Yes! This is a real thing, and no I did not make this up to troll you. Just like with Richard Cheese and "Mr. Blobby", I'm digging up something that some of you may not have heard of, whether that is a good thing or not I'll leave that up for you to decide. I figured doing this song in the middle of the marathon would be best since I could begin and end with a more well known song that I can actually find footage of. That is the problem with relying on YouTube for videos because even though they are a massive website, they still don't have everything. This little gem came from 1980, by a newscaster. I'm not kidding, the singer of this song, was a newscaster, who was the son of a famous Cricket player, Bernard Bosanquet. Reginald worked at ITN and BBC for a while, and he died in 1984 from Pancreatic Cancer. I'm telling all of this to you, because this is one of the cases where the artist, is actually far more interesting that the art, which happens a lot unfortunately.
The song begins with an okay guitar and bass, not great but not terrible either. This could open a dance song of a decade like the 1980s. This however is interrupted by our "Singer", who sounds like a drunk old man, which at this point considering he was bordering fifty at the time, is quite a possibility. Have you heard the Epic Rap Battle of History between Roosevelt and Churchill? Well, Reginald sounds kind of like an older version of Dan Bull, and kind of drunker too. The YouTube description really says it best though, "...with Reggie seemingly unaware of what day it is, never mind he's supposed to be making a record...".
Reginald doesn't even really sing speak per say, he just talks like a news broadcast, which would be fine if this was a novelty song from the 70s, but then again, the most popular novelty hits from the 1970s were "Disco Duck" and "Convoy", which are both songs on my chopping block.
Amazingly, I can actually find the lyrics to this song, and umm... they're lyrics alright. Again, dance songs don't really need complex lyrics, but when you sing your opening lyrics with little to no enthusiasm whatsoever, and your opening lyrics are "Move up, move down, move round, move side" I don't think that one can excuse the poor grammar and writing in the lyrics. There are other lyrics that should be sang with any enthusiasm or charm, but they aren't, I never thought that I'd ever hear the phrase "Dance doowop, doowop all week" sang with no enthusiasm.
I also get the strange feeling like there is trying to be sexy or something, which is impossible considering the way he is "singing" this song. Yeah, if you want to pull of sexy, you got to have the voice to match. Marvin Gaye, Prince, they pulled of sexy so perfectly that some of their most well known songs are about the subject. What really kills any idea of sex appeal to this guy though is his singing style. Who wants to dance to this? The music is good, but much like Limp Bizkit, the problem is the vocalist.
Reginald Bosanquet is such a bad "singer", that I don't even think he gave any vocal work to this track, I think that this is just a prank that somebody pulled by recording his voice and adding it to music. Although, technology was not that advanced in the 1980s, but it was advanced enough.
It's songs like this, "Disco Duck", and "Mr. Blobby" that give the novelty song a bad name. Novelty songs can be done well, especially in the hands of people like Weird Al, Flight of the Concords, The Arrogant Worms, hell even Aurelio Voltaire has done a fair share of silly songs that aren't supposed to be taken seriously. Seriously, next Easter, play "Bunnypocalypse". Don't let songs that miss the point of being a novelty cloud your judgment on novelty songs in general.
Being a novelty song is not just doing something weird or wacky, you do have to put effort into being funny. These are not just the kind of songs that people play for a good laugh, if done well, these songs can actually take on a life of their own. There are many people who are fans of Weird Al and have probably never even heard of the original songs he is parodying. Hell, sometimes I myself play a goofy song by bands like Moxy Fruvous and Aurelio Voltaire because I'm in the mood for them.
This is not a funny song, it is not a song I can take seriously, but it is a song that exists. That is really all I can say about it.
I'm the Entity of Darkness, and I need to listen to "Safety Dance".
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