Nasty Little Record

It is not unusual for a sports star to flex his or her vocal cords, and over the years it seems that almost anyone who has enjoyed a modicum of fame on the sports field has been coerced into the recording studio. And thank goodness for that, for without singing sporting celebrities this blog would have petered out long ago.

 

Some have produced something listenable – although I really am struggling to think of an example right now – but, and let’s be honest here, most are downright despicable. As is the effort I bring you today, with both sides of the 1987 single by tennis bad boy Ilie ‘Nasty’ Năstase, Globe Trotter Lover, and Pour Être Un Homme (To Be a Man).

 

Born in 1946, in Bucharest, Romania, Năstase was one of the world’s top players during the 1970s, and the World No. 1 1973 and 1974. He is one of only six players in history to win more than 100 ATP professional titles, and has won seven Grand Slam titles, four Masters Grand Prix year-end championship titles, and seven Championship Series titles. In 1991 he was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame, and in 2005, Tennis magazine ranked him as the 28th-best player of the preceding forty years. Pretty impressive. He’s also a major sleaze bag, reprimanded for inappropriate comments towards female tennis players (including the former Mrs. James Bond and World Number Three women’s singles player Pam Shriver), racist remarks towards Serena Williams’ then-unborn baby (at a press conference Năstase was heard to say, ‘Let’s see what colour it has. Chocolate with milk?’), and for calling Johanna Konta and Anne Keothavong ‘fucking bitches’. These last few acts finally led to his suspension from the World tennis Federation. The following year he was arrested twice within a six-hour span for drink-driving, and for driving through a red light.

 

The failed mayoral candidate can’t sing, either. Although in all fairness he doesn’t even attempt to sing on the B-side, simply reeling off the words in a matter of fact (or is it ‘can’t be arsed’) style.

 

The disc was recorded and released specifically for the French market; with both sides co-written by French songwriters Hervé Faure Lacaussade and Mario Santangeli, and produced by French musician Christian Delagrange. Financed at least in part by his sponsors Adidas, I haven’t tried too hard to translate the lyrics, but the A-side seems to have been based on Năstase’s biographer’s claim of his having slept with 2,500 women. The flip side is some tossed-off nonsense about how hard it is to be a man from his hometown. Perhaps. Do you really care? He certainly didn’t, complaining to one interviewer that, ‘They put it together, I said I cannot do this.’

 

Bizarrely, this horrible little disc, which took Năstase two whole weeks to record, reached Number Three in the French pop charts, and ‘Nasty’ was asked to appear on several TV shows to promote the disc. In June 1987 he appeared on the well-known entertainment show Champs Elysee, where he actually performed the song live, accompanied by dancers and a small choir. By the time it became a hit he must have softened to the idea, telling the host of the show that ‘A friend from Adidas asked me to do this. At first, I thought it was weird, then I liked it.’

 

See what you think.

 

Download Globe HERE

Download Pour HERE

Have You Heard the Fut?

It is the ninth of October tomorrow, the day that would have been John Lennon’s 81^st birthday. On next Wednesday’s World’s Worst Records Radio Show I shall be playing an hour of Beatle-related nonsense in tribute to the great man, my first and most enduring musical hero.

 

The hour is made up of song-poems, bad cover versions, Beatle novelties and some of the most dire tribute discs you have heard in your life, but today I bring you a sneak peek, with one of the most controversial, and confusing Beatle-related discs of all time, The Fut and Have You Heard the Word.

 

Issued by Beacon records here in the UK in 1970, this disc has confounded Beatles fans for decades. So much so that it turned up time and time again on Beatles bootlegs and as late as 1985 Yoko Ono attempted to register copyright in the song, convinced after years of seeing her late husband’s name attached to it that he must be involved.

 

He wasn’t.

 

The Fut were, in fact, Steve Kipner and Steve Groves of the Kinetics, a group originally formed in Australia in 1966. The duo noted the success enjoyed by the Bee Gees after their relocation to London and, in 1969, followed them across the ocean. Forming a new band, Tin Tin, the pair went in search of their old friend Maurice Gibb, who soon persuaded his manager, Robert Stigwood, to sign the new act. Maurice also offered up his services as producer for the band’s debut album, playing bass on several tracks.

 

Sessions for the album took place over a seven-month period between May and November 1969, taking far longer than anticipated because, in August, Gibb fell down a flight of stairs and broke his arm.

 

And that’s where things get interesting. That evening, Maurice turned up at IBC studios wearing a cast on his arm, high as a kite on painkillers, accompanied by his wife, Lulu (who he had married in February), and her brother, Billy Lawrie (often miscredited as Laurie). Stories differ as to whether he also came armed with a full bottle of whiskey or simply took advantage of the open bar in the studio. When it came time to work on a new, and unfinished song Kipner and Groves had brought with them the session deteriorated, and after tempers flared they left.

 

Maurice, off his face and having far too much fun, decided to finish off the song, thinking it would be a scream to put on tape his imitation of John Lennon. No one seems to recall who attempted the impersonation of Yoko One heard at the start of the song, but I somehow doubt it was his Scottish songstress wife.

