Comments on: LIEUTENANT PIGEON - “Mouldy Old Dough”

By: Billy Smart

Billy Smart — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 09:15:01 +0000

In today’s Observer, we learn that Mouldy Old Dough was the tune to which Joe Royle’s Oldham Athletic FC ran out onto the pitch of Boundary Park in the late 80s and early 90’s. The practice stopped when they were promoted to the top division in 1991 - when the strident sound of ELP’s Fanfare for the Common Man was considered more appropriate.

By: Marcello Carlin

Marcello Carlin — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 07:05:04 +0000

Results 1 - 10 of about 1,140 for “other people having different opinions”. (0.38 seconds)

By: doofuus2003

doofuus2003 — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 02:45:20 +0000

Tom, I was alive and 17 when this was a hit, and to me it was (at the time & now) a complete irrelevance. I said something much the same in comments on Son of my father, and as with that one, to see such revisionism of their reputations 35 years later is a puzzle.
On whether the early ’70s were gray, I think it depends on what your age was/what you were doing then; I had known no other time, and as a late teenager, leaving school and going to university, getting my first car (Triumph Herald, 40 quid) it seemed pretty good to me…

By: Lena

Lena — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 18:00:39 +0000

Um, didn’t the ‘modern world’ start in 1977 like The Jam said?

By: Marcello Carlin

Marcello Carlin — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 09:24:37 +0000

define the “our” in “our world” plz.

By: pigwell

pigwell — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 20:38:37 +0000

err, I only came across your site because I was looking for cover versions of this (my favourite ever) song

the whole of ‘72 sounds like residue, ‘72 is when our world began - the modern world started in 48, and was mainstream in the sixties, and then was gone - so much of the music of ‘72 is inspired by the recognition that progress has ended even as change continues - no longer able to claim legitimacy by referring to the future, it dishonestly claims it by evoking the past

Glitter/Leander’s referencing of Rock’n'Roll (in ‘72) is the pivotal text here - the song sounds nothing like rock’n'roll even as it claims to be rock’n'roll - and there were many imitators, some of whom did sound like rock’n'roll

the best illustration of the end of history in ‘72 has to be that in 1969, 1969 was hot enough for the Stooges to release “1969″; by ‘74 Sweet’s “Sixteens” refers back to ‘69 as a lost past - and we think the cycle of fashion is rapid now

five years, five years, eh

By: Tom

Tom — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 20:20:02 +0000

Hullo Rosie - good to have you back!

By: Rosie

Rosie — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 20:08:01 +0000

And off to Uni we go. For me this track has the whiff of spilled bad beer and dodgy pies in the Sphinx Bar of Liverpool Students Union - it was a fixture on the jukebox there.

As for the early seventies - it’s not a time I remember as being particularly grey. I think the greyness of the time was a myth really - surely it was less grey than the austere fifties for those old enough top have lived through them. The pubs were certainly better then - I have very fond memories of the early weeks of 1972, with the miners’ strike and the power cuts in action, and spending candlelit evenings in the Waggoners pub at Ayot Green. In the early weeks of 1972 the Waggoners was still on the A1, on a bend of what was then still a single carriageway road, so that made coming and going in the pitch dark an interesting experience…

By: Waldo

Waldo — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 06:10:48 +0000

I would say that that was spot-on. Sounds like Stilgoe all over. Puerility was all.

By: Marcello Carlin

Marcello Carlin — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 14:34:37 +0000

Did Richard Stilgoe write a wry satirical verse on the scandal in his Thursday consumer spot?

By: Waldo

Waldo — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 12:41:58 +0000

I don’t know about that, Marcello. All I can say is that the BBC early evening magazine programme “Nationwide” (it launched Sue “So Lonely” Lawley) really got their teeth into the Lieutenant Pigeon “scandal” and I can recall old ladies popping up all over the place. It sure as well wasn’t Billy Preston!

By: Marcello Carlin

Marcello Carlin — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 12:15:36 +0000

Didn’t ver Pigeon record all their stuff in Hilda’s front room?

By: Waldo

Waldo — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 11:01:04 +0000

Really. There was a big hoo-hah about it and there were certainly a least a brace of old bats on the old joanna claining to be t’original old bat. They both/all were clearly the model for Viz’s “Mrs Brady Old Lady” so nobody could tell the difference nohow.

“Rainy Day Women” and “Mould Old Dough”… EVERYBODY’s gotta to get stoned!!!!!

By: Mark Grout

Mark Grout — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 08:39:05 +0000

and the old bat on the old joanna, who was not the same person who recorded the piece back in the Decca studio.

oh really?

Also: The intro can easily be mistaken for Dylan’s “Rainy Day Women” but you knew that…

By: Waldo

Waldo — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 09:27:27 +0000

“Mouldy Old Dough” is nothing if it isn’t a comedy record. I can remember the guy on the tin whistle, the old lag screaming out the title and the old bat on the old joanna, who was not the same person who recorded the piece back in the Decca studio. Complete rubbish but a lot of fun.

