Gordon Bennett, however, is an exception. A gig was arranged in Bargefoot’s house as a send-off for a party of French visitors who had been visiting him. It was to crown a week of joyful shenanigans involving hilarious pitch-dark misadventures in coastal settings, irresponsible cross-common sheep harassment (glowing green, luminous eyes) and nights out in Radcliffs, one of which was supplemented by Papa’s New Faith playing upstairs in the Square Club. A kindly dealer who was a friend and fan of the group was among the (largely) invited audience and, true to his secondary calling, he brought shitloads of cannabis resin to distribute at a fair price. Bargefoot, being the host, wasted little time during the prelims to toke generously off on the ladybird, rendering his mindset pleasantly shitted up by the time the remaining two thirds of the crew made their celebrity-style just-in-time arrival ten minutes before the show. The key thing about all this dreary ‘we-took-drugs’ preamble is that the dope persuaded the trio to take the stage without any prior discussion – as if it were a recording session instead – for the first time ever: previously, with the exception of the resultingly noise-abstract Bryn Menin sets (see RS18), they had lacked the confidence to do this, feeling that they wouldn’t be able to emulate the magic spontaneity the more intimate setting would tend to yield.

Yes. That’s all it took. A couple of carroty bifters and there you go – Bargefoot presses ‘play’ on the drum machine and litters out the riff for what becomes “Why Is My Life Like A Rhubarb?” (courtesy of Stews’ part-prepped meditation), while the telepathic, free-harmonizing bass lines trundle out of Boyes like happy times logged in clay. It was a major turning point which led the group on to book their first public shows in formally recognized venues. And they’ve barely ever played a show since that wasn’t completely improvised, save for the tendency to work in an ‘old-faves’ ethos for the latter part of a set, which itself was completely eradicated by the turn of the millennium.

All the live cuts on the original C-90 version of Gordon Bennett, then, were songs fuelled by homemade marijuana cigarettes, but the rest of the tape was made in the clear-headed conditions of a warm summer afternoon in the Shed they called the Hut in Bargefoot’s garden. The album, in this incarnation, was welcomed by the band as a classic, and several ‘fans’ felt that way, too. Cuts like “(Sh)Ah” and “Mince With the Anal Sphincter” became bona fide, sing-along summer hits among the group’s social circle, while “Trouble In Mind,” “Marty Feldman (Died Frisart)” and “Not In Spar” represented new benchmarks that would come to earn the band a new critical respect within the fraternity of largely non-existent Kak-commentators. … But this fraternity existed in at least one of the band’s heads, which goes along way to explaining the basic drive they collectively forged, see?

But people did complain that it went on a bit… Not only in terms of the actual-physical near-90-miunte outlay, but also side two of the cassette did contain a couple of tracks that felt a little overblown at that point in such and extended submission. And, in the ensuing weeks, the group contrived to reconvene to record some extra material – ‘And, hey, why don’t we smoke some more sess to liven up proceedings, make the studio material more like the gig?’ So, the ‘wrecked’ session provided some slightly more sprucey tracks for what became known as The Wrecker’s Return of Gordon Bennett – still ‘album 27,’ but a different take on it, half the length, issued on a C46 (the version of Wrecker’s Return posted here is 59 minutes because on the original, longer tracks were heavily butched, especially “Mince…” which got cut to less than four minutes). The Wrecker’s Return also features a couple of tracks (“Be My Toaster” and “Mellon”) featuring Niklus, originally intended as part of an EP, or something. All of which is just about as close as the band came to selling out in those days. Both versions are available to download here, along with the CDR version that was hodged together as a compromise between the two, made when CD-burning became commonplace and Kakutopia briefly issued an edition of this landmark achievement in rocular mentalism. Preparing the CDR additionally revealed the existence of forgotten tracks “Wash Yer Hands Jonathan” and “Bumble Bee” (which also features on Pantsful of Cherries Vol. 5 along with the rest of the wrecked session’s tracks initially deemed too far-out, it seems).

