The Undertones with Wednesday Week.
Hello, this is Adam and Joel on BBC Six Music on a Saturday morning.
What more appropriate track to start a Saturday show with than Wednesday Week?
Exactly, that's vintage Undertones, isn't it?
Is it?
I would say so, because that's got Sharky on it, right?
And he's no longer with the band.
They've just released a new album, I believe, The Undertones.
Right.
But it's minus Sharky.
Really?
Yeah, it's supposed to be pretty good.
Sharky's Machine.
Yeah, it's no longer Sharky's Machine.
Really?
They've switched off Sharky's Machine.
Yeah, they have.
Would you invest in an album by a famous band, minus the famous lead singer?
Have you ever done so?
I don't know.
I'd certainly have to listen critically to it.
Yeah.
Like, can you think of any bands that have plodded on without their main asset?
The Doors spring to mind.
They did a couple of albums after Jim Morrison popped his leather clogs.
And they weren't very good.
Very bad.
There was an album called Full Circle, which was the better of the two ones that they did.
Mmm.
And that was a stinky one.
Do you remember that?
I played you a track off that years ago.
I don't remember it.
That's probably evidence that it's not very good.
No, there must be an example of a band that's done well, though, mustn't there?
Without their... Hey, maybe our listeners could help us with that.
The only snag is...
that we're actually on tape this week.
Yeah.
We're not actually here so listeners don't text us otherwise you will be wasting your money and we'll get involved in some terrible financial scandal.
Yes, we'll both be electrocuted.
Yeah, we're actually recording this last Wednesday.
No?
What day is it?
Tuesday?
Is it what day is it?
Well today is Saturday.
Saturday?
But today as we're speaking is Wednesday.
There you go, so in a way that Undertones track was the perfect track to play.
Yeah, we got there eventually.
So coming up in this show, we got great music as usual.
We've got some Sly and the Family Stone coming up.
A bit of Toots and the Maytals.
That's just the first hour, plus we'll be playing.
Text the nation, but remember, don't text us this week.
We're gonna be running that segment.
Running the segment?
Yeah, off of emails we got during the week.
We'll also be doing Song Wars.
It's very complicated because we're on tape.
Song Wars, you can vote for it via email and you'll find out who wins Song Wars next week.
Although you'll hear the tracks this week.
Don't worry, it'll all become clear as we go along.
It's absolutely fine.
Now, here's some more music.
This is a great band, The Young Knives.
I sounded like a very old man there.
This is a great band.
Well done.
They're The Young Knives and this track is called Terra Firm.
What?
Fake brown real steak.
Oh, it wasn't listing.
I was frightened.
Yeah, that is right.
I ran and hid.
You know, they didn't used to be so frightening, the young knives.
They used to be more friendly.
I mean, yeah, one of them is called House of Lords in the band.
Really?
That's his actual name.
Yeah.
Mm.
And which is a good name, I think.
Mm-hmm.
And they were very much a sort of nerd outfit.
Mm.
But now it sounds as if they're furious.
He's called House of Lords.
Yeah.
What's his actual name?
I think House of Lords.
I don't know what his actual name is.
But he's, you know, it's like being called the Edge.
As far as everybody knows... Well, I tell you, there's a difference between being called the House of Lords and the Edge.
What?
And no insults to the young knives, but you too have been around a while.
Yes.
And they're not going away.
What I'd be worried about is if the young knives split up, or maybe, you know, they have 10 amazing years, then they have to, you know, fashions change.
Do they?
Yeah, they have to rethink their, you know, role in the world.
And he's still called the House of Lords.
Right.
That wouldn't be, uh, you know, he couldn't, for instance, be a telephonist.
Hello.
Uh, you're through to John Menzies.
This is the House of Lords speaking.
Yeah, that would be confusing.
Confusing.
What if he worked at the House of Lords?
Well... If he was just an MP... Then he'd kind of cancel himself out.
Right.
He wouldn't appear on any kind of... It would be ex-database.
Yeah.
Because it would confuse the computers.
The right honourable House of Lords.
He might end up having a staff of hundreds of cleaners try and enter him.
And clean up his insides.
I wish... I wish staff of cleaners.
He might have me.
You might get arrested if you protest anywhere near him.
Right.
After he would be a listed building.
and he might be blown up by terrorists but at least he'd get a lovely clean every uh 25 years or so he'd certainly be all scrubbed up nice he'd get really nicely scrubbed when he goes to restaurants oh my goodness does he go order
Well, there's something in there anyway.
Fit that together yourselves.
Bye.
Now, later on in the show, we are going to be unveiling our songs from Song Wars.
And we should remind you that this time, the theme for Song Wars was a... Well, it was suggested to us by a listener.
Do you have the name of the listener by any chance?
Yes, I do.
Who was it?
I'm not going to tell you.
Oh, please tell me, man.
It was from Tony Armstrong.
Tony, that's a good name.
Tony J Armstrong.
Yeah.
It's a good strong and he lives name in Google Mail.
Does he?
Which is a small village in Hampshire.
I don't know that he lives in Hampshire.
But that's all we know about him, his name.
Should we be playing the jingle here?
Well, we can play the jingle when we unveil the songs.
Alright, so this is a pre-unveiling.
Yeah, this is a little tease to sort of set the scene.
Yeah, we asked you listeners to suggest the lyrics for Song Wars this week, and we asked you to get us text, found text, off the back of a instruction manual or maybe a, you know, something, a box, a packet, text that you think could never be made to sound passionate and meaningful.
Yeah.
text that couldn't be used in a song, ever.
Right, so not poems and not stuff from the book.
No, no, no.
Specifically non-poetic text.
Instructions, horoscopes, that kind of thing.
Something deliberately... Yeah, horoscopes.
Proceeding a bit too meaningfully.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
uh and we had an overwhelming response i was overwhelmed yeah if if if one text was whelming then we were overwhelmed right we got like three yeah not even text emails and we chose one which we'll reveal later
Yeah, we're so good at radio.
We know, uh, you don't give listeners all the information at once, you know?
You give them the smallest bit possible.
Double T's, like little hungry birds.
They're waiting for the next old stinky worm.
New to Saturday night.
BBC.
They're just giving up their slime the family stone can't be bothered anymore well you know apparently that's what they were like when they were playing live recently really couldn't be bothered a bit really at the time yeah are they still intact they're still very much intact yeah they were playing a lot of gigs over the summer and what happened they just lost interests and drifted off I read a review of one
particular gig I think it was maybe in Brighton and it was reviewed by several music papers and all of them said it was one of the worst gigs they'd ever seen it was so bad the band was so late and then they played so badly when they arrived on stage that people were just booing and wow and yelling I want my mind back.
There's a thin line even listening to that you know their original stuff there's a thin line between brilliance and laziness yeah and a line that they tread you know uniquely right they fallen off of off of it uh-huh yeah onto the lazy half
This is Adam and Jo on BBC Six Music.
Welcome to our Saturday morning show.
It's time to do song wars.
Yeah, that's right.
Every week, Joe and myself compose an original song for you, the listeners, and it's based on a theme also suggested by you, our friends, the listeners.
And Joe, remind the listeners what the theme was this time.
Yes, the theme this week was... The theme was lyrics that you would never find in a song.
Found lyrics, say from the side of a packet of food or the instruction manual of a new gadget.
Fruit?
What?
Oh no.
What?
No, there's none.
There's none.
Watch it, why?
You're just talking nonsense now.
Instructions?
Uh, there's none.
Are you having a dream?
No, there's no fruit.
The fruit aren't that complicated.
God made them that way.
Sorry, carry on man, I didn't mean to interrupt.
So we asked you to send us some samples of found text that you thought could never make the lyrics to a song.
We had a kind of top three submissions.
One of them was the publishing details on the side of a book that was sent in by David Buchanan from Bristol.
He wanted us to write a song to the following.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding.
Oh, you get the idea.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
And would you have done the ISBN number as well, maybe?
That would have been quite a challenge.
Yeah.
We didn't go for David's suggestion.
That was too difficult.
It was too difficult.
We went for this suggestion from Tony Armstrong.
Uh, dear sirs,
See, that's got us already.
Some respect.
I would be most pleased if you could use your jiggery-pogery technical wizardry.
You see, he's like a little hobbit.
He doesn't understand what we do here.
This is our perfect listener.
He's awed.
by the things we do.
Use your technical wizardry to compose a song celebrating the satanic beauty of IKEA meatballs.
I care not for their cheap, flat-packed furnishings, but find their meatballs simply irresistible, as Robert Palmer once sang.
