The Gas Pomegranate – ‘All Your Ideas Are Rubbish’ c/w/ ‘Try Me For Size, Baby’
Released 14th January 1965. HMV POP 4591
Sebastian Raspberry (vcls, bass), Edgar DeFries (autoharp), Neil Teddington (box & stick)
A classic put-down song in the tradition of The Tinkerbells’ ‘Call Yourself A Girl?’, this almost unbelievably fast number finds singer Sebastian Raspberry sneering insults at all the romantic hopes and dreams of the working classes.
Raspberry was a member of the famous horticultural Raaspberries (sic), the family that invented the raspberry, the fruit which even today takes their family name.
All teenagers at the time of the recording, The Gas Pomegranate didn’t even have a drum kit in their line-up. Says Raspberry, now married to an Iraqi princess, “Neil had this box - I don’t know where it came from – which he used to bang with this stick he had to get a rhythm going. It sounded better than most drum kits”.
Nevertheless, when Neil Teddington’s box finally disintegrated, he was sacked from the group.
Raspberry and autoharpist Edgar DeFries continued as a duo for a week, then decided to call the week a day, shortly before the record was released. “We quite liked the idea of that”, says Raspberry. “It could have gone to number one and there’d be no group! What would they have done on Top Of The Pops then? It would have brought down the whole music industry and all the ugly little working-class bloodsuckers that run it. It would have been our finest hour!”.
The call from the BBC did not materialise, however, as ‘All Your Ideas Are Rubbish’ stiffed before it even hit the shops and to this day no one knows why.
DeFries went on to join Egg Thermometer, again teaming up with Teddington, who had eventually acquired another box.
The group’s unusual name also has an interesting history. In an interview with The Newport Argus in 1966, autoharpist Edgar DeFries explained: “I was tripping out of my head on mushrooms when I suddenly had a craving to eat a pomegranate. There were none in the house, even though I had plenty of kumquats around the place as usual. So I turned on the gas and attempted to fashion a pomegranate from the gas. When I came ‘round in the hospital, I’d forgotten all about it and promptly went home to the charred remains of my flat”.
Released 14th January 1965. HMV POP 4591
Sebastian Raspberry (vcls, bass), Edgar DeFries (autoharp), Neil Teddington (box & stick)
A classic put-down song in the tradition of The Tinkerbells’ ‘Call Yourself A Girl?’, this almost unbelievably fast number finds singer Sebastian Raspberry sneering insults at all the romantic hopes and dreams of the working classes.
Raspberry was a member of the famous horticultural Raaspberries (sic), the family that invented the raspberry, the fruit which even today takes their family name.
All teenagers at the time of the recording, The Gas Pomegranate didn’t even have a drum kit in their line-up. Says Raspberry, now married to an Iraqi princess, “Neil had this box - I don’t know where it came from – which he used to bang with this stick he had to get a rhythm going. It sounded better than most drum kits”.
Nevertheless, when Neil Teddington’s box finally disintegrated, he was sacked from the group.
Raspberry and autoharpist Edgar DeFries continued as a duo for a week, then decided to call the week a day, shortly before the record was released. “We quite liked the idea of that”, says Raspberry. “It could have gone to number one and there’d be no group! What would they have done on Top Of The Pops then? It would have brought down the whole music industry and all the ugly little working-class bloodsuckers that run it. It would have been our finest hour!”.
The call from the BBC did not materialise, however, as ‘All Your Ideas Are Rubbish’ stiffed before it even hit the shops and to this day no one knows why.
DeFries went on to join Egg Thermometer, again teaming up with Teddington, who had eventually acquired another box.
The group’s unusual name also has an interesting history. In an interview with The Newport Argus in 1966, autoharpist Edgar DeFries explained: “I was tripping out of my head on mushrooms when I suddenly had a craving to eat a pomegranate. There were none in the house, even though I had plenty of kumquats around the place as usual. So I turned on the gas and attempted to fashion a pomegranate from the gas. When I came ‘round in the hospital, I’d forgotten all about it and promptly went home to the charred remains of my flat”.
No comments:
Post a Comment