The most obscure lyrics transcription on the site to date, and another one I can’t see has been done anywhere else. I think Epiphany has never been released either, but was only performed on a John Peel session. It’s a shame, because it’s extraordinary. Strange, and a little dark. What the heck is it all about? Can anyone nail down all the references? We’ve all seen the signs to Billing Aquadrome, but who’s ever been there? The season of Epiphany extends from January 6th until Ash Wednesday, in case you’re wondering. It’s all rather disconcerting. I’m off for a lie down.
Se the lyrics of Epiphany
simon smith
I always thought it was `big you up on high days and holidays`, but, hey, I could be a dick!
29 April 2008
simon smith
I guess I`m a dick, huh?
2 May 2008
chris
Heh heh, no, just forgot to comment on that one. Does anyone else agree? I’ll bow to popular opinion. of course.
2 May 2008
simon smith
It makes no odds in the context of the song really does it? Pedant or nitpicker I may be, but this is a fantastic project and if there has to be any labour of love in this world, I can`t think of a better one.
I big YOU up Mr Rand, good man yerself.
2 May 2008
Houtini
Definitely “big you up” – and I think it does make a difference, not in meaning but in choice of phrase cos it just doesn’t fit, does it? (Is the proper word ‘incongruous’? Rings a bell) A loony singing songs about a hospice, who “bigs up” a hospice? And THAT’s the point entirely. Big up all yourselves innit. Brap brap brap!
15 May 2008
simon smith
Nah, deffo a “comment” killer. Twenty two years of HMHB gigs and the clique just gets more cabbalistic and so exclusive they don’t (or can’t) exist.
1 June 2008
Charlie
Random question – does anyone know if the ‘black apes, gibbering on dark lawns’ line was borrowed from somewhere? It’s always sounded familiar to me, but I may be wrong. Google doesn’t suggest anything.
22 September 2008
Neil G
I have listened to this again recently and it is definitely ‘big you up’. “I think you’re marvellous, I sing your praises, I big you up”. They all say more or less the same thing. ‘Pick you up’ means nothing in this context and it doesn’t even sound like ‘pick you up’. Now that this song is available to all via the Peel Sessions download, I suggest everyone has a listen and that those who agree with me write in and let their voices be heard. Do not rest until this injustice has been corrected. Better still phone in to the number below to vote on it. To vote ‘big’, call 0903 1234567. To vote ‘pick’, call 0903 7654321. Calls cost £5 per second. A penny in every hundred pounds received will go to the charity Save Children And Mothers (SCAM). Thank you.
23 December 2008
Charles Exford
If anyone could tell me how “this song is available to all via the Peel sessions download”, as mentioned above, I’d be v. grateful. I can’t find it anywhere. It is the only song on this site that I’ve never heard, and as it’s Epiphany tomorrow I’d love to think that somehow I could get to hear it before too long.
Not having heard it, I shouldn’t comment on the above lyrics yet, but no, it doesn’t seem nonsensical to me that it should be “big you up”. Google searches reveal lots of interesting charity recordings and appeals bigging up hospices. Just as an example try googling Chris Difford (of Squeeze) and “hospice”. He wrote a whole album 2 years ago, bigging up a chain of hospices in SE England … and then look at the list of outings on the front page of that hospice’s website. No Billing Aquadrome but plenty of similar jaunts. [I'm not saying that NB is referring to any specific example though - amongst others I also found another prog rock album that Rick Wakeman's son had recorded for a hospice. There are loads of such efforts evidenced in Googleland]. Maybe NB had himself been asked to write a song for a hospice ?
Could be seen by some as sensitive subject matter – I wonder if that’s why this never made it to “Achtung Bono” ? Perhaps he had second thoughts about the element of (apparently) seeming to satirise such charity efforts ?
It does seem likely however that the “Epiphany” mention is a cross reference to the ‘You only busk when it’s Xmas!’ line, in “Shit Arm”, which would have been written in the same period and could have ended up on the same album. As our hero seems to have strong feelings about those who only busk at Christmas, it is significant that he says he’ll be busking this one on the very day when (in the Western tradition at least) Christmas ends.
Of course the whole busking thing is also probably just a self-deprecating remark anyway about what a cheerful, busk-able little number it isn’t.
Maybe. I have plenty of other (even vaguer) thoughts about the rest of the lyrical ramble so lovingly laid out for us here by Chris, but before I comment how can I listen to it ?
Exford.
5 January 2009
Chris The Siteowner
I’m sure it used to be on the Audio page of the HMHB website but it doesn’t appear to be there at the moment.
5 January 2009
Neil G
Charles,
You can download the Peel Sessions here. There is a link on this website in the introduction to I Was A Teenage Armchair Honved Fan. Perhaps Chris could put it on the home page. I knew it was on here somewhere. It took me ages to find it.
6 January 2009
Chris The Siteowner
OK, good idea! – see top of next column.
6 January 2009
Charles Exford
Thank you so much Neil – BRILLIANT – you’ve made my 2009 already. My inability to listen to this track has been gnawing away at my faith in the interweb for well nigh a twelve-month.
