Jonny Rubbish - Living In NW3 4JR/ The Other Side

If one Johnny Rotten sometimes exaggerates and lies, but the parody of Johnny Rotten always tells the truth, which one is actually right wing?

Label: United Artists
Year of Release: 1978

Novelty takes on punk rock were all the rage within minutes of the scene becoming mainstream news. Given that one of the primary objectives of punk was that anyone could do it, the doorway was left wide open for amateur aspiring comedians and social commentators to feel they could parody it too - it doesn't take a stand-up comedian more than a day to learn how to play a few chords badly, after all, making the movement easy pickings for quick and cheap laughs.

Enter Jonny Rubbish stage left, or Jon Gatward as his family knew him. He was a "punk comic" who supported The Stranglers on tour, being canned and spat off stage while he stood around in a dustbin mocking the careers of John Lydon, Paul McCartney and The Bee Gees with slightly heavy-handed parodies of their styles.

Only two singles of his seem to have hit the record shops, this one - by far the superior effort in my opinion - and a festive parody of The Bee Gees called "Santa's Alive" which is so awful I'm surprised The Stranglers didn't garrotte him for it. Both 45s are blunt takes on dominant trends and topical issues, with some lines which veer close to student revue stylings and others which are unexpectedly funny. NW3 4JR refers to the area of Belsize Park Gardens in South Hampstead, an area much sought after by the cream of North London society, and the track opens with Rubbish sneering "I am a Capita-LIST!" It's completely impossible to ascertain whether he's talking about himself as a defined comedy character or mocking the idea that John Lydon was ever a bog-standard prole with the kids' best interests at heart, but the track continues with all the savagely conservative, aspirational gusto of a man who sincerely wishes to attain the status of Hampstead.

The production is incredibly on-the-money though, sounding gritty, distorted, grainy and strangely thrilling, reminding us that underneath the alleged Great Rock and Roll Swindle lay some bloody astounding material which would have sounded exciting in just about anybody's amateur hands, even a comedy man in a trashcan.

The B-side, on the other hand, is largely some very dodgy spoken-word nonsense about Rabbis going on strike which might have halfway worked in Peter Cook and Dudley Moore's hands, but here just sounds badly thought through at best.

Reupload - Rudy Grant - Space Oddity/ Every Step I Made

 

Reggae cover of David Bowie's classic. It works slightly better than you'd suppose.

Label: Ensign

Year of Release: 1981

It never ceases to amaze me how many unexpected and ambitious reggae cover versions there are out there. Some work, whereas others set their sights high and miss by miles.

In 1981, Eddy Grant's brother Rudy, not content with stopping at one or two singles, decided to record an entire album of covers which contained some unusual but generally workable choices, such as John Lennon's "Woman", Simon and Garfunkel's "Sound of Silence", and Stevie Wonder's "Lately". All of these attempts hang together well, and in the case of the Simon and Garfunkel classic, amazingly so.

This, however, is on dangerous territory. While the original version of "Space Oddity" may have a catchy melody at its centre, it's filled with odd fits and starts and instrumental diversions - which is what elevated the song above the mere 'novelty' tag some felt keen to give it during its initial chart run. It's an enormously sprawling, filmic sounding track with each flourish adding drama to the lyrical storyline. As such, it's a very tricky song to tack a steady reggae beat on to, and the way Rudy sidesteps this is quite interesting.

Magic Grass - Cody/ Ain't It Nice

 

Neat folk-pop version of the John Stewart track

Label: Decca
Year of Release: 1969

One single wonders litter American labels like helium gas canisters pebble the pavements of Ilford. Many local heroes got given one-off shots by major labels to prove their talents to a national audience, and when it didn't work, they were frequently never heard from again.

The Magic Grass were no exception in 1969. They were a Southern Californian group featuring Gary Black on vocals, organ, lead guitar, Zelma Black on vocals, John Carney on bass, Sam Hunnicutt on sax and Jim Masoner on rhythm guitar with Curtis Jordan on drums. Decca obviously had high hopes for them, apparently promising them a second single but ultimately never delivering on it.

Of the lot, Zelma (or Zell) Black had the biggest career afterlife, signing to Motown for one single ("I Been Had By The Devil") in 1974 before moving on to Warners for the singles "Fly Me" and "Ride on Rider" and Casablanca for the track "Need Another Night With You". It looks as if she fronted little after that, but it's an unexpected run of decidedly non-folk, almost dancefloor friendly tunes.

