Comments on: Oh well you’re neither a Stuckist or a YBA

By: Charles Exford

Charles Exford — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 12:55:57 +0000

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.

By: Ricardo

Ricardo — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 11:02:16 +0000

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.

By: Peter Gandy

Peter Gandy — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 17:38:44 +0000

Definitely “Full shift at the coal face” Marc. And being pedantic, we’re all of ethnic origin.

By: Marc

Marc — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 00:32:50 +0000

I think it says “bullshit ethical face” in reference to miners who had black faces but weren’t of ethnic origin.

By: Charles Exford

Charles Exford — Sun, 16 May 2010 21:35:50 +0000

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’.

By: Peter

Peter — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 14:41:19 +0000

think it’s “only when he’s been cleaned from the streets”, rather than “he’d been”.

By: Neil G

Neil G — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 09:52:36 +0000

Hee, hee!

By: Chris The Siteowner

Chris The Siteowner — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 07:36:02 +0000

Fast… (gasp)… losing… will… to… li…

By: Neil G

Neil G — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 00:29:50 +0000

‘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.

By: chris

chris — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 22:01:15 +0000

Nope, sorry: if you listen to the Radio Merseyside session version, it’s absolutely, clearly, “full shift”.