BONEY M – “Rivers Of Babylon”
I didn’t know about genre in 1978 but that didn’t mean I couldn’t recognise it, and this fitted into a very particular and not wholly liked one: music you might sing in school assembly. I didn’t need to have read a single Psalm to know that somehow this fitted next to “When I Needed A Neighbour” and “Kum-By-Ya” and “The Ink Is Black” – i.e. “earnest singalong” not “fun singalong” like the soon-to-be-A-side “Brown Girl In The Ring” (which I did like).
And for all that I find this pretty enjoyable I’d still make that distinction, putting “Rivers” into the less fun side of Boney M, certainly compared to almost anything else on Nightflight To Venus – the space disco title track, the gonzo history of “Rasputin”, their finger-poppin’ covers of Roger Miller and Neil Young. “Rivers Of Babylon” slides down easily but lacks the immense entertainment value of the group at their best. From the intro in, though, there’s a sense of comfort and dignity to it carried over from its religious and reggae roots – it’s proof, at least, of Frank Farian’s apparent conviction that everything could be usefully discofied. Why be like Tony Manero and turn dancing into your religion, when actual religion could be as danceable as anything else?
(And this, incidentally, is why I was wrong about “Rivers” at the time and never did sing it that I can recall – its trace lyrical religiosity would have scared off my primary school pop pickers. Animals going in two by two – yeah, no problem, but all this Babylon and Zion stuff was best left well alone.)
5
Marcello, Bun thinks that’s disharmonious. Go to the podium and confess. HE’LL tell you whay to say…
DJP: “He’s right of course…Quite right…I’m inadequate…INADEQUATE!…”
Continued in 1967.
# 75 – Indeed, yes, Lino. “Self-absorbed” could safely be added to my list of why I detest Sedaka:
“You’ve turned into the cheesiest twat I’ve ever see-en,
So far up yourself, you queen!”
He turned you down, right?
Rumbled.
DJP, please remind us of Neil Sedaka’s TOTP appearance in the nineties. If I remember correctly – in the midst of the breakbeat-techno-pop era – wasn’t he introduced as a “very special guest”? In a horrid jumper, too? Or was I “on drugs”?
Neil Sedaka performed ‘Miracle Song’ on the Top Of The Pops transmitted on the 7th of November 1991. Also in the studio that week were; The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu, Crowded House, K Klass, Belinda Carlisle and Control. The hosts were Mark Franklin and Elayne Smith (Who? This was the heyday of anonymous presenters)
I can remember thinking that The JAMMS were one of the greatest things I’d ever seen on television that night. But more of them anon…
Yeah, the TOTP performance of “It’s Grim Up North” was extraordinary. That and “Rhythm Is A Mystery” are two of my favourite singles of their decade, if not of all time.
Trying to remember if I ever saw IGUN performed in the studio or not. All I’m getting is the Jerusalem moment during the 40-11 rundown or whatever they filled a video clip with at that point. No memory of Franklin and Smith either.
Yeah, Bill Drummond doing the ‘recitation’ live!
The demo version had Pete Wylie doing it, and is worth tracking down.
I remember both the JAMMS and the Sedaka performances, but also have no memory of Mark Franklin and Elayne Smith!
Boney M’s TOTP performances were normally a campy old hoot, but they were comparatively sedate and dignified for “Rivers”. Or at least as dignified as you can reasonably be with half an ostrich stuck on top of your head…
On one of those “TV’s most thingy moments” shows, they spoke about TOTP’s “Daddy Cool” moment, as they used live vocals without realising Bobby Farrel was not actually a singer, and indeed did his part bellowing like a wounded buffalo. Aparently it was a “playground moment” as us kids all talked about it.
Actually, we were all laffing about his ‘orang-utang’ mad dancing, and didn’t notice his singing at the time.
