11/02/2012

North Wales


One of the things apparent in the last column on Dorset is that it seems easier to write evocative songs about American states than English counties, for the grandiose statement and self-mythology seem to fit more easily with the former. The same also applies when one looks slightly further afield across the border to Wales. Wales and England have often had an uneasy relationship  and  Wales has played an ambiguous role in pop music. There have been plenty of successful musical artists from Wales, of course, from the earliest days of pop: the first UK Number one from a Welsh singer came in 1959 with Shirley Bassey  ( Going back to the last column again and my traumatic experience with Dusty Springfield, I once also spied Tom Jones  -  on Bournemouth seafront. He did oblige with an autograph). However, as a place Wales has not  figured that much in pop songs, (Taking A Trip Up To) Abergavenny  and As I Went By  and a few others aside. There was a time in the 70’s when rural Wales became a haven of sorts for communes  seeking a bit of Eden and this spilled out into some of the music of the time. Mike Oldfield’s Hergest Ridge was named after a hill on the Herefordshire/Welsh border and in 1974 Manfred Mann’s Earth Band gave away a square foot of land near Builth Wells to those who bought their Good Earth album.
For many people from England, however, their direct  experience of Wales came not from a yurt in  Tipi Valley but from a camping or caravan site  on a family holiday, most likely in North Wales. An experience captured by the Wombats in Caravan in Wales:We're going on holiday, So why have you got an array of board games under your arm? What’s the point in going somewhere else if you're only going to do exactly what you would be doing at home?” I recently read the book The Tent, The Bucket and Me by Emma Kennedy, and her description of a disastrous  childhood holiday in Wales as the wind and rain howled through their caravan before it was blown right off the cliff  gave me a touch of déjà vu. Some years ago I had a family holiday in a caravan in Abersoch , the party including our own 9-month old  daughter and my sister’s toddler ,who was  being potty trained.(She was also going through a phobia about clowns. By one of those unlikely but inevitable co-incidences, what did we all see out of the car window as we drove through one of the small towns en route to Abersoch? A clown walking down the street.)  The week there also co-incided with the storms and Force 10 winds that decimated the Fastnet yachting race that year –and made getting to the brick toilet block across the caravan site near impossible.  We made up a little parody of the Fiddler’s Dram hit, Day Trip to Bangor (Didn’t We Have a Lovely Time). The full Wildean wit of our  new  lyrics escape me now but it was called 'Week in Abersoch (Didn’t We Have A Terrible Time)'.
It is fitting then that the song here, North Wales, is itself a parody –of Alicia Keys’ Empire State of Mind Part 2 (I don’t know who  the singer is here, presumably one of the great unsung session singers). Song parody is as old as pop music itself, with Stan Freburg and Peter Sellers having some success with parodies of artists like Elvis Presley and Lonnie Donegan in the 1950’s. The most effective ones, however, came from within the same genre instead of someone from outside pointing a finger. The Barron Knights had a run of commercial success in the 60’s and late 70’s with parodies of current hits, though perhaps  their biggest impact was a different one: the story goes that Bill Wyman started on his road to joining  the Rolling Stones by taking up electric bass after seeing the Barron Knights at Aylesbury Town Hall. The most prolific musical parodist is probably Weird Al Jankovic who has released dozens of parodies from Eat It in 1984 to Perform This Way in 2011. The Heebeegeebies did  something similar in the UK in the early 80’s, including  this pastiche of the Bee Gees in their disco era.
North Wales is rather different as it doesn’t rely on humorous lyrics to achieve its effect. In fact, the song itself could be taken perfectly seriously, rather in the way that  some of those of John Shuttleworth (aka Graham Fellows) could be if  removed from the character and context. It could almost be used by the Welsh Tourist Board, though they might need to think about the “people are nicer than they are in France” lines. What turns it into a parody are three things.
 Firstly, it capitalises on the fact that it is near impossible to glamourise, still less mythologise, places in Britain –especially provincial ones -  in song without it starting to sound funny. Stockport Council, for example, must have known that Frankie Vaughan singing Stockport - “The people seem to be so friendly, the houses seem to say Come In”- wasn’t really going to rival Tony Bennett and I left My Heart in San Francisco. It faces the same uphill struggle as  the new tourist attraction being touted in Bournemouth a few years ago: a tour of the Wessex Water sewage works. Secondly, the fact that it is supposedly sung by Alicia Keys adds a surreal edge to the lyrics, particularly the image of her  having scampi for tea en route to Anglesey .I was reminded of the report of Whitney Houston having to get the car ferry from Holyhead to Dublin for a concert when volcanic ash shut down air space in 2010.
Thirdly ,however, the combination of the above have another reverse effect, in that it also deflates the mythologizing of the original song, where New York as fantasy and for real are merged into one. “One hand in the air for the big city, street lights, big dreams, all looking pretty. No place in the world that can compare, put your lighters in the air, everybody say yeah”   on  one hand.  “Wave your hands in the air and say Bore Da” on the other. I suspect it is not just the difference between North Wales and New York but the different cultural contexts from which the songs come that creates this contrast. British songs about  places, when not humorous, tend to the melancholic rather than the heroic, the ordinary rather than the myth. You might not feel you are where dreams are made of in Abersoch or Llandudno Junction  but there really are picture postcard scenes – and  you can have scampi for tea if you fancy it.

