WAITING FOR THE LOVE BUS

Cultural guidance notes issued to the U.K. press

Rosemary Davis, actress, writer and producer, edited the original BBC Sound Effects records. Today these sounds, assiduously recorded in the early sixties, seem to come from another world.

Bakersfield is a place a couple of hours north of Los Angeles where seekers after Purity Of Tone stand in the desert and watch drag racing before cruising the bars of this fine and patriotic borough, and maybe stopping by at one of its lifestyle motel complexes. This particular tune was inspired by a conversation in Boardner's Bar, Hollywood, with Iain O'Higgins and Cole Coonce of the Braindead Soundmachine, whose subsequent attempts to lend decency to the whole concept are never going to wash with this writer.

The JBC spent New Year's Eve 1992 in Kaliningrad, a rocking city of the old U.S.S.R., largely populated by recent unemployed Red Army personnel, for whom we wrote this tune. The Mall is, of course, somewhere else altogether.

A true story. Whaddya want? A diagram?

Inspired by and dedicated - in part - to the Sweetwater Springs Saloon in Los Osos, California, a splendid rockin' redneck shed, which we heartily recommend to all pompous English whiteboy groups trying to "crack the market Stateside". If you're going to play Nick Cave, sooner or later you're going to hurt yourself; far better to stand in a giant refrigerator with six bottles of Jaegermeister and your crew.

Why does the modern simpleton assume that he's causing you a problem by killing you? Inter mortuos nil nisi bonum.

I'm not sure where this came from, and I'm vaguely resentful of the fact. I suppose it imagines itself to well fin-de-siecle. Hey! We're so doomed we've learned to love it.

Imagine how RUDE it would be to die in someone else's apartment. Imagine how much BOTHER it could cause them. Imagine how much you'd CARE.

Written in January, after hearing some extraordinary remarks from ordinarily decent people concerning a character in a news story who seemed to me - in quite black and white terms - the victim. Full of good intentions and bruised sensitivities I tried to write a tune about it. I tried to stay respectful and clear. In the time between the recording and the release of this tune a similar incident occurred in New York. I didn't catch the name this time.

Penguins

In the most desolate place in the world they are standing in large numbers. They are out there doing it now. As far as we can tell they have always been out there, miles from anywhere, in conditions that would hospitalise you or me in the course of an afternoon.

Wrestling with life in Post-Historical Universe, we cast around awhile among some of the more extreme options open to the modern voter. A photo appears in a magazine in Florida showing the Grand Wizard of the local chapter of the KKK in full drag: he is eighteen. A drawing appears in a British newspaper depicting John Major strangling Norman Lamont with his underpants. Can being The President's man help your self-esteem? Your sex life? Why worry about Home Affairs when you will have No Home? Why vote for the Lesser Evil?

The inevitable and inglorious consequences of ill-conceived short firm triumphalist capitalism considered at some length, and with no small amount of melancholy whining, as an enormous submarine beast humming a twelve bar and taking its time about it. Sincerity quotient high, reverbs lengthy.

We can go out the way we came in, but we had best go a bit more quietly. I think that chap in the baseball hat has nodded out.

Richard Formby: Fender Jaguar, Gibson Firebird, Burns XII String, Tapes and effects, engineering, production.

Pat Fish: Fender Telecaster, Fender Jaguar, Yamaha SF800, Keyboards, Percussion, programming, voice, engineering.

Peter Crouch: Fender Stratocaster, Yamaha SF800, Burns XII String.

Dooj Wilkinson: Wal Bass Guitar, Voice.

Nick Burson: The Drums.

Visitors' comments for this page [Add your own]

Wonderful ballison[at]-remove-gmail.com - Bryan, Las Vegas 29Jan2007 11:19 PM (6 years 118 days ago) This is my favorite Conspiracy album by far. Whaddya is just perfect. Sweetwater so happy. And those Penguins! Thanks, Pat.