It’s been a seriously snowy week here in Stockholm with temperatures not rising above zero and going to down to minus 16. That’s warm for Canada or Kiruna but for a big urban softy like me it’s brass bloody monkeys. Wild swimmers who fancy a January winter dip today will need a pickaxe to make a hole. The lakes and canals are frozen over and there are many cross-country skiers out there along with all the dog owners who find that an ice safari adds a little extra to walkies.
And there are some happy pooches out there. I was chatting with a neighbour who was out for a walkies with her two dogs. Both of them were lying on their backs in the fresh snow and barking with pleasure. “It’s the same procedure every day. They just love it.”
On Wednesday morning there was a real white-out snowstorm with two or three inches of the white stuff to trudge through and limited visibility. But public transport was still functioning. Commuters were off to work as usual and (rather delighted) schoolkids (some actually on skis) were all on their way to school. Standing waiting for a bus, I was astonished to see a bloke on an electric monocycle zooming through the snowdrifts. And I’d thought monocycles were for circus clowns. Wrong again!
Snowstorms always make me think of Dylan Thomas’s wonderful description of his childhood: A Child’s Xmas in Wales.
”All the Christmases roll down towards the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged, fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen.”
You can listen to the whole thing on YouTube. Read by Thomas himself or by Richard Burton.
The cold weather means that everyone is indoors a little more than usual. More time for listening to music, reading books, watching programmes on SVT Play, and following up arcane topics of research on Wikipedia and YouTube.
Here’s a thread to share any of your recent discoveries. The sort of the thing that was so fascinating that you just have to share with somebody.
And not just music! European history, venomous reptiles, architecture, Bavarian folklore, kitchen appliances, garden shed surprises, Hungarian grammar, ornithology, Tasmanian royalty, long-forgotten kids TV programmes, Albanian erotica ……
The choice is yours!
I’ll kick off with my discovery of the celebration every January of the Finnish festival of Heikinpäivä in the City of Hancock, MI. It’s a mid-winter festival of Finnish American culture and heritage. But it’s a tad quirky. They’ve revived a Finnish annual celebration, The Feast of St Henry, which no longer actually occurs in Finland. In fact it dies out in the Middle Ages. But why not? Everyone seems to be having a lot of fun.
My Finnish teacher friend, Juha, tells me it’s well-known in Turku. “We had a textbook for 9th graders where everything took place in Hancock in one section of the book. The authors of the textbook interviewed old immigrants, attended schools and supermarkets. So there is a generation of Finnish schoolkids who really know their Hancock!”
“Know their Hancock??” I spluttered. “I do hope you are referring to Anthony Aloysius St John Hancock, of 23 Railway Cuttings. East Cheam. And that that Päivi and Pentti and their pals are now all experts on vintage BBC radio comedy.”
That led me to spend some minutes revisiting the life of that great comedy genius of the 1960s and reading about his life, his co-star Sid James and Galton and Simpson who wrote the early scripts.
Next topic is Bender the Robot and the desirable acrobats of Leeds. That’s coming up in the comments.
Kaisfatdad says
Here are Sid and Tony ….
Kaisfatdad says
Here’s a full description of Heikinpäivä.
And I am sure you now want to see a Finn doing some “hobby horsing.”
And talking of weird Finnish sports…..
Kaisfatdad says
Here’s something that @Locust will know all about.
I was a party last week and the rather eccentric DJ played this track.
The Swedish version of this great Burt Bacharach song cuts the journey time down to 15 minutes and turns into a steamy, erotic tale of moped maintenance!
Interestingly, the French reboot of Tulsa took even great liberties with the lyrics and even got rid of the place name. What’s wrong with 48 hours from Dijon?? I thought the French pop fans would have been mustard keen about that.
Locust, you my find some old Swedish favourites on this playlist, created DJ Sunkit, who was playing at the party.
So many gems! Who hasn’t wondered what Kung Fu Fighting would sound like in Finnish?
What better than a dansband reboot of Sabbath’s Paranoid complete with steel guitar?
dai says
-20C here, but that is warm compared to Western Canada where it’s been close to -50C! The Rideau canal is opening today (partially) for skating, wasn’t cold enough for that at all last year (for first time ever)
Kaisfatdad says
Yikes @Dai. Minus 20 is extremely cold but minus 50!!
As this weather girl says, that is dangerous cold.
A risk of outages! Scary, disaster movie stuff!
I will never complain about the Stockholm winter again!
hubert rawlinson says
Mention of the Futurama festival I had a search for a picture of the venue a converted tramshed in Leeds. The Queens Hall.