The first couple of listens have sort of re-affirmed my opinion that the spoken part could be a whole load of parodies of a whole load of kinds of literary narrative styles … in terms of cliched characters, cliched turns of phrase and ways of revealing the plot … (yes folks this really could be a pseuds’ corner job, so feel free to parody me, too)
OK, I’m off to read some more Hardy, because look apparently this cottage, now a B+B, is apparently referred to in Hardy’s little-studied collection of short stories called “A changed Man and other tales” from 1913 (long after Hardy had written his last novel). “A Changed Man”, eh? Is it an epiphany that brings about the change, I wonder ?
And can it be a coincidence that the random quote from the book we find upon the interweb (faith in which is now fully restored I might add) is:
“They had pursued their rounds for many years without meeting with any incident of an unusual kind, but to-night, according to the assertions of several, there prevailed, to begin with, an exceptionally solemn and thoughtful mood among two or three of the oldest in the band, as if they were thinking they might be joined by THE PHANTOMS OF DEAD FRIENDS who had been of their number in earlier years, and now were mute in the churchyard under flattening mounds.”
Dead friends, eh? Hmm. Wonder if there are any bleached bones actually sucked upon in Hardy’s tales, or if it is just another literary cliche under NB’s microscope ?
…and has NB stayed in that very B+B whilst hiking through Hardy’s Wessex ?
Exford.
6 January 2009
Petrovic
Thank you Charles. The text of A Changed Man’s online here if you haven’t already found it.
6 January 2009
Charles Exford
Thanks for that link Petrovic ! I’d already earmarked a second-hand copy on Amazon, but you’ve saved me the disappointment of ordering it and waiting for it in hope. Having just read the second story in the collection (“The Waiting Supper”), as well as speed-reading through the rest, I can find nothing to justify my hope that therein would lie some evidence of the influences of that particular Keeper’s Cottage, or of Thomas hardy, on any of the words to “Epiphany”.
Ah well, I guess there are gamekeepers’ cottages and emaciated foals all over the place, in romantic fiction, detective fiction, afternoon TV serials etc, etc …
C.E.
6 January 2009
Petrovic
There also appear to be a lot of biographies of Hardy, if you can summon up the strength to search them for evidence… a long job but you’d likely find something about the cottage (I must admit I’ve done similar re Edward Elgar and the Malverns/Worcestershire).
I think there’s also a lot of Hardy on line now he’s out of copyright, if you feel like searching for phrases…
7 January 2009
Rowan
But seriously chaps and chappettes, what about these black apes gibbering on dark lawns? It’s a phrase that has refused to leave my head in 5 years, and is frankly making me difficult to be around. The most prominent Mr Stinchcombe I can find reference for is a former MP
19 August 2009
Ricardo
It’s from Ronald Fuller’s book, “Hell-Fire Francis”, which is a history of the Hell-Fire Club.
“For once the Superior of the Brotherhood had turned his pious attentions to West Wycombe, the Abbey fell gradually to neglect, to decay, and at last even to respectability. In 1777 Francis Duffield sold it to John Morton of Danesfield, and ten years later Morton’s widow sold it to a Robert Scott. Once, on one of the little lonely islands in the Thames nearby, Hellgate Barrymore held a moonlight orgy; and for the last time the ancient walls re-echoed to the tipsy choruses. By 1797 the chapel had entirely disappeared. Robert Scott leased the Abbey to a poor family, who made money by showing round parties of visitors, and regaling them with tales of devils coming down chimneys and coal-black apes gibbering on dark lawns.”
20 August 2009
Rowan
Ricardo, thanks so much for that. Devils coming down chimneys is fairly evocative too…
8 September 2009
Charles Exford
I must admit that Ricardo’s post was so illuminating I thought it desrved some sort of site award, a “Gold Biscuit” perhaps, a “Gold Rand”, or just a bloke saying that Ricardo is “vital” ? But I didn’t know what to suggest … so I said nothing.
I believe Ricardo’s post is the most literarily illuminating since someone called “Richard” posted early in ’09 about the Shackleton biog reference in “A Country Practice”. Richard ? Ricardo ? Hmm.
Definitely fits in with the way that NB has said in one of his interviews that he writes, nicking other people’s pretty phrases that he might use one day.
And whoever posted those handwritten lyrics from the Liverpool exhibition. He’s dead vital too. I’ll be voting for them 3 in the comments-of-the-year readers’ poll for the chrisrand.com award night hosted by Davina Macall or Barry Venison.
8 September 2009
Charles Exford
Oh and by the way I did wonder whether “Stinchcombe” just might conceivably have been jotted down in NB’s notebook as a name worthy of use because of this story, which combines at least 2 of his preoccupations…
http://www.stinchcombehill.com/
It might seem at first that the rambling anti-golf obsessive who runs that website has really only been doing it since 2006-07, but then you notice that the attacks on ramblers started in 2002.
Got to love the Hugo Chavez quote that’s been added on there recently, by the way, though Hugo has clearly never played a round amidst the salt-of-the-earth denizens of any of Wirral’s fine municipal courses.
8 September 2009
Ricardo
Glad to have ended your torment, Rowan.
