I Am Not The Beatles

 

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

Barrington Levy is having a bit of a struggle.

With what ?

His complaints are many and various, but he appears to be mostly struggling with being able to find enough relevant words to pad out 4 minutes and 42 seconds of music. Indeed, so much of a struggle is it that - despite his numerous claims that he’ll never give up - he soon does exactly this when he resorts to enunciating a series of Wop Diddle Dee Doo Bops within just 45 seconds of the song starting, and then repeating them with increasingly alarming regularity throughout.

This is an overcompensation from which Barrington sadly never quite recovers, as around the 3 minute mark he even starts struggling with his ability to be able to that successfully and starts to trip over his own Diddles - which is a messy experience at the best of times.

Maybe he is just a bit stressed ?

He is certainly that alright and for very good reason - as he woke up this morning to make the frankly disturbing discovery that he had run out of tea.

Bloody Hell.

And terrifying though this thought is for just about anybody to contemplate, Barrington has an added complication…

I get the feeling I am going to struggle to believe this…

… and this is that Barrington is capable of perceiving both the past and the future simultaneously - thus making his present moment a rather uncertain one.

Unbelevyable!

This is evidenced in the first verse where he claims that he is currently able to recall both waking up this morning and waking up tomorrow - and this confusion makes any presumptions about any perceived tea or lack thereof laughably difficult to pinpoint. After all he may not have any tea right now, but what if he has already bought some in the future thus making any quick trip to the shops wholly redundant?

Faced with such a chronological conundrum Barrington thus chooses the only sensible solution available to him… and very wisely struggles back to bed to moan about some other things instead.

What Else Does Barrington Moan About ?

Shitloads.

Everything from the fact that he is currently the owner of only one half of a pair of shoes, to the rather strange complaint that he considers himself morally incapable of being a thief. Odd though this latter moan is, the one I must take issue with is where he states that he finds it impossible to make love on a hungry belly.

This must surely be very much in doubt - as I can promise you that if there is one thing men are most definitely capable of if they are given even the merest hint of any action, it is attempting to have sex with just about anybody… hungry belly or not.

Any Major Levylations As A Result Of This Record ?

Yes.

This song is an example of the dancehall genre which originated in the 1970’s in Jamaica.

Now, dancehall is, by its very nature, in existence to make you dance - very possibly in a hall if you’re lucky enough to be in one at the time - but some people take it very seriously indeed and blame it for both social deterioration and increased violence in the place of its birth.

Despite the fact that just about every musical genre has been accused of this at some point in its life so the answer is already blindingly obvious - ie it’s probably a bit more complicated than that - why not read this essay called “So wha, mi nuh fi live to?”: Interpreting Violence in Jamaica through the Dancehall Culture. It essentially argues that, if you are Jamaican, then both you and dancehall are products of the same culture and therefore both you and it are going to exhibit many of the same characteristics of each other.

With this in mind if you dislike dancehall for the reasons stated above, it suggests this is only because you recognise secreted parts of yourself within it and it is thus probably a good idea if you swallow your pride, initiate some sort of group hug, chuck some on the stereo anyway and have a bloody good dance to forget about it all.

A bit like the plot to Footloose then, but with longer words :

http://www.ragashanti.com/articles/Ideaz.pdf

Anyway Barrington himself, like Jean Beauvoir before him, was an early musical developer - releasing his first single under the pseudonym Mighty Multitide when he was just 13 years old. It would then take him just another 7 years or so to become the biggest star in the country at a stupidly young age, is still huge today and is seen as a massive influence to many :

http://www.barringtonlevy.com/

http://springlinejamaica.blogspot.com/2008/09/barrington-levy.html

Interestingly, the second link above tells us a tale about the way record companies view their relevant markets and how this naivety can directly impact upon what becomes popular - as at one point Barrington recorded an album where he collaborated with other people. In the UK this was released with the slightly edgy title of ‘Barrington Levy’s DJ Counteraction’ and it did reasonably well. In the US however they took one at at, didn’t really understand the title, then panicked a bit before finally deciding to tamely downgrade it to … ‘Duets’.

And how did it do there ?

Yep : It struggled.

Can Barrington Levy Really See Into The Future ?

Yes.

But only because, if Professor Mark Changizi is to be believed, then we all do this all the time - as we are all forever seeing about one tenth of a second into the future and predicting what will happen. This is, he claims, where hallucinations (such as ghosts) come from where our predicted future doesn’t match up with the reality of it :

http://www.impactlab.com/2008/05/18/humans-can-see-into-the-future/

Fascinating though that is, others believe they will soon be able to prove beyond all doubt that we all most definitely have a fully developed sixth sense that can do so so much more.

