David Steel - I Feel Liberal Alright!

 

Barmy Synth-funk tribute to the Liberal Alliance leader

Label: Scotland Video
Year of Release: 1982

Back in 2016 I found a sixties Liberal Party single which seemed so unexpectedly strange and unconvincing I felt the urge to blog about it. Little did I suspect that the Liberals actually had yet another outing on vinyl which was equally unlikely to convince floating voters.

This effort was released in 1982 by Scottish eccentric Jesse Rae, who had a penchant for donning Highlander styled costumes in his videos and demanding that all his records sold south of the border had "import" stickers on their sleeves. While this sounds like the kind of behaviour which could only appeal to a select group of nationalists and IPC journalists desperate for amusing copy, his 1985 single "Over The Sea" sold well enough to creep inside the Top 75, and the song "Inside Out" was covered by Odyssey and became a number three hit for them.

Sometimes his ideas were far too bizarre for the popular palette, though, and this synth-funk ode to the appeal of David Steel is utterly baffling. In Rae's defence, it was created at the height of the party's hopes; after the alliance between the Liberal and SDP parties had been created, they regularly polled strongly - at one point leading above Labour and the Conservatives in 1981 - and seemed like a genuine threat to the dominance of the two party system. Were it not for the harsh First Past The Post voting system in the UK, it's probable the party would also have had a much more convincing stake in parliament after the 1983 General Election. The record also predates David Steel's Spitting Image puppet, a weedy, neurotic latex creation which was forever under the spell of his slick partner Dr David Owen.

Even allowing for the excitement created around the new dawn of the Alliance, though, there's just a tad too much excitement and machismo in these grooves. "Da-vid STEEL!" the ladies chant while some library music styled synth-funk throbs away in the background. You're completely unsure whether this is well-intentioned or an awful piss-take, with the track attempting to afford Steel a sexual allure and dancefloor prowess he never really possessed. The sleeve even features handy dance steps on the rear of the sleeve, which I would be willing to bet weren't even followed among the Young Liberals at the party conference, much less the general public.

Still, the Liberal Alliance liked this record enough to make it available to their members by mail-order in 1982, meaning they've managed to release at least two baffling records in their existence as opposed to Labour and the Conservative's total of zero (though if anyone has any evidence to the contrary, I'd love to hear it - the only possible candidate I can think of is the cringeworthy "JC For PM For Me" track which wasn't ever official Labour merchandise). 

Thanks (I think!) to Neil Nixon for sending these mp3 files and images over to me for inclusion on the blog. And remember kids, whatever your political views and however right you believe you are, trying to make political parties seem either funky or a bit rock and roll will always be doomed to ridiculousness. 

 If you can't preview the tracks below, go right to the source for the full horror.