Has an album ever spawned a weirder set of singles than Boss Drum? You got hands-in-the-air club confectionery (“LSI”), moody tribalism (“Boss Drum”), a twenty-minute spoken word piece by Terence McKenna – honestly, “Re:Evolution” alone would make it a contender. And then there’s this career-defining novelty, a cheeky but woeful pun stretched to song length, inventing Dickensian rave (and possibly more) along the way.
If The Shamen were ever serious about hiding “Ebeneezer Goode”‘s subject matter, their best hope wasn’t their bare-faced denials, it’s that no supposed Ecstasy song has ever sounded beerier than this one. The huggy spaciness of “Pro Gen”, “Omega Amigo”, and several summers of love is swapped out for a rammed pub party vibe: listening to it is like elbowing your way through a raucous crowd, and the bolshy “Eezer Goode! Eezer Goode!” chorus is more Oi than E. Something’s always happening – a twist of synth, a catchphrase, some smeared Happy Mondays-style guitar. The success of “Ebeneezer Goode” is generally pinned on a wish to tweak authority’s nose, but whoever scheduled this bustling, silly record to come out just before Freshers’ Week was a marketing demon.
Does it stand up? I think it’s surprisingly strong. It’s idiotic, yes, but it knows it’s idiotic and it sustains its conceit well and if you accept that you’ll have a good time with Eeezer and with this strutting, invigorating record. Back then, it made a star of Mr C and his preposterous geezer-hop: now, every second record in the charts boasts exaggerated London rapping. C isn’t the world’s most technically skilled MC, but that just made him more ripe for impersonation, and even if you couldn’t handle the flow you could manage a “naughty, naughty” or a “ya ha ha ha haaaa”. The sticking point might have been in assuming this single had much or anything to do with rave. With its good-time booziness, its music hall callbacks, its exaggerated characters, its student appeal and its cockney vim “Ebeneezer Goode” is really a cousin of and weird precursor to Britpop.
Score: 6
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I think of this as a kids’ song. I certainly loved it as a 6-year-old, and I had no idea they were supposed to be singing about drvqs.
Listening again, blimey, it IS geezery innit?
“…now, every second record in the charts boasts exaggerated London rapping.”
I am now trying to hear this record as the secret origin of Tinie Tempah.
Yeah, it works as a kids song too!
(As is probably obvious, this was No.1 when I went to University. At the time I thought it was OK, and I still basically think it’s OK, though there have been times in between where I hated it – like most things students are amused by, it hung around too long.)
#2 I was thinking more of Rizzle Kicks (who aren’t London actually, but are geezery) (and are now I think bunnyable?)
#4 Indeed, courtesy of the Featured Bunny. But then again so is Mr Tempah so let us slide this under the rug for now.
Before my time, of course; my only prior exposure to this was through clip shows counting down banned songs or bad songs or doing the “what were we thinking???” schtick. As such it’s a bit odd checking ChartStats to find that they were a Real Actual Band with Real Actual Hits. Any of them worth checking out?
This one is, yes, very geezery indeed, but enjoyable enough. No quibbling with a 5/6.
A few weeks into its reign, on TOTP they started playing this moodier stripped down mix of the track that sounded more like ‘Pro-Gen’ follow-up ‘Possible Worlds’. A trackback to their ravier side, as is the extended mix with its warped moody choir voices threatening to turn it into the title theme to Gamesmaster.
Considering the tempo Mr C does really well, affording a coherent and reasonable level of sophistication to the verses against the ‘idiocy’ of the chorus. Y’know, like Russell Brand.
The “Yaa ha ha!” bit reminds me of that certain London geezer laugh you always (used to?) hear in crowded pubs, on a frequency of its own that cut through everything, no matter how packed and loud the place was.
I remember standing near one of these geezers once on a New Years Eve at the Rail View in South Croydon, his “yaa ha ha”s being so loud that I did wonder what the hell it was that tickled him so, and tried to listen in to the conversation.
After the fifth or sixth “yaa ha ha”, he went “YAA HA HAAA! Classic Beadle!”
#5 Pro-Gen was very good pop-dance, from memory it got a bit less good when it became Move Any Mountain but I dunno if there were any real substantial differences. LSI and Boss Drum are pretty good. I always had a soft spot for their heart-on-sleeve techno-hippyisms so I quite liked things like “Destination Eschaton” too.
