I Am Not The Beatles

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

This record was a hit !

No it wasn’t.

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

No. It wasn’t.

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

It certainly is.

This record was a hit !

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

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

Absolutely correct.

It was released on Virgin wasn’t it ?

Yep.

Catalogue number VS934 ?

You certainly know your stuff.

This record was a hit!

No it wasn’t.

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

No. It. Wasn’t.

WHY NOT ?

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

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

How exciting !

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

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

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

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

Because I blew it’s cover ages ago.

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

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

You Twat.

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

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

Bloody hell, really ? What happened ?

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

What a sad story.

It is.

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

And that is ?

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

It seems unlikely.

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

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

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

What’s This Song Like ?

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

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

Where Are Danny Wilson Now ?

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

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

Or, at least, he is according to himself.

On his own website :

http://www.myspace.com/gedgrimes

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

http://www.myspace.com/garyclarkmusic

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

http://www.myspace.com/kitclarkmusic

What Actually Is Mary’s Prayer ?

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

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

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

Which must have hurt.

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

Money Update

Cost : 8 pence

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

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

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

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

George Bernard Shaw - Preface to Androcles and The Lion

It’s a crazy life isn’t it ?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that would just be silly.

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

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

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

It’s fucking madness I tell you.

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

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

Why is she bad ?

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

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

Yes.

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

What’s The Strangest Bit Of This Record ?

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

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

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

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

http://www.myspace.com/beggarandco

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

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

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

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

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

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

http://www.beggarandco.co.uk

http://www.lightoftheworldmusic.co.uk

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

You certainly can.

Here is a lovely page of nebulae :

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

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

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

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

What Are The Odds Of Me Actually Having This Life ?

It is, of course, complicated :

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

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

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

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

and meaningfully :

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

Money Update

Cost : 8 pence

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

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

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

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

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

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

As in motherfucker ?

No… as in mum.

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

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

I beg your pardon ?

Anal sex. It means ‘up the bum’.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“God doesn’t ever come into it.“

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

What a fucking warped story.

Well, this is one fucking warped record.

In what way ?

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

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

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

It’s a cassingle ! How exciting !

It certainly is… and it certainly is.

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

So what exactly are Hue and Cry refusing to do ?

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

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

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

What’s the best bit ?

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

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

It is a beautiful moment.

Do Hue And Cry Really Deny Inhibition ?

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

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

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

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

http://www.theplayethic.com

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

http://www.patkane.com

What is The Play Ethic ?

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

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

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

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

Gosh. Do Hue and Cry Really Escape Definition ?

Absolutely not.

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

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

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

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

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

Yes I can.

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

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

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

Errr…. yes.

The Motherfucker.

Money Update

Cost : 8 pence

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

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

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

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

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

http://www.hueandcry.co.uk

Supporting Cast Update : Brecht, Bertolt ; Ball, Johnny

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

The lead singer of Hothouse Flowers would like it be made known that he is sorry sorry sorry baby.

In fact, in a move that is going to startle Lenny D and Tommy Musto, he is very specifically sorry a somewhat incredible 28 times… plus one apology - as he manages to get down on his knees and do the latter in the brief moments of what passes for a middle eight.

Seeing as this song is a full 40 seconds shorter than Lenny and Tommy’s panda dance spectacular, this final grand total of 29 expressions of regret can only lead us to the really rather shocking conclusion that the lead singer of Hothouse Flowers is actually more sorry than everything is, in fact, bamboo.

Anything Specific He’s Apologising For ?

Standing on your face.

That Did Really Fucking Hurt To Be Fair, So I Am Glad He Said Sorry For That. Anything Else ?

In no particular order he is sorry that he has told you lies, pushed you around, claimed he couldn’t telephone you when it turns out he actually could, made you cry in many different geographical locations, and that he didn’t know the following :

a) When he hurt you

b) When you cried

c) When you screamed (which was, presumably, in the moments following that ill-fated face standing incident)

d) When you stopped crying after you had commenced it in b)

e) When you called, and finally

f) When you hurt - which of course makes perfect logical sense when you consider point a)

Indeed, apparently he didn’t even know that he should know any of these things and, although this endless cycle of abuse just sounds like a perfectly normal day in my house, I do understand that in many social circles the lead singer of Hothouse Flowers would, in short, be regarded as a bit of a bastard.

Should I Forgive Him ?

That really rather depends upon whether you’re his mother or not.

