Download: Milk and Alcohol – Dr. Feelgood (mp3)

There’s an exhibition on at the Tate Liverpool at the moment called Glam! The Performance of Style which looks interesting. Part of the show is a 1977 documentary called Roxette about young Roxy Music fans in Manchester getting dressed up to go see the band live. The whole movie is 30 minutes long and looks utterly fab judging by this short clip which makes me really want to see the entire thing (wish they’d used a different song though, don’t they know I posted “Beauty Queen” just last week!) I’d love to make it to Liverpool to see the show too but doubt if that’s on the cards.

Some pics from the exhibition here.

We soft Southern pooftahs liked to joke that Woodbines were only smoked by gruff blokes from oop North who wore flat caps, raced pigeons, and liked to proudly declare their narrow-minded prejudices by saying “I know what I like and I like what I know” — especially when it came to things they considered fancy, modern, or foreign.

Well, I used to think it was a joke but, according this ad, it was true!

By ‘eck.

Download: Adventures In A Yorkshire Landscape – Be Bop Deluxe (mp3)

The Watersons are another act that piqued my interest while reading Electric Eden. They might be a little too Real Ale for my tastes but there’s something very elemental about this sound, listening to them you can almost feel the Northern soil under your fingernails and the coal dust in your lungs.

This great poster is from a huge online collection of old Leeds theatre playbills that’s well worth having a nose through. Featuring lots more saucy ladies, cockney comics, scintilating singers, and things I can’t quite figure out..

This must be what Yorkshiremen did for amusement in between walking their whippets and going to the pub.

Download: Burlesque – Family (mp3)

This was a request from my wife’s friend David, sadly I don’t have the record so here’s a video instead. I’d forgotten all about this and it’s still bloody funny (though Americans might need subtitles).

My Mum used to sing the opening line of Cilla Black’s “Liverpool Lullaby” to me all the time and even now I can’t hear “Oh you are a mucky kid, dirty as a dustbin lid” without coming over all soppy, wanting someone to wipe my nose and tuck me up in bed with my teddy. I think that’s the only part of it she knew though, which is a relief because the rest of it is so bleak and miserable if she’d sung this to me I’d have burst into tears and run away from home.

Oh you are a mucky kid,
Dirty as a dustbin lid.
When he hears the things that you did,
You’ll get a belt from your Dad.
Oh you have your father’s nose,
So crimson in the dark it glows,
If you’re not asleep when the boozers close,
You’ll get a belt from your Dad.

You look so scruffy lying there
Strawberry-jam tarts in yer hair,
Though in the world you haven’t a care
And I have got so many.
It’s quite a struggle every day
Living on your father’s pay,
The beggar drinks it all away
And leaves me without any.

Although you have no silver spoon,
Better days are coming soon
Our Nelly’s working at the Lune
And she gets paid on Friday.
Perhaps one day we’ll have a splash,
When Littlewoods provide the cash,
We’ll get a house in Knotty Ash
And buy your Dad a brewery.

Oh you are a mucky kid,
Dirty as a dustbin lid.
When he hears the things that you did
You’ll get a belt from your Dad.
Oh you have your father’s face,
You’re growing up a real hard case,
But there’s no one can take your place,
…. Go fast asleep for yer Mammy.

Not exactly a lorra lorra laughs is it? I think that last verse is the most depressing, the poor little kid is going to turn out just like his Dad, slapping the wife and kids around and blowing his wages on beer, Woodbines, and horse racing. Enjoy!

Download: Liverpool Lullaby – Cilla Black (mp3)
Buy: “Cilla In The 60s (album)

All revolutionary moments in history inspire great poetry, the French Revolution had Wordsworth, the Easter Rising had Yeats, and punk had a snotty rake from Manchester called John Cooper Clarke.

Looking like Bob Dylan if he’d grown up on a diet of fish fingers and cold baked beans, his spittle-flecked, 100mph delivery had the amphetamine rush of punk with the salty language of a northern working man’s club comedian. Thankfully he wasn’t the sort of poet who wrote tortured odes to the painful beauty of council blocks, instead his muse led him up lurid and surreal paths to psycle sluts, homemade porn, monsters from outer space and teenage werewolves.

I wasn’t a huge fan of his studio albums where he read his poems over a rather avant garde musical backdrop provided by post-punk supergroup The Invisible Girls – maybe if he’d been backed by a funk band or drum machine he’d be seen today as a pioneer of white hip hop 20 years before Eminem and The Streets – but it was live that he really dazzled. His act was a cross between Pam Ayres, Johnny Rotten and Les Dawson, confrontational and full of piss and vinegar but funny as hell. Which is why it’s surprising that he only ever put out the one live album, “Walking Back Happiness” from where these four tracks come. This came out in 1979 on 10″ clear vinyl (another reason not to like CDs, they don’t come in different sizes and colours) but has sadly has long been out of print and never reissued.

I’m not going to go into detail about all these but “Twat” deserves special mention, this is a masterpiece of invective (aimed at Michael Heseltine appparently) which should be taught in a class on how to verbally tear someone a new arsehole:

People mention murder,
the moment you arrive.
I’d consider killing you
if I thought you were alive.
You’ve got this slippery quality,
it makes me think of phlegm.
And a dual personality,
I hate both of them.

Sheer bloody poetry, as they say.

Download: Twat – John Cooper Clarke (mp3)
Download: The Bronze Adonis – John Cooper Clarke (mp3)
Download: Gaberdine Angus – John Cooper Clarke (mp3)
Download: Majorca – John Cooper Clarke (mp3)