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Originally Posted by The Batlord
16-year-old communist with 16 pound balls.
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Yeah, thanks for the comment, Batlord, but quite possibly he was neither a communist nor brave: just a scared 16-year-old kid trying to keep his courage up by singing a song from his childhood.
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David Aaronovitch, author of
Voodoo Histories devotes one chapter to the mysterious death of Hilda Murrell in 1984. Entitled "A Very British Plot", the chapter describes the murder of this 78-year-old expert on roses who lived alone in a Shropshire suburb. Conspiracies abound because of the strange circumstances of her death and the fact that she was actively engaged in anti-nuclear activities. Did she die because she interrupted a clumsy search of her house by British Security Forces? That's what many think, including, presumably the band Attaco Decente:
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Her posthumous celebrity came quickly. The year 1985 saw two books published about her murder......a novel....three years later the band Attaco Decente recorded a song about her murder entitled "The Rose Grower".
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Maybe it hit the charts in Shropshire, but I don't think the song has had much impact elsewhere. I've certainly never heard of it until today:
My opinion: Just based on the band name, I was expecting a completely different genre, so the gentle plucking of the intro came as an agreeable surprise. Some nice flute in the song too, but a "story song" stands or falls by the way it tells its story.
The vocals strike me as a bit weak, failing to deliver on the anger inherent in the lines "
they abducted her, knifed her to death" or "
we will get the bastards" In fact, the topic of the song makes the flute interlude sound a little inappropriate, and the line "
Roses growers beware" is right on the edge of laughable imo.
In all, this is a very British song about a very British plot: despite the violence of her death, the song seems at pains not to offend, reluctant to intrude on the gentle rural harmony that has been the norm of Shropshire life for hundreds of years I suspect.