How many novelists have their own song? Remember the academic-style Appendix in ‘The Grove of the Caesars’, discussing the weird authors whose scrolls have been forged?
Of the Arcadian poetess Thallusa, little remains. A widely discredited suggestion has been made that it was in scraps of her work that Samuel Pepys wrapped his Stilton cheese when he buried it to escape the 1666 Great Fire of London. This claim was put forward by Mimsy Bloggins, a romantic novelist. Generally derided, Bloggins appeared in a television documentary, passionately advocating her theory, which gained a following in social media. During the late 1980s and 1990s, Bloggins continued to further her idea through personal appearances on C-list chat shows. She also self-published a five-novel saga envisioning the life of the Stilton cheese while in the custody of Pepys. The original documentary is occasionally shown at 4 a.m. on TV channels at the end of the regular spectrum.
Another claim made by Bloggins is that four lines of Thallusan verse cited by Flavia Albia form a precursor to ‘Identity Crisis Blues’, a satirical rock anthem celebrating the introversion, confusion and mental unhappiness of university students in the late 1960s; no copies are officially known to have surfaced.
In 2024 this led to an email from a long-term reader, Jay Ottaway, who is a songwriter. As a change from setting Wilhelm Müller’s poems that are used in Schubert’s Winterreise, he wanted to set Thalusa’s work to music. Did I know who wrote it?… I explained: me in 1972. We had a lot of fun working on a new musical version: https://lnk.to/AM3GH8
Identity Crisis Blues (Thalusa), Artist: Jay Ottaway, Songwriters and ©: Jay Ottaway and Lindsey Davis, Release date: November 13, 2024
Musicians: Jay Ottaway (Vocals, Acoustic guitar), Guido Lehmann (Electric Guitar), Henrik Herzmann (Bass Guitar), Klaus Marner (Drums)
Engineers: Max Möhler (Max Power Production – Berlin, Germany), John Escobar (Escobar Music, Watertown MA, USA)
Mixing and Mastering: Max Möhler (Max Power Production – Berlin, Germany)