LP review – NME  September 17 1988

FRANK SIDEBOTTOM

5/9/88!

(In Tape Double LP/Cassette Only)

The very existence of ‘5/9/88!’ is a triumph of art over antagonism.  Like The Smiths at ‘Strangeways…’ and The Beatles during ‘Let It Be’, Sidebottom’s O’Blimey Band (incorporating the legendary Demon Axx Warriors and Beastie Puppets) was pushed by personal and production problems to the verge of disintegration on this LP.

Not only has Little Denise lost her head, and Little Frank disastrously agreed to look after Mrs Merton’s wayward baby Reginald, but also the complex relationship between Little Buzz Aldrin and Little Frank – developed during the colonization of the moon for Timperley – has driven Big Frank to violence in the shed studio.

It’s a desperately sad affair; and yet amidst such rancour, tension and chaos, masterpieces are invariably conceived.  Fuhrer Frank has dispensed with the tried and tested formula of cover versions, opting instead for bitter political anthems like ‘Mr Custard’ and ‘Hey You Riot Policeman’ (hard rap with a Lydonesque snarl!).

There are star interviews – Ian McAskill, Patrick Moore, Nicholas Parsons… – and fanatical football anthems such as ‘The Robins Aren’t Bobbins’ for Altrincham FC, coupled with hostile taunts at opposition supporters (“you’re going home in an organized football coach”).  More important, there are classically-catchy pop songs, contagious and contemporary, eclectic and electric, with ‘Me Great Big Zoo Scrapbook’ and ‘Airplay’ (“I’m washing your brain”), brilliant attacks on ‘80s producer-pop both.

Comparisons with ‘The Double White Album’ are inevitable; some will say that fierce editing would have eliminated ‘The Squid Is Correct’ or ‘The Monopoly Game’, but they are vital to this social document of the band’s implosion.  ‘Monopoly’, in particular, reveals Sidebottom as a power-crazed puppeteer: “Oh hotel on Mayfair/And I’ve got a hotel on Park Lane/The blue one/And Little Frank hasn’t even got/A house on Old Kent Road…”

If this is really the end of Sidebottom’s association with the Beastie Puppets – Goldman’s soon-come tome implying Big Frank’s a schizophrenic Northwich Victoria fan who rarely leaves his bedroom and snorts Ovaltine suggests this – we must treasure ‘5/9/88’ for what it is.  An accomplished double debut album of hit singles, bobbins, bitter disagreements and fantastic flashbacks.  More Frank than ‘Rank’, Sidebottom is truly a head of his time. 

Little Len Brown