Entertainment For Lively Minds
New Podcast with Pugwash. We're calling it the Pugcast.
Yesterday we had a magical visitation from Thomas Walsh and his Pugwash colleagues. Thomas is one half of the Duckworth Lewis Method and also performs in his own right as Pugwash. There's a track called "Nice To be Nice", from their new compilation album "Giddy"on the current CD. We all crammed into the podcast "studio". There then ensued a riotous 45 minutes, which took in why you can write an album about cricket but not football, the problems of living with U2, ancient VHS tapes with labels saying "Whistle Test - do not erase" and the rich financial rewards all aspiring musicians can look forward to. Plus at the end we got a belting musical performance.
You can subscribe to get the podcast regularly here. Or you can stream it below.
Further reading:
To enter the HMV competition to win £500 of DVDs, go here.
That Whistle Test pastiche;
Pugwash at Abbey Road with Dave Gregory's strings.
Great podcast
And before you lose that impulse: YES, see if you can persuade Andy Partridge to let you record a Shedcast at his place. Just do it, OK?
When I first saw the above photo...
I was momentarily stunned by the fact that John Martyn appeared to have risen from the grave and joined the podcast.
I'd buy the CD with 'Empty Room' on it :-)
Some nice gear on display in that video as well.
Pugwash
Haven't listened yet, but great to see Thomas getting his 15 minutes with the DLM.
Pugwash have been releasing good records to a disinterested Irish public for quite a few years now. Don't take themselves too seriously either - one of the best gigs I have been at in recent years saw the band play in a small boozer for a small local Arts Festival. They knew that most of the punters didn't know them from Adam Ant, and so they knocked out a set split between Pugwash classics and well-known covers from HJH, Tom Petty, etc. I sat at the bar and lapped it up.
Put My Name Down
After this, there is one less disinterested member of the Irish public.
Grammatical pedantry
I think you chaps mean uninterested.
Disinterest is an expression of neutrality.
Maybe
they were feeling neutral about Pugwash, rather than simply uninterested.
Watch these words fuse meanings as time passes - they are commonly interchanged. The more people do it the less 'wrong' it is.
English is an evolving language.
It's not evolution
Disinterested has a specific meaning. Confusing it with uninterested reduces the language.
An umpire or a referee is disinterested in the match they are officiating at, but are extremely interested in the proceedings.
I know that.
Semantics can shift across time. That's my point.
This may be true but currently we have two words
with two distinct meanings. Any fusing of the two to create two interchangeable words with one common meaning would represent a loss of richness in the language - some would call it a 'dumbing-down' - which is to be resisted.
The more people do it the less 'wrong' it is.
...don't you mean 'incorrect' there, Ad?
Only kidding...
I upped your arrow
for that... :-)
Thanks Stimpy
My point expressed much better than I did.
I am a great lover of the English language, but...
Where do we freeze it to create a 'perfect' and 'correct' state?
Rewind to Chaucer? Or only as far back as Shakespeare?
Maybe the glory days of Victoria and the Empire?
These two words are used across the globe interchangeably - I do not say that is 'right,' only that it is a fact. I understand them and use them correctly - but I wouldn't presume to pick another person up on their use because I happen to know it is a very common 'error.'
If enough people make the same 'mistake' it slips into usage. It's been happening for hundreds of years.
That still doesn't make it right
and, if anything, is evidence of declining standards of English teaching.
The solution is not to shrug our shoulders and say "ho hum, it's happening" and to allow the loss of richness in the language but to ensure that people understand the difference. A return to traditional English teaching is needed - make sure kids gain a proper understanding of syntax, grammar and the correct use of words.
(rant over)
for every word we lose
we gain another somewhere else.
Language evolves. That's one of the things that makes it good.
But we do need to consider words and be interested in words and meanings, and that people are taught (and have been taught) english badly (both dispassionately and inaccurately) is bad. But its also bad that people dismiss teenagers as inexpensive when the richness within the teenage vernacular is, and always has been, the place where inventive language really gets explored.
Slag is just as valid and important as syntax, grammar and correct use of words, and slang has syntax, has a grammar and is all about the correct use of words also.
Engage with language, sure, but don't fear that it will become dead. It is the kids who are keeping it alive after all. And they'll always be more kids.
It's the politicians and spin doctors who kill language. Ug.
Not sure anyone here has dismissed teenagers and/or slang
Have they?
sorry I must not have been clear
I was saying there's a lot of sense to both sides of what's being said.
And putting forward some of my ideas.
The "people" I referred to are the ones who tend to dismiss teenagers. I hear these people constantly at the moment. Sometimes it seems to be the only things anyone not in their teens talks about... but not in this thread or really anywhere on this website where people tend to be pretty reasonable about kids.