Several people myself included have tried to cajole him into writing about his time promoting gigs (though he’s still doing it now The Sensational Alex Harvey Experience last night in Leeds)
hubert rawlinson says
‘Him’ is John F Keenan the promoter of Futurama and countless gigs.
Kaisfatdad says
A real local hero!
https://recordcollectormag.com/articles/engine-room-11
Kaisfatdad says
A few words about Futurama.
I’d never heard about this Post Punk Festival in Leeds until @retropath2 mentioned the band, Acrobats of Desire. I googled and discovered that they had played at the festival.
They are 4.5 minutes in.
As Hubert comments, the venue was something of a dump. But fans had happy memories. Just read the YT comments:
“Thank you for making me feel 16 again. what a brilliant weekend full of weird and wonderful eclectic bands… The Notsensibles.😂 Sleeping on a beer soaked warehouse floor… Happy care free daze.”
“another time… my first concert; just a lad and his mates from the lake district heading to the big city, we did love our music in those days, it permeated our whole lives”
“I was there. Great weekend. The floor was very sticky by the end of the weekend”
This clip gives some background,
As does this article.
“FUTURAMA 2, QUEENS HALL, LEEDS – 13/09/80
Forty years ago today was the first day of the second FUTURAMA FESTIVAL in Leeds. Paul Morley reviewed in in the NME writing. “I woke up early, looked out the window, and the first thing I saw was a line of forlorn looking Punks shackled in leather and straps, marching along with their heads hung low. I groaned. The essential idea of a pop festival is wrong. This festival is the future as much as The Stray Cats are the future.”
The festival itself had a remarkable line-up featuring all the great and good of the John Peel level bands of the early post-punk / electro pop era. Morley commented. “Soft Cell are on stage. An electronic band I think although it might just have been the buzz from the PA. They limped through a version of ‘Paranoid”. As bad as that sounds Morley had probably provided Marc Almond and David Ball with their first ever mention in nationally read media.
Morley was kinder to other bands. “Altered Images are a great Glaswegian Pop Group. Pop-up-to-date, undeceiving, communicative and played as if the group had made a rare discovery. Singer Claire looks like a forgotten girl from a Jean Brodie class: tiny, small-boned, possessor of a neat sway dance that comes from the elbows. her voice quivered with nervousness and she never stopped grinning. She is special. Good God it was happy music.” They deservedly encored with a surreptitious version of ‘Jeepster’. You know their heart is in the right place.”
Morley’s review did not mention the set list but this was certainly a time when the group named after Buzzcocks sleeve designs were at the young and exciting best. As well as ‘Jeepster’ the Altered Images set also included ‘Idols’ and ‘A Days Wait’ with which they started and then, somewhere in the middle, the former Glasgow schoolfriends and members of the Siouxsie and the Banshees Fanclub played what we would argue is Altered Images’ best ever track. ‘Dead Pop Stars’ became the groups first ever single in in early 1981 and would surely have been their first hit but, unfortunately, in the aftermath of John Lennon’s death was not given a lot of airplay and stalled at #67.
Other groups to play Futurama 2 non the Saturday were Siouxsie and the Banshees, Echo & The Bunnymen, U2, Wasted Youth, Clock DVA, Blah! Blah! Blah!, Music For Pleasure and Eaten Alive By Insects. ”
Paul Morley enjoyed Altered Images:
“Singer Claire looks like a forgotten girl from a Jean Brodie class: tiny, small-boned, possessor of a neat sway dance that comes from the elbows. her voice quivered with nervousness and she never stopped grinning. She is special. Good God it was happy music.”
Here’s more from the festival.
hubert rawlinson says
Marc Almond and David Ball were studying Fine Art at Leeds Poly the same time I was there ‘studying’ photography. I see them around.
Kaisfatdad says
What a delight! Fairytale of New York translated to Irish Gaelic.
Even better live!
salwarpe says
I have absolutely no idea what this thread is about, but all power to you, KFC, for letting your creative juices flow and your imagination run completely haywire.
Kaisfatdad says
What a very nice compliment,@Salwarpe. And I think you hit the nail on the head. It’s about letting our juice flow and our imaginations run completely haywire.
I presume that your reference to KFC rather than KFD was a gentle satirical comment on my constant hunger for more of that delicious Corsair chicken.
Sitting on that sticky floor at the Queen’s Theatre in Leeds waiting for the next band to appear, I got thinking about the origin of music festivals.
When was the first? Certainly not Woodstock, although it’s probably one of the most famous because Joni wrote a song about it. Shame she never got to Glasto, Reading or Donington. Of course she never got to Woodstock either. She watched it on telly.
A move about your festival is good PR.
