~Musical Prozac Overdose~: The Barron Knights

When we originally conceived this music Blog around 14 months ago, I always imagined that I would spend each Blog ruminating over Twee Indie bands that appeared on Sarah, Caff or Sha-La-La Records, and comparing the heartfelt overemotional songs of these bands with my own experiences.
Never once did I ever think that I would write about Crass or their record label, and certainly I never expected that particular Blog to be my favourite and amongst my most read Blogs.
Neither did I ever come to expect that I'd find myself sitting here writing about the Barron Knights. Yes....really...THE BARRON KNIGHTS!!!
But there's a very good reason why I've chosen to write about this particularly odd group....read on and all will be revealed....
Anyone under the age of 30, and almost certainly anyone who was not born in Britain will probably have no idea who the Barron Knights are, so we'll do a quick resumé first to bring you all up to speed.
The Barron Knights are probably British music's greatest parodyists(if indeed that is a word!). The band rose to prominence in the early 1960s, lampooning the Beat Groups of the day. The thing about the Knights however is that they were VERY good at what they did. So good in fact that they ended up often sharing the stage with the very same acts they sent up, even touring with The Beatles!
What made the Knights so good was that they were all superb musicians and could replicate the acts they parodied down to a tee. Also, given that all members of the band provided vocals at some point or other, they could easily copy the vocal styles of virtually any act or singer.
A typical Barron Knights single would see them set up a precedent, say for example "What would the Pop stars of today do if they went on holiday?" They would then replicate three or four of the biggest acts of the day, but would change the lyrics to incorporate the surreal image of say, Mick Jagger building a sand-castle, or Peter Noone stuck at the airport check-in. These singles would prove incredibly popular with the British Public who would often send the records way up into the Top 10, sometimes even the Top 5. Check out this example, 'Pop Go The Workers' in which the band ponder what the bands of today(1963) would do if they had to return to work(and check out the po-faced Bill Wyman impersonation)....


The Knights' parodies were never vicious, they often simply gently sent up the very notion of Pop Stars being ordinary people. This meant the band constantly dealt in one thing with great aplomb; good, honest family entertainment, with just the right amount of Pop nous and savvy for the more musically literate.

So why am I writing about The Barron Knights tonight?
Well, any of the above would have sufficed had I been writing another of my 'Nippy Sweeties' Blogs, but the reason I've chosen to write this Blog tonight is because The Barron Knights were the first band that Griff and I ever bonded over, way back when we were still in Primary School.
Back when Punk was just raising it's head above the parapet, The Barron Knights released some of their most beloved and iconic records, especially the 'Live In Trouble' single and album. Both this single and album were amongst the first records I ever owned that didn't simply belong to my parents. These were records that I personally asked my folks to buy for me. I still remember the bright orange (non-picture) sleeve and the orange swirly CBS label on the single. And the album is one that I played to death, not bad for a comedy record, especially one being played by a child with a short attention span. Back in the day, Ray's cousin used to babysit for us and we were forever digging 'Live In Trouble' out and joining in with it's multiple parodies; Leo Sayer singing falsetto because his tailor had took his trousers in but left all the pins still in, David Bowie's cat being taken to the vet to be neutered("Birth control to Ginger Tom"), a spot-on and frankly hilarious take on The Floaters 'Float On', and finishing off with an eerily accurate John Lydon singing 'Any Old Iron'. Not many mainstream acts had the bottle or savvy to tackle Punk but the Knights were straight in there.
Here's a re-cap of the single....


And here's the full thing.....


At school, Griff and I would often try our hand at our own little Pop parodies in the style of the Knights, mostly rubbish of course, but I think from there we realised that we had a kindred spirit in our appreciation and knowledge of Pop's brilliance and it's ridiculousness. Quite possibly the seeds of our musical friendship were sown in our attempts to do a Barron Knights job on the Pop music of the day.

Here are a few other examples of the Barron Knights at their best.
We start with their 1968 release 'An Olympic Record' in which they place the Pop Stars of the day at the 1968 Olympic games....


