Freddie Mercury Speaks!

It’s been a few weeks since we last ran our `Taxi Driver Speaks’ column; so, in light of the amazing changes among Southern Baptists and Del-Boy’s lah-de-dah elitist musings about Mahler (not to mention his sneering swipe at the great state of Mississippi), we asked Freddie Mercury – no, not the late, great lead singer of Queen (as he’s both dead and a Zoroastrian, that would have involved serious breach of several of Ref21’s most sacred blog rules) – but cabbie no. 65512 with Bohemian Rhapsody Cabs, Chiswick.  Freddie, thanks for giving us your time: any thoughts on Southern Baptists and Mahler/classical music?

Well, guvnor, you’ll never guess who I ‘ad in the back of my cab the other day? Only that Baptist guy from the telly, that’s ‘oo!! You know, him wot wears the yellow suit, frilly shirt and utterly convincing orange toupee. And he was telling me, like, how he was really offended by that sarcy blog the other day about how, after a long and thorough investigation, the Baptists had concluded that only believer’s baptism was legitimate. Well, he was proper gnarky, I can tell you, goin on and on and on about how this radical 360 degree turn in Baptist thinking was going to remake the ecclesiastical landscape and all that; and how the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Reformed, and Congregationalists are now effectively marginalized and completely isolated with no where to turn! Will the last paedobaptist to leave the church please put out the light and all that! He told me that this paedobaptist fringe ‘ad either gotta get with the program or become irrelevant, like. I could see ‘is point, mind you. Don’t understand why it ain’t appened before. I mean, when you think of all the great Baptist theologians in history like, er, well, um, well – you know, like that guy with the beard in the Reformation, and that psycho bloke wot Robert Mitchum played in Night of the Hunter (Wasn’t he actually a United Methodist? – Del-Boy Thomas), and the kindly, if somewhat doddery, minister fella in Little House on the Prairie, well, then you see how shaky the whole paedobaptist argument is even from the perspective of ‘istory and all that

As to that Mahler stuff, well, it is true that music does have an emotional power. I mean, I ‘ad that Trueman bloke in the back of my cab the other day, and he was telling me how he always gets ‘omesick when he listens to The Kinks singin’ `Waterloo Sunset’ and `Plastic Man.’ Shows ‘e is sensitive to human emotions after all. And I can sympathise – I love that line `Terry meets Julie, Waterloo Station, every Friday night’ (a pop culture reference to Terence Stamp and Julie Christie, according to my Elitist’s Guide to the Oicky Music of Trueman and Other Crass People (Badsmellundermynose Press, 1999) – Del-Boy Thomas) And the change in rhythm and tempo in `Plastic Man’ really pulls off a critical emotional climax: `He’s got a phony smile that makes you think he understands; but no one knows he really is a plastic man.’ I believe it was originally meant to be called `Presbyterian minister’ but they changed it cos of legal threats. Still, I always reckon the problem with classical music is the immoral lives of those wot wrote it and the degenerate nature of the tunes, the lyrics, and, in the case of opera, the dramatic actions of the plot and all that. Believe me, guvnor, you’re better off smashing all those Debussy things and them Wagner albums wiv their incest and pagan gods and graphic scenes of violence and sex and all that. Just put some good wholesome Ray Davis on the turntable and get down and get wiv it (unless you crying uncontrollably for the old country, that is) – no idolatry there mate, just good old fashioned British pub rock. I mean, I ‘ad that Chas ‘n’ Dave in the back of my cab the other day and they woz tellin me….. (That’s enough `pop’ culture for today, you grubby little Philistine – Del-Boy Thomas)