Our greatest thinker and future of all humanity once wrote:
It would be a tiny bit of an exaggeration to say that ‘Babylon’ by Faster Pussycat smashed my world off its axis, it certainly altered its’ angle of rotation for a bit though. Tommy Vance played it on the Friday Rock Show; sandwiched between the usual humourless thrashers from Austria, classics and NWOBHM past-its ‘Babylon’ just sounded like a glitter bomb. Already a Def Jam devotee – I sat bolt upright in bed and stopped thinking about girls for about 3 minutes and thought that was exactly the way that rock and rap should be combined, entwined and, umm, sublimned. This was clearly the band that the late 20th Century had been waiting for. Even better none of my friends would ever had heard of them.
It would seem I wasn’t alone, welcome to the Backyard Babies Babylon, a 1999 single featuring chum-of-the-band Ginger Wildheart – credited as ‘Wildhearted Ginger’. It’s a ripper.
The Backyard Babies take the (im)pure gold of the Pussycat original and spread aggression and nastiness all over it, like a thick coating of, umm, sleazeberry jam. Babylon is given a far heavier base, some sound FX, more explicitly coketastic lyrics, meaner guitars and additional lyrics from ‘(You Gotta Fight) For Your Right (To Party)’. Add in Ginger’s spoken line at the end ‘Yeah, shut the fuck up’ and the whole is much gnarlier than the original and possibly even more adolescent.
Basically this sounds like the inside of my jeans smelled like in 1987 and I mean that in a good way. Possibly.
In a pure and just world this would have been the biggest selling single ever released by anyone, Wales would have seceded from the UK and become part of Sweden and the entirety of Belgium would have become a Backyard Babies themed theme park – ‘please mummy can we ride the Blitzkreig Loveshock-o-coaster again?’; Sadly, ’twas not to be. Reality is so infra dig, dontcha think.
The B-side is ‘Babylon (Idiot Fo’ Life Remix)’ by DJ Champain* and someone/something called Yod. I was ready to dismiss this without a hearing when I first got this, but I would have been very wrong – it very cleverly, creatively takes us full hip-hop. I particularly like the way they use the rhythm of the chorus here. Smart chaps, these.
My copy of Babylon is a 12″ single with delightfully tasteless cover art, a poster of said delightfully tasteless cover art, one etched side and the whole gizmo limited to 1000 copies.
1046 Down.
PS: What a bunch of sleazy wastrels! I like the chaos here:
*who tweaks his twozzle nut-nuts on the title cut, to great effect; apologies in advance if I get a little too technical for you here.
I like that greasy live cut
perfect choice of adjective there CB. It drips grease, like a f-kd up sump.
Dont get me going on that track (Even though I like it). I’ll be calling Pussycat to get grandpa’s teeth out of the sump.
Let’s not get started on a whole Russ Meyer tip here. Super Vixen can cause me to lose whole days in, umm, contemplation.
Like I said, CB will follow you down that rabbit hole anytime you want. In the mean time I’ll be exploring more of this music.
Limited edition of genius pressed into wax (drools)
It’s what life’s all about.
Natch!
Great stuff! I like a good 12″…single. Get your mind out of the gutter. I have found quite a few lately. I might check out the band as I need something different right now.
Hi John, you’ll really like Backyard Babies – can I recommend Total 13 to you as a good starting point?
Sorry, you can’t recommend. You just overstepped your bounds buddy!! 🙂 Thanks, I will start there!!
You Americans, so touchy!!
LOL!! We are!
Don’t call Americans touchy or we’ll invade your country in the name of freedom, force our way of government upon you, and then take your oil.
Whoa! Back up there pardner, you have a government? tsk, you learn something new every day!
Works well enough to start wars, always.
Dude. I hadn’t even seen the shit going down in D.C. when I posted my original reply to this. What the fuck is our problem?
I know! Talk about timing, right? I look like the shadowy figure pulling the strings now!!
Problem? folks demanding really simple answers to incredibly complex problems.
At the end of the day you’re still responsible for Bryan Adams, and we’re not.
I’m pretty sure Canada has officially apologised at the UN for Waking Up The Neighbours.
I’ve listen now for the first time to this funny band from Sweden. A nice mix of old school punk music and a pinch of hard rock. Not bad after all, but for me made the Ramones, Sex Pistols or early AC/DC better snotty rock’n’roll than the Backyard Babies.
Funny, man. I demoed a song last summer called “Shut the Fuck Up”. We had to change the title for commercial purposes though.
Coincidence, my favourite ever Wildhearts song is a B-side called ‘Shut Your Fucking Mouth and Use Your Fucking Brain’ – my mum loves it too!
Sound advice!
No we won’t shut up, we’re just babylon and on
Babylon on, babylon and on
Shut up
I loved Faster Pussycat. Really loved them.
That first album was very good. Even the cover of ‘Your So Vain’ was good as well. Bought the second and third record and just didn’t get into those two as much as the first.
The second one was the best I reckon, dark and scuzzy. Loved that LP – one of my favourite gigs ever seeing them with the Almighty and Dangerous Toys (remember them?) in Cardiff.
Dangerous Toys…Sportin’ a Woody! Having said that ‘Scared’ was a good track
Holy Moly! Why didn’t I know about this record before this?!?! This might be the record I want to own most in the world now!
£14 on Discogs right now Steve.
It’s a corker isn’t it? The Backyard Babies always liked collaborating.
Can’t believe I didn’t know it existed
It’s okay. Don’t worry. It’ll be okay, nobody’s judging you … you lightweight casual so-called Wildhearts fan!
Hahaha