I was in a band called the Slimy Twats. We called ourselves The Barron Knights of Punk. Now I learn we were beaten to it.
They must have started in the 60's. I heard a single by them (not in the 60's) called "Call Up the Groups" or something in which they did some effective parodies of the Rolling Stones and the like with jokes about them doing National Service and having to cut their hair.
'Little White Bum' is the most disturbing song in history.
Is that their 'comedy' version of "Brown Girl In The Ring"? I think I vaguely remember it.
"There's a Dentist In Birmingham" was definitely their version of "By The Rivers Of Babylon"
No, its a kiddie-type song with paedophile overones e.g. 'He made a closer study of my little white bum'.
It was a spoof of 'Little White Bull' by the great Tommy Steele. What a showman.
They started sometime in the early 60's, and continued until the mid 80's I think, then split and/or reformed. I think they still do gigs at seaside resorts where that sort of thing Goes Down Well.
I have a scarily large collection of Barron Knights records which I bought in the late 70's/early 80's.
In retrospect, most of their stuff was utter shite but there was occasionally a bit of clever wordplay. Not often enough though.
...Vrooming away together, vrooming away in leather Ann & Joe...
...And they painted matchstalk men & matchstalk cats & dogs, they painted a couple on the corner of the street who were having a snog...
...Where are you all coming from? We're from Wandsworth, on the run...
And other classics??
Scarily, try http://www.ss.com/ & search on Barron Knights lyrics - there appear to be 960 links (surely some mistake - I think I'll go & lie down in a darkended room).
Call up the groups was 1964, believe it or not. Most people would kill for careers that long... especially ones with such little to them.
(to the tune of "If I Said You Had a Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me?")
"If I jumped into the back of your lorry
Would you take me to Finchley?
Or you can drop me at The Angel
Coz I'm going out with Derek tonight..."
What was their spoof on that Leo Sayer song that was on I Love 1977 on Saturday? I've forgotten already.
I mean, of course, Top Ten: 1977. Those two series are SO similar...
Erm...
National Health is Painless (spoof of MASH theme)
Mr Rubik (oh how that dates them)
My Tailor Took My Pants In (Leo Sayer spoof)
The Sit Song (Barbara Woodhouse)
oh my god i've suddenly realised i can remember hundreds of these i think it's time to go and kill myself all i was going to do was to ask if anyone thought they were better than the black abbotts...
"The Tailor Took My Pants In".
Christ, no wonder I forgot it.
>"The Tailor Took My Pants In".
>
But he left in all the pins.
That's why I can't stop dancing.
He took my pants in
Pants in
Just the other day.
Now I can't sing
Can't sing
(high voice) any other way
*cries*
I played one side of their 1977 seminal work "Knight Gallery" last night after reading this forum, and I withdraw the majority of my already slender praise. Knight Gallery has such classics as "Little White Bum", "The Big V-asectomy" and "Get Down Shep". The only track on the first side that has any merit is "The Chapel Lead is Missing", in as much as it'd be fairly harmless filler material on any light entertainment show that treated it's viewers with just a little bit of dignity (so none of the shows from the last 10 years then). It's sung acappella and is slightly pleasing, if not actually funny.
However I couldn't bring myself to turning the record over.
Ah well, back to reading "How to be a Wally"
Only one I can ever remember is from about the early 1980s'(?) with them on television taking the mick out of Terry Wogan with a song called *He's everywhere*.
That wasn't the Barron Knights, that's A Tribe Of Toffs, who also had a hit with "John Kettely Is A Weatherman", which got played on CBBC a bit.
By the way, this strand persuaded me to spend an entire evening last night listening to novelty rock. After the third hour of They Might Be Giants and King Missile, I had to stop and listen to John Renbourn and Faust to clear my pallette. It was like eating a whole box of sweets.
Eurgh.
>After the third hour of They Might Be Giants and King Missile
What? No Snuff?
A Tribe Of Toffs - didn't they later become The Supernaturals???
If they did (become the Supernaturals), that would be amazing. I always wondered what became of them. They were the ultimate 6th Form Band. They even wore Cure T-shirts on the back of their records.
Why am I discussing this?
I think TOT would be a bit too old to become The Supernaturals, but don't take my word for it.
I thought The Supernaturals were just some people who worked in a bank or the MOD or something, who saw Silver Sun and realised that this Britpop lark was just money for old rope, and formed a band. Or was that Silver Sun themselves?
They definitely were Robbie Williams' 'credible' support band, anyway.
Thanks, Unruly.
Such poor recollections of my childhood must mean that I'll get a call to appear on a clip show very soon.....
Oooh. That must be worth a strand...
"Most inaccurate memories masquerading as fact, published or broadcast in a nostalgia show or book."
There are loads of them.
My favourite was from that American guide to alternative culture (name escapes me for moment) a few years ago. It read:
MONTY PYTHON: A group of Oxford and Cambridge undergraduates brought together for the BBC by Spike Milligan.
(We'll also have to include the millions of people who cropped up on TV insisting they'd seen a character called Seaman Staines in Captain Pugwash.) (I ask you...)
Well, the best ones are the wild distortions of facts surrounding Chris Morris. Notably the incorrect belief that he announced the death of Michale Heseltine.
I thought the point was that he said 'Still no news on the death of Michael Heseltine', which was correct.
Exactly!
The most oft-repeated Chris Morris myth is that he "was sacked from the BBC for using make-up on disaster victims", surely?
That crops up in almost every straight biography of him.