I've been bitten by the bug. I wish I meant I'm addicted to an exciting new interest but unfortunately it's more literal than that; this is the culprit:
Oops, wrong pic, it's this one below, but it does feel as if something far more malignant is responsible.
This is the Flower Bug. A sweet little thing, really, but I have so many painful bites from this insect that I feel more like one big bite with a little bit of unblemished skin attached. The Flower Bug is only a few millimetres in length and whilst I've never noticed one land on me, they're all around - all around the tiny wildflower patch and the nettles at the end of the garden, all around any plants that attract aphids and other small insects which they eat (they're even used as biological pest control for crop production in some areas; these are the good guys!) Unfortunately they seem to want to prey on me too and my skin reacts quite badly to their nipping, coming up in big red weals which are intensely itchy and take many days to heal. There are bites on my arms, my legs, and in a few more unexpected places too (put it this way, I have no idea how one could have got inside my bra...) Aside from sporting a hazmat suit I've kept as covered up as I can in their presence and yet still they manage to find their way into - under - through? my clothes. A constellation of pink welts decorates my torso right now - an Ursa Minor of irritation. Hats off (although probably best to keep them on, with nets attached) to our friends in Scotland who have to cope with the midges. Anyway, insect repellant has now been bought and I hope I can frolic amid the flowers unbitten in future.
Thinking about the Flower Bug did, however, remind me of a really great song and I can't get it out of my head. It was one of the first '60s psychy numbers I'd ever heard, some time in the mid '80s, which piqued my interest in the genre and started off a whole other foray into underground freakbeat and psych. It was like nothing I'd ever really listened to before - oh, remember how that feels?! - the excitement and magic of embarking on a hitherto unknown musical journey. From hearing songs like this I was opened up to all those obscure records which were given a new lease of life in the ‘80s when labels like Bam Caruso, Big Beat, Psycho and See For Miles mined the rich seam of 1960s psych and beat to present them to a new audience, and it became quite an obsession. Dare I say, I was bitten by the bug...
Enough of the introduction! Here's Flower King of Flies by the Nice, the opening track of their 1968 debut album, 'The Thoughts of Emerlist Davjack', all Hammond organ, psychy guitar, speeded up echo effects and trippy lyrics.
