“On The Wire” on BBC Radio Lancashire is “the longest running continuous alternative music show on UK radio”. Contributor “Fenny” (Michael Fenton) unearthed an old (undated but circa 1992) HMHB acoustic session for the show, on quarter inch tape, and this included an unreleased song that they’re calling “Clear Day”. It contains at least one line which was recycled in a later song. Enjoy.
Broadcast on BBC Radio Lancashire, 20 September 2015
Here are the other two tracks from the session:
Chris The Siteowner
The show is on BBC iPlayer for a while, but it gets archived here.
13 September 2015
dickhead in quicksand
I suspect he’s doing this on purpose to mess up the cup draw.
13 September 2015
Chris The Siteowner
Do we think this deserves full “song status”, and its own lyrics page? Is it now 193 songs…?
21 September 2015
Mark-C
Definitely worth a lyric page so we can all wax lyrical about Baroness Heyhoe Flint ….
21 September 2015
Dr Desperate
Obviously a work in progress, the song is mentioned on Gez’s site in the ‘Unreleased Live Songs’ section (referenced by Chigley Skin in post 32 of the ‘She’s In Broadstairs’ thread).
Gez has it as a live song from 1993, titled ‘It’s A Clear Day (But I Can’t See The Point)’. However, that version apparently had a recorder duet rather than the Roger Whittaker-ish whistling, and the second chorus was unchanged, with “Doesn’t matter what you say” repeated rather than “I don’t need another X-ray” as here, so this may be an earlier recording.
Lines foreshadowing ‘£24.99 From Argos’ and ‘Hair Like Brian May Blues’, as well as the chords from ‘National Shite Day’ in the verses, and two cricketing references (Rachel Heyhoe and wrong ‘uns).
21 September 2015
alan
this time tomorrow by the kinks meets my back pages by the Byrds
22 September 2015
EXXO
Ha, thanks, great find.
Simultaneous rhyming slang & geographical pun on ‘Flint’ – classic.
As pointed out in the ‘Argos’ thread, the Point of Ayr as in ‘I Trog’ is what he can’t see across the Dee Estuary, as well as the point of life in general. And it’s in Flint(shire), ‘cos Offa wanted the entire Dee coast under Anglian rule for obvious strategic reasons.
It’s a clear day (but I can’t see the Point) is a much more Biscuit title.
22 September 2015
EXXO
Undoubtedly full song page status.
22 September 2015
Featureless tv producer steve
Despite the havoc it may wreak on The Lux Familiar Cup 2015, another vote for full song status. Loved it.
23 September 2015
Dr Desperate
Correcting my own error before anyone else notices, it’s Rachael. Her husband Derrick Flint played 10 matches for Warwickshire in 1948-49 bowling googlies, so may well have had three wrong ‘uns with varying degrees of detectability.
23 September 2015
peter mcornithologist
I also agree. A beauty which like Mars Ultras could have vanished.
23 September 2015
GOK WAN ACOLYTE
I’m anti- the full song status. As Dr Desperate suggests, it’s clearly a work in progress and was obviously broken down and recycled into various other later songs.
23 September 2015
Chris The Siteowner
I agree with GWA, as the band didn’t think it was suitable to release. I know that this argument also applies to the likes of “Mars Ultras” and “Epiphany”, but they’re clearly unique, finished songs. If we count this as an official song, should we include other works in progress performed live which may never see the light of day, such as the (rather brilliant) “Man of Constant Sorrow” song played twice this year, or the one about Malcolm Nash and Gary Sobers which also disappeared. I’m more inclined to include it in a “works in progress” section (lyrics and all) but not increment the song counter.
23 September 2015
GOK WAN ACOLYTE
Of course, when the HMHB Anthology box set is released, all of these will feature, along with recordings of Nigel and Neil dicking about in the studio and the long lost version of “It’s Cliched to be Cynical At Christmas” in which Sonia takes the lead vocals
24 September 2015
Dickhead in quicksand
On The Wire has a Wiki page, nowt to do with me.
I vote for full song status (under Unreleased Songs), and for Exxo’s proposed title. It was thought good enough to be played on the radio, and so is more than a Converted Back Into A Loft Tapes-type bootleg.
Query: as an especially good delivery is a Jaffa, would an unplayable left-arm occasional wrong ‘un bowled by a New Zealander be a Chinese Gooseberry?
7 October 2015
Dickhead in quicksand
(1) Regardless of article status, the song needs to be uploaded to YouTube by someone more tech-savvy than me. (2) What were the other two songs, presumably also acoustic by Nigel and Neil, and can they be found?
