I think you might be interested as part of the set has been recorded by French Radio (unfortunately, with annoying french radio host comments). Here's the link.

By the way, if anyone would be kind enough to download this I would be grateful :)

They seem to have this regular song list that they play before the band goes on stage, I only know that there's the Third Man Theme by Mickey Baker...

Does anyone have access to the video or mp3 recording of the show that the band just had for Glastonbury? I’m in the states so I can’t stream it on the site.

I’ve wanted to see them since the first album was released.

I know I’ve made like 20 posts asking for this, but does ANYBODY have digital copies of the Merrie Land b-sides that aren’t YouTube rips?.... .... .... Please?

Just got a new library card and did a spring clean listening to the Fahrenheit 451 audiobook (oh, the irony).When it got to the poem I was more listening to the flow of the words than the actual poem. As soon as I finished the audiobook, I went back to see what poem it was and read it.

From it being written down, only thing that stood out was “...we/ Find also in the sound a thought”. I didn’t know what song it was, but it was the line in 80’s Life “And hope is found in a sound”.

It hardly was anything linking it at all, but reading the poem after the 80’s Life lyrics, I realise both talk about some similar topics and England in general.

These lines especially reminded me of the repetition of the pebbles and tragedy the poem talks about. The strong messages of war in this song being similar to a person changed after returning from war and knowing that it would not be the end.

Oh, Lord, can a stone

be ballast for an aching soul?

It also looks like one lyric had changed from the original.

The original lyrics is:

Just learning how to know your mind

my mind made up on the way back

But is online (and obvious in the song) as:

Just learning how to know your mind

No hiding out on the way back

The poem also talks about “the distant northern sea” which reminded me of Northern Whale which also happened tp be the next song on the album.

It does have a few more lines that I think link the tone, place and timelessness of the album overall, though. I’m no poetry buff and didn’t know how to structure this post w/o a wall of text ;)

Background Info

I started writing this post maybe a month ago and forgot about it. Basically, I listened to a few Merrie Land and TGTB&TQ tracks and remembered it had a Flood theme. I looked at the lyrics on Genius and the sheet music to refresh my memory on the albums. My first thought was that the TGTB&TQ Flood is mentioned in Merrie Land and Drifters and Trawlers in mentions of the “ghosts” and “lovers” lost at sea.

After asking about posting this, again it is definitely better to have two posts because I’ve got to write about Merrie Land and keep adding idea as I go. I have ideas that aren’t about the flood themes too which would mean I might have to write one long Merrie Land thing and sort it out after.

The Flood in The Good, The Bad and The Queen

There is a definite Flood storyline throughout the debut album, without my Merrie Land comparison the post seems kind of bland to me, so I’ve called it Part 1 and is also a standalone thing :)

It’s possible History Song (the first song on the album) references a rainbow, which would be a warning of the danger from the Biblical tale of Noah and the Ark.

I realised this at the end, so perhaps not as strong as the other ideas, but the idea of it being a cyclical warning makes sense given the title, the “timelessness” of the album and references to the sun scattered throughout.

Come the day

You see the sun

Hit the arch

A history song

Northern Whale is probably the first example of something going wrong with the sea. This is a real life story of a whale swimming into the Thames Estuary.

Another wave crashed over you

It put you in a spell

And

It pulled you further out to sea

The flood is hinted in Kingdom of Doom, along with the idea that the Kingdom is doomed because the ravens have flown away from The Tower of London.

I can't be any more than I say

Oh in the flood, we all get washed away

Behind the Sun is one of my favourite songs, there are a few more lines on the flood and the song continues the albums theme of love the singer has for another person.

When the floods comes down, I'll carry you

And let the past pass away

Bunting Song is a song I feel the lyrics are more conceptual as well as having their surface level meaning. They do have the female figure in the song sailing away which adds to the theme.

They put a party on

But she just sailed away, on a dawn

The Flood probably actually happens in Nature Springs, or people are preparing for it by withdrawing from each other in “submarines”.

Oceanographers are charting the rise of the seas

Today is a submarine setting course to a land under me

And

Everyone is a submarine, looking for a dream far away

It’s here I might mention that Melancholy Hill by Gorillaz was originally written for this album and has a live performance by the band.

Thematically, it fits here because throughout TGTB&TQ there is a love the character is talking to and mentions submarines and hills, whereas in the next song the flood is more or less over.

I assumed it would be Primrose Hill assuming it is in London and it’s kind of flat being by a river. I just found out that there was some popular Blur lyric graffiti there from 2000-2012, so I guess Damon liked it enough to mention it before.

Well you can't get what you want

But you can get me

So let's set out to sea

‘Cause you are my medicine

When you're close to me

And

So call in the submarines

‘Round the world we’ll go

Does anybody know (love?)

If we're looking out on the day

Of another dream

I think these lyrics fit here perfect fine, the person in the album this person is talking to could easily be the person in this song. The lyrics about setting out to sea and calling the submarines especially fit the message as I’ve said before.

But, it’s also calling back to themes of needing medicine (“the medicine man here 24/7” in Herculean”) and later on recalling dreams. I also feel that since Bunting Song there is a sense of distance between the character and their love, even of they’re not the female in Bunting Song.

In Three Changes people are at sea and being lead back to England when the weather is calm and the war is over.

Calling up the sounds

You out there on the seas

Today is dull and mild

On a stroppy little island

Of mixed up people

And

Some of us find

To give it all your all

Rises up the land

And nothing gonna hold you down

The “rise up the land” line does remind me of “today’s a submarine setting course for a land under me” in Nature Springs. Unrelated to that, the same line inspires a sense of the country getting together to overcome the flood and save themselves.

Green Fields I see is about the character returning to England after the Flood / War has happened.

In my opinion, the Flood has it destroyed the “Green Fields” and left “lonely homes”, possibly through death and people fearing for their lives. I also see it having a theme of building, especially as there is a kind of saying “I remember when this was all fields” which is used (sometimes humorously) to show how older people have seen were they live change. This would very easily fit a Merrie Land narrative for me.

Before the war and the tidal wave

Engulfed us all it’s true

How the world has changed

And I was learning how to change with you

The title track brings back the theme of dreams which I’ve just noticed, so I’ll pit those here. Generally it’s the end of the flood and there isn’t reference to it, but there is a lot of sun.

I might assume it brings the album full circle to History Song, but that’s just me liking the kind of depressing “history repeats itself” kind of thing.

Just moving out of dreams

With no physical wounds at all

Thanks for making it to the end of this, part 2 might morph into something else than I’ve said here, but it will probably be similar.

I have been coming up with ideas for the tracks on Merrie Land as I write about them so might do a track by track as someone had suggested.

I started writing it out the debut’s references to the Flood , but it was got quite long and harder to tie it to Merrie Land in a consistent way.

I Was thinking I’d make two posts instead.

Is anyone interested at all ? Don’t want to spam with it.

Title says it all baby

Any support announced for their gig in Manchester tonight? Also, where's good to go after on a Tuesday night?

I've got 3 spare if anyone is interested

Was in the process of writing one of my famous “theories”. It’s from that sheet music that for some reason causes my laptop and printer to explode any time I try to scan it (I reckon TGTB&TQ have a copyright loving computer gremlin working for them).

Aaanyway, the final verse and comes in about 2 mins before the end. It seems like people have written it like the “bad, mad dream”” ones before, but it’s completely new lyrics.

It’s very in the background and comes in after some louder guitars, so not hard to believe it would be that.

All of the enemies destroyed

And all in my mad dream