Burn baby burn

Cast your mind back to chemistry lessons at school. There was a rubber pipe leading from a gas tap to a metal pipe on a stand. It was burning. And it was invented by German chemist Robert Wilhelm Eberhard von Bunsen. Today, and every March 31st, we celebrate his birthday, presumably by setting fire to something.

Briefly, Herr Doktor Von Bunsen was born in 1811, making him 198 today, and some people credit the wily design of his tube-shaped burner, with its ability to mix gas and air in just the right proportions for making a controlled flame, as a major advancement in the field of chemistry. Of course, many also contend that he didn't actually invent the thing, just refine an existing design. But he is responsible for the design of the thing you used in Chem 101, so vielen Dank, Doktor von Bunsen!

Indirectly, von Bunsen is also responsible for the second hit single of our favorite mad man of pop, John Otway.

Otway's madcap first single, Really Free, edged into the Top Ten of the British hit parade in 1977 (possibly because of its bizarre b-side, Beware of the Flowers 'Cause I'm Sure They're Gonna Get You, Yeah). For 25 years, he plugged away steadily trying to get another hit. He released plenty of music, gigged steadily, and lost a lot of his mop of curly hair. But he didn't get a single. He did build up a fiercely loyal fan base, though. So by 2002, when Otway wanted to release a greatest hits album, he hit up his fans for ideas. Semantically, he needed another chart success to add an S to the end of that word "hit"--because who ever heard of a Greatest Hit album?

His fans decided that he should set his poem Bunsen Burner to music. The music they picked was Disco Inferno--because it was catchy and it had the refrain "Burn Baby Burn."

The results charted at number 9, and Otway was able to release his album. You can see the video that promoted the single Bunsen Burner here on YouTube.

On a side note, many people, including Otway, believe that Bunsen Burner was his second single to become a hit because of its B side. The reasoning goes like this: The flip side of Bunsen Burner was a call-and-response version of the Animals' old hit House of the Rising Sun. Otway recorded the track live with a thousand members of his fan club shouting out lines like "Tell us about your mother!" before the line in the song that goes "My mother was a tailor."

Otway credited each member of the fan club who attended the recording session on the single's liner notes. So here's how it broke down: The single was released, and a thousand people went out to buy it to see their name on the sleeve. And, as Otway noted, "They bought another one for their Mum."

You'll see why on this other YouTube video--John Otway and a thousand others singing The House of the Rising Sun.