“Re:Evolution” – the Terence McKenna thing – is all about 2012 I think so we’ll find out soon enough if that record does in fact contain the secret of the universe. I can’t think of many other Top 40 singles which tried to, though.
#5 Absolutely worth checking out partly for the observation Tom gives – their uncommon range and will to stretch what was appropriate for single status (‘Re:evolution’ was absurd but unfortunately dull with it iirc). Defiantly lengthy ambient in the charts was a ’92 trend tho (‘Blue Room’, ‘Avenue’…’Halcyon’ had an edit but still). My favourite Shamen track now is probably the album mix of ‘Boss Drum’ (again significantly ‘doomier’ in tone than the single mix).
I have nothing to hand, but I’m sure I remember the reviews for this one on its release being surprisingly positive, focussing on the subversive nature of the track and the “surrealism” of the rap. Had the single peaked at number 8 and sodded off forever, I can’t help but think that it might be regarded in a bit of a different way, whereas the word “novelty” is used to describe it a lot now.
As somebody who liked it way before it went to number one, I have to say this has aged surprisingly well for a record which is unquestionably stuffed with catchphrases and gimmicks. What should have become irritating after the third week of release actually does still stand up cheerily well now, and I think Tom hits the nail on the head when he talks about the sheer volume of ideas in the record. It’s not wholly dependant on the central catchphrase of the chorus, and it’s the little tweaks and touches in the background which kept me coming back for more – it sounds as if they had a whale of a time in the studio with this one digging up samples, riffs and effects.
I’ll take matters further and say that this single was actually closer to the spirit of the KLF (and Bill Drummond acknowledged the Shamen were encroaching on his territory) than its predecessor at the top spot. True, EB is more “Doctorin’ The Tardis” (with Ford Timelord being given a proper vocal role) than “Last Train To Trancentral”, but in my head it felt as if The Shamen were operating from a similar space by this point. Less successfully and intelligently, admittedly, but certainly sneaking bizarre samples, references and coded phrases into the charts then laughing up their sleeves at the rest of us.
It’s a single I’m still known to put on when in need of a lift, and still hugely enjoy despite it commonly being slapped down as lowest common denominator stuff, and I’m going to give this an 8. I’m also not sure I fully buy the Britpop analogy – to me it feels more like the call-and-response devices of seventies glam rock are present, with only the mockneyisms really making it seem like the Geezerishness to come. Mr C’s accent feels like a bit of a red herring here to me – when he’s asking us to follow Ebeneezer Goode, in my mind’s eye it’s always some peculiar Gary Glitter-esque eccentric character rather than a winking, skipping Damon Albarn figure.
EDIT: Though I’ve realised I’ve given the track a sinister edge by saying that which it probably doesn’t warrant….
I was in the sixth form at the time, setting up a new – and thoroughly unofficial – school magazine of sorts. Subversive (or, mostly, to be honest, crap) in the way that something put together by a bunch of 17 year olds from East London and Essex with rather limited experience of the broader world can be.
Anyway we pondered what to call this organ of naffness. Had to get permission from the headmaster in an interview to be allowed to distribute the thing on school premises (I recall the line “When I was your age, one joined the conservative party to meet girls and play ping-pong” being part of his response.). Permission was granted, anyway.
I realise this up until now may have sounded like an irrelevant digression, but the direct connection with this record was that we though it appropriate to call the magazine “Vera”. After all – this song provided us with a sloganeering salesline of some worth. Sorted, lovely.
(Obviously the line we put about was that “Vera” was Latin for “The Truth” – ignoring that in Russian, the word would have been “Pravda”)
I think Hyperreal was a rather overlooked beauty of a single – clever textures and ascents – from the Shamen, who I’d been following, not that compulsively or closely, and strictly from my bedroom, since their “In Gorbachev We Trust” days.
“Ebeneezer Goode” is a lot better than it should be, which isn’t to say that it isn’t rather irritating as well. I think there may be a point to the argument that the enormity of its success has allowed it to transcend novelty-related naffness stigmas. (But, still, Altern-8…though I suppose they had the visual gimmicks to go alongside the music one). I think the intense energy of the track (which really does recall being 17 again), the breathlessness of Mr C’s rap (although I do think in the 6th form we were united in agreement concerning what his initial was, or ought to be, an abbreviation for) is part of what gives it its strength.
