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Saturday, December 06, 2008

COMATOSE 

Haven't got around to reading all of those best music/end of the year lists in the papers or on the internet, but I bet this song and this band crop up in most of them:




Yes, it's Girlfriend In An Oxford Coma (I Know, I Know) It's Serious by The Vampire Weekends.

Problem is, whenever I hear that song I imagine it being performed by the King's Singers.




As you can see, the King's Singers are major LOLZ merchants for the sort of people who fall into fits of hysterical laughter whenever they hear that thing where "cats" sing opera, and they don't own a TV set because television is "evil" but they MUST confess to enjoying Radio Four's comedy output and they ADOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE Steven Fry.

I can't get the Vampire Weekend/King's Singers business out of my head.  

I need to be transported back to 1977 so that the King's Singers can appear on a Nana Mouskouri Christmas Special performing Oxford Comma, with the bald cove singing the "take the chapstick/put it on your lips" lines in his deep bassy voice to *hilarious effect*.

Then, and only then, will I be able to get on with the rest of my life.

:(

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Comments:
Did you see that doc last night on Nana Armskouri? I thought her farewell concert was a bit Demis Roussos. the mention of Nana Mouskouri still induces childlike sniggers and giggles from the early 70's for some reason. She was so successful but such a figure of fun at the same time - like an early advert for Specsavers. Do you think she genuinely needed glasses?
 
Trilling speccy birds don't really do it for me I'm afraid.

Nor do fat warbling tent wearing blokes for that matter.

Joe Dolce singing 'Shutupayaface', that's what I call real class.
 
Isn’t this the season for Jingle Dogs?
 
Those King Singers "comedy expressions" when they were singing - priceless! One looked like he was in the middle of semi-colonic irrigation.

Must invite friends round for sweet sherry and get my King Singers Vinyls out so we can all nod sagely at each other round the radiogram like Manfred Mann and Joan Bakewell.
 
RoMo - we, er, ahem, actually recorded the programmes on the Nana Mouskouri evening on Sky Plus. It is Christmas after all ... we started to watch From The Basement last night but the effects of drink/sleepiness meant that we got as far as the first Sparks song but we'll return to it later on, promise (she says in a nauseatingly sucky-up kind of way). Nana was way ahead of the times with the geek chic look, I think.

Garfer - I think Demis starred with Nana on the BBC Special that was on the telly last night. I hope they did a duet. The real heavyweights of Greek music! That's as good as it gets. Joe Dolce kept Vienna by Ultravox off the number one spot, y'know.

MJ - I can remember cats doing disco songs. They sounded uncannily like the Bee Gees, as you can imagine. I don't know if Murph (see comment below yours) has been in the recording studio yet.

Murph - have you heard their rendition of the Highway Code? I could down a couple of bottles of sweet sherry and still not raise a laugh listening to that. Absolutely grim. Did Manfred Mann and Joan Bakewell have a meaningful relationship in the sixties? You ain't seen nothing like the Mighty Quinn ...
 
I often start singing Shaddap A Your Face out loud when I'm really stressed. I know - a bit weird but I can't help it. Re: FTB - thank god someone's watching even if they are asleep! Don't miss next Weds - it's Mark E Smith and The Fall and White Denim x
 
My dad had a load of Nana Mouskouri records, but, far worse than that, because he had taught the short one in the Kings Singers(Nigel Perrin - see, I remember his bloody name), he once insisted I accompany him to a, for want of a better word, gig. It was the single most ghastly evening of my life. Thanks for bringing it all back.

How the hell can five people all be so pleased with themselves.

I'm off to phone a therapist.
 
I can even vaguely remember that the King's Singers had a theme song, with which they began and ended their radio shows...

"Now these are the songs that the King's Singers sing / When we play at a party* or that kind of thing / With a doo-wop doo-wop doo-wop doo-wop** / Folk songs, church music, light opera and pop!***"

* Christ, what sort of party would that be?
** Trying to sound a bit like Cleo Laine, who appeared on all the same light entertainment shows as the KS did, along with Barbara Dickson, James Galway, Manhattan Transfer, Grace Kennedy etc.
*** But when they sang 'pop', you could hear the inverted commas, like the Times used in the early 60s, eg "Mr Adam Faith, a 'pop' musician".

Glad I've got that out of my system.

The wv is "unnal", which is presumably someone who doesn't like it up the bum. Or who doesn't have a bum, of course.
 
Not a Katy Perry fan then?
 
RoMo - very impressed with what I saw. Gnarls Barkley were bloody excellent. I'm not just "saying" that either.

Malc - sorry to bring back all the terrible memories. The overwhelming smugness of the King's Singers didn't seem to go down too well with the audience of the Nana Mouskouri show we watched last night (... I know, I know, we deserve to be shot). Presumably Nana's fans are a pretty discerning lot.

Tim - Grace Kennedy! I really thought I'd purged her from my mind in 1978. James Galway was also on the Nana Mouskouri show we saw. There's something about him that makes me think that he smells of Brylcreem and that he gropes young women on public transport. The King's Singers had to sing on EVERYONE ELSE'S FUCKING SONG on the show. Hideous.

Billy - certainly not. She's always getting her jugs out. Perhaps she should be on How To Look Good Naked. Besides which, I prefer medicated chapstick to cherry chapstick.
 
my father in law has seen nana mouskouri perform live at the Acropolis or the Parthenon or one of those ruined places. he thought she was WONderful. I wonder why they refused to book her into a hall that had a roof, personally.
 
I too saw some of that Nana Mouskouri stuff on Beeb 4. It left me gagging for the Aphrodite's Child CD.
Yes, gagging.
 
FN - there was some footage of her performing in London, and they still managed to put her on an outdoor stage, with a mock up of the Acropolis. Perhaps all British singers should be forced to perform in front of a mock up of the Houses Of Parliament/Big Ben.

Istvanski - bleugh. I may follow this up with a Demis Roussos post, if I can summon up the enthusiasm to write the bloody thing.
 
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