I Am Not The Beatles

 

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

The lead singer of Balaam & The Angel wants to show you something special.

I bet he does.

What’s more, it is a something that measures 7 inches…

Then I fear he is about to be sorely disappointed, as in my experience 7 inches is anything but special - it takes alot more than that to take the sadness from my smile I promise you.

I think you misunderstand, as the something he is referring to isn’t his Silver Sword… but his… SILVER RECORD!

He has a SILVER RECORD! ?

Yes!

It isn’t a real SILVER RECORD! obviously - as that would imply some sort of chart success on this song’s part - but still, it’s a nice and shiny distraction away from the musical musings which are contained upon it.

Are these musings something special ?

In as much as sounding not unlike a slightly tipsy ZZ Top can be described as such, yes.

Anything else special to note ?

Yes, two somethings :

Firstly, if you hang around long enough then you are soon rewarded with a gap for you to stop dancing in momentarily - which is always a bonus - and secondly, rarely for a rock record, the something special the lead singer refers to isn’t actually remotely penis based at all… but emotional : he wants to create a mutual feeling of trust and respect between you both in the hope this may grow and develop naturally into radiant happiness and love.

The big pansy.

What’s The Best Bit ?

The end.

But only because you know that they chose to finish the recorded version of the song in this way just so when they played it live they could wait for a bit… shout “ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!”… and then haul themselves back into it all over again.

What A Special Band Name!

It is isn’t it - and, interestingly, if we decide to take as a stone cold fact that the lead singer of Balaam & The Angel’s penis most definitely really is 7 inches long, then rather ironically

a) He could never be described as being hung like a donkey, despite the fact that
b) The band name is all about donkeys. Talking donkeys.

I Find That Hard To Braylieve…

Well, here is the story - although for more sensitive readers I should probably warn that the following narrative does contain the mental image of somebody opening “the mouth of the ass”.

In the Old Testament of The Bible, Balaam was considered a poet and prophet of such high regard that people thought he was directly connected to and spoke with God. As such, it was thus believed that when Balaam blessed items or people they truly were blessed - and conversely those he cursed were truly cursed.

At some point in Balaam’s life some chap turned up, for reasons unspecified, to ask him if he wouldn’t mind popping off somewhere to spend a bit of time cursing the entire country of Israel. Balaam said that he would but only if God approved the project first, so he asked God… and lo and behold He did say it was alright - as long as Balaam only cursed things when God said he could and only with the words that God told him to use at the time.

Accepting this caveat Balaam then got on his donkey and started travelling to wherever he was going to do his cursing. However at this point The Angel Of The Lord went a bit rogue and decided to try and stop the cursey Balaam, so he made himself invisible to humans - but crucially not donkeys - and floated about a bit.

This vision of The Angel Of The Lord - which after all is a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus Christ himself - jumping around in front of her face rather unsurprisingly made the donkey stop still in sheer fucking terror… which in turn made Balaam absentmindedly start cursing it with the sort of words that would probably shock even an all knowing God, and which therefore He would never have signed off in the first place.

What happened next, according to the King James Bible, was :

“… the LORD opened the mouth of the ass, and she said unto Balaam, What have I done unto thee, that thou hast smitten me these three times?”

A slightly pissed off Angel Of The Lord then made himself visible to Balaam and in no uncertain terms told him that the only reason he wasn’t dead at this present moment was because of his Amazing Talking Ass.

Balaam was thus allowed to get to wherever he was going and tried to start all that railing against Israel which he had been asked to do previously (a process which must surely be known as Israiling), only to then find that God had tricked him a bit and would actually only let him say nice things about the place - such as praising the cleanliness of the beaches and what a nice place it was to go on holiday.

The moral of this tale is apparently that we should always heed God’s word - although it could also admittedly be that if you want to write a moralistic story which people take remotely seriously, you should probably never have the words ‘mouth’ and ‘ass’ in anything approaching a close proximity.

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

http://cicministry.org/commentary/issue4.pdf

Wham! Balaam! I Am! A Man!

Unlike a young and lithe George Michael, Balaam & The Angel aren’t just one man but three - and what’s more they are all brothers : James, Mark and Des Morris originally from Motherwell in Scotland.

The band was formed in 1984, incredibly 25 years later they are still going, and they are the proud owners of one of the world’s most initially confusing websites :

http://www.balaamandtheangel.co.uk

Want to hear some more ? It’s all very pleasant - their myspace page is here :

http://www.myspace.com/balaamandtheangel

And lots of photos and other stuff is at an unofficial site, here :

http://www.balaamandtheangel.com

Interestingly it turns out the band are quite influential and very entrepreneurial in their own right, as in order to get their songs released they set up their own independent record company in Birmingham called Chapter 22 Records. They didn’t just keep it for themselves however, they also signed other bands too - which means that without them the world may never well have heard of Pop Will Eat Itself, The Mission and …errr… Scorpio Rising :

http://www.vinyltap.co.uk/shop/label/Chapter+22.aspx

And if - just like that lovely chap over at Because Midway Still Aren’t Coming Back - that is the kind of music which makes you go all wobbly with excitement, this fact alone must surely make Balaam & The Angel Something very Special indeed.

