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Ballerina (album version without intro)
A slightly alternative version of the opening track from Polaroid Suitcase, without the spoken intro at the beginning. It's kind of inspired by a Spandau Ballet song called Mandolin which I found utterly hilarious, with a bit of Adam and the Ants and Siouxsie and the Banshees thrown in. Lyrically this is still one of my favourite Le Strange songs: the idea (as with most of them) was to write the songs as if I was ten years old, and this is the first one I got right.
Metal Boy
From Face Academy. I always think of what I do as "prog pop", and this is a good example of what I mean, with all its tightly-woven "movements". It's heavily inspired by Ultravox's The Thin Wall, but there are references to all sorts of stuff in there (Doctor Who at the beginning, Bowie at the end, and the second half owes a big debt to a track called Sleepless by King Crimson).
Oui Monsieur Papillon
An unreleased song, which I recorded during the Beef Scarecrow sessions. I liked the song tremendously and it covers the same kind of themes covered on the album: meat, childhood and metamorphosis. In fact, it was the first one I wrote for the project. But in the end, it didn't really fit musically, and I ended up deciding it was "too eighties". Also, it's very strange but not very funny. So I ditched it. This version is very hastily mixed. But it's OK.
Rodney Normal
From Beef Scarecrow. I didn't do this in the live show. I tried to sing it live once but it failed, for various reasons, and I never tried again. But it stands out as a good advert for what Beef Scarecrow the album sounds like, with its surreal lyrics and the contrasting fast/slow sections. People have told me it sounds like a ferocious piss-take of Damon Albarn, but it isn't meant to be a Blur parody as such. I just had the tune, which I thought sounded a bit Parklife-ish, and wrote a load of lyrics about "everyday British things", then mixed them all up so they sound completely abnormal. Naturally it's inspired by Blur, but really I was listening to The Small Faces and The Kinks a lot at the time, so there's the link. And the chorus is inspired by Brian Wilson. And Syd Barrett. I think.
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