'Labrador' - Benny O'Fee

[C.]

[fange]

I had that same reactuon i'm sure when i first heard that track. 19 mins of layered over-dubs of O'Fee playing electric kazoo, 6-string bass, bouzouki, as well as filtered recordings of some howls and barks from his lab Missy really shouldn't work, but they somehow do.

Really, the whole ZoolO'Fee album deserves some fresh reappraisal. Just goes to show that when he left Snake after Egg Parrot, a lot of the imagination and creative spark in their music left with him.

[C.]

Ange knows what flavour his side of the bread's buttered!

[Charlie O.]

Just goes to show that when he left Snake after Egg Parrot, a lot of the imagination and creative spark in their music left with him.

See, I think both parties benefited from the split. Snake's Open Fifth album is certainly a brave and groundbreaking statement, though much misunderstood. Casual listeners can't appreciate how much concentration, dedication and discipline is required to get three guitarists, a pianist, a bassist and a tympanist to hammer out the E 329.63 / A 440 interval that slowly and that precisely for that long; it's only fair that the audience should devote just as much concentration and discipline in listening to all five LPs, locked grooves and all. It would never have worked with O'Fee still in the band; bless him, he probably would have started yodeling somewhere around the middle of Side 9 and ruined everything.

[C.]

Charlie knows his toffee apples!

[PENK]

I was looking for his performance of the follow-up single 'The Gonfalons of Fate' on Whistle Test, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to have made it to the Youtubes.

It's a shame as it's a great music TV moment. Benny performs the whole song hanging upside down from a trapeze while the band - the notorious Denzil Piñata on tubs - are tied together with a garden hose, stood on a rotating platform made from fiberglass bees. Legend has it that Bob Harris was so shocked by the abrupt arrival of Gordon Fentiman's oboe solo on the four-minute mark that he spilled Horlicks all down his weskit.