The earliest festival I have discovered started in 1715: the Three Choirs Festival. The annual Music Meetings of the Three Cathedral Choirs of Gloucester, Worcester and Hereford.
https://3choirs.org/about/our-history
A distinguished history:
“The festival has always prided itself on bringing new works to its audiences, and over its 300-year history has included premieres by Edward Elgar, Arthur Sullivan, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Hubert Parry, Ethel Smyth, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Frederick Delius, Camille Saint-Saëns, Judith Weir, Judith Bingham, James MacMillan and Cheryl Frances Hoad, many of which were conducted by the composers themselves. Numerous celebrated composers, conductors and soloists have been welcomed to the festival, and it has enjoyed regular royal visits and patronage since the attendance of King George III at a performance of Messiah in 1788. To celebrate the 300th anniversary of the festival in 2015, the massed Three Choirs Festival Chorus, Youth Choir and Three Cathedral Choirs performed in the State Ballroom of Buckingham Palace in the presence of HRH The Prince of Wales, President of the Three Choirs Festival Association.”
I seem to remember that King Charles was really on the ball as regards choosing the choral music for his coronation.
salwarpe says
Sweet of you to alight, after your perambulations, on the 3 choirs, which was a regular background cultural feature during my days in Salwarpe.
KFC was just a general, gentle tease, but I like the direction you took it in.
hubert rawlinson says
I think you are being kind calling the Queens Hall the Queens Theatre. I recall in the early seventies I went to two overnight concerts luckily I took a sofa cushion to sit on (don’t think we had stripped pine scatter cushions then).
Previously it had been used for indoor funfairs, I recall getting off the ghost train running about and getting back on the train, Mind Body and Soul festivals etc. Ghastly building.
Kaisfatdad says
As you’ll hopefully have noticed, this thread is a chance for anyone with a bee in their bonnet to expose themselves to the hive mind.
Back to the 1950s. One enormous bee in my bobble hat right now is festivals: past, present and future. If you said the word “festival” in that postwar decade, two things might sprin to mind,
The fledgeling arts festival in Edinburgh which had started in 1947.
And the enormously popular Festival of Britain in 1951. All that’s left on the site where it took place today is The Royal Festival Hall.
https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/about/what-we-do/history-royal-festival-hall
“1948
Plans are announced by the Labour Government of Clement Attlee to hold a Festival of Britain. It is to be a ‘Tonic to the Nation’ following the ravages of the Second World War.
Amidst the temporary domes and pavilions of the Festival a new concert hall is to be built as a permanent centre for the musical life of London. The city has been without a major concert hall following the destruction of the Queen’s Hall by an incendiary bomb in 1941.
On the South Bank of the Thames, the site between Waterloo Bridge and Hungerford railway bridge is cleared of its derelict warehouses and factories, including the famous Lion Brewery.”
1949
In October, the foundation stone of the Royal Festival Hall is laid by Prime Minister Clement Attlee. The hall, designed by architects Sir Robert Matthew and Dr Leslie Martin, is to be the London County Council’s contribution to the Festival of Britain.
1951
On 3 May, after only 18 months and an expenditure of £2 million, the Royal Festival Hall is opened. The new concert hall seats 2,900 people. The orchestra platform can accommodate an orchestra of 100 and a choir of 250. King George Vl and Queen Elizabeth are among those who attend a ceremonial concert to mark the hall’s opening.”
It wasn’t all culture. There was also a mega funfair.
And a steel band!
The V & A page has some wonderful posters from the festival.
https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/the-festival-of-britain
A brave new world!
The legacy of the festival is still debated. Was it “a hymn to modernity; a post-slum, post-Blitz smattering of riverside jewels sparkling with glass and steel. ”
Or was it more how Edwin Heathcote described it in an article in the Financial Times:
“For someone like me, born in the 1960s, growing up with the fading fragments of the festival, it was a fountain of naff, the perfect illustration of Britain’s ability to corrupt serious Modernism with kitsch and to condemn a population to live in its shabby, halfhearted carcass.”
Discuss. Write on both sides of the paper. No copying of other students’ papers. If you need extra ink in your inkwell or more blotting paper raise your hand and the prefects will deliver it to your desk.
mikethep says
I remember being furious that my dad went to the Festival of Britain and left me at home – hardly surprising, dragging a 4-year-old round all day would be no fun at all. He did bring me back a programme though, and a bibelot of some sort that I no longer remember.
What I really wanted to see was the Far Tottering and Oyster Creek Railway, conjured up by that top eccentric Rowland Emmet. I did get to see Nellie the engine later, when it turned up on Southend Pier.
