16 Jan 2009
‘Cos you can’t get Teenage Eskimo in Wantage…
Well, hardly the curse of HMHB, but in the week when Countdown became Carol-less, it seemed appropriate to add Emerging From Gorse. And anyway, it’s been a long time since I put a song on the site which nobody had sent in*, and which doesn’t appear to be anywhere else on the entire whole interweb: another original! A great song, as it happens, with the music and football obscurometer going well into the red.
See lyrics to Emerging From Gorse
*Don’t worry, there are plenty of contributions in the pile waiting to be added, I just felt like a challenge. Although if anyone wants to have a go at Stavanger Töestub I’d be delighted to receive it.
29 Letters Sent:
Kevan
Might just be me, but I always thought that Brendan had changed his name to Federal Maintenant.
Jan 16th, 2009
Fredorrarci
Stavanger Toestub is easy. The lyrics are printed in the booklet…
(I thought I’d get that in before anyone else does.)
Jan 17th, 2009
s.g.d.,a Shropshire lad
Could it be far beyond … Deep Sierra ???
Jan 17th, 2009
Chris The Siteowner
@fredorrarci: Of course. I’d forgotten. And now I’m going to regret putting all my CDs up in the loft. Bugger.
@sgd: Doesn’t sound quite right to me, and what does it mean? But certainly a possibility.
Jan 17th, 2009
Ben
A mate of mine told me he stormed off from the mailing list over the whole ‘Deep Sierra’ farrago, and quite a few went with him, well according to him – the mard arse.
Is there a keeper with a forename ‘Dip’? I see what ever it is as hanging rancid in the same glade as the other keepers, and the protagonist is looking beyond him/Dip for answers.
Jan 18th, 2009
Max Williams
I started a flickr group a while ago for picture references for hmhb songs. This pic proves that you really can’t get Teenage Eskimo in Wantage, at least in the shop I went into to get this pic, when driving through one day: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bambino_tostare/1531765286/
I got some funny looks off the blokes behind the counter getting it.
The flickr group is sorely neglected – please, feel free to add more pics.
Jan 19th, 2009
Paul F
Thanks for “over the ad for Continental” which I hadn’t quite managed to pick out and which now makes perfect sense.
“‘Cos you can’t get Teenage Eskimo in Wantage” is one of the best HMHB lines ever IMHO. Makes me laugh every time.
Jan 19th, 2009
Chris The Siteowner
Re: “You can’t get Teenage Eskimo in Wantage”: I’ve always wondered if it really is referring to a magazine, as is always assumed (see Max’s photo above). I mean, would you fly to Amsterdam to buy a magazine? Is it possibly referring to the “real thing” (in which case I should remove the italics)? At this point it may be time to get me coat.
Jan 19th, 2009
Petrovic
@Kevan
As I hear it, you’re half right and so is Chris: “Brendan’s changed his name to Federal Metronome…”
Jan 19th, 2009
Chris The Siteowner
OK, let’s compromise on that as Brendan’s new moniker. I’m intrigued to know more about “Deep Sierra” – I can’t find it in the mailing list archives.
Jan 19th, 2009
RobJ
Does anyone else hear an ‘and’ after Pfaff? And indeed, after Bats as well. Or at least an ‘n’?
Jan 19th, 2009
Max Williams
The whole ‘did you see me’ section – is this a reference to some sporting incident? Sounds like a pitch invasion by a fan. Always wondered if it was based on something real.
Jan 19th, 2009
Charles Exford
In the days before t’interweb I certainly knew someone who always chose to fly to destinations worldwide via the ‘Dam for reasons of specialist publications and audiovisual material. Apparently they even sell the latter in the airport itself.
Jan 19th, 2009
Ben
@ RobJ
yup, to these ears it’s “Pfaff and Batts and Joseph Antoine Bell”
Jan 19th, 2009
Patrick
Chris,
I wholeheartedly agree that ‘Teenage Eskimo’ is not refering to a magazine, but the ‘real thing’ and so would be concur that it should be changed to ‘teenage Eskimo’ without the italics
Patrick
Jan 19th, 2009
Ben
The clue is in the fact that you can get ‘The Erotic Review’ in Wantage.
It’s a magazine people, I have several copies right he….Err It’s a magazine, definitely.
Jan 20th, 2009
Paul F
I agree with RobJ and Ben on the “and”s but am wholly convinced that Teenage Eskimo is a magazine (whether real or fictional). Surely otherwise it would be “a Teenage Eskimo”, or “Teenage Eskimos”.