Next up, 'A Taste Of Aggro', one of their biggest selling singles of all time in which they target, amongst others, Boney M, The Smurfs and Brian & Michael. This leads to an interesting conundrum. On their latter day singles they stopped picking on the big names and concentrated more on novelty records of the time; thus creating new novelty records based on recently released ones!


Their last really big hit was 'Never Mind The Presents', a Christmas single in which they take on acts as diverse as Pink Floyd and The Ramblers(who had an excruciating novelty hit with 'I'm Only A Poor Little Sparrow' - don't you overseas readers wish you lived in Britain??)....


Apart from the Pop parodies, The Barron Knights also released their own stand-alone singles, often tributes to eccentric British TV stars of the day, such as 'The 'Sit' Song', a tribute to bizarre British TV dog trainer Barbara Woodhouse, and 'Get Down Shep' on which Blue Peter madman John Noakes is given the Knights treatment. These singles often failed to sell as well as their parodic medleys which may have been the British public's way of saying 'Don't fuck with the formula!!'.


The last time I remember seeing the Barron Knights was on a one-off one hour TV special broadcast on Christmas Eve 1984(I think), this was mostly a series of oddly unfunny raps(yes...really!) and sketches, peppered with occasional flashes if their old genius(the Hunchback Of Notre Dame singing Hot Chocolate's 'It Started With A Cyst' for example). It kind of signalled that their heyday was coming to an end, and since then they've rarely bothered the charts.
Throughout all this time they remained a great live band often selling out tours, or playing the Butlins and Pontins holiday camp route, often to rapt audiences who know what they are going to get....outstanding family entertainment for kids to grandparents.

All hail The Barron Knights then, British Pop's greatest mimics and one of the foundations of this very Blog....

~Gordon~

And if that wasn't enough for you, have a look here where you'll find an entire 25min show made for Scottish Television in 1980

Griff says; Cycling Non Stop

You may not be surprised to learn, given the other cultural indicators which are prominent throughout this blog, i.e. the vegetarianism, the championing of feminism and socialism etc., that the Streetlamp team's preferred mode of transport is undoubtedly the bicycle. Yes, when it comes to getting around, the Streetlampers predictably conform to the stereotype of all righteously indignant, anti-capitalists the world over.
I love cycling and every day quite happily make a nuisance of myself to car drivers all over west central Scotland during rush hour. Yes, I'm the guy shouting and gesturing at you when you pass me too closely, and then trying to catch you at the next junction to harangue you further. Ray, is also a passionate cyclist and a huge fan of tight lycra to boot. Gordon, interestingly enough, used to put in the most cycling hours of all three of us. Right through his teens and twenties Gordon must have cycled virtually every day, putting in literally thousands of hours in every kind of weather (and this is Scotland, so I really do mean every kind of weather). Nowadays, sadly for Ray and I, it's difficult to coax him onto the bike (despite the fact that he truly hates, loathes and detests cars) , but we live in hope. I suppose that the sheer length of time he's spent in the saddle, and I really wasn't exaggerating above, has just scunnered him but I hope that tonight's blog will go some way to reminding him of the thrill of the open road and also bring back some fond memories of a band who he used to adore in the late 70s and early 80s.
This blog is also timely as it serves to remind you all that tomorrow, Saturday 2nd July, one of the world's greatest annual sporting events begins. I refer of course to The 98th Tour de France.



For the benefit of the non-sporting readers, The Tour de France is an annual bicycle race held in France and nearby countries. This year it will be made up of 21 stages and cover an energy-sapping 3,430.5km (2,058 miles). For three weeks the 198 riders will strain the human body to the limit; over mountains, through valleys and into the heart of France's towns and cities. It will all end on July 24th on the Champs-Elysées in Paris. During that time, do not expect to see much of our Ray. To say that he's a fan of le Tour is a bit of an understatement. I think it's fair to suggest that every time I meet up with him in the next six months he'll mention something about events in this year's Tour. Then, for the six months following that he'll start with the, "Not long now to the Tour" conversations. Gordon and I can only try to cope by steering the conversation gently onto something distracting, like the films of Audrey Tautou or the legs of Victoria Pendleton.
For our American and Australian readers I should probably point out that the Tour is a truly great European institution. It is, indeed, one of the largest international sporting tournaments in the world, with the globe's largest viewing figures for any annual sports event, and is surpassed in scale only by the FIFA World Cup and the Summer Olympics. It inspires huge passions and absolutely dwarfs small, local sporting events, such as the laughingly-titled World Series of Baseball for instance. It has also, rather nicely for my purposes, inspired some wonderful music by another truly great European institution; those ironic purveyors of avant-garde electro-pop, Germany's own Kraftwerk.



