‘Misalliance‘ is a melancholy song for Flanders and Swann. It’s the story of forbidden love between two climbing plants, and it sits right at the top of my GOLDEN PLAYLIST. It appears on both LP recordings of At the Drop of a Hat, but I prefer this one (Parlophone PCS 3001) from the final night of the West End run at the Fortune Theatre in May 1959, because the audience’s laughter falls in a more pleasing way. Aliens won’t know what these two guys are singing about, but I think it’s worth sending anyway, in the hope they figure it out in the end.
Author of The Vinyl Frontier, out March 2019
