Essential for anyone who thinks that rock, politics and humour can't occupy the same mental and aesthetic space - The Wire (UK)
BING-OGRAPHY
Discography:
| Chiang Kai Shek
The first Selfish production, a sordid tale of sex/drugs and Chinese politics. Included on vinyl compilation LP released, by UMYU, Barcelona.
"The Americans blamed it on booze and drugs |
| Selfish Works
(12": El Frenzy)
Spanish Dictators / Australia / Rekjavic / He Knows / The Crush |
| Selfish Works
(12": El Frenzy/Messthetics)
Spanish Dictators / Australia / Rekjavic / He Knows / The Crush
Reissue of original vinyl with new cover, numbered and hand-coloured. |
| Selfish Works
(7": Messthetics)
Spanish Dictators / He Knows / The Crush / Rekjavic / Australia
7" with minor edits. Comes in various colour sleeves. Not green. |
| Meet Bing Selfish & the Ideals
Durutti / Old Bucharest / Long March / Dissidents / Drink & Drugs Party / Anthony Burgess / Cult of the Personality / Lament of the Soviet Youth / Tower Blok Rok / Hasis / Pissed and Drunk by the Banks of the Thames / Sofia / Yours Narkotically
They said he was mad to give away his estate, his stables and his offshore interests to pluck four talented (if slovenly) musicians from a South London Job Centre and put the whole lot into this one LP. But every tune, every note, every vibration of air surrounding this album says Yes, it was the right thing to do. This album takes the traditions of singing, playing instruments and dancing to their logical conclusion, stops off to see the sights there, and then forges on into the unknown. "Like a firework crossed with a caress. I bought three." - Jorge Luis Borges. |
| Ego Tripper/Goverment of Love
Ego Tripper / Selfish World / Government of Love / Venus in Plastic (Part 1)
Ego Tripper somehow manages to cram the all musical punch of Bing's musical of the same name into a 15 minute head trip, which made surviving members of the Beatles hang their heads in shame that they had never thought to do it, and is rumoured to have straightened out Brian Wilson's head when he happened to hear it on an underground US radio station. Government of Love brought down the regime of Margaret Thatcher on its release. With a wider radio play in the UK, it could have changed British political life forever. |
| Binging It All Back Home
Everybody's Right Wing These Days / The Ideal / Bela Kun / Kuala Lumpur / Indolino / 100 Flowers / Mondrian / Oil Traders / Godless / Kyoto Kids / Lost In Space / Hotline to a Hothead / Pissed and Drunk by the Banks of the Thames / Party Faithful
A true classic. Features Kazuko Hohki of Frank Chickens on The Ideal and Kyoto Kids. On its release, Bob Dylan finally admitted Bing's great influence on him, and the public reconciliation on live TV was heartfelt, if a little showbiz for my liking... |
| Space College & the Theory of Everything
Space Hopping / Relativity / I Love You / Chaos Theory / Zen Krazy / Super String / Anti-Matter / Space-Out
They said he was mad to leave The Ideals back at that Peckham job centre, but what could he do? They had dissed him once too often, and had to be reminded of where they had come from. Enlisting the aid of the mysterious Xentos Bentos, Selfish stunned the carping critics, not only with his retractable police issue truncheon, but also with the wild mind trip which these songs can barely contain... |
| Dizzy With Success
Diaghalev Said / Anarchists in Love / Modern History / The Right Side of My Brain / Loneliness / Electric Car / Trip to Andromeda / Sechuan / Incapability Brown / Mescaline / Never Grow Old / Sun Yat Sen
There are works of art which to attempt to describe would be futile and indeed laughable, but possibly entertaining. In this fabulous treasure chest of songs Mr Selfish and his Ideals take us from the unspeakably beautiful edge of the galaxies to the lonely rooms of our lives. This is a set unusual in contemporary music in that it makes you want to find out more about the world outside your normal preoccupations and cares of what kind of strings the rhythm guitarist is using (though that's quite an innaresting story...). You can't describe it. But you can love and laugh and lethargise along...
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| The Art of Selfishness
My Coup D'Etat / Laudanum / The NEP / The Acorns of Your Misunderstanding / England's Burning / World in E7 / Financial Advisor / Secret Underground Police Detective / The Fall and Rise and Fall of Jeffrey Archer / Be an Accountant / What an Alcoholic Day / Andre Breton (It would be useless to speak of the Truth if one hadn't spat in its face so much)
To level a charge of Bitterness against Bing Selfish would be essentially to miss the life affirming point of the man's work, so filled is it with love and unadulterated joy. It would also be asking for a stream of bile to be directed against one of such a strength as to require an unexpectedly long stay at a Belgian sanatorium. So let's not go there.
