Friday is Fucking off to Manchester
This weekend there will be a trip to Manchester. Meursault have a gig there – in the Saki Bar on Saturday, I think – and Mrs. Toad and I are taking the opportunity to drive them down and visit my Granddad, on my Mum’s side, who lives there. He’s lived in the same house for the last forty years, one which he bought for something like two thousand pounds when the family moved out of Moss Side. See, I told you I was nothing like as posh as you think I am, despite my (raised in Moss Side, remember) mother’s determination to surround herself with begonias, organic vegetable patches and copies of Country fucking Living magazine.
So, we’ll drive down, see the gig, say hi to Granddad and then hopefully cook a Sunday roast the next day before coming back to Edinburgh. Sunday roasts are one of my strongest memories of that house. Back when my Grandma was alive Sunday lunch was a pretty bloody big deal – the house was always full and I absolutely always, without fail, got in trouble for quietly disappearing at some point to gnaw on the bone in the kitchen.
Manchester is an odd place for me, though. I suffered massive, massive culture shock when, thinking myself basically English, I moved there from Vienna to go to university. It was a horrible year: I was too foreign to be English, and too English to get the kind of tolerance actual foreigners get, so basically people just didn’t know how to interact with me at all. It was, however, the first time I really started getting into indie music and going to gigs and so on, so I suppose there are advantages to not wanting to spend time with your peers.
The other time I lived in Manchester was when I was inbetween uni and my first job, working in a gangster nightclub (guns pulled, stabbings, brawls, the lot) and with no idea how to actually get a job in my actual professional field. I was flat, flat broke and really fucking fed up – mind you I discovered some great albums then too – inevitably I suppose. So I always think of Manchester quite negatively these days, just because I’ve always been so fucking miserable when I’ve lived there. It’s no fault of the city itself of course, but I really can’t shake that unpleasant reaction I get to the place. And, stupidly, I really like Glasgow and the two cities are virtually identical in almost every sense.
1. Strongest memory of childhood times in your Grandparents’ house.
2. What do you irrationally hate, just because your life was shit when you encountered it?
3. Great album found during a shit time in your life.
4. Where did you go to University, if at all?
5. Most embarrassing muppet you’ve introduced to your grandparents.
The Lemonheads – If I Could Talk I’d Tell You
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Barenaked Ladies – You Will be Waiting
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The Pogues – First Day of Forever
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Yo La Tengo – Cherry Chapstick
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Ooh, one I have decent answers for!
1. Strongest memory of childhood times in your Grandparents’ house.
I always remember my mum and my gran sitting in my gran’s kitchen smoking away and me coming home from school once and just being hit with this wall of smoke and horrific smell as I opened the door. I can honestly say that this is the main reason I never took up smoking.
2. What do you irrationally hate, just because your life was shit when you encountered it?
Dundee.
3. Great album found during a shit time in your life.
The first Tindersticks LP. I was at uni and not having a great time and I remember listening to Mark Radcliffe on Radio 1 a lot and he played a lot of songs off this record, and they kinda resonated to me being alone in a cold room in a shit town so I went out and bought it and listened to it a lot more. Still love it to this day.
4. Where did you go to University, if at all?
See question 2.
5. Most embarrassing muppet you’ve introduced to your grandparents.
I can’t think of any, my pals have tended to be quite sane! My gran always tells me of how polite my mate JC was whenever she saw him on the bus, always asking after her and giving up a seat and all that malarkey. Now he’s got 5 kids and she can’t quite believe that!
1.Definitely chowing on the carcass after a roast, but maybe sitting halfway down the stairs when I’d been sent out of the room during a TV program I was deemed too young for. I couldn’t see it, but I could hear it, which was as naughty as I had the guts to be.
2. Yep, Manchester counts.
3. I’d probably choose either Laid by James or Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out by Yo La Tengo.
4. Manchester for a year, then Glasgow, with a year on Groningen in there somewhere as well.
5. That will probably be happening this weekend.
1) i have loads of memories of my grandparents….from over cooked sprouts….to pocket money…..to the unconditional love you get off them….i miss them greatly!
2)My ex-girlfriend, from around the time my dad died……selfish fucking cow!
3) Whiteout – Bite it, from the same time as no2
4) University of Bradford – great uni, only 7000 student, quite homely and you got to recognise a lot of folk, tho, in hindsight, i did the wrong course. Should have done Peace Studies (international development and conflict resolution) over Sociology and Social Psychology.
5) they didn’t live close enough for me to introduce them to anyone really.
1. Strongest memory of childhood times in your Grandparents’ house.
being ill and getting sent to my grans house…every time! there was never anything to do but I never seemed to mind.
2. What do you irrationally hate, just because your life was shit when you encountered it?
see no.4
3. Great album found during a shit time in your life.
either/or by elliott smith. not really willing to go into detail with this one but I can’t imagine how miserable those years would have been without that record
4. Where did you go to University, if at all?
Telford College….see above
5. Most embarrassing muppet you’ve introduced to your grandparents.
I think you know the answer to this one Toad.
actually, i’ve just though, i rediscovered Gold by Ryan Adams a couple of years ago…..awesome break-up album! (though i never really stopped listening to it from one it came out i just got a greater appreciation of it after going through one of lifes tumbles)
1. I have too many to mention too – my Gran was a huge influence on me, from her devout loyalty to her family to her wicked wicked sense of humour. Also she watched snooker on her black and white TV. Even at 5 the irony wasn’t lost on me!
2. I couldn’t think of any, but just to be slightly controversial, I think that I put my dislike of James down to my sister playing Laid day in day out when we were in the last months of sharing a room. Once we got our own room our relationship effectively ended for about 5 years.
3. Libertines – Up the Bracket. For a thousand depressing reasons, but I still love it.
4. Duncan of Jordanstone in Dundee.
5. Ex boyfriend who went by the nickname Ghenghis… nuff said! My Gran told me he was a twat, but at 16, I chose to take the brutal path of finding out all by myself!
1. Playing the organ. It was immense. Though I was too young to actually know what I was doing. It now lives in my flat in Edinburgh. It’s rather special.
