Adorned with winsome references to singing blackbirds and stolen honey, Waters’ song was inspired by the 1968 Prague spring. Possibly to maintain a cerebral distinction between his own offering and the likes of Belgium’s Krazy Mess Groovers, he has even included a cunning nod to Solzhenitsyn: “The curtain has been raised/And Europe’s all one stage/And the archipelagic icicles have melted like the cage.” (As we are all of course aware, The Gulag Archipelago is Solzhenitsyn’s account of the Soviet forced-labour-camp system.)

That obscure literary flourish has only intensified the snorts of derision in Ireland…

Er…I, of course, was fully aware of the Solzhenitsyn reference, but chose not to mention it as I assumed the blog’s readers would be savvy/literate enough to pick it up. *cough*

I’m sure Waters is a closet Krazy Mess Groovers fan. It’s like musical porn for him. A dark, guilty secret.

There were so few sex symbols on Irish TV back in the day that we all probably fancied the same ones: Maxi, a Bosco presenter or two…er…Biddy? I’m quickly running out.

Maxi was the queen of the crop though.

Who did the gurls have? Mike Murphy?

Thanks…I think. They were indeed “three super women”. A sort of acrobatic, singing, 80s Irish super hero team. Go team Sheeba!

Ithaca,

I would absolutely love it if John Waters called me “a corner boy”. I’d immediately put the quote up on the sidebar. Unfortunately, he’s a “neo-luddite” (apparently) and would rather be reading leather bound tomes than slumming it with the oiks on the durty, new-fangled internet.

I gather from Wikipedia that the song is to be performed by a band called ‘Dervish’ which seems an odd name for a group from Sligo that specializes in traditional Irish music, but maybe the bould John will don a full length white frock and a tall red hat and do a bit of whirling to accompany his song. Perhaps “Archipelagic icicles” is really a mantra that he could chant while whirling…