Was there ever a more English name than Eric Coates? Well yes there was, smart-arse. His full name is more English yet: Eric Francis Harrison Coates. Put that in yer pipe an' smoke it!
He was making pop records in the early 'twenties. Nineteen twenties. A hundred freaking years ago, when everything was made of bricks, or wood, by blerks in big aprons and a fag behind their ear (oh, stop). The most popular colour for maps of the world was pink; Coates made pop music for the Empire, through two World Wars, to lift the spirit of the Man In The Street, The Man On The Clapham Omnibus, and the Housewife listening to the Home Service on the wireless.
What makes him pop? He never wanted to compose serious, classical-type music. He liked to cheer people up with a touch of yer light orchestrals. Look at the happy family on the cover of this album what I faked up. That's how English people look when they're happy. They're having their equivalent of a rave party, and jolly good fun it is too.
This music is heartbreaking. All that optimism and good feeling, whistling while you work. A spring in your step, a brighter tomorrow. As much love as I hold for dear old Blighty - which isn't much - the country is fucked. Nothing to do with class or colour, everything to do with culture. Eric Coates is pre-irony, the cultural virus that infected the nation long before John Chinaman invented the covids. The simplicity of heart expressed in this music is as foreign - as lost - to your contemporary Brit as Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Oh well (parts one and two) - Happy New Year!
(Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.)
Here's a question - will you get drunk on New Year's Eve?
ReplyDelete'Fessing up here - moi, non. I hardly drink at all. Not for moral or health reasons (I drank wine like water when I lived at France), but purely social. I don't sit down with drinkers like I used to.
Of course.
DeleteCheers, Stanley!
DeleteNo I won't be getting drunk NYE, always hated the false merriment of it all. As for England being fucked, well 'we' voted for the kuntz in power, 'we' voted for Brexit, and unfortunately 'we' keep believing the lies of the tory party. Our papers call blatant corruption 'sleaze' - its corruption. Boris always was a buffoon (too nice a word), people have only just realised. Tax the rich to save the NHS, and get rid of all the tax loopholes. Elderly stroke victims waiting in ambulances outside hospitals for six hours is a disgrace and now a regular occurrence.
ReplyDeleteAngela Rayner for prime minister, please. Sorry to rant. Happy New Year everybody.
This comment section is here for your ranting convenience. The rest of the year, it's eudæmonia turtles all the way down at th' IoF©.
DeleteI always hated New Year's Eve. Either I had a woman in my life, in which case Bacchanalian hedonism wasn't on the menu, or I didn't, and I felt bleak and lonely. Out here, even the calendar is different, and one day is the same as another.
Thank you Farq. My family 'don't do politics', but if they do vote, they automatically vote tory, because they generally don't like the look of the other lot. I believe it's people like my family that keep the torys in power.
ReplyDeleteOh, and getting drunk these days means a probable hangover.
Nowadays I drink very little. I had one gla of pommeau before Xmas lunch and nothing since. If I want a drink on NYE, I'll have one. It's by no means certain that I will.
ReplyDeleteI used to regularly gig on NYE up until about 2000. We then spent it with friends until they got divorced.
Nowadays it's just the two of us.
Garcon! Another gla of pommeau!
DeleteNope, one bottle o' beer'll do me. English light music is a thing, isn't it? I have a bit. Particularly like this -
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpUsIIwbxRs
This is swell! Love the illustration - note how his cigarette hand is gloved, while the other, holding the cane in a purely stylistic way, is not. Class out th' ass.
DeleteThis sure sounds like a fun one! Very much looking forward to some warbly warbles; might be a perfect soundtrack for the New Year's festivities. To answer the question -- maybe? I drink but don't often get drunk. I'm sure I'll be tipsy though. Hope you all had a great Sol Invictus celebration this weekend and a good kiss off to another not so great year and rounding the corner into what will likely be not much better but fingers crossed things don't continue to spiral down the drain. In the meantime here's a toast to my fellow Island inhabitants where we don't worry about such nonsense.
