25 Mar 2008
Oh well you’re neither a Stuckist or a YBA
If I had possession over Pancake Day makes a couple of Robert Johnson-related references and then links them together via the medium of lemon juice. Very clever indeed. Oh you work it out.
See lyrics to If I had possession over Pancake Day
12 Letters Sent:
zymeck
This is one of my favourite HMHB tracks
i always throught he sang either “we’ll call it a bull shift…” or “we’ll call it a bull shit…”?
(yes, i know it that doesnt really make sense either!)
Mar 27th, 2008
778
Yeah, its definitely bull-something, and I’m pretty sure shit. As in, thats what the Turner Prize winning pieces are.
Mar 28th, 2008
chris
Nope, sorry: if you listen to the Radio Merseyside session version, it’s absolutely, clearly, “full shift”.
Mar 28th, 2008
Neil G
‘Ragmag seller said “I’d be in pleats”‘ should be ‘Ragmag seller said I’d be in pleats’. There should be no quotation marks since “I’d be in pleats” is not what the ragmag seller would have said. He would have said something like “you’ll be in pleats”. The character singing the song is reporting what the ragmag seller said, i.e. the ragmag seller said (that) I would be in pleats but I wasn’t until he was cleaned from the streets.
I’m sure everyone can see how important this is to the integrity of the song.
Oct 12th, 2008
Chris The Siteowner
Fast… (gasp)… losing… will… to… li…
Oct 12th, 2008
Neil G
Hee, hee!
Oct 13th, 2008
Peter
think it’s “only when he’s been cleaned from the streets”, rather than “he’d been”.
Apr 10th, 2009
Charles Exford
Not enough apostro-phedantry on here lately. I remembered that during a BBC 4 show on “Goldsmiths” recently, I made a mental note to check if you’d got it right but couldn’t be arsed at the time. Then I was reminded today by that Guardian style guide, as mentioned elsewhere. According to Wikipedia on legal documents only, it’s still Goldsmiths’ College, and as the rebranding occurred well after this song in 2006 I reckon we could stick with Goldsmiths’.
May 16th, 2010
Marc
I think it says “bullshit ethical face” in reference to miners who had black faces but weren’t of ethnic origin.
Jan 25th, 2011
Peter Gandy
Definitely “Full shift at the coal face” Marc. And being pedantic, we’re all of ethnic origin.
Jan 26th, 2011
Ricardo
Some topical Pancake Day apostro-phedantry.
As mentioned by Mr Exford above, Goldsmith’s (sic) is wrong. The college is generally Goldsmiths officially Goldsmiths’, but definitely not Goldsmith’s.
And ‘till doesn’t seem right. It has to be either till or ‘til, I think.
Mar 8th, 2011
Charles Exford
He’s right you know.
Anyway, as I woke up this morning and found myself brought pancakes in bed, which just didn’t seem right on International Women’s Day, I thought I’d extend my knowledge of the Blues.
So I went to look up my “lemon squeezers”, “biscuit rollers”, etc on sites like bluescentric.com/blues/dictionary/index.php
and blueslyrics.tripod.com/blueslanguage.htm (both of which seem to owe a debt to the book “Blues Fell This Morning: Meaning in the Blues” by Paul Oliver and Richard White).
Shocked at the amount of 1930′s double entendre and yet at the same time dreaming of a love affair in far-off Budapest, I thought I’d better put my new knowledge into practice by re-working the old Robert Johnson lines into something more … empowering. How about:
“Biscuit rollers could squeeze my lemon till their blues went away
If International Women had possession over me toDay.”
See also “fruit” in the lists thread.
Mar 8th, 2011
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