Ultimately it’s not really possible to forge viable, universal legends out of Radioactive Sparrow. Because their legacy is disconcertingly crude. Not obscene, though, nor provocative or shocking. Disconcerting in how they blotted the lyrical content with descriptions of sexual encounter that were hopelessly puerile. Perhaps, then, it was their last defence against acceptability, respectability, marketability. Their grandest disability. In what proved to be a signal year in respect of this dimension (the apotheosis coming with Autumn’s Wall To Wall Tits & Ass), “(Sh)Ah” and “Mince With the Anal Sphincter,” in particular, would test the patience of anyone inclined to try and take the band seriously as a genuine force for the avant Good. The fact that they are two of the album’s stand-out tracks problematizes this conundrum yet further. Then also, Stews was taking it upon himself to send demo tapes to John Peel, knowing in his heart that what the band was doing was proper special and deserved some peer recognition, even if it could (and should) never sell. One particular week during the autumn of 1987, having sent several packages, Peel made a specific comment about how the recent batch of wannabe submissions was of the worst quality he could remember. The Peel-exposure/promotion malarkey was something Boyes and Bargefoot remained sceptical of, and this spurred them on to lace songs with increasing amounts of obscenity, to Stews’ mounting exasperation. Strange, then, that Wall To Wall Tits & Ass was his idea – see that album’s post for more info.

Further trivia fun:

• Bargefoot’s future wife languished in the crowd, as did the emotionally complicated broad whom he was dating at the time and to whom much of “Sh(Ah)” was sort-of unintentionally (what can you do?) addressed, much to her vociferously expressed protests subsequently at social gatherings where its strains rang out for the collective fnaar-fnaar of assembled pals

• Can’s Irmin Schmidt’s daughter was in the audience, as was the legendary Jean-Louis Gauthier who would later form one half of Lakakoustique with Gwilly Edmondez

• Dai Cox was also in the audience, heard to be ludicrously berated (‘You twat!’) by Bargefoot for fiddling with the Casio before the gig. He guest-features on bass for “C’Mon Baby…” and “Swansea.”

• With its line, ‘Are you ready boys?/Are you ready Cornelia?’ “Not In Spar” is one of many Sparrow songs that references “Chariot Races” from the forever-lost first ever session

• By the middle of 1987, Neighbours was already a part of the group’s cultural daily diet – having already covered the theme song on Skottland Escapement, they now featured the soap’s anti-hero, Max Ramsay, on the cover, the visual exemplar of the popular UK expression of surprise, disbelief or exasperation, but also, according to Boyes (who chose the image) at the time ‘an heroic exemplar of the Kak aesthetic in the popular mainstream.’

Of course, the most honest account is most likely to be the best, and therefore history smiles most favourably on the C-90 original, which Kakutopia now recommends to the more casual downloader out of the three. And, oh yeah, apparently Radioactive Sparrow invented Gabber – check out “Creeepers.”

Tracklisting for Gordon Bennett
1. Why Is My Life Like A Rhubarb?
2. Whatever Happened To Changhai Chek?
3. Marty Feldman (Died Frisart)
4. Not In Spar
5. (Sh)Ah
6. Gazette Waltz (Music To Masturbate To)
7. Trouble In Mind
8. Insomnia
9. Horse’s Dick
10. Blocked
11. Mince With The Anal Sphincter
12. C’Mon Baby Light My Fart Etc.
13. Return Of Abraham
14. Swansea
15. Creepers

Personnel
Brooce Boyes
Bill Bargefoot
Heaving Stews

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Tracklisting for The Wrecker’s Return of Gordon Bennett
1. Why Is My Life Like A Rhubarb?
2. Marty Feldman (Died Frisart)
3. Not In Spar
4. Be My Toaster
5. Gazette Waltz
6. Mellon
7. Trouble In Mind
8. (Sh)Ah
9. Mince With The Anal Sphincter
10. The Wrecker’s Return