ReplyDeleteIt's entirely warble free. MrDave.
DeleteIs this from when everything was tickety boo?
ReplyDeleteIt was Peak Tickety-Boo.
DeleteThis music illustrates perfectly the difference between English and British.
ReplyDeleteVery true in its time.
DeleteI stopped drinking when I got my fake knee. (Balance and all that.) Forgot to start again.
ReplyDeleteTry rubbing alcohol, direct into the affected joint.
DeleteProbably not getting drunk. Buzzed, yes, fall down drunk, no.
ReplyDeleteThese days, it's quality over quantity. New years, I plan to drink a Bouchard Pere et Fils 2011 Le Corton, Grand Cru, with my daughter and son-in-law.
If England is anything, it is resilient.
If you drink it out of a proper wine glass (not one of those long-stemmed fishbowls) you'll probably be OK.
DeleteFarq,
ReplyDeleteInspired by your illustration, I thought I'd throw a few choons together and have my own little English rave up.
Courtesy of Kevin Coyne, Max Wall, Noel Coward, The Clash, Ralph Mctell and Roy Harper.
Could have been a bit more diverse, but I didn't have the time.
So join me in celebrating "Old England's round the bend" and if you can't be arsed to listen to them all, here's some selected highlights...
Take me back to dear old blighty
Winkles, Woodbines, Walnut Whips
Here you see the pick of us, you may be heartily sick of us,
This is England, This knife of Sheffield steel, This is England, This is how we feel
The old school, the old rule, rung out on a muffinman's bell
Elvira, stand up for England, Elvira, stand up proud, Elvira, scream if you like but God knows, don't scream so loud
But how could we know when I was young all the changes that were to come?
One of those days in England with the country goin' broke
Old England is on the blink, Old England's round the bend
https://www.imagenetz.de/hSqh8
Oh I say! Th' Nobster wins the Mrs. Joyful Prize For Rafia Work!
DeleteOh, Roy Harper One of those days in England, is a beauty, I used to play his music all the time. Time to revisit I think.
DeleteI bought the single in 1977 and always loved it and the b side "Watford Gap", which for none UKophiles is a motorway service station selling delicious meals to weary travellers:
Delete"Just about a mile from where the motorways all merge
You can view the national edifice, a monumental splurge
It's the lonesome traveller's rotgut or bacteria's revenge
The great plastic spectacular descendant of Stonehenge
And the people come to worship on their death-defying wheels
Fancy-dressed as shovels for their death-defying meals
It's the Watford Gap, Watford Gap
A plate of grease and a load of crap"
It was missed off the album because one of the EMI directors was also a director of Blue Boar, who owned Watford Gap.
Roy Harper - Watford Gap.mp3 7.82 MB
https://www.imagenetz.de/kvd6Z
Thanks for asking. I wish I could. I'm allergic to alcohol now, & even a little makes me terribly ill. If I was going to drink, I'd enjoy some brandy, & a few high end beers.
ReplyDeleteHave you tried alcohol free beer?
DeleteNew Year's Eve's an ugly one and it's better to stay sober and vigilant.Anything can happen. Christmas Eve's much better for feelgood celebrating.
ReplyDeleteAs for Blighty, I jumped ship in '83 after MT won her second election. I'm Welsh but was living in Manchester and after four years of the tories (including the Falklands Adventure) the atmosphere was pretty grim. So I relocated to Italy - noy without its problems, but still...
And there's no way I'd go back. Boris is a new type of low.
So let's hear it for Eric! And many thanks to Mr A.F.O.E. Noblemon too.
There's something to be said for living somewhere you are disenfranchised from the political system. The distance allows some kind of perspective. If I was Thai, I'm sure I'd be feeling the anger that drives the young (and some not so young) people into the Bangkok streets, at their real peril.
DeleteIf you were thai you'll be a thai stick Dear Sir Farq. A smokin' myth that is.
DeleteBest wishes for the coming year.