In 1982 the band's leader, Ralf Hütter, had been looking for forms of exercises that fit in with the Kraftwerk image and, as a result, he encouraged the group to become vegetarians and take up cycling. At the time, the band were in the studio recording a new album and, in keeping with their new found passion, they wrote and recorded the song called 'Tour de France'. This atmospheric slice of Euro-pop included bicycle-themed sounds, such as; chains, gear mechanisms and the hard breathing of a climbing cyclist. At the time of the single's release in 1983, Hütter tried to persuade the rest of the band that they should record a whole album based around cycling. Unfortunately, the other members of the band were not convinced, and the theme was left to one solitary, but exceptionally good, single. Here it is (below):



C'est magnifique, non? And that may have been it for bicycle-inspired music for the rest of history but, luckily for us, 20 years later in response to the Tour's centenary, Kraftwerk finally got around to giving us that album based around cycling with the release of 2003's 'Tour de France Soundtracks', the groups first album of new material since 1986's Electric Café. Here's a sample song, Titanium (below):



Hope you enjoyed that. An MP3 of the wonderful 1983 single can be downloaded 'here'.

And remember, the Tour starts this Saturday.This year, Stage 1 is the Passage du Gois to Mont des Alouettes, a distance of 191.5 km.

Et maintenant, pour la gloire et pour l'honneur, laissez les jeux commencer !


Salut!

Griff
xx

Gordon angrily retorts: Pah! How dare you(of all people) beat me(of all people) to the Kraftwerk Blog!!! What next? Me writing about Ian Campbell & Friends Folk Band?
Only joking, of course....this is a great article and captures the symbiosis of Kraftwerk's music and subject far better than I would have done. Good stuff!
As for getting me back on a bike....kiss my saddle-sore arse!!!