Personnel
Brooce Boyes
Bill Bargefoot
Heaving Stews
Niklus

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Tracklisting for Gordon Bennett (CDR Edition, 2000)
1. 1. Why Is My Life Like A Rhubarb?
2. Wash Yer Hands Jonathan (previously unreleased)
3. Marty Feldman (Died Frisart)
4. Not In Spar
5. Be My Toaster
6. (Sh)Ah
7. Gazette Waltz
8. Bumble Bee (previously released later)
9. Mellon
10. Trouble In Mind
11. Horse’s Dick
12. Mince With The Anal Sphincter

Personnel
Brooce Boyes
Bill Bargefoot
Heaving Stews
Niklus

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The session that emerged relates with real intensity the stir-crazy cabin fever that infested their collectivity that afternoon and was subsequently sweetly packaged and art-worked by Ludal. The weird thing is that November 13 2009 remains the only time this exact trio have performed; this album leaves you begging for more, and Kakutopia hopes very much that somehow the trio can reconvene in the not too distant future to pick up where they done left off.

Tracklisting
1. Ouverture – I Fucking Love That… It’s Like Rick Wakeman
2. Act 1, scene 1- Psychiatric nursery
3. Act 1, scene 2 – I’m so sorry… bitte d’ane
4. Act 1, scene 3 – Jo the fucking taxi…c’est toi la tapette
5. Act 1, scene 4 – It’s actually Caroline’s voice
6. Act 1, scene 5 – One more time
7. Intermezzo
8. Meanwhile in Siberia
9 Meanwhile in Ilton Joan’s bedroom
10. Act 2, scene 1 – May somebody answer the damn phone
11 Act 2, scene 2 – Toi t’es pas beau, t’es pas mignon
12. Act 2, scene 3 – KGB Headquarters…really
13. Act 2, scene 4 – Je veux ma maman
14. Intermezzo2
15. Meanwhile inside culture lab’s printer
16. Meanwhile in Tatooine
17. Act 3, scene 1 – Organization
18. Act 3, scene 2 – Mikado train…are you allright
19. Act 3, scene 3 – Dog on acid
20. Act 3, scene 4 – Grand Finale

Personnel
Gwilly Edmondez
Bloomin’ Caroline
Ludal Le Chacal

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There’s a gruff, gritty darkfulness to this album (even on upper beat tracks like ‘Bouncer’ and ‘Venus’) that reaches its apotheosis with ‘This Misery Can’t Last’ a muddily disinterested dirge that fails to settle on a groove while roughly cut splices (mostly) of Laura Jesson’s famous lines in brief Brief Encounter that give the track its title. The brilliant matter-of-factness of the instrumental playing’s looseness makes for a tawdrily sardonic retort to Dr Shit’s excessively tightly knotted interplay, especially in the swaggery loy of ‘Bouncer’ or ‘I’m Coming Your Way,’ a partial revision of the Sparrow song of the same name from the same period.

Like the knobbly elbows of birds’ wings, two pieces containing collaged dialogue from The Man With the Golden Gun provide a certain symmetry: the first, ‘My Name Is Scaramanga’ is merely exposition through reference and acknowledgement, before ‘James…’ (on what was the old cassette Side Two) makes anarchic mockery of the very premise of 007 – celebrating, as Gage righteously does, the fact that the only Bond suitable enough to accentuate the role’s inherent ridicule was Roger Moore.

At the time of the album’s original preparation for release, Gage supplied several different images along with the cover art (like those inserted above); no recommendation was given as to how these should be deployed (the most reasonable assumption was that they might be good as part of a CD booklet – Kakutopia were more extravagant in their packaging, sometimes, then), but zip-file downloads now offer the chance to include random surplus content – there’s a third picture in the d-load pack.

TRACKLISTING
1. Scraper
2. Venus
3. Decaying Grandeur
4. You Two
5. “My Name Is Scaramanga”
6. Walk In Town
7. Bouncer
8. This Misery Can’t Last
9. I’m Coming Your Way
10. Supermarket
11. W.I.C.
12. “James…”
13. Sad Crap
14. Woman Blare

Tony Gage – all insts

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Genius, here, is seen to emerge from the consistency of a practical engagement that successfully blocks out the paranoia of interpellation and idiot supplication. Using what was already a starkly out-dated sound palette by the mid-90s, Gage seems to court irony and the faux naïf, but his unwavering focus on the music’s subject matter etches the imaginary onto the waxy fibre of ordinary madeness, exposing surreal relief, frigging the absolute.