Right, right.
Since discovering their addictive charms, I've gained three stone.
I can eat nought but processed meat produce with a slightly Nordic flavouring.
I quote directly from the cooking instructions below, which fortuitously includes a title for your efforts in bold print.
He's got florid writing style there, doesn't he?
Yeah, I like him.
It's almost as if the manufacturers of this unholy food stuff knew this day would come.
Maybe they did.
You know what?
I forgot the bold title.
I forgot to sing it, but here we go.
Here are the lyrics that he's asked us to turn into a song.
Heating instructions from Frozen.
Place the meatballs in an ovenproof dish and heat at 225 degrees centigrade for about 15 minutes.
In a microwave, 700 watts, place the meatballs in a bowl without a lid.
Heat at full power level for four to five minutes.
Stir after half the time.
That's all we had to work with, folks.
So, would you like to hear the results?
Now, this week, rather than playing clips of the songs, we're still, you know, it's only show three of our tenure here at The British Castle.
We're still kind of feeling our way through, so rather than playing short clips, we thought, as we're, you know, going to play both songs at the end anyway, we may as well play them right the way through, and you can vote.
And don't forget that because we are taping the show this week, you won't find out whose song has been voted as the favourite today.
You'll find out next week.
Exactly.
And all you have to do is vote by emailing us.
Don't text.
No, please don't text.
I wouldn't want to rip you off like that.
And the email address is Adamandjo, all one word, A-N-D, not an ampersand, dot six music, the number six, not the word six, and then the word music, at bbc.co.uk.
Is that clear?
Yeah, say it all again without all the explanation.
Adamandjo.6musicatbbc.co.uk.
Bingo.
So yes, let's hear the songs right now.
You heard those lyrics before.
You heard what we had to work with.
Now, who wants to go first?
I don't know.
I think I'm gonna lose.
I don't think mine's very good.
Really?
Well, I had a tough time.
I went through several versions before.
Did you?
Well, I didn't.
And that's my problem.
I went with the first version.
And this is it.
So play mine first, please, Ben.
Place the meat of the box.
Place the meatballs in a oven-proof dish and heat at 225 degrees centigrade for about 15 minutes in a microwave at 700 watts.
Place the meatballs in a bowl without a lid and heat at full power for 45 minutes stuff after half the time I said stir the meatballs after half the time come on Place the meatballs eat the meatballs stir the meatballs you love meatballs we love meatballs come on
There we go.
So I was really trying to infuse those lyrics with passion.
You really did.
You went for the soulful route there.
I was kind of going for a kind of power rock thing.
Yeah.
But I ended up in a sort of Deacon Blue sort of a thing.
I didn't mind it.
You know what it reminded me of?
You didn't mind it.
It's just damning with faint praise.
No, it's not.
I didn't mean it to be faint praise damning.
You meant I loved it.
I didn't mind it.
It was good.
It reminded me of mid-80s David Bowie.
Yes.
That's what I was going for.
In an oven-proof dish.
Stadium Bowie.
Exactly, you know?
Weird inflections and stuff.
Stadium Bowie.
I tried to do Stadium Bowie.
Glass spider era.
Exactly.
His nadir.
I tried to do Stadium Bowie as well, funnily enough, because I thought it would suit the whole thing, but my voice just couldn't hack it.
And then the other direction I went was Pink Floyd, like acoustic Pink Floyd.
And, you know, do it like Roger Waters, and put lots of kind of, you know,
Uh, without a lid.
Look, can we hear it?
Well, no, I didn't go that direction in the end.
The direction I went was kind of like Camp New York art punk.
A bit like Suicide and, um... They're a band, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And someone was talking about the band Bearsuit from Norwich last week.
I've been listening to them and there's a little bit of Bearsuit in there now.
I can't take much more of this build.
I have to hear it.
Okay, here it goes.
Eating instructions from frozen Place the meatballs in an oven proof dish And heat at 225 centigrade
without a lid heat them at full power level meatballs for four to five minutes stir after half the time
After half the time In a microwave At 700 watts Place the meatballs in a bowl
Meatballs, meatballs, frozen, frozen Meatballs, meatballs, they're frozen, frozen Meatballs, meatballs, frozen, frozen Meatballs, meatballs, they're frozen, frozen
What year is it now?
Because so much time has brought to me.
Is it still 2007?
It was a long one.
Yeah, sorry about that.
That's all right.
Yeah.
What's changed in the world?
That was just a proper song.
No, that was good, man.
That was very good.
No, it wasn't very good.
It was good.
It was just long.
It was very long.
Draining.
Yeah, I know.
There were lots of gaps.
There was lots of negative space.
Well, that's what it's like.
But I'm naive about that school of music.
No, I don't have the critical faculties to appreciate it, perhaps.
I don't think anyone would.
Uh, I think we should move on rapidly.
So there are the two tracks.
You can start voting for them now, although of course the winner won't be announced until next week's show.
Yeah, vote by email only.
Adamandjo.6musicatbbc.co.uk for Adam's song.
They're both called Meatballs, so you'd just be voting for Adam's Meatball song, the experimental kind of New York version, right?
Yeah.
Or Joe's, uh, Meatball song, the, the... Stadium Bowie.
Stadium Bowie, period.
Meatball song.
That was Weezer with the hash pipe.
Yeah.
Disgraceful.
It's just a bad idea to smoke hash browns.
Yeah.
Why would you do that?
Yeah.
What kind of high would you get from hash browns?
Well, what's in hash browns?
Potato?
Mainly potato.
Maybe some bits of onion.
Is that bubble and squeak?
I don't know.
Maybe I certainly shouldn't smoke bubble and squeak.
No.
But smoking hash browns is a bad idea as well.
It's terrible.
They'll burn up your pipes.
Yeah, exactly.
And internally and externally.
Don't do it kids, just ignore the weezer.
This is Adam and Jo here on BBC Six Music.
This is our third show here at the Big British Castle.
We're still finding our feet.
You know, we'll be finding our feet for about three more months.
Yeah.
Just to let you know.
So, you know, bear with us.
Then we'll have an amazing period that look like one show will be amazing.
Yeah, maybe two or three.
Two or three.
Then we'll start on the downward.
On the slow, slippery slope decline, exactly.
So, you know, that's something to look forward to.
Here's a bit more music.
This is a band called Editors.
Yeah?
Yeah, exactly.
Not The Editors.
Editors.
Only a jerk would call them The Editors.
Where are they from?
Um, well, they're British.
Are they British?
Yeah, I always have them as editors in my head because of Zane Lowe.
Zane Lowe, the only person I've ever heard saying their name is Zane Lowe.
Yeah.
Editors.
And he says it in... Where's Zane Lowe from?
He's from New Zealand, I think.
There you go.
Yeah.
Editors.
So here's the editors with racing... What accent is that?
I don't know.
Here's the editors with the racing rats.
This is Adam and Jo on BBC Six Music.
It's Saturday morning.
Before that exciting trail, you heard editors with The Racing Rats.
They've titled that song as a kind of man trap for DJs.
Why?
Because there's no thee on editors, but there is a thee on The Racing Rats.
You know what I mean?
They're trying to trip us up.
I know, exactly.
Like, make your mind up.
Do you hate these or not?
Do they hate the word the?
Yeah.
And you would think that they do hate it.
I need to, I actually want to talk to them about that.
You know, he goes out with Edith Bowman, right?
Does he?
So we can get to him.
We could get to him.
It's perverse.
And he's causing a lot of unnecessary anxiety for DJs.
Yeah, exactly.
Sort your life out.
But what a track.
Great track.
What a track.
Great track.
Yes, so I wonder if anybody this week watched one of my favourite TV programmes, Dragon's Den.
Hey man, I watched that.
Did you watch it?
I bet you now.
I'm gonna talk about that lady, right?
I'm gonna talk about the lady and I'm assuming that lots of radio stations have talked about the lady.
I imagine breakfast shows the next morning were buzzing.
about the lady.
If you didn't see it, folks, you know, Dragon's Den is a show where entrepreneurs come and pitch ideas to some kind of panto-style business entrepreneurs.
Millionaires!
Millionaires who fly in jets and eat golden toothpaste.
Nuggets.
Anyway, this week there was a lady who'd written a book called Dance of the Goblins.
It was a sort of epic fantasy novel and she was a sort of a mystic stone-wearing sort of goth lady.
Mm-hmm.
There was a touch of the Julie T Wallace from Lifes and Loves of Ashida.
There was.
She had a sort of distant, slightly demented look in her eye.
