Ready Steady Goa is a relative obscurity from Four Lads Who Shook The Wirral in which Nigel justifiably drops scorn on students heading eastwards for spiritual enlightenment. Thanks to Peter and to Fredorrarci, who adds: “I have a feeling that there is a heavily-disguised vocal track in the instrumental break, but if anyone deciphers it they deserve to have a Nobel Prize instituted especially for them”
See lyrics to Ready Steady Goa
grim
“Done took my head to a stilt emporium” – that’s the best I could come up with, as well, but it just doesn’t ring true somehow.
12 November 2008
Max Williams
I’ve tried a few times to make out that buried vocal part. I always took it as a reference to those heavily distorted/buried vocals you sometimes get on psychedelic records – ones that are only supposed to be decipherable if you’re on acid, and then probably wrongly.
I’d love to know what the lyrics are.
28 November 2008
Coops
Isn’t it:
“Dear Prudence and fellow students” ?
4 February 2009
Chigley Skin
Always considered this ‘un an underrated classic, perfect for a singalong. The vocal melody is taken from Woody Guthrie’s great patriotic protest song This Land Is Your Land ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxiMrvDbq3s ), making this one of several HMHB songs to reference Guthrie. The others, to my knowledge, are Got Kramer (“this land is my land, this land is not your land…”), Blood On The Quad (tune taken from Guthrie’s song “Miss Pavlichenko”), Worried Man Blues (an American folk staple that Guthrie, among many others, recorded) and The Light At The End Of The Tunnel (the “old-time religion” breakdown is again an American spiritual that ol’ Woody added to his repertoire).
16 June 2012
MIKE IN COV
I hear, “the tab” rather than “that tab”.
12 July 2012
MIKE IN COV
Here are links to Hare Krishna by George Harrison and Harry Krishna by Bill Oddie.
20 July 2012
Charles Exford
Yes – important post Mike because nobody’s challenged Chigley’s post up there yet – yes, George Harrison might have nicked the tune from Woody Guthrie, but essentially this one is a parody of the George Harrison song, using his slight varation of the tune.
To be fair to George, so famous for another case of (ahem) “sub-conscious plagiarism” after being sued by the Chiffons for ‘My Sweet Lord’, he did at least change (or rather remove) a couple of notes from Woody’s “was made for you and me” bit of the tune. The HMHB tune here doesn’t have those notes either – so it’s using the Harrison version really.
And Woody couldn’t sue George of course – not only had he nicked the tune from the Carter family, but he himeself had commented on Dylan’s plagiarism with one of the most famous quotes of all time on the topic:
“Aw, he just stole from me; I stole fronm everybody.”
(Well, actually he couldn’t sue cos he’d been dead 4 years, but nor could the heirs to his musical estate, for those reasons).
This is folk music after all, so you’re allowed to have tunes passed on to you down the generations, and HMHB are masters of it. But it seems necessary to note, with reference to Chigley Skin’s post, that there actually only really _two_ HMHB references to Woody Guthrie’s own original work on his list: the line from ‘Got Kramer’ and the tune to ‘Blood on the Quad’. The others are to a tune he nicked and songs he covered, all of which would surely have been discovered & loved by Nigel & Neil had Woody never existed.
(Glad he did though. Just being pedantic Chigley – con mucho respect from a fellow Woody Guthrie lover
)
20 July 2012
MIKE IN COV
@Charles. Gez is in the Hare Krishna camp, as am I now.
Quoting from memory, I’m afraid. (1) Critic: Isn’t the theme in the last movement of your [1st] symphony rather like the Ode To Joy? Brahms: Any fool can see that. (2) Stravinsky: Other composers borrow, I steal. (3) Lennon: Seven notes is too many.
I think GH might have got away with this one had This Land Is Your Land been in copyright: it’s certainly reminiscent, but not note-for-note; unlike My Sweet Lord.
I arrived here by remembering the Bill Oddie song while watching a HMHB video: a B-side, once heard, never forgotten. NB was around seven when it came out. What I didn’t know, or had forgotten, was that Dandelion was Peel’s label; and that a copy of this single was found in his record box. Click here.
