bingo_mcdingo: Who Needs Teeth?

Bingo McDingo (

bingo_mcdingo) wrote,
@ 2008-02-08 10:28:00

Who Needs Teeth?

Up until 20 minutes ago, I would have said that this was the only song I'd ever bought on the basis of seeing the video. As a 14 year old, the world of Ska was a mystery to me, with only the Fun Boy 3 showing any kind of demonstration.

Then one saturday morning, probably on kids TV, they played this video, and I was mesmerised. So completely stunned that by the afternoon I owned this very single.

I think in a way it scared me - the music was so different to anything I usually listened to, creepy almost. It certainly made me feel very uncomfortable. And the cover of the single also creeped me out in an unpleasant way, and even now I find it hard to look at for too long, which I know is not becoming of a grown man, but still...

Anyway, again, thanks to YouTube, I found the video, and I cannot for the life of me see what would have appealed to my 14 year old self. It's extremely 80s looking, which I suppose is hardly surprising, and old Jerry Dammers is a bit weird, but no, I just can't see it.

However, it was thanks to this song that I grew to love Ska in general, and the Specials / Special AKA in particular.

Enjoy!

(Post a new comment)

	baybabayba 2008-02-08 10:47 am UTC (link)
	1 ... 2 ... 3 ... comments. 1. Love the hissing sssssssssssss sound ole toothless makes. lol 2. Gay sailor boy - LOVE HIM. 3. Her hair is so awesome. I love that 80s cut. I rocked the heck out of it when I was skinny. that is all. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	bingo_mcdingo 2008-02-08 12:36 pm UTC (link)
	Weird that looking back, I also saw 'Gay Sailor Boy', and yet when this was released, that was the epitome of manliness. How times change!! (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	baybabayba 2008-02-08 10:31 pm UTC (link)
	He give the other fella a gay look that might not come across unless you're older and wiser and have been given the gay look a time or two. lol (Reply to this)(Parent)

jerusalem66
2008-02-08 11:48 pm UTC (link)

I remember the sailor-boy look cropping up in a few music videos back in those days... it was pretty damn popular. I always thought it was just a bit lame though when you could be making your hair stick all over the shop and be dressing like Billy Idol. Now there was some manliness! He was beating the chicks off with a stick, without the aid of any daft sailor's cap.

I was a mite too young to be spotting Tom of Finland archetypes then, but considering some of those sailor-boys were in Frankie or Bronski Beat videos... maybe shoulda been a sign.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	bingo_mcdingo 2008-02-11 10:54 pm UTC (link)
	Billy Idol wore a leather jacket over a bare torso. If there were ever more homoerotic imagery, I'd like to know... (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	jerusalem66 2008-02-12 12:06 pm UTC (link)
	http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g204/automatic_writing/VillagePeopleGuy.jpg Ok, you might have a point, but it was the 80's, how can you judge? Almost everyone was leaning towards the outragously camp in their fashion sense. Still, if it's looking like Glenn the Biker or ol' Sailor-Boy there... I'll be singing YMCA, mate :) (Reply to this)(Parent)

	mockduck 2008-02-08 11:28 am UTC (link)
	How funny - I have that single too. I bet there's an awful lot of overlap between our collections. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	bingo_mcdingo 2008-02-08 12:38 pm UTC (link)
	I'm surprised just how much diversity there is - I thought of myself as a straight out and out rocker with prog tendencies. Looking back through this collection 20 something years later, and there's actually quite a wide range of styles and artists. However, I'm willing to wager that you don't have every 7" that Marillion released between 1982 and 1991, do you? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	mockduck 2008-02-08 12:39 pm UTC (link)
	Erm, let me think.... no. (I might have 'Kayleigh' though). (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	bingo_mcdingo 2008-02-08 12:42 pm UTC (link)
	Hmmmm.... not bad - but I have two copies of Kayleigh (one had a black label in the middle, one had a silver print. Otherwise identical. I know, I know...) However, I reckon based on where we are so far, that you're right, and I can think of at least 3 other singles coming up that you'll also have had. Time will tell...! (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	mockduck 2008-02-08 12:45 pm UTC (link)
	This everlasting clearing up of a huge shelf unit (I do about half an hour a night and it's taking weeks) means I will very soon be onto my dusty vinyl collection. I forsee a game of snap. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	bingo_mcdingo 2008-02-08 12:46 pm UTC (link)
	I start with 'Never Never' by the Assembly. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	mockduck 2008-02-08 12:48 pm UTC (link)
	SNAP (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	mockduck 2008-02-08 12:49 pm UTC (link)
	(It's a bit hard to go further without any of them in front of me)...twelve inch of 'You Spin Me Round' by Dead or Alive? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	bingo_mcdingo 2008-02-08 12:52 pm UTC (link)
	SNAP(ish) 7" Only. Lost to the (first) wife during separation. OK... er... People Are People by Depeche Mode (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	mockduck 2008-02-08 01:00 pm UTC (link)
	Nah, I don't think so.. I was never big into DM. OTOH I had every 7" by the Smiths (and note your point above). Can I just put on the record how much I love Feargal Sharkey? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	bingo_mcdingo 2008-02-08 01:03 pm UTC (link)
	Did you see rhodri met Feargal who walked out while Rhodri was giving his talk? I wasn't a DM fan at all, but was given the single when I bought my record deck from Jonathan Chandler (or Hunka, as he was commonly known). Otherwise I wouldn't have rubbish. Mind you, I never threw it away... (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	mockduck 2008-02-08 02:03 pm UTC (link)
	Yes. I was glad to know Feargal is still around, if nuffink else. (Reply to this)(Parent)

jerusalem66
2008-02-08 12:16 pm UTC (link)

