who's on this recording? alice nutter vocals, habit, rabbit bert bacon vocals, elastic band, foam lou vocals, keyboards, granny bag mave bass guitar, vocals, trumpet harry drums, percussion, octopus' garden boff guitar, vocals, refrigerator dunts vocals, percussion, hammering with: commonknowledge keyboards, accordion, voice mc fusion vocals neil ferguson guitar, keyboards, engineering geoff slaphead fiddle howard storey vocals, a good time thanks: brian and sam typesetting geoff clout live sound cobie hard work, no money, memories mick sexgod guitar southern hard sell jimmy mullen's claret & blue army the mighty turf moor roar written, performed and produced by chumbawamba march 1992
we've long since been tagged as pop's ungrateful spoilt brats, cowering in the wings and sniping endlessly at pop culture and its playschool politics. mama cass carrion crow squadron at 3 o'clock it can get a bit obsessive, admittedly, i mean, there's more to life than slagging off u2 and live aid, so swapping the anti- rock & roll venom for a cocktail of blasphemy, obscenity and stolen chorus line, our fifth lp, originally called "jesus h christ", was all done and dusted when uh- oh! the objections started to arrive, publishers representing millionaire rock scum, in paroxysms and piquets, demanded that we remove from our record any sample or version of their darlings' golden greats money money money saying they "didn't like the tone of the songs", some requested 75% of royalties for about 10 seconds worth of music. abba, kylie, bolan, beatles and so on. not having a huge multi- corporation record company to foot the bill, we gave it up a bad job. "shhh" is the precious bastard offspring which "christ" bore. hear nothing, see nothing, feel nothing, say nothing. just when you figured it out someone lets you down. us, usually and unashamedly who'll make all the wrong decision when the judge is up for trial? no-one has the cure for all our daily hurts-least of all this rock & roll, it's wannable christs all dead and dying. truth, get stomach and wings! mama cass carrion crow! dream a little dream of cass elliot, sweetest voice strangled on a mouthful of sandwich pecking at the tongue of a still-warm body. shut your mouth; or laugh out loud! "er, what does it all mean?" for a few brief words and a few short lines i was was taken to the coliseum, fed to the lions- and lions aren't the type you can really love enough, but you can turn'em into rugs! "ow mate, can you spare some changes?" too much... are you down on your fashion, or down on your luck? sometimes questions never get dropped: hey mick, are you dancing? "i never stopped!" l.a.u.g.h.i.n.g.- launghing.
by the time students across the western world were wetting themselves to monthy python's flying circus, lenny bruce was long since dead and buried. first in the courts, and finally in the toilet, elvis- style. so i was fortunate in having a hero that no-one around here had herard of sometime in the late seventies, ian martindale, "the video, joe! don't tell them about the video, joe!" who later went on to own a pit bull terrier named after jah shaka, gave me a book of bruce's comedy routines and i fell in love with it. i read and re-read the book, laughed out loud on buses, and wished i could die in toilet just like lenny. i practised using words like "motherfucker" and "bullshit". it was no use. this was leeds, england, and i was already a cynical punk casualty without half of bruce's style. wit or amazing ability to say a wrong thing at the right time. rock n roll - it's easier lenny bruce was repeatedly arrested for "obscenity", a word whose meaning he consistently and continually challenged. so in homage to the man i got arrested for having a piss in a public place. i caught you with your head down the toilet as your were gulping up dirty words, and then later dressed in suit and tie, whilst playing to the laughing crowds, you were gargling, spitting, fingers down your throat - making yourself so sick. vomiting the word that you'd sucked and slurped all over the cops at the back! big mouth strikes again ... mc fusion: consored! "to" is a preposition, "come" is a verb. "to come" is a verb intransitive; to come- to come. did you come? did you come good? don't come in me... it takes technique to thrill me! did you come? did you come good? these are words for which bruce was arrested big mouth strikes again... stepford husbands, stepford wives; with longer scissors, snip snip snip sharper knives . this good - good culture - welcome christ, judges, lone ranger, padres, pastors, popes, priests, critics, comics, you, me! big mouth strikes again...
basically, the message is: steal it! culture, music, art, the odd book and slab of cheese... the new will be built from the ruins of the old. buenaventura durutti, give me a d minor! same seven notes and some slag poet's quotes: stick them together with glue; you can mix a fine cocktail from memories, and pretend what you're drinking is new. but there's nothing that's new under the heaven- there's nothing that hasn't been done. pour me another double cliche; you can't write a song that's never been sung. take it away... and don't bring it back everyone's stealing from someone. burglars get burgled as well. there's nothing that's new under the heaven; there's nothing unique over hell. there's nothing that's new under the heaven- there's nothing that hasn't been done. pour me another double cliche; you can't write a song that's never been sung.