 

Dismissed as a potential track for the as-yet-incomplete Tin Tin album, somehow - and Gibb would later admit that he had no idea how it happened – the song was issued on the tiny Beacon label, credited to The Fut. The flip side, Futting, with authorship credited to The Tuf, has absolutely nothing to do with any of those involved with the A-side: it’s a pleasant, if unremarkable, ska instrumental. One can only assume that someone at IBC heard the tape and thought that they could make a quick buck, although I very much doubt that they saw much in the way of financial reward. Issued at around the same time that the Beatles officially called it a day, it did not take long for it to start appearing on Beatles bootlegs, usually listed as an unissued outtake, although occasionally credited to John and Yoko.  

 

Tin Tin would score a Top 20 U.S. hit with Toast and Marmalade for Tea in 1971. The group disbanded in 1973, although Kipner continued working as a songwriter, producing hits for various acts including Chicago, George Benson and Olivia Newton-John. Gibb and Billy Lawrie would continue to work together: Gibb produced Lawrie’s 1971 cover of the Chuck Berry standard Roll Over Beethoven and, in 1972 the pair wrote and played the theme tune to the film Bloomfield, which was issued as a 45, credited to the Bloom-Fields, that same year. In a far less tenuous Beatle connection Rock and Roller, a track on Lawrie’s sole solo album, Ship Imagination, was co-written by one Richard Starkey... a well-known drummer who was not involved in any way with the Fut single. Honestly. 

 

Here are both sides of the 45. Don’t forget to tune in to the show on Wednesday, when you can hear a further 55 minutes or so of similar Beatle-related nonsense!

 

Enjoy!

Download Word HERE

 

 Download Futting HERE

Hail to the Chief

How, in 14 years of blogging, have I never written about Chief Kooffreh before. one of the most original, and most ‘outsidery’ of all outsider artists?

 

Alternatively known as Bassey Kooffreh, Bassey Kooffreh Bassey, and Kooffreh Bassey Kooffreh, the Chief has been making music since at least 2007, recording and releasing dozens – if not hundreds - of albums in the process. Hugely prolific, and anything but the shy and retiring type, at one point the Chief was claiming that he was ‘a voting member of the Grammy USA and the most recorded published music Star in the Eastern Sea Board of the United States East Coast of USA. 120 Albums, 2400 tracks 250 videos according to Itunes, Spotify and Amazon.com. Chief Kooffreh values Family and his millions of fans and friends worldwide.’

 

The typical Chief K track is spoken work polemic over a sampled loop or karaoke backing, with the Chief announcing himself and the title at the very start, usually something like, ‘Here comes Chief Kooffreh with my millions of fans… ’ before launching into a rap about anything from the evils of Viagra to the death of Diana, Princess of Wales or the dangers of cheating on your woman.

 

His biggest ‘hit’, if you can quantify these things, is the classic She Will Cut Your Balls Off, although Bitch Get Out Of My Life You Are The Devil is rather special too, as it Bad Medical Doctors Out Of Control Killed Michael Jackson, and the wonderful Stop Beating Gays, Stop The Violence Against Gays Oprah Denial Closet (Download Supporters And Fans). Confusingly, although he claims to have thousands of songs in his catalogue, many are identical: Doctor Viagra, for example, is the same song as Danger Viagra Can Hurt You, Doctor Viagra Hard Hammer and Viagra Can Hurt You Part Two, making it difficult and downright frustrating for Chief Kooffreh completists. To complicate matters even further, Big Viagra Hard Stone is the same song with added echo and eardrum-piercing police siren effects.

 

Originally from Calabar, Nigeria, the Chief married his wife, Elizabeth, in 2013 and although he claims to work in the financial district of New York, the couple appear to reside in Boston where he works as a supply teacher. In recent years, after studying online with Harvard, he has become involved in IT and software development. I can’t help but wonder if Chief Kooffreh is a character, a persona that Bassey inhabits for his musical forays (rather like Vince Furnier becoming Alice Cooper), and that outside of music he and his wife live a pretty ordinary existence.

 

In July 2020 Chief K published his first book, Cyber Security Intelligence Bible American Big Dark War Cost $400 Billion a Year, his masterwork on how the American government, and many American companies, are at the mercy of criminal hackers, whose unlimited resources allow them to steal classified information. This was followed shortly afterwards by Skills for Men and Women to Love, Live and Work Successfully with Each Other, credited to Chief Kooffreh Harvard Honors. Later the same year he filed to have his name recognised as a trademark: that application was granted in March 2021, which I guess ow means we have to refer to him as Chief Kooffreh tm

 

There are dozens upon dozens of Chief Kooffreh songs for you to listen to on YouTube, iTunes, Spotify and other platforms, but here are a couple of personal favourites: the brilliantly bonkers (and NSFW) She Will Cut Your Balls Off and, from the album STARRR, the original version of Tragedy of Princess Diana England, listed as one of ‘the 101 strangest records on Spotify’ by the Guardian in 2012.

 

Enjoy!

Download Balls HERE 

Download Diana HERE