Rhymes With Egg Bad

Peter Blegvad's career has been a continuing frustration to me and the few others who really love his work. He's witty, thoughtfull, erudite, tunefull and perversely left of centre yet his releases have become less and less popular over the years. Recently, it was rumoured, he had to sell one of his few guitars to feed the family, etc. A parlous state of affairs for anyone, let alone a good singer / songwriter. At least he can rely upon his spoken word "Ear Toons" (frequently broadcast on the BBC) and his skills as an artist - "Leviathan" is one of the weirdest cartoons I've ever read and the book is just plain gorgeous.

Ofcourse, his main claim to fame is his pivotal role in Slapp Happy but I won't go through all that again. Instead I'll look at some of my favourites of his post SH career (and, yes, CC is involved):

mp3: Greaves / Blegvad / Hermann - 15 Objects...

From 77's "Kew.Rhone." - music by Greaves, "lyrics" by Blegvad and singing by Hermann. As ridiculously over-complicated as a vaguely toe tapping song can be, I think. The text is impenetrable to me (although someone must be able to decipher it's intent - hey, Ivan, care to try?) but the way they sound next to each other is just fabulous. My favourite - "hollow cone of tobacco which contains a tin coin" whose title is "dunce's trumpt (for v)". Hardly crowd pleasing, really, but intruiging to the end.

mp3: Powers In The Air

From his first solo album "The Naked Shakespeare" in 1983, produced by XTC's Andy Partridge - another failed attempt by Virgin Records to make stars of their Slapp Happy team. It's heavily bombastic (in that 80s style) with overwrought, pleading vocals, big production values (listen to those drums, for heaven's sake) and a fiddly but excellent arrangement. Hey, once again, I have no idea what it all means.

mp3: Strong, Simple Silences

From 88's "Downtime" and after any chance of a big career had passed him by. The album was rcorded late at night for cheap (or free) studio time and the songs are smaller, more Dylan-esque and, seemingly, more personal. This style would prevail over his trickster / uber-intellectual persona - maybe to his detriment. It's a surprisingly simple song but played with love and care.

mp3: Incinerator
mp3: Stink

2 tracks from 95's "Just Woke Up" and continuing the stripped down sound of Downtime by using Greaves and Cutler as the main players and with minimal overdubs. Both are bluesy in their own ways and deal with love and loss (I think). Listening back to these now I'm thinking, yes, I actually half dislike these tracks. I do have great ambivalence to Bleggers sometimes!

mp3: Blegvad / Greaves - The Black Dog

A lovely, dark, humorous spoken word piece from 95's "Unearthed". Great backing music throughout and, I suppose, similar to his current Eartoons.

mp3: The Marvellous In The Everyday

From 98's "Hangman's Hill" where his style really gels completely. The mix of the personal and the intellectual is almost flawless.

mp3: The Only Song

And I thought I'd end with another song from HH. It may be the definitive version of this perennial PB track: it just goes on and on and on..

"imagine a world where this
was the only song
and against your will
you had to sit
and listen to it all day long
until it made you ill".

I can think of nothing better in many ways.



A merry yule and a glorious new year to those few constant visitors to this tiny page. I intend to revamp it next year somehow - I think I've finally run out of old favourites to bore you with.