I remember writing long, long lists of all the bands I "knew" when I was a kid. All I had to do to "know" a band was to have read about them, or seen their name in The Scene magazine or Rock Scene, or Creem or wherever. I always made the list with bands I could name at least one song of first, but then it could be pretty much a free for all and I may have just liked the name of a band and read about them or saw them on an ad opening for a band I knew better. They were just lists, but they were just for me and they were for me to see how many bands I knew and to make sure the top of the list kept getting longer. I figure I had teachers that thought I was furiously taking notes while all I was doing was thinking, Badfinger sings Baby Blue, Eric Clapton sings I Shot the Sheriff, Sugarloaf sings Don't Call Us, We'll Call You...Tight Kitty is playing a rec center show at the fairgrounds...and I'd write this stuff all down, all day. Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel were one of the bands on the bottom list. I knew they were a band, but I had no idea what they sounded like.
I think I mentioned a friend who's father used to clean the local Capitol Records office. He used to bring home all kinds of stuff, and it wasn't just on Capitol. One day we came home after school (my friend's home, kinda my home away from home) and there was a new stack of posters and records on the bottom step going up to my friend's room. We liked it there, because his parents never came upstairs and we could smoke and drink whatever we wanted and no one seemed to care. This day, one of the records in the stack was Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel's Love's a Prima Donna. Well, I "knew" who these guys were from my daydream lists, and I insisted that they had to be cool because they were from England, and since I had read about them (remember, I may just have seen their name in print) then they were cool but WMMS wasn't cool enough to play them. My friends didn't really go for the college stuff because back then they were really low powered and sometimes they played polka music for hours. So I said, "after we fire up the Neutron Bong, we gotta play some Cockney Rebel!" I had already shortened their name, because I knew they would be so awesome.
The cover of this record can get a group of fourteen year old boys interested for at least one spin, so I had that going for me. I had no idea what was going to happen when the needle hit the record, but I was ready, and like I said, I just knew it was gonna be great. So we all sat there a little ripped and really only used to pretty polished stuff and Harley's voice comes blasting out of the speakers. Seeking a lo-o-ove. To sha-are my pill-oh. Share my dreams and my undy-ing need. To be. Now, Steve Harley kind of made Neil Young sound like singing was his main talent (I like Neil's singing, but it's not his main strength, ya know?) and since the Neutron Bong was out we kind of fell on the floor laughing our asses off at Steve's vocalizations. After that, things got downright weird.
A lot of the vocals on this record get some really weird treatments, and they go from sounding like The Chipmunks to playing a 45 at 16 RPM (lot's of record players used to have 16 RPM) and then there were strings, and backup singers singing doo wop parts and fun electric guitars and weird synthesizers and lyrics that would have been right at home in Alice in Wonderland. Things got weird fast, and I have to say, for me this record was love at first listen. Most of my friends seemed to like it, too. I say most because when we got older and the drugs got harder (for some of us), there were friends that hated when Love's a Prima Donna got pulled out. Even when they could look at the great cover, they'd get upset. Through it all, I loved every minute of that record. I eventually went and bought my own, after that friend got married, because his wife utterly hated that record and it was banished! I think she thought it was "Arty Crap" (to borrow a line from Amazon Women on the Moon), and it well may be arty crap, but I still love it to this day. I don't think I knew of this record until after my History of Rock class, or I'd have brought it in so people could hear some real studio craziness.
So if you ever want a record that sounds like doo wop, overblown Meat Loafy stuff and being trapped inside a bong, you should check out Love's a Prima Donna. I love it. The title track is pretty straight ahead, and it's a rollicking piano and killer backing singers. Love Compared With You is a pretty, mostly conventional ballad. The best of the weird are GI Valentine, Finally a Card Game and the way over the top Innocence and Guilt. It used to be I couldn't get enough of this, and I don't play it very often anymore, but I do still play it and I still think it's a really great record.
My record is in good shape. Like I said, I got it after school was finished so it didn't get too abused. Besides, thee were a lot of new wives and friends that this record would have been "too weird" for anyway, so mine's looking really good. I still like the cover and I still think the weirdest songs are the best.
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