#i'll make a proper intro post soon enough so take this for now

[pestercide]

Uhmm hey... let's see if a new account fixes the issue haha

SO BASICALLY on my old account, I had a several-week-long absence? And for some reason when I returned stuff just wasn't,, working anymore? I dunno. My stuff wasn't showing up in the tags anymore

No matter what I couldn't get them to show up. This messed up my reach nd ruined my motivation. And BTW I don't care about numbers!! I was just bothered since I wasn't getting my usual reach, and again, it's not cuz of the numbers (though it may seem that way) I just found it upsetting that my posts weren't... showing up? Because I left for a bit?

Idk if that was the cause but it happened after that absence for some reason.

But ye, let's see if this fixes the issue. I want ppl to see my stuff nd enjoy it!

[allthemusic]

Week ending: 22nd September

Sometimes listening to the charts like this throws you up a forgotten treasure. Sometimes it's aggressively awful. Sometimes its in the middle and easily forgettable. But once in a while you get something else, something you can't quite categorise so easily. This, I would posit, is one of those songs. It breaks the great-to-terrible spectrum entirely, by dint of just being bizarre.

Close the Door - The Stargazers (peaked at Number 6)

There is nothing this song reminds me more of than a bad acid trip. If you told me that this was a lesser known early Pink Floyd oddity, I would not in any way doubt you. This is music they could play to drive you actually, medically insane.

We start with a high-pitched child's voice going "bah-dah-bah-dah-bah-dah" in a sing-song playground way, except something's been done to it, or it's been recorded such that it sounds uncannily like Crazy Frog's 1950s ancestor. It's a modern enough vibe that I actually stopped straight away and checked I'd got the right song, that's how weirdly 2000s it sounds.

Cutting straight across this, if you can imagine, is a chorus of what sound like grown men shouting Look out! which is all the intro you get before the Stargazers proper launch into the song, imploring you to Close the door, they're comin' through the window / Close the door, they're runnin' up the stairs / Close the door, They're hangin' off the ceiling / Those - bah-dah-bah-dah-bah-dah - are everywhere!

I think the most nightmarish thing here is that it's never specified what "they" are. They're clearly appearing in some number, and obviously unwanted by our main character, who is introduced gardening, before he them coming, warning everybody around him to get into the house, before attempting to hit them with a cricket bat - strong post-apocalyptic fantasy vibes. I'm imagining a world ravaged by attacks by small, malevolent, fanged goblins or pixies, or something of that ilk (Nac Mag Feegle?)

At the end of every verse, our main character gets a couple of lines, and he sings like a drunk pirate with a head cold gargling nails. Once you've got past this, you can hear about how They got into the kitchen, they got into the sink / They went into the cellar and poured themselves a drink / They got on the piano, ran up and down the keys / And soon I was a-standin' in 'em right up to me knees. I think this is meant to give a sense of lovable mischief-makers, except it all just sounds terrifying.

And then they're gone, and we get a comical, slowed-down verse about how Now that all the fuss is over, I sink into my chair / This house is all a shambles, but really I don't care. And... fair enough? You've had an ordeal, you've earned it. Except our main character can't catch a break, because as soon as he announces that I'm going to take it easy, try not to think of them ... You guessed it! Bah-dah-bah-dah-bah-dah-bah-dah - here they come again!

I'll not beat around the bush. This is a fever dream. I don't like it, but I do kind of respect its commitment to weirdness. It's working in a long-established tradition of children's novelty songs, it's got strong Alice in Wonderland vibes (and the Disney film did only come out four years previously) and it's also reminiscent of some of the worst 1990s and 2000s cheaply-produced novelty tracks. You could have easily sold a re-vamped version of this to me as a kid without even adding very many changes.

In some ways, this is a song that could have been a hit at almost any point, just by sheer weirdness. It doesn't make it good, but I like how strongly it commits to the bit. I also enjoyed the shock value of the Crazy Frog-alike at the start - you can absolutely imagine it cutting through the radio fuzz and hooking kids nationwide with its pure silliness and wanton chaos.

Favourite song of the completely-bizarre bunch: Close the Door