The Diverse Stripes

I saw you translate a poem from Japanese. It looked so tricky but you did it with ease. I saw you judging long jump at the athletics. I felt so low because at sport I’m just pathetic. I’m always seeing you do cool stuff. I try my best but it’s never enough.

I’ve been banging my head on a wall trying to get something from Taskmaster – like The Simpsons, it’s really, really difficult. But here we are, finally. After ages trawling the Taskmaster wiki (one of the most comprehensive out there), it finally came to me. I remembered that they had to sing a woman a song once. As a bit of back story, the task was a group one and split series five contestants into one group featuring Nish Kumar and Mark Watson and the other containing Aisling Bea, Sally Phillips and Bob Mortimer. For this, we’re concentrating on the former.

Each team was given five minutes to analyse Rosalind from Southport and thirty minutes to create a song about her. The Bea, Phillips and Mortimer alliance formed a group called Products of Conception and performed the song ‘Quite Good Considering’. On any other day, the song would’ve trounced the opposition (lyrical highlights of their composition being ‘Rosalind’s a fucking nightmare’ and ‘Rosalind’s an average cellist’). However, they could never have predicted coming up against the pop-rock powerhouse of ‘I’m Always Seeing You (Do Cool Stuff)’, as performed by The Diverse Stripes.

A clear pastiche of Michigan’s finest* (Nish Kumar even calls himself Jack Brown), it’s fairly obvious to take some of their visual output to work from. So we’ve got a circle with a bit of swirly stuff going on. As featured on Meg White’s toms and bass drum. For diversity, we’ve got some subtle rainbow-esque colouring going on. I didn’t want it to be too garish because if you listen to TDS (which the cool kids are now calling them), it’s more of a chilled vibe over ramming something down your neck. If you’re familiar with the show (and I think the whole world is by now), you should recognise the typography here.

Oh, the dot of the ‘i’ in ‘Stripes’ is also the centre of the swirl, if that makes a difference. It probably doesn’t.

*I think the Motown people might have something to say about this. And Madonna. And Eminem. And, er, the Insane Clown Posse? Perhaps not them.