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

This entry was posted on Monday, April 28th, 2008 at 11:47 pm and is filed under Admit It, You Quite Like It, It Has A Gap. 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.