But was that the dementia of genius or the dementia of madness?
She was hard to tell.
She was very nervous as well, wasn't she?
She was nervous.
Who wouldn't be when faced by those dragons?
That's so scary.
One of them runs a company that makes pants.
That's as scary they are.
Anyway, she was very nervous.
She'd bought in her book and basically the entrepreneurial idea she was pitching was to make a movie out of her book.
She decided to circumvent the usual process of filmmaking, you know, going to production companies and studios and writing scripts and all that sort of stuff.
She decided to do it all off our own back.
Yeah, she was just gonna go to the Dragons, get some startup capital, and just make the movie completely independently.
She was gonna produce it, she was gathering together the crew, and amongst the people she'd gathered together was an actor whose name she wouldn't divulge.
That's right, she said it was a famous top star.
It was a big name actor.
Yeah, yeah.
She gave two clues as to who this actor was.
She gave one big clue as to who the actor was.
She said he was in Pirates of the Caribbean and Phantom of the Opera.
So, I imagine 90% of people watching reached for their laptops.
Yeah.
And went online.
Did you, Adam?
Only because I couldn't.
I didn't because I couldn't get a... You didn't have access?
Didn't have no Wi-Fi in the telly room.
Well, I did.
Yeah.
And me and the rest of the country looked at IMDb for those two films.
And it soon became apparent that it's the actor Kevin McNally.
Kevin... Now he's not a big star, McNally.
He's done one or two films, The Spy Who Loved Me, The Long Good Friday.
He's been around for a while.
But he's not.
This woman had pledged him a million pounds.
She said that he was a big star and he was going to get paid a million pounds in gross profit points.
She said that...
was it profit points or that was up front though, wasn't it?
Because she was saying to the... I think, I understood that she was saying to the dragons, I'm gonna need like a million and a half quid and a million of that is going straight to the actor.
I'm not sure, I can't remember.
I think she said it was points because the way I understood it, I thought he was gonna get the money up front.
That's why they were so outraged.
And they were saying, you're insane.
I mean, he must be a really big actor and you can't even tell us his name.
And I was thinking like,
This guy, whoever he is... So my question's up.
First of all, the interesting thing was by the next day, Kevin McNally's Wikipedia entry had been updated with his involvement in Dance of the Goblins.
That's pretty good for Wikipedia, isn't it?
Also, I think sales of Dance of the Goblins must have gone up.
And I'm now quite interested in seeing the film.
Yeah.
I think the country's quite interested in seeing the film.
Well, that's exactly what my wife said.
She said, wouldn't it be great if she made the film, it turned out to be an absolute smash, and the dragons were sussed.
Yeah, the dragons were sussed, and that clip would haunt them for the rest of their lives the way they treated her.
Well, there are already things that the dragons have poo-pooed, that they've plop-plopped, pop-popped, have gone on to be smash hits, like the man who made the fan of wedges for restaurant tables.
You know, a wobbly cafe table, and you have a little fan of wedges.
Brilliant.
But he's now a multi-pounder.
Is he?
Yeah.
Genius.
That's the pasta.
Anyway, Kevin McNally, what are you playing at?
Right.
He's going round, making deals with kind of amateurs.
Raising their hopes unnecessarily.
No, what I was thinking is because... You know what I was thinking?
What?
You could do the same.
Well... You've had small parts in Stardust and Hot Fuzz and Son of Rambo as yet unreleased.
You could start doing that.
I think every actor is approached to be in all kinds of projects and generally you would say yes, and especially if it's a small production, you would do everything within your power to help them out, you know what I mean?
But I was thinking, but if you're approached for something that you don't necessarily want to be in, one good way of getting out of it
is by inflating your price ludicrously.
And I bet you he was thinking, man, I'm going to price myself out of this situation.
Well, it's backfired, hasn't it?
Because now everyone reckons he's the star of Dance of the Gnomes.
Hey, listen, here's a track chosen by Adam.
This has been a long link, so we better tell you about this track after it.
But who's this by?
This is by a band called Seventeen Evergreen, and I really hope you enjoyed it.
Sounds very much like Stephen Maltoness, but none the worse for that.
It's called Haven't Been Yourself Lately.
It's nice and mellow.
It's outcast with prototype.
If you were going out with big boy or Andre 3000 and he said that to you, you might not be the one, but even if you're not the one, you're the prototype.
Would you be flattered by that as a woman?
Yeah.
Yeah?
He's good-looking.
Both of those guys are good-looking.
Yeah, but he's saying he might chuck you for something similar to you, but maybe with one or two improvements.
It's good enough, man.
It's good enough, isn't it?
Yeah, you get your go.
Yeah.
What's wrong?
Yeah, exactly.
Before that, you heard a track that I chose for you called Seven... called Haven't Been Yourself Lately by a band called Seventeen Evergreen.
That was also a nice laid-back track for a Saturday morning.
And, incidentally, if you can be bothered, there's a great video for that track, uh, on YouTube, just type in Seventeen Evergreen, you should find it, by a video-making outfit called Encyclopaedia Pictura.
And you should check out their website as well, because their stuff is amazing, it's mind-blown, they've got a truly individual video-making style.
Now, I talk like a young person, have you noticed that?
I don't understand what you're saying, Adam, I'm frightened of you, I think you're gonna stab me or download me.
I will be if you dislike...
Chips.
Yes.
Okay, it's time to go back in time now to 1984, the year of, um, big brother George Orwell and all that kind of business.
Yeah.
Yeah, and this is a session track by the Smiths.
Have you heard of the Smiths?
never heard of them.
They've got a sort of a grumpy lead singer with a quiff that lives in LA called Morrissey.
Lots of Japanese girls really fancy him.
And this is a track called How Soon Is Now and it was recorded for the Peel Sessions on Radio 1 on the 1st of August 1984.
BBC Music Classic BBC Session Track
I am the sun, I am the air All the shyness, that's what's gonna happen, don't you?
I am the sun and the air I do nothing, everything in particular
To find out more, go to bbc.co.uk slash podcasts.
She said slash podcasts.
She's a naughty lady.
This is Adam and Jo on BBC Six Music.
Before that trail, you heard the Smiths with a session track recorded for John Peel on the 1st of August 1984 called How Soon Is Now.
You might have heard that before.
It's one of their big smasharoons.
You know?
It was used on a jeans advert.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, when that track was out, I remember when we were at school, that was a favourite track of Some of the Bully Boys.
Well, you know, the bully boys bullied me, but I bought that track on a 12-inch.
Maybe to show that I was cool as well.
You know, bullies often like good music.
Well, bullies are conflicted, aren't they?
Yeah.
They're not angry with you, they're angry with themselves.
You know, because they're Nazis, they were into some good music.
Were they?
Yeah, Wagner, that kind of stuff.
Fair enough.
It's good stuff, but they were bullies.
You know, what's your point?
I don't know.
Also, I remember some of the bullies at school used to be into music that I scorned at the time, and now I love it.
Jesus and Mary Jane?
Actually, I never got into the Jesus and Mary chain.
I was thinking mainly of Van Morrison, some of the hippie bullies.
Oh, they weren't bullies.
They were just confused.
They were just tired.
They were bullying me.
They were overtired.
There's a difference between being a bully and being overtired because you've been up late listening to hippie music.
Smoking Rollies.
Nation's favourite feature?
Yes, please.
Text-a-nation!
Text, text, text!
Text-a-nation!
What if I don't want to?
Text-a-nation!
But I'm using email.
Is that a problem?
It doesn't matter, text!
Oh, that's got the stench of tea time about it.
What are you talking about?
It sounds like something from, uh, 15 to 1.
Yeah, that's true.
Or, uh, can I have a pee, please, Bob?
What was that called?
Blockbusters.
It sounds, you know, a sort of tea, like a tea time sound.
Quiz, tea time quiz sound.
Yeah.
Which is appropriate because it is a sort of a tea time quiz, because it's Saturday morning time for tea, and it's a quiz.
But it's not a quiz.
It's not a quiz.
It's in no way a quiz or a competition of any kind.
No, that's true.
That's true.
Because if it were, we would immediately be vaporised.
And in fact, the other inaccuracy about it is we're not asking you to text this week because this show's pre-recorded.
Shh.
Don't tell anyone who's just tuned in, because they can believe that it's live.
But it's actually pre-recorded, and we simply will not receive your texts.
No, it's a temporal impossibility.
Do you know what I mean?
Unless you had invented some kind of time-shifting device.
It's possible with our calibre of listeners.
Yeah.
