I thought it'd be interesting to post some entries up about the things that inspired our mental music making...
Ivor Cutler was a somewhat subconscious influence on the GWF and subsequent Santaphobia strands of doss bandage. I never owned a single record by him, but I would listen to his poems and music on the John Peel show late at night under the covers of my bed on a red transistor radio shaped like a big lozenge. Sometimes I would read Spider-Man comics simultaneously, using a Subbuteo floodlight as a torch.
In later years I met an art student who interviewed Cutler for his dissertation. He described a polite and particular man who invited him home and served tea. When the interview finished Cutler walked my friend back to the train station, pushing his bicycle. Along the way they enountered a large dog turd in the middle of the pavement. Cutler took out a little plastic pot and peppered the dog doo with hundreds and thousands - the multicoloured sprinkles you get on cakes...
As I said, I never owned a Cutler record, but this clip shows quite clearly that his music seeped into my brain and made a big impression on the GWF:
7 comments:
The guy looks a bit like the Toxic Avenger tinkling on the ivories on the crappy low-res pic that YouTube puts on the front of the vid...
Stuff like this, makes me realise how much insania has come out of the UK, stuff i've never really taken much notice of, like Spike Milligan for example, or even Tommy Cooper, they all had that 'not quite right' thing going on!
I would say that Monty Python was a fairly big influence on Gibs, especially that Sargent Major guy played by Graham Chapman.
Graham Chapman, definately. In fact the phrase 'Tree mangle whirtsgrove' in the Farmer Flippy sketches was almost a direct transplant from some Monty Python sketch. Also, we used 'Stop that! It's silly!' quite a couple of times. But to be honest, I don't rate MP much these days... Spike was the King. What are we gonna do now?, what are we gonna do now?, what are gonna do now!?
omigod - I have to say that I still enjoy Monty Python - the movies are all great and some of the sketch shows are truly bonkers!
Whereas I never really got Spike - he just seemed really out of it and almost a little scary!
Exactly!
There have been some Python docs on TV lately. There's one this Sunday - a South Bank Show at 10 o' clock.
Spike was huge for me too. Not just the Q series but his war memoir "Adolf Hitler, My Part In His Downfall". It was the first grown-up book I read.
I've just downloaded 5 episodes of Q Milligan from UK Nova. Complete with the Pakistani Dalek sketch. Priceless.
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