Doreen is another song with a whole list of unlikely happenings and situations, including obsessive showjumping fans, letters to the council in the form of poetry and Dutch prog bands on holiday in the north-west. The aforementioned veterans Alquin had split 15 years before the song was written, but the almost inevitable asterisk reveals that they reformed 10 years later and had an “Ultimate Collection”, naturally. Thanks to David and Grim
See lyrics to Doreen
Max Williams
ah, ‘anglia’! I always thought it was ‘angler’ but ‘anglia’ makes a lot more sense. In my experience anglers look serene from any direction, rather than surprised.
18 March 2010
Richard Lovell
My dad had an Anglia in the seventies. Here’s a quite surprised looking one.
18 March 2010
Niall Davies
Yh, the Ford Anglia did look surprised :p
I think this is very surprised
and its been pimped xD roflmao
18 March 2010
John Anderson
Far be it from me to criticise Nigel’s observations, but I would say the fronts of Anglias look downcast rather than surprised…
18 March 2010
Third rate Les in his Burberry fez
Surely “Arimathea”?
19 March 2010
Chris The Siteowner
Was she his wife or something? Anyway, yeah, OK, well spotted.
20 March 2010
Sheridan
Just a small one, but it should be ‘where’er’, there’s an extra e in there at the moment.
1 January 2012
SPENCER THE HALFWIT
Had this going round my head all the way up Scafell Pike last week. I know it refers to the other one but once it’s in your head you can’t shift it. By coincidence the room where I was staying had a sloping roof.
3 June 2012
MIKE IN COV
Could J K Rowling (Chamber Of Secrets, 1998) be a fan?
9 July 2012
Chigley Skin
It just occurred to me, listening earlier, that the indisputably brilliant “they just looked surprised, like the front of an Anglia” (best simile in a song ever?) partly steals the thunder from the equally belting line that follows: “there are no dark corners of cool relief; it’s a tragedy with few interludes.”
As I understand it, in classical stage tragedies, the interludes were specifically scenes of comic relief in between the heavier stuff. Seems a great metaphor for many HMHB songs, with the moments of hilarity shining through some quite dark or angry observations. And I’m not sure if Nigel took those “dark corners of cool relief” from elsewhere (Mr Hardy, maybe?), but if they did flow from his own pen, what a fantastic image to have created.
22 July 2012
MIKE IN COV
@Chigley, it’s one of those elusive lines which looks as if it could contain two literary allusions, but Googling various combinations of words and phrases turned up nothing relevant. It wouldn’t surprise me if Thomas Hardy were involved somehow.
There aren’t many laughs in Greek tragedy. Their scheme was for a trilogy of tragedies on related themes by one author, followed by a comedy often on the same theme by another. Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy, however, often included grimly comic scenes – not strictly interludes – to heighten the drama. One example is the Porter’s scene in Macbeth, immediately following Duncan’s murder; another is the dialogue between the Clown and Cleopatra, just before her suicide.
Read as a poem without conjuring up the music, difficult I know, Doreen has extraordinary power.
22 July 2012
MIKE IN COV
How about this for the worst simile, in a good song: “You are like a hurricane, there’s calm in your eye”. Neil??
22 July 2012
John Burscough
For anyone who grew up in the 60s, “interludes” could only have one meaning: the short films used to fill gaps in TV scheduling or shoved on to cover breakdowns due to technical hitches. The most famous was the Potter’s Wheel. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-wmbM6EpZU&feature=related
22 July 2012
MIKE IN COV
@John, seconded, I’d forgotten that. Makes sense in context, too. And as almost all TV was live then, if there was a technical hitch, you missed part of the programme.
22 July 2012