2. The Smiths. Nick Drake. Joni Mitchell. But mostly the Smiths.
3. Jon Spencer. No particular album. Just Jon Spencer. It’s impossible to be miserable whilst listening to someone sing the line “Take a whiff of my pant leg, honey”.
4. Stirling. I think at the time it had the highest suicide rate in the UK. And the rooms in my halls of residence were based on Swedish prison cells. Fun times.
5. Can’t think of anyone.
Also, can I just add:
Barenaked Ladies. What. The. Fuck?
1. .Both my Scottish and French Granny smuggling me sweets before bed time. They would carry them around in their dressing gowns. My grandmere giving me this cool doll that played records in it’s belly. She had knitted tons of lovely clothes for it too.
2. Abba and hugh grant he’s so shit his name doesn’t even get capital letters.
3. One of Billy Holidays, it was nice and depressing. Can’t remember the name of it though because i think it was a copied tape.
4. Dumpdee
5. They died when I was quite young so I never got to introduce anyone to then unfortunatly.
1. Playing with my dad’s 1960s Lego. I couldn’t get over the fact that there were only two colours. That and staring in awe at the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in most of the rooms.
2. Having a flatmate. A friend of mine moved in when my dad moved out and not killing him is my single greatest achievement so far.
3. Think Tank by Blur. I worked my way backwards from there.
4. University of Cape Town.
5. They are/were too far away.
“Barenaked Ladies. What. The. Fuck?”
seconded.
up there with chumbaw…. can’t even bring myself to say it.
1)Putting holes in the nylon sofa cover by burning sparklers while they were in the pub…..not a good next day
2) No bad things here
3) This is so rubbish an answer all round but UB40 – Signing off was my O levels revision aid
4) Newcastle Uni – I remember they tried to rename the Poly, City University of Newcastle upon Tyne genius
5) A pal ‘hazza’ who was a miner. He should have stopped the ‘when we were in the pit’ stories way before he did.
Oh are Meursault any good? I may take Mrs C to see them.
1. Its either my gran pretending her kitchen was a real chip shop and making me a poke of chips out of newspaper then me giving her pretend money and getting pretend change or my grandad taking apart every appliance in the house and putting them back together to find that they no longer work.
2. uni. biggest waste of time so far in my life.
3. first year of uni was up there for the worst times so far but i did discover nick cave and the boatmans call.
4. napier ten stevenson ten napier again. whay didnt i learn, seriously.
5. yeah quite a few of my friends growing up were idiots. one in particular used to throw tantrums all the time even when we were about thirteen he would act like a toddler. I remember we were having a pretend boxing match in the spare room at my grans and i caught him a cracker on the chin. he started crying and lay on the floor for a minute then got up doing his ultimate warrior/hulk hogan impression. he ran through to the bathroom picked up the toliet brush, chased me round the house swinging it and nocking my poor grans ornaments off the shelves. my gran grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and threw him out the flat. he was never allowed round to my grans again.
1. Strongest memory of childhood times in your Grandparents’ house.
probably visiting my grandparents in Lancaster and bursting my new ‘fly away’ football after about 5 minutes of having it. My dad managed to solder it back together. Don’t you just love a happy ending
2. What do you irrationally hate, just because your life was shit when you encountered it?
Aberdeen, been there once and it was SHIT (due to an ex)
3. Great album found during a shit time in your life.
Snow Patrol – When It’s All Over We Still Have To Clear Up
nursed me through a broken heart
4. Where did you go to University, if at all?
Strathclyde and Liverpool
5. Most embarrassing muppet you’ve introduced to your grandparents
all my friends are muppets, but then so am I, so I will go with myself
1. My grandparents were all dead before I was born except my Dad’s dad. I don’t remember any fond memories at are house and the nursing home she ended her days in wasn’t much fun. Sadly I never really knew my grandparents, which is why it means so much to me that Roddy gets to know his.
2. Train journeys to Glasgow
3. Mogwai – Come On Die Young
4. Same place as Shonagh. DOJ in Dundee.
5. Myself.
1. Playing the organ. It was immense. Though I was too young to actually know what I was doing.
We used to have a harmonium. It was great. It had a bunch of knobs labelled in gothic script with names like Vox Dei and Omni Vox and you had to keep pedalling like a manic otherwise it’d give up and sulk.
No Cogstar, Meersalt are shit.
Come on, Matthew. They’re okay.
1) Hockey Night in Canada. It ‘s like Canadian Match of the Day, only more so because Canadian take hockey more seriously.
2) When you say good morning to people and the respond with a sigh so you’ll ask them how they are and then moan and moan and moan.
3) Phantom Power by the Tragically Hip. Still has two or three of my favourite songs in the world on it.
4) Hull. Which means Va Va Voom by Cinerama could qualify for question 3.
5) Grandad loves my mates. They come over for tea. One of them even spent a day with him working on an elaborate Indian Jones style booby trap for a squirrel.
Meersalt are a bit like Fun Loving Criminals….any help?
Bugger had been trying to be first this week!
Ok…
1. My mother’s parents were dead by the time I was born, more or less, and we would go and stay, once in a blue moon, with my Dad’s Dad and Stepmother in a place called Penarth, which is on the edge of Cardiff. Lots of tea drunk…. No seatbelts in the back of nana’s car…grandpa seeming to be grumpy…
2. Rugby. Public school boys, generally, speaking. Christian fundamentalists.
3. If narrowed down to one, it would be The Queen Is Dead by The Smiths.
4. BA and MA in Philosophy at Canterbury, abortive PGCE at Cambridge (the most artificial place I have ever lived), then PGCE (that is teacher training if you’re really bothered) at Edinburgh.
5. Because we rarely saw them, that didn’t happen. If that said parents, the list would be really, really long…
Thanks RC , I quite like Scooby Snax , do they do a cover version?
Oh yeah, harmoniums…very very cool, sounds like it’s one on the vinyl track of The Cure’s Disintegration…
That should read final track, not vinyl track. Obviously.
no but the lead singer tries to look like a shite gangster! and puts on this weird London accent eg – ya gooing doown ya slag
‘
Ed, none of those are irrational hatreds.
