I Am Not The Beatles

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This man has either the widest shoulders in the world – or the tiniest waist.

He certainly has cheekbones that could cut diamonds, and an evil stare that seems to be designed purely to put the shits up Superman. We must presume that his body has been taken over by demons to create that most terrifying of things : Evil Hernandez.

Musically it’s quite an evil beast too - the worst kind of summer holiday soft reggae. It is one of those records that tries really really hard to be a success with its seemingly inoffensive bounciness, then makes the mistake of just trying too damn hard. All those funny noises and orchestra hits designed to create excitement… can grate. If this song was a contestant on a TV talent show, it would be one of those endlessly sobbing ones who, when asked why the audience at home should pick up the phone and vote for them, inevitably answer:

“Because I want it sooo much…” - as if that is any real answer to the question.

Evil Hernandez has also made this record just a few beats per minute slower than it really should be. This slightly slower pace guarantees that if you try dancing to this record, you’ll end up just aimlessly bobbing around the dancefloor like a 6 year old child stuck in a pedalo at Butlins. I am sure Evil Hernandez laughed his spotty shirt off at the prospect .

Then there is the lyrical darkness. Yes, you lucky bugger, Evil Hernandez will indeed give you all of his love - but there are certain preconditions…

They are :

a) When the world around you has fallen

b) When the one you loved has gone

c) When sorrow’s taken your tomorrow, and

d) When the sun shines on you no more

In other words he will only attempt such a manouvere when you are at your most emotionally vulnerable and more likely to put out.

This shows a complete lack of confidence on Evil Hernandez’s part. Why is he so fearful that he may be rejected in a non-Hernandez-manipulated situation? What is it that makes him so unsure of himself? We all know that evil masterminds have emotional and/or physical characteristics that drives them on to create more and more evil - and that it is this characteristic that somehow makes them feel removed from society. Makes them feel different.

It is here we take another look at the front cover, and notice that Evil Hernandez’s characteristic is very much physical : he has no arms.

Still, at least he’s not Nazz Nasko.

Where Is Hernandez ?

There are many…

There is a chap who hilariously calls himself ‘Hotstuff Hernandez’

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

but, thanks to a truly dreadful goatee / headscarf combination, is anything but ‘Hotstuff’.

This is not him.

There is also a singer called Marcos Hernandez

http://www.marcosonline.com/

If you click on ‘music’ at the above link, you can hear his songs and read his totally fascinating explanation concerning his song ‘ C About Me ‘. It is, apparently ‘a pick up line he uses when asking girls to come check him out’. So, go check him out. Girls.

This, unfortunately, is not him either.

Finally, why not take a peek at Horacio ‘El Negro’ Hernandez

http://www.elnegro.com/

who is ‘one of the most talented drummers in the world today’. It is a shame then that he has decided to show the world his truly undoubted talents by playing with… Stevie Winwood.

In other words we do not know, and will never know if Mr Nice Hernandez ever escaped the Evil One’s grip.

Money Update

Cost : 8 pence

Current Value : Well, after all the excitement that Prayin’ with Harold Melvin created, I don’t expect much. And…. I am right. A paltry 1 pound and 53 pence.

Current Profit : 60 pounds and three pence. It broke us through the sixty barrier, but at what cost to Mr Nice Hernandez’s soul?

EDIT: Hernandez Found! See ‘Corrections and Clarifications’

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“I’m not sayin’ I’m the Prayin’ kind…” Harold hollers authoritatively like a doddery old vicar standing in the pulpit who, despite having been told a million times that the microphone in front of him is actually on, doesn’t understand the technology and so still insists upon shouting at his congregation.

What happens next is strange…

Harold recites a reasonably exhaustive list of the 21 people he does actually pray for - which begs the question what kind of weird religious sect does Harold belong to where mentioning this many people in your prayers still does not really make you count yourself as “the Prayin’ kind ?” Do all the other members of his church all list more than 21 people in their prayers? That’s some pretty serious Professional Prayin’.

Before he launches into his list, he also makes the rather rash claim that he leaves “nobody out” in his prayers. If you’re Harold’s cousin this is the kind of statement that is likely to really to piss you off - as you don’t get a look in.

So who does he pray for ?

Well, first up are his immediate family members : his mother, father, sister and brother.

Then there are the more general categories. These, in no particular order, are : the old, the tired, the weak, the helpless, the lame, Indian chiefs ( I am presuming here that he didn’t mean to say ‘chefs’), the meek, the poor, the hungry, the tired, rich men, poor men, beggars, thieves, doctors, mutes and lawyers.

