Imagine the scene...
The Peryls' tour-bus skids off the road one dark winter's night and we plummet into a ravine, smashing us all into gooey bits. Deranged surgeons salvage what they can from this mess and stitch it back into one single entity.
"They've created a musical superbeing!", is what you'd probably say. "With the combined wit and intellect of all six Peryls, this creature must have sublime taste in music!" And then you'd probably say "Argh, how can this freak be alive!? In the name of God, burn it."
Naturally, it would instantly develop a taste for human flesh, tear free from it's bonds, murder it's creators by crushing their brittle skulls, escape the burning laboratory to climb a hill overlooking the city and let out a primal roar, then begin marching slowly and implacably towards the White House in order to eat the President and enslave all mankind, swatting away the army like they were just the buzzings of flies to him.
But what's on it's iPod?
Well, to prepare for this nightmare scenario, we've conducted a poll! What follows is the combined musical loves and hates of the Peryls, collated anonymously and presented here in glorious 3D.
Name your favourite records.
Inevitably, the Beatles made a strong showing here, with the White Album getting two mentions and Abbey Road making the list too. The La's album also got two votes, and Beck gets two albums on the list with Sea Change and Mutations.
If there's a dominant genre here, it's 'anything with lots of guitars in', but it's still what you might call a mixed bag...
Aha - Scoundrel Days
Beastie Boys - Check your Head
The Beatles - The Beatles, Abbey Road
Beck - Mutations, Sea Chage
David Bowie - Alladin Sane
Alice Cooper - Billion Dollar Babies
Graham Coxon - The Sky is Too High
De La Soul - De La Soul is Dead
Divine Comedy - Absent Friends
Bon Jovi - New Jersey
The La's - The La's
Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin 2
The Libertines - Up The Bracket
Mahavishnu Orchestra - Birds of Fire
Maximo Park - A Certain Trigger
Paul & Linda McCartney - Ram
Mozart - Requiem
Rage Against the Machine - Rage Against the Machine
Simon & Garfunkel - Bookends
Nina Simone - Blue for You
The Smiths - Best Of
Soundgarden - Superunknown
Bruce Springsteen - Born in the USA
Talking Heads - Stop Making Sense
Tom Waits - Alice
Roy Wood - Boulders
Name your favourite artists
Many of our best-loved acts have already been mentioned above. Three of us named The Beatles and two included Tom Waits. The stitched-together Peryls-creature also has a soft spot for heavy metal, folk, indie, classical, and er, Mumford and Sons... so there's no wonder it's hell-bent on destroying the world.
The Beatles
Beck
Blur
Beastie Boys
David Bowie
Kate Bush
Alice Cooper
Goldheart Assembly
Jimi Hendrix
Led Zeppelin
Mahavishnu Orchestra
Paul McCartney
Joni Mitchell
Mumford and Sons
The National
Shostakovich
Simon & Garfunkel
The Small Faces
Bruce Springsteen
Supergrass
Talking Heads
James Taylor
Tom Waits
Scott Walker
Vaughan Williams
Roy Wood
Musical heroes
So the Peryls-monster has crushed every nation on Earth and then set to work harvesting the terrified survivors for their life-essence. A handful are spared though, for they are the musical heroes of our collective youth.
Left to live out their days unmolested are David Bowie, Graham Coxon, Diana Ross, Paul McCartney, and Aha. And Jimi Hendrix - who is dead, so he doesn't care.
What of the also-rans? The acts we used to love but we're now ashamed of... the skeletons in the Peryls' closet. Well, they'll be allowed to live too, but we'll pretend we don't know them. They are Status Quo, PM Dawn, and The Stone Roses. Chris de Burgh will perish, but his concept album 'Crusader' will be spared for it's cultural significance.One member of the Peryls refused to name an embarrassing hero, simply saying 'I have no shame', which maybe explains why Aha are making such a strong showing in this article.
Welcome to hell!
That's musical hell, to be precise. Should the Peryls-creature ever be destroyed, then it will surely spend the rest of eternity chained to a front row seat of the biggest and shittest gig in the universe. 'It could be worse' you say? Well, not when the only music on the bill is Electro, Garage, Techno, Mainstream R&B, Stadium Ballads... and Reggae!