i can't remember how we stumbled across "the hit man and her" a two-hour television programme, shown between two and four in the morning, based around the idea of sitting at home watching other people getting drunk behave! and enjoying themselves, in a nightclub somewhere in the north of england; we were hooked. it's one of those programmes that you just can't stop watching. hosted by pete (of stock, aitken and...) waterman, talentless millionaire. no personality, awful grey suit; and michaela strachan, talentless bimbo, no personality, mini- skirts and giggles. behave! the whole thing is a vehicle for waterman (the "hit man") to play his label's new releases. and his catchphrase is: "behave!" sa&w typify pop's ability to avoid talking about sex whilst filling the charts with endlees oohs, aahs, and carry on- style euphemisms. ooh er missus, pump it up, let's spend the night together so i can sex you up... behave! it's the same unreal glossed over crap you see in penthouse. sex without the... well, without the sex. macho bragging or little-girl whimpering, staple pop under brown wrapper. tee-hee. behave. five fingers holding five wise angels: little heads float by on clouds of goodness. they're playing voodoo with their kylie dolls- sing it right or don't sing it at all.
fascinated by the hills of hebden and halifax, it was inevitable that i'd stumble across the legacy of the calder valley coiners: a huge network of coin forgers and counterfeiters who, some 200 years ago, cost the government dear and shared out their profits among the poor of the region. this was too good to be true: a thousand robin hoods virtually on my own doorstep. i'd seen an advertisement for a fell race up n down x country called "the coiner's seven" - a seve mile slog around the coiners' eighteenth century haunts - and began looking for any writings on the coiners. precious little is left: the history of these coin clippers is writ small, usually by wet liberal historians who fail to understand the radical nature of coining. what little there is led me to heptonstall church graveyard where "king" david hartley, one of the leading coiners is buried. finding his rainswept tombstone, one desperately stormy sunday afternoon, was as exciting as child - hood annual visit to backpool pleasure beach it was up in the tiny village of heptonstall, to (i later read) that a local woman called mary newall had killed an informer by putting hot coal down his trousers a flame for your pants, a poker for your eyes in a local inn. great stuff. as coincidence had it, the summer of 1991 saw a spate of forged tenners and fivers hitting the street of england, with shopkeepers and bankers across the country discovering they'd been conned by counterfeit notes. respect due to mickey thomas, wrexham footballer ha! well madam how 'd you like it, maybe plenty off the back? i heard the coiners took the snippers to the union, jack with a snipper and a clipper and a bloody close shavemaking fivers, tenners, twenties, change. what's your size? what's the houres? tufnelspeak no, you don't need the hassle- take the new short cut to the old clippy castle with the ramblers and the scramblers and the loiners and the tykes and the punks and the hippies living by the pike. skyline dominating stoodley pike, built to commemorate the end of napoleonic wars, now a phallic haven for twolegs and fourlegs pick a coin, any coin, and with a snip snip snip you turn a portuguese guinea to a threepenny bit; and every last watermark just curled up and died, haircut sir? and now the king and the queen got a bit on the side. don't be bloody silly- keep away from bloody billy notorious government informer- cause he's shooping all the chooping going down along the valley, and supergrassing catches like a plague, to be sure: but it's nothing that a bullet in the belly couldn't cure. please to put a penny in the old man's hat, then roll'em over! roll'em over! lay 'em out flat! just deliver us kicking from our pokes and sacks to the hills of hebden, hell and halifax. and the next bugger blabs is the next bugger dies, got a flame for your pants and a poker for your eyes... where every hot guinea is another hot dinner, with the weavers and the spinners and the reverends aye, even the reverends were involved! and the sinners.
