... without a doubt this one. The work of legend-in-his-own-mind musician Lawrence (no surname necessary), formerly of the 80s band Felt and the 90s band Denim. For more on Felt go here immediately. Lawrence is one of the last true great pop mavericks. Felt were studious, gentle, symphonic, guitar-based melodic genius and one of my all time favourite acts. Lawrence had a plan in mind when he started them in 1980 - ten albums and ten singles over ten years, disband in December 1989 - and he stuck to it. He re-emerged with members of Gary Glitter's former backing band in the 90s with Denim, a sort of concept art rock band writing songs about the 1970s, false teeth, the pathos of Christmas and, most notably on their masterpiece album Denim On Ice, Glue and Smack. For Lawrence this was not just a snazzy song title, though, but a reality. Like many in the heady rush of mid-90s Britpop, he became a serious heroin user. Unlike most of them, though, it lasted, and he now looks like a rather damaged soul. When I worked at the BBC during this period, one of my highlights was persuading the producer of the then fledgling Jools Holland Later... programme to book Denim on a very early edition of the show. Sadly, live, they were terrible, and in retrospect he may well have been rather out of it.
Lawrence now only makes music intermittently. Go Kart Mozart (a line, Andy revealed last night, from Springsteen's track Blinded By The Light) is like a cheaper, tinny version of Denim. The aesthetic is elevator music, novelty records, early experiments at adapting electronics into pop (a la Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep by Middle Of The Road) and 70s TV theme tunes. The subjects range from Birmingham's notorious BullRing complex to the plastic pop diva Wendy James to non-existent nostalgic made up pop. The truth about this record is that it's so totally in its own bubble it is night on impossible to commit any critical faculty to it. I both truly can't stand it and find it fascinating. Anyone else writing a song whose entire lyric is a repeated yobbo chant over something resembling a Yamaha keyboard demonstration disc would find their record heading right to the Record & Tape Exchange but this being Lawrence, somehow it seems only fair to make the effort.
For further proof of the genius - or is that insanity - of Lawrence I offer the following three anecdotes:
1. He once refused to share a hotel room with another band member on tour because said other person had already removed the paper sanitary seat cover from the toilet.
2. He gave an interview to the NME in the late 1980s purely on the basis that it was going to appear on an issue whose cover story was an essay about the tragedy of youth suicide
3. When a variety of musicians were invited by Select magazine in the late 90s to review and comment on the grossly unlistenable folly that was Be Here Now by Oasis, Lawrence tried to grill the CD before putting it in his microwave.