Whilst doing a bit of second hand record shopping on Wood Street, I chanced upon a copy of Chas N Dave's "Christmas Jamboree" album on sale for the princely sum of one pound. The entire album (for those of you unfamiliar with it) is a rollicking ride through various cockney pub classics, and what caught my eye most especially was the inclusion of "Ask Old Brown To Tea". I grew up with this ditty on family occasions, and the whole idea was to slur as many of the words as possible so they sounded like swearing. So it began with:

"Arse ol' Brown to tea.
Arse ol' Brown to tea.
If 'e don't come,
I'll tickle 'is bum
with a lump-a celery!"

then progressed to even cruder levels. By the time you reached the final verse imploring him to come "fa coff-ee then" the whole thing descended into hoots of laughter and chaos. It's at moments like these that our northern English cousins should truly feel jealous of our cultural heritage.

Chas & Dave, however, have been devious rascals on this occasion, and have only included a very clean 15 second snippet of the song as part of a greater medley of other classics such as "When I'm Cleaning Windows" and "Run Rabbit Run". Still, the marginally offensive and borderline sexist "Rabbit" is on the B-side, so I suppose I shouldn't complain too greatly.

Whilst I was at the store, I also happened upon this ridiculous item:



Which begs an enormous amount of questions. The Beatles, after all, were known for their pacifism and tunes imploring folk to look to the better side of human nature. Why the world needed a marching military band from the barracks of Sandhurst to play their tunes is something far beyond me. It's noteable that tracks such as "All You Need is Love" are left off the album, however, and the unit have instead focussed on rather more neutral numbers such as "Ob La Di Ob La Da" - and I suppose "Help!" is a rather appropriate number for an army as well, or at least the closest you're going to get on any logical scale of appropriateness.

Please don't trouble me to ask for an MP3 of the album, though - it's as dire as you can imagine, and possibly rather more dull than that as well. A number of liberties have also been taken with the arrangements of various tracks, to the extent that "Ob La Di Ob La Da" is barely recognisable until the chorus kicks in (although thinking about it, that might not be such a terrible thing). The Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst are a most self-serving bunch of rascals.

Novelty items aside, it's usually at this time of year that I dig out my copy of John Cale's "Paris 1919" and stick it back on the stereo, where it normally stays until March. It's one of the only CDs I own that I feel strong urges to play during the winter. I own summer records as I believe everyone does, but the melancholy, chiming arrangements of this album, combined with wintery tunes such as "Antartica Starts Here" and "Child's Christmas In Wales", make it a must for low-lit evenings in the early part of the year - almost certainly unintentional on John Cale's part unless somebody can tell me otherwise. It's steadily become one of my favourite albums of all time, and is also one of the most durable - nine tracks, and absolutely none seem remotely out of place or clunk at all, an exercise in quality over quantity. I have yet to buy the remastered edition, though.

I've begun playing Scott Walker's "Til The Band Comes In" again as well, which Pulp fans will know about for the line in "Bad Cover Version": "Like... the second side of 'Til The Band Comes In'/ Like an own brand box of cornflakes/ he's gonna let you down my friend". Not very flattering, really, and I have to concur that the album is indeed a little patchy, but still has moments of sheer greatness. It's also partially a concept album about a housing project, and opens with "Prologue", an atmospheric theme track that takes in dripping taps, children yelling and slamming doors, and a genuinely bold and stirring orchestral arrangement. The rest of the album (until "Epilogue") focusses on the lives of the inhabitants, from an Eastern European immigrant, to a lonely man who listens to the speaking clock for company, to lyrically my personal favourite, "Joe" about an elderly old man:

As old Joe sat dying,
the baby down the hall was crying,
somebody had a party going on.
The fat boy you told tales to
moved away the other day,
to think with no goodbye
he could have gone.
A postcard from Sun City
was found laying by your side
a kind of desert place
where old folks dry away.
You gazed out through the window
at the wonders of the sky
as if it were the first time every day.

There ain't no-one left alive to call me Joe
you used to say.
No-one left alive to call me Joe.

You've been beyond the boundaries,
understood it all
and thought of nothing.
The ultimate was simple to your eyes -
just watch the world make madness
as the youth cried their replies,
an old man knows far better than to try.

They say towards the end
you hardly left your shabby room
where once you loved to go walking through the day.
Sit back and watch a spider
weave your window cross the moon
and meals on wheels laughed kindly
when you'd say:
"There ain't no-one left alive to call me Joe
To call me Joe
No-one left alive to call me Joe".

Brilliant, if not exactly cheerful easy listening. There are melodically tracks on the album that are among Scott's best too, as well as some howlingly bad cover versions on the second side (naturally) that cause the whole to fall flat.

I've got the 1996 CD re-issue of the album on Beat Goes On Records, which quickly went out of print and hasn't been seen since. I checked online to discover copies of it are now changing hands for 63 pounds, which seems utterly ludicrous - hopefully Phonogram will take the hint and give this a proper remaster soon. It's always been treated as the poor cousin to Scotts 1 - 4, but in my opinion it may actually be slightly better than the first two albums.