Improv Workshop Mimeshow Gobshite is notable for containing one of the oddest bits of trivia ever to occur in a pop song. HMHB have an awesome track record of mentioning people and places in their lyrics which suddenly go, er, tits up. From Rod Hull and Tony Bastable, to Rob Fisher of Climie Fisher, you wouldn’t want to get a namecheck in one of their songs, and not just because your name is probably being taken in vain. Anyway, it’s perhaps not surprising then that non-league Farnborough Town went into liquidation in 2007.
Pete T
Always thought it was “saw your pastel on the precinct floor”, but hey good effort.
Pete
2 May 2008
chris
Another one we’ll probably never be quite sure of!
2 May 2008
Treadmore
“torch songs” – I thought that would refer to something specific, like the Carly Simon LP, so would be “Torch songs”.
4 October 2009
Treadmore
nevermind, just read the wikipedia article š
4 October 2009
dagenham dave
I agree with Pete T’s May 2008 suggestion about the ‘pastel on the precinct floor’.
Now I really must leave this site alone and go to bed……
25 February 2010
Dave F.
Yet again from the lyric book, it’s ‘pastelling’.
Tell me when I sound like a stuck record, won’t you?
25 February 2010
lurking like len
Does anyone know if āIām Standing In The Roadā was actually penned by said burly physio of non-league Farnborough Town?
17 May 2010
John Anderson
Sad to say it wasn’t.
17 May 2010
s.g.d A Shropshire Lad
I think that they were all Villa fans though.
17 May 2010
lurking like len
it seemed so unlikely – i thought it might possibly be true!
24 May 2010
Neil G
From the Blackfoot Sue website:
“After coming home from a gig, they would unload their gear out of the van and straight away set it back up in their front room, ready for rehearsing and noodling out new song ideas. It was here that Standing In The Road was written, in January 1972, during an extended jam session, based on a rhythm that had come to David in a dream!”
I hoped it was true, I must admit. I don’t think any members of Blackfoot Sue ever went on to become burly physios, non-league or otherwise.
24 May 2010
Poolio
Not happy with Kenneth, Emma, although might be the two voices overlapping that confuse… sounds more like….
Kendif.. Emba.. althought can’t think what on earth might replace it….
And I think RADA should be R.A.D.A. or R A D A or R-A-D-A otherwise I want ot pronounce it Rada like Lada…
Home time – yippee!!
6 September 2010
Dave F.
Kenneth Branagh & Emma Thompson, who were married luvvies, darling.
Both slappable.
6 September 2010
Dougal
Rainer Werner is probably Fassbinder:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainer_Werner_Fassbinder
R-A-D-A is probably The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (which Branagh attended):
http://www.rada.ac.uk/
6 April 2011
churl
Seems to be an unwritten rule on here that nobody should ever be churlish enough to point out the unwritten rules.
Like the fact that if it’s on hmhb.co.uk, well we assume everyone knows.
Not that Gez is always 100% right, but anyway I’m so churlish these days that I’ve turned into an actual churl
http://cobweb.businesscollaborator.com/hmhb/records/Leaden.htm
6 April 2011
Chris The Siteowner
Ah, but Churles, you maybe assume that Gez’s site is somehow where HMHB fans live when they’re not eating or sleeping, whereas I’m going to humbly suggest that a decent number of visitors here have probably never been to that fashionably black place. We’re just approaching our 200,000th visit here since records began, and something like 55% of them came from Google. So straighten your tie (and your act), your ramblings may be one of the first things many people ever read about the band!
7 April 2011
Vendor of Quack Nostrums
As Billy Boy once wrote:
“tender churl, mak’st waste in niggarding:
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.”
7 April 2011
MIKE IN COV
Another bleeding obvious reference, but someone might be visiting this site in the year 2163. Send In The Clowns is a song in Sondheim’s A Little Night Music (1973). YouTube supplies some stunning renditions.
Mention of Villa (A Shropshire Lad, above) reminds me that there are three clubs in the Football League-as-was whose names contain rude English words: Arsenal, Scunthorpe, and Aston Villa. Around here, at any rate.
9 July 2012
BrumBiscuit
Mike in Cov: You are a man of mine own heart.
SOTV!
(Warwick-based, Acocks Green-born)
11 July 2012
Chigley Skin
And mine too! We seem to have a Seal-haters comvention on the go. Boing boing!
11 July 2012
Rick
Are you sure it’s “the WI”? It sounds like “A WI” to me.
12 November 2012
ACIDIC REGULATOR
I second “a WI”.
13 November 2012
johnnybrum
“Friends of Mine” by Buzzcocks, also features a “Cokeheads, Cokeheads” refrain at the end of the song?
30 January 2013
John aNDERSON
Bathing currently not safe in Barmouth.
http://tinyurl.com/phsk9yg
2 January 2014
EXXO
Was up Cadair Idris on Monday, the one day when the climate allowed any reasonably dry Whit Week Malarkey. Straight up from Dolgellau as recommended by Perrin and westwards along what he called, and who could argue, “the finest peak ridge south of the Highlands.” The whole massif seems to have been designed by the big cheeses from the tourist information in Barmouth, and the ever-more-dazzling view of that town’s golden sands means you can’t help singing this song… for miles and miles, along the ridge. Which made a visit the next morning inevitable, paddling miles out for the first time since childhood. You feel like you could paddle to Abersoch or Pwllheli. Which finally gets this song out of your head, to be replaced by that one.
30 May 2014
Cygnus
I just realised I ‘know’ someone mentioned in this song, well sort of. Blackfoot Sue comprised the Farmer twins and some other bloke whose name escapes me. Tom and Dave Farmer were in the year above me at primary school although I don’t recall either of them being especially interested in magnets. Before forming BS they were in a band called The Virus and drove around in a Transit Van with “Catch The Virus” on the side. Well it’s better than strategies and logistics I guess.
4 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
Leicester Lads!
https://farm7.staticflickr.com/6123/6208063737_4b6833641e.jpg
4 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
Tower block, WE couldnāt score in a tower block, SHITE
22 November 2014
Gordo
I’m no longer convinced that the bathing is safe.
8 December 2014
dickhead in quicksand
I see that the Daily Heil! spells the beast “Mako shark”. A most unsatisfactory solution to the capitalisation problem, unless they think it’s named after the town in Hungary or Geronimo’s granddad or something.
8 December 2014
peter mcornithologist
@ Dick. Your knowledge is boundless! Mako-home of the worlds greatest onion festival.
8 December 2014
dirk hofman
The future’s so bright I’ve gotta wear shades-Timbuk 3(late eighties,husband and wife harmonies)
13 January 2015
dr desperate
Marc Riley played ‘Standing In The Road ‘ on R6M tonight. Well, obviously it writes itself [1:40:40].
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07nx2tt#play
23 August 2016
AMOCO CADIZ
Onto the sandbank??
3 January 2017
Rien Post
The string of i’s and o’s in “dropkick the improv workshop mimeshow gobshite” (oiioooiooi) is the same as the binary code 0110001001, which stands for the number 393, which is the number of counties in Canada.
Discuss.
11 August 2018
Schoon
@rien, good work! But surely the 393 is more likely to refer to: http://ualocal393.org.
12 August 2018
TRANSIT FULL OF keith
I was reminded of a line in this song today while getting my first shot of Astra-Zeneca at the Chesterton Bowls Club, which turns out to be “proudly sponsored” by a local firm of funeral directors. Massive sign at the door was a bit on the nose, I thought.
24 April 2021