Jeremy Healy, Brit guitarist and audio engineer with Haysi Fantayzee, turns 46.
Song Revie by Stewart Mason
[Bio & Info © allmusic.com]
One of the most deliberately bizarre UK chart hits ever, Haysi Fantayzee’s “Shiny Shiny” is supposedly an anti-nuclear protest song, but in reality, it’s a glammed-up mish-mash of sounds cribbed from Adam and the Ants (the in-your-face drums and twangy Ennio Morricone guitar), Dexy’s Midnight Runners (the fiddles and Jeremy Healy’s declamatory vocal style) and Madness (the music hall-style skip of the jaunty chorus and pubby piano), along with some Culture Club-style fashion. (Healy was supposedly an ex-boyfriend of Boy George.) Kate Garner’s intentionally annoying babytalk voice is in full flower here, chanting the sing-song chorus like a bored kindergartener, and yet somehow it’s all so incredibly dumb that it becomes perversely appealing. The EP contained two superlative remixes, “Shiny Shiny Dance,” which was one of the first UK singles to feature DJ-style scratching, and “Shiny Shiny Bon Temps,” a crazed Cajun reworking of the song featuring Bobby Valentino’s frenzied fiddle work. Both are included on the 2000 Razor and Tie reissue.
