The Barron Knights C/D Defend the Indefensible

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The Barron Knights was one of the first bands I ever had anything by. I was about 13 and not really into music but I got a Tring double-tape in my christmas sotcking. My friends seemed to like it and being quite young, yeh I thought it was okay (not exactly hilarious). Now I must admit, they're pretty cack.

So what are your views on this band

― dog latin (dog latin), Saturday, 8 November 2003 12:43 (twenty-one years ago)

If anything I thought the humour was rather crude considering they're quite an innocuous "comedy" band. Songs like "Stick To Selling Onions" and "Don't Let The Germans Steal Your Sunbed" were verging on petty racism.
Elsewhere there'd be really stupid "covers" where they changed the lyrics to old songs so that they would be about farmers or bank managers. Not terribly funny I'm afraid.

― dog latin (dog latin), Saturday, 8 November 2003 13:09 (twenty-one years ago)

I heard one of theirs from the '60s called Under New Management...obv, about a change in government. The only problem was, I didn't know the songs they were parodying (I was only 11). It was the first time I'd heard (a version of) They're Coming to Take Me Away. Get Down Shep is pretty awful; they also did Ann & Joe, based on Abba's Angelo...I liked them when I was a kid, but then, I like Dad's Army & couldn't have possibly understood it...

― Jez (Jez), Saturday, 8 November 2003 13:41 (twenty-one years ago)

same as me. now when i hear bohemian rhapsody or space oddity i still get the words wrong.

― dog latin (dog latin), Saturday, 8 November 2003 14:31 (twenty-one years ago)

When we were nine my friend and I thought they were hilarious! We also played the Goodies album over and over, and the Darts, and Showaddywaddy, adn the early Beatles singles. We knew nothing of girls. Then one day my best friend's sister brought home albums by The Boomtown Rats and The Clash and our world turned upside down.

― colin s barrow (colin s barrow), Saturday, 8 November 2003 17:11 (twenty-one years ago)

see when they brought the boomtown rats and the clash to our house, we said "get this shit off, and put hedgehog pie back on"!!

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Saturday, 8 November 2003 17:20 (twenty-one years ago)

were the barron knights the ones where one of them wore a gas mask, and he inflated a balloon through the eyehole. I thought that was teh funney when i was a nipper.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Saturday, 8 November 2003 17:21 (twenty-one years ago)

They did medleys of pop hits, didn't they, the Barron Knights. I remember one that had a version of 'Float On'. They were a British Weird Al Yankovic kind of thing.

― colin s barrow (colin s barrow), Saturday, 8 November 2003 17:31 (twenty-one years ago)

i suspect they were teh suck really.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Saturday, 8 November 2003 17:35 (twenty-one years ago)

Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones listed them as one of his favourite bands in an interview reproduced in that NME thing. I found this a bit puzzling, did they have a life prior to their comedy incarnation?

― PJ Miller (PJ Miller), Saturday, 8 November 2003 19:00 (twenty-one years ago)

I found this a bit puzzling, did they have a life prior to their comedy incarnation?

How about..their 'comedy incarnation' began a lot sooner than you thought?

― David (David), Saturday, 8 November 2003 19:14 (twenty-one years ago)

I love the song Pete Townshend wrote for them, "Lazy Fat People". I didn't know they'd done anything else! I could see how a whole 35-year career of that sort of thing could get a little irritating.

― Arthur (Arthur), Sunday, 9 November 2003 05:54 (twenty-one years ago)

From their website:

1960 BARRON KNIGHTS WERE FORMED IN LEIGHTON BUZZARD,BEDS., INTENDING TO BE A STRAIGHT VOCAL HARMONY GROUP.TRAVELLED THE COUNTRY IN A 27-SEATER BUS CONVERTED INTO A TRAVELLING HOTEL WITH SEVEN BEDS.
1963 AFTER BRIAN EPSTIEN SAW THE BARRON KNIGHTS PERFORM IN LIVERPOOL HE ASKED THEM TO SUPPORT THE BEATLES ON THEIR FIRST UK THEATRE TOUR.
1964 .E.M.I. SIGNED THE BARRON KNIGHTS AND HAD THEIR FIRST OF SIX HITS. WITH THE TITLE CALL UP THE GROUPS.A COMEDY RECORD WHERE THEY SENT THE POP STARS OF THE DAY INTO THE FORCES. ALSO TOURED UK WITH THE ROLLING STONES.
1965 ANOTHER TOP TEN HIT WITH POP GO THE WORKERS.ALSO A 26-WEEK SEASON AT THE LONDON PALLADIUM WITH KEN DODD.TO THIS DAY IT IS THE LONGEST RUNNING VARIETY SHOW AT THIS FAMOUS THEATRE AND SOLD OUT EVERY NIGHT.
1966 SUNDAY NIGHT AT THE LONDON PALLADIUM TV SHOW AND ANOTHER TOP TEN HIT WITH MERRY GENTLE POPS
1967 WON AWARD FOR WRITING BEST TV ADVERT FOR SMARTIES
1970 FIRST OF 24 CONCERT TOURS OF AUSTRALIA.
1974 TOURED SOUTH AFRICA WITH PETULA CLARKE
1977 CBS RECORDS SIGN THE BARRON KNIGHTS AND LIVE IN TROUBLE HIT NUMBER THREE IN THE CHARTS
1978 "TASTE OF AGGRO" BECAME THE BANDS BIGGEST HIT EVER WITH OVER A MILLION SALES AND THE ALBUM SOLD WORLD WIDE.
1980 SOLD OUT 12 SHOWS IN THE USA.
1981 .ROYAL SHOW FOR PRINCESS ANNE
1983 PERFORMED TO 50,000 PEOPLE AT OUTDOOR CONCERT IN PERTH WESTERN AUSTRALIA
1994 PRIVATE SHOW FOR F.I.N.B.R.A. ON QE2.
1995 B.A.S.C.A. AWARD FOR SERVICES TO THE MUSIC INDUSTRY AND PERFORMED FOR THE TROOPS IN THE FALKLAND ISLANDS.CELEBRATED 35 YEARS IN SHOW BUSINESS WITH A SELL-OUT CONCERT AT THE LONDON PALLADIUM.
1996 PERFORMED FOR THE ROYALS AT BUCKINGHAM PALACE.
1997 PERFORMED IN KUALA LUMPA FOR THE KING OF MALASIA
1999 RELEASED A SINGLE TITLED THE GOLDEN OLDIE OLD FOLKS HOME A STORY ABOUT THE SIXTIES GROUPS IN AN OLD FOLKS HOME BUT BANNED BY THE BBC.
2000 PERFORMED 23 CONCERTS IN AUSTRALIA 4 IN NEW ZEALAND AND RETURNED TO UK FOR THE SPRING AND 32 SHOWS TO CELEBRATE 40 YEARS ON THE ROAD.
APPEARED ON NEVER MIND THE BUZZCOCKS BBC TV SHOW