But you know, we set this feature up in last week's show.
We asked you to send us in examples of childhood misconceptions, things that you got wrong about the world when you were a little kid, right?
Adam, you were talking about how you believed until quite recently that Concord travelled at the speed of light.
Not until quite recently.
Well, how recently?
Well, I was in my teens, and I was around 14, still believing that Concorde travels at the speed of light.
Yeah.
Which was a little humiliating, and I got in an argument and was, of course, sussed all over the shop about it, because it travels at the... or it travelled at the speed of sound.
I believed when I was a kid that Bob Dylan and Dylan Thomas were the same people.
Yeah, which that's not that far-fetched, is it?
They're both kind of shambolic, crazy-haired poets.
My parents had a seven-inch of a Bob Dylan poem.
You see, it's still happening.
My parents had a seven-inch of a Dylan Thomas poem, so I assumed that he was a singer.
Right.
Bob Dylan, Dylan Thomas.
Easy mistake to make.
I thought that temping agencies
distributed tampons.
Right.
Tamp, tamp, tampon, tamping.
I thought that the girl on the on the Kelly girl advert on the side of the bus walking confidently down a street in in a trouser suit jacket was confident because she was well padded.
Nice.
On her under areas.
And just these are just examples listeners.
When my mum took me for the first time to Wimbledon Common I was terrified that I'd encounter a womble.
Terrified?
Yeah, terrified.
Not excited.
Well, I had no idea how big they'd be.
Yes.
Because on the telly, they're the size of giant people.
Mm-hmm.
It just blew my mind because I was literally expecting a wumble.
You know, I thought, well, will it really be all felty or, you know... Had you not seen them on top of the pops playing Remember You're a Wumble?
Yes, yes.
Therefore, I believe they existed.
Okay.
I just didn't understand what they'd be like.
Yeah.
Because I knew that when adults turned animals into children's things, they made them soft and cuddly.
Mm-hmm.
So I thought, what would a real one look like?
Oh, I see, yeah.
You know, like scaly and that stinking breath.
It's cool rubbish as everyone knows wumbles are actually just tramps.
Yeah, they collect rubbish eco tramps man They were way ahead of the curve with the eco anyway Thank you to everybody who's emailed in over the last week with their childhood misconceptions.
Do you want a couple here from our listeners Adam?
Yeah, I'd love to hear some okay.
This is from Rachel kitty
She says, dear Adam and Jo, when I was 24 I was in the doctor's surgery waiting room when a little boy came up to me and asked what was wrong.
I said I had the flu.
I asked him what was wrong with him and he said he had germ and measles.
I laughed at his sweet little mispronunciation and kindly informed him that he'd meant to say, germs and measles.
His mum then shook her head gently and told me that, no, he was right.
I thought germs and measles made much more sense, as in, oh, I've got germs and measles and all sorts.
Ooh, I'm in a terrible way.
I got German measles, you know.
Twenty-four, she was.
Twenty-four.
That's pretty good, Rachel.
That's great.
Here's another one.
Hello, Adam.
Hello, Joe.
This is from Scott Spencer.
When I was around six years old, I was taken to the park by my slightly older uncles.
The three of them must have been between 11 and 16 years old.
For an impressionable child like myself this was a very exciting experience.
It was the first time I'd been in the park after dark, unaccompanied by an adult.
In the park we met a group of my uncle's friends who were introduced to me as Dex's Midnight Runners.
I'll spare you the details but we messed about and did the kinds of things you'd expect kids to get up to in a park at night with no adults around.
From this point on I was convinced I'd met Dex's Midnight Runners in the park at the end of my road.
Whenever anybody mentioned Dexes, I'd relate the story of how I'd met them.
It seemed to me totally credible.
To back this up, they did live kind of locally to me in Birmingham.
It was dark, but I'm sure they were wearing dungarees.
It wasn't until I was well into my twenties that I began to question the truthfulness of my introduction.
Yam yam, my uncles had given me.
I began to doubt it was Dexes' Midnight Runners that I'd met that night.
There you go.
Well, is he absolutely sure it wasn't?
Well,
I think it probably couldn't have been, right?
I don't know.
When he was around six, he doesn't tell us how old he is now.
That's a strange lie to tell to a child.
No, it's just the kind of thing you would... I can see that happening.
Because as adults, you're perfectly comfortable with speaking in terms of analogy and metaphor and just introducing a friend as, oh, this is Margaret Thatcher.
Yeah, Superman.
There's a kitty, a what?
Superman?
That's good.
So there's a couple, we've got lots more coming up, but maybe we should have some music first.
Yes, this is a track from The Go Team.
It's called Roth of Maris and it's out on the 26th of November.
It's from their album, Proof of Youth.
Check it out.
They sound like a kind of charming youth orchestra, don't they, the go team?
Yeah, that was the go team with a track called Roth of Maris.
I've noticed something pop-culturally, Adam.
And it's something I am calling primary school chic.
Right.
Yeah?
I've coined that phrase.
And it's spreading through the media like wildfire is evident in that go team track.
It's also evident in almost every commercial on TV.
The latest thing seems to be to get a group of trendily dressed young adults mixed with children and have them engaged in some kind of street
art kind of collective art performance oh yeah there's one advert where a whole bunch of people roll multi-colored ribbons out of windows and down streets you've seen that one seen that one it's the orange ones where the stupid gypsy mental woman makes does the sort of cardboard cutout caravan show have you seen that one with like clouds on strings there's another one where a whole family of idiots
create giant telephones out of furniture and stuff, have you seen that one?
And there's another, there's another one.
But this, like, all adverts seem to be about, like, community groups getting together and doing something kind of fey and arty and pointless in the streets.
There's some idents for Channel 5 where they shoot them from above and it's loads of people making the shape of, like, a person walking along, you know what I mean?
They're all holding hands.
It's all about working together, it's all about the environment, all these key buzz words, and it's also about
buying stupid rubbish, mainly buying rubbish.
But you know it would be wrong for me to include the go team in that kind of thing, because they're not a cynical bunch of advertisers, they're artists.
And they've merely been pollined by that dreadful advertising movement.
But there we go, the go team with Roth of Maris.
This is Adam and Jo on BBC6 Music.
It's time for some more music, this time from the Pigeon Detectives.
This is called I Found Out.
There you go, that's the Pigeon Detectives with I Found Out.
That's being re-released on the 12th of November because the first time it came out, you idiots didn't realize that it was amazing.
It just totally went in one ear and out the other.
But in the interim,
you found out that they're... You're being given a second chance by record buying publics.
This is... This is your last chance.
If you don't make it hit now, then it's just your stupid fault.
Do you think... Have bands re-released singles more than once?
Uh, yes.
Yeah.
Yeah, very, very famous ones have.
Yeah, I guess.
Like, after years and years.
But you mean it as an attempt to make it into a hit?
Yeah.
A band that just will not give up.
They won't accept the truth.
Every three months they just re-release the stakes.
Could you do that?
Could you just, yeah, the same song.
Why not just use that as an approach to the whole industry?
Come on, public.
The adverts will just get bigger and bigger.
Marketing spend larger and larger.
They should do that with films.
I guess it's not financially practical, is it?
No.
It isn't.
But there we go, the pigeon detectives, they've had a brilliant summer, loads of smashing performances at festivals.
That's a word young people use, isn't it?
Smashing.
Smashing, yes they do.
Yeah, and they've done really well, and well done and all that stuff.
Now we're in the middle of text, the nation, even though we're not accepting texts, only emails, and the subject this week has been misconceptions as a child, things that you kind of got wrong-headed when you were a kid,
A couple of the ones that I had, I've talked about this before, but the phrase, going through it with a fine tooth comb.
Now, I, like many people, believe- Is this to do with tooth and tooth?
Yeah, yeah.
Is that a misconception or just something you didn't sort of know the truth about?
Same thing, really.
Well, I thought it was a fine tooth comb.
Do you know what I mean?
And what's a tooth comb?
Yeah, it's like, why do you need a comb for your teeth?
And many people still say it today, you know, I'm going through it with a fine tooth comb.
Really?
You're using a tooth comb there.
And of course the real phrase is, it's a fine toothed comb, yeah.
Here's one from Matt Garner.
Thanks for emailing Matt.
He says, hey, good to hear you're back on the radio.
Hey, thanks Matt.
Hey, I just heard your plea for misconceptions for next week's show, and this isn't one of my... I don't know why I'm reading your email in this voice, Matt.
I'm going to continue.
It's not one of my own, but I can pass on something my wife let's slip the other day.
