Just feel the need to put this classic out here: The Days Of Pearly Spencer, David McWilliams

Svetlovska

Marc Almond did a pretty fair job with his cover, achieving UK chart success, which the Irish McWilliams never did due to it being banned on regular radio here (though played to death on pirate station Radio Caroline.) Yet nothing tops the strangeness and beauty of the original. Well, not so far, anyway... (Yes, this is part of my not-so covert campaign to get @ReneAsologuitar to cover it! )

Fun trivia fact: according to Wikipedia it seems the footage showing Mr McWilliams on the phone is a sly reference to how the distinctive telephone voice passages were recorded. In the days before sophisticated effects, he… er… apparently literally phoned his performance of those passages in, from a nearby telephone box, recording the audio direct from the receiving handset. (Although a competing theory has him singing through a megaphone to achieve the same effect, in the style of another track popular around then, Winchester Cathedral by the New Vaudeville Band.)

I was five, and the weirdness of the vocal and producer Mike Leander’s crazed orchestral string arrangement imprinted themselves on my mind even then. This, along with Eleanor Rigby, is one of the standout musical memories from my earliest childhood.

“Buried in the rot gut gin
You played and lost not won
You played a house that can't be beat
Now look your head's bowed in defeat
You walked too far along the street
Where only rats can run.”

Don’t imagine I understood any of that at five, but something about it hooked me. I guess I was always a cheery child..

LeeB

Great song. Love the Marc Almond version too.