~Kitten Wine~#28: Primal Scream's Anthems For A Doomed Youth

I get quite angry when British television does a retrospective on the 1980s and comes up repeatedly with the same boring old cliches about how the 1980s was all big haired yuppies in shoulder-pads and red braces quaffing champagne while listening to dreadful soul-less synthesised Pop and bragging about Thatcher and the Falklands and Charles and Diana.....BOLLOCKS!! That isn't what the 80s was about to me and my friends! To us it was all grit and great music. It was The Smiths, Crass, New Order, Creation Records, Sarah Records, Sonic Youth, Channel 4, genuinely dangerous alternative comedy, Coal Not Dole stickers, Greenham Common, The Miners Strike....it was about making a difference, not sitting around patting yourself on the back.
So when the 1980s ended I did feel genuinely sad. I remember clearly Griff and I standing on the floor of our local Jive Emporium on the 31st of December 1989 watching the countdown to New Year on the big screens, and I turned to him and said, "Well, that's it then. The end of our generation". "So, you think we're the children of the Eighties then?" he replied. "What else could we be?" I remarked. Had I known how the Eighties would be portrayed by future generations, I might have kept my opinion to myself, but I did genuinely feel that a specific time was coming to an end. In January 1989 I decided to document the final year of the Eighties in Diary form, and it's quite depressing that the youthful bright eyed and bushy tailed, over excitable, easily pleased young man who writes the first entry is replaced by a bitter cynical, downtrodden unhappy individual who brings the diary to a close.
The final entries are full of vitriol and bile, heartache and disillusionment and were soundtracked by an album which, for me, summed up the death of 1980s and the end of my generation.....the eponymous second album by Primal Scream!
Primal Scream, and Bobby Gillespie in particular, have always been cast as Indie chancers jumping on every bandwagon in an attempt to be cool, but if you look back carefully you'll see that in actual fact they were always just a step ahead of the rest; they made C-86 music before 1986, they made swirly psychedelic music two years before The Stone Roses released their rather familiar sounding debut album, they made the first truly great Rave generation album in 'Screamadelica'; and with the album we're focusing on tonight, they pre-empted Grunge by releasing an against-the-grain leather-kecked Rock album beneath which beat a broken heart of love lost.
And it was this album that played out alone in those final weeks of 1989.
As November 1989 kicked in and I knew now for sure that SHE wasn't coming back, I bought three album one Saturday afternoon; 'Dum Dum' by The Vaselines, 'Workbook' by Bob Mould(ex of Husker Du), and Primal Scream's second album. Of the albums, I expected the Primal Scream album to be the lesser of the three....little did I know it would become a permanent fixture on my turntable as the final weeks dragged on.
The album became like both a serenade and a requiem to the end of such a fantastic year, the end of the Eighties, and in many ways to the end of a way of life for many of us. Hank Williams once sang "Those wedding bells are breaking up that old gang of mine" and within 6 months of 1990 two of my friends would be married. Others disappeared into a shady world of hard drug use, others just stopped calling. The band that I had played in since High School would only last 6 days into 1990 before splitting up on January the 6th. My youth was falling apart and disappearing, taking many old friends with it.
But let's look at Primal Scream's eponymous album and reflect on it's bittersweet glories....
First single from the album set the stall out beautifully; 'Ivy Ivy Ivy' is a raucous leather bestrewn beast of a thing underpinned by Bobby's almost too sweet vocal. You get the feeling that Bobby can't really rasp or roar like his idols can so he replaces the vocal with a gentle, almost tremulous wail that creates a beautiful dichotomy tenderness within the confines of rock music....


One day somebody might record the sound of the sun setting, or capture the actual sound of a leaf turning from green to Autumnal brown. The reason I say this is because the next track I've chosen, 'I'm Losing More Than I'll Ever Have'(a perfect title for the times) has become synonymous with the changing of Indie music from guitar based shimmer to Dance inflected hedonism. Little did I know it at the time but the fade out of 'I'm Losing More Than I'll Ever Have' would form the basis of Primal Scream's most instantly recognisable single 'Loaded'; a song which formed the touchstone of a night in April 1990 when Griff, myself and a couple of friends organised our own DJ set which we also called 'Loaded'. Thus yet another 1980's quirk was replaced as, instead of playing live music as we always had, we were playing our record collections at full volume to a room full of paying mugs....er, I mean 'punters'.....


I had hoped to include the track 'Kill The King' next but no accompanying clip exists to feature with it. The song though is a beautiful, psychedelic gem that wouldn't have disgraced 'The White Album'.

And so to the two most important tracks on the album, beginning with 'Lone Star Girl' another raucous blast which opens with the line "Hey Wendy, you move me!". In the 1980s I had two relationships with girls called Wendy, both of whom left an indelible stain upon my easily bruised heart, so when Bobby gets to the chant, "Hey Hey Wendy Wendy Wendy" you wonder if it's possible to say the word 'Wendy' any more times in a song without sounding silly. Even the Beach Boys song 'Wendy' doesn't feature the word 'Wendy' so many times(although it does feature Brian Wilson coughing on the keyboard solo!!). So as a grand Hurrah to all the girls who led me astray through the 1980s, each armed with a (metaphorical)knife bigger than the previous, 'Lone Star Girl' is my kiss-off to you all....


And so to the most important track upon the album; 'You Are Just Dead Skin To Me', again a perfect title that sums up how I was feeling at this time.
This song is a song that I played to death from the moment I got the album home until the Eighties and all it stood for and all it meant to me and my friends vapourised in a heart beat on that December night. It's a song about putting on a brave face while being unable to accept that something special has most definitely ended. Whether it's an all important relationship, or maybe the end of a friendship, or maybe the final days of a certain time and place; or maybe that your entire youth and all the things you burned for, all those nights you escaped from the confines of the family home into the company of your alcohol soaked friends or the perfumed arms of a beautiful girl, all the nights you sat crying listening to your favourite songs, all the nights you laughed yourself hoarse in the company of your dearest friends, all those 7" slices of vinyl that are more permanent fixtures in your psyche than even the deepest tattoo, all those scars you attained which look cool on the outside but which tear you up inside, all those girls who never stayed, all those nights when you just......existed! "I don't care now// You are just dead skin to me......"


