Hayman, Watkins, Trout & Lee
I must admit that I found myself more than a little excited when I received this single. After all, it is not every day that you are greeted with the prospect of a band naming tunes in salute to the salaciously saucy, funkadelic explosion that is Sly and The Family Stone. Intrigued, I found myself eagerly anticipating a dirty, crunked-up, blaxploitation monolith in the vein of The Heavy. However, my hopes of a funky and colossal paean to everyone’s favourite drug laden despot were quickly and brutally dashed. Reading through the accompanying promotional material, I was horrified to learn that was the song “not especially anything to do with the band Sly and the Family Stone”. As if this in itself was not enough, my disappointment was quickly compounded by the discovery that this was the work of “a country bluegrass band from East London” that perform “weary singalongs” about “tube trains, Bethnal Green, sick days, flat lemonade and unmade beds”. All of which sounded about as appealing as an evening in with The Feeling’s latest album.
In spite of my better instincts, I knew I had to give the track a listen. However, as I had feared it proved to be a truly turgid and pointless exercise. The track itself is frankly horrific. Not only does it show an absolute modicum of musical creativity, its lyrics are frankly cringe-worthy. ‘Sly and the Family Stone’ is a pretentious, silly and self-indulgent salute to the joys of being a house-husband, which is quite possibly as close to the antithesis of rock ‘n’ roll as I can imagine! The kept man in question is Darren Hayman (formerly of Hefner) who in the promo blurb explains that the song was inspired by the fact his “wife earns more money” than he does. Hayman, does not see why men would get hung up on this (nor do I, but I wouldn’t feel compelled to write a song about it!) and appears to quite enjoy his position as a “kept man”, which is understandable, as presumably it gives him the freedom to indulge in the art of vanishing up his own arse. Other pearls of wisdom offered from Hayman include his affections for “girls shoes” and that his aim is “to start writing even more songs about them”. He describes his penchant for “sexy shoes” as “shocking behaviour” and feels that he “shouldn’t be allowed out”. Whilst I would hate to impinge on the domestic bliss shared by Hayman and his breadwinning missus, I feel that he has got his wires slightly crossed here. Clearly, this work is indicative of a man who should get out more; if anything shouldn’t be allowed to come into contact with the public, it is this pompous idiocy.
Truly woeful.