So if you’re a thief you’re alright – Harold’s Prayin’ for you - but if you’re an Estate Agent, you’re damned. Well, unless you are a meek or poor Estate Agent of course – but that doesn’t seem very likely.

My favourite one on the list though is ‘the tired’.

”Why can’t they sleep ?” he innocently enquires.

Believe me Harold, if you walk up to an insomniac at four in the morning and ask them that, you’re likely to get punched in the face.

Is it Any Good ?

Yeah, it’s alright I suppose – as long as you don’t mind being shouted at for three and half minutes over a half arsed musical approximation of Don’t Leave Me This Way.

Where Are They Now ?

The men with the very shiny foreheads are here :

http://www.aaeg.com/bluebio.htm

They are playing at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles on 21st July alongside The Stylistics, The Delfonics and The Three Degrees if you’re in the area. Prices start at £12.50.

Anyway, there is of course a bloody good reason why this remix sounds like Don’t Leave Me This Way.

Harold Melvin and The Blue Notes were the first band to record that song in 1975… and this remix of Prayin’ was released in the same year that The Communards also had an enormous hit with their rather fantastic version of Don’t Leave Me This Way - so this was presumably hastily remixed and then released to try and cash in.

Fascinatingly, that mention of the Communards in the last paragraph is Jimi Somerville’s third personal mention in the past four posts. God knows why.

I am obviously developing some sort of fetish and I think I need help – of the Prayin’ kind.

Money Update

Cost : 8 pence

Current Value : The best song on here by miles thus far, is lovely Sonya Grier’s fabulous Love Flight 109.

Quite rightly, it was also the most valuable too, clocking in at a rather magnificent 13 pounds and 17 pence. Well, sadly, it is not the most valuable anymore : The original version of Prayin’ released in 1979 is worth pretty much nothing, but I can only find two copies of this 1986 remix anywhere - apparently it is considered some sort of lost Northern Soul ‘classic’. The cheapest one is… brace yourselves… 14 pounds. This is just enough to buy myself Harold’s cheapest concert ticket - but not quite enough for the flight to LA.

Current Profit : 58 pounds and forty eight pence. We almost leapfrog the fifties with one athletic leap.

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Turquoise Blue are two inoffensively nice looking chaps : Brian Rydell on vocals and Michael Robinson on bass. What a line up, eh? Initial band rehearsals must have been the very essence of postmodern minimalism. Lets take a look at the back cover - which one is which do you think ? I could be wrong, but I reckon Brian’s the blonde be-quiffed one - he has that funny smile peculiar to vocalists down to perfection.

Songwise, their record is a fascinating surprise in just about every way.

Sure, there are better songs here, but this is certainly the most thoughtful… although I tell you now, the production really does its best to try and convince you otherwise. For a record supposedly mastered at Abbey Road, it’s all a bit of a mess - from the REALLY LOUD cheap electronic bass drum that should be about 25 times lower in the mix, to Brians initially unintelligable vocal - every part of this record takes time to love.

The intro kicks off this confusing process neatly, as it has almost nothing to do with the rest of it. One second you’re dreamily imagining a nice Bontempi-styled La Isla De Bonita then, before you know it, you are crashing into a song that bounces along like a badly produced Lloyd Cole and The Commotions on helium.

Brian’s sincere warbling comes over like a pigeon version of Lassie. “I think he’s trying to tell us something,” you want to say, “ but I can’t… quite… make it out. “

Stick with it though, after a good few listens you may find yourself utterly charmed by this song - this does come with the caveat that it took me 6 listens before it started to make any form of sense though…

“I used to think my life was planned”, begins Brian. I agree with this. So did I. It bloody isn’t though.

“Life should be like in my dreams”, he continues. I don’t agree with this bit at all. Either Brian has very boring dreams, or he is a tremendously sick individual - if my dream last night about Ozzy Osbourne and some giant chickens is anything to go by.

Then, after a strange Smiths-like allusion to “ladies hands who captained rugby football teams”, we get to the immediate heart of the story. Brian, it seems, has met a man and

” Since that day my life has changed

My childish thoughts turned to a sigh.”

I am happy to be corrected, but with the exception of Jimi Somerville and - if you were paying close attention - Neil Tennant, were many other people trying to push openly same sex love songs into the mainstream in 1987 ? For this alone, Turquoise Blue surely deserve some recognition.

I know this record was released a good few years after we were all hit in the face by Holly Johnson’s ’laser beams’ (not a thought that causes me to Relax, I can tell you) but this record is talking about the breathlessness of falling in love, not the stickiness of doing the sex.

This was 1987 don’t forget, when George Michael was still pretending to cavort with female supermodels in his ‘I Want Your Sex’ video, Morrissey was trying to convince the world he was a lifelong asexual, and Elton John was still married to female sound engineer, Renate Blauel.