How does he achieve this? Beats me. Except to say that Gage’s use of the familiar is key, threw out for the r/cats. There are four cover versions (well, that’s if you include ‘Angel of Death’ which is named for the Slayer song as a would-be cover, but completely rewrites the tune – look out for the sung version of this on Bollocks to the Lot of Them for a full explanation), but several songs have ‘covered’ referential passages buried deep inside their narratives: look out for Stereo MCs’ ‘Connected,’ Prince’s ‘Sign O’ The Times,’ and a brilliantly inept dribbling of Dave Brubeck’s rubbish ‘Take Five.’ ‘Into The Stadium’ is an exemplar for a Gage approach that inhabits a mindset (in this case, presumably, enthusiasm for sports) convincingly enough to draw the listener in, before spiking their drink with extravagant hallucinogens that expose the very neurons of spectacular foil.

Doctor Shit is an historic masterclass in MIDI orchestration and counterpoint: the well-programmed sequencer. After the two ‘Sierra Era’ albums, Gage went back to composing with MIDI sequencing in a big way. What he had to work with was the Atari 1040ST/C-Lab Notator® that he and Gwilly Edmondez had used to make Sparrow’s Dirty Willy’s Deep Party (1990) and Europe Yoy (1991), but with only one expander, the Roland U110, to source sounds from. The U110 was good, but it was limited, and besides it would only allow six voices at once, which meant most people (including Gage and Edmondez previously) would generally use it as one of several sound modules. Technically, then, Doctor Shit represents a triumph in timbral resourcefulness and savvy programming, squeezing every last sonic giblet from the entrails of technology that was already hopelessly dated by the mid-90s. So it’s like Bach, but also Mozart, and then also Bartók, then Stockhausen, back to Poulenc, before humiliating all the Fitkin/Bloke tangi-vibrat.

For Gage is the true artist, the artist’s artist as well as the world’s artist and the best’s artistes. Consequently you got this thing going on where a mind and its hands will appropriate whatever materials that are to hand and make something from them that is beyond meaningful, pungently sublime, poignantly irredeembable. Broken hearts are full of art’s holes – taste is a sorry capitulation. This album will change your life.

Tracklisting

1.     From Russia With Love
2.     Angel of Death
3.     Mission Impossible
4.     Into The Stadium
5.     Bjork
6.     Funky
7.     The Prat
8.     5/4
9.     Substitute
10.  Magic
11.  Candle-Wax
12.  Dr. Voodoo
13.  Interval
14.  Mad March
15.  Dr. Voodoo
16.  Space
17.  Funk It
18.  Glass
19.  Piano/Piss
20.  Russ Mix

Personnel
Tony Gage – everything

Recorded in Roath, Cardiff, 1995

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Like almost all Gwilly’s solo albums (with the exception of 1986’s Bigger Geddy Numbers) prior to 1990’s unaccompanied rock singing epiphany, Song Birds is mostly made up of songs whose content and intent is socio-emotional – expressions pitched at specific people and personal experience, even including love songs. ‘Baby, Please Don’t Leave Me’ plays on the narcissistic self-pity the spurned indulges bordering on real insanity. The title track is probably the only song Gwilly ever made about his dad. ‘Blow Job’ ham-fistedly tries to tell the tale of a fraught relationship’s unraveling from the point of view of a girlfriend herself. ‘Who Is They?’ uses a favourite technique of assembling voice overdubs as an auto-choral rabbling, drunk on the euphoria of total self-identification, astonishingly re-observed by Gwilly on encountering a group of ecstatic winos in York one day during an early 21^st C heatwave, snapping it briefly to dictaphone for inclusion on the eventually finalled On On On On Any Edmondez (2003-?).

