MY GRANDAD (is a prostitute)

A lovely song.

As the modern music scene begins to disappear up its own rectum, more and more people are going back to the source material. It's nothing new - Eric Clapton pillaged the catalogues of blues legends Robert Johnson, Howlin' Wolf and many others, Joss Stone raped the soul classics for personal gain, and Gareth Gates dipped into the leftovers of Dane Bowers. But as more and more people look ever further afield to make up for their own lack of talent, the world's natural stocks of untapped original music are diminishing. Where to look now? The answer - the hitherto ignored British folk/country scene. And here, we present for you, one of the shining lights of BriFoCo... "Blind Lettuce" MacGarrity Born to syphilitic parents in 1907, in a village just outside of Thumping-in-the-Colon, Obadiah MacGarrity spent his early years de-slugging the lettuce crops of local farmers to earn enough money to buy a Sousaphone. When a rogue blow from his slughammer left him blind in both eyes and one ear, he was forced to leave his job and earn a pittance performing degrading sex acts on whoever he could convince to pay. When, one day, one of his clients turned out to be his own father, Tarquin realised the folly of his ways and turned to song to soothe his troubled mind. His studio recordings, on Crusty Rim Records, were destroyed in a fire and are lost forever, but several of his live performances were captured on tape by bootleggers who really should have known better than to waste good tape on this dross. It is one of these recordings that we present for you here - recorded at the Scuttle and Socket, his hymn to his ancestors, "My Grandad ( is a prostitute)", with its haunting reflection of his own life.

Click the CD to download the song (2.7MB)