africabig

“Fairies Wear Boots” is not the greatest Black Sabbath song every, but the lyrics are so weirdly surreal, crude and elliptic at the same time, that the song becomes emblematic of the crazy late 60s and early 70s drug culture.

“Goin’ home late last night
Suddenly I got a fright
Yeah I looked through a window and surprised what I saw
A fairy with boots out dancing with a dwarf
All right now!

Yeah, fairies wear boots and you gotta believe me
Yeah I saw it, I saw it, I tell you no lies
Yeah fairies wear boots and you gotta believe me
I saw it, I saw it with my own two eyes
All right now!

It’s only slightly disappointing to read claims that ‘fairies’ refers to skinheads. I’m going with guitarist Tony Iommi (via Wikipedia), who insists that the song title comes from when “Geezer and Ozzy were smoking outside and witnessed fairies in the park, running around wearing boots. As far as Tony knows, it didn’t come from an attack from skinheads.”

The song is from 1979’s Paranoid, which of course has the greatest song about paranoia and obsession ever written, with one of the greatest bass lines ever.

The Kalahari Surfers, one of the great bands of the anti-apartheid struggle, is now really just Warric Sony, a genius of a musician who also happens to be a really nice guy. Here’s a track off the Surfers’ recent album, Agitprop. It’s great dubby electronica, with very intelligent lyrics. Here’s a song about Dr Wouter Basson, the evil apartheid scientist (yes, yes, “allegedly”). The lyrics are sad, and remind me of the stupid racism of someone like Jessica Leandra on Twitter yesterday.

“What’s going on/With Dr Basson/I heard his soul had gone/Decided to move on.

“Left his body like a prisoner/Thrown from a plane/Into clouds of/Cocaine/Ecstasy and chemical rain.

“The condemned soul/Wanders through the hallways/Knocking on every door/Trying to find a way out/Looking through the files/Playing back the dreams/Of 1982.”

Go and buy the album, it’s only $10 to download. It’s really beautiful.

Very cool Tangerine Dream meets Outkast vibe to this song by Spoek Mathambo. He’s going to be big, the real answer to the real question: which is, do you make great songs? It’s called Kites, from his recent album Father Creeper.