After bumping into Brian Wilson in a self-help bookshop, Bing was lifted from a trough of despond to new heights of Selfishness. Pondering the state of the Artist in this Overweight Society, Bing opened the Door to the Future in an almost Psycho-Cyberkinetic kind of way and now everyone can freely share in the Art of Selfishness. See mail order page for prices. |
The Legendary Conway Hall Concert (and Other Live Gems)
(CD: El Frenzy)
See below...
| Calling All Dionysians
Baudelaire / The Bloomsbury Set / Existential Angst / Genevieve / Ulan Bator / Diplomat / Nihilists / Dial M For Emma / Strike While the Irony is Hot / Calling All Dionysians
They thought they had lost him to the world of film-making and radio serialisation. But just when you thought it was safe to sign up to that accountancy course or take that job as a phone-tapper's assistant, Selfish blasts back with the voice of conscience that makes you drop your prejudices, your inhibitions, and possibly your knickers, run out of the soulless supermarket and out into the Sun, the Sun, the Sun!
With harp, shakuhachi, the sonic stylings of Barry Krishna and the most delicate vocal harmonies yet on a Selfish record, this is the record of a summer that must never end! Bing berates, he lambasts, he excoriates. But on the turn of a sixpence, he soothes, he succours, he gives hope to your needy masses. Because Bing wants us to LIVE, and he's Calling All Dionysians!!!! |
| Self-Knowledge
Self-Knowledge / Production Manager
You no longer need to get hold of or study the Tibetan Book of The Dead. You can learn much more by grabbing this single. Also useful for production managers. |
| Lonesome Andi Haller and Bing Selfish: No Puedo Dejar De Pensar En Ti / Vidas Pasadas
No Puedo Dejar De Pensar En Ti / Vidas Pasadas / No Puedo Dejar De Pensar En Ti (Remix) / Vidas Pasadas (Remix)
Like a leaf from a page found in the ruins of the Library at Alexandria, here is the document indicating a portion of the might of Hacen Vapor and their trek across the Tyrol. Found in a pawn shop in New Cross. |
| Last of The Bohemians
No Way / Now This is What I Call Entertainment / Evil Flowers / Anything But (Modern Times) / Cannabis Sativa / Bohemian Symphonietta / Hemingwhy / Boabdil's Blues / Beach People / Self Indulgence / A Case of Mistaken Identity / Last of The Bohemians
Recorded in a state of spiritual retreat yet corporeal attack, this is an album at once lush and cold, savage and gentle, yin and yang, little and large, meat and potatoes.
Bing decides against the planned album of the carefully recorded crushing of a variety of vol-au-vants in different key signatures, and gifts us all with the kind of advice they should be giving out in careers offices up and down the land. Deceptively accessible guitar the only accompaniment, you will find yourself finding layer after layer to intrigue and inspire. Aurally, the equivalent of telling your egomaniac boss to stuff it. |
| Space College and The Theory of Everything
Space College and The Theory of Everything / Space Hopping / The Uncertainty Principle / Robot Language / Why The Y Chromosome, Man, Why? / Relativity / Space-Out / Zen Krazy / Anti-Matter / Space Station Blues / Super-String / The Space Age
After the release of the cassette-only Space College and The Theory of Everything, they said music was over. Well, it didn't turn out that way, so Bing has (mind) expanded the original release, a few cuts here, a few additions there, and here is Space College and The Theory of Everything in its full CD glory. If this doesn't finally see music off, nothing will.
Produced by Bing and the mysterious Xentos Bentos, and engineered and arranged by the even more mysterious Xentos "Fray" Bentos, this magnum opus, years in the making, will turn your brains inside out, roll them in a spicy blend of science and philosophy and then stuff them back into your head. The head and brain is then placed into the oven of Truth for 45 minutes and you come out the other end wiser, mellower, richer and more beautiful. Ten quid. |
| The Bing Selfish Radio Show First Series Double CD:
The Selfish Hymn (Version 2) / Now This is What I Call Entertainment (Part 2) / Amerika / Middle Aged/Middle Class / Selfish City Will Not Fall / Mad Family (featuring SuNray Jahchild) / I'm in Power / Stay Away / What's So Wrong With War? / L.B. / Drunkenness / The Selfish Guard Barracks Room Song (featuring SuNray Jahchild) / Rainy Day in Tblisi
They said it was a myth. They said it didn't exist. They said it would never happen. They said a lot of things, all of which were recorded, later used in evidence in absolutely fair and open trials and now haunt their every waking moment with thoughts of what could have been...
