Sunday 23 March 2008

What the Caked Crusader chose to bake to this week (22 Mar 2008)

At the moment I seem to be having a wander down “nostalgia lane” in my musical tastes and listening to CDs that I haven’t listened to in years. I’ve also had some mammoth sessions of putting all these old CDs onto my MP3 player enabling me to relive my lost youth whilst baking.

This week I listened to Space and I expect you’re probably all saying “who?” as they were never a mainstream popular band but did have a few hits such as “The Female of the Species”, “Avenging Angels” and “The Ballad of Tom Jones”. I was a bit of an indie-kid in my day and loved their guitar pop coupled with darkly humorous lyrics. They were the also the only band I’d come across where the singer sang in character so used different voices to suit different songs. Funny but never novelty, I still recall the first time I heard them – it was an indie pop compilation CD, the best way to come across new artists in the pre-internet days. The song was called “Neighbourhood” and I knew I’d be buying their album just from the brilliant attention-grabbing opening couplet:

In number 69 there lives a transvestite
He's a man by day but he's a woman at night

Over the course of the song we also learn about other residents:

In 999 they make a living from crime
The house is always empty cause they're all doing time

And:

In number 18 there lives a big butch queen
He's bigger than Tyson and he's twice as mean

And:

In 666 there lives a Mister Miller
He's our local vicar and a serial killer

Most songs seem to have sinister or dark themes but then you get an absolute dance classic such as “Disco Dolly”.

If you’re a nineties indie kid looking to relive what was great about music in that era, you can’t go far wrong with Space.

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