Last week I accidentally ruined any remaining vestiges of childhood innocence for BCB’s Tez Burke.  A man with a beard as fulsome and manly as Tez’s should probably have left Playmobil and Ker-Plunk behind a long time ago (though Lego is allowed – you can never truly tire or grow out of Lego.  God, I miss Lego.  I’m off to buy some Lego…), but I suppose William Blake would probably argue that our days of innocence are not to be dismissed in our grown up cynicism.  Whilst I agree to an extent, this doesn’t forgive The Songs of Innocence which are, contrary to what your English teacher may have tried to tell you, a load of old shit.  (I give you this, from Laughing Song: “When the meadows laugh with lively green / And the grasshopper laughs in the merry scene / When Mary and Susan and Emily / With their sweet round mouths sing “Ha, ha he!”  Sorry, but that’s rubbish.  Did he not think, “Hmmm, needs a bit of work”?)

However, I digress whilst dredging up old literary criticism arguments from A Level English.  The fact is, William Blake has little to do with Plastic Bertrand as far as I am aware, and it was the story that the latter had been guilty of taking something of the Milli Vanilli route to pop stardom which sent the hirsuite mouth of Tez into the downward Glum position.  I was glancing over the details of the sordid business on that there interweb in the BCB building when poor old Tez saw the terrible truth over my shoulder.  That terrible truth was that Plastic Bertrand’s most famous track – Ça Plane Pour Moi – was not, in fact, sung by Plastic Bertrand.

When the tale surfaced at the end of last month, singer Roger Jouret – the man behind the Plastic – denied that the voice was not his, but a day later he reversed his statement admitting that not only was it not his voice on the track, but that his singing did not feature on the band’s first four albums.

“I don’t mind saying it wasn’t my voice.  I wanted to sing but he wouldn’t let me into the studio,” says Jouret of producer Lou Deprijck – the amusingly-named* source of the actual voice on the records.  According to the BBC News website, Jouret claims he agreed to keep his trap shut on the subject of his trap being kept shut “in exchange for 0.5% of the royalties, promising that he’d let me use my voice on another version, which, of course, he never did.”

Whilst the track remains a splendid record, it’s difficult to know who to credit the record to when playing it now.  For now, though, the Plastic will remain on the record.

* Surely pronounced as close to “Lou the prick” as you’re ever going to get.

Anyway, as last week, courtesy of this lovely Soundcloud player you can listen to the show again for a limited period (probably about the length of time it would take an unopened malt loaf to go off).  Sadly due to copyright and such blah the show cannot be made available as a downloadable file.

Selection Box Show 143 by PatrickSelectionBoxDJ

Selection Box Show 143

Transmitted 2/8/2010

1.  Plastic Bertrand – Ça Plane Pour Moi
from: King of the Divan

2.  Milt Trenier – You’re Killing Me
from: The Birth of Rock & Roll (various artists)

3.  Grinderman – Heathen Child
from: Here Come The Wolfman

4.  Khamoro – Lingara/Csavargók
from: The Rough Guide To The Music of Hungarian Gypsies (various artists)

5.  The Unifics – The Beginning Of My End
from: Kent’s Cellar of Soul Volume 2 (various artists)

6.  The Wake – Something Outside
from: Auteur Labels: Factory Benelux 1980 – 1985 (various artists)

7.  Dr Dre feat. Snoop Dogg – Still D.R.E.
from: 2001

8.  Rice Brothers – Won’t You Come Back To Me
from: Decca5738A

9.  Le Switch – Monkberry Moon Delight
from: RAM on LA

10.  Them – Dirty Old Man
from: Time Out! Time In For

11.  Maclaine Colston & Saul Rose – The Lazy Farmer
from: Sand & Soil

12.  Tawney Reed – You Can’t Take It Away
from: That Driving Beat – Doin’ The Mod Volume 5 (various artists)

13.  Gene Henslee – Diggin ‘n’ Datin’
from: Red Hot Rockabilly (various artists)

Patrick Thornton presents Selection Box every Monday at midnight.