I quite agree with 23 Daves that Ebeneezer Goode sounds more akin to Gary Glitter than to Damon Albarn!
But what a carry on, indeed.
Another one too personal for me to write about here, but I’ve given it a 9.
#10. Jerry Sadowitz was a good bit of casting for the video as the titular character.
Fabulous record, I might also stretch to a 9.
the ‘geezerish’ quality of the vocal gets balanced out by the glam eye-shadow and Frankie style bondage gear in the video so that it embodies the advertised all-embracing happy vibe of the rave scene. There’s guitars in there plus 80s synth-frills and 90s synth-bass. The video also puts me in mind of Madness. Interestingly it looks very White – little or none of the mix of races seen/heard in the KLF productions.
I like it – a strong 7 for me
I’ve changed my mind – this is a 10. It’s so busy, so much fun, and such a great wind-up that it deserves nothing less.
What is it that elevates the “Famous philosopher once wrote” joke above the “Jacques Coustonk” joke in The Stonk?
What is it that makes the “Naughty Naughty Very Naughty” interjections less annoying than the assaults of “Ah Yeah” in Itsy Bitsy …?
What is it that separates that “yah ha ha haaaa” from the forced cackle at the end of Let’s Party by Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers?
What is it that makes that makes the rhyming of ‘mischievious’ with ‘devious’ so acceptable when other, more legitimate, rhymes attract opprobrium?
For me: nothing, nothing, nothing and nothing.
Perhaps it’s just my personal annoyance at the use of mischievious that managed to spoil the whole record for me.
But I suspect not. A particularly self-aware and insightful friend of mine once told me that she doesn’t do […] anymore, because she knew how annoying it made her to others. In a close comparison, it’s my belief that most folks know how difficult it is to arrive at a party stone cold sober when everyone else is drunk (Frank Skinner even argues parties are rubbish if you’re sober and everyone else is sober). Few, though, realise that when drunk they are the annoying ones whose behaviour keeps outsiders out.
I think possibly Shamen are on to that – if you’re not arriving to this party – er, shall I say drunk – you might as well go home sober and soon. The hosts will forgive you because they know they’re very, very annoying to the outside world. Which makes it a very clever, insightful social commentary and hats off to them.
But IF that’s true, it’s as self referential and self fulfilling as “We know a song that’ll get on your nerves”. Plainly, it gets on my nerves.
And yeah, mischevious isn’t even a word.
Sorted.
Boy this sounds good now! The rap/narration is skilfully delivered, there’s passion in the delivery and lots to interest in the music, and Mr C looks like the annoying bloke in the pub or on the tube platform who knows he’s unnerving you and just takes it a bit further for his own enjoyment. As a package he’s a kind of missing link between Ian Dury and Keith Flint. Anyway, it was good to hear again. Hadn’t realised it was Jerry Sadowitz in the video.
The song was of course adapted for the football terraces as “E’s a c–t, ‘e’s a c–t, the referee’s a c–t”.
Blog 92 crossover alert! https://popular-number1s.com/ft/2007/09/blog-92-naughty-naughty-very-naughty/
By the time Ebeneezer Goode gets into the charts, my wayward days are mostly behind me. However, the references to “veras” and “salmon” didn’t strike me as surrealism but actual realism. The streetwise Mr C delivering Artful Dodgerisms with a Sid James cackle. The perfect balance between club-culture Pied Piper and “leader of the gang” as referenced above. Coded messages to the club kids? That horse bolted already. Joey Beltram’s “Energy Flash”, Andy C’s “Sour Mash” EP and a host of others referencing ecstasy, permeating the consciousness of an army of weekend ravers. EG only reflected what was already out there. Those who knew, knew. Those who didn’t were never going to. Ah, but that was just bullshit wasn’t it? Nobody really bought into Boss Drum’s cod-mysticism did they? That McKenna claptrap? Maybe the Tories did.