By: Billy Smart

Billy Smart — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 22:08:02 +0000

One of the very greatest of number ones, for me a ten out of ten. The only thing I can add that nobody else has yet quite mentioned is the sheer lurchingness of the thing, the sense of imbalance but always managing to stay on its feet: it makes me feel rather drunk hearing it. Also, the connection that you make to Position Normal makes me think of other pieces in this context that I hadn’t thought of before - in the way that the same elements loop back again and again and recur; Revolution Number Nine or Reality Asylum.

By: Mark M

Mark M — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 20:31:13 +0000

Measured look at the decade here , including comparison with the early 90s, whose grimness now seems largely forgotten in popular mythology…

By: Mark M

Mark M — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 20:28:58 +0000

Well, except for the other thing everyone remembers about the 70s here is the extraordinary summer of 76, when it was sizzling hot from May 7 onwards and the classic English lawns burnt to a crisp and the pubs sold two million pints more than normal (or so it says in the A to Z of 76 I wrote for the Q 30 anniversary of Punk issue someone mentioned earlier…)

By: Doctor Casino

Doctor Casino — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 18:41:55 +0000

Dang it all, totally commented on this last night but it got lost in the ether somehow so I’ve been scooped on the “Lily The Pink” reference as well as “Winchester Cathedral.” Certainly I find Tom’s thesis here fairly convincing, although I’m not sure the song is quite dour enough to nail it on the head. The guy croaking out the title line is clearly enjoying himself doing the funny voice, and the overall impression is that “Son of My Father” has somehow run off the rails, gotten drunk, and kept swirling around in an increasingly disturbing, but still somehow joyous fashion. Lingering Sgt. Pepper-ism is afoot I daresay. This track is a fun discovery, just headsticky and weird enough where you could understand people really needing to hear it again, because your imagination can never quite recreate the exact tremble in that voice. As for the Anglopocalypse of the 70s, it’s funny - I’ve only ever absorbed a few scattered reference to this period (old Doonesbury strips, VH1 documentaries about Black Sabbath), and it was enough to convince me that it was never summer in England in the 70s. In America I picture people sweltering in the sun as they stand in gas lines; in England they shuffle through gray, gray, gray.

By: Pete Baran

Pete Baran — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 11:56:49 +0000

Of course it was better than the blitz. People weren’t dying.

By: Erithian

Erithian — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 11:38:08 +0000

wwolfe’s comment above reminds me of the discussion we were having about “Lily the Pink” and the Britmania that gripped the US in the mid-60s. In a sense “MOD” harks back to the Edwardian/WWI fad in the UK (“Kaiser Bill’s Batman,” “Winchester Cathedral”, even the Sgt Pepper costumes) and the time Herman’s Hermits could take a 1910 music hall song to No 1 in the States. Maybe if it had been out circa 1965, “MOD” could have been a “perfectly English” US smash!

Number 2 Watch – but for the Pigeon, 10cc could have kicked off their chart career with a Number 1 with “Donna”.

By: pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør

pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 09:17:33 +0000

haha whenever someone says “the 70s was the worst time for strikes” i remember a gleeful riposte from nme’s sw3llsy (for it is he): “you mean the 70s was the BEST TIME for strikes”

in our family we loved the powercuts! big spooky dark cold house in the country, range in the kitchen, logfire in the sitting room, run between them to keep warm, stock up on candles night lights and paraffin heaters (i was clearing out dad’s house last year and finally chucked two of these out, with great sadness) (i think if i’d tried to light them one last time, the whole parish wd have died in a ball of flame) — instead of telly we played boardgames or consequences (which we thought the height of hilarious intelligent sophistication)

it was better than the blitz! (my mum — who was four when ww2 started — always maintained she enjoyed every second of it, so this is the kind of family you are up against)

By: byebyepride

byebyepride — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 08:21:54 +0000

Tom — I can sort you a copy of the Position Normal record. Will bring it down at the weekend! If I can work out how to transfer from vinyl to PC I can do you the second one as well. In fact I have half of it waiting to post on Sukrat…

By: Billy Smart

Billy Smart — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 08:16:01 +0000

It’s the curse of the BBC Archives once again. Only one of Lieutenant Pigeon’s many appearances survives - the one from the Christmas 1972 edition where they’re dressed in Robin Hood outfits. Which is pretty impressive in itself, but the idea that there were variant performances that I can never see is tantalising!

By: Marcello Carlin

Marcello Carlin — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 06:11:11 +0000

Actually it seemed to me like a perfectly logical appendix to glam (but then isn’t “Rock ‘N’ Roll Part 2″ the least logical of pop records?) - on TOTP, in addition to Hilda and her joanna, the drummer was dressed as Napoleon and Rob Woodward growled out “dirty old man” in lieu of the title. Sadly I couldn’t find the performance on YouTube but no doubt someone will post it.