Bigger the stereo, clearer it gets. Tonight we listened on an empty auditorium PA.

Which makes me realsie how bloody good ” Tommy Walsh” is gonna sound in the mosh.

Cannae wait.

And good shout for the Olde White Rose in Bilston too Brumbiscuit – that does sound like a decent beer selection. I’ve never been that tempted by the Bilston gigs till now but I want to do some walking in & the Welsh Marches & Salop while the weather’s half decent so I’m gonna do Bilston on the way back, with a very handy 23.36 train afterwards

I hope you mean we get the mind-blowing 10p discount in a DPAS though – I’m always loath to strip down to the full DPAK until about to mosh.

For me, a large part of a HMHB song is the setting Nigel creates and the visualisation that you can get from his words. RSVP, to me, is John Budgie Byrne the former England international. He’s short(ish) and squat and has simply taken the narrator’s good lady because of his modest fame. Of course it can be something else to others.

‘Landing’ in Wick… doesn’t necessarily have to mean by air or sea. You can land anywhere once you are there. We know he got there by just after 10.30 pm and the catering would have been provided a few hours before so the options for the location of the reception remain pretty open for me.

Just as Lord Hereford’s Knob aims at the hundreds of generic “As I walked out one morning/evening etc” songs that have been written over the last 500 years, and succeeds in being the funniest and best one of them we’ve ever seen or heard, so this one sets its sights on the hundreds of “The False Bride”/ “My Auld Sheen” songs which have been sung over a similar period, and has no trouble of course being the funniest ever one of those as well. Incidentally, many variations this trad arr. theme mention the jilted lover pouring wine for the bride at her wedding to another bloke ( though none I have read go as far as a poisoning).

If you try to think of a single-syllable first name & surname to rhyme with “return”, John Byrne is as good and as generic as anything you come up with…. but at the same time there are a fair few interesting John Byrnes out there and that may have made a generic name into an intriguing and irresistible choice for the writer.

In the improbable eventuality that one particular John Byrne _did_ run off with NB57’s sweetheart in a dream or something, then my money’s on the interesting Scottish writer/director/painter, him with the interesting beard and the interesting relationship history. I can find links in his biography with Findhorn (see Eno Collaboration thread), near where he lives in Nairn (see Multitude), but not with Wick or any of the islands further North though.

As for “landing in Wick”, of course this being a trad arr. type theme I at first had visions of our fugitive mass-poisoner on a storm-tossed ferry across the Pentland Firth. But then I realised Wick doesn’t have a ferry port. Too shallow it seems. Either he had his own speedboat standing by, or his landing in Wick must be by air, which then of course means it doesn’t have to be a flight from the Orkneys, but the song could be set on another island group, Orkney of course still being the most likely.

None of the John Byrne footballers seem remotely likely to be involved in a wedding in those parts, even a fantasy one laced with lashings of ethylene glycol.

You can tell I’ve got other stuff I really ought to be doing, can’t you ?

Supposedly it’s a type of modern day duel when there’s a disagreement (about what, I’m not sure). The protagonists are meant to meet up and have fisticuffs, after which the problem has been ‘straightened’ out.

I now use:

http://mpesch3.de1.cc/mp3dc.html

Just so much better all round IMO.