In a thorough poll of our gig-going lives, it turns out that two of us independantly named The Sleepy Jackson at the Marquee in 2002 as the worst gig they'd ever attended! More positively, there were great shows from the likes of Bowie, Pulp, and Public Enemy along the way.
Your first single
They say you can tell someone's age from the first single they bought, but with a collective age of about 200 years (no, really) it's quite hard to pin us all down. Let's just say we're all younger than Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas. She's a proper old crone.
Gathering dust in the attic are:
"Black Hole Sun" - Soungarden
"The Show" - Doug E Fresh and the Get Fresh Crew
"Everything I Do" - Brian Adams
"I Just Called to say 'I Love You'" - Stevie Wonder
"We Don't Have to Take Our Clothes Off (To Have a Good Time)" - Jermaine Stewart
What are you listening to right now
Moments before our tour-bus slips off the road and we get splattered on the rocks below, we'd probably be giving these records a spin (while we drink heavily and distract the tired driver)
"Cruel" - St. Vincent
"Extrapolation" - John McAughlin
"Goodbye England" - Laura Marling
"Hold On" - Alabama Shakes
"Melanie Davis" - Supergrass
"The Last Kiss" - David Cassidy
"The Wicked and the Blind" - The Do
Check out our new widget! You can hear some of our current favourite records using the music player on the right of the page.
And the last albums we all bought were:
"Band on the Run" - Paul McCartney
"Straight Life" - Freddie Hubbard
"Bad As Me" - Tom Waits
"Lets get out of this country" - Camera Obscura
"50 Words for snow" - Kate Bush
"Smoke Rings for My Halo" - Kurt Vile
SMASH HITS!
In the true spirit of the now-defunct teen pop magazine, our poll didn't just stop at the music! There were other pressing questions that needed to be answered...
Who was your first crush?
Not every Peryl answered this one, probably for reasons of deep shame, but those who did declared their adolescent love for Madonna, Morton Harkett, and Winona Ryder. One Peryl was a bit too honest though, and wrote "Tyrone - my brother's best mate".
What would be your last meal?
We could have just asked 'What's your favourite food?', but remember, you're in Peryls territory now, where the grim stench of despair is never far away. So let's eat!
On the death row menu tonight is...
A massive plate of seafood and some proper ale
Flemish beed carbonnade with stoemp mash and a few glasses of strong Belgian beer
Pizza with cheese, mushrooms, artichokes and sun blushed tomatoes. And a vanilla milkshake.
Chicken jalfrezi, mushroom rice, tarka dal, and a garlic naan. And 9 pints of Tiger Beer.
Bread and Cheese
Curry with a steak and kidney pudding.
The song they'll play at your funeral
So, the Peryls are dead... but we didn't even get executed in the end! We all suddenly died of food poisoning. We'll still need a good send-off though, so which songs will be playing while we're being buried/cremated/mummified/launched into space?
"I Want You (She's So Heavy)" - the Beatles
"Severed Garden" - The Doors
"Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground" - Blind Willy Johnson
Theme from "Once Upon a Time in the West" - Ennio Morricone
"Children's Story" - Tom Waits
Somebody answered 'Whatever I liked best at the time', which really wasn't entering into the spirit of things. Just for that, they're going to have 'Angels' by Robbie Williams. (Available on "Now That's What I Call Nan's Funeral Vol.16")
And the big questions...
Let's wrap things up. Take a deep breath and prepare to have your minds blown... In a uniquely frank and personal interview, the Peryls revealed the answers to the only questions that really matter.
Cats or Dogs?
Dogs! By a landslide!
Daddy or Chips?
It's a tie! Exactly half of us prefer deep-fried potatoes to their own dear Dad.
Thank you for joining us on this epic, nightmare voyage into the twisted musical soul of the Peryls... It's ok, you can come out from behind the sofa now. The Peryls-creature is merely the stuff of fantasy... or is it?....
...Yes. Of course it is, you idiot.
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