Rather than mining the original masters in the hope of yielding fresh inversions benefiting from 21^st C hindsight, this upload is a direct digitization of the edition that did narrow rounds upon the album’s original completion. A glance at the cortex revealed by a visit to the separable archive, in the now, shows that the voices on ‘Ysette Monroe’ are actually quite loud – their subsumption deep into the mix here, therefore, would suggest an intention to weave them like neighbouring colours into the manically overbearing keyboard lines.

Anyone familiar with the Sparrow oeuvre would notice the title ‘Mong’ with a bemused recognition. However, the song is named for the woman whose voice is heard throughout the track: Edmondez was given the cassette and was given to understand that the person singing on it was a Thai prostitute called Mong – on the tape’s label was scribbled ‘Mong singing.’ So there you go. Gwilly seems to have lazily Eno-Byrne’d the objet trouvé into what winds up working in a gay star-shone derive through gently soporific dog hair, setting the precedent for the following year’s more earnest ventures into collage/improvisation on Group Portrait Laughing and Nonchalance In Vain.

Tracklisting

1.     Baby, Please Don’t Leave Me
2.     Song Birds
3.     Blow Job
4.     Ysette Monroe
5.     Mong
6.     Who Is They?

Personnel
Gwilly Edmondez – all sounds, except for…
Jason Davies – mandolin on ‘Mong’

Mong – vocals on ‘Mong’
Casio keyboard borrowed with thanks off Owen Powell of Ogmore
Yamaha synth borrowed with thanks off of Jane Powell of Llandaff (no relation)

Recorded in the Shed, Ewenny, Bridgend, Summer 1987.

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Playlist

Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band – ‘Hey, Garland, I Dig Your Tweed Coat’
Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band – ‘Doctor Dark’
Marion – ‘Untitled’ (live at Blue Rinse, Barkollo, 16th December 2010)
Bradfield – ‘Untitled’ (Excerpt from 30-min set at Blue Rinse, Barkollo, 16th December 2010
Boundy-Mannequin-Ludo-Edmondez – ‘Untitled’ (Excerpt from set at Blue Rinse, Barkollo, 16th December 2010)
Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band – ‘Sheriff of Hong Kong’
JFK (Ludo Bunel – v/John Pope – b/Jon Clark – d) – ‘Untitled’ (Excerpt from set at Blue Rinse, Barkollo, 16th December 2010)
Wellington Boot & Mr. Blazey – ‘Untitled’ (I forgot the name and
Pawn Flex – ‘Untitled’ (that is, I have lost the name, and now the Hub’s gone I can’t go and check)(Excerpt from set at Blue Rinse, Barkollo, 16th December 2010)
Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band – ‘Flash Gordon’s Ape’
Brown Torpedo – ‘You Can Stick That Job’ (live at Blue Rinse, Barkollo, 17th December 2010)

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There was another reason to go there, though. To play video games in the arcades. It was amazing, because they kept everything there, even old ones like Space Invaders I, Defender and Galaxion/Galaga. And Sparrow favourites Marble Madness and Paperboy. And that one with trucks racing round a dirt track. Obviously, being composers and improvisors, their favourite part of all these treats was the music and sounds. So, on this particular Sunday, they took the trusty Panasonic Radioacassette (on which everything was recorded until it shot out the back of the van in the notorious Alton lanes head-on collision returning from France in 1990) in order to record their favourite games. The idea was that each member would go off and record 10-15 minutes of games and whatever other sounds. Except Heaving Stews didn’t share this passion, so his track is a recording of him walking along the beach (eventually arriving in a different arcade), something he didn’t tell the other two, his non-cooperation only revealing itself on playback. The cover image features Tony Gage standing before Barry Island’s much-loved Log Flume ride, which was also to give the Eurydge singer/guitarist his name… Of which more in a later episode.

Also tacked on here are two acoustic tracks that Stews and Bargefoot recorded at Bill’s Cathays flat onto the same cassette; they don’t belong anywhere else, so they might as well get bundled into this post.

How many games can you name?

Tracklisting

1.     Robocop “Drop-It” Intro
2.     Bill Bargefoot
3.     Heaving Stews
4.     Tony Gage
5.     All Three Random Finale
6.     Gate Open/Gate Shut Slut
7.     Untitled Heaving Stews Track

Personnel
Heaving Stews
Bill Bargefoot
Tony Gage

Recorded Barry Island Fun Fair, one dusky Sunday late afternoon in Autumn 1989.