Popstars positively thrive on the imperceptibility of their sexuality. Entire careers can be kept alive by excitable are they/aren’t they debates… which usually end up being cynically dull, of course, because they usually aren’t - and then everyone feels a bit let down for some reason. But Turquoise Blue ignore this, performing a plaintive love song about a single life changing emotional event, and the attendant hopes and fears it creates.

“To tell the truth I feel afraid

It was so easy in the crowd

And when my friends find I have changed

I wait for them to beat me down…”

However, he hasn’t really changed, of course, he has discovered - and he notes this in the chorus, making a beautifully phrased political point about nature, not nurture :

” We are lost - from the moment we gasp…”

Lovely.

Anything I Shouldn’t Be Doing Whilst Listening To This Song ?

Yes.

Under no circumstances should you suddenly realise that Brian’s voice actually sounds just like Tweety Pie - and that in many ways this song is really just ‘I Tawt I Taw A Puddy Tat’ , transposed to humans.

It really ruins it.

Where Are They Now… Are They… Lost ?

Well, I can tell you that Brian and Michael obviously had some musical differences about a particularly nifty bass line or something, as Brian released a solo single immediately after this one, on the same label with the not remotely Carry-On title : ‘The Passage’.

Apart from that, the problem with calling your band Turquoise Blue is that when anybody tries to track you down years later, they find lots of nicely designed webpages offering very tasteful Man At C&A type pastel sweaters - but very little else.

In other words : I cannot find anything.

Except the sweaters.

Money Update

Cost : 8 pence

Current Value : Gosh. I hadn’t really noticed this until now… but this is a ‘New Mix’, which makes it about seven times more valuable than the original version… This takes it to a really very healthy £7.42 and is now the second most valuable single on the board. That’s about right, I think. It’s interesting… but it’s no Love Flight 109. Up until now, Luba was quietly holding second place for reasons I didn’t really understand, and - excellent new haircut apart - I didn’t think she really deserved it.

Current Profit : 44 pounds and 56 pence. The thirties are so over - we are now aiming for fifty. Hurrah!

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

Ever had your heart broken ?

Want to know exactly how it happened ?

Unfortunately Toby can’t help you.

I am all for leaving out lyrical specifics so the listener can fill in the gaps with their own life experience, but you can only take this idea so far before your song becomes absolutely nothing at all. Toby proves this over and over again with a lyric so devoid of existence that it could be being sung by Godot himself.

“How long Girl?… It’s been a long time ” he begins immediately answering his own question, like one of those really annoying men you meet at a party who insist on finishing all your sentences for you.

It’s not a good start and is just about enough for me to start looking over his shoulder, make vague excuses about refilling my wine glass and scuttling off to the kitchen to hide.

Before I do though, I’ll give him a chance and have a close listen to the rest of Toby’s expert explanation of heart breakage :

” How long Girl?

It’s been a long time

I got in mind, but where did you come from ?

You’ve had a good time, but now you look about ready to run.

Oh, your dreams they didn’t work out

I wish I knew when I was starting out

Oh, you said you know now

I guess you found it out.

That’s how hearts break. ”

Sorry. Am I missing something ?

Forget the never appearing Godot, it seems all I need to do is paint Toby’s face white, put a noose around his neck and bung in a few lines about a skull in Conemara and I could be listening to the incoherent jabberings of a doped up Lucky.

The Cover

Oddly, Toby is vacantly sitting in almost precisely the same position as that young scamp Geoffrey Moore did a few songs back - but in mirror image.

Let’s have a look at them side by side.

It’s like a pair of rather unappealing Toby n’ Geoff bookends.

I can only presume it was the same photographer who is incredibly short on ideas.

“Oh, it’s for a record cover is it ? Why not, errmmmm, sit on the floor with your legs open flashing your lovely crotch to all and sundry ? Yep, yep… that’s brilliant…”

Unlike Geoffrey though, Toby makes the wise decision not to take his shoes off - but he is still trapped inside tight trousers that are far too short, thus exposing his ridiculous socks. What is it about Geoffrey and Toby ? Are they trying to appeal to some hitherto untapped musical market populated purely by ankle fetishists ?

As for that jacket : I always wondered what happened to my grandmothers living room curtains after she died - now I know.

And my family wants them back.

Where Is Toby ?

Well, I hope I track him down, as I’m deadly serious about the curtains.

I bloody loved those.

OK…. it seems he may have been a keyboard player by profession, and may even have appeared onstage at Live Aid with Spandau Ballet.

Gosh.

