Another Collection of Cacophony from Columbine

Another four tracks from my personal Columbine stash for you this week, this time the entire 1983 release, Columbine EP-189. It's a fairly mediocre release, but the final cut is a real pip!

 

Katherine Maynard’s They’re Coming After Me is a deeply confusing song. A typical country shuffle, the lyrics make it sounds as if the protagonist, presumably Maynard herself (although here voiced by Kay Weaver) has some sort of death wish and is praying to the Lord above for release. Who are the two little angels though? Has Katherine murdered her own twins, presumably back in Nashville if any kind of sense is to be extrapolated from her lyric, and now she’s on the run from the law and seeking absolution from the divine? Perhaps I’m reading too much into it.

 

G.B. Tan’s lounge bossa nova Whene’r I Make My Wish is a peculiar little song about yearning. Ms. Tan’s wishes she had been brought up in the country, win a room that had a window sill (not a window, you understand: G.B. seems to have the ability to be able to see through wood or concrete) so that she could gaze out into the night. Now, irrespective of what part of the country she had been raised in, what kind of parents bring up a child in a windowless – and window sill-less - room? The Fritzl-esque monsters!

 

There’s not much to say about the third track on the EP, You Bring Tears to My Eyes. With lyrics penned by W.G. Lassetter, it is a slow, dull plod delivered in Miss Weaver’s usual slow and plodding style. The tune owes something to the Beatles’ This Boy, but there’s little to recommend it apart from the rather wonderful line ‘I’m flying high in a gay paradise’.

 

Finally, the reason we’re all here: Pansy Loop’s marvellous Disco Blues, credited like all four tracks on this particular EP to Kay Weaver, but clearly sung by the unctuous John Muir, who of course worked for Preview as Gene Marshall, but whose real name is Gene Merlino. The lyrics are wonderfully inane and often downright stupid - just what does ‘let’s rent out those blue jean shoes’ actually mean? – but our Pansy was lucky enough to also have her song included on one of Columbine’s many, many The Now Sounds of Today compilations, this time correctly attributed to Muir. They may have given her this as a sop for miscrediting the original release, or more likely conned poor Pansy out of even more money to have her song featured as the album’s opening track.

 

Enjoy!

 

Download Coming HERE

 

Download Wish HERE

 

Download Tears HERE

Download Disco HERE