True, Bart!! the worst thing about being ex-public school and being quite ‘big’ is that people assume I play Rugby. the reality is I hated most of the people I went to school with, who would no doubt be very snide about me going to Easter Rd to watch Hibs, and I never fitted in. Oh and I would never vote Tory.
As for christian fundamentalists…yeeeuuuch.
1. Can I have two, as my grandparents were utter legends who I miss all the time. My Grandad used to get my sister and I playing “Indiana Jones”, where he would roll a cushioned footstool down the stairs and we would have to cycle out of the way at mega speeds on our trike, while Gran shrieked “Gibson, be careful!” On sunny days we would take loads of pipes and associated DIY things out into the garden and water the plants by a convoluted series of pipes all joined together from the kitchen to the garden. It was amazing. They were line dancing DJs, and they ruled the world.
2. Liars.
3. Interpol – Turn On The Bright Lights. Although it will always be associated with Milton Keynes, poor thing.
4. Oxford, then here. And still here. Eurgh.
5. An ex boyfriend called Luke, who liked to pierce his own ears with safety pins and had an IQ similar to that of your favourite dog, who tries hard but will ultimately fail in everything. He’s now “singing” in a black metal band in Batley, and hence has the most inaccessible MySpace page I have ever been subjected to.
They should get themselves a record label and some promotion, it’s sounds like they’d do quite well. I’ll be sure to wear spats to make them feel at home.
thanks guys
Chutters went to uni in Bradford and liked it?!
I am gobsmacked, frankly. Did you ever go to Bradford Rios?!
2. Liars.
Why not hate them because they’re completely up themselves and couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket? That’s a much better reason.
yeah….all the time….but mainly Weds night!
i loved Bradford when i lived there (yeah it can be a bit grim, but on the whole it was pretty amazing), but hated Leeds when i lived there!
Wednesday nights at Rios were some of the best nights I have ever had! The most bizarre but wonderful mix of tunes, and not an ounce of pretension from anyone.
When were you there?
And Liars – just can’t listen to them because of aforementioned hatred. Maybe I’ve been spared?
from 1997 through to 2001ish
1. My maternal grandparents lived in a large, old, cold house in the country that had been a speakeasy during Prohibition in the 1920s and 1930s. A pretty impressive, spooky place for a kid. When we’d visit, I’d put on my footie pajamas and sleep in a huge bed in an old-fashioned second floor bedroom. One night, at the age of 6 or 7, as I lay there in the pitch dark, I heard a gravelly voice from the hallway whisper “I am the devil” in a sort of moaning voice. I screamed, and my grandmother came running up the stairs, where she found my twisted freak of a grandfather lying on the hallway floor weeping with laughter. The bastard.
2. The Rosebuds (the band).
3. Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois.
4. The State University of New York at Albany.
5. Myself at the age of 20.
1. My nan on my mum’s side used to make welshcakes when the family were visiting, but I didn’t like raisins as a kid so I’d get a special batch just for me with dessicated coconut in. My grandparents on my dad’s side had a little Farfisa organ in the house and I’d always spend most of the visit tonking away on that.
2. Surrey
3. I was a bit grumpy around the time that first Young Republic album came out.
4. I managed to get a good clutch of GCSEs without opening a single book for revision, then tried the same trick for my A levels and utterly failed, forcing me to enrol in the university of life. That’s a big regret for me because I’d been offered a place on a specialised music industry management course in Farnborough that was so popular it generally only offered places to about 10% of the total applicants. I also had an offer pending from Durham and missed out on that too. Cock.
5. They all lived a long way away growing up so I’m not sure if they ever met any of my mates.
Ed, I can’t imagine you fitting in at Easter Road – do you have the hibs badge tattoo’d on any part of you????!!
Liars are a bit like Animal Collective only without the solid grounding in reality, imo.
1. We used to go to my Nan’s in London every christmas. Her fucking amazing steak pie served with her home-grown new potatoes springs easily to mind. Since I went down every year while I was growing rapidly, and Nan was always waiting at the door when we rolled up, I can picture the same doorway greetings with Nan getting smaller and smaller relative to my increasing bulk. My american grandparents, I remember them trying (and failing) to force feed me honey roast ham, which I had a momentary dislike of.
2. Aye, I’d go for Dundee too, the awful time being my last 7 years of school. Not sure about the irrational though.
3. Arab Strap-Philophobia. Somehow this got me through the massive balls-up that was my 18th birthday.
4. I went to Aberdeen Uni, and mostly had a fantastic time. That strange architecture program that was on the other day brought it all back.
5. London Nan was too nice for anyone to be a problem. I introduced my pal Harry to American grandparents (at the time living on a farm in Illinois), and he had pink hair. Of particular note to the entire farming community was his red Doc Martens, which I think were mentioned in that week’s sermon in town. Extended family who I barely recognise still ask me how he’s doing.
“Couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket” Good work!
Has no-one else given Bart a hard time for saying that he used to go and play on his Granddad’s organ, which was apparently immense? Bart, that’s not okay, you don’t have to let people do that.
And yes, the fucking Barenaked Ladies. They did become shit, but they absolutely unquestionably did some great stuff. And there was a spell of a couple of years where they were one of the best live bands going. Deal with it, hippies.
1. My uncle drowning kittens in an outdoor drainage system thing. I was about 6 and sobbing, and my dad tried to tell me they were just teaching them to swim.
2. Chicken?
3. Fevers and Mirrors (Is there anything better to listen to when you’re a whiny emo teenager?) or People that Can eat People are the Luckiest People in the World by AJJ, for much the same reason.
4. Bristol. Surprisingly easy to get in and to pass exams.
5. They were all dead/living abroad before I was anywhere near old enough to do introductions.
Chutters: We may have overlapped right at the end – you never knew Michael Oates did you? He’d have been a student about then and was a Wednesday regular (ish). That would be weird.
No Euan, no tattoos full stop, but I go to the East Stand with my friend Alan, read the Hibernian, wear my Hibs scarf and hat, and join in the chants:
” We hate Glasgow Rangers,
We hate Celtic too (THEY’RE SHITE!!!!)
We hate Hearts of Midlothian
-but Hibernian; we love you.’
as sung to the tune of ‘Land Of Hope and Glory.’
