On The ‘Roids was one of two new songs previewed on a session broadcast by BBC Radio Merseyside in September 2007. The gig was to celebrate 30 years of the station’s PMS programme, and was introduced by long-time presenter Roger Hill. There’s a bit about the event here. Thanks to the BBC’s “Listen Again”, lots of people got a decent recording of the whole hour-long gig, apparently. On The ‘Roids isn’t too deep and meaningful, more a bit of a terrace singalong.
See lyrics of On The ‘Roids
Gordon Burns
At the end, during the repeated “He’s on the ‘roids”
Leave it be, let it go
Don’t be daft, don’t you know
22 May 2008
Neil
Can someone overcome my ignorance and tell me what ‘he used to lark with the dreads, now he’s a nark on the steds’ means?
9 August 2008
Ben
Neil, my interpretation is of a man who previously was comfortable knocking around with people with dreadlocks (dreads) and possibly imbibing certain substances associated with that lifestyle, until he became consumed by body building, and taking anabolic steroids, a side effect of which is being a moody bastard.
10 August 2008
Paul F
Beautifully put Ben.
11 August 2008
chesneywold
Sorry to be a bit fruity but i just wanted to say that i think the ‘come on’ at the end of the refrain is the most beautiful iamb in all of literature. It really demonstrates the way that rhythm combines with words to create an effect that is unique. ‘Just walk away John’, is a fair enough line but the repeated heartbeat ‘come on’ evokes a desperate and insistent tug that would be lost if it were not so perfectly placed. I’d like to write more drivel but men have come to clean our carpet for fleas so i have to go home.
12 June 2009
Jam
Just being a pedant but shouldn’t it be Narc as in narcotics?
19 June 2011
aiwacat
Nope, it’d be nark, meaning an annoyance or irritant. See also, “The car that parked on the pavement narked pedestrians and children with chalk.”
19 June 2011
Jim Wickham
Thank goodness for this excellent site. As a primitive creature of the heath (and a Western Australian one, at that!) I had initially assumed that ‘roids was a contraction of haemorrhoids. I thought all the attitudes described were down to a pain in the arse rather than body building.
Anyway, thank goodness, as I recently introduced a real Scouser down here in Oz to this album, so was therefore prepared when she first scanned the song titles on my iPod and commented “oh yeah – LOADS of boys in Liverpool are on them”.
Looking forward (like a teenager!) to 90 Bisodol (Crimond) – the last album I pre-ordered was probably a Bowie one back in the 70s…..
15 September 2011
whiteyTRFC
Is “Just walk away John” anything to do with the Cast song and frontman John Power or a mere coincidence? Can’t see why he would be connected to a song about steds…
10 May 2012
MIKE IN COV
For what it’s worth, picking up a loose thread from Tyrolean Knockabout … how now brown cow, surely … and the black horse might come from Lloyd’s bank ads like this one. The horse was often in closer view; a friend once unreliably confirmed that they got it to rear by parading a mare in heat just out of shot.
“Nark” is one of those odd words with a double origin. In the British senses (an informer, or to annoy) it comes from Romany; in the US one (a police agent, often “narc”) it derives from the former Federal Bureau of Narcotics.
25 July 2012
Chris The Siteowner
Just the names of pub teams, surely? Or have we moved past that and onto the selection of the pub names?
25 July 2012
MIKE IN COV
Nah, nothing too profound here … I just wanted to get the black horse anecdote in.
25 July 2012
John Burscough
Pub team names perhaps, but also …the coat of arms of Uruguay?
(No.)
25 July 2012
Vendor of Quack Nostrums
Sunday morning Pub League teams obviously; hungover violence and mayhem masquerading as the beautiful game. Awful garish strips devoid of any full blocks of colour, ‘cos there is no single member of the committee who has a iota of taste, and besides they got a great deal from Big Dave’s sister who’s knocking off that bloke who delivers for KitKing.
So you stand there witnessing the whole Neanderthal situation, watching the young referee taking some appalling abuse (idea for song – essentially a list of reasons why without the referee, football as a competitive game would not exist), avoiding the glare of the manic eyed substitute who is sulkily dribbling a ball around some cones whilst racking up his inner tensions at the injustice of his being dropped for that knob who works with Jonno’s mate and has always used that other bloody boozer, and contemplate yet another underrated NB57 line which is sooo bloomin’ clever and yet seems to have gone unnoticed here. Only a man who is at one with his craft can pen:
Full of ringers of course
Thrown up from The Plough
25 July 2012