You may have noticed – see my sidebar – I am reading Harry Turtledove’s Days Of Infamy at the moment.
When I started reading it I showed the book’s cover to the good lady and she said instantly, “They’ve all got it in for me.” (She’s obviously lived with me too long.)
Yet it was also a natural reaction since, while for USians the word has historical resonances similar to those that Chamberlain’s, “I have to tell you no such undertaking has been received and that consequently this country is at war with Germany,” speech has for Britons, for most British people – of my generation anyway – “infamy” conjures up nothing so much as Kenneth Williams playing Julius Caesar in the film Carry On Cleo.
The very first time I watched the film, as soon as Williams uttered the first “Infamy!” I started laughing: because I knew what was coming. The phrase, “got it in for me,” was inevitable – especially if you were a devotee of Up Pompeii and other Talbot Rothwell creations. Indeed had “got it in for me” not been forthcoming it would have been something of an anti-climax.
The humour arises in a similar way to the custard pie – which I read once was funny purely since it was expected, though I’m not much into slapstick myself.
I’m more an aficionado of the pun, even the excruciating one.
Especially the excruciating one (before everyone who knows me jumps in with the comment.)
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s Ohio wasn’t the only song to mention the Kent State shootings. Student Demonstration Time, from the Beach Boys excellent Surf’s Up album, does so too.
A (restricted access) blog which I frequent aired complaints that this is a rip off of Riot In Cell Block Nine which, according to Wiki, the Beach Boys used to play in their concerts around that time. Some might, instead, call it a homage.
The lyric does contain what I think is rather a good pair of lines in:-
“The pen is mightier than the sword
But no match for a gun (when there’s a riot going on.)” The parentheses are mine.
The blurb on this You Tube item says it’s a different version from the one on Surf’s Up.
This is the more familiar (to me) track from the album.
“What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground?
How can you run when you know?”
Previously I featured only C S and N. This is the full monty CSNY with their Neil Young composed protest song about the Kent State University shootings, Ohio.
The cover shown on the clip is of Deja Vu, but Ohio didn’t appear on that; only coming out on a studio album with the compilation So Far (on which a notable absentee was CSN’s first hit in the UK, “Marrakesh Express” – a track which for which I can only find fairly dodgy live versions on You Tube.)
I don’t believe I’d ever heard this song by Aphrodite’s Child until it was on Radio 2’s Sounds Of The Sixties recently. It’s clearly influenced by the mid 1960s British group Nirvana whom I featured some time ago – see my category. (Or perhaps it’s a Greek thing. Nirvana’s composer was Greek as were at least two members of Aphrodite’s Child.) There’s also a touch of Procol Harum’s A Whiter Shade Of Pale in the bass line and the organ.
It’s Five O’Clock:
The Aphrodite’s Child song I most remember, though, is Rain And Tears. There’s a murky sound quality film/video of them playing it on You Tube but I also came across this crisper version. A touch of Pachelbel’s Canon in the intro methinks. It gets everywhere.
As I recall (and Wikipedia confirms) Aphrodite’s Child spawned Demis Roussos and Vangelis but I’ll not hold that against them.
Two losses today. One is provisional but will most likely go through and that is the takeover of Cadbury by Kraft. This can only presage “restructuring” and job losses. Cadbury was one of the original good employers, renowned for treating its employees with consideration, actively looking out for their welfare. This arose from the Quaker traditions of the company’s founders. I can’t see much of that ethos surviving under Kraft.
Also, if the takeover is finalised can reformulation of Cadbury products using cheaper ingredients be far behind?
The other loss is irrevocable and struck me more personally. It is the death of Rugby Union commentator Bill McLaren. For many of my age he was – and remains – the voice of Rugby Union. His knowledge and enthusiasm for the game shone through every comment and his impartiality was impressive.
Rugby Union has never felt the same without him behind the microphone. I sometimes wondered how he felt about the modern professional era as, to me, it seems more soulless than in his commentating heyday.
The good lady told me she caught Mike d’Abo (the former Manfred Mann frontman, successor to Paul Jones) on TV last week talking about one of the songs he wrote, Handbags And Gladrags. She got the impression it had been written for Rod Stewart but I said I was sure Chris Farlowe had recorded it first.
D’Abo apparently said he had to write a woodwind part for Stewart but since he doesn’t write music he had to have someone transcribe it.
Whatever, the song has since become more widely known as a result of The Stereophonics recording and the version which was used as the theme music for Ricky Gervais’s “The Office” TV series.
I dislike the Stewart and Stereophonics versions both. (I can’t remember “The Office” one clearly. I didn’t watch that show.)
In theirs the relevant lyric is rendered as:-
“the handbags and the gladrags that your grandad had to sweat to buy you,”
which is okay but implies a willing benevolence on the grandad’s part and is rather sweet.
However it means something completely different – and much less damning – compared to the original:-
“the handbags and the gladrags that your grandad had to sweat so you could buy,”
which is more redolent of the wastrel ways of an ungrateful grandchild.
This is Chris Farlowe’s version (from 1968):-
There is, by the way, a connection of sorts between Chris Farlowe and myself. But I don’t want to make too much of it as I have read he has become something of a right winger and BNP adherent. (If this is not the case I apologise to him.)
There are no prizes for getting the connection as it’s pretty obvious.
When I was a Chemistry student at Glasgow University, way back when, the student Chemical Society was known as The Alchemists’ Club. Among its many functions was providing the team for an annual University Challenge with Strathclyde Chemistry students. (The year I was in the team we creamed them. Another of our team members loved quizzes so much he went on to the full University team and later appeared on Mastermind. Hello, Tam.)
However the most popular of the Alchemists’ Club’s endeavours was running a football league for students. The participants were allowed to choose their team names. With typical undergraduate, or indeed post-graduate, humour a fair few tended towards the rude but there were also word plays on the names of well known European teams of the time.
To get it out of the way first, there was the fairly obvious Arselona. A team of students whose studies straddled various disciplines called themselves Inter Course. Unless my memory serves me incorrectly there was also a bunch called Surreal Madrid. Another good one was Us Pissed Dossers, in homage to the Hungarians of Ujpest Dosza. But my personal favourite was No Time Toulouse. (I’ve always been partial to a pun; especially one that straddles two languages.)
No doubt inspiration for these creations was derived from the wonderful chutzpah of the works team of a firm of Glasgow bread bakers who adopted the magnificent moniker of A C Milanda. They even took up the red and black striped shirts of the more famous Italian team which has a similar name.
I can only imagine what such jokesters would have made of CFR Cluj.
*Edited to add:- Old age must be creeping up on me. I’d forgotten I’d posted the bulk of this already. I’ve only just seen it again on looking for something else. Serves me right for composing posts elsewhere and not scrubbing them from that file immediately. That earlier post has now been deleted.
Posted in Music, Nostalgia at 10:53 pm on 13 October 2009
This is by the Magic Lanterns, of whose existence I only learned when I looked the song up on You Tube.
They do seem to have had some impressive members, though, who went on to greater things.
However, the (actually quite good) version of this song that I remembered – and the reason I was searching for it – was by Chicory Tip.