Always enjoy going to Easter Rd, the next Edinburgh derby taking place at Tynecastle should be interesting. Maybe won’t wear my scarf in the street for that one…
As for other posts:
1. Bare Naked Ladies – ‘Be My Yoko Ono.’ GREAT. ‘One week – fucking terrible.
2. Liars may sound weird but that’s why I like them. Bands that scare the beejayzus out of people (see also Wolf Eyes) are fab.
Whiteout – Bite It!
Amazing
Love that album. Big Wow was ok after it too but probably not as good overall perhaps. The main guy Eric Lindsay has released some new stuff … http://www.myspace.com/elipop
C&B – Your #1 was hilarium.
Voldermania’s dad sounds like a lovely, sensitive chap, doesn’t he?
Liars may sound weird but that’s why I like them.
I’ve no problem with bands that sound weird (I read this blog, so, obviously), but Liars are just a navel-gaze too far for me.
Though I do rather enjoy Person Pitch by Panda Bear, which most of my friends find indistinguishable from Liars. So, yeah.
For the record, I didn’t say I played my Grandad’s organ. Or that it was immense. Or that I now keep it in my bedroom in Edinburgh.
Also, “their early stuff was good” is not a get-out clause for every single fucking band in the world.
And sometimes, no matter how “amazing” their early stuff was, releasing a song as vile as “One Week” is enough to render all their other material irrelevant.
Don’t even get me started on the Fun Loving Criminals.
Are Barenakedladies the ones who did that vile Mmmmmmmmm song? Cause they should die in a fire.
Oh yeah! One Week – that was it!
I was trying to remember the name of the Barenaked Ladies song I liked..
Anotherdave, you’re thinking of the Crash Test Dummies.
Another hilariously monickered exponent of radio-friendly acoustic pop with oh so clever and amusing lyrics that were big with teenage girls and idiots back in the mid to late 90s.
I’m sorry. Maybe I should re-address my answer to question two….
Barenaked Ladies and Crash Test Dummies both have good songs. A little like the Divine Comedy, however, they are remembered for by far their worst – National Express Syndrome.
I stand by the likes of Superman’s Song, Lucy, or Wrap Your Arms Around me against the sneering assault of any ginger cunt who was raised playing his grandfather’s immense organ.
1. swearing
2. Liverpool
3. Surfer Rosa
4. Birmingham, Newcastle and Edinburgh. I am overqualified to do anything except my current job. Which is temporary.
5. I can still remember an incident clear as day aged 16 when I was the muppet.
Barenaked Ladies and Crash Test Dummies both have good songs.
I liked the Crash Test Dummies when I was twelve. Unfortunately I have come to realise that between the ages of about eight and fifteen everything I liked was shit, with the possible exception of Asterix.
I really like Person Pitch…might have to go check out Liars, although they don’t have very good album covers, a quick google reveals.
Go and clean your monocle, then re-read my above comment, substituting “one week” with the words “mmmm” “mmmm” “mmmm” and “mmmm”.
I lo e both the Barenaked Ladies and Crash Test Dummies, and wonder about people who are so contemptuos of them. My recollection of both bands was that all my music cred freinds loved them right up until they were over played. Then the sneering began. One Week is a really fun song, like If I Had a Million Dollars, it has a whimsey that got irritating after the hundredth time through
Erm, that was a bit pissier than I meant it. What I was trying to say was: Crash Test Dummies are like the really bad haircut I had in grade six that I’d much rather not think about again, good songs or no. Perhaps I should rethink my answer for 2 as well.
Asterix still rocks though.
1. My grandparents on my mum’s side were both broon bread before I was born and my dad’s side live in fucking Australia so I can’t really answer that one.
2. Seventeen year old males, Sociology Higher, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone(the book), Portishead, Radiohead, the smell of lavender, M&S in Morningside, christmas parties, the fucking OC, Stirling Uni, Stevenson College(Mr. Bear, something about colleges in Edinburgh just ain’t right.)…I have a suspicion this list would go on forever so I’ll just stop.
3. The Glow Pt. 2 by The Microphones and I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning by Bright Eyes.
4. Not been yet, but I’m looking forward to that torturous chapter in my life.
5. See above.
1. Probably the year my brother and I decided it would be fine to open all our Christmas presents first thing in the morning rather than waiting ’till we’d all been to mass. Guilt trip central for the next five years.
2. I wonder whether I hate London purely because I had a really shit year when I moved there for uni or whether that year was shit, at least in part, because I was in London. Regardless I’m going for London on this one.
3. Blur – Blur
4. London, then Edinburgh – both pretty disastrous.
5. My grand parents never really met many people I know, so I don’t really have an answer for this one.
Oh yeah! Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm – that was it!
I was trying to remember the name of the Crash Test Dummies song I liked..
1. Sawdust – my grandpa among many other things was once a carpenter and he was always building things in his shed. His last job was overseeing the fitting out of pubs for Dryburgh’s brewery in Edinburgh and used to salvage all sorts of things. I remember the time he came back with a solid section of granite about 1m by 3m sticking out the boot of the car. To this day it’s still going strong as a table top in my grandparents’ garden. My grandpa is still going strong on the carpentry front too, in his early 80s, he was up on my tenement roof inspecting the tiles last year and this month was supervising my attempts to restore my sash and case windows to something like working order – he used to build them, which is handy.
2. Probably Blur. I respect their more recent stuff, but when I was introduced to them at school I was a cynical bastard and saw them as just ripping off a bunch of artists I liked – The Stone Roses, Pavement, Chas ‘n’ Dave…
3. The obvious one is ‘Blood on the Tracks’, recommended by a friend of mine as “Dylan’s divorce album”. But my wilderness years in early University were soundtracked by Natalie Merchant’s ‘Ophelia’ – not a great album compared to her 10,000 Maniacs stuff, but I love her voice, especially on that record.
4. Edinburgh University, initially as an engineering student, then once I realised my maths limit, I graduated as a geologist. Uni was an excuse not to be in full time employment, and my social circle was all around my evening job working in Thins.
5. Probably an ex-girlfriend, but that would just sound bitter.
Having read the comments here, I realise I need to amend my answer to 2 to Barenaked Ladies (one too many tos?). The girl with whom I suffered a messy break up (which necessitated the ‘Blood on the Tracks’ remedy’) loved the Barenaked Ladies that is pretty much all she would play. That and the ‘Music to Watch Girls By’ swing compilations.
