Saturday 30 August 2008, 8pm
Bing Selfish
"Essential for anyone who thinks that rock, politics and humour can’t occupy the same mental and aesthetic space" - The Wire (UK)
Included in The Wire magazine’s list of "60 singers and songs that broke the mould" (May 2004) for his personal anthem ’The Ideal’ ; Bing Selfish is the dapper crooning Dean Martin of the disaffected and disenfranchised. A South London myth whose songs of intrigue / betrayal / lust / science and imagination scan the 20th century and beyond.
According to his still unpublished autobiography, Bing Selfish was born in the small village of Dzhebel in Southern Bulgaria in the year 1900. Unlikely as this might seem he refuses to accept any other version of events and indeed has been seen to get most upset when commentators observe that his behaviour and attitude seem more reflective of some anglo-irish parvenu born in the late fifties/early sixties and raised in the South of England than a romantic continental-style bohemian.
The story continues to this day...
The Nobodies
Our idea is to describe to future generations our sorry situation. Our motive is the purest – revenge. Our means are cheap tavern songs.
