Artist: Cassetteboy
Title: Di & Dodi Do Die
Format: 7" Single
Label: Barry's Bootlegs
Catalogue Number: BAZ001
Year of Release: 2000
Tracklisting
A Di + Dodi Do Die
B The Parker Boy's About Yer Know
In Charlie Brooker's recent TV series Newswipe, the broadcaster, critic and Guardian columnist pointed out the exact moment when news stopped being about facts and events, and started being about reaction. It was 31st August 1997 and the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.
This wonderfully offensive single purports to be recorded on the very same day, although some of the news commentary spliced together here must have been culled from the subsequent media orgy. Cassetteboy say of their work, "Basically we record famous people and make it sound like they're talking about sex or drugs. It's a winning formula". Here they do so much more though! Selected quotes below:
Diana the Princess of Wales is Dead [cheers]
She was full of landmines
I think she was motivated by money
[snippet of Dirty Diana by Michael Jackson]
I always believed that Elton John would kill her in the end [Car crash noises].
News broadcasts are cut up to describe sexual relations with horses, abuse of her sons, and shagging outside Harrods.
It takes my reaction of the time - indifference, backed with anti-royalist sentiment, then tinged with the sadness you would feel for any accident victim - and laughs at it. Highly recommended. Higher than Newswipe, which is a poor cousin to Screenwipe, in much the same way I am a poor cousin to the Royal Family.
MPs expenses still make the front pages, but everyone seems to have forgotten about the payments made to a whole other bunch of undeserving work-shy landowners on the Civil List.
The B-side is a considerably more throwaway number, the first part being largely ripped from songs with 'Hello' in them (which I used to use as a voicemail message, to many people's annoyance.) The second part of the track samples various rap acts, and twists the words a little: "Straight Outta Chelmsford", "Simon Says (Sit The Fuck Down)". Funny, but not as good as the A-side.
I was going to share some stuff here, but there's enough on Cassetteboy's YouTube Channel to be getting on with.
