“Ant Rap” was great, though!

This month in 1981 also gave the world Only Fools and Horses. According to the Radio Times, scriptwriter John Sullivan… “in pursuit of his campaign to bring situation comedy into the 80’s is going to sidestep some familiar clichés. ‘I won’t make Gunga Din jokes about Indian characters. In the kind of pubs where I drink, there are people of all races and they’re not at each others throats. If there’s a fight, it’s between two drunks, not between racial antagonists’.”

Which is pertinent to various posts on Japanese Boy, I suppose.

What’s nice is that the score, as always, is a bit peripheral – I enjoy the essays for attempting to draw me into Tom’s world and his readings of the songs. Sometimes I think there’s not nearly the stuff there that he dreams up, but that’s okay – I would generally rather like songs than dislike them, so if I can adopt the reasoning, I can live a happier life.

Prince CharmING, unfortunately, I haven’t been able to warm up to. I can’t think of what I’d change – it’s certainly slow but the whole ambience would be wrecked by speeding it up. I think it’s the repetitiousness of the song as a whole – any given stretch of it sounds GREAT but by the time it’s 2/3 over you kind of want it to be done. Obviously the structure of it requires the long lumber, but I wish there were a few more surprises along the way.

The atonal screeching, on the other hand, is pure genius!

I can remember a letter in Melody Maker at the time that Romomania was conspicuously failing to sweep the nation in 1995 that observed “Ridicule is nothing to be scared of – Well, obviously, but neither is it something to be actively courted”

Loved by my nine-year old self, like most of my peers here, I think that the sheer conviction of Adam’s silly philosophy still has the almost same thrilling effect on my adult self.

What this brings back to me is my one foray into student politics, such as it was – taking part in a demo in central London against threatened grant cuts (what we’d all have made of student loans, God only knows). A chance to fulfil your preconceptions of being a student (before The Young Ones revised them all) and walk around the streets being subversive. And our section of the demo invented a chant that was taken up by all, addressed to the then Education Secretary – “KEITH JOSEPH! KEITH JOSEPH! DON’T YOU EVER CUT OUR EDUCATION!”

It was on this demo that I met the worst girlfriend I ever had. She was a bit self-consciously wacky – looked up the Riot Act of 1715 in the college library just so she could say she’d read the Riot Act, that sort of thing. When we had The Breaking Up Conversation, she made it clear I’d rung her while she was watching a good film on TV, then at the end said not to worry ‘cos she’d managed to keep up with the plot of the film anyway. No great loss…

It also fades out far too early – the additional percussion over the main drum break transforms the last 30 seconds or so into a monstrous proto-hip hop groove.

There’s also a very hip-hop style break on “Scorpios” (I think) on the “Prince Charming” album, which I’m surprised hasn’t been sampled yet (perhaps it has and I haven’t heard it).

I assumed Manchirons were some “oriental” warrior race, something to do with Genghis Khan (not the Eurovision act). But, of course, Golden Brown was all about drugs!! Just like Being With You!!

Anyway, back to Prince Charming. Echoing WL’s perception of Dors* , I’ve a rather ominous feeling that if I take a look at that video, I might, being 39, find her looking way younger than I thought she did at the time. Only one way to find out…

*sorry

(Whispers) ok… it was the eighth no.1 of this century.

Back to the matter in hand: the harpsichord “break” on Ant Rap strikes me as a move as bold as the jerky interjection after the second chorus of God Only Knows. Not as good, necessarily, but compared to the teen idols we’ll be facing down for the rest of the eighties it is genuine, high wire, derring do.