I'm going to stop the voice now.
It was only when watching a recent Nigella Lawson TV programme, in which La Lawson made Honeycomb as a gift for the hosts of a dinner party she was to attend, that my wife realised that Honeycomb, of the type one finds in crunchy bars etc, is not in actual fact a bee-derived product.
Apparently she had wondered how the bees made it so small.
That's good.
Now, if I caught my girlfriend making a, like a miss, whatever it is, conception like that, I'd be very happy.
But somehow for one's wife to do it, to be married and for that to happen, isn't that must be extra brilliant?
Yeah.
That must be quite a good, you know, bit of ammunition.
Exactly.
You can get a couple of years of teasing out of that.
Exactly.
Another one that I had when I was younger,
was I lived in Wales for a time, okay?
And in the morning, we would all say the Lord's Prayer.
Our Father, who art in heaven... At school, you mean.
Yeah.
Not in your house.
No, at school.
You weren't like Carrie White.
No, no, I wasn't.
And we would all say the Lord's Prayer and it would be, you know, mainly in a Welsh accent because most of the students were Welsh.
And so our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, and the head boy at that point in this little primary school where I was, was called
Right?
And I thought that we were saying, our Father who art in heaven, I led be thy name.
Because I was like, whoever gets to be head boy, they get their name inserted into the Lord's prayer.
Wow.
For like massive Jesus props.
And I was thinking, I wish that was me.
I wish I could be head boy.
Our Father who art in heaven, Adam be thy name.
Yeah?
Thy kingdom come, I was thinking, then I be the king!
And, of course, I was gutted to find out that it was no such thing.
It was always... Wow.
Halloween.
So, it's actually saying that that would be God's name, isn't it?
Yeah, it was basically... So you thought that God took the name of whoever the head boy of... Yeah, or the head boy becomes divine in some way.
Wow.
That's amazing.
That was the teardrop explodes with reward, the sound of Joe and BBC Six music.
That's just got me all fired up.
It was exciting.
They're a great band.
Yeah.
And what a terrific name.
Uh-huh.
Capturing a tiny moment there.
It was from a comic book, wasn't it?
Was it?
Yeah.
Ah, brilliant.
Anyway, there you go.
This is Adam and Joe here on Six Music from the Big British Castle, the BBC.
Yes, it's our new Saturday morning show.
Now, if you're podcast fans, maybe you listened to one of the podcasts we did for previous bad radio stations,
Then we should let you know that we are working on doing a podcast of this show.
We're talking to people at BBC Worldwide.
It will be a free podcast and at the moment we're thinking about doing kind of like a fortnightly digest, right?
Yeah, I think that's the idea.
Like a digest book with extra new stuff as well.
Yeah, it'll have new stuff in it.
But, you know, be patient because the longer we leave it, the higher quality it'll be.
The more nutritious it'll be.
Yeah, exactly.
Now, we're in the middle of text the nation, which this week, of course, is email the nation, as this show is should be recorded.
But just pretend it's live, it's fine.
And we were asking you for your childhood misconceptions, stuff that you believed as a child that you now realize was stupid.
Are you ready for some more, Adam?
Yes, please.
This is from Imogen in Cambridge.
She says she's a long time Adam and Jo's show podcast listener.
Oh, I'm sorry.
This isn't it.
Childhood misconceptions.
My sister used to get confused between Michael Jackson and John Major.
Michael Jackson and John Major.
I think the reason was they both have J and M in the initials.
She said that she must have been at least under 10 because the Prime Minister was still John Major during that time.
That's very bizarre.
Isn't it strange?
Do you know who I think John Major looks very like?
Who?
Mark Hamill.
You're right!
If there was a young, a film and you needed kind of like a young John Major, it doesn't work tight.
Because they're probably about similar ages, probably.
Yeah.
But, you know, Mark Hamill would have been a brilliant choice in the late 70s to play a young John Major.
That's true.
Well, are you talking pre or post car crash, Mark Hamill?
Well, a car crash happened between Star Wars and Empire, didn't it?
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, so, well, I don't know, because part of the thing is the top lip that makes him look like John Major, and maybe that was slightly damaged in the crash.
Yeah, there you go.
I don't know there, Adam.
Interesting little point there.
Here's another one, youthful misconceptions.
A friend of mine, Lucy, this is from Andrew Davy in Chester, a friend of mine, Lucy, got a song lyric very wrong.
When they were young, they thought that a particular song had the lyrics, it's my party and I'll cry if you want me to.
As a result, she would go up to her friends at parties and say, would you like me to cry?
Because she thought it might be etiquette.
No, she did not.
I don't believe that one, do you?
Don't know.
Read it out, didn't I?
Here's one from Simon.
Hello.
When I was young and lived in West Bromwich, I used to get confused whenever my auntie said she was going to the market in Walsall.
I always thought she was going to Warsaw in Poland instead.
You know, I used to have a tough time with when people would say, say when?
And I didn't understand if I was supposed to say, that's fine, thank you.
Or if I was supposed to actually say, when?
Right.
Because I was thinking like, why you wouldn't say the actual word when because that doesn't make any sense.
But what?
So sometimes I would just not say anything until like the people would just carry on saying, say when.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, tricky situation there.
We got some quite strange ones, to be honest.
Yeah.
Craig in retil says I used to think that dilute to taste on the side of squash bottles meant that it went out of date in July.
That's just a complete non sequitur.
Diluted taste.
John Packham from Hartlepool says, up until the age of 34, I believe that if I unscrewed my belly button, my bum would fall off.
But you know what?
They're just silly, those ones.
Yeah, they're ludicrous.
And I'm not gonna read them out.
Well done.
Thank you.
All right, it's time for more music.
This is one of your choices, Adam, isn't it, Mr. clarinet?
What is this, some kind of new children's record?
Well, no, we were talking about music that the bullies enjoyed earlier on, right?
This was one that the bullies loved.
They loved the birthday party.
That was Nick Caves, one of Nick Caves' early bands, if not his first band.
And this is a track that I came to very late on in life.
Only just heard it, well, a couple of years ago, actually, on one of the rough trade box sets.
but it's a smash.
Hope you enjoy it.
It's called Mr. Clarinet by The Bursary.
It's gone a bit nutty there at the end.
Someone was trying to kickstart a moped during that, weren't they?
It's kind of an enjoyable gothic cacophony there from Nick Cave and The Birthday Party.
Certainly one of the songs that made me into a caveman.
Yeah?
Yeah.
Okay.
Okay then.
This is Adam and Jo on BBC Six Music.
It's our Saturday morning show.
We're going to wrap up our text the nation, which of course isn't text the nation this week because we're reading emails that you sent to us during the week.
Here's one from Bill, who's aged 37 and a half in Derby in the UK.
And this Adam is, I think, a misconception that you had until very recently.
One of many.
Hi lads!
One of mine was that I didn't realise that the Republic of Ireland was NOT a part of the UK until I was about 20.
That's a badly constructed sentence with hilarious ambiguity, but I can't be bothered to re-write it.
You know what I mean, though?
The realisation that it was an entirely separate political entity really twisted my box-up.
I just never thought to question it.
It was obviously part of the UK.
It's part of the British Isles, after all.
Now, I believe that you had some Ireland problems as well.
No, I did.
I think I had a bit of an argument about it on a plane once.
Did we?
Yeah.
Luckily, there was someone there to back me up.
I've I've screened that one out of my memory box.
I think it was either that you thought the whole of Ireland was British.
That's right.
I don't think you realize that Ireland was its own country, its own nation state.
Is it absolutely necessary to bring this up?
Yeah, because because, you know, some little bit of me is really happy.
Yeah, of course, getting its revenge.
Oh my god.
So there we go.
Here's another one.
Oh, that one's a bit tricky.
I don't think I can read that out.
It's to do with the disease aids and a misconception about that, and it's just not fluffy enough for a Saturday morning.
You can't say that!
Alright then.
Dear Adam and Jo, as a young child in the late 80s, I was undoubtedly not alone in being scared witnessed by the television campaign for AIDS awareness.
Obviously there's nothing funny about the AIDS virus, but it's likely that a few others misunderstood the information supplied to safeguard oneself against the disease in the same way that I did.
As I remember, a lot of emphasis was placed on the possibility of transferring the illness by sharing a toothbrush.
However, at the time, I understood this to mean that by sharing a toothbrush, you created the virus.
I remember being at cub camp and jumping onto the back of a fellow cub who had accidentally picked up my toothbrush thinking it was his.
He thought it would be fun to hold onto the toothbrush and keep it out of my reach.
I thought I was saving him from the AIDS virus.
As I hung on and tried to grab back my toothbrush, the little legs of my fellow cub gave way.
He fell, his face collided with the communal sink of the cub camp toilets.
While he went to hospital to have the retina reattached to his left eye, Aquila and me had a little chat about AIDS, and about how I had done little to protect the health of my friend.
That's from Peter Green in Saffron Walden.
Peter Green from Fleetwood Mac.
Uh, you know, notice how I just, uh, you know, I didn't make a big deal out of the fact that you didn't know how to pronounce Arkayla.
I just glossed over it.
That's a person's name, though.
It could be pronounced the way I said it.
No, it couldn't.
There's no, there's no possible way.
He's got a little PS, though, as well, here.
He says that, um, as a child, I thought that Roy Castle of kids' TV program, Record Breakers, and celebrated trumpet player had lost his hair because he blew his trumpet too hard.
Well, that might be true.
But the whole toothbrush sharing thing, I don't think you can get AIDS from sharing a toothbrush anyway.
So he was wrong on all those counts.
But my commiserations, especially to the chap who lost his retina.
You sound proud that you can confidently say he's wrong.
Yeah.
Good.
Well, am I gonna find out that you can get it from sharing these questions?
No, no, no.
No, you're right.
It's wrong.
That is definitely wrong.
Okay.
Um, a couple more?
Or is that it?
Yeah, go on.
Hit me with one more.
Okay.
Hi, Adam and Jo.
This is from Dawn Wilson.
From Western Australia brackets, the home of evil.
I'm not sure why she's put that in, but there we go.
I remember as a child looking at photographs of the Earth from space and imagining that we lived inside it and that the outer edge of the sphere, which I now know to be the Earth's surface, was the sky.
that we look up at.
Yeah.
This memory came flooding back to me the other day when my seven-year-old daughter commented that we live inside the earth when she looked at a globe of the world.
That seems to me quite a lovely misconception.
Yeah, that is.
It's nice and poetic.
Of a dreamer.
Oh, she's saying that it's the home of evil because last week we were talking about me doing the Australian satanic preacher go.
Oh, there you go.
There you go.
So that's a lovely one, Dawn and Robert.
Whoever which one of you thought that?
Dawn.
Thanks for sending that in, and thanks to everybody who texted us with their childhood misconceptions.
No, didn't text us, emailed us during the week.
We'll have another superb text the nation next week.
Yeah, we're gonna let you know what the subject is before the end of this show so you can start getting your aura out.
I said it was superb.
What's wrong with superb?
That's the kind of thing DJs do, isn't it?
They call their own segment superb.
Listen.
It's acceptable on the radio, that kind of casual, wrong self-aggrandizement.
We'll have another disastrous...
kind of stumbly text the nation next week.
Gotta big up yourself, man.
That's what it's all about.
Right, what have we got now?
We've got a new band.
We think they're new because we haven't heard of them.
They're called Glass Vegas, a brilliant conjunction of Glasgow and Vegas.
Yeah, exactly.
Because the lead singer feels that the Glaswegian accent has its own kind of Hollywood poetry.
Glamour.
You know, in glamour.
This is a track called Daddy's.
Neat, neat, neat, by the dammed there.
This is Adam and Joe here on BBC Six Music.
Man, this morning we're playing nothing but music that was listened to by people we didn't like when we were young.
That's true, that was another favourite with the bullies, wasn't it?
Yeah, with the naughty bullies and their winkle picker shoes.
Adam and I were sort of soft theatrical types at school and our lives were made of misery by tougher kids, mainly your life actually.
Mainly my life.
Yeah, who smoked and wore winkle pickers and listened to scary music.
Yeah, and they've all turned out to be very nice though.
That's the thing about bullies You know is that if you if you just give them about ten years they they generally shape up.
Yeah Exactly.
They're upset with themselves more than they are you yeah, that's right That's what I didn't realize at the time listen two more quick childhood misconceptions.
All right two more quick ones.
Oh
Yeah, this is from our Text the Nation feature, and yeah, let's polish it off with these two.
Yeah, okay, this is from Michael Smith in Norwich.
He says, I was watching Police Academy the other day, and for the first time ever, I realized that Sergeant Lavelle Jones, the actor Michael Winslow, doesn't actually do all of those crazy sound effects from out of his mouth.
Wait a second.
Well, exactly.
I felt broken.
I'm not sure about it, though.
Maybe he really did, did he?
Thanks, Michael Smith.
So this isn't a childhood misconception.
This is something that Michael and Adam Buxton are still struggling with.
Did Sergeant Lavelle Jones from Police Academy really make those noises?
Well, obviously, yes.
Why?
Because you think that if he didn't, it would just be cheating.
Well, yes!
What's the point otherwise?
Well, you could equally say, like, what's the point in pretending that, you know, David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear if it didn't.
It's a bit different, come on!
Is it?
If the guy's whole stock in trade is the fact that you can mangle his voice to make amazing sounds.
What if they discovered there was an actor with this capability?
They wrote him into the script, but then to make some plot points work, he had to do some sounds that he couldn't actually do.
So in early scenes, he's really doing them.
But by the climax of the film, when it comes down to gunshots, to chase the gangs away, remember?
Yeah.
Or megaphone, you know, feedback, maybe they popped some foley in.
I mean, it's true, obviously, that they would have had to re-record a lot of stuff anyway because they couldn't have used the original sound.
But I would think that they would still be him making the noises in an RDR booth.
That's right.
You can't fake that kind of stuff!
The Police Academy scandal!
That would take the whole franchise down.
surely yeah we don't we can't answer that for you get off come on that one i would say in my long uh experience in the movie business having made all the films i have um i would say that it's probably a mix of the two mix of the two well listen i wouldn't put it past them it's always that message from michael smith in norwich listen mike i'm with you i'm heartbroken there's his number actually i'm gonna yeah talk it through you have a drink and cry together here's another quick one this is from dorm wilson
No, hang on.
It's the wrong one.
Don't we tell them Wilson's one?
No, that was entirely pornographic.
Ross in Edinburgh.
He says, on my first day in college at the age of 20 we were shown into a lecture theatre designed in the late 1970s.
The carpet didn't stop at the edge of the floor but went up the walls as well.
I was just about to blur it out to my new friends that this must be what they mean by wall-to-wall carpeting.
A phrase I'd heard as a child had never understood.
That's fair enough.
The misconception had remained unchallenged in my brain for all those years.
I'll tell you one final misconception from me, right?
This was quite a humiliating one.
Until I was about 13 or maybe 14 again.
14 was a momentous year, a lot of things were explained to me, finally.
But I believed that it was possible for adults to procreate via asexual reproduction as well as sexual reproduction.
i.e.
fertilize themselves exactly so it was the choice of every woman whether she would reproduce with her mate this is with another person to deal onto the table or or she could just you know if you wanted to have a baby she could just concentrate really hard and then she'd get one okay that's the cliffhanger we're gonna have some music uh by the zombies she's not there and we'll come back to your mad misconception well no one told me about her
That was yet another favourite of the tough chaps when we were at school.
The tough chaps.
That was the psychedelic furs with President Gass.
This is Adam and Joel on BBC Six Music.
President Gass.
I know.
That's, uh, you know, a president that's been eating badly.
He's got gas.
He talks nothing but gas.
Exactly.
He's only interested in gas, which is American for fuel, which is oil.
That's all they care about.
That's right.
Psychedelic furs hitting the nail on the head there.
Absolutely!
How's my little impression of Rick Bucklar?
Now before the top of the hour listeners, Adam revealed an extraordinary fact that up until the age of 14 he believed that women were capable of asexual and sexual reproduction, therefore could choose between mating with a man or somehow self-pollinating.
How would they do this?
How would they self-pollinate?
It would not always happen, but there would be cycles.
What do you mean?
Lady cycles.
You knew about lady cycles, but you didn't.
No, no, I didn't necessarily know about lady cycles, but I had some kind of notion that there was a cycle.
And so at a certain time, you'd wait for the right time, and then you'd eat properly and exercise, and then you'd concentrate really hard.
And then if you were very lucky... Are you just making this up?
No, I swear to you, I thought... You really thought that if a woman thought really hard, she could make herself
Listen, I hadn't figured out all the details.
All I knew, I was in a biology class when all this actually came out.
OK, but this is what I was going to say.
Yeah, this all came out in a biology class, right?
And we were talking about asexual reproduction in plants and the teacher said, you know, is there any other kind of species that does reproduce asexually?
