:: archive

February 07 - issue 1

COULD ROCK BETTER

The parish has spoken and our search for the UK's least rock and roll towns is at an end. Despite the desperate pleas of the sons and daughters of various 'burgs across the UK, the parish council has spoken and named the following un-rock and roll towns together with the best favourite son or daughter they can muster :

10. Eastbourne - Leapy Lee

9. Peterborough - Andy Bell out of Erasure

8. Harrogate - Wally

7. Batley - Robert Palmer

6. Clacton - Sade

5. Dunstable - Faye Tozer out of Steps

4. Reading - Slowdive

3. Doncaster - John Parr

2. Plymouth - nobody

1. Milton Keynes - even less than Plymouth

THE VICARAGE ART GALLERY

From the desk of parishioner Danny Baker:

"I enclose some rather delicate, and hitherto unheralded, paintings made by a notorious front man of a wild famous British band - which one?"

You can view them by going to "art gallery" right here. Share your speculations about attribution with other collectors on the messageboard.

PS If you've got any interesting daubs, sketches or sculptures by interesting rock names, send pictorial evidence to mail@rockingvicar.com and we could add them to the exhibition.

THE 'I'LL FINISH IT LATER' LYRIC

Parishioner Nev:

Have we forgotten Camper Van Beethoven's classic, Take the Skinheads Bowling & its immortal line, telling it straight from the heart... "There's not a line that goes here that rhymes with anything (anything, anything)"?

...and not forgetting the mighty Edwyn Collins treating us to a Baccara (Bacarra?) homage in Orange Juice's Intuition Told Me Part II : "Did I mention in the first verse, how you would come to disown me?" Fey indeed.

Parishioner Allan Williams:

On King Crimson's Happy With What You Have To Be Happy With Adrian Belew admits defeat with this lyric "Yeah, then I'm gonna have to write a chorus, We're gonna need to have a chorus, And this seems to be as good as any other place to sing it till I'm blue in the face". I also think Howard Jones got away without taxing him self on three of his big hits ; New Song - " Throw of your mental chains Ooh Ooh Ooh", What is Love - "What is Love anyway, does anybody love anybody anyway wo-oh, Oh-oh" and Things Can Only get Better - "Wow wow wow oh, wow wow wow oh oh oh oh" repeated 4 times.

Parishioner Trevor:

Post modern irony and a top tune nonetheless, but step forward Graham Coxon on

Freakin' Out:

Nothing to see nothing to hear

Nothing to be nothing to fear

Nothing to prove nothing to say

La la la la la la la lay

Parishioner David:

How about the Manic Street Preachers' song about Hillsborough, 'SYMM'? It's pretty half-arsed throughout, but in particular includes the deathless couplet: "The ending for this song/Well I haven't really thought of one".

Don't want to be too unreasonable, but how's about thinking of one and *then* recording the song? Wouldn't have happened if Richey had still been there.

As for the story about Michael Nesmith and 'Good Clean Fun', was this about the time that the Monkees were asked to come up with an alternate title for 'Randy Scouse Git' and settled, inevitably, on 'Alternate Title'? Are there any other songs with two titles, neither of which feature in the lyrics?

DOWNHILL ALL THE WAY

Parishioner Tim Footman:

Bands that failed to return on their initial promise to an increasing degree: I give you Suede. They kicked off with their sleazy masterpiece of a debut, followed it with the flawed, over-ambitious but still commendable Dog Man Star, then released three albums (Coming Up, Head Music, A New Morning) whose main purpose seemed to be to send you back to the first one to check that it was the same band. They then played the master stroke of sort-of reforming as The Tears, and producing an album that was even duller than the last Suede LP. Nice work, fellas.

Parishioner Richard Lipscombe:

Counting Crows have gone from a great debut to a song for a Disney movie. Does it get any worse?

NAMECHECKING YOURSELF IN SONG

Parishioner Sara Teal: In the Morrissey song ''Ouija board, ouija board'' a ghost spells out the sentence ''Steven, push off'' when our hero tries to make contact.

AS EVER WE RELY ON YOUR FEEDBACK

SEND US SOME LOVIN' AT MAIL@ROCKINGVICAR.COM

Pip pip!!

Your Rocking Vicar

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