And as Sherlock Exford suspects, I was also responsible for the Shackleton quote – it was my first post on this magnificent site- but saw there was already a Richard. Ta for the compliment; smiley emoticon thing.
8 September 2009
Wildebeest
Ricardo, how do you come up with these? Inside info direct from NB?
A better search engine than the rest of us have seen? Or, are you
really an exceptionally prodigious reader who just happened across these quotations?
15 September 2009
Charles Exford
I notice it’s five years to the day since this last Peel session was recorded … which means it’s five years this week since the last Peel show… which means Peel Day. More events than last year it seems, but still not as many as there should be. There are all-dayers in London & Manchester today, and this
http://www.artinliverpool.com/blog/2009/10/john-peel-day-at-the-bluecoat-11-oct-09/
tomorrow in L’pool. Hope someone will take an HMHB disc or two along:
However, I can’t find anything listed for Leeds, so I guess next Thursday should be declared Leeds John Peel day. See you in the Fenton from about 7 (the beer at Stylus is unspeakably bad )
Exxo
10 October 2009
TWO FAT FEET
I don’t know how many different actual recordings of this track exist, but on the one I’ve got Nigel sounds like he’s got a rotten cold.
4 April 2010
Ben
I’ve never heard this ever. Can someone up load to you tube (other websites are available)
4 April 2010
Chris The Siteowner
The Peel Sessions download at The Perfumed Garden (see link elsewhere on this page) appears to be down at the moment, but a quick Google will give you many sources for torrents of the complete set of songs from John Peel’s show (and more), well worth hearing. Especially this one.
5 April 2010
Ugeine
Billing Aquadrome is a holiday park near Northampton. It’s got static caravans, some funfair type things, I think a marina as well. My mum used to do the accounts for the café.
One of two Northampton references in HMHB songs, the other been ‘Rothersthorpe North / South’.
27 June 2010
Daryl
January the sixth. Epiphany.
6 January 2011
SPENCER THE HALFWIT
January the sixth. Epiphany.
Well someone had to do it.
6 January 2012
ACIDIC REGULATOR
I agree with Exxo that the last few lines cross-refer to Shit Arm, Bad Tattoo. Epiphany is the twelfth day of Christmas, suggesting a further cross-reference, this time to Upon Westminster Bridge; which mentions Good Friday. My brain’s beginning to hurt.
There have been five references in this thread to the religious festival and only one (yes, Exxo, you again) to the alternative meaning of epiphany: “a moment of sudden or great revelation or realization” (OED). I think the long first and second paragraphs relate to such a moment, very specifically described, induced by a transition from quiet delight on discovering the crossed line to utter horror as the overheard conversation developed. I’m not surprised the band have never released the song.
5 August 2012
ACIDIC REGULATOR
A variety of search strategies on the passage “strange disquiet … dead mates” yielded zilch; in particular, I found nothing in Hardy. If it’s derived from anything, it’s an obscurity – where are you Ricardo?
Bleached bones have no nutritional value, sucking on them doesn’t even serve cannibalistic purposes.
6 August 2012
Vendor of Quack Nostrums
Never felt the need to analyze this one too much. I always fancied that it was just a few of Nigel’s idle thoughts, perhaps undertaken whilst keeping his feet about the mulch of the barton, that meshed together one day into a sort of monologue seguey song type thing. Doesn’t really fit onto an album (a wot?), don’t do EPs any more, don’t release singles so it can’t be a B side. Tell you what, we’ll do it at the next Peel session.
It is, however, crammed full of wonderful things, not least the quote that Chris uses to summarize the whole Lyrics Project, the Hell-Fire club reference and the title itself. Maybe that’s just meant to be a random snippet of information offered up by Karen Henderson’s father as an alternative to hospice song composing and bleached bone sucking. Similar to ‘Shawshank Redemption. Five quid, HMV’, it could be blurted out to bemused passers-by, perhaps to deflect those who are showing concern about the lack of nutritional value in his diet.
Interestingly (or not), another wonderful phrase ‘grooming agitator’ when googled, throws up very little except a reference to Hoover (and innumerable links back to The Lyrics Project).
http://www.useless-tools.co.uk/hoover_hurricane_extra.htm
Not a good review either; maybe that was the cause of the increasing frustration. If you try using a Unique Hoover grooming agitator on a Dyson it aint gonna work too well is it?
6 August 2012
vendor of quack nostrums
Probably better to keep your feet above the mulch of the barton rather than about it.
6 August 2012
Charles Exford
Countdown happened to come on after the racing this av – hadn’t seen it for years. The whole programme is reassuringly average these days isn’t it? Has the dumbing down been gradual or did it come with the Amstrad fella?
13 September 2012
vendor of quack nostrums
I can recall the day quite clearly. A Sunday, in January.
6 January 2013
BrumBiscuit
Well, Carol had to go, she was far too Daily Mail for Channel 4. They should really have rolled the shutters down for good once Richard Whiteley croaked. The succession of unsuitable hosts has only served to show what a charmer he was. I think Des O’Connor might even have been drafted in. Now, Rachel, on the other hand has her points.
7 January 2013