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Wednesday 21 November 2012

Is He Alive? Can He Still Feel?


Continuing my short series of mashing up Victorian explorers with Clash mash ups; John Hanning Speke did actually discover the source of the Nile on a trip across Africa with Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton, almost died, almost went blind. Not a great holiday (apart from naming Lake Victoria I suppose, more than I've ever managed on holiday). When the two men returned home Burton spent years rubbishing Speke's reputation and his achievements, believing Speke had presented too soon and broken an agreement between the them. Speke died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound while stepping over a stile, shooting himself just below the left armpit. Duh.

Manriki's A Good Profile from the London Booted album- at Last FM it reads 'Manriki: A guy- maybe from Belgium- making very funny bastard tracks'. A good Clash song to bootleg because the guitars and horns chop up so well and neatly.

A Good Profile

Of course The Clash song The Right Profile is about Montgomery Clift so really I should have had a picture of him rather than John Hanning Speke.

Bonus track: there were three bootleg/bastard versions of The Right Profile on Lodon Booted. One involved Peaches fucking the pain away. This one by Allen Smithee is a hugely enjoyable splicing of The Streets with The Clash. As Mike Skinner says 'Hold it down boy!'

Street Profile

2 comments:

dickvandyke said...

Sorry to sound like a right clever trousers, but it's Montgomery Clift not Cliff. His famous handsome Hollywood face was disfigured following a car crash on leaving Liz Taylor's mansion party in 1957. Following that, film-makers attempted to capture 'the right profile' on-screen. Unsurprisingly perhaps, his intake of pills and booze reached new heights.
REM also did 'Monty got a Raw Deal' on Automatic For The People.

Sorry again. I'm off now.

Swiss Adam said...

Yer absolutely right on all counts Dickie.