The Dandy of the Danube

danubeA lot of my relationship with Prefab Sprout is more about collecting than music. That’s not to say the music isn’t important too, nor that I claim to be indifferent; that would be faintly ridiculous given the amount of time I spend listening to it.

But in terms of the music I really love or which moves me on a deep emotional level, it’s more likely not to be Prefab Sprout if I’m completely honest.  I guess there’s something in the collective work and mythos that attracts as a whole, the way Paddy sells a song, and it’s that that pulls me on board for the ride, but for me, and to take just one example, Nightingales doesn’t get close to Rodgers and Hart’s “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered”, or Cole Porter’s “Got You Under my Skin” as a song. It’s a nice song, it’s pleasant and pretty and lots of really good things, but it’s not magical in the way one of the really great songs is. Of course many fans would argue the contrary and claim it as a modern classic, and I do appreciate I’m a little bit out of step, but there you are.

Be that as it may, there are a few songs that completely floor me when I hear them. “Venus of the Soup Kitchen” is one, as the choral section comes in from absolutely nowhere you can imagine and turns the whole thing – already beautifully formed – inside out. “Desire As” is another. “Jesse James”. And so on.

And right on top of the list is “Dandy of the Danube”.

Why? It’s difficult to explain, but it’s something about the fully formed imagery that seems to suggest a whole library of leather backed dusty volumes of back story: you feel you could walk into the world it describes and live there for eternity. Yet for all the density of imagery it’s utterly disconnected from anything you find elsewhere in Paddy’s work. There’s a weariness about the narration that seeps chillingly under your oilskins like the rain that drenches the broken chairs beside the river, and it seems like the desperation of an immortal, waiting for his lost love to be reborn, watching successive generations come and go in piles of carrion, gristle and bone.

Dandy Of The Danube

Old Bermuda floats out there
Heiress of a thousand tunes
Trees are wound in purple vine
Somehow seem to reach the moon

This world is built on dead men’s bones
Piled high in lorryloads
Women’s eyes shine night-white shine
The odd one haunts like precious stone

Forget my name yet I’m still proud
Though I am not a young man now
My hair once parted black and thick
Now more grey than I care to admit

Evening thunders in my blood
And carries far the sound of drums
While Death the blacksmith hammers home
Your feline eyes still lead me on
Though the years are strewn with carrion
We guests got dancing, drunken feet
While the moon recruits a whole new fleet

Where are you queen of the Danube?
Shall I find you?
My question comes back to me
Where are you queen of the Danube?
Shall I find you?
Will it take years to locate you?
Years to locate you
Years to placate you

When Death the blacksmith calls to claim
This dust and dirt my very name
The sea is red and the wind is dry
Be blunt in your reply
Where death the blacksmith hammers home
Your feline eyes still lead me on
Though the years are strewn with carrion
We guests got dancing, drunken feet
While the moon recruits a whole new fleet

Where are you queen of the Danube?
Shall I find you?
My question comes back to me
Where are you queen of the Danube?
Shall I find you?
Will it take years to locate you?
Years to locate you
Years to placate you

Old Bermuda floats out there
Rain falls on broken chairs
While Death the blacksmith hammers home
Hammers home, hammers home, hammers home

 

I’m maybe extrapolating too far, but the song leads me to do that. It’s perfectly exquisite, every detail seems to me perfectly judged. It intrigues and delights me endlessly. Even the arrangment – however hurried it may have been – is spot on.

So what do we know about it? Not much at all really. It was released, incongruously, as a B Side to the “King of Rock & Roll” 12″ and CD singles, and can’t have interested many of the “Hot Dog, Jumping Frog had a Cookie” fans-come-lately. Perhaps that was on purpose.

At that time we know from interviews that Paddy was being pressed for B Sides by the label, and he wasn’t delighted about having to record material quickly and in his opinion compromising new songs with a poor production. So it was that he reached into his back catalogue and dashed a few out. “Dandy” was one of a number of songs  fans remember the three piece Punkish Prefab Sprout playing in pubs in the very early days. There’s a snatch of that available here, and it’s more than a little difficult to imagine that band playing this song, or even the band that played “Cherry Tree” or the songs that would become “Swoon”. it’s smoother and more narrational and arguably closer to “Jordan” stylistically. Is the narrative connected to “Captain Barclay and his Regiment” from “Vendetta”, or the “Ageing Count” of “Donna Summer”? Who knows, but I’d like to think it is a fragment of something more epic.

Of course should there be anyone who heard the original version, or knows anything about it, I’d love to know. But maybe this isone of those cases where the world the listener builds for themselves trumps the original vision.

 

3 thoughts

  1. Certainly one that could stand on its own lyrically. I don’t care too much for the melody or the production though. However, you have prompted me to slap it on the turntable and give it a spin once more.

  2. Always thought Dandy… sounds similar to Bowie’s Drive In Saturday and List Of Impossible Things , to it’s detriment , sounds like Dandy…

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