08: A Song That You Know All The Words To.
Bed & Breakfast Man, Madness (One Step Beyond…, Stiff Records; 1979)
Our house was mostly LPs when I was growing up. I wasn’t really allowed to play the records because I broke needles and scratched the vinyl. I was given free reign on the few cassettes we had because you can’t really do too much wrong[1].
The tapes were pretty crappy, I can’t remember most of them. I liked the cover of One Step Beyond… because it looked fun. It was fun. I listened to it over and over and over, all the time, anywhere I could.
As a kid, you want a song with an achievable melody that you can sing along to, easily understood words and a story. Madness and The Beatles, they’re both nursery rhymes to me. Melodies, stories, a bit daft in places and fun (for the most part). It wasn’t until much later that i grew to understand them as “bands” and everything that went with that.
I know every word on One Step Beyond…. I used to sit listening to it on my dad’s Walkman, pausing the tape and writing the lyrics down, relistening to the song and making sure they were correct. For hours.
Bed And Breakfast Man was a tricky one to get right when I sang along without the lyrics. There’s a false chorus that happens after every verse, the same musical queues as the ‘chorus’ that appears as the outro to the song. The outro is infectious. Whenever it goes into that section, I want to sing it, still.
I taught myself to not do it.
LISTEN: Album recording [Spotify link]
WATCH: Commercial video [2]
[1] I did manage to overdub Swan Lake with the radio. My dad still doesn’t know.
[2] If you don’t laugh at the fifteen second mark, I’m sad.
