Outrageously and overtly camp flop 45 - not to be ignored
Label: Dawn
Year of Release: 1974
Regular readers of this blog have probably gathered that I'm fascinated by the extreme camp edges of glam rock and seventies pop. Well, Simon Gitter certainly did, because back in February he actually dropped me a line to bring this record to my attention. "Have you heard this one before?" he asked - and no, I most certainly hadn't.
"Don't Leave Your Lover Lying Around (Dear)" is so camp and flamboyant that it would possibly make the corpse of Joe Orton blush. Filled to the brim with pub piano riffs, flirtatious gay remarks, a leg-kicking knees-up "Ain't She Sweet" interlude and a distinctly unsettling feel, it's like some kind of early seventies pop pantomime. Its appearance on the Dawn imprint of Pye is particularly baffling, as the point of that label was to showcase the more hippyish and progressive of Pye's signings, and while this could be described as "progressive" in the societal sense of the word, it certainly isn't otherwise. This is pure novelty pop with a twist.
The B-side "Seductress" is much more conventional, though equally flamboyant and dramatic in places.
As for Elgin, he hailed from Bath in Somerset but moved to London in the early seventies which is where he first graced the public with live performances. This was his only release (but what a release!) and I have no information on his whereabouts these days.
[Blog update - regrettably, when I uploaded this single in 2017 somebody informed me that Elgin had passed away in 2009, but remained "outrageous to the end". At the very least, I'm glad to hear that].
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