One band name I forgot to include on my list of crappy band names is Badly Drawn Boy, the nom de sensitive rock of singer-songwriter Damon Gough. The bookish and coy stage name is actually just one of a number of things I find annoying about Gough. Another is the fact that his Wikipedia entry says that he was born "in Dunstable, Befordshire [and] grew up in the Brightmet area of Bolton, Lancashire, England." This is obviously fake, as no one comes from that many fruity-sounding English places. The next sentence in the Wikipedia page entry might as well just say, "The son of a cockney boot black, Gough spent his childhood working as a lovable chimney sweep, clean as a whistle, sharp as a thistle, best in all Westminster, until he was sent off to Mrs. Picklingworth's school for wayward lads, where he excelled in fourth form chicanery and ballyhoo." Another thing I don't like is the way Gough always wears a knit cap no matter the climate or circumstance--I read this as an overly committed homage to Elliott Smith (USA! but dead).
Despite all this, I do like a number of Badly Drawn Boy's songs, even if his catalog is uneven. And there are two songs of his in particular that I really do love--"Silent Sigh" (from his About a Boy soundtrack) and "The Shining" (from The Hour of Bewilderbeast).
I should like very much to play them for you now, m'lady:
The video for "Silent Sigh":
And a live version of "The Shining," from London's Royal Festival Hall in 2004 (note how he screws up the lyrics of the first verse and starts over):
And a live version of "The Shining," from London's Royal Festival Hall in 2004 (note how he screws up the lyrics of the first verse and starts over):
1 comment:
This is by far your best entry yet. Here, here old chap.
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