7 October 2015
Chris The Siteowner
(1)
Will doHave done.(2) 4AD3DCD and M-6-ster, I’m told. And I’ll ask. (UPDATE: Now featured above)
7 October 2015
brumbiscuit
@DiQ: ‘Query: as an especially good delivery is a Jaffa, would an unplayable left-arm occasional wrong ‘un bowled by a New Zealander be a Chinese Gooseberry?’
Maybe in the same way that a short-pitched ball delivered to a New Zealander that strikes home where his eyes immediately water renders them All Blacks.
8 October 2015
deen 3man
Question: what was the theme tune to “On The Wire?”
9 November 2015
EXXO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCWhEe_SMtE
Always thought it should have been “on the Wyre” though really
9 November 2015
Low drone
Happy that this has been tracked down. Was one of my favourite songs and was a bit gutted when it was dropped from the repertoire. Definitely it’s a clear day (but I can’t see the point), played, according to my fading memory, at Bridgewater arts centre, the venue in Winchester (I can’t remember the name) on the night Nigel broke two guitar strings having leant his gear to the support band, the square in Harlow, and possibly in King Tuts. I am still able to sing along so must have heard it a good number of times.
13 March 2016
Gareth
It was on a Thursday night late July or early August 1992, I remember Nigel and Neil turning up at Probe Plus HQ above Probe Records armed with guitars and then having to atttempt to play a tape on Geoff’s stereo in the office the next day.
I think i still have the original cassette somewhere.
1 July 2016
Low Drone
Sound man Gareth?
10 July 2016
EXXO
OK, so Heyhoe’s had her heave-hoe to the furthest boundary. Only then did I come back this thread, to check the date of her cursing (I’d have gone for 24 years and c.170 days meself going from Gareth’s comment 22 above) and to consult the lyrics, and saw for the first time Chris’ somewhat arbitrary (and minority) ruling on 23/09/2015, so there are no lyrics.
There is no precedent for the band recording a work in progress.
They were happy for it to go out, as they were for ‘Epiphany’ or ‘Mars Ultras’. So it wasn’r a work in progress at that point. It was finished, like the others in the same session.
The difference is that those songs don’t feature lyrical fragments which found their way instead into two other, better songs, which (by definition) at this point were themselves, works in progress.
So what we have here is a finished song, which was also performed live, that was dropped
It is not a great song but it contains one of the greatest Blackwell puns ever, it sheds light on other lyrics and the majority were right – it surely deserves a lyrics page.
20 January 2017
EXXO
And to answer the question, surely not intended rhetorically, in Chris third sentence of comment 13. No, they are very different cases, and have not yet been recorded in a radio session like wot this one was. But at even money I’d bet a fair whack that ‘Man of Constant Sorrow (With a Garage in Constant Use)’ will be on the next album.
20 January 2017
EXXO
Too hasty to ‘submit’ as ever, I intended my final sentence to have the added oomph of the curse:
“It is not a great song but it contains one of the greatest Blackwell puns ever, it sheds light on other lyrics, it has now claimed a curse victim of its very own and the majority were surely right – it deserves a lyrics page.”
20 January 2017
dr desperate
Of the seven ennobled Test cricketers, had the highest batting average (45.54).
21 January 2017
Shit-faced, no tattoo
I’d like to vote for this to increase the song count. It was broadcast as a song in its own right and it is still is a unique composition, even if some elements were used elsewhere. And it’s staying on my MP3 player!
27 February 2017
dr desperate
“Gonna follow the path
That climbs up through the trees
Walk along the cliff top
And gaze out to sea
I feel free when I come up here and
If it’s clear
Some days I see the point”
(‘Some Days I See The Point’, from ‘England, Half-English’, Billy Bragg 2002)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1i8IDSli6Y
3 March 2018
hendrix-tattoo
‘Curtis Mullard’
3 March 2018
dr desperate
‘Arthur Mayfield’.
3 March 2018
hendrix-tattoo
It was Mick Talbot’s nickname for Billy during the Red Wedge tour.
Remember going to see it at the Manchester Apollo in the eighties.
https://youtu.be/q9vAcLPhM5w
3 March 2018
EXXO
Thanks for reminding us of that one DD. Went to have a look at the Bragg-assic Coast when was down near there playing in a summer football tournament some years ago, and noticed that BB lives on Burton Beach right by Bind Barrow in Burton Bradstock, and probably the only point you can really see from the cliffs there on a clear day is … the Bill.
4 March 2018
EXXO
So counting Gez as a ‘yes’ in the other thread, and not including Low Drone or Gareth the Sound Man, even though both might be taken to imply ‘yes’, we’re on 7-3 for yes. Including the abstentions, we have at most 20% of those who have commented voting ‘no’, albeit an influential triumvirate, and no votes for ‘no’ for the last 4 years, so I can’t see debate in the scout hut raging on past Hallowe’en meself.
28 June 2019