So far, The Werefrogs have provided me with my second favourite track played by Peel in 1992 and a requiem for an ailing great aunt. Had I known about them at the time, I’d have been championing them to anyone who listened, and I know that I would have been in a state of keen excitement when they released their album, Swing. I can only be grateful that I lived in ignorance back then, and didn’t have to suffer the realisation that this beguiling band were not going to survive beyond 1993.
Listening to Potvan, which like Nixie Concussion, had been released as a single from the album, albeit as Peel reported, on pink vinyl, you don’t hear a band seemingly coming to the end of its time. It could be though that they were trying to warn us not to get too upset should anything happen to them through the line, Wipe the tears off your shoulder, everyone which serves as the chorus line on Potvan.
The title appears to be a creation of its authors, as I can find no reference to what a potvan is. I suspect that it may be a hiding in plain sight drug reference given that the song contains wonderfully psychedelic lines like Ride all alone and the nowheres are on board/Lean out the window but I don’t know how to fly/ But it’s all on Dior(?) till he finds me once again/ And that sound in your eyes doesn’t tell me how to fly.
There’s more in the same vein in later verses, and lyrically, it comes off sounding like something which clearly made sense to whoever wrote it down at the moment they thought of it. No revisions, no second thoughts, just crank up the guitars and let Marc Wolf loose with a vocal set to “keening.” I like it, and it’s a nice tune, but the window dressing doesn’t disguise the fundamental vision of a stoned man driving at 5mph which seems to be the force that drove this song into being.
Video courtesy of baro69.
No comments:
Post a Comment