12 Jan 2009
Yesterday Matthew, I was a Factory completist
Yes tonight Matthew, he really is going to be with Jesus, because David Vine has just died at the age of 73, and becomes the first person mentioned in a Half Man Half Biscuit song to die for nearly three weeks. Tonight Matthew, I’m Going To Be With Jesus also mentions Julian Bream and Matthew Kelly, who must be making the most of each day. The song also contains one of the ultimate quick tests of whether your mindset is that of an HMHB appreciator: show me anyone who instantly understands what a “Factory completist” must be, and you’ll show me someone who will “get” HMHB. The opposite applies too, for sure. Thanks to Neil G
See lyrics to Tonight Matthew, I’m Going To Be With Jesus
15 Letters Sent:
Charles Exford
What a brilliant song. Thanks Chris. Good luck David Vine on your “What happened Next?” in the Sky.
I thought for years it must be ‘drag me out of my sloth’, just a collocation I assumed without ever particularly listening. But now I realise (from both album and studio versions) that it’s ‘prod me out of my sloth’. it’s interesting how our ‘internal collocation machine’ programs us to automatically use (and hear) certain verbs with certain nouns.
Apologies for once again being about to descend into base pedantry about single phonemes, in this case the sound /v/, but I definitely can’t hear an auxiliary verb “ve” in “I told thousand of lies”, and I’m fairly sure there’s none in the previous line either, “I got”, though for a different reason. “I got” is just how a lot of people, on Merseyside (and everywhere really), say “I’ve got.” It doesn’t mean they are necessarily using the Past tense. However “I told thousands of lies” is the Simple Past tense. If we were grammaticians we might even conjecture that he doesn’t use the Present Perfect tense here as he wishes to place these past sins as far behind him as possible, now that he’s going to be with Jesus?
While pondering on these weighty issues may I just say how much I love the little keyboard twiddle in the last chorus of the Peel version. And I’ll share three particular sort-of-PBR’s here if I may, rather than in your splendid PBR section.
(i) Rock City Notts. For ever to be remembered as the Scene of the live debut of National Shite Day last year. But if anyone can tell me what the classical music was that opened and closed the gig I will buy you a pint of Dave and Barbara’s finest.
(ii) About three times a year I go to stay with my folks, and sometimes walk down to my brother’s for an early evening constitutional. He’s just moved his family into a bigger house, inheriting 14 huge Koi Carp in a not-particularly large pond, just in front of the front door. And yes, it is just over a mile through the countryside from door to door. The kids have given all the fish names so I can now taunt these little nouveau riche status symbols individually : “You fat b*stard”, “You’re just a Polish Christmas dinner!”, “He’s big, he’s blonde, his fins stick out the pond!” etc.
(iii) The ‘footie interview’ bit is one of those HMHB lyrics that comes straight to mind whenever you hear a certain trigger. I think of this and chuckle quietly to myself now whenever I hear “we’ll take each game as it comes”. A while back I even heard a presumptuous skipper say “No, it’s one game at a time, we’ve got to take all the victories as they come, whether it’s win lose or draw.”
Anyway I will now share the homely scene in our house when news of David Vine’s passing came through:
‘David Vine – The curse strikes again’, I said. We were in the kitchen as the dread news was announced on the radio. I may or may not have been washing a sieve at the time.
‘What curse ?’ she asked.
‘The HMHB curse. You know, MFI… now David Vine.’
‘Oh yeah, the curse. David Vine. What song was he in ?’
So I went and put the CD on.
‘Who was David Vine again ?
‘You know, a Question of Sport.’
‘Oh yeah, Feel the Sportsman’ she chuckled, and something sinister, probably an oven glove, groped the bag of my leg.
‘Err no that was that Nick errm … Han…
‘C*ck.’
‘Yeah him.’
‘But what were David Vine’s lips like anyway ?’
‘I don’t know, nothing special I suppose. Never looked.’
‘I thought you were obsessed by HMHB lyrics ?’
I am, but it doesn’t matter. It’s just a silly line.
‘I thought you said nothing was random in HMHB ?’ (She’d spent too long yesterday listening to me ramble on about the significance of the hippopotamous song in relation to the epistle of St. Peter, judgement day and the music business when ‘Thy Damnation Slumbereth Not’ had come on in the car last night).
‘Well it isn’t random, but it’s just a silly line. Ringo Starr had a hit with it when we were about 11: ‘You come on like a dream, peaches and cream, lips like strawberry wine.’ Anything soppy like that you’d have just made up silly lyrics to it. Lips like David Vine. It fits, it’s funny, no other reason.’