As a piece of pop though, EG’s mockneyisms are only a facet. Malcolm McDowell’s Great Philosopher line interruped by “NAUGHTY NAUGHTY VERY NAUGHTY YAHAHAHA!” demands our attention. Then follows Mr C’s scattergun oblique references and street-savvy memes. For the most part, their approach is pretty much those of cheeky scamps. When Mr C appeared on TOTP, he was asked to tone down the rap, hence; “Has anyone got any UNDERLAY?” (“…gratuitous RUG reference”). Well, I thought it was funny.
EDIT: I see I unintentionally have finished on a similar note to Kat’s post on Blog 92. My bad.
@17 ‘Mischievious’ is too a word, same as ‘grievious’: both part of Irish English and its colonial offshoots. I didn’t even realise there were such words as “MISS-chev-uss” and “GREE-vuss” until I was well into my teens. (Of course, that’s how I say them where I live now, same as I avoid split infinitives in formal writing even though there’s no good reason to.)
EG sure was a blast back in the day; can’t wait to hear it again and see how it sounds now…
“If the truth can be told so as to be understood it will be believed”
Human history represents such a radical break with the natural systems of biological organisation that preceded it that it must be the response to a kind of attractor or dwell point that lies ahead in the temporal dimension. Persistently western religions have integrated into their theologies the notion of a kind of end of the world. And I think that a lot of psychedelic experimentation sort of confirms this intuition. I mean it isn’t going to happen according to any of the scenarios of orthodox religion, but the basic intuition that the universe seeks closure in a kind of Omega point of transcendence is confirmed. It’s almost as though this object in hyperspace, glittering in hyperspace, throws off reflections of itself, which actually ricochet into the past, illuminating this mystic, inspiring that saint or visionary, and that out of these fragmentary glimpses of Eternity we can build a kind of a map of not only the past universe and the evolutionary ingression into novelty, but a kind of map of the future.
This is what Shamanism has always been about. A Shaman is someone who has been to the end. It is someone who knows how the world really works, and knowing how the world really works, means to have risen outside, above, beyond the dimensions of ordinary spacetime and cozooistry (?) and actually seen the wiring under the board: stepped outside the confines of learned culture and learned and embedded language into the domain of Wittgenstein called the unspeakable, the Transcendental presence of the Other, which can be sectioned in various ways to yield Systems of Knowledge which can be brought back into ordinary social space for the good of the Community. So in the context of 90% of human culture, the Shaman has been the Agent of Evolution, because the Shaman learns techniques to go between ordinary reality and the domain of the ideas: this higher dimensional continuum that is somehow parallel to us, available to us and yet ordinarily occluded to us by cultural convention out of the fear of the Mystery, I believe, and what the Shamans are, are people who have been able to de-condition themselves from the community’s instinctual distrust of the Mystery, and go into this bewildering Higher Dimension, and gain Knowledge, recover the jewel lost at the Beginning of Time, save souls, cure, commune with the Ancestors and so forth and so on.
Shamanism is not a religion – its a set of techniques, and the principal Technique is the use of psychedelic plants. What psychedelics do is they dissolve boundaries; and in the presence of dissolved boundaries One cannot continue to close One’s eyes to the ruination of the Earth, the poisoning of the Seas and the consequences of two thousand years of unchallenged Dominator culture, based on Monotheism, hatred of Nature, suppression of the Female and so forth and so on.
So, what Shamans have to do is act as exemplars by making this cosmic journey to the domain of the Gaian Ideas, and then bringing them back in the form of Art, to the struggle to Save the World. The Planet has a kind of intelligence, that it can actually Open a Channel of communication with an individual human being. The message that Nature sends is transform your language through a synergy between Electronic culture and the Psychedelic Imagination; a synergy between Dance and Idea; a synergy between Understanding and Intuition, and dissolve the boundaries which your culture has sanctioned between you. Become part of this Gaian Supermind.
I mean I think it’s fairly profound, it’s fairly Apocalyptic. History is ending, I mean we are to be the generation that witnesses the Revelation of the purpose of the Cosmos. History is the shock wave of the Eschaton. History is the shock wave of Eschatology. And what this means for those of us who will live through this transition into Hyperspace is that we will be privileged to see the greatest release of Conpressed Change probably since the birth of the Universe. The Twentieth Century is the shudder that announces the approaching cataracts of Time over which our Species and the destiny of this Planet is about to be swept.