Important I Am Not The Beatles Warning

The following article contains the potentially deadly cocktail of words ‘paranormal researchers’ and ‘The Daily Mail’ :

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-452833/Is-REALLY-proof-man-future.html

Money Update

Cost : 8 pence
Current Value : Barrington may well be struggling with lots of stuff, but his second hand market is certainly buoyant - 5 pounds and 35 pence - which puts him in 9th place and sandwiches him between Sudden Sway and Luba value-wise.
Current Profit : 232 pounds and 26 pence. Want to hear a bit more Barrington ? Here is the very lovely You Have Caught Me :

And if you like that, why not pop off to Amazon to buy his Greatest Hits ?

http://www.amazon.com/Too-Experienced-Best-Barrington-Levy/dp/B00000E9KP

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

“John Moore : musician. Searching for a way to tap into the hidden strengths that all humans have via the medium of popular music. Then an accidental overdose of gamma radiation from a particularly orange light bulb in the photographers studio alters his body chemistry. And now when John Moore grows angry or outraged, a startling metamorphosis occurs… “

Spoken word intro to The Incredible John (TV Series)

If the hot new date you’ve rather rashly just jumped into bed with decides to unexpectedly announce the onslaught of their impending orgasm by suddenly pausing mid-thrust to put their shades on and sneer ‘Welcome To The Resurrection’ over your shoulder, before then thrashing around wildly inside you not entirely unlike The Lord moving in a very mysterious way - you would perhaps be a tad concerned.

If, in those usually blissful post-coital moments, they then proceed to repeatedly prod you uncomfortably in the buttocks with their guitar, angrily demanding to know ‘Where Do You Think You’re From These Days?’ in a way that suggests they believe the question actually makes any form of sense - you would certainly have the right to end your ‘concern’ and move it up a level to ‘more than just a little uneasy’.

When your terrified muted responses finally enrage them enough so that, like some sort of Nu Rave influenced Incredible Hulk, their skin turns a luminous dayglo orange and they trash your room screaming ‘I’m Out Of My Mind Thinking Only Of You’ whilst vomiting each and every time they reach the end of the phrase - it seems certainly possible you could reach the conclusion that your date selection techniques need a rather radical overhaul.

Oddly however this is precisely the situation which occurs in what can quite literally be described as the climax of this song, as Out Of My Mind is very cleverly designed to mimic the ups and downs of the sex act John Moore so desperately wants to indulge in up your Expressway - at least I am presuming that is what he is referring to when he quietly asks in the second verse if it may possible for him to make love to you in an exotic location.

What’s The Oddest Line ?

In verse one he asks you for some love and affection before adding quite bizarrely that he don’t care where you got it from, as if to suggest that what would really turn him on would be for you to whip out a dildo from under the bed and present it to him with the words “It’s my mother’s…”

I’m Going Out Of My Mind! Tell Me About John!

John’s first success was when he joined Jesus and Mary Chain in 1985 and took over from Bobby Gillespie, soon to be of Primal Scream fame, as the drummer. He stayed with the band for two years, yet oddly only ever played the drums on one actual recorded track - Some Candy Talking. This appears to be because Jesus and Mary Chain preferred to use a drum machine both on recordings and when playing live which, apart from making you perhaps wonder why they actually bothered employing any drummers in the first place, meant that John often got to play rhythm guitar with them instead… despite, rather confusingly, still being referred to as the drummer.

Presumably figuring that if he was going to play the bloody guitar anyway then he may as well at least be in a different band that recognised such things, he thus left in 1987.

Tell Me Moore! Tell Me Moore! Did He Get Very Far ?

Yes he did, eventually.

He released two albums with John Moore and The Expressway over the course of a few years, then a band called Revolution 9 and finally - perhaps most famously - Black Box Recorder with Luke Haines.

Intriguingly he is also apparently well known these days for his rather marvellous talent of playing the saw - and has actually done so on two albums for a band called Art Brut - and also for making shedloads of money when he became the main importer of Absinthe after setting up a company with The Idler magazine to do so.

He seems tremendously nice by the way - and a bit posh these days too, as he currently writes for The Guardian

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/arts/author/john_moore/profile.html

has written a novel called Bad Light and once even appeared on University Challenge - where it seems he was obviously getting a bit wound up by Jeremy Paxman’s ever intimidating presence, as he started to turn a rather alarming shade of orange before the show even began :

http://www.john-moore.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/lineup.jpg

Want to know more about Moore ?

http://www.john-moore.net

If you want to hear yet even more Moore then, in one of those I Am Not The Beatles coincidences we haven’t had for a while, he released an album called Floral Tributes - a collection of unreleased songs from the past 16 years- just four weeks ago :

www.myspace.com/johnmoore23

You can tell he’s obviously lovely as he describes his genre as ‘Melodramatic Popular Song’, which is about right.