A distillation of songsmithery from the mammoth work that is The Bing Selfish Radio Show First Series (see below). A concoction of fine ditties, desperate invocations, sly imprecations and downright groovy allusions. Join in with the bunker classic, Selfish City Will Not Fall, surrender to the dizzying effects of personal might with I'm in Power, cha cha cha down the boulevards of L.B. The presence of SuNray Jahchild gives a patina of respectability to the whole affair. |
| CD2: The Bing Selfish Radio Show First Series
Hail Selfish! Go on, hail him! |
| Songs of Inexperience
Are You Inexperienced? / The Credit Crunch / The Funeral of Kropotkin / I Hate Water / Elisenda's Night Out / World Without Government / Veronica Dream / The Everlasting Now (Give up your day job) / All Quiet at the Kitchen Sink / The Chicago School of Economics / Bratislava / Poetic Licence
Here he comes again! With William Blake as a guiding spirit, Bing explores unknowingness and all that follows with the wide-eyed wonder of a puma as it bites through electric cables at the Newport Folk Festival. Economic theories fight for space with stories of life at the the thin end of the consumer wedge, exquisite women elbow for room with boorish wastrels and poetry has a wee chat with anarchism about who gets that last biscuit.
Instruments coming at you from all directions; longing, excess, boredom, landladies; and a song from the dreaming pen of the mighty SuNray Jahchild, what can you say, except, "I want! I want!"? |
Various Artists
The Unstrument Soundtrack
(CD: El Frenzy)
1. Overture (00:25) Jason Creep
19. The Inversion of Anti-Matter (00:14) Web Overlander |
What the hoo-hah? They made a soundtrack album for The Unstrument? 38 tracks have been flung at you, and they all offer a taste, a smell and a smack in the face of the experience you feel watching the feature length “Citizen Kane of the coalition era” (Ed Baxter). Featuring a track from the Bing and Bob sessions that were thought to be lost, but had in fact been carelessly tossed in a broom cupboard then buried under 3 layers of boxes of finest cut price Polish shoe polish (duty paid). |
| The Bing Selfish Radio Show: Olympic Special
As we know by now, Bing Selfish is Emperor of the World, excluding pesky democrat-riddled Australia and Patagonia. |
| Handsome Out Altogether
The Rational Derangement of All the Senses / There goes the Sun / Architect, Architect / Marcus Aurelius / Dissolution / The Paris Commune (if they're the rabble I'm one of them) / In Shanghai / The Ballad of PC Mark Kennedy / The Genderizer / Latterly Natalie / Take me to your Dealer / How the Banking System Works
Some people mellow, others keep their eyes open and can’t help but find more entities, situations and discoveries to set off neurone explosions all over the china shop. Mr Selfish, known for his wide range of interests, arrives again to say a lot of stuff we never even knew we were thinking and even if we did know we were thinking it, we'd never have written a song about it.
We fly back to the days of Marcus Aurelius, zip through today’s catalogue of dirty digital mugshots (PC Mark Kennedy, the banking system, architects) and zap to the future in Shanghai and with Xentos Bentos’ Genderizer. Don’t let this make you think there ain’t a few laughs along the way and a few dreams we’re allowed to have before the sun disappears one last time. A set text in a country you wish existed.
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| Space College and The Theory of Everything [Expanded Universe Edition]
Space College and The Theory of Everything / Space Hopping / The Uncertainty Principle / Robot Language / Why The Y Chromosome, Man, Why? / Relativity / Space-Out / Zen Krazy / Anti-Matter / Space Station Blues / Super-String / The Space Age / Churchill Calling / Are You Confused? / I Love You / Space In / Chaos Theory / Space it All About
What was once a mere electromagnetic pulse in a neurochemical environment has developed and expanded, by way of electromagnetic tape, into an aural cascade of sonic, spiritual and scientifically-defensible entities we know as “Songs”.
The 18 songs on this newly-remastered and reconfigured release will take you on a trip back to your chromosomatic state and smaller, the further into your subatomic being, and will then hurl you at something approaching the speed of light out, out to the far reaches of the universe, and beyond. Of course, beyond…
An essential album for all physics, chemistry, biology, metaphysics students and teachers, space explorers, rocket scientists, myth busters, cropdusters, readers, breeders, bleeders, weeders and everybody else as well.
First released as a cassette tape in another millennium, bypassing the vinyl release (not considered cool in Cosmic Circles), but getting a 12 track CD release a way back, now fully remastered and augmented by previously unheard songs from the Space College sessions. In a universe full of so many meteors, it's a miracle any of these tracks has made it through! Entertain yourself while feeling the pulse of new elements in your earbox!
