Sunday, May the 23rd, 2004

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Since You've Been Gone

All that's left is a band of gold-lamé-suited troubadours. They arrived shortly after you flounced off, with your gaudy reticule in one hand and a map of Tantarabim in the other. As Bob Dylan once sang, you left me standing in the doorway crying. But not for long. Soon the band arrived, quite unannounced, and made themselves at home. I fed them with what was left in the fridge—basil, glucose tablets and chopped-up suet—and went up to the attic to consult Dobson's little-known Tip Top Encyclopaedia Of Tip Top Pop Bands (out of print). Downstairs I could hear the band tuning up for what turned out to be a “jam” session, as the young people say. And what did I learn from Dobson? I discovered that my uninvited—but not unwelcome—guests had begun life as a skiffle combo called The Urbane Blodgett Seven. Riding the sixties wave, they tried out various styles until in 1969 they emerged, utterly transformed, as the pioneers of glob music. By now they had settled on the name of The Hinges And Nozzles, after being told that their other choices—among them Foghat, The Carpenters, Petula Clark, and Blodwyn Pig—had already been nabbed by other acts. The 1970s were kind to them, and they had a string of hit albums, including Baleful Porpoise, Jesuit Gewgaw Handler, and Irk The Shibboleth. The release of Brain Salad Surgery was postponed indefinitely after a rival album was released by a so-called “prog rock” group whose name Dobson could not recall, despite all the research materials listed in what Nestingbird has dubbed his “most exhaustive appendix”. Curiously, the latter phrase was the used as the title of a The Hinges And Nozzles compilation CD which was released only days before they showed up in my house. They are still here, by the way, and have told me in no uncertain terms—as they saying goes—that they will not leave until you come back to me, oh my darling, oh baby baby, please won't you come on home?