Wednesday 4 April 2018

Mid-Life Crisis Songs #21: Beany Bean


Do you ever get a feeling that you're missing out on something?
And whatever the point was?
I can't remember what it was...

Life is a series of crises. The one you have in your late 40s / early 50s gets all the press, but there are plenty more before and after.

Ooberman released Beany Bean as a single in 2002, the year I turned 30, so obviously it suited my Turning-30-Life-Crisis down to the ground. A couple of years earlier I'd been forced to quit drinking after I discovered I suffered from a little-known liver condition called Gilbert's Syndrome. Some doctors say it's an asymptomatic condition, but I found that after drinking I was getting repeated bouts of severe fatigue that could last up to two weeks or more, and all the medical tests I had came up blank... except for the one that revealed Gilbert's. If you google the condition, you can find plenty of people who say they've suffered fatigue as a result of the condition... as well and many medical experts who say that's hooey. All I know is, a few years after I'd quit drinking, the symptoms disappeared and (touch wood) I've not suffered a bout in over ten years now.

Around the time this single was released though, I was still coming to terms with an alcohol-free existence, and so Sophie Churney's lovely chorus of "Get me a Jack D, a double Jack D" was quite apposite (particularly as Mr. Daniels' Old No. 7 had been my tipple of choice)... as was Danny Popplewell's rough Bradfordian existential mumble. I'd been single for getting on 5 or 6 years, I was stuck in a dead-end job, lonely and just turning 30...

And it just seems like the whole point of life is just to grow old and die and maybe get a family or something but... what a waste of time.

This song brings it all back. God, I loved this band.



I need a holiday on Mars...

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