Well: the good lady and myself used to live there when I worked as a Research Chemist. We thought we’d see how it had changed in thirty years so made it one of the last stops on our recent trip down south.
I well remembered the cinema. The Embassy as was. The building is very deco indeed but is now a Wetherspoons pub called the Picture Palace.
Surprisingly the inside has not been mucked about with much. On either side of where the screen was situated – the screen itself appears still to be present behind the bar area – are some original panels one of which I tried to photograph (see left above) but the light level was very low so the result is grainy. Two photographs of the original interior are in a frame on the wall of the foyer (right, above.) The windows are not original but have been replaced very sympathetically. You can just about make them out here.
We astonished the waiter by saying we had actually seen films in it. (By the way, a true life incident – not to do with the film itself – from watching the first Star Trek movie there made it into my novel A Son Of The Rock in somewhat disguised form. It was too good not to use.)
Last week I heard a DJ on Radio 2 saying when Agnetha came to sing this song for Abba she must have said to Björn and Benny, “The lyric on this is insane! It doesn’t scan or rhyme.”
I think this lyric is fantastic, precisely because of the rhymes and scansion.
The rhyme scheme for the first verse is AABB*CC*DEFF* (where the * is for a part rhyme – which is more than common in popular music.) Moreover the D and E lines have an internal rhyme of lunch with bunch. Indeed, if you consider the line break is at “lunch” – which verses 2 and 3 suggest is more correct – the rhyme scheme becomes a near perfect AABB*CCDDEE.
The second and third verses both have an absolute AABBCCDDEE rhyming.
As to the scanning; it’s brilliant. In fact the line, “Undoubtedly I must have read the evening paper then,” is a wonderful iambic heptameter.
“There’s not, I think, a single episode of Dallas that I didn’t see,” is superb; the best line in any Abba song bar none. If you allow the “see-ee” at the end as an iamb it’s also a near perfect iambic nonameter.
The only thing I dislike about the lyric is it’s written in USian. Gotten is now archaic in British English – except for the phrase “ill-gotten gains” – and we don’t say “to go” but “to take away” or, in Scotland, “to carry out.” But then “to go” provides the rhyme.
Plus there’s an element of SF to it all, with the looking back to something that has changed, the implication of a life transformed.
I’ve always had a soft spot for the Blancmange version.
On our recent trip I seem to have passed through, or close to, a fair few towns in England that have or had teams in the Football League, which gave me some idea of their geographic proximity. Starting with Sheffield, we went on through Derby, bypassed Mansfield, then headed back up to Chesterfield where I photographed the famous crooked spire which lends the nickname Spireites to the local side.
Cheterfield had a large street market on the go the morning we were there. It made the place seem thriving though whether it truly is or not I have no idea.
After that it was up north through Huddersfield and Halifax on our way to Haworth again.
Yet in all these travels I caught sight of not one single football stadium – though I had seen a road sign for Brammall Lane in Sheffield.
The reason for going to Haworth this time was we hadn’t seen as much of it as we would have liked when we were there before.
This certainly wasn’t there in the Bronté’s time. It’s now a stop on the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway – one of those preservation railways which reflect the British love of nostalgia but are an important reminder of our industrial heritage.
We didn’t do the Bronté Parsonage this time but explored the old street more. There were more shops open this time including the old style sweetie shop where we bought something called Yorkshire Tablet – as sweet as Orkney Fudge but a bit softer – and had a browse round two second hand bookshops we don’t recall from two years ago. The good lady bought three books and I got a hardback of Tricia Sullivan’s Lethe; goodness knows when I’ll get round to reading it.
The Shadows were a bit before my time though they were a kind of Saturday night variety televisual backdrop to my childhood.
But I do know that they were important and that without them there might have been no Beatles, no Clapton, no Jeff Beck, Peter Green, Jimmy Page etc etc.*
It’s only right to mention, then, the passing of bassist Jet Harris.
Terence (Jet) Harris. 6/7/1939 -18/3/2011. So it goes.
*This is maybe overstating the case a little as some of these might have come to prominence anyway but there is more than a grain of truth in it.
I’ve mentioned before that for a short while the Troggs were my favourite band. (We’re all young once.)
This song leans almost entirely to their raunchy side except for the breathiness of the, “Wild Thing, I think I love you/Come on, hold me tight/You move me,” lines and the ocarina solo.
The clip once more puts the lie to the story that until videos came along there were no promotional films for singles. Note the Troggs uniform, stripy jackets and trousers.
Reg Presley would also give David Gray a close run in the strange-movement-of-the-head stakes.
The newpapers, television and radio have been full today with obituaries and tributes to Paisley born Gerry Rafferty who died yesterday.
His first well known appearances were with The Humblebums, a group of folk oriented musicians which included a certain Billy Connolly as a member.
When they split up Rafferty set out on his own for a while. Mary Skeffington, a song apparently about his mother, shows his folkiness at the time of his first solo LP, Can I Have My Money Back?, recorded before he joined the group where he had his first big success, Stealer’s Wheel, effectively a collaboration between Rafferty and Joe Egan.
The big hit, Stuck In The Middle With You, needs no introduction nor explanation but on that LP I liked more Rafferty’s quirkier song Benediction, a web friendly version of which unfortunately I cannot source. Also a hit was Star, said at the time to be a reflection of Rafferty’s fractured relationship with Connolly but in fact written by Egan. Any rift with Connolly was later repaired.
Stealer’s Wheel’s second LP was the unusually named Ferguslie Park, after a well known Paisley housing estate.
Rafferty’s biggest success came of course after the demise of Stealer’s Wheel when he resumed his solo career and recorded the LP City To City. There is barely a dud on there. My particular favourites are the title track, Mattie’s Rag and that fantastic ballad Whatever’s Written In Your Heart.
The blockbuster was Baker Street with its signature saxophone playing from Raphael Ravenscroft. (No. It wasn’t Bob Holness.) This recording was, as I recall, the first ever winner of a Brit Award for a single (though it may have been a similar award that was the Brits’ precursor.)
The two subsequent LPs Night Owl and Snakes And Ladders still saw Rafferty at the peak of his powers but a reluctance to tour and a shrinking from fame meant more big hits weren’t forthcoming.
[Edited to add:- Rafferty’s last brush with chart success came with his production work on The Proclaimers’ Letter From America (for an unusual take on which see here.) That recording’s final musical flourish – after the drawn-out “Lochaber no more” – seems to me to be pure Rafferty.]
A sad descent into alcoholism followed in his latter years.
Everyone will be featuring either Baker Street or Stuck In The Middle but I’m going with a song each from those latter two LPs where Rafferty was still in his pomp.
Gerry Rafferty: Get It Right Next Time
Gerry Rafferty: The Royal Mile (Sweet Darlin’)
I’ve just listened to Whatever’s Written In Your Heart again.
I can’t not put it in.
Gerry Rafferty: Whatever’s Written In Your Heart
Gerald (Gerry) Rafferty, 16/4/47-4/1/11. So it goes.
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.
“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 original clip (now vanished into the ether) was 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.
Aphrodite’s Child: 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 hint of Pachelbel’s Canon in the intro methinks. It gets everywhere.
Aphrodite’s Child: Rain and Tears
As I recall (and Wikipedia confirms) Aphrodite’s Child spawned Demis Roussos and Vangelis but I’ll not hold that against them.
