Bantam Boys

[imomus]

A new Momus mp3 for your consideration (and suggested Paypal dollar donation if you like and keep it): Bantam Boys

Sorry, this track is no longer available. Please buy the CD when it comes out!

I wonder if it's too late for me to become a eunuch... or at least sing like one? Bantam Boys is perhaps the strangest new song so far, splicing the spirits of Henry Purcell, Klaus Nomi and Matthew Barney. It has eunuchs and synths and shit harlequins and polluted ballet shoes. It even has a background drone specially made by Bernhard Gal, with whom I've been talking about collaborating for months. Although Anne Laplantine's not on it, I do seem to have taken a page from her cut-up guitar book. Oh, and there's a guy in New York who would totally understand this song. He's called Michael Portnoy. (You can hear him singing about husks and buckwheat on the art gallery version of Handheld, incidentally.)

Have a listen and tell me what you think. Actually, when I wrote the song I had no idea what it was about. But in retrospect I'm pretty sure it's about an experience I had at the Warhol party on Saturday night, when a certain green-robed queen with a train of bantam boys holding up her dress was too proud to deign to acknowledge my existence. O Venus thou art cruel!

Bantam Boys

O Africa and orient bring gifts
Spigot weed and egg of the teal
Master baker bring me eel
O your legs were lovely
The synth, bring the synth
Bring the rickety raggedy synth

You harlequins you play such shit
The colour is clean
But you pollute the ballet shoes
You are trying to keep them new
I'm sorry for you

Here comes the queen
Fat and obscene
See her a-staggering
Bringing her bantam boys along
In a line behind her

Walk, walk with a bassoon in the rain
Ringing the filters, ringing the filters
Ringing the summer in

Walk, walk with a bassoon in the rain
Ringing the eunuch, ringing the eunuch
Ringing the eunuch in

Dr Walford Bodie dragging along on a string
A spaniel made of tin
Arise, arise
O Venus shall arise