The title of Third Track Main Camera Four Minutes refers to some bizarre captioning which made a fleeting appearance on Match of the Day a few years ago, comfortably telling you which camera Auntie Beeb was using (presumably as a response to Sky’s interactive select-your-own-camera facility). Like so many great HMHB titles, it then has no relationship to the song. Frampton Comes Alive! does have an exclamation mark, and gets namechecked in Wayne’s World 2: “Everybody in the world has Frampton Comes Alive. If you lived in the suburbs you were issued it. It came in the mail with samples of Tide.” Thanks to Sarah, Neil G, Jon A and Peter
See lyrics to Third Track Main Camera Four Minutes
chesneywold
I got my mate into hmhb while he was planning his wedding, and though he would never admit it, i’m pretty sure he didn’t go to Cuba on his honeymoon becasue of this song as it was the only place mentioned for ages then suddenly dropped. Mind you he didn’t go to Dorset instead so perhaps i’m wrong.
10 August 2009
Exford
I notice that Gez doesn’t give the Hardy reference for this one on hmhb.co.uk, so I’m tempted to cut and paste a whole swathe of that particular Victorian melodrama. Book 5, chapter 1, where Clym is blaming himself for his mother’s death :
“Eustacia turned, entered the house, and ascended to the front bedroom, where a shaded light was burning. In the bed lay Clym, pale, haggard, wide awake, tossing to one side and to the other, his eyes lit by a hot light, as if the fire in their pupils were burning up their substance.
“Is it you, Eustacia?” he said as she sat down.
“Yes, Clym. I have been down to the gate. The moon is shining beautifully, and there is not a leaf stirring.”
“Shining, is it? What’s the moon to a man like me? Let it shine – let anything be, so that I never see another day!…Eustacia, I don’t know where to look – my thoughts go through me like swords. O, if any man wants to make himself immortal by painting a picture of wretchedness, let him come here!”
“Why do you say so?”
“I cannot help feeling that I did my best to kill her.”
“No, Clym.”
“Yes, it was so; it is useless to excuse me! My conduct to her was too hideous – I made no advances; and she could not bring herself to forgive me. Now she is dead! If I had only shown myself willing to make it up with her sooner, and we had been friends, and then she had died, it wouldn’t be so hard to bear.”
11 August 2009
Exford
Sorry, forgot to say that’s from Hardy’s ‘The Return of the Native’ of course.
I know I’m not the only person who’s ever found it odd that Mr. Galbraith’s onions would have been better cared for had he gone to Dorset rather than Cuba. Nevertheless, I should never have pointed this out from in front of the stage mid-gig in Holmfith. I thus thoroughly deserved to be identified and pilloried by our favourite front man as someone who had probably been to Cuba. How right he was. And I loved it. (And Iceland too for that matter. And I’ve got the Buena Vista Social Club CDs, all of them. And loads of Bjork. And I’ve never been to Bulbarrow Hill, though I’d like to).
But what was impressive was that five minutes later (after For What is Chatteris, I think), Nige did come back to me and lean over to say “You’re right though, it doesn’t make much sense, does it ??”
11 August 2009
Dave F.
Err…?
Yes he does.
It might avoid confusion if you’d had said what the actual novel was that you were quoting.
11 August 2009
Charles Exford
oops I am just embarrassing to be around, eh ? Gez is good with his Hardy so I thought it was odd …
‘Cos of the purple quotes and the yellow explanations it looked as if the last line was more info than I needed about Frampton Comes Alive! so I never read it.
That’ll learn me.
11 August 2009
Featureless TV producer Steve
This is uncanny timing as I was browsing through my local record shop on Saturday and came across “Frampton Comes Alive!”, which immediately connected with this song – could never work out what it said before. Was pleased with myself, but just needed to wait a couple of days..
Good point about the onions though.
12 August 2009
Chazza
And I was browsing through my online Amazon shop
Looking for live concert footage of old time 70s pop
When suddenly (god’s my witness),
Into my mind walked Fred Titmus
And said “fuckinell if ever a DVD was in dire need of Roman numerals it has to be Frampton Comes Alive II…. I wonder if they considered having the exclamation mark as well ?”
12 August 2009
John Anderson
Tranmere Rovers had a manager called Walter Galbraith who endured a short and unsuccessful spell at Prenton Park in 1961. This, I strongly suspect, explains the man over the road’s surname.
16 August 2009
Charles Exford
Something I forgot to put in my review of the Sheffield gig, something quite remarkable really.
Nigel actually added a few lines to the song about Mr.Galbraith’s arrangement with a neighbour to look after his onions while he was away,
but somehow the neighbour let him down and then we ended up on Summerisle where the vegetables …. well you can guess the rest. Because I can’t remember it.
But the point being well made, I think, was that it doesn’t have to make sense.
21 December 2009
Charles Exford
Where you have “once again”, Chris, NB57 said it’s “pots and pans”, a spontaneous comment on the quality of sound being achieved and desired in the studio at the time.
And that, I think, is just about the final correction that I elicited from Nigel when we met up, though there are still one or two confirmations of lines which you already have down correctly.
14 May 2010
Godsy
Very good info that, Charles, cheers. Return of The Native goes on the to-be-read list if it’s good enough for NB.
11 July 2010
Onion Man
Before reading this section, all the above points regarding onions also occurred to me, and perhaps I’m psychic because I thought the ideal solution for Mr. Galbraith would have been to ask that nice Mr. Blackwell over the road to look after his onions while he spent two weeks either in Cuba or Dorset with its wonderful Bulbarrow Hill. However, it seems, from Charles’s comments above that even this arrangement would still result in a no-rosette situation for Mr. Galbraith. Perhaps he should give up growing onions and start listening to HMHB instead. Then he wouldn’t have men knocking on his door wishing to make themselves immortal by painting pictures of wretchedness.
I went to school with a John Galbraith but I have no idea if he lives over the road from Nigel or grows onions.
28 November 2010
Onion Man
Here’s a get out of jail free card for Nigel on this one. Since Bulbarrow Hill is far closer to anywhere in the UK than Cuba is, it is conceivable that had Mr. Galbraith gone to Dorset, he could have nipped back every couple of days or so to check on his onions, something he could not have done had he gone to Cuba. Do I win £5 (or at least a rosette)?
28 November 2010
dickhead in quicksand
Very tenuous, but Dylan said “I don’t see why anybody can’t go to Cuba” in his acceptance speech for the 1963 Tom Paine Award.
As a linguistic side note, he also said “robbed” (three times) in the sense of “stole” – so, that usage is more than just a Merseyside speciality.
22 February 2015
GWO
Just by the by … Pots And Pans may be culinary necessities, but its also the name of a large hill that overlooks the Saddleworth villages on the edge of the Saddleworth Moor. There’s a lovely war memorial on it.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/andyhemingway/3562908451
With any other songwriter, this would be a coincidence…
3 November 2016
dr desperate
Another possible coincidence: “I’m going to tell you something: thoughts are never honest. Emotions are.” (Albert Camus)
3 November 2016
kojac mac
There’s a video for it on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk2QbCDRP0U
16 March 2018
cream cheese and chives
In this week’s ludicrous travel section of the Saturday Times there is an article titled, ‘Where’s hot for 2019’. Greenland is apparently the new Iceland. Cuba is also promoted. Dorset doesn’t get a mention.
23 December 2018