My mates and I had a classification for this sort of vaguely credible guitar stuff (Crash Test Dummies/Barenaked Ladies/Zero 7) – “music for people who don’t like music.” Sorry Mr Toad!
The day anyone puts Zero7 and BNL in the same category you know they are embittered by sexual failure.
shite is pretty wide category tho Matthew!
And Bart, you are attacking the wrong songs. I’m not defending those.
Who do you object to being placed in the same category with whom? I mean, is it Barenakedladies that shouldn’t be sullied with association with Zero7 or is it Zero7 who are far above those Canadian cretins?
Barenaked Ladies, for all their list of sins, have some good songs – two good albums, basically. Zero7 have not one single good song.
Is One Week not that song with the line where the only word you can remember is “chicken”? blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-CHICKEN-blah-blah…
Yup, that’s the one. Used in American Pie too, just to make matters even worse.
Mmmm, pie.
I thought those were the actual lyrics.
What I’m saying is that some songs are so unspeakably awful that they render the rest of an artist’s output null and void.
It’d be like if you discovered Toploader actually had some pretty decent songs lurking in their back catalogue from before they got famous. They’d still be fucking Toplaoder.
Dancing in th… no, Bart, I can’t say it and you can’t make me.
You know what song I hate that has a really prominent use of the word ‘chicken’, that also fits into this abysmal subgenre of MOR-American-college-frat-boy-cunt-lounge-guitar-pap we’ve blunedered into? Drops Of fucking Jupiter.
I just had to google it to find the band’s name. Train, apparenlty.
Bunch of wankers.
But hang on, BNL and the Crash Test Dummies and even Zero fucking 7 are light years above fucking Toploader. Christ, even rapists are better than Toploader. You’d have to kill a lot of children in a pretty creative manner before I’d consider your sins to just maybe compare to Dancing in the Mjndfghflrrrhj.
Being liked by chummy American frat boys could pretty much ruin the appeal of any band.
Well then you should understand that your gut wrenching knee-jerk reaction to that Toploader song is the same for me when I hear someone mention the Barenaked Ladies. Or Crash Test Dummies. Or Fun Loving Criminals. Or Train. Or Zero 7. Or Nickelback. Or Wheatus…
When he sings that bit “Na.. Na.. Na.. fried chicken.” so fucking triumphantly, I could batter the cunt with a KFC bargain bucket, I really could.
Embittered by something I may be (and reading back through my post it’s hard to argue), but Zero 7 always struck me as a similarly lightweight, disposable pop-rock outfit to the Barenaked Ladies. Although I will readily admit to a lack of any real knowledge of Zero 7′s catalogue.
“Na.. Na.. Na.. fried chicken.” Wasn’t that Freddie Mercury on the playout to ‘One Vision’?
Bart, I understand your reaction, I’m just disagreeing with it. I can see why anyone would hate BNL or CTD, but I would still say that both bands do have a bit of decent stuff in their early records if you can suppress the rage long enough to hear it.
Poppycock.
ditto
To be honest, I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt on this one.
I’m sure the Barenaked Ladies back catalogue is littered with works of sheer indisputable genius. But I’ll be quite happy living in ignorance.
I think that’s Bart’s way of saying “You can take your Barenaked Ladies, and your Crash Test Dummies, and your Train, and go fuck a bucket of fried chicken.”
Although I may be mistaken.
1. I remember sitting on my Bubbie’s knees while she sang “Hoppe Hoppe Reiter” when I was very, very small. Also, they had a cabinet with boxes of marzipan and those Guerlain seashell chocolates, which are still one of my favorite things in the entire world.
2. Most hip-hop, especially the stuff they play at high school dances. Arrogant douchebags (especially preppy ones).
3. I listened to a lot of Janis Joplin when I was sixteen and depressed to the point of numbness. Her cover of “Little Girl Blue” by Nina Simone still gives me chills.
4. UC Berkeley and Edinburgh, both of which made up for the awfulness of high school. I was definitely one of those people who bloom at university after a lot of suffering in high school, i.e. a nerd.
5. Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever introduced any of my friends to my grandparents. One grandmother lives in a nursing home in Kansas, and the other isn’t really the kind of granny to whom you introduce people willy nilly, unless you’re about to marry them or something formal like that.
My brother just stated he would like to punch Mary Poppins. Thought I’d share.
Marzipan=Toploader
I fucking hate marzipan. Euech.
I love marzipan.
It’s like eating almond-flavoured blu-tack.
Haha!
Here we are discussing the culinary merits of marzipan on Toad, meanwhile I’ve just put a comment relating to a llama’s bollocks on Gin and Crumpets!
Sometimes the world moves in funny ways..
I would rather listen to Robbie Williams than eat marzipan.
i like marzipan……it’s lovely
Robin Williams is great
I didn’t think it was possible to dislike marzipan. Really? Even on Christmas cake?
i want to punch marzipan.
1 Watery lentil soup
2 Any of the music my ex-wife liked
3 The Walkmen – Bows and Arrows
4 Edinburgh Uni and University of Texas in Austin
5 Me or my Dad.
Sorry I didnt get to see you in Edinburgh last week Matthew, but I appreciate that you spent most of the week on your back thinking of England. Email me and we can talk about Found in New York during CMJ.
I am adding a voice to the down with Marzipan caucus. It is a vile, substance that seeks out saliva and destroys it Overly sweet, sticky sickening paste that sticks to you mouth and leaves a film of discomfort you just can’t get rid of. What’s more it’s insidious because every time I go near a box of chocolates the Marzipan disguises itself as something delicious like a little almond terrorist waging jihad on my taste buds. I always get the fucking marzipan and I hate it.
Especially on christmas cake. I’d rather eat a cake wrapped in a diseased, wart-ridden scrotum.
Marzipan is a product of sheer evil.
i like marzipan…….you lot are weird
There is a difference between Marzipan and that almond flavoured crap they put in chocolates. You guys do realise that, right?
It’s like saying that you don’t like chocolate because easter eggs are shit.
