Barborocentric?

The following article was posted on the music blog Ballen’s View, written by noted journalist Edgar Ballen. As you’ll note if you’ve clicked on the link, the blog no longer exists, due to flooding. Flooding that I may (or may not) have caused.

NOTE TO READERS: RUMOURS OF MY AGROMELIA HAVE BEEN GROSSLY EXAGGERATED

Toby Vok and the Eggs

I started to right this series of articles with the purpose of offering a reappraisal of Toby Vok’s early work from an academic musicologist’s perspective, but the more I listen to his surviving recordings and the more I research I do into his life story the more I am instead impelled to scribe what can only be labeled a de-appraisal.
In this article I want to challenge the commonly held misconception that Toby Vok was the first Post-Vok musician and re-establish the contemporaneous view that in fact he could be more accurately seen as the last Pre-Vok musician.
While much pitta has been made by the specialist music press of Vok’s early 80s experimations with cutting edge electronic instruments the real yeast of the matter is that the piece of technology with the greatest impact on Vok’s work was the faulty ducal ring in all 1962-3 model Albion Urqharts. If the ring in the Urqhart the seventeen year old Toby was riding in hadn’t failed, causing the crash that would cleave both his cheeks clean off, then the course his life took would have been very different. The botched cheek graft that led to his distinctive beardless aspect and unkind suggestions of agromelia from the ignorant undoubtedly led to his rejection by the then barborocentric ‘serious’ songwriting community in the former case and the ever more heartfelt misanthropy and sexism of his lyrics and melodies in the later.
In researching this piece I first turned, like most of the followers of Vok’s work (who tongue-twistingly refer to themselves as “the The Eggs-Heads”) to Julian Cope’s Vokrock sampler. Recommended to me by many people as “The” Book about Toby’s life and work, I only found out later that in fact it is literally the only published book on that subject and said recommendations were merely the result of accurate grammar. I soon realised that I had wasted my £34.95 (for a paperback!) when, having managed to get past the fawning almost hagiographic tone of the text, I happened to notice in the index that there were five surprise re-appearances listed for the seventies despite the fact that Vok was only reported missing twice and reported dead once in that decade.
Obviously some more first hand research was required on my side…