Money Update

Cost: 8 pence
Current Value: 1 special pound and 73 somethings
Current Profit: 339 pounds and 40 pence.

Supporting Cast Update : ZZ Top; Michael, George

I’ll show you Something Special :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQEm37DlsgA

 

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

“Desire is experienced as a gift : we privilege people with
our desire for them, though they don’t always recognise
quite what an honour they are being given.”

Adam Phillips - Terrors and Experts

Love can be many things : a battlefield, a losing game, a many splendoured thing. But - no matter what your personal opinion of love may be at this present moment - one thing it always is, is a transaction.

Taking this undeniable fact to its logical conclusion and using a bit of lateral thinking, Stylistics thus wish to make a suggestion designed to help us all during these tough financial times. Instead of giving out money to get the stuff you desire they say, why not give a little love instead?

What A Lovely Idea !

It certainly is.

Unfortunately - rather like your first visit to the prize booth after using the shoddy ticket / reward system employed by amusement arcades on many of Britain’s piers - the range of products actually available in exchange for your love is disappointingly limited.

Indeed some may suggest that the aforementioned pier system is vastly superior to this lovely suggestion, as at least with that you can walk away with something concrete you didn’t have before you went in - even if

a) it is a dusty Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles plastic key ring, which
b) cost you nigh on twenty quid - playing as you were on an endless series of shitty fruit machines in order to get enough tokens to acquire it in the first place.

Please be warned then that if you choose to use Stylistics latter method no plastic key rings are available, and that only yet more love can be traded in return for your initial little love outlay.

So I Can’t Give A Little Love For Oven Chips ?

Much though I would love to say that the freezer section in Sainsburys now recognises a little love as legal tender, I am afraid that the answer is no - which of course makes the idea behind this song less of a transaction… and more of a straight swap.

What A Shame… I’m Right Out Of Oven Chips.

On the plus side though there does seem to be an inflationary bonus attached, as you only have to give a little love to Stylistics in order to immediately have the much bigger and better bona fide full on intense why don’t we move in together love thrown right back in your face.

And although this is admittedly enough to scare just about anybody off who was only making a tentative enquiry, what with all the emotional trauma I’ve gone through with Falco recently the idea of anybody loving me these days certainly makes a nice change.

What’s The Song Like ?

Like a mobility scooter on a motorway : dangerously slow.

Indeed, so ponderously does the lead singer express himself to his beloved over the most unhurried backing track in existence, at some points you may well fear the whole thing is about to shudder to a complete halt and start playing itself backwards.

Where Are Those Lovely Stylistics Now ?

This is a tricky question to answer as first of all this seems to be the only release by the band which, presumably for some legal reasons involving people leaving, was released with no ‘The’ as part of the band name - and secondly because a bit like all that silliness which once afflicted Beggar & Co - there are now actually two bands vaguely bickering over which is the real one.

In one corner we have Russell Thompkins Jr. - an original member of The Stylistics who formed in 1968 and had massive hits such as You Make Me Feel Brand New - now singing alongside three other chaps who were also in The Stylistics and Stylistics at some point (although not necessarily at the same time as Russell) who call themselves The New Stylistics.

Whilst elsewhere we also have another original member called Airrion Love singing alongside three other chaps who may or may not have been in The Stylistics or indeed Stylistics at any point at all… yet performing in a band called The Stylistics.

Confused ? You will be :

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

Do Stylistics Give Love A Bad Name ?

No.

The same cannot be said for the website below however - as it is asking you to share the most intimate private moments of your utterly personal emotional and spiritual experiences of love… in exchange for a sample of some shitty perfume :

http://www.philosophygiveslove.com

Does Anyone Give Oven Chips A Bad Name ?

Yes - Jamie Oliver.

As apparently, when he was doing all that DON’T KILL THE CHILDREN nonsense a few years back, the sales of oven chips in supermarkets plummeted as a direct result. Luckily however, a company called Elmwood were on hand to charge McCain a pretty healthy £40,000 in order to draw some new pictures onto a plastic bag and thus - theoretically - save their frozen arses from collapsing :

http://tinyurl.com/psw8b4

http://www.elmwood.com/flash/?#/home/

Yes, it seems they utterly transformed the product - but only… stylistically.

Money Update

Cost : I give a little 8 pence
Current Value : for 2 pounds and 23 pence in return.
Current Profit : Gosh - 335 pounds and 75 pence. Which has made me rather chippy.

Want to hear You Make Me Feel Brand New - which apparently uniquely for a (The) Stylistics record has both Russell and Airrion singing on it - with the addition of some words scrolling annoyingly along the bottom ?

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

Like the annoying scrolling words but can’t stand the voices ?

http://ronansonlinekaraoke.com/sing.php?id=190

Supporting Cast Update: Oliver, Jamie; Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles