Vauxhall Road Populi

St Albans City had Dean Austin and Iain Dowie as young 'uns, and the sadly departed Berkhamsted Town had superstar DJ Nigel Callaghan mixing the tail end of his football career with his time on the decks, but could this bloke be the most famous footballer ever to play for Hemel Hempstead Town?:

Step forward one Danny Granville, formerly of Chelsea, Leeds Utd, Man City and Crystal Palace (amongst many others). The bloke played in a cup winners cup final!

Granted at 34 he's at the tail end of his career, but he's always played at left back and, for some reason or other, it's one of those positions on a football pitch where a footballer's career is just naturally prolonged for a few extra years. Maldini playing at left back for AC Milan in his fortieth year; Andreas Brehme still making those overlapping runs of his from the left back position for FC Kaiserslautern at the age of 37; and now, in his 35th year, Danny Granville turning it on for Hemel against the likes of Bedford Town and Bashley. It's too late this year, but maybe, finally, a decent FA Cup run next year?

This post isn't a pisstake, btw. I reserve the jokes for the posts that touch on politics. I'm childishly impressed that The Tudors actually have a bona fide ex-pro on their books. It's a bit of a step up from when I used to watch them and Mark Goodson (I bet I've got the surname wrong) was the regular full back playing every other week at Vauxhall Road. A solid enough player despite his frail appearance, who I seem to remember had a rasping shot. It's just unfortunate that he looked like the love child of Howard Devoto and David Bradley. He wasn't going to get any Gillette Mach3 adverts any time soon.

More on Granville at Hemel here. If the link doesn't take you directly to his bio, then scroll down and you can't miss it. He's the bloke striking the ball with his left foot.

Cheers to Getty for fair use of the image. If I ever visit California, I'll be sure to put an extra quarter in the collection box at the Getty Museum by way of recompense.

Thank You Wiki (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)*

Never knew that. Procrastination sometimes has its own rewards.

Turns out that the bloke who produced the first two Duran Duran albums, Colin Thurston, also produced the following seminal records:

Human League's 'Reproduction'

Magazine's 'Secondhand Daylight'

Our Daughter's Wedding 'Digital Cowboy'

Talk Talk's 'The Party's Over'

KajaGooGoo's 'White Feathers'

Well, seminal records for me, I mean.

And people still insist on sneering at Duran Duran after all these years. Dismissing them as being nothing more than vacuous pretty boys. Pop culture harbingers of Thatcherism.

"Pretty boys"? Have you ever seen John Taylor in his natural light? Fulham's Jimmy Bullard scrubs up better. If it weren't for the tunes and Simon Le Bon's Sondheim-like lyrics, Nick Rhodes would still be second assistant at the bovril stand at the Holte End to this day.

*With regards to the title of the post; Yeah I know that Colin Thurston didn't produce that particular classic Magazine track, but the song was ringing through my ears whilst spewing out this post.

Paul Morley Tony Morley was once my hero

Further to this post on the blog from a few days back, Snappy Kat was kind enough to post a link to the 'notorious' 1981 TOTP appearance by Magazine.

Sad to discover that it wasn't the 'event' I was expecting from the vivid description in Simon Reynolds post-punk bible. Any stage fright from Devoto had less to do with caught up in the occasion, and probably owed more to being struck dumb by David 'Kid' Jensen's positioning when introducing the band. I always wondered where Ricky Gervais got the inspiration for that pose in the second series of 'The Office'.

Should have known that any story that had the name 'Paul Morley' attached to it would have a certain je ne sais quoi.

However, every cloud had a silver lining and, via the comments accompanying the YouTube clip, I discovered the following nugget of useless post-punk information:

"The guitar lick in 'Lipstick' was given to Devoto by Shelley for use in Magazine's 'Shot by Both Sides', one of 2 Magazine-recorded songs co-written by Shelley, the other being 'The Light Pours Out of Me' by Devoto/McGeoch/Shelley. 'Lipstick' was actually written before 'Shot by...', even though 'Shot by...' was released first on Mon, Jan 16, 1978." [Info via here.]

Shelley, as in Pete Shelley of Buzzcocks fame, not that other Shelley anti-hero bloke from the post-punk era.

What with my trained tin-ear for all things musical, I find it difficulty to hear the overlap between the two tracks. And that's despite the fact that I've listened to both tracks on numerous occasions down the years. But it is a good excuse to post some early eighties stuff on the blog for sampling purposes:

Magazine - 'Shot By Both Sides' mp3

Buzzcocks - 'Lipstick' mp3

Shot By Your Own Side

Excellent music blog, Spinster's Rock,' is currently posting the entire Magazine singles discography on their blog.

Come on: it's late 70s/early 80s post-punk; Howard Devoto had the best cameo in Michael Winterbottom's '24 Hour Party People'; and I currently can't get the Magazine album track, 'Suburban Rhonda', out of my head. I'm obliged to link to the posts.

Mmm, wonder what Simon Reynolds said about Magazine in 'Rip It Up And Start Again'?:

"On the brink of the Top 40, Magazine were invited to appear on Top of the Pops. At first Devoto refused. Asked again the following week, he buckled to pressure from Virgin and agreed. But he remained extremely uncomfortable about miming to the song ['Shot By Both Sides'] on television. 'It was very artificial. The whole thing seemed absurd . . . and scary.' At the last minute he decided to make a gesture that would indicate his disdain for the corny charade. 'I didn't want to jump around in an obedient, "here's your entertainment" way. I wanted to be bloody-minded, but in a fairly understated way.' He got the BBC make-up girl to do him up in whiteface, but instead of a striking glam alien, 'he looked like Marcel Marceau', recalls Paul Morley (who was glued to the TV because seeing a band like Magazine on Top of the Pops was 'so rare' in those days). 'And then Devoto decided, because his mind was racing so quick, that he was far ahead of the game and he'd just be still. Very, very still. And thid great song was playing, but Devoto stood stock-still. And the next week the record went down the charts - possibly the first time that's ever happened in the history of pop, that you get on Top of the Pops and the single goes down the next week. And from then on, everything shut down. Killed stone dead.'

*Nips over to YouTube to try and locate the car crash tv clip.*