Here's another one that sounds like absolute rubbish on first listen but hey you can't stop playing it then bam the genius hits you. Hideous vaudeville novelty with awesome honky tonk piano. Warning: Absolute toe-tapper will have doing what you believe to be The Charleston within seconds. Also It'll get stuck in your head for the rest of the day and maybe the rest of your life.
Now gimme dat gimme dat gimme gimme gimme dat ding!
The tune: Infectious singalong 70s pop, wee bit funky, genius words sung with folky lullaby melody and harmonies, crowd chorus and pre-glam take it down now hand clap delirium.
There's something about Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep that makes you not hate it for some reason and then it eventually it becomes embedded in your brain forever. I mean some have called it a moronic pop crime but they didn't mean it as THE compliment that it is, yet as an aesthetic value a moronic pop crime is highly appealing. As an achievement this is one of the great moronic pop crimes.
A pop masterpiece.
*And there's more than meets the eye. Emma points out there was something upsetting about this song when she was small. The thought of your momma or poppa mysteriously being "far far away" was horrifying for a child. The fact that these traumatic lyrics of neglect & abandonment were sung in a chirpy... er... sorry, upbeat manner adds to the sinister tone.
The first song I recall liking. I was just over 3 years old but fuck me it was number one here for eight weeks. So I guess I heard it a gazillion times and maybe it was an involuntary decision in music taste at the time but I gotta say as a cranky old fucker this is a top tune, a pop-rock banger baby! Not a bad choice for your first favourite song.
Also gotta love a jumper with your band name on it... just not enough jumpers in pop music anymore. The day jumpers stopped being worn in rock might be the day it all turned to shit.
[1974]
Possibly even better though was their number 12 hit from the previous year, (It's) Magic.
State of the art pop-rock finery.
The sound of the 70s.
Toppermost musos! Looking into my crystal ball I can see a future for them in a little up and coming group called The Alan Parsons Project.
All the melody, rockin' 70s gee-tars played with a sixpence man, strings, funky wah wahs and hand claps galore: All luscious!
Came across this the other day. A bittersweet tune. Seven years later and it's only had 2169 views. Somewhere between Dave Graney, Jarvis, Galaxie 500's echo-chamber and all those other lost indie singer/songwriters you've forgotten the names of from the 80s and 90s. They call him the southend troubadour: The Essex Riviera's hardest working musician.
Gateway To The North - Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan [2020]
"It is an endeavour to provide a balanced town in which the motor car has certain privileges, public transport has certain privileges and people, perhaps most of all, have the privilege of walking about in in safety from their homes, as far as the children are concerned, to their schools and the parents to their... (audio dubbed out/washed out into oblivion but I've pieced the missing bit together) ... social facilities, to the shopping centre and so on"
This was the first thing WRNTDP did, a year before his debut album, and a great synchronicity of sound and vision it was. If you thought his music was a bit, you know, BOC-ish, well his very first video featured footage from the actual Film Board Of Canada where the two great Scots got their name.
Runcorn New Town [1974]
Here's the 1974 documentary from the Film Board Of Canada. The town planners and social engineers are at pains to deny any sort of utopianism going on.
Check out the proto-hauntological closing credit music at 37:32. It's eerily dystopian with fx laden analogue synthesisers emitting a plethora of dark tones .
A Scarfolk Council Public Information Message
Just outside of the village is Lower Frontbottom.
Don't forget children are dangerous.
72 diseases.
Remember never accept sweets, cigarettes or alcohol from a child.
For further information please reread.
The View From Halton Castle - Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan [2023]
The funny thing is when Colin added guitar to his usual synthetic formula he created his best record. It's a shame then that it was only an EP. I'm sure I'm not the only one waiting for him to head in this direction again on a future recording.
The chic double exposures and kaleidoscopic fx make this video pretty psychedelic and once again he's using footage from the Film Board Of Canada Runcorn New Town (1974) documentary to great affect.
Open Green Spaces - Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan [2025]
The true sound of the new towns where the idealogical utopian optimism sours and the green belt becomes just as bleak and brutal as the urban spaces of the derelict old town. The sound of where the darkest shit happens and the safety you were sold becomes a lie. It's grim up north.
Bucolic jam of the highest order. Featuring the tune Butterflies Bees & Other Insects by Vic Mars. The video though mainly features birds.
Another prime slice of bucolica from Vic Mars. This video featuring Walking On A Bearing which is another tune that turned up a few years later on his 2015 LP The Land And The Garden on Clay Pipe Music.
The video's got ye olde hiking in the countryside. There's cows, roads, ruins, rolling hills, a bus, a village and a headland on the bay. Somewhere in Britain in the 60s or 70s I presume. Lovely.
The Road Through The Village - Vic Mars [2015]
More of the same probably from the same source as the previous footage. All manner of out of the way stuff. Some of these old clips seem to be older than the 70s. We get vintage images of canals, birds, boats, fishing, a salvation army band, babies eating butties, eldery folks, gardens, tea rooms, scones with jam and cream, ponds, parks, churches, fishies, ducks, even a bloody horse and cart, flora & fauna, the woods, couples on bicycles, quaint cars, a ye olde hardware shoppe and a tranquil sunset.
The Land And The Garden - Vic Mars [2015]
All this lovely music was apparently created on a mellotron and recorded on tape. Are all the flutes, guitars, dulcimers and glockenspiels synthesized too, I dunno. Mars is influenced by all sorts of things like memories, meadows, kids telly soundtracks by legends Freddie Philips & Vernon Elliot, ye olde composers like Vaughan Williams & Gustav Holst, Vintage British Railways posters, library music, specific geographical locations, early ambient, Virginia Astley, nostalgia for a lost England, school music etc.. All similar ingredients to hautological acts yet there's nothing disconcertingly sinister or particularly eerie about it. The picturesque homespun warmth of these graceful pastoral jams is a pure delight.
The Land And The Garden is a deeply personal work based on the childhood memories of Mars' native Herefordshire composed while he was homesick in a foreign country. It evokes an idyllic time in the 70s and 80s when he would explore the liminal spaces at the edge of town of where the village meets the countryside and beyond.
Villages, Hamlets & Fetes - Vic Mars [2015]
Step right up, step right up every tune's a winner...
Wall Of Ivy - Vic Mars [2015]
In a way those above ye olde nostalgia videos detract from this charming music. I prefer just listening to the album, it's a whole lot more than a cheap nostalgia rush. The beauty of this music doesn't have to be tied to a specific time and place. I mean I'm enjoying it here and now in my autumnal Aussie backyard. Having said that this one's a bit Trumpton-y.
Genius succinct twenty second song from Brian Cant and Freddie Philips.
Chatter chatter
Have you heard the latest gossip...
Not a word to anyone
But do you know the...
Natter natter
Well, my dear, you know
You could have knocked me over with a feather
I was shocked
Urban Hype - A Trip To Trumpton [1992]
Trumpton samples, breakbeats, anthemic pianos and ruff rave riffage. Hardcore raving goodness or as one mush in the comments says "cheesy chart shite". I mean it's hardly very hard hardcore but its a whole lotta fun. Some called it Toytown Techno or Chartcore.
