luns, 2 de novembro de 2009

DUFFO Bob The Spider (Discophon, 1980)



If ever there was a performer in this crazy industry who was innocence and knowing all in one, a perpetual outsider and a Peter Pan, it’s Jeff Duff...and that’s why the angel wings that have adorned a lot of his publicity photos and CD artwork make a lot of sense too. A fallen angel perhaps and perhaps not. Maybe he’s a creation of Wim Wenders circa ‘Wings of Desire’ and he doesn’t know it.

The basis of the BOB THE BIRDMAN album was inspired by a recurring dream Duff still has where he sees himself literally lifting off the ground and flying around his room and then off out into the night. He would have been great in the vastly underrated Robin Williams take on the Peter Pan story, Hook...

Infamous ‘New Musical Express’ journalist, Tony Parsons had given the single a favourable review so Duffo was summoned for an interview in the journalist’s favourite Carnaby Street pub. Duffo arrived with walking cane and dark glasses pretending to be blind. Assisted to Parsons’ table, Duffo offered the journalist a cigarette which promptly exploded in Parsons’ face, which saw him tip backwards and connect rather unceremoniously with the floor, to the great delight of the other journalists in the establishment. Needless to say, Parsons was not exactly enamoured and the incident set the scene for Duffo’s diffident relationship with the British press throughout his years there.

“Peter Green and I shared the same birthday, and being label mates, PVK Records threw a dual party for us each year which included a huge banquet. I would always take my leave when food was introduced. For some unknown reason I had stopped eating and was literally starving myself. I had no idea of what I was doing to myself! The musicians, the record company and everyone else thought nothing of it, they just accepted the fact that I was incredibly thin and a little weird. My reluctance to eat became a major problem and a major mind game!”

If the British press weren’t exactly sure what to make of Duffo, café society were enamoured with him; they were always prepared to toy with eccentricity. Duffo was soon being seen at all the right parties and at one of these parties in 1980 he met the late Andy Warhol. Never shy about his work, Duffo presented the man who had “invented” Pop Art a copy of his eponymous first album, sporting a suitably elfin/alien image of the singer on its cover. Later in 1980, Warhol provided Duffo with an epigram to grace the sleeve of The Disappearing Boy: “Sinatra, Presley, Jagger, Popeye and now ... Duffo!" (Michael Smith)

2 comentarios:

wolfram dixo...

Un gran disco, habitual en las cajas de a tres euros el kilo....¡ y aun así casi nadie le conoce...y editado aqui.
Por cierto, que te parecen los Vapors ?. Otros olvidados de la época

fm marciano - Eduardo dixo...

EXELENTE DISCO.... CONOSCO UN PAR DE CANCIONES DE ESTE ALBUM... GRACIAS POR COMPARTIR ESTE LP Y POR CIERTO EL COVER DE LOU REED ESTÁ MUY BUENO.