Bad Ambassador was the second, and much anticipated, single from
Regeneration. Originally scheduled for release on May 7th, it was delayed for a week.
The song is quite a favourite from the album, but failed to overtake
Love What You Do, reaching only #34 in the charts, despite intense promotion. According to NME [1], the promo video, directed by Mike Mills, cost about £150,000.
The
Claire Burbridge artwork is also quite spectacular, despite not being in relation with the song. Like the
Regeneration cover, it expresses a movement.
The first CD features a couple of studio B-sides in addition to an edit of the song (without the end of ‘
Timestretched’ overlapping). ‘
Edwards The Confessor’ is quite a personal song from Neil Hannon, and is a less-produced version of the extra from the
Japanese Regeneration release. ‘
U.S.E.’ is an odd tune, with banjo it sounds different to the other
Regeneration songs.
The second CD is a live one. With a live version of the title tracks, it features a couple of B-sides. These songs were taken from a performance in Bristol touring the Spring UK tour, and voted by the DC BB (Divine Comedy Bulletin Board) community members.
The Winners are ‘Sweden’ & ‘Pictures Of Matchstick Men’.
I’m sure this will be no surprise (especially ‘Sweden’) as these were by far and away the biggest draws.
A full breakdown looks like this:- Sweden with a massive 40% of the vote
- Pictures of Matchstick Men with 19%
- Your Daddy’s Car with 10%
- Life on Earth with 9%
The remaining votes were pretty much equally distributed between:- Lucy
- The Frog Princess (acoustic)
- I’m All You Need
- National Express (acoustic)
- Perfect Lovesong
- Mastermind
- Tonight We Fly
- Eye Of The Needle
- Love What You Do
and these combined made up the final 22% of votes.First in line was the live version of ‘
Sweden’ which was quite different from the FIN tour. The next choice was then a cover version of Status Quo’s ‘
Pictures Of Matschtick Men’ which is quite a rocker as well.
In third position arrived ‘
Your Daddy’s Car’, being an all-time favourite of the DC audience. However, this song having already been released in 5 alternate versions previously, the idea was dropped. So ‘
Life On Earth’, another
Fin de Siècle song re-arranged in a new form as well, was released as the B-side of the limited 7” release of the single.
[1] NME 31/10/2001