Floreat Inertia is pleasant enough, and the band still do it live, but I never quite got this one, I’m afraid. That said, “the low drone of the treadmill is the sound of my hopes being shattered” is a magnificent line. Thanks to Patrick and gnick
See lyrics to Floreat Inertia
fnc
I always thought he used to cudgel Gordon Giltrap, as in hit him with a stick, but I suppose cajole makes more sense.
22 May 2009
Gareth
I think this is one of the classics. I asked Geoff for the bands permission to use a bunch of HMHB lines in a book I wrote – a disproportionate few were from this song and – oh ultimate accolade – he agreed and added ‘ good choices ‘. Sad perhaps, but it made me happy.
Don’t know what you think of Mr Giltrap but, at least to me, cudgel has a ring of truth
23 May 2009
richard
This took me a minute to get my head around it but this has to be one of my favorite biscuit tracks now.
Also, the John Peel version was a delight. Peel says it’s probably the only song ever to mention Gordon Giltrap. He’s probably right, too.
6 September 2009
NIck Ink
I like the morose melodies of this and Malayan Jelutong (they’re inseparable in my mind) but I still don’t really feel I understand the song. Is there more to ‘I turned my back on Nazareth’ than meets the ear? I was rather hopeful that Gordon Giltrap would turn out to have been in the band Nazareth, but sadly it appears not to be the case.
15 November 2009
Chigley Skin
One of my all-time favourites from Nigel and the boys, and as with a few other songs from this era (notably Yipps and 4AD3DCD), I feel the Peel sessions recording is far superior to the album version.
Lyrically, I’ve always taken it to be about long-term unemployment (hence the cracking Yosser Hughes reference), and the way the mundanity of everyday life can grind you down. Granted, I can’t explain how Gordon Giltrap and Nazareth fit into that subject matter, but they’re balanced out by so many other brilliant lines that I’ve never tried to read too much into them.
29 July 2011
clifton perkins
To my uninformed ears it sounded like
“I used to catch old Gordon Giltrap”
which makes a lot more sense really.
Maybe it started out that way and mutated,
as things do. Anyway, one of my
absolute favourite HMHB songs. They
rise above pleasant and amusing and
do something quite powerful in this song.
Would not have been out of place on
Hatful of Hollow perhaps.
7 January 2012
MIKE IN COV
“Left me standing like a guilty schoolboy” (The Eton Rifles, The Jam, 1979, tune!). And the motto of Eton College, an expensive school for penguins, one of whom once identified it as a favourite, is …
Bloody hell. I’ve been listening to this track for the best part of 20 years and never made the double connection before.
9 July 2012
Chigley Skin
Some picturesque colour footage of Machynlleth in 1929 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DDd6dgY-dY – no sunflowers, and no girls for that matter, but there is a chaos of sheep around ninety seconds in.
17 July 2012
ACIDIC REGULATOR
“I thought that pain and truth were things that really mattered
But you can’t stay here with every single hope you had shattered”
Big Country – In A Big Country (1983). Bought the LP when it came out. Just realised.
5 October 2012
MrSpecialPants
One of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard, the guitar outro makes me tingle.
17 October 2012
MrSpecialPants
By the way the Nazareth song ‘Woke up this Morning’ contains the line ‘I turned my back’ but that’s the only connection I can make.
19 October 2012
MrSpecialPants
Really annoyed, and amazed to find that this is nowhere to be found on YouTube. I honestly think that this is one of the greatest songs by anyone ever. I really want to share this on my Facebook page so could someone clever please upload it because I, quite appropriately, can’t be arsed learning how to do it.
7 December 2012
ACIDIC REGULATOR
@MrSpecialPants, try here.
7 December 2012
Chris The Siteowner
But there was a video there! Stupidly, I just took MrSpecialPants at face value without checking, and – agreeing that the song did deserve a video – made my own one from the BBC Radio Merseyside session (I don’t agree with posting original album recordings on YouTube). It was only when I came to put my video on the page that I discovered one already existed there. A bit of my time wasted, but hey, I guess I’ve made a small but worthwhile addition to YouTube.
Meanwhile MrSpecialPants, look before you comment, I guess.
7 December 2012
MrSpecialPants
What??? I must have searched for that a million times and never found it! Thanks guys.
9 December 2012
Facebook Mum
Sorry if this is really obvious but could someone tell me what “kicking off on the goats” means please?
13 April 2013
TommyS
Erm, what it says, I guess…
13 April 2013
TommyS
It’s only on reading this site I realised Machynlleth is mentioned, Nigel’s pronunciation being so far from from the real thing, which is most unlike him, I have to say. In the vague hope that he ever sees this (and I’m probably not the first to say this) – you got the hard bit right (the ‘lleth’) but the first part is pronounced Mackun, not Mackin, and with the emphasis on the ‘un’.
13 April 2013
Facebook Mum
No, that hasn’t got me any further forward I’m afraid.
Is he: 1. Starting off his jobs by tending to the goats; 2. Kicking a football and trampling over the goats; or 3. Having a tantrum/breakdown and riding on the goats?
14 April 2013
vendor of quack nostrums
I suspect that it’s one of those lines that only Nigel could clearly explain (and even then, probably not). If we were going to apply some sort of democratic Utilitarian principle, then I’d chuck my hat towards FBM’s goat based kicking off explanation No. 3.
14 April 2013
Dr Desperate
I think it’s NB57′s stock character, if not alter ego, the Angry Middle-Aged Man, on the slide from penning furious letters to the local paper (Letters Sent), the council (Doreen) and the Ombudsman (Evening Sun) into ranting at innocent animals at a petting zoo. “Kicking off on” (as in “It’s all kicking off now”) in this case would suggest verbal abuse rather actual caprine physical contact.
The idiosyncratic use of “cajole” makes it difficult to be sure of the protagonist’s earlier opinion of Gordon Giltrap, but “turning his back on Nazareth” suggests they were both erstwhile musical heroes, in keeping with the general tone of disillusion and shattered hopes. (This puts them in a different category from, for instance, Styx, REO Speedwagon and Slipknot, not to mention Korn and Mötley Crüe).
Like CtSO, I don’t get it, but I think it’s magnificent.
15 April 2013
Facebook Mum
Ah right, thank you for that. I didn’t know you could kick off in that way ON someone, or goats. I’ll have to get myself some of those language pills.
Sorry for lowering the tone.
15 April 2013