ALMOST THERE | ISSUE FIVE
Where’s Captain Kirk?
It’s humour Jim, but not as we bourgeois revisionists know it...
No. 2: The Fire Hydrant Men, ‘Mayday in Moscow.’
Picture, if you will, a bright spring day in Moscow. Thousands have gathered in Red Square to watch the might of the Soviet armed forces march past in the annual May Day Parade. Amongst the crowd are three young women there to see their sweethearts take part:
Hey look- there’s Boris looking really smart,
Carrying the banner behind the missile cart.
And there’s my Igor showing up the Yanks
Don’t he look tall on top of one of the tanks?
It’s nice to see Yuri marching as one of the stars
Don’t it make a change, girls, from building cars?
On your Marx... Get set... Go!
It is the girls’ cheery anti-capitalist message, meant to praise the Soviet system but unwittingly satirising it, that gives the song its comic edge:
Humour was the stock in trade of Norwich’s Fire Hydrant Men (featuring the Fabulous Fezettes), who brought out a mini LP, Missed it by That Much! in 1985. The six tracks on the record are all delights, with my favourite being I’m In The Pits (Since My Racing Driver Baby Left Me), a nice send up of the ‘my boyfriend died in a motorcycle smash’ sub-genre.
As far as I know nothing by the Fire Hydrant Men has ever been released on CD. Perhaps the apparatchiks down at Cherry Red Records could ‘posthumously rehabilitate’ the band?
You have a party that’ll put you down,
But we have a Party lasts the whole year round.
Who needs Bob Hope?
We’ve got Konstantin Chernenko!
Click on the Dansette to listen
to Mayday in Moscow