I think that 1996 gig is significant. Back in the seventies my dad got a new car with a cassette player, and as we were going sur le continent for our hols, my brothers and I got to choose a cheapo cassette each. I chose Pink Floyd's Relics, middle brother got a blank tape and recorded a couple of Lindisfarne albums (from their pretty good hippy/folk phase, not the subsequent Gazza party band), and youngest brother, who would have been about eight, got a Barron Knights tape. So we travelled all over France listening to Interstellar Overdrive, Lady Eleanor and some bloody awful novelty song about beetroot. The royal family has the musical taste of an eight year old.

― Andrew Norman, Sunday, 9 November 2003 18:00 (twenty-one years ago)

Their pisstake of "Matchstalk Men And Matchstalk Cats And Dogs" (part of "A Taste Of Aggro") is a pretty accurate description of how things *really* were in the North West of England in 1978 (that Man Utd fan getting a dart thrown in his eye at Anfield, etc), a genuinely clever comment on the misty nostalgia of the original. I'll always respect them for that, not that I can be bothered about the rest.

Incidentally, I suspect "BANNED" re. the 1999 single above means "NOT PLAYLISTED", cf Status Quo et al.

― robin carmody (robin carmody), Sunday, 9 November 2003 18:56 (twenty-one years ago)

"With big rosettes and coloured scarves
They go to cheer their favourite stars
They all look forward to their Saturday's
There's one young lad walks down our street
With Bovver Boots upon his feet
And an aerosol can of paint he freely sprays
And he painted Grandad's Bike and next door's cats and dogs
He sprayed a couple on the corner of the street, they were having a snog
He fell down on his can, and his aerosol wen't 'bang'
And all they found was a flat cap and his gloves"

― mark grout (mark grout), Monday, 10 November 2003 11:48 (twenty-one years ago)

appearing on "nevermind the buzzcocks" = surely the most undignified thing the barron knights have ever done.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Monday, 10 November 2003 12:06 (twenty-one years ago)

On a side note, I've always felt that Leighton Buzzard has been somewhat unfairly written out of pop history. Aside from the Barron Knights, Leighton Buzzard also gave the world legendary New Romantic visionaries Kajagoogoo, and top UK rap mega-star Silver Bullet. Add the fact that mullet-haired indie titans Tiger were from only about 15 miles down the road (and thus might have driven through the town once or twice, maybe to visit the narrow-gauge railway) and I think we can fairly safely conclude that God may well have emptied a rather large keg of 'Elixir of Rock' into the local water supply.

― NickB (NickB), Monday, 10 November 2003 12:11 (twenty-one years ago)

and the leighton buzzards, presumably "Modern Romance" as well.....

― mark grout (mark grout), Monday, 10 November 2003 12:14 (twenty-one years ago)

mark grout, you unleashed a torrent of preteen memories with those lyrics, locked up in a disused part of my brain for twenty-eight years.

― colin s barrow (colin s barrow), Monday, 10 November 2003 12:20 (twenty-one years ago)

Mark, I think that the Leyton Buzzards were actually from Leyton in London. Obviously though, they took major inspiration from South Bedfordshire's Rock Mecca.

― NickB (NickB), Monday, 10 November 2003 12:21 (twenty-one years ago)

i would like to say thank you dog latin for this thread. i can now retire happy

an integral part of my childhood - i can still remember all the words to the Ann & Joe segment of "Live in Trouble"

― zebedee (zebedee), Monday, 10 November 2003 19:21 (twenty-one years ago)

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