“If the truth can be told so as to be understood it will be believed” The emphasis in House music and rave culture on physiologically compatible rhythms, and this sort of thing, is really the re-discovery of the art of Natural Magic with sound. That sound, properly understood, especially percussive sound, can actually change neurological states, and large groups of people getting together in the presence of this kind of music are creating a telepathic community, a bonding, that hopefully will be strong enough to carry the Vision out into the main stream of Society. I think the Youth culture that is emerging in the nineties is an End of the Millennium culture that is actually summing up Western Civilisation, and pointing us in an entirely different direction; that we are going to arrive in the Third Millennium in the middle of an Archaic revival which will mean a revival of these physiologically empowering rhythm signatures, a new Art, a new Social Vision, a new relationship to Nature, to Feminism, to Ego – all of these things are taking hold, and not a Moment too Soon.
I mean, y’know, in yr face Baz Luhrman.
Anyway as a student I found the sci-fi elements of all that stuff pretty exciting, though probably more entertaining a few years later when I met them all again reading The Invisibles.
This is so nineties it would be a parody if it occurred at the other end of the decade. As it is, there’s a space and a place surrounding this song, and it’s bedded further into them because it’s joyously unaware of the coming of Phil Daniels.
Like Tom, this was my fresher’s week soundtrack by default, but it was also a much needed shock to my listening framework. At school, the flow of music had been the choked off by plenty of the usual suspects: tribalism, painfully prohibitive costs and so on. They created a tightening spiral of analysis that could easily lead to a stolid approach to listening to a song: How far could it be dissected? What was the _quality_? I’m sure I imagined the test of time was very important. Rockism, as I would later know it, prospered.
And it was soundly defeated by this song. Ebeneezer Goode became part of the rush of starting university – ditching old restraints and taking on new fun. I was so tuned out of the charts that it needed that long stay at the top to batter its way through to my attention, and by the time it did I realised that it had become part of the story of my first weeks at college. The puns were cheesy and the rest of the lyrics were souped-up pseudisms, but they all made for a cheerful shout-along to go with the cheap beer. It was easy and populist and ridiculously transparent. And I bloody loved it.
#18: “Eezers to be cheerful, one, two, three…”
Precursor to Britpop? How about precursor to the Fast Show, Little Britain, Catherine Tate and anything else that subs catchphrases for wit. An energetic record for certain but also an agressively lairy one.
The basic circumstance for this one is that a friend of mine spent the entire Autumn term of 1992 reciting the various Boss Drum singles right in my ear (we sat next to each other) thus my recollections are somewhere between irritation and affection.
This has got KLF all over it hasn’t it? They’re the hidden/unacknowledged legislators of the UK Pop world at this point. (I’ve been listening to and reading about Ace of Base a bit recently, and, amazingly, KLF were a big influence on them too!) Anyhow, EG’s beery cross-over to clubs definitely seems to anticipate (got to #2 only, so unbunnyable) Born Slippy(nuxx)’s slightly troubling appeal/profile. Together with the MC/singer’s visual anticipation of Keith Flint, that makes EG seem prescient. But I don’t think it makes the song/record much good, and I’d score it a couple of ticks below either BS(nuxx) or Prodigy’s bunnies easy. So this is a 5 or 6 at best for me.
As far as chart pranks go this still rates as ‘cheeky’ rather than ‘annoying’, but I can understand how anyone could feel it was the other way round. I was just about too young to get the joke straight away, and thought it wasn’t as good as ‘Move Any Mountain’. Still, it does sound ok today, surprisingly so as it sounded terrible last time I heard it in about 2003.
Funny to think that just two years previously they’d been credible enough to get into the Festive Fifty (with Pro-Gen), or that they’d follow up ‘Boss Drum’ with what I remember (possibly wrongly) as the tedious psy-trance of ‘Destination Eschaton’. I may check it out to be sure, but I just remember seeing (on TV) their set at Glastonbury 1995 and it being the most irrelevant, past-its-sell-by-date thing I’d ever heard.
Long story shortened: I did this at Karaoke once. Tip: Breathe.
I read this as: Shamanism is not a religion – its a set of techniques, and the principal Technique is the use of psychedelic pants
# 29
Yeah they did disappear surprisingly soon after this.
I recall Colin Angus (the guy with the glasses) getting hot under the collar about some long-term fans who’d complained that Mr C was cheapening the band ( as a replacement for the guy who drowned on the video shoot for “Move Any Mountain”). You could make a comparison with The Thompson Twins or Rod Stewart’s “Atlantic Crossing” here.
