You
used to be able to get them from Chemists
Insert
audio here from The Works' first cassette tape
Apart
from flying his home-made girocopter and appearing in a hologram,
Xero had but one major ambition really. He wanted to teach
a particularly jolly little ditty that he'd written to forty
nine other saxophonists. They were to play the tune through
in various octaves, stopping and starting at staggered intervals
as in a round - like Frere Jacques or Row Row Row the boat.
Each player would simply repeat the same refrain over and
over ad infinitum to weave an anarchic sonic web with the
other forty nine.
Thus trained and
armed with all of the different types of saxophones - soprano
to alto to tenor to baritone - this musical guerilla army
was to launch a strategic assault on that cathedral of consumerism
for those with more money than sense, Harrods.
The
horn players were to be situated at several points around
the building. Ideally, the assault would take place just before
Christmas, when the store was at its busiest. The troops would
be attired in long overcoats to conceal their instruments.
They would also don berets and dark glasses.
At
a given sign, they would all take out their saxophones and
would walk amongst the bemused shoppers and staff playing
their parts in Slingsby's minimalist masterpiece. The sheer
numbers would make it very hard for the store security guards
to shut them all up.
That
was the theory. In reality, Xero placed an advert in Leeds
Other Paper and had five saxophonists (including himself)
turn up for a rehearsal-cum-recording session with Geoff Clout
in the front room of Dunbuskin on Clarendon Road. The tune
may not have brought about the downfall of Capitalism, but
"You used to be able to get them from Chemists" did appear
on the very first Xero Slingsby and the Works tape and is
a work of true genius. |