Almost everything they did had a somewhat sinister undertone to it. Granted, ska for me generally meant the nutty boys themselves or good old Buster Bloodvessel and his merry band, but I really did develop a taste for this darker end of the street stuff... must have been all those Hammer movies I watched back in those days warping my fwagile little mind! ;)

Is the cover art by Ian Pollock by any chance? He did some seriously creepy stuff like that...

(Reply to this)(Thread)

bingo_mcdingo
2008-02-08 12:40 pm UTC (link)

This is what I was saying before about viewing my 7" collection as a series of grubby little secrets. At school, because I'd been to see Motorhead, there was no way I could admit to liking Madness. Therefore I didn't realise until the mid 90s just how good they really were (see also: The Smiths).

And you're right, most Ska is so upbeat it's unbelievable, but this lot... well, Coventry can do that to a person. I never really watched the Hammer movies, but there is definitely a revelling in the darker side going on here.

Not sure about the cover - it's two floors up at the moment, and I can't be arsed walking all that way! Maybe later...

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

jerusalem66
2008-02-08 03:41 pm UTC (link)

I think we'll continue to have differing opinions of The Smiths, thankew ;)

I seemed to like an awful lot of different stuff musically in those days, though with the exception of The Cure and Simple Minds, I didn't like any of the real "supergroups" of the era... Depeche Mode, New Order, The Smiths... they all just left me cold; they all seemed more pompous and self-important than 70's outfits had. I was still listening to my old man's Zep, Who and Bowie albums most of the time (I didn't get into heavyweight prog until the mid 90's really), but when I was living in the now I was more prone to bopping around the living room to The Style Council, Roxy Music, Simple Minds, Frankie Goes To Hollywood and Scritti Politi. I did a fair shair of jumping around on the bed playing air guitar to Marillion, Motorhead and Iron Maiden (I think it's a old law or charter or something that all English lads aged 11 - 16 go through a Maiden-phase where it's all they listen to, and all they draw in art class is pictures of Eddie).

I had massive crushes on Siouxsie Sioux, Toyah, Kate Bush and Wendy James(as I think any lad with eyes did) so that tarred my musical purchases somewhat. I remember way back in the 90's going to a wedding reception with Marv and some of his family at some backwater WMC-type place that hadn't seen a paintbrush since the late 80's, and us discovering in a hallway a huge framed picture of Wendy James wearing very little (as was usual) and then trying for the best part of an hour to slyly unscrew it from the wall with pocketknives like we were escaping from Stalag Luft 13 or something.

Any of those lovely musical ladies in your singles collection?

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	jerusalem66 2008-02-08 03:48 pm UTC (link)
	Oh! Oh! And the one band I never felt did a single duff record ever - Deacon Blue! And yes, since my hormones seemed to play a large part in these things, I had a crush on Lorraine McIntosh too ;) (Reply to this)(Parent)

	bingo_mcdingo 2008-02-08 12:45 pm UTC (link)
	http://2-tone.info/2tone.pl?display122 Seems it was by someone called Nick Davies... That saved me two flights of stairs! (Reply to this)(Parent)

	Ska? eppylover 2008-02-09 01:54 am UTC (link)
	Oh my. That was ... different. (It's gotta sticky beat. I'll probably be dreaming it all night.) (Reply to this)(Thread)

	Re: Ska? bingo_mcdingo 2008-02-10 05:32 pm UTC (link)
	Sticky beat? That's a phrase that I hadn't heard before, but explains the song beautifully. Oh, and thanks to you, I've dug out my copy of 'Love' and have been listening to it over and over while painting my stairs. If you pardon the pun, I love that album! (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Cirque LOVE by the Martins, big and small eppylover 2008-02-11 09:23 pm UTC (link)
	Just won the Grammy, it did. :D Hopefully your stairs turned out psychedelic? ;P (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Cirque LOVE by the Martins, big and small bingo_mcdingo 2008-02-11 10:55 pm UTC (link)
	Sadly not, though I did used to have stairs painted in candy stripes in primary colours. I might even be able to dig out a photo one day if I remember. And I hadn't heard about the Grammy for Love, 'cos all we got on the news over here was about Amy Winehouse. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Amy Winehouse eppylover 2008-02-11 11:23 pm UTC (link)
	Aww jeeeeeeeez. If it hadn'ta been for Brian's Boys, nobody woulda ever heard of Amy Winehouse. Because nobody over here paid attention to anything British, especially the music. Quelle ironie. (Reply to this)(Parent)

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