I’ll Show You Something Special (Ltd Edition Collectors Item) - Balaam & The Angel - 1987 - Virgin
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 :
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July 31st, 2009 at 12:00 am
Another band I really used to like - I purchased their first three albums! Amazingly, I’ve managed to locate said items, played selected tracks and decided that I still really like their stuff. I’m definitely regressing back to my student years - is this what a midlife crisis looks like?