51 comments:

  1. This is so interesting, Geoff! To be honest, Wales is one of those places that I've never been completely sure really existed (all the mythology of dragons!) Now I want to visit!

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  2. Yes, (Taking A Trip Up To) Abergavenny is one of the only songs about Wales. Interesting to listen to this song North Wales, which I hadn't heard before!

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  3. That book The Tent, The Bucket and Me sounds fun - will order it on Amazon!

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  4. Ha ha, this is one of the funniest things I've read for a long time:

    "my sister’s toddler, who was being potty trained [was] also going through a phobia about clowns. By one of those unlikely but inevitable co-incidences, what did we all see out of the car window as we drove through one of the small towns en route to Abersoch? A clown walking down the street."

    NIGHTMARE!

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  5. This is an amazing story, I hadn't heard it! - the story goes that Bill Wyman started on his road to joining the Rolling Stones by taking up electric bass after seeing the Barron Knights at Aylesbury Town Hall.

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  6. I agree Geoff, I don't think I would have known this song North Wales was a parody necessarily, without being told it is......

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  7. I LOVE the image of Alicia Keys having scampi for tea en route to Anglesey. SUPERB!

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  8. Geoff, you have a really uncanny ability to write about people just before they die! I think you posted this at 11am British time on Saturday. And she died around 4pm U.S. West Coast time (about midnight on Saturday night in England). I don't think you had ever mentioned her in your blog before, and right as you did, she died about 12 hours later!

    The same thing happened with Jet Harris, although with a longer gap in between you mentioning him and news of his death.

    Maybe you should stop mentioning people!!

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  9. By she, I meant Whitney Houston, sorry about that.

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  10. It's a wonderful image though, of Whitney on the car ferry between Holyhead and Dublin! Apparently it wasn't too bad, however - "she had the option of upgrading to the Plus lounge or visiting the relaxation area, observation deck, cinema, restaurant or enjoy onboard shopping." See: http://www.metro.co.uk/showbiz/822098-whitney-on-ferry-as-tour-continues#ixzz1mavjw9vv

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  11. "You might not feel you are where dreams are made of in Abersoch or Llandudno Junction...." BRILLIANT.

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  12. I met Tom Jones too. In the early 1970s I was hired as an assistant to Paul Anka, who needed someone with a lot of free time to Jones. It was an odd assignment, but as a budding journalist I felt I could capture Jones’ essence and report it accurately back to Anka, who would pen a new hit, “She’s a Lady.”

    Jones and I met at an outdoor café in the summer. I asked him:

    “Tom, when you meet an amazing lady, a really special woman, what do you do to impress her? What’s your ideal date?”
    “Oh, man. That’s a tough one. Is she, like, my soulmate?”
    “Yes. She means a lot to you.” “Hhhhhmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…..” he pondered this until my hand cramped from writing m’s. “I’d take her to dinner!”

    I waited for the next part.

    Nothing.

    “Dinner? At a restaurant?”
    “Yeah!” said Tom, clearly excited. “That’s a great date!”
    “I can’t argue with that… But isn’t it kind of, uh, generic?”
    “Dinner! Dinner! Dinner!” he said, banging his fists on the table and smiling.
    “Tom, she’s the woman you’ll probably want to marry and spend the rest of your life with… plus, we’re writing a pop song, so it has to be –”
    “Dinner!” he started dancing. People stared. Nobody at the café knew who he was.
    “OK, OK,” I wrote 'take to dinner' in my notepad.