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| The Indefatigable Logic of Bing & Bob
Introducing Bing and Bob / Drinking Our Way Out Of Trouble / It's The Colours That Get Me Going / Castles / Imogen Incidentally / The Fly / It’s A Dog Eat Toast World / Evil Combination / Polly / Loser / Fish And Ships / Solaris / Recriminations / Blasé
The classy Bing & Bob straddle a rift in time (quick) time between now, whenever that is, and the roaring 20's. This is a perfect album for which to don your smoking jacket, light up a cocktail and engage your cigarillo holder as you take a dérive down Las Ramblas, as you tuck into a pie and a pint on the shores of Lake Constance, as you start a bin fire in Monaco or perhaps just simply seek gainful employment as a croupier in Lisbon, Chicago or Casablanca. |
| In the Morning We Glow and in the Evening We Glow Again
Transcend/Descend/Amend/Ascend-Over / The Unbearable Lightness of Bing / Back to the Abstract / Tripped-Out Mentality / I Couldn't Find What I Was Looking for but I Found Something Else / What We Are / Song of Solomon / Forty Ways to Keep Your Head in a Civil War / What She Said to Him, What He Said to Her / Colour - Me - In / Winter of Love / Radiate
An album of experiential revelation
Bing Selfish joins forces with the mulitifarious Multiverts and takes you out on a trip again. But this time, the trip is you. |
| Right Side of My Brain
Right Side of My Brain / Right Side of My Dub
Bing rides out with The Windsors in this taster of what's to come on their forthcoming giant release. |
Selfish Sentiments
The Rational Derangement of All the Senses / Long Weird Summer / I'm All, Like, 1967 / Financial Advisor / Relativity / Evil Flowers / Right Side of My Brain / Never Alone with a Drone / Business and Pleasure / The Everlasting Now / Renaissance Street / World Without Government
Bing Selfish and The Windsors burst into your life on a flying ice cream cart throwing multicoloured tunes everywhere. The spirit of '67/'17.
Bing and The Windsors have arrived from another planet and have news to spill. The psychedelic hopes of 1967 have come to fruition and the psychedelic tropes of 2017 have come to Wolverhampton. New Bing songs with all the urgency, wonder, bile and laughter you may expect, but still surprising. This is the place where Galileo meets Conan Doyle and Caravaggio mixes business and pleasure with your hedge fund manager.
They also raided the Bing Selfish Songbook and brought back into circulation Bing solo hits like “Financial Advisor”, “World Without Government”, and the previously-thought-to-be-impossible-for-a-live-band-to-play “Relativity”!
So watch the skies and Bing Selfish and The Windsors pilot their ice cream drone across the dimensions and into your heart! Looks like it’s gonna be a long weird summer.
To see just how weird: I'm All, Like, 1967 | |
| Bing Selfish in Off-On-A-Tangent Park
Anarchists in Love / Black Country Pop / Go Curator Go / 14:15 in Off-On-A-Tangent Park / Self Indulgence / What Lies Beneath the Pavement of the Super Rich / Selfish Sentiments / In Shanghai / Fracking / The Age of Enlightenment / Wolverhampton Wandering / Highgate High Street / Selfish Sentiments Revisited
Recorded and produced by Matt Armstrong in JC Montague’s Shed of Earthly Delights, this is at once the most intimate yet most expansive Bing Selfish album; yeah, even more expansive than Space College.
Bing shuffles the members of The Windsors in various combinations, with Matt Armstrong at the controls, and produces a real human warmth on every track, even the ones where he’s slagging off curators, bankers, destroyers of the earth, etc. You’ll be taken from the posh parts of London to the crazed surfaces of Shanghai and onwards, outwards to the shopping centres of Wolverhampton and environs. But don’t worry, everywhere we go, we’ll take you to the park first. Heartbreakingly for us and for you, the final recordings by Simon King.
Simon King Forever: Wolverhampton Wandering |
| Inside the Head of Steven Saint
Inside the Head of Steven Saint / What he did to het a few Quid when he was a Kid / Bigger Things / David Bowie Forever / Private Equity Firms / Burgled / Olde Monaco / When You're an Entrepreneur / Property / Dreaming, Steven's Dreaming / You can't Drive my Car / Mind Your Own Business
Let Bing and the gang walk you through the biography of a Really Good Man. The gang being Matt Armstrong, Tom Murrow and superstar Led Godwit. Let them whisk you from market to macro to Monaco and they'll probably show you the model they had made of their latest property complex, and maybe even let you drive their car! (They will never let you drive their car). AMEX accepted.
