I did, and I wasn’t even there.

However, I also put “things can only get bedder” for Del Amitri, as I always get them confused. I’m pleased to report that that irked my purist mate.

@Mike – too right – let’s complain. How about a Spacebook Group & some letters sent ?

@Chris – I’m starting another campaigning MyFace page to get you to consign your “dumpster” & “sneaking admiration for one of two of them” phrases to the, errm, dumpster.

http://8tracks.com/grim/festival-of-irk-bbc-6-music-edition

But it occurs to me that others might be able to do better…

Yes, as is picking Simply Red’s Talking Heads cover. By being a bit cautious/squeamish about the non-cool bands, they do seem to have missed the point of the song. Did they actually play a Michael Ball track in full?

Also, they cheated by not playing the ITP artists back to back. The cool stuff therefore vastly ounumbered the non-cool stuff.

Steve Lamacq

4.00pm: Lammo opens with “Irk the Purists” and explains the general idea.

4.04pm: Rush. Unfortunately not one of their prog-rock epics but the radio-friendly “Spirit of Radio”, which got to number, errm who cares, in about 1979.

“One likes to believe in the freedom of music
But glittering prizes and endless compromises
Shatter the illusion of integrity.”

Indeed.

4.40pm: Hall and Oates “Man Eater”

“If you’re in it for love, you ain’t gonna get too far.”

5.08pm: Sly Stone “I Want to Take You Higher”

“Music’s still flashin’ me…
Feelings that should make you move
Sounds that should help you groove.”

5.35pm: Patti Smith, “Because the Night”

“With doubt the vicious circle turns and burns.”

6.24pm: Lammo again explains this evening’s project, demonstrating the short straws and the long straws of it by segging a short snatch of Michael Ball’s “Love Changes Everything” into The Fall’s “Glam Racket”

“You’ve cut my income by one third
You are working on a video project
You hog the bathroom
And never put your hand in your pocket.”

6.55pm: Lammo plays “a bit of Coltrane” – “The Promise”, in fact – and says his Dad will be thinking: “got him at last”.

Marc Riley

7.03pm: Lard’s second track is “Irk the Purists”, and he explains the idea again, prompting everyone in the studio, notably a contemporary beat combo called The Hornblower Brothers, to express their admiration for Our Lads. It sounded like if they hadn’t done so, he’d have chucked them out on their ears forthwith.

Lard is now going on about the fact that it’s “Irk the Purists Evening” between every song. In fact (7.20pm) he’s just offered the Lads a session… next week! He reckons he’ll “get his people to contact their people”. He’ll be lucky. Geoff, oh Geoff, wo weilest du ?

7.24pm: It’s the random Goth selection. The Sisters of Mercy with “Good Things” (1982)

7.35pm: Chris de Burgh doing a cover version of “Turn, Turn, Turn”. Surely that’s cheating!? In conversation with Lard later on, Gideon Coe says he had been tempted to ask his producer to contact Chris de Burgh’s record company to ask if the latter had done any instrumentals.

8pm: “Mr.Blue Sky” is the predictable ELO choice. Probably the first and last song tonight that HMHB have covered? Ten down, ten to go!

8.25pm: “At the request of HMHB, this is Love and “Bummer in the Summer”. ”

“In the middle of the summer
I had a job bein’ a plumber,
Just to pass till the fall
It was you I wanna ball
All day.”

8.44pm: most, but not quite all, of Television’s epic 10-minute “Marquee Moon” title track.

8.57pm: “We’re going to leave you with (and I never thought I’d say this) Simply Red and “Heaven” (the Talking Heads cover)”

“The band in heaven, they play my favourite song.”

Gideon Coe

9.26pm: Sun Ra “Watusa”

9.32pm: Hüsker Dü “All this I’ve Done for You”

9.44pm: Captain Beefheart “Moonlight on Vermont” (featuring “gimme that old time religion, it’s good enough for me”)

10.15pm: Can “Sing Swan Song”.

10.45pm: Del Amitri “Deceive Yourself”

“When over the table and two cups of tea
She told me she felt the same way about me.”

10.58pm: Gideon plays “Irk the Purists” again.

11.00pm: Miles Davis “Dr. Jekyll”

11.56pm: Meatloaf “You Took the Words Right out of My Mouth”

“Now my body is shakin’ like a wave on the water
And I guess that I’m beginnin’ to grin.”

Now that’s what I call the opposite of being irked. A brilliant evening’s listening.

Anyone for “Patricia The Stripper”?

“4. It rhymes with ‘laugh’.” I’m sorry, Mike, but do you have a speech impediment?