FROM THE SOUTH-WEST CORRESPONDENT..WHAT’S IN YOUR BOX (25)

The Shoebox of Delights – #8 – Chosen by Badgerman
It Ended On An Oily Stage – British Sea Power

After yesterday’s lively debate, I think it would make sense to hand over to S-WC for a bit of light-hearted relief….although whether you find it amusing will I guess, depend on your sense of humour.

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Remember a few months back when I was asking for advice around my iPod Friday, and I decided to go down the cover version route, well here is an update on that ‘teambuilding idea’. I have to be quite careful here so from the end of this sentence everything I write up to the word ‘Anyway’ somewhere down the page will be a complete and utter lie. If by some extraordinary chance any of this actually happened it will be a massive coincidence, also I wasn’t there, so I can’t be telling the truth. That ought to cover me.

So it is the turn of Mike (not his real name) to do his iPod Friday, he has been in the office for a few years, a few months back, Mike went through a small transformation, his hair changed, he grew a small beard, smartened his act up, looked like he started washing in the morning that sort of thing. It didn’t take long to work out that Mike had a new girlfriend, it turned out that the girlfriend in question was someone else in the office, and Mike had left his wife of ten years to be with this new girlfriend. These things happen, it’s no big thing, people get bored of gossip quite quickly – actually I don’t, I retain the information and embarrass them with it when drunk at Christmas Parties, but I’m letting daylight in on magic here.

Mike’s squeeze wasn’t in the office when he started his iPod Friday in fact I haven’t seen her in a couple of days, she is probably ill I thought to myself. The first track, and I kid you not is Without You not the popular Mariah Carey version, oh no, this is the original Nilsson version, in all its heartbreaking brilliance. Its an odd choice to be honest for an opening song, I mean it’s a great record but when you are playing songs to stimulate debate and show off your personality its fucking weird. It gets worse, much worse, very quickly, Crying by Roy Orbison worse. Three songs later (much the same sort of songs) I get an email from another correspondent from these pages which reads ‘He’s going Mad, bet you a bottle of rum we have I will Always Love You by Dolly Parton before long’. I buy him a bottle rum two hours later. Because he is right. We also get Yesterday by The Beatles and You Keep Me Hanging On by The Supremes. Yup, ladies and gents we were getting Mike’s break up mixtape right there and then. Forty minutes of songs about how much he loved this girl and she wasn’t even there to hear it. It was, erm, awkward to say the least.

Oddly it mellowed about a bit, and there was some gems in there, Creep by Radiohead for one, and Jumpin’ Jack Flash by the Rolling Stones for another. Then the boss wanders over and puts an arm around Mike who we have all just noticed has destroyed a stapler on his desk and is frankly a mess of snot, tears and well, staples. Mike gets up and throws no, hurls, his coffee mug at the desk where his (presumably) ex sits just as the opening strings of Elbow’s A Day Like This starts up. Seriously you cannot make that shit up. With that Mike is gone. As exits go, that was impressive. I secretly hoped that the cup bounced and hit someone else, not because I don’t like them, just because, (it didn’t) and that he walked straight into a cupboard or came back for his wallet or something (he didn’t).

Another email comes in from the same chap as above, ‘You’re writing about this aren’t you’. Possibly was my response. ‘If you don’t I will’ was the return. The next email was from the boss ‘iPod Friday is cancelled until further notice’. Good it was Badgerman next week and he was bound to play Muse.

Anyway (see, that is journalistic planning at its finest) what relevance is this to British Sea Power, well there isn’t one, not really, but there is a cover version on the B Side of this, a cover of the Mum classic Green Grass of Tunnel, which is pretty ace and had I known about it early, I would have included on my iPod Friday. And also the lead track, is sort of relevant as Mike’s cup ended on Tidy Desk. Sorry that’s a terrible link.

So here is the CD out of box, backed with the cover version and two of my favourite BSP tracks.

mp3 : British Sea Power – It Ended on an Oily Stage
mp3 : British Sea Power – Green Grass of Tunnel
mp3 : British Sea Power – Atom
mp3 : British Sea Power – Monsters of Sunderland

Enjoy your week folks.

S-WC

JC adds…….

S-WC, in his covering e-mail, didn’t know whether this incident was comic or tragic.  In a sense it is a bit of both and being a bit of a sick fuck I veer towards it being hilarious.  It is, as Aldo said when I gave him a sneak preview, like an outake from The Office.  Oh and I now know that Tim Badger drinks rum.

I love BSP and they are on the list of bands that will one day get the Imaginary Albums treatment but not for a while as I’ve a few already written and waiting their turn to appear (including some cracking guest postings….keep them coming)

As for this series, S-WC needs another random selection for next week.  Thus far we’ve had 8, 17, 18 and 25 – all other numbers between 1 – 28 remain available.