Brilliant - It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World - 1985 - Food Records
Tuesday, September 16th, 2008
Click above for big pictures, click below to play me…
‘This,’ claims June Montana - vocalist for the most presumptuously named band in the known universe - ‘is a man’s world,’ and, in an apparent attempt to prove that this is most definitely the case, she seems to be entirely incapable of making this record without a load of men doing all the complicated stuff on her behalf.
Two of them (named, according to the back cover, Youth and Jimmy Cauty) first do all those manly tasks women can’t do like play the actual instruments and program the sodding computers ; whilst the other three (with the surnames of Stock, Aitken and Waterman) are then gainfully employed to fiddle with all of those confusing sliders, set up the effects in the studio and produce the whole thing. And what does June choose to do amidst all of this extreme masculine productivity… she stands around in front of them all looking pretty and singing a bit.
In essence then, June has quite blatantly put the least effort into the whole let’s record a song process - but by then putting herself forward nonetheless to be the band’s frontwoman is still aiming to get most of the adulation. She didn’t even have to write the bloody song - as even that was written by some bloke ages ago.
It’s feminism gone mad, I tell you.
You also get the feeling listening to this song that if the world was anywhere near as much of a man’s one as June suggests then they wouldn’t have allowed her to sing the thing in the first place - and the most exciting involvement she would have had with it all was doing the washing up in the studio kitchen as the men popped down the pub for much needed refreshment after a particularly strenuous piece of soft reggae creativity.
June doesn’t let this rather salient fact get in the way though, moaning on as women do :
‘But he would be nothing without a woman or a girl,’ - and to try and prove that this is true too, she has decided to create a Real Man’s Man’s Man’s World under laboratory conditions by getting Youth and Jimmy to scuttle off and write a B-side which is totally devoid of any vocals ie with no female input… whatsoever.
What An Interesting Experiment !
It certainly is.
So Which Is Better ? A World With Or Without A Woman Or A Girl ?
Well, the resulting track is certainly well named, entitled as it is Crash The Car and… it is an utter car crash of an effort.
If there are any James Spader or Debra Unger wannabe paraphiles in the audience who are finding the idea of a car crash involving a younger Youth and a sexually alluring Jimmy Cauty all too exciting for words, then I am sorry to report that the music in question doesn’t remotely resemble a really juicy and traumatic car crash involving things like broken misshapen limbs and the sudden brutal death of all of your immediate family - nope, it is instead a really boring crash : a bit like watching your Dad reverse his car into a bollard in the car park.
Want to hear it ?
Fussy feminists who are now revelling in the knowledge it has now been scientifically proven that the world is generally a slightly better place with women and girls shouldn’t get too carried away however, as the one serious attempt to create a fully fledged Girl’s World on I Am Not The Beatles wasn’t exactly an overwhelming success either :
http://www.iamnotthebeatles.com/?p=383
Are Brilliant… Brilliant ?
The most brilliant thing about Brilliant is the fact that this record bizarrely influenced shitloads of other stuff - from Jason Donovan to Pulp. We start our investigations by reading this interview with Pete Waterman in The Guardian :
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2005/dec/03/popandrock
“We did a record with this band called Brilliant, the reviews were phenomenal and it got to 58 in the charts. I remember saying to the guys, fuck that for critically-acclaimed music, you can’t pay the fucking rent with that.”
OK, so it isn’t exactly a resounding endorsement of this song’s charms but it does heavily suggest that by producing it Stock, Aitken and Waterman were forced into a radical rethink of their production style. It must thus follow that without June grumbling on about those overbearing masculine types we may never have been given the marvellous hi-energy version of Bananarama , the soft camp of Brother Beyond or - and there is no polite way to say this - Sonia.
Even more importantly, it is possible that you would also never have known that certain sections of the younger generation generally preferred to Jack than Fleetwood Mac - which I am sure you agree would have been a total fucking travesty.
http://www.stockaitkenwaterman.com
The only other person who remembers this record enough to comment on it is the A&R man who signed Brilliant in the first place - but I warn you now, he isn’t really that complimentary either :
“I signed a band called Brilliant, who I worked with, we worked together, and it was complete failure. Artistically bankrupt project. And financially deaf. We spent £300 000 on making an album that was useless. Useless artistically, useless… commercially.”