whilist "kicking back" (a term we picked up from chris and janis) in the states a few summers ago, we had the privilege of visiting one of the most inspiring shop i have ever come across. this was prior to the alice nutter/roger ahlforth bout (one round, one punch, and he's down!) and so it was with roger as holy guide that we tropped off like a big happy partridge family to this christian music superstore and bookshop rolled into one. "jesus loves you" cowbells! i was in heaven. surround by icons and crosses and flagellation devices we filled our pockets with the joys of the lord. on the counter of the book store we came across a small pile of badly developed photographs come on baby, do the camera shake accompanied by the following explanation: "picture was taken by meta battle while flying from indiana to florida. the lord impressed her to take a picture of clouds formation and, developed, this was the result. upon seeing the picture, a deacon from her church gave a prophesy of the soon return of jesus. at the end of it were the sic words to this effect: you think that you have lots of time, but you only have a moment to get ready to meet jesus. copies of this picture were sent to a friend, miss may miller, who was visiting in oakland. she gave these to friends in oakland. a negative was made so that more copies could be given out to be used for god's glory. people out with polaroids all around town rev ha! herman, a former professional photographer of hollywood, gave his opinion that it was authentic and not contrived in any way. jesus is coming soon! (matthew 24:30)". well i believe it. amen! (ahem). look, no strings: just paper-glue and card. hark the angels sing: paste the lord! high above the streets and houses paint the whole world with a rainbow mrs meta battle, with one hand on the valium and one the bottle. somewhere over indiana, eight miles high, meta battle sees the good lord wandering across the sky. have your fun whilst you're alive... you won't get nothing when you die. have a good time all the time because you won't get nothing when you die... gobsmacked, william shatnered, twilight zone doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo monster- on-the-wing episode meta does a double take: come on baby, do the camera shake! half expecting from the aisle a certain mr hated jeremy beadle watching you, watching us, watching mrs meta battle (can you see what it is yet?) accompanied on the stylophone meta battle shot her lord load and watched him tumble down: and now there's people out with polaroids all around the town. and who knows, that jesus on the church near your house may well be the original - kiss it as you pass!
oi jesus, what you looking at? guilt, shame and fear... twelve years old and i'm being told that masturbation is unclean. jesus is watching. all the time. both the youth club leader the boss at the church who drilled this into me got send down for molesting children. presumably jesus was watching them. so when boy george and his drug rehab mates pop up chanting the hare krishna mantra on top of the pops, everybody's on to-oh-op of the pops telling me that "jesus loves you", i get the urge to nut him where his third eyes should be. rich pop stars have always had this thing for religious misticism - egos looking for justification, spoilt brats wanting surrogate mothers to wrap them in cotton wool. i wouldn't care if they didn't try to conver the rest of us into their funky freak show. fine, if lennon wants to float off to india to sit cross- legged in front of some smirking joker in a loin cloth, chapman put a stop to that! but frankly most of us haven't the time or inclination to spend what little money we have on buying flashy cars for sexually repressed gurus. i thought that sort of rubbish went out the sixties. walking down lands lane in leeds can be a nightmare - not only do you have to dodge the revolutionary communist party's maniacal paper sellers, you have to run the gauntlet of bald-headed, wooly-hatted, clip-board wielding krisnas wearing their false smiles and trying to screw money out of you on the pretext of some "poor children". liars! the money-grabbing mansonite "friends of the family" call this technique "transcendental trickery". true! it means lying through their teeth in the name of the lord to get cash. heroin, jesus - same drug in a different syringe. mainline some escapism. "i can handle it..." i'm having a wonderful time drunk on communion wine; one sin over the seven, sick all over the stairway to heaven. bullshit, bullshit, priests without a pulpit, shake shake shake your blessed bells. ding dong heaven calling! buzz buzz buzz... haircut sir! you put your whole self in, your whole self out, in out in out, shake it all about with a pop songs, pop songs, smothering love bombs, you're great i'm great everybody's great! happiness is just a chant away. georgie got the needle and georgie got a hit. georgie got religion and a saviour on a stick. a thousand georgies all posing in a field mimicking french situations madman who joined a convention of people all claiming to be jesus. he interrupted the mass meeting by descending from a light aeroplane dressed as christ. touché! - which are false and which are real? you put your whole self in, your whole self out, in out in out, what's it all about? pop songs, pop songs, smothering love bombs, you're great i'm great everybody's great! (chant the harry roberts mantra:) harry roberts, harry roberts, roberts roberts, harry harry. a popular football terrace chant of the seventies was the non secretarian "harry roberts is our friend." harry was incarcerated for shooting a cop... everybody got a good deal, everybody got a guru, everybody got a love bomb, everybody got a hit song.
an extract from the ransom note, written in cut-and-paste newspaper style (ref:. jamie reid). a phone rendezvous, don't whisper a word. half a million by monday - or roger waters gets it! (as spoken by roger water's mother:) "my little baby! they cut off his ear!" hooray! half a million by tuesday, then - don't whisper a word...
