening on the same day ? They do what any sensible country who won the actual battle would do, and have a nice game of tennis instead :

http://www.anzaclegendscup.com/

‘I Was Only 19′ blames a desire by Australian men to believe the ANZAC myth as the reason why people sign up to the army all these years later, including in this instance the Vietnam war, claiming it mythologises the war process as far away as possible from the grim reality of actually doing unproductive things like getting your legs blown off or shooting other people in the head.

It is based on the true story of the Battle of Long Tan in Vietnam as told to John Schumann (the singer and lyricist) by his brother-in-law, Mick Storen. Pretty much every detail of the lyrics are factually correct from the mention of Puckapanyal and Vung Tau, to the Grand Hotel where soldiers used to unwind of an evening before popping out to shoot a few more people on the following day.

There are photos of the Nui Dat battle taken by somebody who presumably really should have been shooting people instead, here.

Incidentally, it seems I may the only person who finds that line about ‘contact’ and somebody uncharacteristically swearing vaguely amusing - as this very quote is included on a memorial to all the Australians who died at the Battle Of Long Tan on a Wall Of Words in Canberra :

http://www.vietvet.org/aussimem.htm

Does That Make You Feel Slightly Guilty ?

Possibly, but it seems I will never feel as guilty as a chap called Dr Richard Gatling presumably did. He invented the world’s first multi barrel machine gun in 1861 - and his design is still the basis of all machine guns used today.

Why would Richard feel so guilty ? Because the only reason this peace loving baptist invented it in the first place was because he was absolutely convinced people would be so utterly repelled by the carnage and horror his weapon would create, war would become unthinkable and peace on earth would inevitably reign.

Ooops.

Tell Me About The Redgum Band

John Schumann, Michael Atkinson and Verity Truman met on a Politics and Art course in 1975 in Adelaide and were asked by their tutor to contribute to a music project. So incredibly amazed were they all by the genius outcome, the band was born.

It may not surprise you to learn they were all active members of the anti-war movement, and their politicised brand of folk went on to become Very Seriously successful in their native Australia - this song was a number 1 there - until John left the same year this song was released and it disbanded soon afterwards.

http://www.geocities.com/redgum_music/

John initally tried his hand at politics but then went onto become Very Seriously revered as a solo artist, and is about to release an album of Australian songs “either directly or indirectly related to Australian’s at war” with a bloke from Midnight Oil :

http://www.schumann.com.au/john/news.html

Verity now works in local government using a mystery new married name so is currently untraceable, whilst Michael writes music for film and television. If you are a Very Serious Redgum Fan and therefore demand a much more in depth Very Serious Redgum Update, click here.

Finally, what did John Very Seriously describe as “… just not very useful; in fact it’s counterproductive in the final analysis” ?

Yep… INXS.

Money Update

Cost : 8 pence

Current Value : This has a different B-side to the Australian Big Hit version, and is thus worth slightly more : 2 pounds and 96 pence. It doesn’t, however, spin in the opposite direction which is a shame.

Current Profit : 162 pounds and 29 pence. Want to know how poor old Richard’s machine guns work ? http://science.howstuffworks.com/machine-gun4.htm

Supporting Cast Update : Weather Girls, The ; Midnight Oil; INXS