Errr… No I’m Not…

In that case then I am afraid this has all been a massive misunderstanding, as he quite clearly states towards the end of the song that this is a record apologising to his sweet mama… and absolutely nobody else.

So if, as you claim, you are not the leader singer of Hothouse Flowers’ mum then this record isn’t actually directed at you, and whether you choose to forgive him or not for your own personal face stomping experience is therefore completely immaterial.

Hang On A Minute. Does This Mean He Has Actually Stood On His Mother’s Face As Well ?

It appears so, yes.

And he’s really very sorry about it all.

I Don’t Care How Bloody Sorry He Is, When He Stood On My Face I Thought It Was A Careless One-Off ‘Mistake’ - But His Own Mother ? That Is No ‘Mistake’ It Tell You… That Is A Pattern.

It’s not a particularly pleasant story, is it ?

The man is obviously totally bonkers, and it is certainly possible we should have really picked up on this at an earlier stage in the proceedings… as in the spoken word intro he even laughs in a rather sinister fashion at his own really really crap joke.

He’s Always Done That. It’s Dreadfully Irritating.

Irritating or not it is, it appears, one of the very few things he isn’t prepared to actually apologise for.

Anything Else Interesting To Add ?

Errr… No.

Sorry.

What Is Hothouse Flowers ?

Surprisingly that question makes sense - as Hothouse Flowers is the name of a book published in 2006 with the shittest plot in the universe.

Yes, using dandelions as its central characters and rather disturbingly aimed squarely at children, the book’s writer claims it to be an allegorical tale warning against the horrors of immigration - and, if the word ‘allegorical’ has had its meaning expanded in recent years so it now also takes in the monolithic mountains of ‘undoubtedly crap’ as well as the sweeping vistas of ‘knob twistingly intolerant’, then his description is probably a fair one :

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

What Else Is Hothouse Flowers ?

It is the name of an American report subtitled ‘The Vices and Virtues of Climate Federalism’ which essentially argues that because the US government is so stupidly slow to take a lead on dealing with climate change within it’s own borders, it really shouldn’t complain that states who have already passed their own legislation are then resistant to further central government interference.

Take a look. It is one of those papers that you can’t quite believe anybody ever got around to writing :

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1096571

Anything Else ?

Yes, it is a 1984 album by Wynton Marsalis :

http://www.wyntonmarsalis.org/discography/jazz/hot-house-flowers

which is, incidentally, where our Hothouse Flowers got their name from… and they are still going - after splitting and reforming a few times - in a slightly modified form, here :

http://www.hothouseflowers.com

I’m Sorry is taken from their first album People and was the follow up to their first, and biggest, hit to date Don’t Go. Here are the two songs back to back :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBIKSOlje7Q

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

Why Wasn’t I’m Sorry A Hit… But Don’t Go Was ?

Don’t Go is a song about begging somebody not to go and not to leave me now now now - and in our darker, more needy, and possibly more drunk moments we have all done that, haven’t we ?

Whether we care to admit it or not, we have all collapsed in naked pointless humiliating tears in front of the one we love imploring them not to leave, and reassuring them we will change - what’s more we do this safe in the knowledge that the way we are currently acting is actually making it more likely they will, ultimately, get the fuck out of our lives very quickly indeed.

In direct contrast, however, the market for songs about standing on your own mother’s face is somewhat niche to say the least - and I fear this may well have been a contributing factor.

Do You Have Any Desperate Attempts To Connect This With Another Record To End With ?

Yes I do.

According to Wikipedia Hothouse Flowers spent a - surely pointless - one whole day in a recording session with Daniel Lanois. Now, those of you with very long I Am Not The Beatles memories will no doubt recall that poor old Luba has also worked with the tremendously loaded bubblebath fanatic with very disturbing consequences :

http://www.iamnotthebeatles.com/?p=80

Money Update

Cost : 8 pence

Current Value : One person is charging a stonking 50 quid for this because of it’s limited edition gatefold sleeve (don’t forget to pop off and have a look at it, by the way). The more realistic however are charging… wow… a very decent 5 pounds 60 pence - all of which means Hothouse Flowers have absolutely nothing to apologise for at all.

Current Profit : 186 pounds and 49 pence. I am, in essence, Feeling Good.