Primal Scream would become much bigger on the 1990s but 'You Are Just Dead Skin To Me' remains the one track which I will love them forever for; an anthem for my own doomed youth.
Whenever I hear talentless journalists berate Bobby as some derivative flybynight I smile quietly to myself and thank the lord that he's not, and never will be, Noel Gallagher!

The 1980s then....just dead skin my Friends, just dead skin......

~Gordon~

You can download Primal Scream here

Robert Wratten, and Songs As Map Of The Human Heart

The recent massive success of Adele has been a good thing for music, I think, as it has shown the popularity of the classic style of songwriting, away from repetitive dance tracks or talent show karaoke rubbish. The 6 weeks or so at Number 1 for 'Someone Like You' in particular should be applauded; a classic arrangement, superbly played, beautifully sung....a return to proper songwriting! But it's the lyrics, or at least the sentiments of the lyrics that I have a problem with.
In the song, Adele contacts her former boyfriend/lover whom she has obviously been madly in love with. He, however, has moved on and has gotten married and settled down with some new love. Adele can't seem to handle this and does a bit of 'What about me?' protesting to him, creeping back into his life. Now, it may just be me and my rather oversensitive views and feelings about love and relationships, but to me this is dangerous ground. This is borderline stalking. Think of former Radio 1 DJ Andy Kershaw, unable to accept that his marriage was over he took to heavy drinking and hanging about his ex-wife's new home....it's pretty much the same thing. Sure, it's all very romantic when viewed with clear eyes, and I'm sure Adele doesn't advocate stalking a former lover in any way, but sometimes love has too strong a pull and it's actions can be viewed as a little odd.
It also reminded me a great deal of 'Sometimes I Still Feel The Bruise' by Trembling Blue Stars; a song which pretty much covers the exact same ground. Have a listen and see.....


Trembling Blue Stars were the band formed in the wake of the demise of The Field Mice by it's principle songwriter and vocalist Robert Wratten; in my opinion a genius in the Morrissey/Brian Wilson mould.
Sometime last year on a cold hungover Saturday morning, Griff and I were discussing great British songwriters and how some songwriters often hailed as geniuses weren't as good as their reputation suggests; Shane MacGowan and Joe Strummer being our biggest culprits. We thought of who we would suggest as undervalued replacements to these; I first proffered Mark E Smith but had to concede that ranting over what sounds like an industrial cacophony doesn't constitute songwriting, genius though it may be. So I rather timidly put forward the suggestion of Robert Wratten as his songs were second only to The Smiths or The Beach Boys as being able to genuinely move me. Griff admitted he wasn't too aware of Robert's songwriting in any great quantity but accepted my argument.
So, even though we've covered The Field Mice before, let's take a look at why I consider Bob Wratten to be such a genius....
Say the words 'Sarah Records' to anyone and they almost immediately conjure up some ultra-fey floppy fringed twee music about heartbreak and Vimto. And it's The Field Mice who are often held up, by extremely lazy journalists, as the best examples of this. People who have clearly never heard any Field Mice songs. Likewise, Martin Strong's mighty tome 'The Great Alternative And Indie Discography' describes The Field Mice as having released a 'string of pastoral acoustic singles and EPs'...EH?? What the fuck are you blethering on about man? Acoustic?? All those shimmering Rickenbacker guitars and icy synthesizers....acoustic?? Try listening to the songs first next time!
Their 'The Autumn Store' EPs feature staccato Motownesque brass and Stax Record style guitar bursts. Their 'Snowball' 10" album features glacial Kraftwerkian electronic soundscapes of which St Etienne covered 'Let's Kiss And Make Up' as their debut single. Hardly twee and hardly acoustic.
Where Bob Wratten connects with me most though, rather obviously, is in his lyrics. I've never known any one to wear their heart on their sleeve so blatantly as Bob does. In fact, he practically wears his heart as a rather fetching three piece suit (of armour). Even Morrissey would probably advise Bob to reign in the confessional heartbroken approach a tad.
Maybe it's because Bob is virtually the same age as me (actually a year older) that he was able to articulate exactly the kind of things that I felt myself go through in affairs of the heart, or even just the beautiful agony of full-on unrequited love that makes his lyrics both uplifting and soul-destroying in equal measures. Listening to The Field Mice when in love is a joyous thing....listening to them while in the throes of heartbreak, well let's just say that you DON'T listen to them when your heart is broken, not if you want to retain your sanity.
Let's look at some examples of their songs then....