    “Tom, keep the image of this woman in your mind and try to imagine true love. Have you ever been in love?”
    “Oh sure, plenty of times.”
    “OK, great. So imagine you’re in love again, only this time it’s insane, head-over-heels stuff. This woman is a blessing to you. You love everything about her and you can’t sleep at night when she’s not around.”
    “Ah!”
    “Yes. How would you treat this woman, in day-to-day life?”
    “Well, I would have to treat her incredibly well, I guess. I wouldn’t want to lose her…”
    “Yes…”
    “I would treat her with more compassion and respect than I’ve ever treated any other woman…”
    “Yes! Yes!”
    “I guess what I’m trying to say is…”
    “Yes! Go on!”
    “… I never would abuse her.”

    I paused for considerable time as Tom grinned at me affectionately through a strawberry milk mustache.

    “Tom, are you saying that the most romantic thing you can do for a woman is to just not abuse her?”
    “Don’t forget dinner!”

    We waited in pleasant silence till the bill came, which I paid because Tom said he forgot his wallet, even though he had pulled it out earlier to show me photos of his cat.

    I walked him to his car.

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  13. Hi Geoff - I've been trying to find the song As I Went By that you mentioned, but can't seem to find it. Any chance you could let me know the singer/band?

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  14. I actually have a copy of a magazine produced by a commune in Wales. It was by the Selene Community, who were were based in a remote cottage called Can-y-Lloer (Song of the Moon) overlooking the village of Ffarmers, in Carmarthenshire. These pioneers started up a magazine called Communes, of which an impressive 2,500 copies were produced on a bi-monthly basis. The journal acted as an information point for all the hippie, pagan and alternative communities across the UK. It was hoped that an international federation of communes could be developed. The people who produced the mag were Tony Kelly and his two "wives" Betty Kelly and Pat Blackmore. They were a threesome and shocked villagers by strolling around nearby fields in the nude. Apparently the locals thought they were Buddhists. In fact they were neo-pagans and it was their desire to eventually become witches. But as a commune, the Selene Community proved ultimately to be a failure. Tony Kelly and co were too busy getting the magazine together to develop the commune properly and their numbers gradually dwindled from 34 to 3. They lived on sickness benefits and by renting out the land which they had bought for grazing. Their magazine eventually ran into financial difficulties and folded. The Commune Movement itself petered out in the mid-70s. Here is the cover of the magazine: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_FVIKjTcQR-c/SYGUQ2dfT5I/AAAAAAAAAjI/ijOSSQ5MO6o/s1600-h/communes.jpg

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  15. You may like my novel Wild Abandon - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wild-Abandon-Joe-Dunthorne/dp/024114406X

    It's about a Welsh commune that is slowly disintegrating and the overarching desire teenage brother and sister Albert and Kate have to leave it. As their parents' marriage falls apart, and various characters' turbulent relationships begin to unravel, their father attempts to reunite all commune dwellers through an almighty rave. I visited several communes himself in researching the novel, some culty, some just like the Good Life, but the original idea came from a friend who lived on one in Pembrokeshire and spoke fondly of her time there. I liked to hear her stories about it and ages ago started writing something about a commune through the eyes of a visitor, in the first person, and it just didn't work. Later I came back to it and felt more comfortable writing in the third person and set in the community itself, so once I'd found a way in, I just went with it. I wouldn't be averse to living on a commune myself actually, although I imagine it would have to be designed to my exact specifications, so I would probably have to be in charge of the place!

    Cheers.

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  16. There are still some communes / international communities in Wales - here is a list of 15 of them! - http://www.diggersanddreamers.org.uk/index.php?one=dat&two=exi&fld=super_region&val=Wales&status=existing%20community&tit=Existing%20communities%20in%20Wales

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  17. We are an industrial and provident society in Wales - the movement didn't completely die out! It was formed in 1992 by 6 families. We have room for new members if anyone is interested!

