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General »   Songs and Song Lyrics

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  1.  
    • CommentAuthorggggareth
    • CommentTimeJun 25th 2009
     
    So, The Hippy Goes Fishing. What's it about? Is it a personal story, or a work of fiction, or something you just observed?
    • CommentAuthorggggareth
    • CommentTimeJun 25th 2009
     
    Something I've always wanted to ask: Leave The Straight Life Behind is a more edgy (even rocky) album than the jangly Swag Sack. Was this a deliberate change in direction or was the sound of Straight Life more akin to what you always wanted to sound like but couldn't pull off in your early days?
    Cheers! Gareth.
  3.  
    I nearly made a video at school for The Hippy Goes Fishing (in the days when making videos wasnt the ten-a-penny thing it is now). I was sucked in by the romance of it all. It's a classic song, and one of BOB's finest I reckon. Needless to say, the video never got made, due to fickle friends and an unfortunate lack of equipment...
    A bit of a non-story really, on reflection.

    John from the BOB myspace page.
  4.  
    The Hippy Goes Fishing. Blimey. Now yer asking...

    I was 21-ish, and I'd not long started going out with a girl who'd just come out of a live-in relationship with a guy who had a beard. (He was also a marine biologist, or something, and was then stationed near the Falklands, or somewhere similar...hence the angling metaphors!)

    It was immediately clear to both her (Jo) and I that we wanted to be together, so we moved straight in with one another and stayed that way for most of my 20s - all through the BOB years, as it were. I was particularly happy about the situation...no angst of any real merit to draw on...so drew, humorously, hopefully, on my only real insecurity, which was that he, her ex, may have been somehow smarter, more manly, more adventurous than I, and thus deserving of some of by then peculiar wit!

    Ridiculous really, but when you're determined to create something, you draw on whatever experience you can to fuel the act, huh?

    Can't believe it was nearly the subject of a video!

    What was the storyboard?

    Thank you for your kind words about the song. I like it too.

    :)
  5.  
    And as for our sound, well, you know, although there were differences in Simon and my influences, they were really broadly the same: lots of 60s stuff (British & American), punk/new wave stuff, early 80s alternative music like Echo & The Bunnymen, The Cure, Orange Juice, The Smiths, Aztec Camera, Microdisney, early Prefab Sprout, etc. As a consequence, there was no doubt that our stuff was gonna be drums, bass, 2 guitars, harmonies, occasional keyboards, and so on. That is a basic constant from our first to our last recordings.

    I' sure that our early recordings (take that 'It Was Kevin' demo, for instance), were aiming at a rockier sound, and as a consequence of lots of playing, improvements in the quality of our equipment, that's where we ended up. At the time of the jangly BOB, I reckon it was pretty much a case of turning the fact that we only had crap gear and no money for 'proper' studios into something of a virtue, just like a lot of our contemporaries.

    I like the simple clarity of the early stuff, but my/our 'abilities', at that time, are not particulary flattered by the transparency of the recordings!

    Don't forget that Swag Sack was not a 'proper' album..it was a collection of early singles (the flexi, What A Performance & Kirsty), and thus brings together our Lo-Cost, Lo-Fi recordings into one album-type bunch. 'Straight Life was a 'proper' album, with a modest-but-proper budget, made by a practised live band. The band that made Swag Sack was, in the main, fresh from the bedroom and a few low-key pub gigs on the then London indie scene.
    • CommentAuthorLi'l Lisa
    • CommentTimeJun 27th 2009
     
    "Who You Are" was always one of my faves, always made me happy-sad and made me think of Dean!! Tell us the story behind that one Richard, sir!
    • CommentAuthorkrudster
    • CommentTimeJun 29th 2009
     
    I was always puzzled why most of the songs from the awesome last 2 Peel Sessions didn't even end up on an EP.

    Scarecrow, in particular, struck me as such an obvious single contender with its infectious riff. Discarding the brilliant Extension Bob Please, Wild West 9, Bloodline, and Throw Away The Key seemed odd to say the least, as they were some of the strongest songs you ever did - and arguably prime contenders for the album.

    Any particular reason you never did 'official' recordings of these?
  8.  
    The storyboard for 'The Hippy Goes Fishing' was disappointingly literal. However it did provide my colleagues and I with the excuse to spend an afternoon or two out of school, down by the banks of the River Croal in Bolton with a can of Heineken or two. No idea why Heineken, either: it was awful stuff.
    Perhaps the gathered masses on the forum could come up with their own (properly realised) videos for their old favourites?
  9.  
    Wouldn't that be great, John!

    On the subject of video, I've just sent a live BOB video tape (Berlin '93) over to my friend Robin, who is going to do a transfer for me. I'll put the gig online when I can. No idea what we played for that gig, but the live cassettes of that era I've heard recently seem to reveal us playing a few tunes from Stride Up/Tired/LTSLB, but the majority drawn from those Harlow demos and later material.

    I will take a think about Who You Are for you, Lisa, and get back to you here. I re-wrote the words a bit for the album...dunno why really...the original was much more honest...but I did come up with the autobiographical 'I still thank God I told Jesus goodbye...' line in the re-write, which I still like, and is true. I had a brief flirtation with organised religion at about 13 or 14, which became untenable when my head proved turnable! Not uncommon, I think ;)
  10.  
    And, Señor Krudster, as for your kind comments about the songs on the 2nd and 3rd Peel sessions, well, I don't know what happened really.

    Simon and I always thought in terms of albums. As soon as we had a group of decent songs, even at the early demoing-only stage in 1985/86, we considered that we had 'an album'. The first was 'No Mean Typist', which we made in a very limited edition on cassette, just for ourselves really.'Swag Sack' was a compilation of the first three official releases, but, in some ways, I think it could be seen as a proper album. It contained (pretty much) the next good set of songs that we wrote after that earlier cassette.

    There really should have been an album after Convenience, but we couldn't afford to do it ourselves, we had no label, and our newly-acquired manager, Paul Thompson, didn't seem to have any joy raising the money to do one. He did, however, get us little publishing deals that financed the EPs. If there had been an album then, it probably would've had Convenience, Tales Of The Expected, Who You Are, Scarecrow, Extension BOB Please, Come Winter, Trousercide, etc. on it, and would've been a little pop corker :)

    But it never happened. 'Straight Life' ended up being a bit of a mish-mash of older and newer BOB songs from either side of the funnier-happier-poppier/more cynical-rockier BOB divide, which definitely occured after H joined the band in 1990.

    There were 2 more possible albums after LTSLB, I reckon.

    Thank goodness for the Peel Sessions!
    • CommentAuthorkrudster
    • CommentTimeJun 11th 2010
     
    You know what? One of my best mates Marcus is convinced that Convenience is "as good as anything the Beatles or the Beach Boys ever did". He's going to have Convenience as his first dance at his wedding next year. How much to get you guys to give the guy his ultimate wedding gift and play live just for him? :)

    You'd have half the Norwich Arts Centre there!

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