Oh, and want to read what he thought about Jesus and Mary Chain performing a gig with Scarlett Johansson last year?

http://tinyurl.com/29hew2

Does Everyone Agree That John Moore Seems Tremendously Nice?

No.

In 2005 he wrote this about Morrissey on his blog :

“…there is something amusing about seeing the once Charming Man, now with a face like a sack of marshmallows, at heart attack age, cavorting on a stage borrowed from the Elvis 68 Comeback Special and probably wearing some kind of girdle or corset”.

Now, this comment didn’t make lots of Unfeasibly Serious Morrissey Fans over at Morrissey Solo particularly happy so they planned to storm his forum with fury - only they never quite got around to it as the conversation very quickly disintegrated into a discussion over exactly what make and model of corset John could possibly be referring to.

Beyond this, the best response was from a person who took it all very very personally…

“I was introduced to John Moore once at a Libertines gig in London- I told him how much I loved JAMC, but the only thing he said in response was that he thought I looked like the token “indie” guy who was on Fame Academy a few years ago (hopefully someone will remember the guy, the really annoying idiot with stupid hair!)- pretty insulting, especially as he said it in a voice completely devoid of irony or humour. He actually meant it and I suspect meant it to annoy me as well! Needless to say I didn’t talk to the miserable fool after… “

So how does this chap, who we must sincerely hope isn’t actually an annoying token indie idiot with stupid hair, now feel about John after this devastating and unprovoked attack on his own personal style and lack thereof ?

“He really is a chump.”

And this blatantly obvious understatement of his true bruised and broken feelings is, in retrospect, probably just as well - after all, if there is one thing we have learnt today…. he doesn’t want to make John angry.

He really wouldn’t like him when he’s angry.

Money Update

Cost : 8 pence

Current Value : One exceedingly optimistic French outlet is asking for 136 pounds for a copy of this record - they must be out of their minds. 2 pounds and 85 pence.

Current Profit : 193 pounds and 72 pence. Want to watch the video? He’s wearing quite nice lipstick if it helps :

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

Supporting Cast Update : Haines, Luke; Paxman, Jeremy; Gillespie, Bobby; Jesus and Mary Chain; Art Brut; Johansson, Scarlett

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…

You would never guess it from her confident smile and brave choice of black jacket, but Suze De Marchi has a very severe dandruff problem. If you take a close look at the front cover you will see the telltale sign as, when Head and Shoulders just isn’t enough, your GP will often advise you to wear what are known in Pityriasistic circles as Dandruff Dusters.

These simple yet effective gadgets attach to your ears and operate with a subtle shake of the human head. This slight movement first dislodges the dandruff from the scalp, allows it to fall delicately onto the shoulders… then almost imperceptibly the Dandruff Dusters brush it neatly onto the floor - all in one swift and simple movement.

Suze is going to be doing alot of this subtle head shaking over the next few days, as dandruff can be annoying at the best of times - but it is doubly irritating when you’ve got a Big Wednesday coming up.

Ooooh. What’s happening on Wednesday ?

You’re going to die.

I’m going to die and all Suze De Marchi’s worried about is her dandruff ?

Well, she wants to look her best for the occasion doesn’t she ?

Selfish bloody cow.

Look, before you start getting overexcited about it all, you should probably be aware that it’s not just you who is going to die - it’s everyone, Suze included. We are all going to die. On Wednesday.

Well if that’s true, that really is a rather Big Wednesday.

Exactly.

You see, according to death predictor Suze, Wednesday may well turn up as usual, but that ever meddling Doomsday is going to get in the way and ruin it all for everybody. So taking all things into full consideration, you should probably expect to be dead by somewhere around Wednesday teatime.

Bugger. Is there anything I can do to stop this ?

Suze does suggest you may want to try and create a little love with her. Be careful though, you had better get the fuck out of her face once the special coital event is over… she does need some room to breathe after all, you great big bloody obsessive.

Right. So will having casual sex with Suze De Marchi actually help ?

Errr… no, unfortunately not. It’s a shame but everything that could have been done has already been done, so this is ultimately just a way of getting nicely fucked before you are both completely and utterly fucked on Wednesday - I think she just thought it might help pass the time.

