The Story of Dr
Bob and the Wild Boys
by Dr Bob
CLICK
HERE TO DOWNLOAD AN MP3 OF 'WILDBOYS' LAMENT'
PERFORMED
BY DR BOB AND THE WILD BOYS (2.8 MB)
For many years
Dr Bob travelled the deep, deep, south of
Cheshire with his little dog called Boo, in
retrospect, not a very well chosen name for a dog
of such a nervous disposition. Keeping to the
back roads, he went from town to town selling Dr
Bob’s Special Elixir. For the benefit of
American readers, Cheshire is the largest county
in the England, spanning several times zones and
remains to this day largely unexplored. The
Elixir was made to a special recipe so secret
that Dr Bob himself had to keep a blindfold on
every time he made up a new batch. A brief exert
from the label will give the reader some idea of
the power of this potion: “cures impotence
in rabbits, encourages cats to sit by the fire
and makes parents invisible to teenagers. Avoid
contact with brightly coloured fabrics”.
Upon reaching
each new village the doctor would gather together
the young ragamuffins, who in exchange for a few
coins, would throw bricks through the local
windows carrying cordial invitations to a
“Special” evening performance. For the
benefit of American readers, ragamuffins are
poorly dressed children who have roamed the
streets of England since Dickensian times,
getting in to mischief but at the same time
always managing to maintain a cheeky grin.
Flaming torches would light the stage as
“Fatima the Turkish Slave Girl” did her
dance of the twenty four veils. It was based on
the dance of the seven veils but she liked to
wrap up warm. Once a decent crowd was gather the
Doctor himself would take the stage and expound
the properties of the Elixir, while Fatima
wandered the audience feigning disinterest while
vending Elixir to the locals.
It was on one
of those evenings, after the crowd had gone but
before the police arrived, that good doctor
noticed two youngsters sitting on a nearby fence.
One of them held a simple hand crafted guitar and
the other held a simple hand crafted guitar.
“What’s your names boys” asked the
Doctor “I’m Woody” said Woody and
this here’s Kid Lightnin’”
“What do you boys want?” asked the
Doctor. “We want to leave our simple
backwoods life and join your show” said
Woody. “If you can play those boxes of yours
like you can sit slack jawed on a fence,
you’re hired. It pays £10 a day but you
have to provide your own food, bedding and wages.
Let’s hear what you can do!” The boys
started playing and after just a few minutes a
tear formed in the corner of the Doctors kindly
old eye, after a few more minutes he was crying,
later he went on to do some screaming and before
the boys had finished had tried to kill himself
in many different ways, some of which were quite
ironic.
Needless to
say, the boys were taken on. Within a very short
time they were closing the show. Unfortunately,
they were doing this just after the show started.
However, you can’t spell the word success
without some of the letters in the word
perseverance and it wasn’t long before
crowds were shouting down the Doctor and
demanding to hear the “Wildboys” that
they had heard so much about.
Well
that’s the story of Dr Bob and the Wildboys
and how they got together and eventually started
making that sweet, sweet music you’ll find
here. If you like what you hear, tell them; if
you don’t there’s still a few bottles
of that old Elixir for sale.
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