Bentley Rhythm Ace

The following article appeared in "Jockey Slut" magazine, vol 2, no. 3, Aug/Sep 1996. Contact Jockey Slut at [email protected].

 

 

MIKE AND RICH AND THE CAR BOOT SALE
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Bentley Rhythm Ace make wiggy cartoon hip pop out of records they find at car boot sales. John Burgess joined them on a car boot jaunt one Sunday and found that the best things in life are 20p. (Sherpa shorts by Clare Smith).

 

It's a Sunday afternnoon, 'round roast time, and I'm sprawled out in the back of an old Sherpa van with five other folk and a wee bairn called Perry. The sun is shining, we've just left Kings Heath and we're off to a car boot sale in Studley.

The Sherpa has 'Bentley' sprayed on one side, the slightly more wordy 'carbootechnohardkorejumble van' on the other and it belongs to curly-topped Michael Stokes, one half of Bentley Rhythm Ace. His older, taller partner Richard March is skinning up behind him, laughing at Stokes' odd comments. "We want to make a film, 'Sherpaphenia'," he'll say. "Put fifty mirrors on either side of my van and off we go. I'm sure Sting'd be up for it."

The previous night they DJed at the Heavenly Social as part of a Skint records night. Armed with a plastic bag full of cartoon pop 7 inches and stuff by Nancy Sinatra and Lee Perry, their 45 minute set blew the whole
joint up and they were enthusiastically offered a monthly residency. Several Social-climbing pop stars were eager to meet them, all turned on by their debut EP, featuring the decidedly wiggy 'Bentley's Gonna Sort You
Out', which samples Crosby, Stills and Nash, Jimi Hendrix and - yep - bits of bizarre records they've snapped up at car boot sales. Hence the Studley bound Sherpa.

"You wait 'til we turn the corner and you see the car boot sale." Michael beams. "It's huge. You can't see where it ends! It's like Woodstock, we wanted Perry to be born here!"

As we pull onto the field to join the Sunday booters, we are faced with a panoramic view of hundreds of glinting cars and vans brimming with assorted unwanted trash (yours for a quid). "We've been going to car boots for ages." says Richard. "Since they started. We went to the old school ones."

First stop (third lane, fifth car up) we find a couple of crates of albums amongst the unwanted lawnmowers and pairless shoes. Most are by James Last, called something a go-go or on the Music For Pleasure label. "Twenty for a pound lads" nods the owner obviously wanting rid of this weird wax.

Flicking through, Michael picks out albums by organist Klaus Wunderlich, 'Trumpets A Go Go', '20 Samsh Hits of '72', 'Hammond a Go Go' and 'Enjoy Your Slimming With Eileen Fowler'. He chooses a few others with Seventies 'birds' in bikinis on the front and the now ex-owner bin-bags them up for him. A quid well spent and an unsuspecting Eileen Fowler could be immortalised amongst the big beats of a future Bentley release.

Mike and Rich met just over a year ago at a party. Stokes, a tarmaccer, was DJing, playing the sort of kitsch sixties pop that rocked the Social. "I was playing records and he really loved them." Mike remembers. "Then we nearly kissed... but we didn't, so we made music instead. We were lonely."

Richard, a member of a very famous rock'n'sampledelics brummie band, had a studio and so the two got together, named themselves after a seventies drum machine ("It's got flares") and Bentley Rhythm Ace were born. The car boot is their spiritual home.

Back in Studley, (fifth lane, eighteenth car up), Michael has purchased a grey wig which he pulls on to compliment his broken sunglasses. It seems most things are 20p, or at least under a pound. Stokes picks up a copy of The Monkees 'Headquarters' and goes to purchase bfore reeling in horror when he is told that it is, in fact, a fiver. No folding stuff gets handed out here! Shrapnel for crapnel.

Michael goes on to buy a yellow plastic dumper truck for his son Perry, five pairs of socks (white), a Bentley car plastic picture and a bamboo curtain for his kitchen. Richard almost leaves with nothing but buys eighteen lighters for two pound in the final lane. They nick a sign, 'Booters' and retire, satisfied with their haul, to the Sherpa and then home.

"I don't hide the fact that I went out with Barbra Streisand. That was after Kylie and Nancy." We are sitting outside a pub in Moseley and Michael is getting surreal. Or plain daft. "We had this Nancy Sinatra album cover and she winked at us." he continues. "Which was funny because we were stone cold sober. We knew then that we had to use her drums."

They call Bentley Rhythm Ace "serious with a smirk" or as Richard would have it "We were trying to do minimalistic techno but we pressed the wrong buttons." The KLF's crazy sample-stuffed '1987' album (since banned due to uncleared Abba samples) is their main inspiration.

Their next EP, due in September, features 'Late Train To Bentley On C' and "The Man With The Golden Toast'. There are less samples - "apart from trains and seals" - but it still has that cartoon hip pop sound with tribal rhythms, funny funk and the odd 'boing'. "I'd be going to Richard 'we wanna sound like' (makes boing noise) and Richard would get an inkling then get a sound he liked which was half way in between and even weirder."

Bentley are readying themselves for fame having already chosen pop star pseudonyms like their pal Rankin' Roger (yep, that one from The Beat). "Michael Barrywhoosh is my name, though I quite like Romeo achet." Michael muses. "Richard's is Barry Island though I think Barrington is much more classy." They both hope for world domination but if they fail they'll settle for less. "We are making records to order so they can work in tiny matchbox sized rooms or arenas and football pitches. When we get massive, people will be chipping bits of road up which I've tarmacced." Michael, it should be pointed out, has not slept since playing the Social last might.

In August Bentley play their first live set at Birmingham's Spacehopper club. Their live show will have more to look at than two blokes staring at their equipment' as Michael and Richard have made some amazing visuals out of car boot sale trash. "We have a spaceship made out of polystyrene toilet rolls, mirrors, stars and glue. It's motorized and it comes down during the set. It'll Jean Michel Jarre the room out!" Michael enthuses. "And there'll be sexy dancing girls! We've already got one which we made up out of bits of car boot stuff, we call her Miss X. She'll do anything including birthday suit. We've coated her in this sodium skin mix so she looks beautiful. She's cool because you can pack her away after."

They seem to have a masterplan for sure. Anthing else they'd like to add to it?

"Clubs were getting too serious. No one was copping off anymore. It would have wiped out the human race. Bentley's here to save the human race."