Marzipan raped the Little Baby Jebus, and it has been mouth-raping its victims ever since. Foul, filthy, diseased substance clearly designed as some sort of satanic building material rather than for eating. I actually would rather listen to Toploader.
No wait.
Actua…
Oh no, now I really am confused. It’s like being asked if you’d rather have your balls cut off and served to you fried or poached. There’s two wrong answers and no right one.
AnotherDave stoppit before I feel compelled to perform an exorcism. You are speaking the devil’s words. Marzipan is a dirty little rat-fucker of the worst sort. Filthy, horrible, cloying, disgusting stuff.
Gah.
Now I need more beer just to get the taste of remembered marzipan out of my mouth. Yeeech.
Marzipan seems to have gone right out of fashion, I can’t remeber the last time I had to pick it off a wedding/Christmas cake.
Now I want to force-feed Matthew marzipan while playing Toploader at full volume.
Anyone know a good travel agent? And where to get those industrial noise-canceller headphones?
Zero 7 are my wife’s favourite band – and she nearly dumped me very early on in our relationship when I described them as ‘coffee table dance music for over thirties.’ We don’t own a coffee table now either (it would be covered in crap) but I think they’re ok. Much better than BNL.
Train were terrible; Toploader were really terrible; Nickleback are rock music for people who don’t like rock, and marzipan would probably kill me with its’ sugar content.
Marzipan caused the credit crunch and was mostly responsible for the holocaust.
That’s one fucker of a dilemma.
I would actually rather fellate a member of the conservative party than eat marzipan.
poached.
Marzipan was Hitler’s middle name.
Was Marzipan responsible for the Kennedy assassination in 1963?
Who cares?
Marzipan is upset and is going to come and right your wrongs
marzipan beates his wife
Poached it is then Michael.
When marzipan poaches eggs the yolk isn’t left runny.
Marzipan is missunderstood
There’s a lot of hate in this thread.
Some cunt did have to mention marzipan.
And Toploader.
That’s like invading Russia and expecting it to turn out well.
Yeah, let’s get back to talking about llama-baws like usual
Just ask Adolf Marzipan Hitler – it just never, ever works.
it’s always the way, young Matthew
makes a change from slagging each other off…..Dylan Toad….ya cunts
the united marzipan haters society. meeting one. adjourned.
My friend Robert in High School’s solution to these situations was to ask the question: who’d win the fight, Ninja vs Pirate? or something similar. Seemed to work. Everyone would go silent.
We are, undeniably, cunts.
So the question here would be; who’d win the fight, marzipan or that fuzzy-headed cunt out of Toploader?
I’m going with marzipan.
Calling Mr. Marzipan, I need your information please!! Check your email darlin xo
True, true. Where’s the gin?
fuck you all!
Which one’s Mr. Marzipan?
Who’s Tart propositioning now?!
1. It’s a tie between watching Judge Judy with my grandmother or having her tell me fantastically scary stories in what was, I suspect, an effort to make me pee myself.
2. Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. And anything associated with them, including hippies. Except banjos. I like them.
3. London Calling. It had the dual effect of making my adolescence slightly more tolerable and making me feel superior to the little punk kids who liked Blink-182.
4. Michigan State University and currently Edinburgh University
5. My grandparents died before I was of an age to have embarrassing friends
Hippies. Quite right.
There are no good hippies.
Now now Timmy. Show me on the doll where Marzipan touched you.
Also, what is Toploader?
Oh Dylan, who knew you’d grow to be so possessive?
(by the way, I love how when I copy text on your blog now, it highlights in the prettiest shade of blue, Matthew! Well done!)
1. The shack out back where my grandfather had his tools, his lawnmower fuel, and his naughty pinups. I still associate porn with the smell of gasoline somehow.
2. Tucson, AZ
3. Abbey Road listening to it on vinyl in my closet, real low, behind the hanging clothes so my parents wouldn’t hear me, late at night… age 13.
4. New School for Social Research, NYC
5. We did not entertain.
And did I hear mention of Toploader? …. Dancing in the…?
awww, it all comes full circle, doesn’t it, darling? xoxo
1. Strongest memory of childhood times in your Grandparents’ house.
My grandad had loads of animals, especially rabbits chickens and pheasants in his back yard and used to weld and make just about everything he owned. His car was a Morris minor he had cut in half and made into a flat bed truck and painted with some weird ceramic type paint he got off a mate in the pub. Same colour as the Forth Rail Bridge oddly enough. It didn’t half gets looks when he visited us in Bridge of Allan. Anyway, he had a couple of owls (flightless, they had been hit by cars) and used to let me feed them dead mice. He also used to keep chicken in a bin till it was dead maggotty and let me feed maggots to the pheasants (not the black ones which are apparently good bait and would be exchanged in some sort of deal usually involving hens or tools. He also lived almost exclusively on Baxters soups and fish suppers washed down with Mitchells limeade. So visiting him was great fun.
2. What do you irrationally hate, just because your life was shit when you encountered it?
Fort William. But it is actually a shithole.
3. Great album found during a shit time in your life.
I had a Pink Floyd – The Wall spell when I was a teenager when (of course) no-one understood me and I hated everyone. I used to sit in the darkened room, smoking fags and listening to the Pink Floyd.
4. Where did you go to University, if at all?
Heriot-Watt. Not so much shit as almost completely pointless. Does anyone learn anything at uni? I barely went at all and socialised with people I worked with instead. Even my flatmates went to another uni.
5. Most embarrassing muppet you’ve introduced to your grandparents.
No-one (I only had my Grandad) but we took him to our house in rural France a few times and he somehow managed to impart some wisdom about carp breeding, hen selection and the correct way to demolish a shed through grunts, sign language and appreciative nodding at tools to the local farmers that clearly led them to the conclusion that not ALL of the new foreigners were irredeemable fuckwits who shouldn’t be let near plastic scissors nevermind heavy machinery like chainsaws.
133 comments, bugger why am I always late for these things?
1. Playing the piano while Grandpa sat in his rocking chair by the fire place in his red & grey flannel shirt, horn-rimmed glasses & “winter beard” (he only shaved in summer).