Here’s a learned article about the whole thing. https://web.archive.org/web/20070706111900/http://mech.mcmaster.ca/~nyet/emett/Far_Tottering_and_Oyster_Creek_Railway.html
mikethep says
Emmet also came up with the Hogmuddle Rotary Niggler and Fidgeter.
https://www.gettyimages.com.au/detail/news-photo/workmen-building-punch-cartoonist-rowland-emetts-hogmuddle-news-photo/3270497
Kaisfatdad says
Thanks @mikethep. That was really interesting. I can well understand that you were miffed about missing the Festival of Britain. But I am impressed you knew about Emmet. A Punch reader at the the age of four! Quite a prodigy!
There’s an Emmet appreciation page on X!
https://twitter.com/rowlandemettsoc?lang=en
What an interesting chap! Some magnificently whimsical inventions!
This clip from Birmingham Museums provides a wonderful overview of his machines.
And here Dr Sally Hoban does a fine job of presenting his inventions.
A precursor of steampunk!
hubert rawlinson says
In the Merrion Centre in Leeds was one of Emett’s machines which was always worth a visit so I thought I’d add a photo of it, however on looking I found this.
https://merrioncentre.co.uk/promotions-events/emett-machine-exhibition
I’m on Leeds next Thursday so a visit to see this is on the cards.
Thank you all for the timely reminder.
Kaisfatdad says
Go for it, Hubert! I look forward to your report, if you manage to visit.
hubert rawlinson says
Unfortunately the display area was on the balcony and not the best area to view them, also the timer that operated them had misfired and there was no movement.
Here’s one photo of the only one you could see properly.
Here’s the original that was in the Merrion Centre for years.
I shall take a better camera next time.
Kaisfatdad says
Thanks for posting. They are creations of great wonder,
As you say, they need the right lighting and a timer that works. I’m very glad I’ve learnt abut him.
This is pure Wallace and Gromit.
hubert rawlinson says
The lighting is fine (my camera was on an unusual setting) the position is terrible.
Here’s the rest, to the left are the steps up so the ones at the far end can’t be seen very well. You’d have to lift small children up.
Most of them are from CCBB.
If you like those I can recommend visiting here.
https://sharmanka.com/
I’ve suggested a visit to @retropath2 as he’s in Glasgow now.
Kaisfatdad says
While that great Yorkshire City is in the AW spotlight, I think we’ll all enjoy Alan Bennett taking about his Leeds childhood.
Kaisfatdad says
That Alan Bennett interview is quite superb. Such an amusing chap,
It is the perfect antidote to the tsunami of upsetting news engulfing us every day.
Here’s a fine, very informative article about Mr B’s childhood.
https://secretlibraryleeds.net/2019/05/10/alan-bennett-and-yorkshire/
Now a question, How many of you live in Yorkshire?
I don’t need to ask @Hubert Rawlinson! He constantly delights us with reports from his home county. But what about the rest of you? is he the only Yorkshireman in the AW village?
In the interview AB mentions the Yorkshire delight in the English language and the use of archaic expressions.
This discussion the “prissy posh Yorkshire accent” is superb.
https://languagehat.com/the-prissy-posh-yorkshire-accent/
“There’s a thing about British accents that non-Brits just don’t seem to get: accent depends on social class just as much as on region. Everywhere has more-posh and less-posh variants. Even where I grew up in West London suburbs. My ‘resting’ accent is mid-posh Osterley/Isleworth, although I can do stronger Hounslow. The phenomenon is so ubiquitous we don’t need a specific term for posh Yorkshire vs posh Buckinghamshire.
Yorkshire’s a big place. The three Ridings are distinct culturally. There’s lots of accents from nearly-Teesside in the far north; gentrified farmers in the North Riding and York; nearly-Lancashire in the NW; the flat ‘ull accent in the East Riding (see previous thread); and shading into the industrial West and South.
Alan Bennett is from mid-posh NW Leeds (Headingley/Burley, where I lived for 10 years), not as posh as Adel or Harrogate; his father was a butcher (I know where the shop was) and his mother upwardly mobile. He’d have had the thicker parts of his accent pared off at Oxford. His accent is by no means the most-prissy in Leeds, let alone in Yorkshire.
In South Leeds “the” reduces to “t’”, in caricature Monty Python style. In Sheffield it reduces to glottal stop. In Huddersfield/Holmfirth (Last of the Summer Wine) it’s disappeared altogether. Of course for TV audiences all three characters in LotSW had somewhat moderated accents, but you can hear a shading amongst them.”
How odd! I’ve “known” Hubert for several years now but have never heard his voice. And vice versa!
