The Comedy of Errors: Dr. Phibes and the House of Wax Equations - Mr. Phantasy [Live] (29 May 1992)

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NOTE - The video is not a live version of Mr. Phantasy as it has not been shared.  Peel played a version which Dr. Phibes and the House of Wax Equations recorded for Mark Radcliffe’s Hit the North programme on Radio 5.  We’re better off hearing the studio version given that the Hit the North recording sounded like Peel had taped it off the radio.  The joys of  medium wave....  Nevertheless the quality of the track still came through.  The tracks that Dr. Phibes and the House of Wax Equations recorded for their first Hit the North session were subsequently issued on an album called Seconds Out Round One alongside contributions from The Boo Radleys, Leatherface and Scorpio Rising.

I’m coming to the conclusion that it was everything except the music which conspired to prevent Dr. Phibes and the House of Wax Equations becoming stars in the early 90s.  Combine that unwieldy band name, the hippy look with the tie-dyed tops, beanie hats and self painted van (see the video for the sublime Hazy Lazy Hologram), the fact that the bassist played with his guitar up around his neck like a crusty Mark King, the drug-centred nature of their output which seemed to be accepted if you were wrapping it around a dance beat or you were an American band but meant the BBC wouldn’t touch them before the watershed and the lack of anything approaching dynamism in the early 90s British record industry; it’s little wonder that the band were always up against it in terms of breaking through to a wider audience in the manner that they deserved to:

 “We found that there is no push, no money around, no record company willing to get off its fucking arse and take a chance on us.  So we did it ourselves.” Keith York, drummer with Dr. Phibes and the House of Wax Equations in conversation with Jon Bains circa 1993.

Mr. Phantasy is, in its way, a gloriously irresponsible song.  It sells drug-taking with all the gleeful hucksterism of The Beatles’ Doctor Robert, by forecasting pilgrimages to the eponymous drug-dealer .

Sandpaper smile/Sandpaper smile
Don’t worry about tomorrow.
Sandpaper smile/Walk half a mile
For Mr. Phantasy.

There are references to consumption suitable for fussy or reluctant samplers (“...no artificial flavours
or sweetners”), safety advice (“Nobody talks about the consequence so keep all medicines out of reach of curious children.  Should a ten-ton truck knock me over/please return all contents to my
doting mother.” *Shudder)
Finally though, it advocates that indulgence in pharmaceuticals is your own choice.  The pushback line, “Need no DJ to be my conscience/What an example to set when the world’s got so much to answer for” reads like a rebuke to dance DJs and a scene which had had the drug stories all to themselves over the late 80s/early 90s.  I can well believe that there would have been resentment about this in the rock community.  Drop an E, incorporate a drum loop and you get called a band-wagon jumper.  ‘Fuck that acid and weed shit, ecstasy is where music is going’ and I think at the time, it really felt like that to some bands, who feared being written out of the picture.  Ultimately, as Mr. Phantasy shows, they were all in thrall to the same thing - at least until the money and cocaine rode in.

In the hands of Dr. Phibes  and the Wax Equations, this hallucinogenic public service message should have been a Top 20 hit, as indeed should Hazy Lazy Hologram before it.  It’s catchy as hell and precision tooled in every respect.  If it had been picked up and given wider exposure then with increased scrutiny, I think it would have caused every bit as much of a moral panic as Ebeneezer Goode did.  Not that it would have bothered me, I would have been too busy singing along.  But without the push of label funding or pre-evening radio play it got nowhere.  And the nation’s moral fabric remained undisturbed.

Video courtesy of Pie Ness.
All lyrics copyright of their authors.