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  18. Oops, here is our website address: http://www.dol-llys.co.uk/

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  19. I love Hergest Ridge. Notwithstanding the stunning beauty of the region, I acquired an added interest in Hergest Ridge when I discovered that it was here that Mike Oldfield once lived and flew radio-controlled aircraft, at the time when he recorded his second album of the same name. While hiking there I was told by a woman in the local Ye Olde Tavern that he flew model radio controlled aircraft on the ridge.

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  20. I remember when Manfred Mann gave away that land! I even bought the album, but forgot to fill out the form you had to send back to get your certificate of the freehold deed to one square foot.

    Apparently today though, Manfred Mann's 10 acres, situated near the head of the Irfon Valley at Llanerchyfa, Abergwesyn, remains as untouched as it was back in 1974. Manfred Mann and some of the fans who took advantage of his offer were reunited on the land a few years ago for a TV programme, I remember. It just had sheep and shepherds and the occasional wild pony as it has been for decades. Great conservation scheme!

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  21. I remember that BBC programme about the 10 acres. It was a few years ago. Manfred Mann stood on a plot and mimed to the record. But I also read that if all 435,600 available pieces had been taken up it would have made the site the world's most expensive nature conservancy scheme!!

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  22. Here are Wombats with Caravan in Wales - which is very good: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeIc75zyAPk. I wish these guys would tour a bit in the U.S.

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  23. Ha ha, here is the Fiddler’s Dram song Day Trip to Bangor (Didn’t We Have a Lovely Time): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMNrrLBdhuM

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  24. I remember the Bangor song being in the charts - we used to sing " didn't we have a lovely time the day we went to Belfast, a lovely day we got shot on the way all because of the IRA". Kids eh.

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  25. But there's a Bangor in Northern Ireland and one in the State of Maine. Maybe a few others somewhere. Are you certain that the one referenced in the song is the one in Wales?

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  26. I think it's the Bangor in Wales. Because it was originally written as day trip to Rhyll (another seaside town in North Wales) but was changed because Bangor fitted the beat of the song more naturally.

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  27. Geoff, re: your family spoof of the Bangor song -'Week in Abersoch (Didn’t We Have A Terrible Time)' - there was also the butter advert that spoofed/adapted it as well, - 'Didn't we have a lovely time, those far off days with Anchor?'

    You can see it at this link, at 3.54 mins: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry8Ag_ID6d0. The whole ad is a very nostalgic depiction of the British countryside actually.

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  28. Cathy and the Cucumbers managed to reach number 13 in New Zealand with their cover of Daytrip to Bangor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz5WoGkXZnY

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  29. Dude, check out our parody of Empire State of Mind, called Minnesota State of Mind: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we6R3GGkTW8
    ("Puttin your mittens in the air, everybody say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!")

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  30. Good parody, the North Wales one.

    Here's our parody of Empire State of Mind: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U7kuqow3gg.

    Newark State of Mind. With some pretty representative shots of my hometown, Newark.

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  31. Here's our parody, about the suburbia that is Long Island (Suffolk County): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBHpY-5gigY

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  32. I did one about Wales too! Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eijc2tGe-zM. It's called Newport State of Mind.

    "Chips, cheese, curry makes you feel brand new
    Washed down with a special brew."

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  33. And there is our New Hampshire one!

    NEW HAMPSHIRE
    LAND WHERE THERES NO INCOME OR SALES TAX
    THERE S NOTHING MUCH TO DO
    HERE IN NEW HAMPSHIRE
    THESE TREES WHERE LEAF PEEPERS DRIVE TO
    MAPLE SYRUP IS PRODUCED
    THIS IS NEW HAMPSHIRE, HAMPSHIRE, HAMPSHIRE

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX7nQrCgALM - check it out!

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  34. Here are the lyrics to the song Geoff posted!