Nope. The last time I got drunk must've been at least ten years ago.
ReplyDeleteAs Babs said, quality over quantity. I enjoy a little long drink (or two, or three) with just enough of the alcoholic stuff to taste it but not enough to get drunk off it.
I might've mentioned my love for a tasty gasoil here before.
Are you an ethyl or regular type guy?
DeleteWhistle while you work.
ReplyDeleteI have some more in similar vein, yer light orchestrals, up later.
British Light Music Miniatures - with a hint of yer actual classicals, innit.
ReplyDelete"Here's a question - will you get drunk on New Year's Eve?"
ReplyDelete"Here's an answer - yeah, probably, a little bit.
Cheers, hic, Peanuts Molloy.
A little bit drunk is the very best drunk. Stopping when you get there is the difficult part.
DeleteI suspect I'll be otherwise occupied. NYE has only rarely hit the mark with me. Most years I try to be in bed before midnight, given the anticipation of a day or two later having to resume my place on whatever Hamster-Wheel I'm contracted to for generating the substrate for the media-political class to grandstand upon for another drudgery-filled circuit of the Sun.
ReplyDeleteI am comforted by the fact that the calendar is a work of fiction, requiring an act of faith to have any effect.
DeleteUnfortunately, like all social constructs, it only requires others to believe in it to have effect (and quite a big one). But it is always good to remind oneself that it's just a shared illusion, though a very crafty one with it's connection to our observable planetary cycles and all. Imagine if those metric people tried to make a calendar on a Base 10 construct!!
DeleteRegarding the cover, The only time I was expected to adopt the pose was in school. " Hands together and eyes closed, don't forget to blow yer nose. Amen!" Got booted out of church as a kid for "not taking Daddy-o, the Late JC and Spooky seriously" at all. Still see it as a huge con. Epistle over.
ReplyDeleteHave you read Zealot, by Reza Aslan?
DeleteYes & no.
ReplyDeleteYes I have read the book
No to the alcohol (for reasons that are verboten on this platform,(for which I have no problems).
Depending on whether I have to babysit my Irish grandchildren at sometime or the other I will be taking a voyage into inner space.
On my way to Ireland a few years ago I celebrated New Year on an aeroplane. I wanted to land somewhere before they had celebrated New Year (Other than Islamic nations) so I could boast of being a time traveller. Unfortunately I left too early for this to occur.
El Reverendo Dr Baz Mania(c)
Dear Ms Blancmange
ReplyDeleteI would have thought your appellation would bring a little light relief in your life.
My other thought would be (once the pandemic allows) to visit Sweden, hang out at a few bars frequented by young go getters & surreptitiously ask if anyone has some reindeer juice. Purchase a half pint of said elixir & imbibe a glass or two as the mood takes you. As a soundtrack do not listen to ABBA or any doom gloom, or Viking metal. Other than that, the choice is yours, my preference is for Swedish beat combo, Goat or Russian Orthodox Chants.
That should do it & you`ll probably change your name to Funny Blancmange.
"But only if you want to"
Lycka till
The Chaplain for The Cosmonauts of Inner Space
Never done Sweden though spent a week in Oslo in 1993. It does look splendid. I'm probably being overly gloomy. My circumstances are far far better than many people's, even those within shouting distance. It's the age, ennui, physical weariness, social isolation and small portions of daylight drowned under lousy weather talking.
DeleteFarquhar, Thanks for the Eric Coates. It was a pleasant surprise. Would you know who the musicians are for the individual tracks? Thanks again,
ReplyDeleteGbrand
I don't, but it's a fair bet there are a few Normans, Reginalds, Terences, Ernests and Dereks in there. Maybe some Hildas and Beryls. Don't miss the other collection a few comments up - Miniatures.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteTry again.
ReplyDeleteEric's got a few radio themes. Also memorable were intermission themes from childrens' radio programs.
here are two that have stuck with me since before there was rock and roll.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TivozM6cfoU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5V8-5_rYecY