1.[album version] (4:46) 2.Last Fruit (4:17) 3.[live at Glastonbury] (5:33)
He's not just a scruffy bloke with a funny hat, you know. The former Damon Gough managed to release two albums in 2002, firstly the About a Boy soundtrack, and then the seond album proper, also produced by Tom Rothrock with the aid of LA session musicians.
You Were Right here is perhaps disappointingly the full-length album track, rather than the shorter version played on the radio; this reveals a whistling solo and an extra verse not commonly broadcast, but isn't ideal value for money. Nothing wrong with the song itself though. It's very much the centrepiece of the Have You Fed the Fish LP (despite another track actually being called 'CentrePeace'), with references in various other album tracks, such as 'Tickets to What You Need' (one of the present song's lyrics) and the preceding 'I Was Wrong'. Stripped of all this japery, you get an idiosyncratic but mature examination of the relationship between pop stardom and domestic life; not for nothing his girlfriend appear on the front cover. Much attention was focussed at the time on the reference to turning Madonna down, although this occurs during a dream where he's married to the Queen(!) and to the liturgy of dead pop stars: "I remember doing nothing on the night Sinatra died.." A wiser critic has pointed out that he appears to be building up to some hugely pertinent (and pompous) climax, but deflates it by ending "I remember I stayed in and watched the news with everyone".
In releasing this single, he copied his friends and former collaborators Doves by releasing an allegedly limited number of copies and selling them for 99p. This succeeded for him, if not quite as dramatically, landing him his first (and so far only) Top Ten hit. As the album proved to be a slight disappointment, though, maybe it's a shame the single isn't easier to come by now.
Unlike Doves, who adorned their CD single with only a video and saved the B-side for vinyl, BDB provided extra tracks on both formats. The acoustic number Last Fruit is entirely self-performed, adorned only by a bit of synth brass. With its folksy melody and charming homegrown feel, it stands in stark contrast to the gloss of the album, and must sound quite strange on the Japanese version where it appears as a bonus. This seems a more natural direction for him in many ways.
The third track, which was omitted from the 7" single, is a live version of the A-side, recorded at Glastonbury on the 30th June 2002. For a man who was once famously inept and self-indulgent live, he goes some way to pleasing the crowd, apologising at the start for playing so many new songs. The performance is restricted to voice and piano, although the song itself is no different having clearly already been finished. He gets a spontanous cheer for the Madonna reference, and it's quite endearing when he fluffs the whistling solo slightly, gives up and hums it instead but alas the same cannot be said for the final verse, which he sings completely out of tune.
ONLINE:
His official site is rather cute.
The record labels Twisted Nerve and XL.
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