i grew up on the never-never; everything was bought on tick and had to be paid for every friday night weavin' and a-bobbin' when the tallyman called. my dad got paid thursday and by monday my parents were hard up again. my num always made sure she paid the bills; there was supposed to be virtue in being "poor but honest". but all it gave us was less than everybody else had. thirty years of married life to the holiest joe, ex-footballer and possibly, an armchair without ever taking a penny that didn't belong to her. she was sixty then my dad died, and after she'd paid for the funeral she'd a grand total of £200 in the bank; and she still thought that honesty was the best policy. years after i'd left home and i met group of woman from council estate who'd chucked that idea out the window and had taken to shoplifting, managing to get videos and descent clothes for their kids as a result. they'd hire a van and set off for a city and descend en masse. you could order anything from three pair of kid's knickers to a nikon camera and they'd let you have it at a third of the price. if the girl's got to have it, then girl's got to have it nobody buys from catalogues on that estate. shoplifters of the world unite! two little ducks sank with a knock knock knock; she got twenty on tick and she smoked the bloody lot. the fridge was bare, the dog was bone: weavin' and abobbin' when the tallyman calls. marry, mary, she went up the wall and she kissed bye bye to the holiest joe: played the wild rover and climbed on board, says, "it's all that the lady of the manor can afford." you sometimes plunder, and you sometimes plunder... met ms morrissey, fingers light, she lifted up his hat a hatful of hollow rhetoric. all abroad for maudlin street! and he wept all night. she's the woman with the granny bag dressed to the nines - the pleasure and the privilege mine all mine! candid camera watching you, watching us, again. on every bloody wall - all all the cameras under heaven couldn't catch'em all. fill those pockets and lift that grail; lead me into temptation, girls. (interlude): everything i do, i do it for you. everything i do is driven by you? you don't have a clue... i make your song better and you always try to sue! money, money, money- it's gone to your head. i sample too much and you say "the music's dead". dead? huh! you're the one that's dead- lots of money spent on someone with with a hollow head. new kids, minogue, all those sort of rogues, making lots of money for those scheming little toads. then you come to us and say we made the music worse; look at the beatles and stones - who made their music first? all the threes and all the queen bees singing "does the driver want a wee wee?" wicked ladies, malicious intent: "but your honour, i was only trying to pick it up for lent." roll up for the magical miss tour, step right this way! does the driver want a wee wee? 'couse we want a wee wee too! why waste change? why change the habit? if the girl's got to have it then the girl's got to have it. easiest pickings, wall to wall, in england's piped ceramic malls. by the dickens! and the devil's daughter - bingo! full house! everyone's a winner! the lady works in mysterious ways: all because the lady loves christmas every day... you sometimes plunder, and you sometimes plunder. and here's the moral of this story you can make a living sometimes plundering.
we were driving down to the london the other day listening to magic 828 (ray stroud playing "what have i got in my hand?") when on came "the streak" by ray stevens. vivid memories of sprinting naked bodies came flooding back- that guy who leapt over the stumps at lords, or blaine ward, who, whilst out camping in our back garden, agreed to streak down whitehouse road in return for an orange. then there was of course bert bacon comma, though, in the middle of the night, down to the post office to post a letter, stark naked, for a bet. so, this dutchman pictured when he got all his clothes nicked during a heavy session at the launderette of the lean years of the nazi occupation of holland, took the only possible option: a brave walk home in the rain, wearing only a hat, shoes, and carrying an umbrella. suffice to say he was spotted and photographed and the rest, as they say, is history: "a daring dutchman strolls naked through the streets of amsterdam to protest again strict german clothes rationing". i'm so brave and i'm not too crazy, and i'd rather be a coward than pushing up daises. never rocked the boat. never tipped the scales. never got off the fence. never had that much to say... so when i get a leather glove across my face, i say "yes sir, no sir, whatever you say sir." and when the nazis stop me, shouting "get out your pass book!" i say "yes sir, yes sir"- i don't trust to luck. blimey! who'd adam and eve it? they're rationing clothes; and where they find a molehill a mountain grows. so please, no pictures! 'cause the snap they took- they'll take it as a sign, jesus h christ! shhh just my luck! (i'd stay at home and sit it out, but in dirty world you need a launderette. gene kelly, played by paul simeon, whistling "singing in the rain"... two short minutes, i look the other way- some bastard robbed me blind! you can't trust anyone nowadays.
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