Marnie has a problem and so do I. Can you help?
This week’s poser: Marnie
ALMOST THERE | ISSUE SEVEN
Now the Jazz Butcher has been in and around the indie scene for as long as most of us can remember, with his first single, Southern Mark Smith coming out way back in 1983. However it was his second release that first caught my eye. In Marnie, we find the song’s narrator telling us all about his girlfriend’s strange and somewhat worrying obsession:
Well, Marnie’s got a problem,
She wants to keep a lion in her room
She’s going crazy!
She’s going to get in trouble soon
She’s going crazy!
Her bedroom wall looks just like Regent’s Park
She’s going crazy!
She hunts for tiny creatures after dark!
As the song progresses Marnie’s predilection for all things feline shows no signs of abating. If anything it’s getting worse:
Now Marnie has a problem,
She wants to keep a panther in her tiny upstairs flat
And not just any panther
Uh-oh, Marnie wants it black!
THE JAZZ BUTCHER
Last of the big game hunters...
Suffice it to say that by the end of the song our poor narrator is at his wits’ end. But he’s not the only one with a problem. It’s not that I’ve fallen out of love with Marnie or anything like that. On the contrary, I still consider it to be a triumph of tongue-in-cheek whackiness and it will always have a special place in my heart (and my vinyl collection). The trouble is I can’t find the seven-inch single version of it anywhere on the internet and it is virtually impossible to get it on CD. There is an alternative version that is readily available (the so-called ‘Muscovite mix’) but for me it just isn’t the same. So- all I’m asking is this: can some kind soul out there upload the good old single mix of Marnie for me?