And who is this strangely articulate A&R man ? It’s only Bill bloody Drummond who then went on to form The Jamms and The KLF with one member of this band he met through this recording… Jimmy Cauty. So, again, if Brilliant had never existed it is entirely possible that you may well never have heard the words Justified and Ancient in the context of some silly dance music and the tardis may never have been doctored.
Youth is also a well known chap to some of course - being a member of a band I know absolutely nothing about, Killing Joke. You can find out all about them and their music - like I just did - here, and it all seems perfectly pleasant :
http://www.myspace.com/killingjokeofficial
http://www.furious.com/PERFECT/killingjoke.html
So that only leaves June, who went on to be in a band with Jimmy Cauty’s wife Cressida which they called Disco 2000 - which means that once again without June meeting Jimmy and his wife, Pulp would probably have never written a song of the same name.
In a review in the NME at the time Barbara Ellen described Disco 2000 as:
“…two raucous, wicked, hideously beautiful she-cats with diamonds for brains…. For men, Disco 2000 must be like sex without the draggy chat-up scenario, Mae West without the lard, Madonna staked out in a jacuzzi looking anything but helpless.”
If you want to know what a lardless Mae West could possibly sound like, then why not try the supremely bouncy Uptight - it’s all rather reminiscent of listening to an equally lardless Bananarama in the middle of a wind tunnel :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIsgBb144XI
Where lovely June is now though… I have no idea… but interestingly Jimmy Cauty has recently formed a band with 16 alleged others whose music will never be recorded or performed, so all you (and 16 of your friends) can ever do is recreate it yourself from the music scores they produce. Just click on the ’scores’ link at the website below to see if you think it’s worth your while :
Did Men Really Invent Everything In This Song As Claimed ?
The more recent claims seem entirely valid but others are, at the very least, slightly scurrilous. Whether you believe the assertion that Noah invented the boat, for example, is pretty dependent upon whether you interpret the bible as Godlike Historical Fact or Mortal Metaphor - and if you belong to the latter group, then you might want to get pissed off on The Phoenicians behalf for this so-called Noah bloke stealing their thunder :
http://phoenicia.org/wreck.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenicia
Similarly the oldest toy on record - which June claims were all made by men for their children - is about 4000 years old… and in a bid to show that nothing has really changed since, rather depressingly it looks a bit like Barbie :
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=588&art_id=qw1091703241764B234
Importantly however, although we can make assumptions that these were made and/or carved by men we have absolutely no definitive proof.
So Is It Really A Man’s World ?
And it is these assumptions we make that some feel are causing just a little bit of hassle.
Warren Farrell, for example, in his Camille Paglia recommended book The Myth Of Male Power claims that neither sex was ever truly subjugated more than the other, but were instead given very specific - now historical - roles within which to maximise their wellbeing. He claims more affluent societies suddenly lurched from what he terms a Stage 1 society - based purely on survival - into a much more comfortable and leisurely stage 2 society, and thus both historical roles now need to be changed and expanded upon.
However, he argues, society is only currently readdressing the balance in one direction : through the extremely worthwhile changes brought about by feminism - and we make an assumption when we interpret historical roles as subjugation, and the male role as power:
http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Male-Power-Warren-Farrell/dp/0425181448
Whatever your views, it is a fascinating read even if, like me, you don’t agree with quite a lot of what he is saying - as it definitely challenges your preconceptions. In fact the only time my preconceptions were challenged so utterly since, was when listening to a soft reggae version of an old James Brown song - which challenged my preconceptions of what perfectly intelligent human beings were capable of believing maybe a really good musical idea.
Money Update
Cost : 8 pence
Current Value : 3 pounds and 15 pence. Considering who was involved, not exactly Brilliant.
Current Profit : 215 pounds and 81 pence. Want to watch the video ?
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