Ask @Duco01 and he’ll probably pigeonhole me as “semi-posh Pinner”.
I really know nothing about how they speak in St Albans: his neck of the woods.
I’ll take a chance and categorise him as Ultra Cool Albans Hipster.
hubert rawlinson says
Well a Hubert Rawlinson does the voice over on this, if that’s a help.
Kaisfatdad says
That THE PRISSY POSH-YORKSHIRE ACCENT thread is so interesting. I’m sure many of can relate to it, here’s another quote:
“I’m more, rather than less, convinced that “posh-Yorkshire” really is “a thing”.
You’re not following: posh-anywhere is “a thing” in Britain. posh-London, posh-Liverpool, posh-Derbyshire, etc. Yorkshire doesn’t exhibit it any more (or less) than elsewhere. It’s just that Yorkshire being a big place exhibits more local variations and therefore more posh/non-posh clines.
Perhaps Yorkshire folk, with their tough self-image, are unduly reluctant to admit that such a beast really can exist?
You’re ‘falling for’ too many caricatures. Go to Betty’s tea shop in Harrogate. Absolutely no-one with that caricature gritty self-image. All very genteel ladies of a ‘certain age’. But still proudly Yorkshire.
I defy anyone to listen to Bennett, … not recognise similar local-genteel tendencies in the speech of all three.
But anyone in Britain can ‘put on’ a posh or less-posh accent. Bennett, as an actor and professional observer of life, can codeswitch better than most. I said to look him up on Youtube, because you can hear the different degrees of poshness he uses. BTW in his memoirs, he always refers to his mother as “mam”. That’s not Yorkshire/Leeds. I suspect an Irish influence (there’s a huge Irish community there).
And as @Jen points out, accents can change over time/under other influences.
I assume when Hat posed the question, it was some foreigner asking. You’re a Brit already, and with a non-RP accent: I’m astonished you’re not deeply aware of the phenomenon. And no it’s no revelation: English dialectologists are all over it. So much so that Shaw’s Pygmalion could make fun of it.”
Coming to another country, and maybe another language, it takes time to recognise, for eaxmple., the difference between “posh Södermalm” and “semi posh Östermalm!”
Well@Locust, It really is time for that “semi-posh Bagarmossen” mini mingle!!
What’s the Stockholm equivalent of York’s wonderful Betty’s Tearoom??
Moose the Mooche says
There’s one in Harrogate too, which along with Ripon and Richmond are essentially bits of Kent that have inadvertently slipped northwards owing to the curvature of the Earth.
Kaisfatdad says
Nääääh! I’m not sure about that, Moose. Harrogate is a different Yorkshire, but it’s not the home counties.
Just stumbled across Emma here, talking about the different Yorkshire accents. Very informative.
Locust says
Growing up in Mälarhöjden you’d think I’d have a semi posh accent, but it wasn’t a very posh place back then, very middle-class and politically quite red (but then most places were in the 70s…) When I hear myself speak as I speak, to me I sound very neutral, no strong accent at all. Then when I hear myself on tape, I sound like a proper Söderböna!
(In English I sound like a semi posh Swedish Chef…)
Throw a dart in any direction in Stockholm and you’ll hit a coffee shop, tearoom, bakery or café, or at least a 7Eleven – which is mostly a coffee shop these days. We seem to do nothing but fika since they all survive!
Since Betty’s seems to serve both cakes and food, I’d recommend the café at Akademibokhandeln on Mäster Samuelsgatan, they do nice food as well as yummy baked goods. And afterwards one can browse for books, which is just about the best way in existence to spend an hour! My only complaint is that they have useless tea mugs that are impossible to touch until the tea is too cold to drink. Terrible design!
Kaisfatdad says
“A semi posh Swedish Chef”! That I have to hear @Locust.
For book browsing my favourite place is the English Book Shop at Södermannataran 22 on Söder. It’s choc-a-bloc with books from floor to ceiling. But no cafe!
https://bookshop.se/
But I can compromise1
We really must get this mini-mingle off the ground!
hubert rawlinson says
@Locust take your own tea mug and transfer tea from useless mug to your non-useless mug.
Locust says
That works if you know you’re going there, but I usually just “end up” there after long walks and other errands, and I don’t want to carry a mug in my bag at all times!
Perhaps I can nick a paper cup from the nearest 7Eleven once I realise where my feet are stearing me… 🙂
Kaisfatdad says
Thanks for Tubular Kazoos and your narration, Hubert, A perfect listen for a snowy, slippery morning in Bagarmossen.