‘So David Vine’s lips are like Dickie Davies Eyes ?’
Yeah, metaphorically speaking.’
‘Ah well no, it’s not the same is it?’ She was dissecting my arguments with the scalpel of truth once more. ‘David Vine’s more random than that, ‘cos that one was a direct spoof of Bette Davies Eyes.’
I had to admit, she’d got me.
‘Attagirl. Now you’re starting to sound as obsessed as me. I think we both need help.’
‘He was 73.’ She said the next time the news came on.
‘Yeah. Why ?’
‘Hardly a curse, is it ?’
Damn, she’d got me again.
Jan 14th, 2009
Neil G
Yeah, right.
Jan 15th, 2009
Petrovic
Hi Charles
@ Classical music opening the gig:
sadly I was not at Rock City Notts, but for the Forum gig last November it was Siegfried’s Funeral March from Götterdämmerung, so it may have been that again. (If anyone has a link to a [cough] recording of that opening, do post…)
The Wagner’s here, and worth a listen in any case:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=20RldhK9354
From about 1:40 it should be recognizable if that’s what you heard.
Jan 15th, 2009
Charles Exford
Thanks so much for your help again Petrovic. It was along time ago now, but somehow the section between about 3 and 6mins does sound familiar, and certainly does swell to suitable crescendoes – it would have offset the usual diffident shuffling onstage and fumbling around before ‘The Light at the End of the Tunnel’ quite nicely.
I can’t be certain though, and I must admit I was asking mainly because I wondered if there was a conection between the music and April 23rd and an implied contrast with ‘National Shite Day’, i.e. was it something very English and Vaughan Williamsy? Wagner I guess could hardly be less so …
And Neil G – I just noticed it was you who had first submitted those lyrics – brilliant, thanks !
Jan 15th, 2009
Petrovic
And I meant to add: top post, thank you for that.
I didn’t know National Shite Day was premiered on 23rd April! They may have considered using Jerusalem or some Elgar but thought it a bit obvious…? and Götterdämmerung’s suitably doomladen in subject; no music connected with St George’s Day immediately springs to mind. I didn’t hear it at the end of the Forum gig though – was it the same music? [A Wagner nerd asks].
I was really hoping the conductor was Kurt Sanderling, but I’ve not identified him yet (and can’t face wading through 25 pages of pretend Nazi comments about Wagner, sigh).
Jan 15th, 2009
Neil G
Chris, you say “show me anyone who instantly understands what a “Factory completist” must be”. The first time I heard it I assumed it was a job in a factory, finishing off products. I assumed it was being sung by someone with a boring job. It was only when I saw it with a capital letter that I realised what it must actually mean. How embarrassing.
Jan 29th, 2009
Dave F.
The title needs a comma after Matthew
Feb 2nd, 2009
Chris The Siteowner
I hope you’re right, my CDs are in the loft and I can’t get at them to check…
Feb 2nd, 2009
Charles Exford
Surprised our genial host hasn’t mentioned the The Backs, Cambridge, from the wondrous “Blood on the Quad.” Though Stuart may care to add a quibblesome note about Cambers not having “quads” like that Other Place, strictly speaking, but rather “courts”.
Feb 2nd, 2009
Dave F.
@Chris
Hmm… Back of Case doesn’t have one, Inner leaflet does??
The ‘official’ site
http://cobweb.businesscollaborator.com/hmhb/records/Voyage.htm
has it.
Take your pick, but I think it seems better with.
Also PRS Yearbook (Quick, The Drawbridge) doesn’t have brackets, but a hyphen, & full stops between PRS on the CD: P.R.S. Yearbook – Quick The Drawbridge
& Monmore, Hare’s Running also has a comma.
The pedant in me does not want to die
Feb 3rd, 2009
Rob
Factory completist: A person who slavishly collects everything released by Factory Records perhaps? Even though Joy Division were shite, when you think about it…
Feb 12th, 2010
Paul F
Rob. Right and wrong. In that order.
Feb 12th, 2010
TWO FAT FEET
Sorry, bit of an arriviste here I know, but referring back to the rather chucklesome story of Mr Exford’s about the David Vine news, wasn’t the lyric in that original song something like “lips like crocus vines”, hence “lips like David Vine’s”? So it was the name that was the gag, rather than there being anything unusual about his lips.
Apr 6th, 2010
Third rate Les
I think you’ll find Mr Exford covers that point in page 6 of his post above, Two Fat Feet. Except he says it’s “strawberry wine”.
Apr 6th, 2010
TWO FAT FEET
Yes Les, that was the point that it was originally ‘vines’, not ‘wine’.
Apr 6th, 2010
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