OUT OF THEIR BRILLIANT MINDS : FURNITURE vs LIVING IN A BOX
I have been contacted by a long time reader to bemoan my lack of commentary on the 1980’s band Furniture – a beat combo who barely set the charts alight in 1986. Now I know I say I set out to be encyclopaedic here, but give me some chance. I was happy to have put this morose bunch of chancers out of my head.
There is a theory knocking about at the moment that every word in the English language has been used in a bands name. Perhaps this has bearing on the success of Furniture. While the theory may be true, no band called the Wardrobes, The Prancing Sofas, or the Chiltern Three Piece-Suite has ever dented the charts. Furniture made a slight graze on the top twenty with Brilliant Mind, a song whose lyrics accurately describe their own shock at anyone buying it.
“You must be out of your brilliant mind”
they sang, not realising that while their consumers were indeed a couple of crusts short of a loaf even the stupidest people in the world (Elton John fans ferexample) would soon get the patronising and condescending tone. As their album said they were “The Wrong People” and even Stiff records, not a label shy of punting shit on to an unsuspecting public – deleted the damn thing in a matter of weeks.
Such a marketing stategy has only been surpassed once since. The band Living In A Box whose single “Living in A Box” was aimed at and marketed solely to people who were also living in boxes. Not realising that the disposable income of such box dwellers in Waterloo’s Cardboard City was not enough to stretch to a cup of tea, let alone synth-pop by a band without enough imagination to think of a band name and a song title.