Friday Three Times

Today we're at one of those bloggers standby types of post, songs named after the day of the week that we've arrived at- Friday. The weeks seem long at the moment and Friday is always welcome. Two of the three Friday songs today have connections to recent Bagging Area posts and the third has a connection to an album that came out this year and has been largely unnoticed. 

Friday number one- The Replacements...

Love You Till Friday (Live at Cabaret Metro 1986)

The Replacements were Minneapolis contemporaries of Wednesday's postees Husker Du and were considered to be the ones most likely to make the jump to a major label- a more palatable, classic rock 'n' roll sound- The Replacements were quite capable of scuppering those kind of expectations by their own willful self- sabotage. In 2023 a remixed and re- issued box set version of their 1985 album Tim was released, a remix that actually made the songs entirely new, the really poorly mixed mid- 80s album totally redone and better for it. There was a live disc, The Replacements kicking the arse out of their own songs at the Cabaret Metro in Chicago in 1986, of which Love You Till Friday was their second song, rattled off in between the ridiculous and the sublime, between set opener Gary's Got A Boner and third song Bastards Of Young. And that's The Replacements all over. 

Friday number two- Jack Kerouac...

Friday Afternoon In The Universe

Jack Kerouac's On The Road was the subject of a Saturday Soundtrack post a few weeks ago. Friday Afternoon In The Universe is from a very long narrative poem Kerouac wrote called Old Angel Midnight, a 'monologue of the world' Kerouac dreamed up in Tangiers in 1956 and then began in a notebook while staying in a cabin with Gary Snyder later the same year. Kerouac called it Spontaneous prose, naked word babble and automatic doodle writing. A judge in a censorship case called it a prose picnic. Whatever its called, Friday afternoon in the universe is a good time and place to be in. ]

Friday number three, Half Man Half Biscuit...

Friday Night And The Gates Are Low

In 1995 Wirral's finest released their second album Some Call It Godcore. Friday Night And The Gates Are Low is a lamentation for Friday night football, Tranmere Rovers playing in the rain in front of a small crowd and the 'bastard slip of a sub's ruined my weekend'. Nigel signs off with 'Friday night and I just love complaining/ And no I haven't got anything better to do'.

In the summer of this year HMHB released their sixteenth album, All Asimov And No Fresh Air. I will return to it- its very much business as usual, in other words thirteen slices of customary laugh out loud lyrics coupled obscure references to modern life and some genuinely moving moments. If you haven't heard it, you really should.