This video is tons of fun. I’ve really outdone myself. It was mostly shot in Amsterdam, but there’s a few shots from London and elsewhere.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKt3Umkvt2I
There’s a bit of trivia behind the soundtrack song for real prog-rock geeks.
‘My White bicycle’ song about the activities of a racist thug organisation - the white bicycle allegry is obvious, the ‘seagulls’ are the Dutch anti riot police, some of which were using helicopters for use in crowd control.
I can’t remember exactly which soccer team these thugs affiliated themselves to, but they were pretty notorious at the time, right through to the late 1970’s
This was something of a skit on an anarchist group policy of providing free bicycles in a sort of ‘park and ride’ scheme, but the song has much more sinister background than that - the lyric
‘See that man he’s all alone?
Looks so happy but he’s far from home
Ring my bell, smile at him,
Then kick over his rubbish bin’
Sort of gives the game away.
It amazes me how various other explanations that are far more innocent were put forward, from green poltics to anti-establishment taunts, this was a time in the UK and Europe that had a lot of racist movements around, for those who remember Enoch Powells ‘Rivers of blood’ speech and organised marches by various racist organisations in ciy streets.How short the memories of folk are, sometimes ugly truths are more readily forgotten.
Oddly enough I couln’t remember the name of the group, had to look it up!
Go figure. I’m familiar with the White Bicycle of Amsterdam anarchist group project, but I had assumed the song was about bicycling around town in the wee hours tripping on acid.
Riding all around the street
Four o’clock and they’re all asleep
I’m not tired - and it’s so late
Moving fast everything looks great
Do you have a cite for your more sinister interpretation, casdave?
Still one piece of trivia about that song has yet to be answered.