I had a rather lovely surprise the other week when I finally got round to checking the email account linked to this blog: an email from a chap called Hal, who had kindly taken the time to email me from Western Australia to tell me how much he enjoyed the blog, and to give me a couple of suggestions/requests for things to feature on these pages.
I’d never heard of either of them, but promised I’d try to find a way to squeeze them both in sometime. One of the choices I figured would be fairly straightforward, the other…hmmm…not so much.
So when Hal said: “Do you think that Pluto Shervington should put in an appearance?”, and I checked him out and found he is a reggae singer, I began to question how I’d manage to feature him. See, I’ve mentioned before that reggae music has always been a bit of a blind spot for me. Get past Marley, Tosh and…erm…UB40, and frankly I’m a little bit lost.
On BBC4 at the moment, they’re continuing to air old editions of Top of The Pops, and they’re up to 1985 now, but at the same time, they’ve started showing ones from earlier in the 1980s, which they probably only re-aired a couple of years ago at the most.
When watching an episode from 1982 the other night, my ears pricked up when a chap called just Pluto was introduced. There’s a coincidence, I thought, before realising the Pluto in question was none other than Mr Shervington, and the song was one that I’d stumbled across on YouTube after I got Hal’s email.
And wouldn’t you just know it, I’ve only had the song in my brain ever since, which I figured was enough of a reason to share it with y’all.
Recorded in 1975, but not released until 1982 when it reached the giddy heights of #19 in the UK Charts, this is Your “Honour”:
There’s much to love about this; the fact Mr Shervington has decided he is famous enough to be known by a single moniker, a la Madonna or Prince; the sarcastic use of speech marks around the word “Honour” in the title, showing a healthy disregard for the Judge’s authority; not to mention the plot-line pre-referencing R Kelly’s gloriously loopy Trapped in the Closet opus, whilst also doubtless planting the seed for Shaggy’s It Wasn’t Me.
Don’t let that put you off though. It’s really rather good.
Cheers, Hal!
More soon.
A History of Dubious Taste 