Her partner Gary Black apparently still works as an engineer and producer in LA with Zelma's occasional involvement. The whereabouts of the rest are unclear.

Trevillion & Nine (with Deuce) - Anyone For Tennis

Novelty disc satirising Cliff Richard and Sue Barker's "relationship"

Label: Service

Year of Release: 1982

If there's one thing I love about novelty records, it's how timelocked so many of them are - so often dependant on the hot trends, catchphrases, follies or events of the few weeks or months around their release date that viewing them from five, ten or fifteen years distance can feel absurd, never mind forty.

 You could be forgiven for forgetting about the 1982 tabloid furore around Cliff Richard and Sue Barker's romantic relationship. Pictures of them playing tennis together - and never doing very much else, seemingly - littered the gossip pages and even the news stories for a season or two, with lots of desperate "are they or aren't they shagging?" speculation as the thinly disguised subtext, similar to the press stories about the pandas in London Zoo. As I remember it (and I really should thoroughly research this, but you'll hopefully forgive me for not wanting to waste too much of my life away) Cliff Richard denied all the speculations, arguing that Barker was just helping him develop his tennis skills. Hmm. It didn't sound plausible to some, but let's face it, it was almost certainly true and the pair seem strangely distant and barely mention each other these days, akin to the kind of relationship commonly enjoyed between sports trainer and their ex-client rather than two lovers.

That clearly didn't stop the media and public from peeking behind the hedgerows and into the tennis courts, though, and this single taps into that strange fascination by imagining what the tennis might be a metaphor for. All the puffing, panting and groaning from the balls being hit perhaps being a substitute for something else? 

These people had obviously put more thought into all this than I ever bothered to, and it's a very strange record indeed, taking whistled snippets of "Summer Holiday" at the start (without a songwriting credit, I notice) before leaning into what actually sounds like a very strange radio comedy sketch on 45. It was released on its own label, didn't sell in quantities which could even be described as miniscule, and made virtually zero impression on the public. Such is the fate of the novelty record that misfires and mistakes casual nosy interest for public obsession.

Particular People - Boys Cry/ What's The Matter With Juliet

 

Haunting take on the Eden Kane hit

Label: Big T

Year of Release: 1967

One thing I find fascinating about the late sixties is how often bands were tempted to take earlier beat or pop hits and twist them like plasticine into unexpected new shapes. The most obvious example of this would of course be The Score's version of "Please Please Me" which took an already raucous rave-up and turned it into some kind of mental collapse conmbined with a freakbeat freak-out. Jason and The Centremen's bash at "Singin' The Blues" in 1966 also shows how dementedly far-out Joe Meek could be as the decade passed the halfway mark.

Stangely uncompiled and seemingly unloved is also this beauty, a cover of the 1964 Eden Kane hit "Boys Cry" from Particular People, a duo consisting of Ken Lewis (of Carter, Lewis and The Southerners fame) and Rod Clark of the Moody Blues (for about five minutes in 1966). "Boys Cry" drenches the track in Spectorish echo, mellotron and Everly Brothers styled vocals, making it sound both faintly retro and of-the-moment, on-the-button 1967. Like a sweet cough syrup dream, the track is a gentle, faintly dizzy trip into the comforts of a childish past. 

The B-side is intriguing too. "What's The Matter With Juliet" was a Carter and Lewis composition which would find itself on the flipside of the Canuck band The Sceptres debut UK 45 five months later, and also the B-side of a single by The Wheels in the US in 1969. Clearly nobody ever considered it strong enough to put on an A-side, and yet it's a persuasive bit of tunesmithery which with a forceful enough arrangement might have hit home. The Sceptres version is up for sale on my Discogs store (coughs) for anyone who is interested. 

Oh Goodness, Is That The Time?

Just a quick note to say that the blog will be returning from its slumber tomorrow morning with a new entry, and others to follow in the weeks ahead.

HOWEVER... life has taken a couple of twists and turns for me since we last spoke, though this wasn't entirely unexpected. It now looks extremely likely that I'll be moving house from London (where I've lived for last twenty years) to the Midlands, which means selling this place up, possibly putting some belongings in storage, hopefully having a relatively straightforward house purchase and move in the new location, and then who knows. I certainly don't.

While I'll try to keep blog postings at their usual frequency while chaos reigns, I may have bigger fish to fry for awhile so it's possible there will be further periods of silence or occasional brief quiet patches. It's been decades since I tried to uproot myself to a completely different city, so let's see how this goes.