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For
14 dark and stormy nights at the close of the last millennium,
the Cuban Boys were almost legends. Their single 'The
Hamsterdance Song' was impossible to avoid, from radio
adverts to football stadia, from pubs to clubs, Saturday
night television to John Peel's radio show.
Almost immediately, the band vanished, leaving a few
pop morsels kicking around the halls of Radio 1, and
a hefty bill on a record company's marketing desk.
Where
did they go?
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The
downfall kicked off one day early in 2000 when the Cuban
Boys label and chief sponsor, EMI Records and Tapes,
stumbled across the band's masterplan hidden in a large
fibreglass melon - a supposed video prop ingeniously
stored under their very noses in the office of Mike
McNally.
The band's dastardly scheme was, as EMI discovered,
to use their monster Hamsterdance hit single as a smokecreen
to allow the Cuban Boys to implement a daring raid on
the EMI Building.
The objective, to steal the British music business'
most prized artefact - the tinsel-plated head of Saint
Cliff Richard from the EMI lobby.
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After
a thrilling chase around the marbled halls of EMI, the
Cuban Boys found themselves hiding in Tony Wadsworth's
secret golden elevator. So secret infact, that when the
elevator plummeted into the depths of the building, the
band found themselves trapped without any hope of escape
between two floors - commerce and art.
And
that's where they remained for the next couple of years.
Hermetically sealed in mirror-box madness, existing
on a diet of easy listening, schnapps and cheese.
Late
in 2004 the Cuban Boys' emaciated bodies were found
by two immigrant workers and were immediately escorted
from the building. Though, to be honest, by then nobody
could even remember who they were - even though they
were wearing 'We Are The Cuban Boys' t-shirts.
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In
an astonishing twist of fate just 24 hours later, VH1's
'Bands Reunited' contacted the band to ask them to star
in their popular TV show. Initially, the band rejected
the idea to reform when they were refused permission
to use the man from Men Without Hats as their new lead
singer.
But, almost improbably, there was some form of divine
intervention (resembling a surprise unpaid tax bill)
and the band suddenly changed their minds. Holy smoke,
VH1 then caught on to the fact that the band weren't
as popular as they had remembered. Incredibly they realised
this when no speaking hamsters turned up to the creative
meeting.
However,
it was too late. The band had already plugged Shitty
The Drummer into the sampler and left him running on
"random" for three weeks. When they came back,
he'd written an album. The album that the world has
been waiting for, even though the world thought it was
waiting for a bus.
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