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No tracklisting, really, I gave up on rekkids for this.

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So, this was the first great reunion following the acrimonious split upon completing The Final Conflict, whose brilliance apparently still hadn’t persuaded the band that they didn’t necessarily need a drummer, inviting Rory Redking for the second time to fill part of the gap left by Cox’s departure. Redking’s contribution here is more in tune with the Kak aesthetic than his previous appearance (1986’s Mystery Turd). The whole album is charged with an energetic joy in returning to (K)action after the lay-off and the temporary concession that the game was up. The group issue forth a report from the crux, gazing back at their already considerable self-attributed legend, whether making reference to early material (Boyes’s resuscitation of ‘Memories of Roman Times’ at the start of ‘Hally Hally Hally Ha-Haan,’ for example) or would-be tributes to Cox (‘Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fondle,’ ‘So Happy’). Cox had originally entered the fray by volunteering as a lyricist, much in the way that Bob Bailey’s mum had answered a call made by Elton John in the early 1980s to send him lyrics in the wake of his split from Bernie Taupin. He used to write out complete songs on the torn out centre-sheets of school exercise books. At one stage, having joined the band proper as a drummer, he had accumulated a whole exercise book’s worth of songs which he would pass on to members of the band as and when a new song was required. Around 1982 he penned an ecological-awareness lyric which featured the lines, ‘The trees and the grass is green/No other colour is allowed,’ which triggered an unfortunate bout of derisory piss-taking, not least from class mate Paul Burston (see below). The ensuing humiliation on Cox’s part not only led to his permanent retirement as resident Sparrow lyricist, but also the destruction of his collected songs – an obvious tragedy (some, the ones written for the never completed, fully composed Criminal Records, were partially remembered by Bargefoot and then reconstructed brilliantly by Tony Gage in 1990, ready for whenever the band feels like finally recording that album). The only surviving originals in Cox’s hand can be viewed HERE and HERE – these are the very first two songs, neither of them ever used. Nonetheless, this sorry turn of events and then Cox’s departure in 1986, meant that for some time (really until The Final Conflict) the band struggled to find a solid collective approach to generating vocals appropriate to the rest of what they were doing.

Each member of Radioactive Sparrow has had a different approach to making improvised lyrical content. The band’s original vocalist, Ozzy Oskins, tended to not improvise the words as such, but his penchant for improvising source material was little short of genius. At the legendary First (now-lost) session, he grabbed the pile of school exercise books from the table in Bargefoot’s bedroom, where they had installed themselves to conjure the mother of all Evental Sites. During the session he segued effortlessly between (badly done) translation exercises of Latin, French and German (‘Chariot Races,’ ‘Siggie’ etc.) and indifferently cobbled composition exercises on asinine themes such as the idea of robots and automatons taking over day-to-day production (‘Machines’). Bargefoot himself would develop perhaps the most recklessly unmeditated approach to vocal parts, almost always committed to blurting out whatever suggested itself in the full flow of performed committing, although often having a pre-determined chorus or theme usually the result of informal (usually pub) conversation, in-jokes, shared experiences etc. Gage would later operate in a similar fashion, although he started by bringing part-written lyrics to his first few sessions. Heaving Stews’s method, however, was much more hybrid and complex. While apparently preparing very little in concrete (i.e. written down) terms, he seemed to develop and carry around in his head fairly complete song templates that not only comprised the chorus lyric, but often verses to support it. Crucially, not being a musician in any conventionally recognized sense, the manner of these songs’ articulation, their phrasing, rhythm, tune, dynamic etc. would be conceived in the improvised moment along with everything else. Strangely, though, such cells seemed to remain in his head for years, ready to be seized on and re-deployed at any given point. This tendency first becomes apparent on Skottland Escapement, an album rich in morsels for the ardent Stews fan to savour. While most the songs comprise completely new content (whether purely improvised or via Bargefoot’s diaries – a new trick introduced on this album), in ‘Wishing Well’ he suddenly quotes lyrics from Oh Yeah, Oh Wow!’s ‘Chase Me Down the Corridor’: ‘I was sitting on an egg-cup timer/Waiting for the days to pass by/I was sitting in the mouth of a whale/Watching the waves go by,’ setting a trend for self-reference that saw him revisiting several disparate pin-points in Sparrow’s past (which will become apparent as and when they appear on this site).

