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..And we're back!
Back with Now 20 from 1991, historically noteworthy as the first album to use the familiar three-dimensional block lettering on the cover. Apparently it was also the last Now album with an accompanying VHS tape. You can see a TV advert here, although of course it contains spoilers for what else is on the album.
Coincidentally, we're back where we left off, in the realm of the singing actors, although the context here is slightly different. At any rate, this record is supposed to be funny.
Whether it actually is, though, that's a different question. In the early 1990s I was still too young to be allowed to watch any of Vic's programmes, so my only real contact with him was through the records. I didn't understand his version of 'Born Free' at all, whereas at least this number had some musical chops thanks to a backing band I'd already heard of thanks to their huge hit with 'The Size Of A Cow' earlier that year.
Presumably influenced by the large number of key changes (11 in the original, 12 in this version) the Stuffies amp up the tongue-in-cheek effects, with plenty of wah-wah guitar, drum solos and Miles Hunt's deadpan responses to Reeves in the final chorus. The result is a pub singalong that lasted longer at the top of the UK chart than Tommy Roe's original (which managed only seven days between the last two Beatles chart-toppers) but hasn't aged terribly well. I do rather imagine that out of context it'd just sound like a bloke who could sing very well covering a song that wasn't particularly good to start with. And as some have pointed out, it makes a bit of a mockery of the bile some early Wonder Stuff songs aimed at people who recorded cover versions.
The Wonder Stuff also appear on: Now 21
Vic Reeves also appears on: Now 31 [with EMF and Bob Mortimer]
Available on: If The Beatles Had Read Hunter ... The Singles
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