Willy Flascher and the Raincoats - (Everybody Wants To Be A) Streaker/ Run Rabbit

 

In the past, our privates were all famous for fifteen minutes

Label: Decca

Year of Release: 1974

At some point in the early eighties, I was sat in the living room while my Dad watched the cricket. I cared not for the test match, but my attention was briefly caught by a man running stark bollock naked across the pitch while my parents sighed. "Another attention seeker's disrupted a game," my Dad muttered, while the rest of the family gazed up for a split second before going back to our own interests. A streaker again. BORING. By the eighties, streaking felt like the realm of sad arses desperate to be noticed, drunken rugger buggers and sex pests, and it's probably not much of a coincidence that the phenomenon didn't really grab headlines much throughout that decade.

In the seventies, though,  something about streaking was deemed sufficiently cheeky and carefree - and not dodgy at all - and captured the media and the public's imagination. Ray Stevens "The Streak" got to number one in 1974 on the back of all the anarchic public nudity, and no doubt the mysterious Willy Flascher here (no points for the choice of name) fancied a slice of the tittybum pie profits.

If Ray Stevens' record was all whoopsy-daisy larks and laughs, like a cornball Benny Hill number retranslated to smalltown America, this one is more of a bar-room novelty ditty with woodworm infested piano and oompah rhythms - somewhere between Gilbert O'Sullivan and Lieutenant Pigeon without quite capturing the wit or eccentricity of either. "You can have a lot of fun when you're flashing your bum" they sing as if they know from experience.

The B-side is more interesting, having an almost glam grooviness to it which is utterly unexpected given the unvarnished spit and sawdust scruffiness of the plug side. It sticks rigidly to its groove without changing tack much, but is brief enough to not wear out its welcome. 

From a modern-day perspective, the mania for streaking seems incredibly odd. In an era where lad mag nudity has come and virtually gone and where nudity is easily Googled for anyone who wants to see it, the idea of someone galloping across a field in a blur with their charms on display feels quaint and not at all transgressive. "So what and who cares?" we might think, and the further we move away from that decade, chances are the more inexplicable it's going to seem. 

Perhaps more inexplicable still is the fact that the Nicholls and Duncan credited with penning both sides of this record seem to be the same pair who co-wrote "Baby Make It The Last Time" with Scott Walker in 1967. His opinions on this record are not recorded.

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