One from the Archives – “Lyrics”

What do you do when you have a habit of keeping almost every scrap of paper that either someone wrote something on or drew a silly picture on? Eventually you have no choice but to sift through that paper and determine what stays and what goes.

As a parent, I was duty bound to keep a lot of Reuben’s pictures. Some were merely because they were cute and reminded me of simpler times, others were because they were downright weird and prompted referring to a psychiatrist for confirmation as to whether it was time to call the men in white coats. Shame you can’t call it a looney bin anymore because it’s not politically correct. It’s not a real bin full of loonies, how would anyone ever confuse a large building full of crazy people with a bin? Silly. I suppose looney building doesn’t have the same ring to it. “I’m going to put you in a looney office,”

Mixed in with some frightening scribbles of monsters ripping people in two and an invention of mine called the ‘Scuba Umbrella’, I found some hand-written lyrics for two of the Papples most played / most requested / best loved songs of all times: ‘Mincey Beef’ and ‘(Do it)’, the latter of which is a lot harder to type at 11pm at night.

Does it offer an insight into the collective minds at work? Does it share the rare genius hammering out the hits during a prolific time in their career? Not really. The top left-hand corner reveals what I think I was trying to crowbar into the song: mince, beef (obviously), nen tosh, Shergar (?), Aberdeen angus and no neddy beef. The rest is pretty much the lyrics of the song verbatim with the odd tweak here and there, no doubt as a result of hours of sweat and toil in the recording studio working out the best arrangement.

Let us not forget the immortal words: “Beef is back, meat attack.”

‘(Do it)’ is less interesting because there was only two strips of lyrics and nothing on the back. These were probably used as the starting blocks of the songs because they were transferred to somewhere more permanent, a larger piece of paper or a notebook, or maybe even a word document. It’s hard to remember the long ago times as we all know.

Proto-Papples

I’ve been digging around my old boxes of nonsense again because new content doesn’t find itself and bringing old things you’ve forgotten about back into the light is a good process. Right?

FYI, expect more of this over the next month or two.

This page was lurking at the front of one of the many notebooks I used to keep. It definitely wasn’t the genesis of the name ‘Papples’ because Chris and I definitely came up with that when I was visiting and we tossed off the idea of continuing the music making antics of The Office and recording an album. I must have been musing on the mythos, considering the chumblies and trying to develop a chart for people who didn’t quite understand.

It takes a while to comprehend both the genius of the name and the music of The Papples.

I’m not entirely sure why I was developing a gun of sorts to turn good apples to pap apples, then again I am an inventor so it must have come naturally (?). Let’s go with that.

The Rapples ride again

Do you remember eight and a half years ago, when we were rap stars? What did we do with all the fur and gold chains when that all ended? And how did three thirtysomething white northerners ever get away with recording four terrible, terrible rap songs?

The EP Space for an Ace might not be something you revisit on a regular basis (though I still think Turd Picnic is pretty catchy), but a far more appealing prospect is the video footage we recorded over the course of the weekend while we were making it. I’d just got a new camera and wanted to try it out, so we filled a tape with more than an hour of nonsense. A few bits have leaked out over the years (like this and this and this), but now I’ve finally edited the rest to make a pretty watchable 18 minutes of new stuff.

A lot of material was trimmed because it was rubbish. Other parts have been lost forever: a fair slice of the creative process for “Crash and Burn” exists only as silent pictures, because of a microphone mishap that Kev kindly makes me explain in the film. There was also a five-minute sequence with the three of us sitting on the sofa, talking to the camera and to each other. It looked hilarious, but we’ll never know what we were talking about now. Never mind.

Still, lots of stupid stuff survived, so I’m delighted to present – at last, eight years late – the Rapples in action, live from 2015. It’s pretty good.

A song for Morten

Hello there. Chris here, from the chart-topping band The Papples. Thanks for joining me.

Years ago, when we were hard at work writing and recording songs for our third album, Pop Squared, we made a start on a song about the lead singer of Norwegian pop sensation A-Ha that never saw the light of day.

Well, lucky for you, every dog has his day, and every tired old half-baked Papples idea has its day too. I can now present to you the finished lyrics to a lost classic: “Everybody Fancies Morten Harket”.

A Sensual Awakening: Two Word Reviews

Everything gets reviewed these days, from mobile phones to toilet cleaners, so it seems only fair that The Papples latest body of work should be included.

Sarah and I sat down this fine evening to give ‘A Sensual Awakening’ a good going over, and decided that rather than use lots of words to accurately convey how we felt about each song, we’d do a two word review.

From Us.

To You.

Terrible news

I don’t know how to tell you this. It’s too tragic for words.

In some ways we saw it coming, but still, when I walked down Church Road and saw what had happened, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Sexatronic has gone.

Once the home of Bum Chin Bollock Neck McGee, and then – gloriously immortalising the star of one of The Papples’ most inventive album tracks – home to Sexatronic herself, the stylish and cosmopolitan plywood sheeting has been removed after five years’ service and has been replaced with these unimaginative shop units.

We’ll never forget you, Sexatronic.

Album art

The music press has been very excited lately about rumours that The Papples have been working on a side project with their occasional collaborator Kevil – fans will, of course, know him as co-creator of “Dirty Chips”, the top selling track on their last album.

It looks like those rumours were true as news emerges of the formation of a supergroup called The Rapples. They are describing themselves as an urban music collective, set to “revolutionise rap in the same way the Papples have revolutionised pop music”. Their debut EP is due out soon. It’s not yet clear whether legendary producer Nizzle will also be involved.

Details of the track listing and any possible live dates are still firmly under wraps, but Pouring Beans has been granted an exclusive look at the album art, and we can also reveal the title of the EP is to be “Space for an Ace”.

Obviously we’ll bring you more news as this thrilling story develops.

Sexatronic eviction

Gentlemen, we have a crisis. Sexatronic – my oddly named neighbour and subject of a hit single by The Papples – is about to be evicted from her ground floor hovel overlooking Church Road.

I suggest you do as I have done and write to your MP (remembering to CC the Queen) demanding that the Government steps in to prevent this impending tragedy.