Will Sinott, the drowned fellow was called: he arrived late-ish in the band’s history and departed early and very sadly, and I think was its heart: they were negligeable before and rudderless after.
Like “Lazy Sunday” the Small faces, this was their “light relief” track that sits in fine alongside their more ‘serious’ stuff, but then became what they were known for.
I hadn’t knowingly heard this for about 15 years and had no particular desire to here it ever again but on giving it another listen it now comes across as quite a fun record.
I remember how it was reviled at the time on the ‘rave scene’ but my own dislike IIRC was just related to the fact that novelty records very quickly become annoying. And with this record being pretty inescapable on the radio (even on Kiss so it wasn’t all underground classics even then!) for what seemed like months meant that to me the joke outstayed its welcome very rapidly.
An afterthought – as somebody who had been aware of (and liked a lot of) The Shamen’s work from 1987 onwards, the leaps they made stylistically over the course of a mere five years seem staggering now. From the dense, hammering interstellar psychedelia of “Christopher Mayhew Says” to “Ebeneezer Goode” – use of drum machines aside, they’re barely recognisable as the same band. I may be wrong, but I can’t imagine another act veering off their course so radically now for fear of alienating whatever fanbase they had. With The Shamen, it also didn’t feel that contrived, it was just that their drug of choice moved from LSD to E.
From what I heard, they started out as a psychedelic Jam-style rockband.
The first I heard of them was “Jesus loves Amerika” thanks to Snub-tv.
I interviewed them for City Limits! Sinott was a lovely man; Colin Angus I took to less, perhaps — though I don’t now recall why and this is hardly a fair judgment across such a timegap, in ref such a context. Mr C was not yet on the scene.
(would have been in 89 i guess: ie between nme and wire for me)
Mr C was the first pop star I ever interviewed by phone. Nothing interesting to add to this at all, sorry.
I thought Jesus Loves Amerika was pretty “hard-hitting” at the time – it was an unwise revisit, it sounds a dreadful muddle w/sub-Carter lyrics. Example rhyme (from memory): “These are the men who put the right in righteous / Their hypocrisy and bigotry is truly out of sighteous”
But it got me to buy In Gorbachev We Trust whose house-tinged tracks when played in the common room got me a degree of surprise and grudging new respect from older boys who fancied themselves as ravers*. I didn’t let on that I preferred the song-y ones.
*And may have been ravers! Though I think they were no more on speaking terms with Ebeneezer than I was.
Yep, I didn’t understand/ appreciate how much “In Gorbachev We Trust” was a bridge album for them at the time. I think the remix Bam Bam did of “Transcendental” from that album was the birth of the more commercial, rave-orientated Shamen. I remember the copy of “Indie Top 20” I had with that remix on came with a sleevenote saying “You may never hear the like again!” Of course, we were to hear many more such things, from The Shamen and others.
“there’s always been an element of carter in our music”
#36 My Chemical Romance? Emo to Bubblegum (albeit punky bubblegum) in 4 albums.
Reminds me a bit of the Hitcher out of THE MIGHTY BOOSH, rapping about eels. That’s not a bad thing, I think.
TOTPWatch: The Shamen twice performed ‘Ebeneezer Goode’ on Top of the Pops;
3 September 1992. Also in the studio that week were; Bananarama, Sonia, Dr Albarn, Lionel Ritchie and U96, plus a live performance by satellite from Sinead O’Connor in New York. Femi Oke & Mark Franklin were the hosts.
17 September 1992. Also in the studio that week were; EMF, Manic Street Preachers, Inspiral Carpets, Happy Mondays, Daniel O’Donnell and Soul II Soul. Femi Oke & Adrian Rose were the hosts.
re 17 September – that lot plus Daniel O’Donnell? If ever you wanted to be a fly on the wall in the green room…
“Dr Albarn”
Billy don’t scare us like that…
Re:47, as I recall, that episode faded directly from a shambling Shaun Ryder reading lyrics off a piece of paper to O’Donnel looking super-slick and showbiz. It was a jarring moment, to say the least.
Worth pointing out of course that the undisputed king of Geezer-hop recorded Blinded By the Lights!