Day 59: I didn't count on the guest informant!

Request from Simon today, cheers chap. I actually wrote this on the day it was meant to be published, but blogger was down last night, typical!



Song: Guest Informant
Album: The Frenz Experiment
Year: 1988

This sounds to me like a cross between Mark imagining he is Jack Nicholson in The Shining and being an invisible observer in an episode of Murder She Wrote. It probably started out as one of his film noir songs, but quickly descended into this, brilliant.

The music is a bit rockabilly, but also a bit American blues and there's some great 60s-sounding organ in there as well, very Hammond-ish.

Lyrics, now these are amazing, from the strict paranoia of: 'I called the colonel to the cheap hotel, I attacked the bed/I wired the phones as well' which sounds like he is stalking someone with a rusty magnum, to yet more paranoia: 'I've been split on, I've been tattled on,/I had not counted on Guest Informant' it's like he's being followed around by a dark, shadowy figure in a trenchcoat, or an unassuming double agent.

The next line, Simon picks this out as his favourite and to be honest, it's mine here too: 'And the morning Scotch, of another Sunday over/A miserable Scottish hotel,/Resembled a Genesis or Marillion, 1973 LP cover' I can imagine this already, but here is the cover he may have been envisioning, Marillion didn't actually form until 1979:










The whole thing has the air of a confused twilight phonecall you might receive from a breathy man in a phonebox, not making any sense, maybe not even intending to, one of Mr Smith's more manic moments, yeah?