Listen, I'm getting impatient

Yes folks, the blog returns. And I think that quite a long time ago, I promised a post on ace pop-punksters Splodgenessabounds, so here it is.

Artist: Splodgenessabounds
Title: Simon Templar / Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps Please
Year: 1980
Chart peak: 7

You can often tell a lot about a band by the stage names they choose to give themselves, and none more so than comedy punks Splodgenessabounds, who achieved their brief moment of fame with a line-up of Max Splodge (vocals), Baby Greensleeves (more vocals), Pat Thetic (guitar), Donkey Gut (keyboards), Robert Rodent (another guitar), Desert Island Joe (drums) and Wiffy Archer (paper & comb). Yes, they had a paper & comb player - the DIY punk ethic was very much alive here. Splodge and Thetic had previously performed as a duo called The Faber Brothers, briefly getting a residency at Butlin's holiday camp in Bognor Regis. Very briefly.

Anyway, the group started playing live in March 1979, and came third in a Melody Maker talent content, netting them £200 and an amplifier. Partly as a result of this, they were picked up by Decca Records for a £1000 advance.

You can't really say a lot about "Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps Please" as a song, because there's not a lot to it. Inspired by a real-life incident of struggling to get served in a pub (The Crown in Chislehurst, should you wish to recreate the magic for yourself), Splodge chants the title a lot, informs us that he even has the exact money ready (should he ever get served) and eventually has to give up when "time" is called. The song was relegated to being the second track on the B-side of "Simon Templar", a punky re-working of the the TV theme to "Return Of The Saint" (the first track on the B-side was a ditty called "Michael Booth's Talking Bum", of which the less said, the better). But in the way of such things, the other tracks on the single got passed over and it was the chant-along filler track that got all the airplay.



Splodge, it should be mentioned, was not entirely happy with the financial arrangements - he claims that he was paid just £240 for the publishing rights. And for some reason, when the BBC started a series called "Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps", named after the song, they didn't even use it as the theme music, preferring to commission a completely new song from another composer! Now that's a raw deal.

Anyway, on the "Whatever happened to...?" front, the follow-up was a raucous version of "Two Little Boys" and there was also an album, "Splodgenessabounds", which bombed spectacularly. An almost completely different line-up issued a second album under the truncated name "Splodge" in 1982 and there's still a version of Splodgenessabounds playing intermittently, but it's anyone's guess who's actually in the band now, or indeed five minutes from now. Whoever it is, at least with 24-hour licensing, they should be able to get a drink afterwards. If they're prepared to wait.

The sword of time will pierce our skins

After doing yesterday's entry, it struck me that I'd inadvertently created a little run of themed songs about war: a fictional nuclear war, WW1 and Vietnam. So I thought I'd carry on the theme today, and Splodgenessabounds will just have to wait a little longer!

Act: The Mash
Title: Theme From M*A*S*H (Suicide Is Painless)
Year: 1980
Chart peak: 1

Richard Hooker's novel about the staff of a US field hospital during the Korean war provided the source material for one of 1970's more surprising hit movies. The black comedy M*A*S*H (with asterisks originally added purely to grab people's attention on the movie poster) not only made a star of its director Robert Altman, but also spawned a long-running TV series, a hit on both sides of the Atlantic.

The series was at the height of its popularity when Radio 1 DJ Noel Edmonds started playing the original movie theme song. The version used on the TV series was an instrumental remake and as most viewers had never seen the original film, the melodramatic lyric (written by Robert Altman's son Mike, just 14 at the time) made quite an impression. The resulting public demand swiftly led to the song's (re-)release as a single. As the track was recorded by a group of session musicians, it was credited simply to The MASH.



Musically, it's quite a clever song - it's obviously in the tradition of folky protest songs (which were pretty big at the time) but it also has a bit of an easy-listening vibe (dig those finger bells!) that makes the morbid lyric all the more startling. All in all, the ideal soundtrack to a film full of black humour, which used the Korean War to make a not-so-oblique point about Vietnam (in fact, Robert Altman deliberately didn't have the setting stated in the film, so as to blur the boundaries even more).

The song, incidentally, refers to a character in the film known as "Painless Pole" (he's a really good dentist) who attempts to commit suicide, but his bid fails because the pills he obtains for the purpose are actually placebos. The character never appeared in the TV series.

The song returned to the charts in 1992 when a beefed-up but otherwise quite faithful version by Welsh angst-rockers Manic Street Preachers became their first top ten hit. It's also been covered by Marilyn Manson.