The Stranglers – Golden Brown – A song for Daniel

The Stranglers are an English punk rock music group.

“Golden Brown” is a song by the English rock band The Stranglers. It was released as a 7″ single in December 1981 in the United States and in January 1982 in the UK, on Liberty. It was the second single released from the band’s sixth album La Folie.

The video for “Golden Brown”, directed by Lindsey Clennell, depicts the band members both as explorers in an Arabian country (sequences include images of the Pyramids as well as the explorers studying a map of Egypt) in the 1920s and performers for a fictional “Radio Cairo”. In addition to the Pyramids, the video is intercut with stock footage of a madrassa in Uzbekistan, the Shah Mosque in Isfahan, Iran and Great Sphinx, Feluccas sailing, Bedouins riding and camel racing in the United Arab Emirates. The performance scenes were filmed in the Leighton House Museum in Holland Park, London.

Scoring some 23 UK top 40 singles and 17 UK top 40 albums to date in a career spanning four decades, the Stranglers are the longest-surviving and most “continuously successful”  band to have originated in the UK punk scene of the mid to late 1970s. Beginning life as the Guildford Stranglers on 11 September 1974 in Guildford, Surrey, they originally built a following within the mid-1970s pub rock scene. While their aggressive, no-compromise attitude identified them as one of the instigators of the UK punk rock scene that followed, their idiosyncratic approach rarely followed any single musical genre and the group went on to explore a variety of musical styles, from New Wave, art rock and gothic rock through to the sophisticated pop of some of their 1980s output.

They had major mainstream success with their single “Golden Brown“. Their other hits include “No More Heroes“, “Peaches“, “Always the Sun” and “Skin Deep“.

The Stranglers’ early sound was driven by Jean-Jacques Burnel‘s melodic bass, but also gave prominence to Dave Greenfield‘s keyboards at a time when the instrument was seen as unfashionable.  Their early music was also characterised by the growling vocals and sometimes misanthropic lyrics of both Jean-Jacques Burnel and Hugh Cornwell. Over time, their output gradually grew more refined and sophisticated. Summing up their contribution to popular music, critic Dave Thompson later wrote: “From bad-mannered yobs to purveyors of supreme pop delicacies, the group was responsible for music that may have been ugly and might have been crude – but it was never, ever boring.”

Source:      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stranglers

Picture Source: http://www.punk77.co.uk/groups/Stranglerspersonalview.htm

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