I am ashamed of my lack of knowledge of Yorkshire. The population of the country is about 5,400,000,
I had no idea that Leeds is the biggest city, with a population of 530, 280. Then comes Sheffield, Bradford, Kingston Upon Hull and then York with a measly 141,685. I’ve been there several times and it’s such a grand city, with the Minster, Yorvik, the Shambles and the Railway Museum, I’d presumed it was the biggest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yorkshire#Cities
And what a lot of novelists, poets and playwrights the county has produced!
The Brontes, Alan Ayckbourn, Simon Armitage, Ted Hughes, Margaret Drabble. Kate Atkinson….
https://www.yorkshire.com/inspiration/culture/yorkshire-authors-poets-and-playwrights/
Chrisf says
That surprised me – I always thought that Sheffield (my home town) was the biggest city in Yorkshire.
Regardless, Sheffield is definitely the “best” city in Yorkshire (and the wider area) – It says so on a traffic sign on the M1 northbound…
The North
Sheffield
Leeds
Kaisfatdad says
All this talk about Yorkshire, led me to dig out this very handy map that @salwarpe produced a few year back. It show the geographic location of the various contributors to this site. If you’re not on it. and would like to be, just add your pen name and geographic location.
https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1sVU24FUxHO-SXnbc7sSTbpDXmko&ll=25.6519510136398%2C42.340936699999986&z=2
Manchester has always done a very good job of promoting its music scene. But once I start listing Yorkshire bands and artists, I realise it ‘s a very long list and that the county has not been so good at blowing its own trumpet.
Leeds – Soft Cell, Marc Almond, The Mekons, Jake Thackray, Sisters of Mercy, Corinne Bailey Rae, Gang of Four, Kaiser Chefs,
Sheffield – Human League, Heaven 17, Pulp, The Everly Pregnant Brothers, Arctic Monkeys, Def Leppard, Pulp, Joe Cocker, Family, Reverend and the Makers, Cabaret Voltaire, Richard Hawley
Hull- The Housemartins, Fay Boy Slim, Norma Waterstone, Lal Waterstone
Wakefield – Be Bop Deluxe,
Penistone – Kate Rusby
Scarborough – Liza Carthy
Huddersfield – Simon Armitage (who’s been in the band LYR since 2016)
Please tell me who I’ve missed out!
Someone on Spotty has made a playlist. I think I’ll have a try too later.
dai says
Yorkshire not good at blowing it’s own trumpet? That’s a new one! (I am half Yorkshire btw)
hubert rawlinson says
Just a couple Robert Palmer was born in Batley (as I found recently was Gordon Rollings).
Bradford had Smokie.
John Curwen who invented the tonic sol fa scale and the man that wrote the Archer’s theme tune were from Heckmondwike.
But the majestic band Black Lace were from Liversedge.
Kaisfatdad says
Some fascinating titbits there, Hubert. Liversedge! What a superb place name.
Here is a list with many more Yorkshire artists.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bands_and_musicians_from_Yorkshire_and_North_East_England
Welshman Green Gartside was living in Leeds when he founded Scritti Politti.
Barnsley .- The Bar-Steward Sons of Val Doonican
Kingston Upon Hull – Everything but the girl, Sade (three of the band were from Hull), The Beautiful South
Leeds – Chumbawumba, Michael Chapman
Several more names on this list too.
https://www.radiox.co.uk/features/x-lists/best-bands-from-yorkshire/
retropath2 says
I had a chum with surname Liversedge. He spoke with such a robust Pontefract accent as to sound, and look, as if he was eating his own mouth.
Kaisfatdad says
What a wonderful way you have with words @retropath2!
Alias says
I can’t give you any examples of Albanian erotica, but Italian label Cinedelic Records offers an introduction to Italian ‘erotica’ as explained in this fascinating article on 15 Reissue Record Labels You Need To Know About in 2024.
https://www.pastemagazine.com/music/reissues/15-reissue-record-labels-you-need-to-know-about-in-2024
Moose the Mooche says
“I can’t give you any examples of Albanian erotica….” ….frankly, you got lotta nerve coming here….
Kaisfatdad says
You did us proud there @Alias! Thanks. In fact all fifteen of those Reissue Record Labels in that article look interesting.
Moana Pozzi and Ilona Staller (Cicciolina) were rather unusual pop stars.
“Beyond their X-rated films and italo music careers, Pozzi and Staller were deeply political and co-founded the Love Party of Italy together, which advocated for the legalization of brothels and better sex education throughout their country.”
Amadeo here looks like a refugee from X-Rated Boney M reboot.
Surely TOTP was never like this?
And Cinedelic don’t just release erotic Italo disco, they also do Japanese psychedelic big band jazz! Takeshi Inomata & Sound Limited. very good it is too.