And I put it on my hand and I said, yes, human beings.
And everyone laughed and I said, what's the big joke?
And the teacher said, human beings, human beings reproduce asexually, is that what you're saying?
And I said, yeah, I mean, yeah.
And so then it was explained to me at humiliating length that that was not the case.
All human reproduction was necessarily sexual.
And that was a shock to me and also
just embarrassing because I had assumed that my parents had reproduced asexually.
And then, you know, I had to go home and look my parents in the face and I just thought you are two absolutely revolting people.
How could you?
How could you have done this?
You know, I was obviously just a little bit backward about all matters sexual.
Yeah.
And, well, you weirdly, nowadays, of course, women can reproduce merely by... You have to do a bit more than think about it.
Yeah, you have to get some turkey-basting equipment and a whirling participant.
But, you know, it's a shame.
I still think it would be nice.
I think women would agree.
It would be nice if you had that option.
You know, just to really eat right, concentrate, and then you're away.
Jelly, maybe if you ate enough jelly babies.
You reckon?
Yeah.
But then maybe you actually just birthed to a jelly baby.
Maybe, jelly baby.
Man, that might be quite sweet.
Sorry to go on a little revolting tangent here for you, but I saw The Fly 2 the other day.
The Fly 2's a very good film.
Along with Amityville 2, it's one of my, and Superman 2, it's one of my favourite number twos.
Well that has a absolutely shocking bursing at the beginning.
It's got a brilliant bursing, yeah.
It's superb.
I mean, if anybody wants to come to my house and watch a triple bill of Amityville 2, uh, what's the other one I said?
Superman 2, and the Fly 2.
And while we're at it, I might stick the Exorcist 2 on as well.
Well, the style Empire Strikes Back, I guess, counts as a number 2, isn't it?
Hasn't got the number 2 in the title.
Fair enough.
Now, let's have some more music.
This is Calvin Harris, uh, with colours.
Yeah, it's a little abrupt, the ending there.
Calvin Harris with colors, he got angry there and left.
And he's a very tall man, and tall people tend to do that.
It says here he has contributed two songs to the new Kylie album.
He must be very, very pleased.
Yes, is that a good thing?
I don't know.
Who can tell?
She's an icon, man.
People think she's one of the most important.
I've never understood it.
No, neither have I. Anyway, this is Adam and Joel on BBC Six Music.
It's time to return to Song Wars.
Yes, Song Wars is the segment of the show where we ask you to pick a theme, and then we both write songs on that theme, and the songs are battled against each other like a couple of musical Beatles.
you kind of vote for them, vote for which one you like best.
It was tough this week because not only were the lyrics not our own, the whole point of this week's one was that they were suggested by a listener, but also we didn't have as much time to create the songs as we normally would.
We didn't have the full week because we're pre-recording this show.
I just finished mixing my tune, which you'll hear in a second, five minutes before I came into the studio.
I offer no excuses for my tune.
This is the best I could possibly do.
Well, yeah.
So, have we got our caller on the line?
Hello, Tony.
Hi there.
Hey, now, Tony, listeners, is the gentleman who suggested the lyrics for our songs this week.
So, Tony, we asked you to come up with kind of found text, like, text that would be impossible to make sound like a good lyric.
Does that make sense?
Yes, yes.
I was just making some Ikea meatballs in my kitchen quite hungover at the time when I was at your show and...
look down front of me and there it was and it even had a title and bold for you don't know if you used it of course but there you go
So it was the instructions to a packet of meatballs, and these are meatballs that you're quite familiar with.
You know, you see these... Yeah, I think there's something wrong with them.
I can't seem to stop eating them.
I don't really want any pro or anti-meatballs to say, but... You're sort of addicted to them.
Well, that's good.
So therefore, if we have imbued these words with meaning and passion, you're the man who will be able to pick up on it, right?
Well, either me or the head of gear, but you're probably the devil to me.
I think you're the man.
You're the absolute ultimate arbiter of the quality of these songs.
You're Dicky Arbiter.
So now, Tony, I want you to listen to, first of all, Joe's track and tell us what you think.
Well, now, hang on.
Wait, wait.
Let's let him listen to both tracks.
We'll come back to you in between them and then tell us what you think after both tracks.
It's more dramatic.
Okay.
Trust me.
So here's my track, Tony.
Listen carefully to this one.
Place the meatballs Place the meatballs Place the meatballs Place the meatballs
Place the meatballs in a oven-proof dish and heat at 225 degrees centigrade for about 15 minutes in a microwave at 700 watts.
Place the meatballs in a bowl without a lid and heat at full power for four to five minutes stuff after half the time I said stir the meatballs after half the time come on Place the meatballs, eat the meatballs, stir the meatballs You love meatballs, we love meatballs, come on meatballs
You're still there, Tony?
Yes, yes.
That's a good sign.
So there, I was really trying to go for some passion.
I was trying to go for kind of a stadium rock feel.
I did like it.
It sounds a bit like John Denver Goes Techno.
It was very, very good.
John Denver Goes what?
Techno.
Oh, Disco, sorry.
It was Disco.
OK, thank you very much.
All right, with no further ado, we're going to play you Adam's track now.
This is a bit of a marathon, this track.
Sorry about that.
It's very long.
I should call it a Snickers maybe.
But yeah, see what you think.
Eating instructions from frozen Placing meatballs in an ovenproof dish And heat at 225 centigrade For about 50 minutes
At 700 watts Place the meatballs in a bowl Without a lid Heat them at full power level The meatballs for four to five wins
Stir after half the time.
Stir them after half the time.
Then I'll microwave 700 watts.
Place the meatballs in a bowl.
Meatballs, meatballs, frozen, frozen Meatballs, meatballs, they're frozen Meatballs, meatballs, they're frozen Meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, they're frozen Meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, they're frozen Meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, they're frozen Meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, they're frozen Meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, they're frozen Meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs, meatballs
So it's a tough choice there, Tony.
You must feel like Simon Cowell having to reject one of two of his own acts at the climax of a particularly exciting episode of The X Factor, do you?
My pants aren't that tight, so no, not really.
Aren't they?
No.
Now, yours is not the deciding vote, unfortunately, Tony, but he can have a major influence.
Exactly.
It would be interesting to see which way you're going to go.
In a way, you're a collaborator with us.
You know, you're a lyricist in our respective bands.
Oh, I hear I've got intellectual property rights, I'm afraid.
That's true.
That is true, actually.
Well, well said.
So which, which, so give us more opinion there, Tony.
I think I'm gonna have to go for Adam's, Joe.
Nice.
Because I thought it was A, the better tune and Adam is behind at the moment.
Well, listen, observed.
Tony, I wish you hadn't said that last bit, because now Joe's gonna think it's all about sympathy.
You know what?
I think Adam does.
I think Adam has the more original take on it.
I do.
I think.
I was saying, I was aiming for stadium rock and I felt at the end of the day mine was a bit Deacon Bluey and it does go out of tune very badly towards the chorus.
The bit I'm happy about is the way I say 15 minutes.
I think I'd to claim that with more importance than necessary.
Tony, thank you so much for proffering those lyrics.
No problem.
Thanks for listening to the show.
Yeah, we really appreciate it.
Cheers, Tony.
Good to talk to you.
Yeah, have a lovely rest of your Saturday.
Bye-bye.
Okay, bye.
Lovely Tony Armstrong there talking to us.
He provided us with our song lyrics for Song Wars this week.
And of course, you can vote for which track you think was the best throughout the week.
You can hear those tracks on the Six Music website.
If not immediately, then they will be up there in a few days' time.
So next week, we'll be able to tell you which one you thought was the winning track.
But right now, time for some real music.
This is the king of real music, David Bowie, of course.
This is in his pre-stadium rock days.
In fact, it's the peak of his powers, more or less, 1971.
Here's Bowie recording Kooks for Bob Harris on Radio 1.
Enjoy.
When you're stayin' I love the story If you stay, you won't be sorry Cuz we believe in you Soon you'll grow, so take a G When you're stayin' I love the story
Classic stuff there.
That's David Bowie singing Kooks for Bob Harris' show.
David?
On Radio 1, that's in 1971 he was doing that.
Yeah, uh, who would that have been on the bass there?
And singing the harmony, do you know?
Ahhh... That's in Europe.
You're a Bowie expert.
Who would that have been?
Well, it probably a spider, I would think.
One of the spiders?
Um, although I'm not sure.
I'm not sure.
That's that test's no Bowie knowledge.
Beautiful though.