2. England.
3. The soundtrack to The Sweet Hereafter.
4. I didn’t. I did my own book learnin’. :p
5. 3 of my grandparents died too soon, & the remaining curmudgeony Grandma was usually more embarrassing than anyone I introduced to her.
It doesn’t really take much to feel superior to anyone who liked Blink 182. Half a functioning neocortex will do it.
Maxwell, it’s all the marzipan’s fault.
By the way, I should clarify that I do not like marzipan either (the favorite thing applies to the Guerlain seashells, which are mouthfuls of glorious chocolaty hazelnut goodness and you are INSANE if you don’t like them). While I don’t think marzipan is responsible for the decline of Western civilization as you lot seem to believe, it is waaaaaay too sweet for me, and there’s something medicinal in the flavor that makes me wince if I consider it too much.
I only have to think about Marzipan too hard and I gag. I hate that shitty cake thats covered in it too. battenburg cake. Horrid fucking stuff fit only for Tories and people who smell of wee.
Luckily, the Food Standards Agency is onto Battenburg and its Marzipan caked wiles and has devised a cunning plan to ban the fucking stuff
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battenberg_cake
Adolf Marzipan Hitler. That needs to go on a shirt.
I have that T-Shirt. I always get people commenting on it.
Ooooh!!! That’s Toploader. My wife absolutely loves that song. It is absolutely her favourite song ever. It has always amused me that two of my favourite people in the whole world have such strong feelings about such an harmless piece of art.
We are not the first people to debate the Marzipan issue and its connections with the Third Reich
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USWDyajiNNw
And, if that wasn’t enough, definitive proof that people who eat Marzipan are all evil baby eating sociopaths
http://www.hoax-slayer.com/images/marzipan-babies1.jpg
“5) Grandad loves my mates. They come over for tea. One of them even spent a day with him working on an elaborate Indian Jones style booby trap for a squirrel.”
ben, I cannot wait to meet this man!
Art! See?!?
and by the way ‘dancing in the moonlight’ is hardly ‘harmless’…it took little madelene
1. sittin’ on the stoop in brooklyn with grandparents in the evening after a big pasta diner – especially during the 77 blackout…it was amazing for a kid. a city in complete darkness and the national guard roaming the streets – both terrifying and exciting.
2. central illinois – though i was in a shit time then i still think it’s a desolate void.
3. the supreme dicks – the unexamined life (while in central illinois). great album to exist in the void with.
4. upstate new york and central illivoid.
5. it was an accidental exposure – honest!
mrs toad – as a female human did you have any trouble identifying with a male human character in regards to the pink wall? it was easy for me being a male human, as i am.
http://www.super-cook.co.uk/products/regalice-ready-to-roll-icing/supercook-regalice-white-ready-to-roll-icing/11181
Far superior to marzipan, and a delicious straight-from-the-box snack.
I know all the words to ‘One Week’.
1. Strongest memory of childhood times in your Grandparents’ house.
My mother’s father died when she was young & her mother remarried — he was never really liked by my mother or her brother or that side of the family. I remember him being a lanky fellah with a bitter temper who hated kids, but he always gave me & my sister 10 bob each (50p, to you & I) when we visited as a way of getting us out of the house. We’d always go to the corner shop, which my gran used to own years before I was born, & stock up on 10p mix ups, sugar paper, Nutella & a quarter pound of whatever we hadn’t yet tried from the row & row upon row of sweet jars stacked on shelves behind the counter. We’d then sit on the embankment next to the abandoned coalyard railway line & make ourselves sick from eating everything in one go.
However, the abiding memory is of the time my mother’s mother died — we were all very close & the shock of it was quite enormous for me. We all went up to stay at the house to sort out her affairs — at this time her husband was himself very ill in hospital so hadn’t been told. On the day of the funeral my sister & I were sent to an Aunt’s house to be looked after as we were deemed too young to attend the funeral. When all the relatives returned to my gran’s house for the wake they discovered it had been burgled & ransacked. The police arrived & within 5minutes stated they knew exactly who had sdone it &, in fact, the house was being watched by those responsible at that very moment. Seems a family who lived in a house on the back lane behind my gran’s house had been under surveillance by the police on suspicion of similar burgalries for about 2 months. Their MO was to scour the local newspaper obituaries &, on the day of the funeral – which was normally printed with times & location – they’d target what was guaranteed to be an empty house. What was galling was the family used their 9yr old son to carry out the breaking & entering — he’d carefully smash a small window at the back of the house, crawl through, then open the back door for his older brother & father. They were all arrested within 48hrs, still in posession of sentimental value property of my gran — nothing fiancially valuable was taken — & everyone of a jailable age got 2years & the kid was put into the social services system.
My gran’s husband, whom we weren’t allowed to call gran’pa or anything similar — just Ted — was never told of the burgalry as it would have killed him given the state of his health.
2. What do you irrationally hate, just because your life was shit when you encountered it?
I genuinely can’t think of anything that fits that criteria.
3. Great album found during a shit time in your life.
This might seem like an odd choice/association to some, but I discovered The Wonderstuff & then they released their debut The Eight Legged Groove Machine all around the time of a really, really shitty 4th/5th year in school, which coincided with my mother dying. Those early gigs & that album (though not ‘classic’ in the true sense of the word, but definitely brought a new style of music to my ears & evolving taste) were an extremely good source of releasing a lot of buried screams & teenage anger I can tell you.
4. Where did you go to University, if at all?
I didn’t. I took a year off after a rather gruelling 2years of 6th form & never took up my place. I would have taken Psychology, specifically Criminal Psychology had I gone. I was bouyed by the fact I got myself a job in Forbidden Planet in Cardiff, was living with my then girlfriend (& her Czechoslovakian Marxist exile parents) where my rent was £25 a month, & the fact most of my decent school friends were in Cardiff University (so I could party like a student AND had a cool job to pay for the lifestyle) . I eventually studied & qualified in Criminal Psychology in night class (purely because I was fascinated by it, rather than because I wanted a job as one at that stage) & then photography in a one year arts foundation college in Cardiff. Apart from that I have simply read a lot.
