Sam Henderson explains some @%#*!
The whole idea of deleting of expletives in the comics is historical revisionism on the part of a few blue-noses. It's little known that until the 50s, swearing was normal in the medium. During the Red scare, censorious legislators all but erased any evidence, but sometimes you can find things here and there. On a 'Little Nemo' original from 1906, the last panel shows the title character saying, "Shit, that was one fucked-up dream!". When Jiggs tried to sneak out at night in 'Bringing Up Father', it was typical of Maggie to bait him with, "Come back here you fucking mick asshole!" Even into the fifties, EC's flagship title was called 'Tales From the Fucking Crypt', with the tagline, "It'll make ya shit!". My favorite is a Krazy Kat Sunday from 1932 that's only one panel with Ignatz on the horizon, the top 80% of the space taken up by a single speech balloon saying "KUNT!!"
palmed from the collection plate
ROCK AND ROLL PRONOUNCIATIONatone for my sins at the parish
Parishioner Stuart Maconie:
Can I be the first, oh please, to venture Paul Weller as the grand vizier and nabob of the rubbish pronunciation. Exhibit A)"Come on boy, come on girl, Succumb (with B proudly, wrongly sounded several times in the course of the song) to the Beat Surrender" Exhibit B) "Until the Unity is threatened by / Those who have and who have not / Those who are with and those who are without ...(wait for it, it's worth it). And dangle jobs like a donkey's carrot." That's Carrot, emphasis on the second syllable to rhyme with, well, "have not" obviously. As for the childish mispronunciation as in Costello's "spectaclear", Julian Cope did once call an album Skellington but I think the arch-drude knew this was wrong. I eagerly await news that Robbie Williams sings about "chimleys" somewhere"ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR-DOH!"
Parishioner Rodney Kennard:
"Horrible Bass? Look no further than Rod Stewart's "Maggie May". Apparently reading the changes off the back of a fag packet, having left his glasses at home, Ronnie Wood insouciantly lurches and fumbles his way through what he must have assumed to be a preliminary run through. Originally buried artfully in the mix, digital re-mastering now exposes the ensuing shambles in all its ragged glory. There again, Honest Ron has made a career of this sort of thing. One still recalls, with shock & awe, his slide guitar "feature" at one of the last Faces dates, at Reading Festival, notable for its free-form approach to microtonality and oblique homage to the serial scale..."STATE FUNERAL FOR SLIM DUSTY
Parishioner Malcolm Hill beams in from Australia: "I attended the State Funeral for Slim Dusty last Friday and a fine and fitting affair it was; he was a lovely man. Australia knows how to treat its icons. The tragedy of Slim's death was nearly matched on the day by Jimmy (Cold Chisel) Barnes haircut, modelled on Robbie Williams mohican. Thank God I have a 17 year old who tells me when I'm about to cross the fashion boundary. Also making his way up the staircase is Scarborough's own soul legend Robert Palmer. Another lovely man, a complete gent and great to be around not least because, as they are prone to say down here, he was a major 'fanny magnet'."
Parishioner Alan Robinson diverges from a brief entry of relevance:
"...I've got to do a slot on Robert Elms' show on BBC Radio London on Friday, called 'What's All The Fuss About'? This week, it's about Roxy Music. Some fabulous stories came to mind. 'Country Life' features two scantily clad women on the cover, and I recall that it was banned in the USA, apparently because a Mid-Western granny came home to find her grandson practising his 'five knuckle shuffle' with the sleeve for inspiration. The US record company replaced the front image with the reverse sleeve image, which is, of course, a bush. Who says Americans don't appreciate irony? Also, for the Country Life tour, Bryan Ferry (or Burn Fiery, or Byron Ferrari, or whatever else the NME used to roundly insult ol' Bryan with) started off sporting a 'Gaucho' look, with a billowing white shirt and voluminous trousers, until someone pointed out that said strides made his arse look huge, and he swiftly opted for a more figure-flattering set of US Army fatigues. Also, when Brian Eno was drop-kicked through the Roxy goalposts, he apparently went on some kind of sexual safari, apparently having sex with numerous women in a twenty-four period, resulting in the collapse of one of his lungs. I'm surprised that that was all that collapsed. Can anyone shed light on this story?"
nicked from vic
ROCK & ROLL GAFFESget yer own honey smacks at rockingvicardotcom
Parishioner Jake: "Can I give special mention to my two favourite fluffed guitar solos committed to CD: 1) Get Back from the Beatles Anthology's Third cash grabber. To be fair to George, he was under a bit of pressure what with the police hanging round waiting to cut them off but even so, that's a real bum note he hits isn't it? and 2) Party Girl by U2 on the Live From Red Rocks album. The whole solo merits replaying a few times to bathe in its majesty but the crowning moment is when Bono shouts "Guitar Hero!" towards the end of it in what I've always hoped was the first recorded attempt at sarcasm from the previously po-faced Irish rocker."Parishioner Paul Maguire: "Regarding esoteric tuning issues, Mick Ronson's terrifyingly off-key guitar lick halfway through White Light White Heat on Ziggy Stardust: The Motion Picture has always cheered me up. A whole semitone out for the most part. However in his defence:
1) it was live
2) there were lots of strobe light effects
3) he'd only recently finished a 10 minute guitar/bass duel with Trevor Bolder during Width Of A Circle AND survived Bowie's trapped-in-a-box mime routine. Not forgetting that this is a man pretending to be an alien rock star who's scared of flying in real life.