Can this really be him playing keyboards at the bottom ?

http://liveaid.free.fr/rewind/bbc/pages/015spandauballet.html

I have no idea - he’s a bit podgier there and isn’t waving his leathery crotch in my face, so it’s hard to tell.

If it is him, then he now plays with Paul Carrack - and is one of the people stood on stage in the first photo at Paul’s really horribly designed gallery here :

http://www.carrack-uk.com/

Well, it’s either that or he took up a sport I’ve never heard of before called Sprint Racing, becoming the Midwest Season Champion in 2006 :

http://www.tobychapman.com/

Anything Else To Add ?

Yes. I have been looking at that website for 10 minutes now, and I am still not convinced I understand what Sprint Racing actually is.

Oh well.

Money Update

Cost : 8 pence

Current Value : Just two pounds. Now that’s how hearts break, Toby.

Current Profit : 37 pounds and 22 pence.

 

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Oooh, this is quite good as well.

In the rules I make damn sure to inform you that I pull all of these records totally blindly out of a large cardboard box. This is to ensure nobody thinks I am torturing them unnecessarily when we get a few really bad ones in a row (and lets face it Nazz Nasko followed by Luba wasn’t exactly a highlight). It never occurred to me that we might actually get two good ones in row – so brace yourselves, the one after this is bound to be dreadful.

In the meantime, enjoy this cracking song.

Musically a fusion of the best bits of Je Suis Un Rock Star (ie the bits with no words where Bill Wyman isn’t rambling on about shagging underage girls) and Club Tropicana (in other words, all of it), it has a vocal straight out of the verses of Yes Sir, I Can Boogie that bounces along very merrily indeed. It places within you an insidious desire to reach into your wardrobe and pull out that figure hugging white t-shirt you haven’t worn in a while - and do a little Jimi Somerville dance in front of the mirror.

Yep, it’s that good.

It’s also lyrically succinct, using the first six lines to expertly sum up a deceptively simple situation that can take James Blunt an entire bloody album to express :

“Last night we both said things that we regret
Things that we didn’t mean
Broke up, all that we’ve ever had
You went, said you weren’t coming back,
Baby please, can’t you see
Back in your arms is where I want to be… “

Brilliant.

After just one more verse it is choruschoruschorus all the way home – who needs a proper middle eight when your song is this good? There is a downside to all this repetition however, by the fifth time you hear the chorus you may find yourself sympathising with her ex, thinking : “Good God, she just moans on and on and on about the same things all the time.”

Don’t let this put you off this record’s infinite greatness though – it’s definitely worth getting to the final 10 seconds when the bass player finally gets a bit bored and goes bonkers just before they manage to fade him out in a bit of a panic.

Incidentally, it needs noting that this is a ‘Remixxx’ by that expert remixxxer to the stars, Bert Bevans. This had better be no Froggy style ‘joke’ again, or I’m going to get really upset.

Where Are They Now ?

Vicious Pink aren’t exactly unknowns. I have certainly heard of them before and, in a story whose details will remain vague, the fact that I owned this record was instrumental in getting a rather nice person to sleep with me a good few years later.

I am, therefore, both grateful and hopeful.

Aha!

http://viciouspink.info/

They were Josephine Warden and Brian Moss.

First up I am pleased to announce that this really is a remixxx,as a bit of the original can be downloaded from their Sounds section – as can another bit of it ….. in French (it’s absolutely brilliant).

Secondly, the original forgoes all the aforementioned references to Club Tropicana whatsoever, so this genius bit of thinking must have presumably been Bert’s idea all along.

Controversial in Vicious Pink circles I am sure, but I prefer Bert’s version, it’s much more fun and the drinks are quite possibly free.

It’s worth looking at the nice photos too. There is a fantastic ‘Press Shot’ of Josephine tied to an office chair in a short latex dress with Brian holding a knife to the back of her neck, and a promotional toothbrush too. You can’t ask for much more than that.

Finally, thanks to wikipedia

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

we now know that ‘Josephine Warden went on to marry a top London music lawyer’, whilst Brian is making some slightly strange music with Mirazma and now has rather long hair :

http://www.mirazma.com/

And Bert ?

Well, he seems to have remixxxed just about every single Style Council song in existence then apparently dropped off the planet.

Well, you would, wouldn’t you ?

Money Update

Cost : 8 pence

Current Value : I am gutted. If I owned the twelve inch it would be worth about sixty five quid, and that dinner at Geoffrey Moore’s restaurant would finally be affordable. It must have had that fabulous bass bit at the end extended in it or something. As it is, the 7” is worth a measely 1 pound and 65 pence. Pah.

Current Profit : 35 pounds and 30 pence. We are inching our way towards the big four zero… it may take a while though.