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The Legendary Conway Hall Concert (and Other Live Gems)
(CD: El Frenzy)
Bing Selfish and the Ideals: Conway Hall 12th May 1990 | Durutti / Old Bucharest / Pan-American Highway / Anthony Burgess / Long March / Yours Narkotically / Cult of the Personality / Government of Love |
Bing Selfish and the Super Notions: Bonnington Square, Vauxhall September 1983 | Health and Happiness |
Excerpts from the musical EGO TRIPPER: Union Chapel, Islington 1996 | You'll Find Me on a Yacht / Everybody Can Be Bought and Sold / Crucifixion |
Bing Selfish and the Ideals: 12 Bar, Denmark Street 11th September 2001 | Hotline to a Hothead |
Bing Selfish and the Ideals: New Peckham Varieties 19th March 1988 (First ever concert) | Hasis |
Where have you been for the last 40 years? Well, OK, everyone wants to forget the 80's but even those dirt laden years held within them jewels which could inoculate you against as many nostalgia tours as number the hairs on an archbishop's arse.
From the opening set in the Conway Hall, a triumphant fiesta over the corpse of the Thatcher years we are taken back and forth in time (mostly - look out for the bassist) to the eye of many a storm created by Bing and the Ideals. If you can't have been there, be here!
Cineography:
| Picnic En El Garraf (2004)
http://www.xterkyu.net/news.htm#0105
First Selfish film is a collaboration with Ramon P., Lonesome Andi Haller and Oriol Pont. It's a 25 minute homage to Tarkovski's 'STALKER'. |
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| Drytown (2005)
YouTube |
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| Antoni! Antoni! Antoni! (2007)
(as part of Libre Albedrio)
Featuring Selfish, Straka, Haller, Hanley, Hanley, El Rolf and several, several more.
Available on DVD - see Mail Order page |
Art will conquer all. |
Bibliography:
Selfish Works (lyrics & illustrations)
A Selfish Life (Vol 1) - autobiography
Ego Tripper (1996, musical -performed at Operadix Festival) See Legendary Conway Hall Concert CD above for extracts |
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The Selfish Way - The Selfish Story (unfinished)
Yoko & Hugh: a 2 man musical (with Lonesome Andi Haller) (2002, Barcelona, Vienna)
SELFISH CITY WILL NOT FALL: 99 poems
What all them other poets should have been trying to say.
A.N.D./O-R
A novel
Europe's occupied by the Chinese.
George is king and off his head.
Harbourmouth FC have signed the nastiest defensive midfielder in the league.
Empty headed art trash celebrities drool around London town.
Cambridge University is home to the most devious terrorist on Earth.
Peace loving anarchists get their heads kicked in.
The Daily Mail still thrives.
It all ends in a big bang on the Moon.
It's funny, savage and gripping. Yes, it bloody is!.
There's no reason why you shouldn't read it!
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Radio:
Offside By A Mile - Radio Script
The Bing Selfish Radio Experience(ResonanceFM 104.4): 2 radio shows broadcast 2003/2005
The Bing Selfish Radio Show Numbers 1-10E, more to come... See Discography above!
Extraography:
| HACEN VAPOR
Fab 2 man combo, Lonesome Andi Haller and Bing Selfish, who so far have only performed in cities beginning with B - Barcelona, Berlin. These guys have a thousand songs...'The beach people, ''Business school, ''Making It,''Audi A4', 'Vidas Pasadas', 'No puedo dejar de pensar en ti','In my car'... |
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Editor:
"El Frenzy" Magazine (editor, contributor)
Throughout the 80's as the majority of the population and media lay cowered and impotent, the satirical/political comic "El Frenzy" led a lonely crusade against the tyranny of Thatcherism and consumerism. The magazine hurled a constant tirade of imagination, wit and cruel satire at the walls of the establishment. The editor, a shadowy figure known as "Xanfise Koke" has been linked with Selfish himself, there being a significant gap in his musical output during the period in which El Frenzy was published. Selfish claims he was living as a Tibetan monk in an isolated Himalayan monastery learning advanced inspiration/respiration techniques. (Recent evidence has casts doubts on his assertions). |
| As a farewell to a pretty patchy thousand years, El Frenzy 99 points the way to a new Age of peace, love and the possibility of passing the Catalan Level C exam.
Features El Forastero - an existential tale, Las Dudas de Xhangise, Filth 666, Que Bien se esta Tumbada and many more. Contact El Frenzy Productions to find out how to get hold of one of the little beauties. |
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