She is a sexually confident woman is Suze so you’ll probably enjoy it, as she even quite helpfully informs you of precisely how she would like the sex to be : telling you to just, well… hold it there.

That’s not really how sex works in my experience…

I would do it her way and not argue if I were you - as in the second verse she also explains that in her life each time she ever puts a foot out of line it always gets broken in two… so I suspect she would be expecting a reasonably similar punishment for you if you do the same.

Hang on a moment, can I get this straight ? Suze De Marchi is demanding I sleep with her and then leave immediately afterwards or she will, rather unreasonably in my opinion, break one of my feet… and either way I’ll be dead by Wednesday ?

Yes. That’s about the size of it.

Bloody hell. Doesn’t she know who I am ?

She certainly does and she’s not impressed… but even if she was there is no diplomatic immunity when it comes to Doomsday I am afraid.

Well I would rather die without any painful broken limbs just adding to the final existential agony if remotely possible, so I suppose I had better get on with it. Also, I guess that if all she is expecting from the sexual act is for me to just hold it there, I will probably still actually be there on Wednesday anyway - and there must be worse places to be hanging around in whilst facing your imminent and ever impending death than Suze De Marchi’s vagina.

Good decision.

Watch out for those Dandruff Dusters though, the last thing you want is to die before Wednesday - slowly suffocated by the endless amounts of skin being flung towards your nostrils as she shakes her head at you, faking orgasms.

Thanks for the advice. I’ll bring a snorkel.

This Song If It Were An REM Song Title ?

It’s The End Of The World As We Know It, Let’s Have Sex

This Song In One Made Up Word ?

Deathshag.

Was Big Wednesday … errr… Big ?

No, not remotely apparently - anywhere.

Suze is Australian and, just like Nick Cave before her, decided that the London music scene was a much more happening affair… so moved there. Nick Cave went on to release songs like Release The Bats - a darkly comic song about releasing a substance that definitely does not contain bats, and soon became very famous indeed.

Suze whilst in London on the other hand released three singles - including this highly polished one about sex and death - and then… buggered off back to Australia again.

http://members.aol.com/babyarocks/SuzeDiscsR.html

In all fairness, her song isn’t really helped by the ever shiny production plastered onto it by the equally shiny and lovely Simon Climie - as he does seem to make the entire process of shagging seem far too… well… shiny and not remotely squealchy enough. Despite this lack of squealch factor however, someone was tempted to just hold it there with Suze - as it seems that at the exact moment Suze recorded this song, she was actually dating… Gavin Rossdale.

This Song Is Produced By Simon Climie ! Does That Mean It Is Connected To Any Other Records Here ?

No, not really.

If I was desperate, however, I would point out that one member of the very brilliant Bang looks a bit like Simon Climie, and would ask you to pop off there and give their totally superb record another listen.

It’s a tenuous link though to say the least.

Can You Tell Me Something Extremely Interesting About Suze ?

I can.

Rather like David Icke, Suze’s constant predictions of Doomsday haven’t - as yet - ever manifested themselves. But this is just as well as far as she is concerned, as after she moved back to Australia she formed a hugely successful band called Baby Animals and is now officially totally loaded.

Baby Animals were massive in their native land. Their debut album went 8 times platinum there, Nuno Bettencourt of - ahem - Extreme wrote a few songs with them for their second album (before he and Suze eventually married), and all members of Baby Animals also went on to play on Nuno’s first solo album called Schizophonic. Also, Suze was the first ever female Australian musician to be put on the cover of Australian Rolling Stone magazine and was one of the inaugural inductees in the West Australian Music Industry Awards Hall Of Fame.

All in all she is, basically, held in Very High Regard Indeed.

Baby Animals eventually split up in 1996 but, guess what? Yes, like the many millions before them …. they’ve only gone and bloody well reformed :

http://www.thebabyanimals.com/

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

Want to read a rather overexcitable interview with Suze which includes lots of unnecessary CAPITAL LETTERS ?

http://www.rockwired.com/rockwired_interviews_the_baby_animals.html

That’s All Very Interesting And Everything, But Can I Look At Some Real Baby Animals Now Please ?

You certainly can :

http://www.babyanimalz.com/

And yes, I know this record isn’t remotely Connected To Swing Out Sister, but may I recommend the hedgehog ?

http://www.babyanimalz.com/images3/baby_igel.jpg

Money Update

Cost : 8 pence

Current Value : If I owned a piece of music from yet another film I’ve never seen called Big Wednesday written by the superbly named Basil Poledouris, I’d apparently be up nearly 20 quid. As it is though Wednesday itself may be big, but the price most definitely isn’t : 2 pounds and 2 little pennies.