There we go.
That was the first song I ever learned how to play on the guitar.
Really?
Yeah.
Wowza.
I learned how to play that for my wife.
Bowie.
When we got married, I played that to her on our wedding day and it was, uh, you were there.
I was there, yes.
It was very emotional.
It was a sort of wonderful mixture of poignance.
Poignance?
Is that a word?
No, it's not, is it?
Poignancy.
Yes.
And embarrassment.
Yeah.
For all concerned.
Now, in just a second, I just started saying that before I even thought about what would happen in just a second.
It was just a phrase I was falling back on.
In just a second, it's a very good phrase.
I'll pick that up for you, Puckson, because that's the charm of a double act.
We're going to be playing you Rakes with We Dance Together, another band that don't have a thee.
They're just rakes, apparently.
And in fact, those couple of seconds have elapsed.
So here it is, Rakes with We Dance Together.
That's the sound of the Lemonheads, of course.
With If I Could Talk, I'd Tell You.
Before that you heard a fantastic trail.
Don't confuse it with modern music, it was a trail.
Before that you heard Baby Shambles with You Talk.
And of course, if you were eagle-eared with the Baby Shambles track there, you would have heard a little cowbell opening that was an absolute rip of the beginning of Baggy Trouses by Madness.
Maybe it was a conscious nod.
from the delightful junkie to madness, I don't know.
Anyway, folks, you're listening to Adam and Jo here on BBC Six Music.
We're in the final hour of our show here this Saturday afternoon.
Even though, to be frankly honest with you,
for us it's Wednesday.
We're pre-recording this program because at the moment I, Adam Buxton, am making my way back from Oxford where last night I was helping Radiohead with their webcast which I will tell you a little bit more about next week perhaps and I might tell you later on in this show a little anecdote connected with that.
But we need some help from you for next week's features, both Text the Nation and Song Wars.
Joe, would you like to...?
Thanks a lot, Adam, yeah.
Let's deal with those features one at a time, and let's deal with Song Wars, because we would like you listeners to send us in a subject for next week's Song Wars, and that subject is this.
We'd like you to send in the name and a character profile of a close friend of yours.
It could be somebody you love or someone maybe you don't like.
We'd like you to tell us their name and say like seven or eight facts about them.
Yeah.
That we can then turn into the lyrics of a song about that friend.
Exactly.
As if we knew that person we were writing about.
You can give these songs to that friend as a special prezzy.
Imagine the joy that that would result in.
Yeah.
Adam and who?
Six what?
Did what?
That kind of thing.
You could pretend it was Anton Tegg.
Yeah.
So send in the name of the friend and some facts about them that you think might make good lyrics to adamandjo.6musicatbbc.co.uk.
That's the email address.
Send them in, you know, in the next few days because we'll be writing this song midweek next week.
So send them in on the Monday or the Tuesday.
Uh, and who knows?
We could get you on the phone, you could be kind of helping to judge those songs next Saturday, and you could have two songs written by us for your best friend for nothing.
It's like a kind of pathetic service that we're providing, isn't it?
Yeah, that's the idea anyway, you know?
If no one emails in, we might have to change it, but that's the plan.
Listen, man, we could always cheat.
We could just pretend that someone emailed us.
This is the Big British Castle.
There will be no deception of any kind.
I'm sorry.
The Big British Castle and the King of the Castle, who is... What's his name?
I can't remember.
Lord Thompson.
Is it?
Lord Thompson.
He will not tolerate such scurrilous behaviour.
No, fair enough.
Yeah, so... And then the other thing we need your help with, of course... Hey, hey, man.
What?
Let's talk about that in the next link.
Spread it all out, you mean?
Yeah, spread it all out!
For instance, right now, I say we hear some rikes up, and a track called Eppel.
Eppel, you're pronouncing it Eppel, are you?
Eppel.
I would pronounce it Eppelay.
Eppelay.
Here it is, anyway.
Let's see how they pronounce it.
Eppel.
So he doesn't even say the, he doesn't, you know, we get no help from the guy as far as pronunciation goes.
Call that music.
Because it's all just wibbles and wobbles.
Sounds like a computer malfunctioning.
Now this is Adam and Joe here on BBC 6 Music and now we're going to ask for yet more help with yet another feature, next week's Text the Nation.
That's right, next week normal service will be resumed on Text the Nation but we'd like you to suggest, what do we want from them?
We want you, the theme this week, or rather next week, will be... What superpowers would you like?
Superpowers, basically.
Superpowers.
What would your choice of superpowers be if you could have one like him?
You know, do you watch Heroes, Joe?
Uh, I watched a bit of Heroes, but word on the street is... Right.
Series 2, down the laugh.
Bit of a stinker.
Plummeting down the laugh, so I hear.
Right, right, right.
Well, that doesn't surprise me.
I watched the whole of series one, struggled a little bit, I must say, and yeah, watched the first episode of series two and haven't bothered to return so far.
Just because there's a few too many of those chaps in Heroes with powers that are...
just rubbish and not anything you're talking about.
Well, let me see.
There's one woman who has a split personality.
So she looks in the mirror.
But the thing is that the split personalities manifest themselves in a physical way.
Do you know what I mean?
So she's like a shape shifter.
Yeah, like it's it's it's hard to describe recently It's nice, but it's not as simple as being a shapeshifter because shapeshifting is a good power.
She always she's always herself It's always herself, but sometimes it's her evil self and sometimes or not It's not even as straightforward as it being the evil self It's like a feisty version of herself and a regular.
It's just a bit rubbish.
I'm confused Yeah, what um, what power would you have?
Well, I can't tell you this week.
We're going to find out next week about all the powers.
But we want to know what powers you, the listeners, would have.
And what you would use it for.
Exactly.
Yeah.
So it can be a fairly conventional superpower, like a flight or jumping.
Or... That's the only other one I can think of.
Offhand.
No, what are the classic powers?
I mean, like... X-ray vision.
X-ray vision.
Flying.
Jumping.
Stretching.
I mean, that's a bit of a stupid power anyway.
But you get the picture.
Yeah.
So, just email us.
The email address, once again, is AdamandJoe.
What is it?
So wrong.
AdamandJoe.
So please email us immediately with your suggestions.
We'll collect them over the week and read out the best of those next weekend.
Now it's time for a session track.
This was recorded for the John Peele show on Radio 1 on the 25th of September 1977.
Wow.
And this is a track that features in the film Stranger Than Fiction.
Don't know if you saw that, Will Ferrell, in there.
And there's a little bit in that film where he decides that he's going to learn how to play the guitar.
And this is the song that he learns how to play.
But don't hold that against it.
It's Reckless Eric with Whole Wide World.
Besides a lot of girl.
I love King Creosote, and that's called Home in a Sentence.
It was released on the 5th of November, and before that you heard a session track, Reckless Eric with Whole Wide World.
And this has been Adam and Joe here on 6th Music on a Saturday morning.
Now, next weekend, I will tell you a little bit more about my experience with the Mighty Radiohead, with whom I was doing a little bit of work last night, as you're listening to this.
And last weekend, I made the mistake of actually mentioning that I was doing this at all.
Why was that a mistake?
It was supposed to be a secret.
How were they?
So you basically blew the lid on the whole thing?
Yeah.
Without asking permission.
Big mouth.
Because I didn't realize no one said anything to me about it being a secret.
What were they planning?
They were planning to, like, go right up till about an hour before and then announce it on their website, Dead Airspace, so it would just be like a hardcore fan thing.
Right.
Instead, you announced it a week before?
Yeah.
Oh, dear.
And what happened when they realized that?
Well, I guess they just had to abandon all that because you realize kind of realized that as you said it last week in the show And I could see you looking quite sick and ill yeah I mean I wasn't I wasn't planning on talking about it But we mentioned the fact that we were gonna have to pre-record this show and then you Forced me to explain why okay, and then because I just cannot lie I can't I simply that's the reason I can't think on my feet.
Do you know what was very actual?
What was that?
What's that?
What did Tom say?
Quickly, just quickly.
He said it was okay.
He said it wasn't the end of the world.
He was nice about it.
He was nice.
You know, I mean, they're nice.
He's very angry.
They're a nice bunch of chaps.
You know, that kind of thing works in an inverse way.
They're not going to be trusting me with too many more of their secrets, I would imagine.
There we go.
This has been Adam and Joe.
Thanks for listening.
Thanks to everybody who texted an email during the week.
We'll be back live with you at 9am next Saturday morning.
Have a great week and all that sort of a business.
Yeah, cheers.
Bye.