Songs: Chips And Cheese, Pint Of Wine

notes / gigs / releases

Chips and cheese, pint of wine
At the Poly Bop on a Friday night
Stone Roses, Nirvana and Vanilla Ice
Chips and cheese, pint of wine

The tights are all stripey, the shoes are all Docs
We've rips in our jeans and holes in our socks
We're all bobbed and quiffed and our shirts are tie-died
Chips and cheese, pint of wine

The Berlin Wall's come down and Thatcher's just gone
And we might dare to dream we'll not die by the bomb
It'll soon be the future, but in the meantime
Chips and cheese, pint of wine

The arena's been knocked down, the kitchens have closed
We've shortened our haircuts and widened our clothes
We're annual dancers who've drifted apart
But if you saw us now you'd say we're not that far from

Chips and cheese, pint of wine
At the Poly Bop on a Friday night
Playing Daydream Believer as they turn on the lights
Chips and cheese, pint of wine

Published by Wipe Out Music Publishing

Here's what I said the day after I wrote this song:

Yesterday (24th May 2007) I went and bought myself a copy of Axis Bold As Love by Jimi Hendrix, largely because we watched a GRATE programme about him at the weekend and I was HANKERING for some JIMI. Listening to it took me back to my Student Days when my housemate Dr N Brown used to play that particular record OFTEN, especially just before we were heading out to the Poly Bop.

THIS morning I woke just before 7am with a song in my head, and as I lay there waiting for the alarm to go off (which had been set for EARLIER than usual, as The Fretboard Of My Axe had an APPOINTMENT first thing) I thought up the first couple of verses. We LEAPT from our slumber and I started to play it on guitar, before thinking "HOLD UP!" and instead took the UKELELE, which somehow sounded more suited to the subject matter. Over the course of the next hour and a bit (including breakfast) I wrote the whole thing, gently modifying an "and" here and there by singing it on the way to work, and here it is.

The title would, I hope, be immediately clear to ANYBODY who went to the Leicester Polytechnic Arena (i.e. the Student Union building) in the very early nineties, as it seemed that pretty much everybody would start their evening with a polystyrene tray of chips and cheese before purchasing a reasonably priced pint of wine to get themselves in the mood for dancing. The rest of the song is all VERY true, especially the bit about them playing the Monkees for the last song.

Happily, people who HAD been there, who also happened to be in The Validators, DID know what I was on about, and everybody seemed to like this song. I considered saving it for the Validators' album but as I'd actually written it on a Ukelele I eventually decided to keep it for A Million Ukeleles.

Recording was pretty easy, i think i tried it first of all with a drum machine but then lost the slowed down bit at the end of the middle eight, so then tried overdubbing the sound of me tapping the back of the ukelele as a replacement rhythm. This sounded crap, so i took it off and handed it over to Tom. He'd just set up his recording equipment at home and was EAGER to try it out, and thus did me the LOVELY little violin arrangement - originally this featured only one track, then i asked for a bit more in the middle and he added another. As expected, it sounded lovely. As NOT expected, it also came with a MALE VOICE CHOIR - i was very surprised by this, as he'd done it completely without me knowing but, COR, doesn't it sound good?