Oliver! appendices: Eggs - Ocelot [Party Mix] (10 November 1991)

Yet another find of a track which wasn’t around when I originally looked for it. Strictly speaking, this isn’t the version Peel played on 10/11/91, which was the b-side on Eggs’s first single on the Teenbeat label, Skyscraper.  That version started at the 20 second mark and was a little more stripped back, using only a single vocalist rather than the frail harmonies on display in this ”Party Mix” version from Eggs’s first album, Bruiser.  It was also a little slower and featured low-mixed horn parts.  Nevertheless, I’m delighted to have a version to put on this blog.  It seems to be a great example of what I think of as campfire rock - overdriven acoustic guitars backed by sludgy electric guitar and bongo like drumming (although, in this case they really are bongos helping to drive this track along).  A decade or so later, Jack Johnson would enjoy substantial success with a variant on that sound.

As well as being catchy as hell, other notable features of Ocelot include its vaguely surreal lyrics: “Every ocelot is a stroked cat/But not every stroked cat is an ocelot”*; weird verse metres and Mark E.Smith vocal lifts.  No wonder Peel was getting letters about them.


*Not quite so surreal since I’ve subsequently discovered what an ocelot is.
Lyrics copyright of Andrew Beaujon.
Video courtesy of Amye Sagar