Well at Least Its British

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1. Guest

   October 3, 2010 at 12:00 am

   The discovery of this fascinating 1964 solo album by English songwriter Alan Klein set Damon Albarn in a new direction, inspiring Blur’s Modern Life is Rubbish; Albarn has even cited him as a possible influence on David Bowie (who shared the same manager) and Ray Davies. Klein had previous, having recorded comedy songs in a Cockney accent for Joe Meek and written East End musical What a Crazy World, drawing on music hall, but despite the album cover and title this is actually an extremely varied collection, ranging from satire to (almost) straight pop, sung in tones ranging from broad Cockney to lightly Americanised. What unifies the album and makes it still seem fresh, however, is that Klein clearly cannot abide cliche. At times his ridicule takes extreme forms, as in Will You Ever Come Back Again? It’s a wonderfully simple idea which anticipates the Bonzos: take one overused songwriting phrase (\\”My poor heart is breaking\\”) then let the rest follow logically on (\\”My kidneys are aching, / My appendix is feeling the strain…\\”). Elsewhere he simply scales down the extravagant promises of conventional love songs to a more human, or you might even say \\”British,\\” level. Klein’s lovers are self-confessed losers and fantasists: Big Talk from a Little Man, I’m A Dreamer, As Long As You Love Me a Little. At times he can be darker, as with the cynical Love’s Just a Word in a Song: a beautiful pop-folk arrangment but with no let-up in the lyric (\\”Don’t let a sweet kiss fool you…\\”). And there’s no manly resignation in I’ll See You Around, a tale of being dumped which is all humiliation and pain: our hero even blubs. Songs like the above point up the problem, however, when it comes to a convenient classification for this album: the sort-of-serious content makes it reductive to label them as parodies. The same is true for First Taste of the Blues: the vocal has traces of a mocking nasal twang but the Scotty Moore-style guitar romps along, making it hard to square the overall effect with one reviewer’s opinion that Klein was essentially contemptuous of rock’n’roll. We’re on more solid ground with outright comic songs such as the cheerful satire of Twentieth Century Englishman. Damon Albarn’s favourite track, this catalogues the failings of the modern gent – basically a dishonest, selfish, unchivalrous coward. It could well have inspired Ray Davies but it also reminds me a little of Benny Hill, who’d had several hits in 1963. although it does show the difference in their approaches: where Hill is content to stuff in any old jokes, regardless of the notional theme of a song, Klein is sharply focused (compare his savage Barry McGuire parody Age of Corruption, included here as a bonus track, with Hill’s What a World, for example). Among other bonus tracks are the hilarious Joe Meek productions Three Coins in the Sewer, about the unfortunate consequences of attempting to retrieve said monies, and Striped Purple Shirt and a Pair of Yellow Braces, the testimony of a fashion-fixated yobbo: not hard to imagine Ray Davies drawing some inspiration from the latter too. As far as I know, this was Alan Klein’s one and only solo album. I don’t know how it was received at the time, although I do wonder whether the range of genres may have confused the public, despite the earlier success of What a Crazy World. Only a few of the original album tracks are sung with a Cockney accent, and some of the comedy can be subtle. But it’s to Klein’s credit that he didn’t restrict himself to any one style. It also has to be said that almost all the settings are beautiful and precisely achieved, full pop arrangements, a delight in themselves: this is not one of those rather polite small group or songs-at-the-piano-type comedy albums. Provided you’re not expecting belly laughs throughout, Well At Least Its British is hugely enjoyable, and far more than a period piece. Note, too, that at the time of writing the soundtrack CD for Klein’sWhat a Crazy World is also cheaply available on Marketplace. How much his work directly affected Bowie or Ray Davies may be a matter of speculation but Damon Albarn put the case for Alan Klein’s influence more generally when he talked in a 1995 interview about an \\”embryo of cynicism\\” in his apparently innocent lyrics. Try them.