Summer Gold: Andy Forray 'Drac's Back'

Now this is a fascinating piece of work. I note that it was a hit in Australia, after its appearance on this album (so, early 1980 - it was something like the 52nd biggest selling single of that year)  God life was so much more complicated back then, in a less innocent time! It was a hit in Victoria and it was on the 3XY chart but it was totally not a national hit in Australia (at least not according to the Barnes-Scanes Top 40 Research book). OK back to normal service... though I for one don't remember it at all, and I even suspect it might not have got much radio airplay because of its suggestive nature (though also I don't recall how much I was listening to the radio in 1979/80 tbh). There also doesn't seem to have been a video made - which is so ridiculous, given the way the song begs to be played out in a video, with Forray of course starring because he was primarily an actor (and an early cast member of Hair but perhaps more importantly for this kind of thing, a comedy actor for instance he was 'Second Christian' in Up Pompeii - don't laugh!)

The weirdest thing about 'Drac's Back' I guess is that when we hear it now it sounds like, well, AIDS comedy. We got very used to the idea of vampires and gayness (possibly via The Fearless Vampire Killers, I'm not entirely sure) and then much later tropes about AIDS and blood and nightclubs. This record came out two years before the first actual AIDS diagnosis, and so any interpretation along those lines is with hindsight. There are probably other associations that are just so much part of pop culture I can't see them anymore. What We Do in the Shadows was following the same kind of schtick though (and is a really, really funny film - if you didn't know that)

It's a clever little record, a lot of satisfying punchlines and on the whole a good music hall spirit to it. I'd like to find out more about Andy Forray but I've lived this long knowing very little so I suppose I can keep going without the knowledge.

One thing that bothers me. Drac's back. I want to suck your oooh... Dracula WHAT? What is that last word? Driving me crazy.

Something else occurred to me after writing the above: I wonder how many people used albums like Summer Gold for cover. If you thought your parents (for instance) or friends would deride you for having a song like 'Drac's Back' in your collection, but you really wanted it, you could purchase it on Summer Gold and say that you merely tolerated it because it was inalienably a part of the collection. I'm thinking about 'Drac's Back' in particularly because it is pretty darn gay, or at least, pretty sexually suggestive, which I'm sure stopped it being played on 2SM in Sydney, for instance. 

23/1/18 MORE MORE MORE: The redoubtable Paul Fleckney has suggested this is 'a song about the recreational drug Mandrax (aka Quaaludes or ludes). He points out that Drac's victims are left 'feeling like a wreck' and 'wake up all wasted' and that his 'drinks are all free' ('During the '90s,' says Paul, 'many clubs complained that ecstasy was killing their business because no one drank any more. I imagine there was a similar reaction to Mandrax in the 70s' He also notes that of course the second syllable of 'Mandrax' and 'Drac's' are, um, the same thing: 'I wonder if this song is a bit of an advertorial announcing Mandrax's return to the dance floor in the late '70s?' 

I think so. In fact, I'm sure so. It makes Forray - who as far as I'm aware never wrote another song - a particularly clever lyricist, particularly as the tiredness Drac's victims feel is as easily ascribed to having your blood drained as it is to taking disco drugs. (That said, he could have made a play on words between 'lewd' and 'dude', couldn't he? Do I need to write this guy's schtick for him?!).