Spirit of the forest

Now this one’s taken me completely off guard. While doing a little research on the band Fox, after having seen their performance on TOTP2, I noticed that the guy who put them together – Kenny Young – has had quite an ilustrious musical career.

Aside from writing numerous hits including Under The Boardwalk, he’s also been involved in activism – specifically environmental activism. Back in the 90s there seemed to be pieces of rainforest the size of Wales (or Belgium) destroyed every so often, so people like Kenny and Sting and other famous people had to tell us all about it in partonising ways.

Enter a bevvy of pop stars to record a charity single. This could honestly be a spoof – I’m not sure.

Ranks of singers with headphones on – check. Shots of wildlife – check. “Indigenous tribal music” – check. Ringo Starr bobbing his head while singing “whoah-oh-oh-oh-ho” – check.

What got me was the fact that LL Cool J is involved. That’s rapper LL Cool J. I’m not sure what the thought process was here. Perhaps they saw that his then current album was called Walking With A Panther and decided it would be a nice piece of tie-in marketing. His contribution amounts to singing in the chorus. Why they would aks one of the hottest rappers on the planet to lend his questionable singing voice to a song and not rap is a mystery. Maybe he recorded a Dizzee Rascal style charidee rap about howler monkeys but it didn’t make the final cut. You can’t really see him on the video apart from at 1:45 in the very top right of the screen.

I’m guessing this song didn’t really impact the world in the intended way. The two videos of it on YouTube only have 111 and 114 views each.

I’d like to think that the song with its infection chorus became an anthem at the City Ground but Brian Clough wouldn’t have stood for it.

At least Cool James got something out of it though. The parrot he starred alongside in Deep Blue Sea was given to him as payment for his participation in this single.