OFF TOPIC with Steve Mixup. A place for me to tell the odd story or two about the post war rock generation. If they couldn’t change the world at least they brought us some wonderful music.

Cool for Cats by Kraftwerk

If only that were true. The nearest we might come to that thought is a vinyl record I found some twenty years ago of an unknown artist performing “Cool for Cats” by Squeeze sung to the music of “The Model” by Kraftwerk. It is a record whose origin still remains unknown to me.

I’m always looking for unknown and obscure records and I found five copies of this 7″ single around 2003 in a charity shop on Radford Road in Nottingham. Each copy had a hand drawn picture on the label in a style that suggests it was the same artist but each one different. Each had a quote to go with the image. The other side had a white label. The white sleeves were numbered. My guess is that this was a short run of maybe 100. Because I found it in Nottingham it suggests that it might have some local origin but this may not be necessarily so.

Me and my mates would often meet up on a Sunday night to DJ our carboot and charity shop finds from that week and this one went down a treat. We are all Kraftwerk fans and laughed at the corny fake German accent used to sing a classic British new wave song. It is a little like a mashup but sung for real.

The only other mention of this record I can find is on the Packet of Three website which is dedicated to the complete Squeeze songbook. It mentions this “spoof recording” and then quotes someone who I think is me. Well, I’m fairly sure it is.

“I know little about this record. My guess is it’s a local band from the east midlands (I live in Nottingham).
The white sleeve is numbered 061 so it was likely to be a small pressing 100? 200? 500?
I don’t know who the artist/band is.
Sung to the tune of Kraftwerks “The Model” I think it is a classic gem, with humour too”.

Someone in the comments suggests that it is Chris Difford of Squeeze but I’m not so sure. The B side is not something I imagine he would do.

The B side is a piece of sampling and beats in a down tempo style with one vocal sample which I use as the title for this unknown piece.

“melodies bring memories that linger in my heart” is a line from “Georgia on my mind” the 1930 song written by Hoagy Carmichael, Stuart Gorrell. It is an intro lyric to the song which you won’t hear on many versions like the standard Ray Charles version but you can hear it on the Mildred Bailey version for example. Most versions come in on the “Georgia Georgia” nowadays.

Melodies bring memories
That linger in my heart
Make me think of Georgia
Why did we ever part?

Some sweet day when blossoms fall
And all the world’s a song
I’ll go back to Georgia ‘
‘Cause that’s where I belong

Georgia, Georgia
The whole day through
Just an old sweet song keeps
Georgia on my mind, Georgia on my mind

If anyone knows who this record is by then let me know.