5. Most embarrassing muppet you’ve introduced to your grandparents.
I think I’d have to say the 1980′s Upwardly Mobile Ambitions of my mother & father & their extended family. Huh, you say? Well, Ted, my Gran’s 2nd husband, was English (so that was bad enough given my family considered themselves Welsh through & through) & his family (he had been married before, so had a daughter & two sons) never saw eye to eye with anyone on my Gran’s side. When my Gran died there was a bitter contesting of the will. During all this Ted’s son came up to visit from London. Yes, Welsh folk from deepest darkesy valley of Cwn: London! To add to this he only went & turned out to be a GAY! Hadn’t they started AIDS? Didn’t they molest kids? Talk about small minded little Hitlers. My mother’s side of the family + my father all became viciously homophobic over night; all behind his back, of course, & to such an extent that they’d leave my Gran’s house en masse each time Ted’s son turned up. I felt very uncomfortable with their position on that & it was a very awkward month where I had to bite my lip on too many occasions while they spat misguided/un-educated anti-gay venom in this poor guy’s general direction.
If anything can be gleaned from that unfortunate time then it’s a fucking good advert to make sure you have your will sorted before you pop, so there’s no needless bitching over a barely cold corpse’s trinkets.
Mr. Bear
You will not be disappointed. There was a greased pole that the squirrel scampered three quarters of the way up, before slithering back down.
I came home from work and found the two of them giggling like school kids.
That’s “Cwm”, by the way, not “Cwn”, in the proper South Wales Valleys.
I try not to think about it really Chris. It gives me Shame to think how much Pink Floyd I listened to. Mind you, I don’t half listen to some right old shite now, mostly inflicted by him indoors.
Anyway, watch this, its awesome and fuck all to do with Pink Floyd
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/prison_economy_spirals_as_price
(there is an ad first but its the Onion and they rock)
hey pink floyd is great – i still love the wall myself (as overblown as it is). i have known a few women who were affected by the wall during their school girl days but never thought to ask that question.
that was funny – but i can’t help think why you suggested it to me…was it the prison, the cigarrettes, or the overt reference to situational homosexuality.
Err, cos its Friday and its funny?
as is this if you ever watched Rainbow as a kid
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pxonu_MqadI&feature=related
ok, scared me for a sec., thought you somehow knew my life…
im amerikkkan, not englesh, so not sure what rainbow is. and englesh humor is so strange to us frat boy amerikkkans.
hey tart – there is a song by rodney crowell called ‘sex and gasoline’ – you’re not the only one.
“New School for Social Research, NYC” – ah, that explains the pinko take you have on things.
dangit, i was hoping to slide that one under the radar! … rodney crowell eh? must google
Ben, do they only let you out for weekends? I’ve missed you, sweetie xx
1. Records. My mum’s two youngest brothers still lived ‘at home’ with my grandparents when I was growing up and one of those was a club DJ who had hundreds and hundreds of interesting things to listen to – I used to sit in the corner and listen to stuff on huge black headphones whilst everyone else was watching the snooker. Also tea serve in cups and saucers, and bread and butter on the side of every meal.
2. ‘The Ship Song’ by Nick Cave, as something of symbol for quite a number of songs which I have simply ‘lost’ because of the connotations they’ve took on for me after everything turned into a pile of poo the other year. (It’s better now but I’ve still lost lots of songs).
3. ‘I Just Can’t Stop’ by The Beat, in about 1984. It was a very long time ago and I can see how trivial it might seem now but it was an astonishingly shit time at the time, and the strange anger and nastiness of lots of songs by The Beat were just the very thing.
4. UEA, Norwich. Had a lovely time. Was meant to spend a year at Louisiana State at Baton Rouge but was making so little academic effort that they wouldn’t let me go. I stayed in Norwich for about six years after graduating, it was a good place to live.
5. I don’t think I’ve ever introduced a friend to any of my grandparents – one died in 1958, ten years before I was born, one in the early 70s, one in the early 80s, one still going strong. Actually my nan asked me ‘whatever happened to that Gabriel’ the last time I saw her so I guess she met him. Even a Quaker school expelled him.
I quite like marzipan in small quantities although I’m not so fond of hitler.
Ben, like myself, only enters teh internetz with the approval of his wench. However, it appears that his wench likes him far more than does mine, as Mrs Toad seems positively grateful for the fact that the Internet keeps me out of her hair most of the time.
Also tea serve in cups and saucers, and bread and butter on the side of every meal.
Oh, yes. On the nail.
My father’s mother always. No, start again. ALWAYS fucking made tinned salmon sandwiches when we went to visit. I fucking hated fish & I fucking absolutely hated tinned salmon sanfucknigwiches. No matter how much she was told she always thought I LOVED them. Even when I became a vegetarian & she was politely told I no longer ate meat or fish. Her response? “He’ll be alright with this, it’s from a tin…”. Mad old bat.
My father’s brother, Ken, who looked like a Ken (massive ginger beard & ’70s mullet to boot) will always stick in my mind for this: one summer, like every summer, we had a day at my gran’s where we all ate in the garden. As she often did she brought her bird cage out with her canary in it. This day, however, my uncle Ken opened the bird cage door & after about 20mins of staring at this sudden portal into the unknown the canary leapt onto the door frame then flew off. My uncle gave it two gardens worth of freedom before plugging it with his air rifle. Apparently it was very old, getting very sick, & the decision was made to give it a happy memory before ‘humanely’ killing it in front of the kids.
Cheers, Adam. You brought back a damburst of memories there.
Bread and butter and cups and saucers! Yup, nail on head.
They even had a budgie for a while.
ah, even we philistines had tea with cups and saucers (no idea why, my great (times x) grandparents who came from over there were dead and gone for more than 100 years before I came along.
and homemade bread, or rolls. always. and dare i say pickles without you all going off on another chutney trail? but yes homemade pickles of all sorts.
but most of this is all misted over by the stronger memory of the #1 cardinal rule in my grandparents house: women in the kitchen and men in the front room, no matter the time of day. my gran was born in 1901 afterall.
It was another Uncle who had the budgie. Fred. We inherited it when he died.
And my Grandprents’ rule was ‘Women in the kitchen, men down the Working Men’s Club’. I was a boy and therefore an honourary man and spent many a long sunday noontide drinking coke and staring longingly at the snooker table.