The JAMMS doing its Grim Up North on TOTP (lowish quality but you get the idea).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvDQxdv-wuE
Boney M Daddy Cool: where Bobby’s vocals are indeed a bit odd!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ7m5vmrx10&feature=related
That performance of Daddy Cool comes from the TOTP transmitted on the 6th of January 1977. Also in the studio that week were; Sheer Elegance, Tina Charles, Smokie, Gladys Knight & The Pips, Clodagh Rogers (!) and Johnny Mathis. The host was David Jensen.
I’ve no idea what Clodagh was doing there, as she hadn’t had a hit since 1971. Still, I’m sure that her surprise appearance – performing ‘Save Me’- must have been welcomed by certain teenage Popular commentators.
Well, she was there because “Save Me” was indeed a hit by then.
Although Everyhit doesn’t seem to have it! Which seems wrong.
No, it definitely wasn’t a hit.
It seems that Boney M were last spotted helping the president of Georgia adopt “a disco approach to conflict resolution”…
Clodagh’s Save Me sounds brilliant in my head, husky Anglo disco. The chorus has been embedded in my brain, every word, for 30 years and I never owned it – does that mean it’s ripe for a makeover? Kylie, maybe?
I’d have guessed it landed between 40 and 50 but don’t have a Guinness book to hand, so I bow to DJP’s finality.
Well, I just hauled up my Guinness book, and you’d be right to! Truly amazed, no chart position at all.
Mark G just beat me to it! Wikipedia says it got loads of airplay despite flopping, but I have no memory of it (and am now quite curious).
I remember the record very well indeed. Much played on R2 and 208 (and Radio Clyde 261) but it didn’t chart.
this was popular at folk Mass back when I were small.
There was something not quite right about poor old Bobby. Dancing like a maniac (very badly) and so often missing his singing (miming) cues on totp. I couldn’t take Boney M seriously – Daddy Cool was ok, as was Rasputin and Nightflight To Venus (the title track) – but the rest were pretty dire – neither of these sides warranted the sale of the single so those that bought it twice ? The stupidity of the GBP beggars belief sometimes.
RIP Bobby Farrell. Blimey, didn’t see that coming. Nobody would describe him as one of the greats, but a 70s icon nonetheless.
Bobby Farrell R.I.P.
Sleazy, Beefheart and now this…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/dec/30/bobby-farrell-boney-m-singer-dies
Riddle me this. Bobby died the same day as Rasputin.
And both in St Petersburg, more or less.
…although the manner of Greg’s and Bobby’s passing did differ somewhat.
You mean they didn’t poison, shoot, stab and drown BF?
‘It’s what he would have wanted’
and as I’ve just mentioned to Waldo, the time between Rasputin’s death and Boney M’s hit of the same name was 61 years – Bobby Farrell’s age when he died. What does it all mean?
Oh, dear God, it get’s even more terrifying…
If you match each letter for “Rasputin” and “Bobby Farrell” with its numerical place in the alphabet, they both total 118!!!!
There’s definitely some strange shit going on here..
There’s a rather good version of this done at some rasta street gathering in that rather patchy Rocksteady documentary shown on BBC4 recently…
Didn’t know this was a psalm back then, truth is stranger than fiction with reference to his death, Boney M still played places like Pontins when I worked there, but Bobby wasn’t with them, he was Boney M in a way
While Rivers of Babylon is based on a Psalm, the idea that that Psalm is especially comforting is false. Psalm 137 concludes with enslaved-in-Babylon jewish women doing their babylonian masters’ laundry at riverside singing songs of Zion but concluding by warning babylonian women as follows:
Daughter [of] Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is the one who repays you according to what you have done to us./Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.
The horror/intensity-of-anger image is actually two-fold:
1. The enslaved women who are doing your laundry by beating it against rocks, are thinking of beating your infants’ brains out as they do so
2. The women who are doing your laundry will (eventually and probably sooner rather than later) be providing your child-care (so look out).
Anyhow, the Rivers of Babylon song in all its forms only uses the first 4 lines of the Psalm 137, avoiding the horror punchline by interpolating a couple of lines from another Psalm.
I wrote a blogpost a few months ago about the general phenomenon of Nasty Surprises in the Old Testament if anyone’s interested.