Kaisfatdad says
I just stumbled across a little Yorkshire humour from Harry Enfield.
and Hale and Pace
What about modern Yorkshire comedians, @hubert rawlinson?
Are there any big names? Who should we know about?
hubert rawlinson says
I’m afraid KFD I’m not up on the comedy World, but have this duo from Yorkshire who I saw on Thursday musical and highly amusing.
I mentioned our mutual friend @thecheshirecat to them
Kaisfatdad says
Lucky you! I imagine they put on a fine show.
No need to apologise for not being up to speed with the latest in Yorkshire comedy, Hubert!! Your encyclopaedic knowledge of so many areas never ceases to impress me,
Where did you see Bryony and Alice?
thecheshirecat says
Oh Bryony and Alice are ace! They came to us at Northwich last summer, following some heavy hintage to my fellow committee members. I love the way Alice turns up with her harmonium in flatpack and assembles it on stage – very Ikea. She’s also a phenomenal dancer in seemingly any style; indeed, I’ve had the pleasure of a waltz or a mazurka many times.
hubert rawlinson says
At ‘the oldest folk club in the world’ the Topic now in Shipley. Alas it’s too far out to visit regularly.
No dancing but body percussion instead.
Kaisfatdad says
It looks splendid.
https://www.facebook.com/TopicFCBradford/
Est 1956. That seems very recent! I suppose the folk clubs were a post- WW2 thing. I googled and that’s what wiki says
“From the end of the Second World War there had been attempts by the English Folk Dance and Song Society in London and Birmingham to form clubs where traditional music could be performed. A few private clubs, like the Good Earth Club and the overtly political Topic Club in London, were formed by the mid-1950s and were providing a venue for folk song, but the folk club movement received its major boost from the short-lived British skiffle craze, from about 1955 to 1959, creating a demand for opportunities to play versions of American folk, blues and jazz music, often on assorted acoustic and improvised instruments.[1] This included, as the name suggests, the ‘Ballad and Blues’ club in The Round House, Wardour Street, Soho, co-founded by Ewan MacColl, although the date and nature of the club in its early years is disputed.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_club
Obviously people were singing lots of folk songs but this was done down at the pub. Or perhaps weddings, funerals and such like?
Classical composers were definitely digging into folk music before the 50s.
That made me look sharp and go back to Cecil!
“He’s a complicated man
But no one understands him but his woman”
https://www.efdss.org/learning/resources/beginners-guides/35-english-folk-collectors/2446-efdss-cecil-sharp#
Kaisfatdad says
It’s 4.00 a.m. and our darling son has just rolled in from a Södermalm pub somewhat under the affluence of inkohol. And now of course, I can’t sleep.
So what do I suddenly remember? That back in 1995, before she became a Yorkshire national treasure, Kate Rusby made a superb album with Kathryn Roberts.
That led to me this wonderful live clip of that duo from a folk club, the Albert Hole, in Bristol. Kate is on very amusing form.
It’s the kind of place where I suspect you’d run into @retropath2, @thecheshirecat or @vulpes vulpes..
It seems the Albert Hole is still going. I do hope so!
Next thing I knew, my thoughts had turned to Scarborough. Fair?
A Peel show memory from 1969: Michael Chapman.
fitterstoke says
You’ve inspired me to dig out some Michael Chapman for a listen, KFD – soon as I finish this Nielsen concerto…it’s a full orchestral score (I’m listening to the Gothenbergers on BIS), but this clip is fascinating – a reduction to a trio format!
Kaisfatdad says
Thanks @fitterstoke. I enjoyed that trio version.
(Have you noticed the comments? Very eccentric!)
I am of course delighted that my shaggy, meandering behemoth of a thread has inspired you to revisit Michael Chapman. Peel was a great fan and MC did 12 sessions for him in the 1970s.
https://peel.fandom.com/wiki/Michael_Chapman
He also made an impact in Europe by the look of things.
Lots to enjoy on YT.
He was quite a guitarist!
fitterstoke says
Something more recent…I love this one
Kaisfatdad says
For me, @mikethep, Rowland Emett is one of the great discoveries of this thread.
The missing link between Heath Robinson
(who now has a museum in my old hometown of Pinner)
https://www.heathrobinsonmuseum.org/
and Wallace and Gromit.
I tried to find out if Aardman have ever namechecked him. I didn’t find anything, but I did find an excellent FT interview with Nick Park in which he talks about Wallace and Gromit.
Just Google
“Nick Park on why he ‘refused’ to sell Wallace and Gromit”
Rowland became big news in North America in the 50s.