Supporting Cast Update : Marsalis, Wynton

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

Panda’s are notoriously docile creatures, so any record which appears to have been released with the sole intention of trying to entice them onto the dancefloor is, I fear, bound to end in severe frustration for all involved – no matter how many times you say bloody bamboo in an attempt to cajole them into it.

How Many Times Do They Say Bloody Bamboo ?That’s a difficult question to answer with any real certainty. I think it is very probably thirty times, but each time I played it I kept giggling too much at two minutes and seven seconds – with the result that I always lost count… so it may be a few more.The point is, however, it feels more like four hundred and thirty.

Why The Giggle ?

It is here that Lenny and Tommy decide to play some perfectly pleasant atmospheric minor chords under the whole thing to try and give it all a bit of extra gravitas, seemingly unaware that this is a song which involves a grown man just going bloody bamboo every fifteen seconds or so over the best approximation of Axel F their poor old keyboards can handle and, as such, any gravitas is – if not entirely misplaced – certainly rather unnecessary.

Does Anything Else Happen Except Someone Saying Bloody Bamboo Quite Alot ?

Yes, we also get instructed to Rock The Joint eleven times as well. Although quite how we are supposed to rock any joint with just a piece of bamboo as an accessory is left enticingly unclear.

It seems possible we could poke the joint with it, I suppose. But rock it?

It doesn’t seem very likely.

Errr… Anything Else ?

You will be glad to know that a heavily reverbed man also pops in three times to warn us that he is wasted – presumably meaning he has done more with that aforementioned joint than just rock it or poke it… and five times somebody actually screams.

This, however, is only poor Larry - the increasingly embittered sound engineer - who is being forced to listen to this song for the one hundred and fifty seventh time as Tommy and Lenny sit around pondering whether inserting just one more bamboo is a relevant pursuit or, perhaps, slightly overdoing it.

Bam !

I didn’t hold out much hope at all of finding anybody remotely connected to this song, but I was mostly wrong…

It seems Lenny D has changed his name slightly and is now the much more cooly named, errr, Lenny Dee:http://www.myspace.com/lennydee

He has worked with shitloads of people including, interestingly, Arthur Baker – which, in an unlikely turn of events, means this record is really rather strangely connected to Thrashing Doves :

http://www.iamnotthebeatles.com/?p=89

Larry DeCarmine meanwhile – who is that poor tormented ever screaming sound engineer - obviously found the endless repetition of bamboo a little too much and decided instead to branch out into working with film music :

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0213658/

He also currently teaches at the

Palm Beach Film School :

http://www.palmbeachfilmschool.com/faculty.php

Boo !

Poor old Tommy Muster however appears to have disappeared. Some of his mixes, like his one for 808 State, were in very high demand at the time :

http://www.rolldabeats.com/artist/tommy_musto

Whilst it seems perfectly possible that this one probably wasn’t :

http://eil.com/shop/moreinfo.asp?catalogid=7611

But that’s about it I’m afraid…

You could almost say I am bamboozled.

Oh Well. Found Out Anything Nice About Pandas ?

Yes, they first appeared on this planet a rather incredible 3 million years ago when life was, presumably, slightly slower. One of their problems survival-wise is that the female panda can only conceive for three days every year, and this very sadly means there are now only a stupidly tiny 1,600 pandas left in the wild :

http://www.wwfus.org/pandas/facts.cfm

Want to see sixteen of them as babies ? I warn you now this is so incredibly unbearably desperately cute you may well need to go for a quiet lie down afterwards :

http://www.pandafix.com/pandafix/2006/01/16_baby_pandas_.html

Cute they maybe, but they are obviously also bastards too, as half a million years ago they competed with giant apes for their favourite food… and won :

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/12/071228-panda-ape.html

What was the food ? Oh. It was…errr…

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

http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/52255

Money Update

Cost : 8 pence

Current Value : 1 pound and 44 pence. Bloody hell, the 12” goes on for… 8 minutes.

Current Profit : 180 pounds and 96 pence. Thank Christ for that, I was going bloody bonkers. Incidentally, the B side of this is an oh-so hilarious Dub Version. I really wanted it to be exactly the same but with absolutely no bamboo’s involved, because for some reason the idea of that really made me laugh. Unfortunately this isn’t actually the case, but they are much more regulated in their usage – as it contains a mere 10 bamboos, 4 rock the joints, 2 wasteds and just one measley piddley scream. Fascinating stuff eh ?

Supporting Cast Update : 808 State; John, Olivia Newton