As regards WG, I’m rather proud that I managed to persuade Cerys Matthews to play The Byrds’ version of Plane Wreck At Los Gatos last Sunday. You won’t find it online, their lawyers are stroppy. I can’t find Woody’s version either; but here’s his kid & Pete Seeger.
20 July 2012
MIKE IN COV
There is another, non-musical, Guthrie reference of course – the photo on the Achtung Bono booklet.
20 July 2012
MIKE IN COV
Have a butchers at Half Arsed Half Biscuit. Good name lads.
20 July 2012
Chigley Skin
Fantastic post, Exxo – the resemblance between This Land Is Your Land and Harrison’s Hare Krishna had gone completely over my head before, but I can now see it very clearly. I still feel Ready Steady Goa follows the melody of This Land Is Your Land more closely than Hare Krishna – albeit minus the “this land was made for you and me” codas – but given the subject matter, I accept now that Hare Krishna was more than likely the source material.
You could, of course, have an academic debate on whether certain American folk songs would have survived through the generations had Alan Lomax not persuaded Woody Guthrie (and often Leadbelly) to record them, but that’s an argument for elsewhere. Either way, Nigel and Neil’s dedication to weaving them into HMHB songs indicates a huge love of the folk tradition, which I feel is one of the many aspects of the band that’s always been overlooked by music critics.
20 July 2012
John Burscough
I have to admit that it had never previously crossed my mind that “Hare Krishna Mantra” was surprisingly similar to “This Land Is Your Land” (WG’s response to Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America”). As Exxo points out, this in turn goes back to the Carter Family’s “When The World’s On Fire”, itself based on the Baptist hymn tune “Oh, My Loving Brother”.
It was probably, like many of their songs, written/discovered by Lesley (Esley) Riddle, a unidexter following an accident with an auger in a cement factory, who later became a crossing guard.
Not long now before lollipop men are called Esley.
23 July 2012
ACIDIC REGULATOR
You might be interested in some of the current offers The Guardian is running … including 3CDs of Woody Guthrie for £5.99! 3CDs of Jacques Brel for £7.50!
There was another recent 4x2CD offer (Son House, Electric Blues, Voodoo Blues, Bottleneck Blues), which I think even better than the one still on show; they might respond to enquiries.
We have a lot to thank Alan Lomax for.
27 July 2012
CyberFoggy
I also hear ‘THE tab you gave me’
Also
‘I sold ME Berghaus’
This site is terrific. The level of eruditious nit-pickery warms the cockles.
19 September 2012
John Burscough
What eruditious nit-pickery? (Incidentally, there’s no such word as eruditious. Or nit-pickery.)
20 September 2012
John Burscough
Interesting, that mention of Wavey Davey. There was a Widnes children’s entertainer and ex-Commonwealth gymnast (inventor of the Simpson Spindle) called Wavey Davey – he was jailed in 2010 for benefits fraud. There was also a character on ‘Reeves and Mortimer’s Big Night Out’ by the same name, who was eventually revealed to be Satan.
However, the hippie clown and peace activist who organised security at Woodstock (as mentioned on Gez’s site) and appeared in the film ‘Timothy Leary’s Last Trip’ was called Wavy Gravy.
Incidentally, if we assume, as all right-thinking people surely do, that ‘Maharishi Navratilova’ refers to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, shouldn’t he be listed in ‘Those No Longer In Need Of Season Tickets’? He succumbed to the curse on 5th February 2008, ten years after the release of FLWSTW.
8 December 2012
Chris The Siteowner
John – I would join you in classifying myself as a right-thinking person, but is the Maharishi reference really direct enough? Isn’t the term just an honorary title, which others could be given?
One Maharishi. There’s only one Maharishi…
12 December 2012
Mr Galbraith
The brief discussion following the breaking news of Ravi’s death led me back to this page, and after reading the lyrics properly, I must say I’ve always heard the phrase ‘nowty jackdaws’. Though, why imaginary birds should have a gob on or get miffed I don’t know…
18 December 2012
Max Williams
Still no-one’s had a crack at the hard-to-discern lyrics in the middle twelve. (at 2.17)
22 February 2013