Didn't mean it to suggest anyone here was dismissing anything.
As I said...
I'm not saying it is right.
I'm not shrugging my shoulders.
I'm saying that language inevitably changes - it evolves and some words die along the way - evolution does not always give us what we might find most aesthetically pleasing.
If I were marking an essay and the disinterested / uninterested issue arose I would correct it.
If I were reading a blog I would let it slide. For me it is a matter of context - The Word website, to me, is like a conversation in a pub and I would never be so nit-picking as to correct the grammar of someone I was chatting to in a pub - it seems rude to do so, to me.
As a former student of English, a teacher, a writer and a specialist in Shakespeare no-one takes the English language more seriously than I do.
Finally - and I mean finally - I wish I hadn't said anything at all.
Indeed.
From the FAQ: "drawing attention to grammatical and spelling errors contained in others' posts is considered bad form."
I accept my admonition
However I did title my post that started all this "Grammatical Pedantry".
I shall try my best to avoid it in future.
Although, strictly speaking, the difference
between 'Disinterested' and 'Uninterested' is a matter of neither grammar nor spelling. :-)
Touche
Yawn
jesus fellas, I was just indicating my new found interest in a local beat combo, steady on.
Has anyone seen
the Benny Hill parody of Whistle test? Henry McGee does a great impression of Ron Mael.
Who plays Russell?
The little old man that Hill used to slap repeatedly on the head?
Did Eric Idle actually raid
Whispering Bob's wardrobe? Nice of Bob to play along
Stan Fitch
I've suffered for my music, now it's your turn
Brilliant podcast....again
didn't think you could follow the Danny Baker edition, but I suspect you've surpassed it; Mr Walsh is a fine raconteur as well as being a top songwriter. Gin and tonics all round.
Memories of Whistle Test
Yet again the Word podcast unlocks long-buried memories, this time prompted by Thomas's reminiscences of OGWT.
Just past midnight on New Year's morning, late 70s or very early 80s; Annie Nightingale is presenting the highlights of the year show (I think that's what it was) and a young Renkadima is sitting transfixed watching a full-length video of Lyrnyrd Skynyrd performing a live version of Free Bird at a concert in the US. Utterly magical, as up to that point the group hadn't even entered my consciousness.
An experience that you just couldn't get anymore, due to the oft-mentioned ubiquity of music on various media nowadays.
Wasn't the well-used clip the one of Freebird
at Knebworth when they supported the Stones?
I was more than a little disappointed when the OGWT DVD included a different version.
That's the one
Didn't know it was Knebworth though. Thanks for that - that's twice I've seen it now ;-)
Never as magical as the first, unexpected time though
is it? :-)
Brilliant
"Mervyn King, what the darts player?!" - a tea-spray-on-keyboard moment.
The right music at the right time
This morning at half-past seven I was walking along Southend seafront on my way into work. It was Monday. The sky was overcast. Rain was being blown down from the clouds. It was too windy to put up an umbrella.
I was listening to the tail-end of the podcast on my iPod. Pugwash's cover of I Can Hear the Grass Grow was a few minutes of unfettered joy, completely at odds with the weather, the hour of the day and the season of the year; I heard it at just the right time. That song has carried through today.
Rock Around the Clock 1986
went like this =
http://ftvdb.bfi.org.uk/sift/series/411751
Seriously
with the Beeb vaults stuffed to the gills with music TV why can't they junk all the shite on BBC3 and turn it over to showing some of this stuff.
BBC Parliament sometime repeat whole General Election night coverage frorm significant years, why can't we have a repeat of the NYE Rock Around The Clock Special. It would mean thruppence in pay for
Mssrs H n E and a better use of my license fee than another series of Two Pints of Shite And a Packet of Scum.
Your Sincerely
Derek Singe (Mrs)
I'm sure we'd all love the chance to revisit...
8.05pm Hip-Hop Grandmaster Class
8.35pm Radio Times Rockalikes
10.25pm Championship Darts
12.35am Air guitar competition
3.30am Battle of the Giants: Simple Minds v U2
Be still my beating heart :-)
Dear Thomas Walsh...
You, in the words of Adam and Joe, are a mega-dude. Long may you, and your Pugwash, run.
The music industry (such as it is) needs more folks like you.
Talented, tuneful, unpretentious and totally passionate about music.
Nice one.
Highly entertaining as usual.
Train journey home a joy rather than a drag.
Great performance at the end but why the wild applause gentlemen?
In the spirit of the OGWT surely we should have had a deathly silence interupted only by the dull thud of a dropped sound cable somewhere...