The diaries thing: for a while, Bargefoot’s diaries from adolescence became a popular source of lyrics in a brilliant twist on Ozzy’s original homework-grabbing method. The idea had come from an earlier instance where Jason Davies read from diary entries during the studio sessions for 1985’s TC: The Collection – the absurd, ridiculous earnestness of Bargefoot’s intended privately personal observations had been duly noted for its joke potential. For the diaries’ inaugural outing proper, it’s the 1984 volume, the band’s final year at school, that is featured here, ‘Awful Day’ being the very first song to bring to life a particular day’s angst, in this instance the writer’s terror that his girlfriend might be pregnant. Later, during the excellently abstract ‘Hally Hally Hally Ha-Haan,’ Stews actually gets distracted by the page that the book happens to be open on and starts reading it silently to himself until he suddenly chimes, ‘The question remains: why did Will guess that Paul’s gay?’ ‘Paul’ was Paul Burston, author and oft-BBC gay issues pundit who had been a school mate of members of Radioactive Sparrow, sometimes acting as the band’s advisor and critic, and with whom Bargefoot shared an appreciation for the music of Kate Bush. He didn’t actually reveal his homosexuality till at least a couple of years after they had all left school, but apparently, according to a diary entry Stews had found, Bargefoot had already worked it out. Unfortunately all of the diaries (apart from 1982 diary, which gets plundered for lyrics later on) are now lost, so it’s not possible to trace this exact moment of lucidity on the part of the Kak diarist. Incidentally, it’s probably worth mentioning that ‘Hally Hally Hally Ha-Haan’ always seemed to be a reference to Clive (‘Mr.’) Hally who had been the band’s form tutor in the 3rd year (‘year 9’); more importantly, he had been Bargefoot’s O level art teacher, in which capacity he would deem it appropriate to physically hit pupils quite violently across the head or face if the work they presented showed an obvious lack of effort or inspiration – a brilliant ingredient to factor into the artistic development of anyone who ended up as a world leader in the field of Kak music.

Furthermore, ‘Hally Hally Hally Ha-Haan’ and ‘Wishing Well’ employ a brilliant technique that has yet to be revisited, but which is liable to produce hilarious musical gestures, wherein the bass player is also playing the kick drum, detached from the rest of the kit, as the only source of percussion or time-keeping.

One more piece of trivia: it’s funny how rarely any kind of wind instrument makes an appearance in Radioactive Sparrow, which is surely to be regretted. Everyone in the band would love a trombone, though. This album is the first to feature a saxophone (alto) and the only one where Bill Bargefoot is playing it. Having long wanted to learn the instrument, he got one cheap and second hand, but it reeked of urine; he felt well sorry for the girl whose Dad bought it for her for Christmas when it went up for sale in the local paper.

Tracklisting
1.     Grunge
2.     Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fondle
3.     Smooch Nr. 1 (Sabotaged)
4.     Awful Day
5.     Maureen Lipman Imp
6.     Stupid Fucking Society
7.     Neighbours
8.     Wishing Well
9.     Hally Hally Hally Ha-Haan
10.  So Happy
11.  Smooch Nr. 2 (Flamingo)
12.  Isn’t Strange?
Personnel
Bill Bargefoot
Brooce Boyes
Heaving Stews
Rory Redking

Recorded in the Shed, Ewenny, May 1987

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PLAYLIST
Saigon
AUN
John Russell & Roger Turner
Christian Marclay
Zappa
Prurient
Playground
Ludo Bunel
alright lover
Bloomin Caroline
Wolfgang Rihm
Deathspell Omega
MOP
People Like Us
Prince
Zappa
Wino

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Producer: Ko-Le Chen