….as it failed to mark the centenary yesterday of Ivor Cutler.
Here’s my first experience of him – the Peel session 1979, including a version of the story Egg Meat. I was very young and it blew my mind. This guy was from another planet. The incredible stillness of his delivery with the haunting strangeness of the story itself – at once everyday and fantastical. In this story he’s a cross between Chic Murray and HP Lovecraft.
Memories of the great man here please – particularly if you saw or even met him.
But remember: “If your breasts are too big, you will fall over – unless you wear a rucksack”
Here’s a delightful song to give you some thinking time.
There’s a book coming, which I will certainly want to read.
Bruce Lindsay was also interviewed this afternoon on the Janice Forsyth show on BBC Radio Scotland (at 2h 05m). His book came out yesterday, I believe.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001h3pm
Ordered already! The musical play about him at the Edinburgh traverse theatre in 2014 was excellent, and I still live in hope of it being revived and filmed for posterity.
He was also interviewed on Word In Your Ear by our revered former headmasters Hepworth and Ellen
Really? You don’t say ..
Well, this might interest you, Moose – I saw the great man in Edinburgh, at the Festival in 1986. Gruts had just been released as an LP on Rough Trade and this was a Gruts-themed show. His attitude to noise in the room would have earned him the AfterWord Medal – if anyone spoke or made a noise, he would stop and glare at them…
I can’t quite believe I was there – lucky I have THIS!
https://imgur.com/a/ESZtIwO
…what did you have for tea?
Gruts was seen at the time as Ivor’s, er, “pop” album. A few months later RT put out Prince Ivor which very much…wasn’t.
Ivor had some of the best album titles ever.
Who Tore Your Trousers?
Dandruff
Gruts
Jammy Smears
A Flat Man
A Wet Handle
Velvet Donkey
…this last rendered on the back of the album as Velvey Donket. He also helpfully provided a grid to fill in – you play the album to your friends, and then they give a mark out of ten for what they think of you. I think all albums should provide this.
Someone’s nicked me stub!
Never mind – I’ll join the others at the window, to watch the sleet fall…
I very much like the Scottish Indie Supergroup, Citizen Bravo, Raymond MacDonald & Friends, and their 2020 tribute album, Return To Y’hup.
And I very much like Emma Pollock, who sings Size Nine And A Half. I’m sure Ivor would hate it.
Been giving this a listen on the dreaded Spotify. It’s really good fun and a bit of a hoot. Very enjoyable.
And, from Karine Polwart’s Scottish Songbook, Women of the World:
I have a small book. It’s called LARGE et Puffy. There’s a lot of quality content. It was published in 1984. Sample text: A nurse’s jersey is full of compassion. Another: The old burglar thoughtfully rubbed cheese against the window.
I used to have that. Pocket-sized.
“Two lovers exchange saliva in a field”
Here’s the front of my copy.
Yeah, that’s it. I’ve got the Scotch Sitting Room book, illustrated by Honeysett (who still appears in Private Eye from time to time). It’s a beautiful object, like a kind of gothic Broons annual.
I’m sure there were one or two more in that pocket-sized series…
Private Habits. I have that one too somewhere. Damned difficult to find…
I used to read this book to the kids when they were little – they adored it, as did I.
We had Jammy Smears in the car – I must quiz them about what it did to their young psyches.
Ivor and I went back a long way. He used to appear on a radio show on the steam radio in the late 50s/early 60s called Monday Night at Home, introduced in plummy BBC tones as Ivor Cutler of Y’Hup OMP. Imagine having a childhood that featured Ivor Cutler and the Goons.
Read that one to my son and Herbert about a boy changing into different animals.
It even had a song sheet about capybaras.
I don’t think it has done anything to my son’s psyche he’s become a fine well-balanced man not unlike his father.
I listened to Jammy Smears and Dandruff a lot around the age of ten, and as I think you can tell, I’ve turned out fine….
Albeit round at the back, and flat at the front….
One of the most beautiful aspects of Robert Wyatt’s Rock Bottom is how his friends rallied round to help. Ivor has the last word. Robert might have written it but Ivor most definitely *owns* it.
Robert Wyatt’s Rock Bottom…and what a remarkable album that is.
Cutler, Wyatt, Hopper and Frith jamming together… Peak Peel.
The complete Life In A Scotch Sitting Room