There's Always Time For One More

Apart from anything else, Christmas and the New Year always serves to highlight death. I don't think I'm being particularly morbid. Obviously news is slow so stuff that may have been otherwise shelved gets more of a look-in than normal. Having said that, the tsunami of 2004 broke al records for bad news over the festive season. Anyway, James Brown left us on Christmas day in 2006, and this year, either side of the 25th, we had Teena Marie and Bobby Farrell. Although by far the most artistically credible I can't just reinvent myself as a fan of Teena Marie now she's gone. I knew of her and heard some of her records way back when, I also knew of an association she had with Rick James, and the only way I knew of Rick James was because 'Super Freak' and 'Give It To Me Baby' were played at almost every club I visited, regardless of the crowd, throughout the early/mid eighties. In any case, I confused Teena Marie regularly with Kelly Marie, a Scottish singer who made it big in the eighties, sort of, with a tune 'Feels Like I'm In Love' which I remember mostly because of her dance routine in which she was flanked by two camp black guys who bounced to the beat of trebly synth drums. Takes me back to my primary school days actually, when I was made to absorb the Catechism, (so much so in fact that I can still quote passages from it now), and the answer to the question "What Is God?" . . .the answer of course "God is a living being without a body." Anyway, when I was a young whippersnapper inside the Catholic school system I initially misheard the response as "God is a living bean without a body." Consequently, I used to think that God lived in a tin and breathed tomato sauce.

Bobby Farrell as well. Definitely a hero from my days of Top Of The Pops addiction. I put up some words about Captain Beefheart when he died the other week, and mentioned what an influence he'd been . . .well Boney M, although I deride my girlfriend for having one of their cds in the car, made just as much a mark in their own way, and their centrepiece was Farrell, his gruff, murmur of a voice and his silly, but eminently watchable dance turns. Out of all the artists mentioned here, (except Kelly Marie), although he fronted the least artistically credible group, he gave me just as many musical memories as anyone and they weren't bad by any means so, for that reason, he'll be very sadly missed.

Have a Happy New Year and a great 2011 whoever and wherever you are.

P xxxxx