Noughties By Nature #29: The Research - C'mon Chameleon

Pop music: a series of grand treatises on the human condition (or, at least, the part of it that involves getting off with someone, not getting off with someone, and all possible variants thereof), interspersed by people going "la la la", "ba ba ba" and possibly "shooby dooby doo" if the opportunity arises. I don't think The Research have ever gone "shooby dooby doo", but they were very good at going "la la la", and so good at going "ba ba ba" that they called a song it. The first The Research album features lots of splendid wonky keyboard tunes, delightfully cooey girly backing vocals and much in the way of faux-innocent treatises on the human condition, essayed by a chap calling himself Russell The Disaster; all of these are good things. However, it is C'mon Chameleon that we turn to here as the intro to the single version is really quite stirring (particularly for those of us who always assumed that playing the keyboards would be easy and were never able to produce anything better than, well, the intro to C'mon Chamelon by The Research) and because it is the only song that dares to ask the all-important question: "What's the scientific name for truth serum?"

Sadly, record company shenanigans followed (there is the possibility that someone at EMI thought that The Research could sell millions of records; it's impossible not to admire the optimism of everyone involved) and some time later there was a second album with the wonky keyboards and girly backing vocals largely ditched, as if they'd somehow lost track of the point. Shame, that.
Matt Sullivan

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