Comments on: LIEUTENANT PIGEON – “Mouldy Old Dough”

By: wichita lineman

wichita lineman — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 11:33:05 +0000

As far as I know, the last time Lieutenant Pigeon played Mouldy Old Dough live was at a Ken Livingstone campaign fundraiser at Hammersmith Working Men’s Club in 2004. They borrowed a keyboard from Harvey Williams of the Field Mice.

Re 47: Or could have been ‘cribbed’ from the interview I did with Woodward and Fletcher for the Stavely Makepeace cds notes. Not cribbed at all, in other words, because that’s their story and anyone who interviews them will get a very similar tale.

Or is there something of Marcello’s that I haven’t read?

Either way, great to see LP on the telly again!

By: thefatgit

thefatgit — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 23:40:30 +0000

#46 Not really targeting Woodward and Fletcher here, but with the BBC’s vast resources available to The One Show, they could have presented something that DIDN’T sound like Marcello’s research notes. One glaring omission was maybe a comparison soundclip of Stavely Makepeace to accompany the stills of the band. Woodward and Fletcher’s contribution was valuable, of course, but my reaction when I clicked on this clip from my Recommendations list on YT was like “hang on, all this sounds WAY too familiar”.

By: pink champale

pink champale — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 21:34:57 +0000

so it’s LEFFtenant pigeon? i’ve spent 20 years thinking LOOtenant.

er, not so sure the item was wholly cribbed from this threat – the actual blokes from lieutenant pigeon probably had other sources.
and er, also very much not sure about the bbc points. there’s plenty of things you can criticise, precisely none of which would be made better by privatisation.

By: punctum

punctum — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 10:34:22 +0000

I didn’t watch that programme about whether it will snow in Britain this winter – peaktime BBC2 on Sunday; you used to get top-quality world cinema in that timeslot – but it wouldn’t surprise me if they’d cribbed their chat from various ILx threads NOT THAT I AM SAYING THEY DID (does that cover me?).

By: Jimmy the Swede

Jimmy the Swede — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 09:12:11 +0000

You’re speaking to the converted, Marcello!

By: punctum

punctum — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 09:02:50 +0000

The parasitic BBC stealing other people’s ideas and thoughts and threatening us with fines or imprisonment if we don’t pay the robbers’ protection money – no surprises there. Privatise the fucker until it bleeds.

Also, don’t agree to be interviewed by Chris Evans; he’ll only steal your words and pretend they are his own.

Isn’t everything on here copyright, anyway?

By: thefatgit

thefatgit — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 18:45:44 +0000

The One Show researchers crib off Popular Shock!:

http://youtu.be/ifV7kfNnqY8

Everything stated in this piece can be gleaned from THIS VERY THREAD!

By: lord darlington

lord darlington — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 00:15:36 +0000

Yes Marcello, they definitely recorded at least some of their stuff in Hilda’s ‘best’ room, where the piano remains even though she has now departed. As for surviving tv appearances, there is an episode of Shang A Lang from ’75 (I think but I’m sure Billy can trace it) on which they plug the current Pigeon single AND an album of train noises they’ve compiled for Argo. Being the avants they are, it’s an album of diesel engines rather than steam engines.

Oh, and MOD is so a 10.

By: inakamono

inakamono — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 19:57:35 +0000

After spending a few months dipping in and out of this Popular project, loving the concept and enjoying the reviews and the discussion that ensues, I’ve decided there are a select few reviews that deserve a mark of 10 in their own right.

“this dredge through the silt and leaf litter of English pop seems to burrow into something broader and deeper: the decaying country itself, sinking into post-Imperial dementia, singing old songs to itself as the batteries run down and the lights go out.”

I’d have given “Mouldy Old Dough” an 8; but thanks to that sentence, I’ll boost it to 10.

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.