From martin burbridge Sent Sat, Oct 31st 1998, 18:11
mouldy (old) dough/lieutenant pigeon/top of the pops lp w/ dodgey cover/(probably) k-tel i don't know about copyright now, but it appears that in the early seventies, you could go to almost any old building site, get y'self a lot of brickies throw them in a studio and record versions of all the latest hits and sell 'em on an lp for about 50p. with a picture of a lady wearing a bikini on the cover. this practice was far more damaging to popular culture than the so-called underground art terrorists of today, as they were quite easily available in newsagents and gas stations all over the country. v/vm have obviously come to their senses in choosing to promote the collapse of society through dodgy '70s records. anyway i was given this top of the pops lp as a birthday present at about age 5, and that combined w/ a single tv appearance of the original band, has seared this record into my mind, despite the fact i have not heard it in almost 30 years. powerful stuff. the tv appearance consisted of a very old grandmother type lady playing a teeth grindingly cheerful melody, while a big bearded hippy in fur coat occasionally growled "mouldy old dough". this was a piece of piss for the brickies as they just played the backing track and got one of them drunk to shout the refrain. still managing to completely miss sounding anything like the original. as i said these 'cover' records were pretty widespread, and later resurfaced to accompany some early experiments with alcohol. other classics included 'not nat', which was an entire lp not by nat king cole, that a friends dad had. and another top of the pops volume which had an extremely painful version of david bowie's "sorrow" by a brickie singing 'widge-cha long blonde hair anj-cha eyes of blue', that puts most of merzbow's back catalog to shame. maybe v/vm have butchered off more than they can offal in taking on the classics. -martin <no responsibility will be taken for any injury, loss or damage, direct or consequential, arising out of the use, or inability to use this message>