Current Profit : 175 pounds and 61 pence.

Incidentally, if there are any major fans of poor old dandruff afflicted Suze reading this then, yes, I am totally aware that she now spells her surname with no space - DeMarchi. But, if you look at the back cover of this record, she didn’t then… OK ? This may seem a trifle defensive of me, but the last time I reviewed a record by an Australian I got called a fuckwit, and I am a sensitive soul so I don’t really want it to happen again.

Supporting Cast Update : REM ; Cave, Nick ; Bettencourt, Nuno ; Icke, David ; Climie, Simon ; Rossdale, Gavin

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

Well, this is exciting. We haven’t received a record sleeve communiqué since the dark days of Nazz Nasko’s gap ridden reggae monstrosity, ‘No More’.

If you were perplexed by Nazz’s insistence that you were more likely to be seduced by his lolloping charms if he emblazoned the phrase ‘Remix By Froggy’ across himself - despite the fact that

a) It didn’t appear to be a remix, and
b) You had no idea who ‘Froggy’ actually was -

then the hastily stuck sticker on Willy’s record which proudly proclaims this to be the ‘Theme From The Gateway Stores Television Commercial’ is likely to leave you feeling faintly giggly.

Willy doesn’t let your coy smile affect his performance however and turns in an optimistic, if hungover, vocal.

‘Beyond the blue horizon,’ Willy groans - watching the seagulls circle above him as he throws an empty whisky bottle into his recycling box - ‘ waits a beautiful day…’

Now, although it is lovely to hear Willy being so cheerful of a morning despite his headache, I feel it is my moral duty to point out that not all blue horizon’s actually do bring the beautiful day he is so merrily trying to describe.

The last time I saw a blue horizon, for example, was out the corner of my eye when I was 9 years old. It was a metallic blue Talbot Horizon being driven by my uncle, and it was about 2 milliseconds away from knocking me unconcious in the middle of the road just outside of my parents house.

In this case, the blue horizon lead less to a ‘beautiful day’ and more to a ‘fucking painful evening’, followed by ‘a really rather miserable couple of months.’

Is Willy’s Song Any Good ?

It is rather like a family shopping trip to the now defunct supermarket chain this record is advertising : largely uneventful.

Where’s Willy Now ?

Errr… this is where our story plunges rapidly from ‘exciting’ to ‘deeply worrying’ as - in an apparently determined attempt to rub ever larger pieces of salt into the newly remembered broken limbs of my pre-teen self - Willy is currently in an outfit called ‘Willy Finlayson… and The Hurters’ :

http://willyfinlayson.com/

Willy seems very well respected and has played with such people as Jools Holland and Manfred Mann’s Earthband in the past - but nothing can take my mind away from the fact that, with this record and his current choice of bandname, he is quite blatantly taking the piss out of my own misfortune.

Aren’t You Taking This All Rather Personally ?

No.

In fact the more I think about it, the more I realise this song is quite plainly part of some sort of Terminator style conspiracy organised by my Uncle, who has obviously travelled through time in order to place this very particular record into my box. Why he would do this though I am not entirely sure. Am I destined to save the planet via the admittedly odd medium of written descriptions of inter-familial car accidents ?

Even more worryingly, will the next record also have been placed there by someone from the future - but this time by my uncle’s Evil Equivalent with the sole intention of it trying to kill me ?

I, and I am sure you, await the next record with much trepidation.

On the off-chance that you’re right and you are murdered by the next song before you get a chance to write about it, do you have an interesting fact about this record to sign off with ?

Thank you for your concern, and yes I do.

This record was produced by a chap called John Altman - the same man who produced the Not Entirely Dissimilar Now I Come To Think About It ‘Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life’.

He did loads of Monty Python stuff and then went on to become terrifyingly successful working with people like George Michael and Diana Ross to name a few. Coincidentally, he also arranged, conducted and produced Aled Jones’ ‘Walking In The Air’ - this (mixed with the fact that he has also played with Jools) means this song is oddly connected with Hugh’s.

http://www.jazzcds.co.uk/artist_id_8/biography_id_8

Money Update

Cost: 8 pence

Current Value : 1 pound and 70 pence. Beyond the blue horizon lies a profit, of sorts.

Current Profit : 145 pounds and 32 pence. Incidentally, to my knowledge Jimi Hendrix never drove a Talbot Horizon - but if he did I am sure he would have described it as… ‘boxy’ :

http://www.simcatalbotclub.org/tcar2.jpg

Supporting Cast Update : Mann, Manfred ; Jones, Aled