In 2016, back when Twitter wasn’t quite such a flaming skip of shite, I started listening to Matthew Rudd’s Sunday night show on Absolute Radio, Forgotten 80s. I would regularly tweet along to the show, sometimes with a rum and coke in my hand, and found there was a little Twitter community of listeners, some of whom became my friends (hi!) after a couple of tweetups.
One of the first things I realised was, despite listening to Radio One pretty much constantly throughout the whole of the 1980s, how much of this stuff I had not only never heard before, but never even heard of. I was familiar with It Bites, and Toto Coelho, and Kraze and The Passions and Fred Wedlock (the latter of these stayed on my sofa in 1981 – and if you’re expecting an amusing anecdote, tough shit, I was six), but Susan Fassbender? Honey Bane? Surface Noise? These were names I’d never even noticed in the Guinness Book of Hit Singles. I’m pretty sure I was alive for the whole of 1986, and yet I had never before listened to Brother Louie by Modern Talking. (Yes, I have now. No, I wasn’t missing much.)
So it was with Forgotten 80s favourite, Gary Byrd and the G.B. Experience. The Crown charted on 17th July 1983, and while it would be a few years before I started writing the charts down every week, and I preferred Whizzer and Chips to Smash Hits, I still had a pretty good idea of what was going on in the world of pop. That week, Paul Young was at number one, laying his hat (and yes, we were a No Parlez-owning household). Number two was Arthur Baker’s second proto-house hit after Walking On Sunshine (no, not that one), I.O.U. by Freeez. And rounding off the top three was… Rod Stewart, whose Baby Jane seemed like it was number one for twelve years. There’s something for everyone here, and even a very early attempt at a (re-recorded) mashup, in the snappily-titled Do It Again-Billie Jean Medley, by Italian producers Clubhouse – apparently the same Clubhouse who had a couple of Italo-dance hits in the 90s, although like Trigger’s broom there’s no evidence that any of the original members were involved. And elsewhere in the chart is… oh, just take a look for yourselves. (Click to view on Official Charts, if you must)
Now I’ve had a good look at this chart and I think I’ve worked out why I can’t remember hearing The Crown on the chart show. At number 35 is the Thompson Twins’ third hit single, Watching, which I’d forgotten about until it was played on either Forgotten 80s or Eighties Time Machine years later. I had an instant, almost physical reaction to it – part “Fuck me, I haven’t heard this for 35 years”, but mostly “ARGH SCARY SONG TURN IT OFF NOW”. I don’t know what caused 8-year-old me to take against it so much – major chords played in a minor scale and a spooky sounding opera voice is my best guess – but I can only assume I ran screaming from the room and missed the rest of the chart that day, including The Crown.
On the other hand, it’s possible that I did hear it and forgot. My first memory of hip hop may have been Herbie Hancock’s Rockit (released one week after The Crown), but it’s more likely it was Rat Rappin’ by Roland Rat, which I got for Christmas that year. Considering how much music I do remember from about 1977 onwards, it’s surprising how almost none of it is rap, considering I spent two or three years as a teenager listening to almost nothing else. I knew Good Times, but not Rapper’s Delight. Buffalo Gals, a hit six months earlier, didn’t really register. I was vaguely familiar with The Message, but mainly as an advert for the Green Cross Code.
So I have no idea what I would’ve thought about The Crown if I’d heard it – perhaps “It’s really good and I learned loads about pyramids and Ancient Egypt, but it sounds like it’s from 1979”. Because in terms of the music and Gary’s delivery it’s an old-fashioned party rap, similar to Rapper’s Delight, with a regular structure of 16 or 32 lines to a verse, and a guest appearance by co-writer and producer Stevie Wonder – this was a year or two before he started his harmonica solo phase, so we get a full sung verse. But lyrically it’s a celebration of Black culture from Ancient Egypt to the present day, an unusual subject for any top ten hit in 1983, and pre-empting “conscious” rappers by several years. And it’s really, really, REALLY long. Here it is (someone’s helpfully edited in footage of a dance routine performed to The Crown on Top Of The Pops, although Gary never appeared on it in person).
Anyway, let me get to the point of this post. Because of a series of extraordinary coincidences, today, November 17th, is International The Crown By Gary Byrd day.
On November 17th, 2018, The Crown is played on 6 Music. I was so surprised by this that I write a throwaway tweet with a silly hashtag, one of two lines in The Crown which Gary pronounces in an unusual way, like Mark E. Smith-uh.
On November 17th, 2019, @snathe finds a mint condition 12″ copy of The Crown in a charity shop. So I reply with #TheFaceUponTheSphinxAh hashtag, which I’d not used for a whole year.
A year later, November 17th, 2020, and @neilsmiles tweets about The Crown (and the other Crown). Cue the hashtag.
And on November 17th, 2021, @extreme_rice posted this, and finally I realised there was a pattern.
For four years in a row, on the same day, someone I follow on Twitter had posted about The Crown. Now I don’t really believe in spooky coincidences, but when digging around on the Forgotten 80s blog, I found that Matthew Rudd had played The Crown in March 2014, January 2015, September 2016 (the first time I heard it, in fact) and – dun dun DUNNNNNNN! – Sunday 17th November, 2019. So…
Well, the answer to that, it turns out, is Noisebox Radio. We played The Crown on this day last year, we’ll play it again today, and for as long as we are broadcasting, we will celebrate The Crown By Gary Byrd Day and play it as often as we can on November 17th.
And – you’re not going to believe this – I looked up Gary Byrd’s birthday just now, and it’s… wait for it…
…the fourteenth of March. Oh well. Have some bonus Bob Carolgees footage, thanks to @neilsmiles.
Megablast 