12 Dec 2008
Bowling my left-arm occasionals again
I have to confess I was inspired to add Tyrolean Knockabout when I saw this rather unbelievable object in the b3ta newsletter this afternoon. It defies belief (and as they say, “Filed in the what the fuck are Amazon selling now? category”). A bit of a filler, this track, but a chance to get the accordion out, it would appear. Thanks to EskimoEric
See lyrics to Tyrolean Knockabout
15 Letters Sent:
Neil G
I think it should be ‘break man’. The break in a song is usually a little instrumental bit, hence no singing and ‘more words’ to be found. So the break man would be the man who provides the break. That’s how I’ve always understood it.
Dec 13th, 2008
Dave Betts
Why Amazon, Why?
Dec 13th, 2008
Richard
I can’t agree with you on this one I’m afraid. A filler? This is one of my favorites on this album.
I love the accordian and the guiter after the second verse. And he talks about taking a walk with a flask – I always like the songs when he goes walking (Light at the end of the Tunnel, Joy Division Oven Gloves etc)
Anyway, HMHB dont do fillers!!
Dec 13th, 2008
Chris The Siteowner
Sorry Richard. You’re probably right. Anyone else want to speak up for the big “break” theory?
Dec 13th, 2008
s.g.d.,a Shropshire lad
from the website:
Jimmie Rodgers was “The Singing Brakeman” – he’d obviously put a few words in with the yodelling as well.
Richard is correct,they don’t do fillers.
Dec 14th, 2008
Neil G
There’s my whole belief system in tatters. What am I going to do now?
Dec 14th, 2008
Daryl
Agree with richard and sgd. No way a filler.
As to Paul Ross and Amazon, my conception of man as nature’s final word is destroyed, although all of the 25 5-star reviews are taking the piss.
I see it rather like an online version of unloading old fridge freezers in front of Paul’s “gaff”. Sort of.
Daryl
Dec 14th, 2008
Neil G
Whilst on the hmhb website, I saw this “keeping my feet above the mulch of the barton” First sentence of Phase the Third, Chapter 2 of Tess of the d’Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy) reads, “The dairymaids and men had flocked down from their cottages and out of the dairy-house with the arrival of the cows from the meads; the maids walking in pattens, not on account of the weather, but to keep their shoes above the mulch of the barton.”. So it looks like ‘barton’ rather than bottom. Never heard the word before.
Dec 14th, 2008
Richard
Its a killer when that happens Neil. I thought the same as you. We were partially right – it was just Nigel being very clever and having two meanings – one for us and another for intelligent people!
Dec 14th, 2008
dj
keeping my feet above the mulch of the barn or possibly barton, i’ve heard nigel use this phrase in an interview previously as well
Dec 14th, 2008
grim
Mulch of the barton, I think. Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles: “The dairy maids and men had flocked down from their cottages and out of the dairy-house with the arrival of the cows from the meads; the maids walking in pattens, not on account of the weather, but to keep their shoes above the mulch of the barton.”
Not sure, but it appears to mean, “the lands surrounding a manor house.”
(“Pattens” also isn’t a typo, but means a sort of high-heeled wooden shoe or clog, worn precisely for purposes of not getting the feet muddy.)
Dec 14th, 2008
Steve Malkmoose
A farmer friend of mine has since told me that a “barton” is a type of barn or outbuilding where the cows are kept” – so I take it they were trying to avoid the cow shit lol
Dec 15th, 2008
Charles Exford
‘Barton’ is from an old English word for farmyard in general, from the same root as the Anglo-Saxon word ‘bere’ for ‘barley’ and of course the usual placename suffix ‘ton’ for ‘fortified settlement’ (the fortifications almost always being a wooden stockade to stop yer livestock getting rustled). Hence Barton being such a common placename and surname.
Rather like Shakespeare, Hardy has almost single-handedly managed to preseve a fair bit of Olde English lexis for our delectation, simply by including such archaic rural items in one of his classics – and I like to think that’s what he was consciously trying to do, as surely is our Nigel. I don’t think either Hardy or his Birkonian admirer are just trying to show off that they know a few obscure words.
Incidentally, did anyone hear the “Walking Hardy’s Landscape” series on R4′s Woman’s Hour recently ? A few weeks ago (and I remember noting that it happened to be the morning when HMHB would have been setting off in the van to Norwich) they were tramping around Berkshire following the story of Jude the Obscure, and the ‘Hardy expert’ from the University of Hull referred twice to “The Book of Revelations” and then once, as if correcting herself almost immediately, to “The Book of Revelation”. Edge-of-the-sofa listening.
As for ‘The Singing Brakeman’, I seem to recall Peel may have played some of his yodelling stuff on air, but the pun with ‘break man’ is almost certainly intended, since Nigel seems so self-consciously obsessed by ‘the break’ as a concept in so many of his songs….
Exford.
Dec 15th, 2008
Neil G
As DJ said, above, Nigel used the phrase ‘above the mulch of the barton’ in an interview. It was on the Millennium Edition of Andy Kershaw’s show between When The Evening Sun Goes Down and If I Had Possession Over Pancake Day. I downloaded it from the HMHB website some time ago. It’s not on there at the moment. I’ve listened to it quite a few times but I never caught that phrase until today. Strange.
Feb 4th, 2009
Vendor of Quack Nostrums
Stumbled across this. Released 41 years ago – suddenly I feel very old.
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/films/1964to1979/filmpage_disused.htm
Feb 10th, 2012
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