“Emett is now best known in Britain for designing Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the magical flying car, and for the crackpot inventions of Caractacus Potts, as played in the film by Dick Van Dyke, but he has remained a star in North America, where he was first acknowledged as a serious artist in a Life profile of 1954.
https://www.originallifemagazines.com/product/life-magazine-july-5-1954/
The Smithsonian and the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry house his works, and no institution owns more Emett machines than the Ontario Science Centre.”
https://www.bonhams.com/press_release/28283/
mikethep says
You’re very welcome, @kaisfatdad. Thanks to your truffling I now know a great deal more about Rowland than I did last week.
Kaisfatdad says
Keen to know more about the history of Yorkshire folk music, I plucked up courage and descended into the dark, dusty archives.
And to my great delight, the first person I met was what charming, entertaining, Belfast polymath, Mr Colin Harper. ( known as @Colin_H to his pals in these parts).
Colin has uploaded a complete 1972 gig by Yorkshire folk pioneers, Mr Fox.
Bob and Carole Pegg and Nick Strutt – recorded by the late Geoff Harden at the Old Ash Tree, Kent.
No surprises that I was particularly fascinated by this song: Elvira Madigan.
Many cinephiles here will know Bo Widerberg’s sumptuous 1967 film about the tightrope walker and her aristocratic lover.
A true story, Elvira’s tragic fate was well-known in Sweden thanks to re-tellings of the tale and folk songs.
Kaisfatdad says
You’ll remember that this thread started off with the Acrobats of Desire playing at Futurama in Leeds. So it seems appropriate that now (Halfway towards Fingerlicking Corsair Paradise) we should encounter a voluptuous, Swedish, acrobat Elvira Madigan.
I mentioned to Mrs KFD about Mr Fox’s song about Elvira and she commented that all of Sweden knew the story because of a “skillingtryck” that had spread throughout the Nordics.
https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skillingtryck
Professor @Locust from Popholm University will doubtless know this term I didn’t
And anyway, what’s that in English? I had no idea. The answer is a “broadside ballad”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadside_ballad
That’s a form of sheet music for popular songs which has enormously popular. It was rather tabloidy as the songs often dealt with famous or infamous people.
You won’t understand much but here you can see that they looked like.
Sales of broadside ballads were at their highest when the ballad was about someone who was about to be executed.
And here is a piece about the Manchester broadsides.
Locust says
We learn about skillingtryck in school at the same time as we learn to sing Elvira Madigan (well, we did in my generation anyway!)
Not all of them are about murders and crimes and small children dying, here’s a famous one about life-long love, that I always disliked as a child because it’s called Lilla vackra Anna, and my name is Anna…this is a weird version by Hootenanny Singers, the 60s band Björn Ulvaeus was a teen idol in before they started ABBA:
One of the most famous skillingtryck is Emigrantvisa (De sålde sina hemman), but it’s most famous now for this instrumental jazz version by Jan Johansson, so nobody knows the words to it anymore, bar the first four – and even those are unclear as many know it as Vi sålde våra hemman… ! Here’s a live version of that one:
Kaisfatdad says
I am impressed that you learnt about skillingtryck in school, @Locust. I can’t remember any mention of broadside ballads in my musical education. Not posh enough for Pinner I suspect! We were too busy with the likes of Bach and Beethoven and Gilbert and Sullivan
I’d never heard Lilla vackra Anna which is surprising in the light of the number of times it was in the charts.
I can imagine that it is an absolute floorfiller when played by a “dansband” at a country dance. If it was translated into English, I suspect it would be big hit in Nashville.
I know that Jan Johansson track very well but never realised it had lyrics.
It’s a completely different kettle of fish to Vackra Anna. The description of families crossing the Atlantic is heart-breaking and tragic.
Here it is as a song complete with English subtitles.
Thanks a lot for those two, Locust!
Kaisfatdad says
A fascinating piece of literary trivia.
While Googling the poet Ted Hughes to find out which part of Yorkshire he grew up in, (Mytholmroyd in the West Riding), I discovered that after their wedding in 1956, Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath went on honeymoon to …..Benidorm. That was a surprise.
‘
I couldn’t really see those two playing bingo or visiting the many English pubs.
But of course, in 1956 Benidorm was still a picturesque fishing village not the high-rise horror story which I was to become.
https://sylviaplathinfo.blogspot.com/2016/08/sylvia-plath-in-benidorm.html
Today, I can scarcely believe it happened, but I spent all of 1984 in Benidorm. And not once did anyone mention Senor Ted or Senora Sylvia! You’d think there’s be a plaque or something.
Here’s a home movie of Benidorm from 1962.