4) Add the fact that Ronno had been forced to wear lots of make-up and sequinned knickerbockers for the previous 18 months (surely quite traumatic for a former municipal gardener from Hull) and it all becomes quite understandable really.
5) Plus, to really cap a wonderful night Bowie sacks them all on stage one song later!"Brother Ronald Hackston: "Listening recently to the Proclaimers' cover version of Roger Miller's King Of The Road, the following occurred to me. The protagonist of this song claims to "know every engineer on every train, all of their children, and all of their names". An astounding feat, even if he only means all the engineers on trains in the USA. A quick search on the interweb tells us that Union Pacific, the largest US train operator, has a total of 7,094 locomotives, each presumably with its own engineer (the figure was probably higher in Miller's day, before the advent of large-scale road freight and cheap air travel but let's stick with this for now). So taking these 7,094 engineers and allocating them each 2.4 children, we are left with a staggering 24,119.6 names which have somehow been memorised by this self-styled "King Of The Road". With mental skills which more than rival those of Derren Brown, why is our protagonist living the life of a bum? Could he perhaps be the product of a scientific experiment gone awry, who wanders from town to town a la Bill Bixby in The Hulk? He describes himself as a "man of means", so maybe he is the idiot savant child of a wealthy family who have exiled him to a nomadic existence, while continuing to send him enough remittance to rent a trailer and purchase the occasional "old stogie". If by any chance Mr Miller is still alive and/or reading this, perhaps he could elucidate on this matter."
SATIRICAL SONGS ABOUT THE INDUSTRY
Parishioner Jeremy Stephen: "I don't know about satirical but, Starry Eyes by The Records, is supposed to be a fairly blistering attack on their then management."
The Vicar wonders if Parishioner Will Birch might like to read The Epistle regarding this one. Next Evensong, if poss?"Parishioner Val Jennings: "Singer/songwriter and session singer extraordinaire Lesley Duncan penned a very vitriolic attack for her second CBS album Earth Mother, in 1972. In Fortieth Floor, presumably the New York location of the hapless record executive's office, Miss Duncan spits "You caged the songbird but you can't make it sing". Further on she declaims "When your time comes,just do your sums/And count the enemies you've made". Perhaps not surprisingly, this was the last album she made for CBS."
Parishioner Dave "Smudgeboy" Smith: "Let's not forget our own Parishioner Partridge from Swindon who's been known to rail against the industry in general in Funk Pop A Roll from the Mummer album ("Funk pop a roll beats up my soul/Oozing like napalm from your speakers and grilles on the radio"), but also spectacularly against a former manager in the magnificently cutting I Bought Myself A Liarbird from the Big Express LP ("I bought myself a big mistake/It grew too greedy, bough will break/And then we will see that/Liarbirds are really flightless on their own"). Wonderful spleen-ventage! "
ONE HIGHER
Phil Champ of the French parish of Beausoleil: "A record producer whose name escapes me for the moment once said that you can tell when they've run out of creative ideas on a record if the whole song suddenly lurches up a key about halfway through. You know, Boney M's Brown Girl In The Ring and plenty of other rubbish records. What I'd like to know is, though, are there any truly *great* pieces of music which feature the tell-tale key change?"
John Coulthart writes
"Shadowsnake is the company behind the Alan Moore documentary, 'The Mindscape of Alan Moore'. I've done the poster for the film. I don't think they've had much chance to develop their site, they've been too busy finishing the film and approaching festivals about a screening. People are going to be knocked out by the documentary, as it's the best thing that's been done to date about Alan and his work/life. A lot of the TV stuff he's been involved with has been cheap and amateurish, this is leagues beyond them all, with great sensitivity and intelligence shown towards his comics and his philosophies. Good music as well. And you get to hear how Rorschach speaks when Alan reads the opening lines from Watchmen at one point."
where don't babies come from?
"The Shire of Wyndham-East Kimberley in Western Australia's north-west is considering adopting so-called ‘condom trees’ to reduce sexually transmissible infections in the town of Kununurra.
...
"The idea has had some success in the West Australian towns of Fitzroy Crossing, Derby and Halls Creek.
...
"'The council is supportive of the concept but just believes a little bit of thought needs to go into the location of where these condom trees are located and also about some other issues about disposal of waste and those sorts of things.'"
I was washing up when
my flatmate came in and said "I wrote 'detention' on the board today, and put a frowny face in the 'O'."And I wonder why my students don't take me seriously."