    Ooooh North Wales (x2)
    Never been been up here before, where the mountains meet the shore
    And it's all so green
    It's just so picturesque with the air so clean and fresn
    It's like a dream
    From Mount Snowdon to Llandudno Junction or to Colwyn Bay
    There's so much to see, and it's great to be here in the month of May
    I've got a map and a hire car
    I'm going to travel near and far

    Baby I'm in North Wales
    Picture postcard scenes on my doorstep
    So much I've not seen yet
    Yes I'm in North Wales
    And this place will make you feel brand new
    Fresh air will inspire you
    Let's hear it for North Wales, North Wales, North Wales

    Getting hear can be a trek
    But you should try what the heck, if you ger the chance
    The welcome is so warm and the people are nicer than they in France
    Yesterday I travelled north from Harlech to the Menai Bridge
    What a pretty drive, with so much to see, it's a privilege
    I'm going over to Anglesey, I fancy scampi for my tea

    Baby I'm in North Wales
    Picture poscard scenes on my doorstep
    So much I've not seen yet
    Yes I'm in North Wales
    This place will make you feel brand new
    Fresh air will inspire you

    Let's hear it for North Wales, North Wales, North Wales
    Take the A55 to Bangor City
    Or to Prestatyn, Conwy, Rhyl or maybe Abergele
    It's all accessible, as long as you have a car
    Wave your hands in the air and say
    Bore... da! Bore... da!

    I'm in North Wales
    Picture postcard scenes on my doorstep
    So much I've not seen yet
    Yes I'm in North Wales
    This place will make you feel brand new
    Fresh air will inspire you
    Let's hear it for North Wales!

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  35. At the time we were actually a bit confused and thought Alicia Keys was really singing about us! We thought - this is tremendous, she will definitely be welcome here as an ambassador for Bangor. Then it turned out to be a parody! It was still brilliant though.

    Gwyn (Bangor City Council)

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  36. I feel bad for the session singer though - it's frustrating we still don't know her name; she has a great voice!

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  37. Geoff, I tried to find those Peter Sellers parodies you mentioned, and found this baffling one - a parody of a Beatles song! It's very funny! - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rOEp5ICXOU

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  38. And here's a very funny Stan Freberg parody of Elvis! - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQfstyrksP0

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  39. I love the Barron Knights - they not only parodied the musical styles, but on Top of the Pops they also did impersonations of the mannerisms and accents of people like the Stones: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yD-LAX0DxL4

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  40. It's probably a thankless task to start posting links to Weird Al Jankovic songs, as there are so many. So I'll just do my favorite - Eat It (based on Michael Jackson's Beat It!): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcJjMnHoIBI

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  41. Ok, I lied, just one more: Amish Paradise (from Gangsta's Paradise!) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOfZLb33uCg

    :)

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  42. Weird Al Jankovic is awesome! He puts on a great live show too - I saw him a couple of months back in New York!

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  43. These all came posted up at once!
    The song is actually 'I Went By' (no 'As') by Louise Marshall, Jim -it was posted up in the Waterloo Bridge column, inspired by a trip to Newport
    .
    This is the Peter Sellers pastiche of Lonnie Donegan, Martha

    Yes, It is rather weird I mentioned Whitney Houston for the first time on the day she died!..
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkPNHV0DTWc

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  44. That Heebeegeebies version of the Bee Gees is funny - thanks for posting that Geoff!

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  45. Geoff, has anyone ever theorised why it's so hard to glamourise or mythologise places in Britain in song without it starting to sound funny? There are a lot of quite majestic or historic places in England, I wonder why it's so much harder to sing about them with a straight face than in the U.S. It can't just be because our place names are inherently comedic, in their literal sound......

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  46. Here is Frankie Vaughan singing Stockport:)

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRwnoJSsNk0

    Very strange song!

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  47. ps - I agree with you that "British songs about places, when not humorous, tend to the melancholic rather than the heroic, the ordinary rather than the myth" - but I still am not sure WHY. Why does British culture prefer the 'ordinary' rather than the myth?

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  48. Ha ha, I thought you were joking about the tour of the Wessex Water sewage works but apparently it really did happen and was a popular event! - http://www.wessexwater.co.uk/news/threecol.aspx?id=3418

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  49. It's an interesting question, Noel. I am not sure there is an obvious answer. Maybe it is to do with the genre of music here. Unlike folk, British pop started as a copy of American music before finding its own voice. As the myth and heroic is so embedded in American culture, perhaps finding a different voice meant a reaction against that- hence the melancholic and ordinary.

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  50. That's fascinating - that the question is more 'why does American culture/music seek the mythic and heroic' than any question about British music, because initially British music simply sought the opposite vibe (the anti-mythic) as a way of defining its own sound. There's a book right there!

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  51. I actually did that tour of the sewage works. It was more interesting than it might sound!!:)

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