'So Said Kay' is one of my most treasured of all Roberts songs, probably because the song is based entirely on the narrative of one of my favourite films, 'Desert Hearts'. 'Desert Hearts' tells the story of a straight-laced woman whose marriage ends and she finds herself in a small town in 1950s USA where she begins a reluctant affair with a free spirited young woman. It's an absolutely beautiful non-exploitative film which should be required viewing for everyone. The song, such a gorgeous arrangement, captures the beauty and tragedy of the movie completely.....


'The World To Me' is from the aforementioned 'The Autumn Store' and is just an astonishing piece of music on it's own, so far removed from the perception that exists of them. The lyric too, such a yearning declaration of love is so heartbreaking that if you don't fill up when he pleads "Don't go// Don't go away" then you are obviously Anne Widdecombe....


'When Morning Comes To Town' is a huge song that begins with just the gentle strumming of an uneffected ELECTRIC guitar but builds into a huge multilayered symphony before regressing back all the way to the strummed guitar. The lyric sees two people, a boy and a girl, share one last night together, both knowing that their love and their time together will be over by the time the sun rises. Go on, let it all out, dear readers, you'll feel the better for it....


When The Field Mice split circa 1991 it was a sad day, a day of lachrymose mourning round our way. But thankfully Bob didn't leave us hanging round waiting for long. His new project, Trembling Blue Stars, began almost immediately. Now, there are cynics who will say that there is scant progression between The Field Mice and TBS, but again, those are the people who DON'T LISTEN!!! TBS applied a slightly grander, more muscular approach with Bob's vocals becoming less breathy and more forceful in the mix. The subject matter too, expanded away from just introspective moist eyed longing, taking in all life itself. But as we've seen with 'Sometimes I Still Feel The Bruise', above, when he goes right to the root of the emotional complexities and the psychological damage inflicted by that crazy little thing called love, it can be too much pleasure and too much pain, and it can leave you giddy and ranting and contemplating Van Gogh like acts of self-mutilation....all for a beautiful girl!

'Letter Never Sent' is a song about the agony of not knowing if that all important relationship has indeed ended as you doomily suspect it has. The vocal, like that of the most emotionally satisfying Morrissey, Tindersticks or Beach Boys compositions, breaks and quivers at all the right moments. I often wonder if Bob really is as easily bruised as he comes across in his songs, or if he's actually as cold hearted and uncaring as I am(ppfffftttt!!!!)....


'This Once Was An Island' is possibly my favourite TBS song and proves (I think) that my theory that TBS's songs are more meaty and chunkier than those of his previous band. I'm not entirely sure what the lyric is about, but sometimes that's the best way....


'Abba On The Jukebox' is a song which ironically deals with the emotional pull of certain records or songs, something Bob has delivered in spades over the years. I had also hoped to bring you the similarly themed 'Doo Wop Music' but unfortunately there's no accompanying video....


So that's my eulogy for Robert Wratten, one of Britain's finest songwriters and one of my own personal favourite artists of all time. Quite how my lovelife would have been soundtracked without his wondrous songs is quite unthinkable.

Six weeks at Number 1....it really means nothing!

~Gordon~

A catch-all of The Field Mice's output called 'Where'd You Learn To Kiss That Way' can be downloaded here

There are too many Trembling Blue Stars albums to single out one but they are all worth investigating!