The Cleaners From Venus >> Some of my dreams weren't really worth saving

⍟ The Cleaners From Venus - "Follow The Plough" ⍟

« (Man At The Off License [or RCA Records], 1986; Tangerine Records, 1993) «

The Cleaners From Venus were an '80s English jange-pop group, essentially the mastermind of a guy named Martin Newell, who is revered amongst circles of people who revere this type of music.  I'm not sure if this song is from their 1986 cassette-only album Living With Victoria Grey, or from their 1987 (recorded in '86) LP Going To England.  Maybe those versions are the same?  All I know is it's taken from their best-of compilation called Golden Cleaners, put out by Tangerine Records in 1993.  Man, it's just so beautiful and intense.  "I followed you like a seagull follows the plough" refers to the way seagulls flock behind plows [ploughs], shrimp boats, etc., looking for scraps of food that have been stirred up by the commotion.  One of the most bizarrely romantic things I've ever heard anyone say about someone else...  He just keeps hanging around a person due to force of habit, even though he knows it probably isn't going to lead him anywhere in the long run.  The line "Live in a world of violence and danger, finding myself a comparative stranger" is open to many interpretations, especially since he seems to be singing from the standpoint of himself as a child in that part of the song. "You are before me, you are behind me / It was predestined that you would find me" is another line that sends a chill up my spine for some reason.

The guitars chime along (using a picking technique called harmonics, used to spectacular effect in the second half of "How Soon Is Now?" by The Smiths) in an urgent manner as Newell's vocals swell with passion in the choruses, while a truly sick bassline provides the undertow.  The way he sings the "And I can't remember how..." line in a descending manner is just too cool for words.  I'll admit to not knowing much about this band, but I kind of don't want to investigate much further, since I can't imagine they have a better song than this one.  It's not surprising that a major label, RCA, snatched the Cleaners up immediately after hearing this song, but I think most of the band's music was too quirky to reach a larger audience.  Their lyrics also contain lots of references to obscure facets of British culture, most of which wind up going right over the heads of non-Brits like myself.  The Cleaners are apparently best known for their cult hit "Ilya Kuryakin Looked At Me".  It will never cease to amaze me how most bands are beloved for a song that is nowhere near their overall best song, but that's a whole 'nother topic.

L-R: Martin Newell & Giles Smith, ca. 1986

This will probably interest absolutely no one, but I like to always tell how I got into a song, so I was in a Goodwill thrift store in Houma, LA in summer '07 when I saw an LP by Gerry & The Pacemakers, which had a song called "Girl On A Swing."  I made a mental note to check out whether one of my favorite songs, "Girl On A Swing" by Lions & Ghosts (a song which presages the band Morphine's entire aesthetic), was a cover of that one.  So when I got home I typed in that song name on iTunes and lo and behold, found a song called "Girl On A Swing" by the preposterously-named Cleaners From Venus, on one of their (other) greatest-hits albums.  I clicked on the 30-second sample clip of "Follow The Plough," was immediately stunned, listened to it over and over, and eventually got an internet buddy to track down the mp3 and send it to me.  So there you have it.  All three "Girl On A Swing"s are different, for what it's worth...

Well, a few hours ago the Mavericks just won their first NBA title over the choke-a-riffic Heat, as I predicted in my post on May 8th, in what was definitely the most interesting NBA Finals I've seen.  Big ups to those old dudes, especially to Dirk for somehow managing to avoid the dreaded Sports Illustrated Cover Jinx.  Jason Terry is probably my favorite player in the NBA now.  The Mavs' run had lots of parallels to the Saints' Super Bowl season, and I've adopted them as my secondary basketball team, since the Hornets will never win one.  (Until tonight, only six teams had won the last 27 NBA titles.)  The grind of playing seven-game series means that fluke teams never make it through to the Finals, as often happens in one-and-done formats like the NFL, tennis, or March Madness.  And the current craze for assembling an expensive "Big Three" means that small-market teams simply have no way of being competitive, and must live off of other teams' scraps.

Planets with similar climates: The Smiths - "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out" (1986), The Go-Betweens - "The House That Jack Kerouac Built" (1988), The Church - "Shadow Cabinet" (1984) & "Tantalized" (1986), The Sound - "Golden Soldiers" (1984), Tears For Fears - "Broken" (1985), Kitchens Of Distinction - "What Happens Now?" (1992).


Still chuckling at: The couple in front of me in the line to get into a show by This Will Destroy You on Friday night in Baton Rouge.  They were casually improvising some nonsensical stuff in a British accent, which I thought might be some lines from Monty Python.  A few hours later I ran into them at the merch table, so I asked them what they were talking about, and they told me they were imagining what Morrissey would say if he were making an order at a fast-food restaurant.  Also, upstairs next to the pool table, some guy next to me quoted one of my favorite Ahnuld lines: "Get to the choppa!"

Surprisingly, it was the first time I'd ever heard anyone quote this legendary line in the field.  (Though it was cancelled out by his clichéd request to opening band The Nighty Nite to "Play some Skynyrd," for which I almost threw him over the railing.)  So overall, it was a pretty entertaining night, though I hate driving home for an hour every time I go to shows there, especially since they always seem to end at around 2 AM.