I Am Not The Beatles

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

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 at 10:43 pm and is filed under You Might Not Make It To The End, Reformed. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.