Jan 20th, 2009
Max Williams
I vote for it being a magazine name. The alternative would be the cosy middle class couple wanting to have a three (or more)-some with some actual teenage eskimos, who have found themselves working in the sex trade in Amsterdam. Seems unlikely.
Jan 20th, 2009
Daryl
I’ve always thought ‘teenage eskimo’ was a magazine or film, for what it’s worth
Brenden changing his name to Federal Metronome always puts me in mind of Norman Cook, who after years in the rather unfashionable Housemartins, reinvented himself into dance auteur extraordinaire Fatboy Slim. This could just be me, however, and it won’t be the first time I’ve got a hmhb song arse backwards…
Jan 20th, 2009
Petrovic
Agreed Daryl – likewise Midfield General or Indian Ropeman or all those other slightly random Skint signings.
Jan 21st, 2009
Sanchez
Re Stavanger Toestub – the words in the booklet are not what Nigel sings during the song, rather they’re a Slipknot style lyric about the existential despair of hurting your tootsies.
I can’t quite make out what he’s actually singing, but much of it sounds rather like “Arse! Cock! Cock! Cock! Arse!” over a badly played nu-metal backing track, again a parody of modern potty-mouthed Yank metal bands.
Feb 18th, 2009
Mike McCahill
I always thought the line was “There’s a million retired *Nevilles* watching ‘Countdown’” – a tart summation of the average age of that flagship programme’s demographic, rather than their political beliefs, although – admittedly – “liberal” does go on to tie in with the whole Amsterdam business…
Feb 19th, 2009
Swanaldo
‘Teenage Eskimo’ is a genre of niche pornography, surely.
Aug 9th, 2009
professorrev
I think that that they were defending the band Arcana, rather than our corner. Seems to make more sense in the context of the lyrics.
Oh and I always thought that Brendan had changed his name to Fred Von Metronome. Not sure which I find funnier now!!
Sep 14th, 2009
Rob
I have always thought that “Well, I’m just about to defend arcana” is more likely…
Feb 8th, 2010
Charles Exford
NB57 confirmed “far beyond dim sierras.” Sounds poetic, so naturally I asked if the words had come from any specific source, but NB wasn’t sure.
I later googled, and this is my own conjecture, but can it be a coincidence that a quite well-known-between-the-wars poem was written in Aberdaron (a village near Abersoch, where my own family used to go camping) in the 1920s which described Snowdonia at sunrise as “dim sierras” ? The Llyn Peninsula and Snowdonia – it certainly ticks some Blackwellian boxes. That young poet, Roy Campbell, by the way later turned out to be a massive fascist-sympathising twat, which is why he is now largely forgotten.
As for the image of “the keepers … hanging rancid in the glade”, NB57 said he was influenced in writing that by John Eastwood’s articles in the Wirral Journal (1989-1993), collected in “Wirral Born and Bred: the old life of the countryside in Wirral (1993)”. When I then got the book I read a very striking description on page 30 of a keeper’s gibbet, with the bodies of predators hanging from nails, rotting in a glade of a private wood where pheasants were bred for shooting, and where other competing species, predators and vermin were slaughtered. Very reminiscent of the descriptions of gamekeeper’s gibbets in poems like Edward Thomas’ ‘The Gallows’, which in turn influenced Ted Hughes’ ‘November’.
So NB57 has flipped the image around at least twice, and perhaps via ideas of gamekeepers hanging there in place of their victims, we now have goalkeepers surreally hanging there in the woodland glade, going rancid.
Eastwood’s book is full of tooled-up gamekeepers chasing young scallywags off land belonging to the local gentry, with descriptions of the incredible adrenalin rush that gave. Again the image is updated and so we have the stewards and police escorting away the adrenalin-rush pitch invader (who is equipped with all the gear from all the sponsors of the Champions League when that competition was first re-branded – Wampum, Motorola, Continental).
Then, as the final lines of his book on page 63, Eastwood quotes a poem by his own Uncle, another older, posher, John Eastwood, a local poem originally published in 1912, on the subject of re-reading a boyhood adventure book:
“Poring over these stained, tattered leaves, I catch back boyhood;
Reading them, I revel in an enclosed content, a havened security -
As in some secret hayloft, shot with shafts of afternoon sunlight –
With sudden upbubblings of joy, inalienable hilarities.”
Apr 1st, 2010
Richard Lovell
Another stellar comment there Charles
Apr 1st, 2010
Matthew
Surely “ad for Continental” should be “amber continental” on account of their logo on theadvertising hoarding being amber?
Jul 7th, 2010
Godsy
“Shot with shafts of afternoon sunlight” is a really beautiful line.
Jul 12th, 2010
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