sweet effay

The engineers arrive tomorrow to sort out our central heating. This involves them buggering about in the loft, so we have spent most of the weekend clearing eight years of accumulated material out of it. As I wasn’t actually present when we moved into this house (here’s a handy tip: Anytime you have to move, try to arrange something important to do at least a hundred miles away) and the majority of our possessions had been in storage for the best part of six months before that, I came across loads of stuff that I thought had gone for good. This included the First World War bayonet that my mum gave me when I was around eight or nine and my copy of the Necronomicon (I bet you think I’m making this up don’t you?).

Also up there was a box containing all our seven inch singles. This held several nasty surprises courtesy of Mrs effay; including yet more Toyah that I had managed to repress, and (no, I’m still not making this up) Val Doonican singing ‘Paddy McGinty’s Goat’. However, to my great joy, it also contained The Greatest Single Ever Made which I had nicked off my sister as soon as I was old enough to operate a record player.

For those who are unaware of it, The Greatest Single Ever Made is ‘Quick Joey Small (Run Joey Run)’, released by the Kasenetz-Katz Singing Orchestral Circus in 1968. A touching little ditty, sung at a smart pace in a bubblegum style, it is the tale of the eponymous hero’s prison break for the purpose of getting back to his loved one, ‘Sweet Mary-Jane’, who has thoughtfully sent him a file baked inside a fudge cake in order to expedite his egress. The narrative itself is interspersed with the inappropriately cheerful-sounding chorus of

Run Joey, Joey run, run
The hounds are on your trail
Run Joey, Joey run, run
They’re gonna send you back to jail

Naturally, like all the best bubblegum songs (‘Leader of the Pack’ anybody?), there is no happy ending for the two lovers in the final verse:

Sheriff McClain ain’t got a lot of brain
But he knew one thing for sure
He took some toughs and a pair of handcuffs
And headed straight for Mary-Jane’s door

So far, so good, but what raises it to the heights of sheer genius is the wonderfully catchy call and response section between the high, clipped, nasal male lead and his whining backing singers:

Sheriff got a shotgun
He do
He fill you full of lead son
It’s true
He also got a blackjack
He’s mad
He bust your head with one whack!

What a great song.

However, one great song does not The Greatest Single Ever Made make; were that the case there are several other contenders. ‘Terry’ by Twinkle with its rousing chorus of

He rode into the night
Accelerated his motorbike
I cried to see him ride
Don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it!

Comes close, although I think ‘Joey’s’ call and response section gives it the edge.

What makes this so good is that if you turn over to the B side, you find a number with the unassuming title of ‘Rumble ‘69’. Naturally, after the A side, you will be expecting some sort of bubblegum take on gang fights; a sort of poppier ‘West Side Story’. Bung it on and what do you find? A two minute proto-grunge instrumental which sounds like a cross between Ten Years After and Sonic Youth. Not only is it a surprise, but it’s also bloody good. Over the years that I’ve been listening to this record, I’ve come up with a theory as to how it came about:

My guess is that after the effort of writing the A side, the Kasenetz-Katz Singing Orchestral Circus were so shagged out that they didn’t have the energy to come up with another piece of bubblegum genius for the B side. Consequently, they decided to cobble together some sort of instrumental jam to fill the space. Unfortunately, their guitarist cast doubt upon his own ability to carry a convincing solo and so either the other members or the producer suggested that he overdrive his amp so as to cover up the errors and lack of flash fingering. Then, in order to ensure that this did not stand out as some sort of incongruity, some bright spark suggested that they overdrive every single amp in the studio, thereby creating the marvellous noise in question.

Yet that is still not enough to win it the accolade of The Greatest Single Ever Made. What finally clinches the deal is that both sides of this single are so perfect in their own way that I have no desire to seek out anything else the Kasenetz-Katz Singing Orchestral Circus have ever done (if, in fact, they ever did anything else), because I cannot conceive of it being anything other than a disappointment. That is the reason that this little vinyl circle constitutes something very special indeed.