I recently fell in love with this song. Odd story behind it. We were in pub years ago, I’m going to say 1993 based on the release date of the album. I’m not sure who was there but I imagine the usual assembly of football and music loving cohorts. An acquaintance came in, I don't think I could call him a friend but he's a good guy, he was at the time the editor of magazine, a kind of music and style thing of the time, very hip. Anyway he had an armful of copies of the new album from The Trash Can Sinatras and proceeded to hand them out to everyone there. The band were from Irvine in Scotland and at the time I hadn’t even heard of them but who turns down free vinyl? It lay untouched on my shelf for decades. In other words, it’s mint and was recently valued at over €100!
The song I’m love with is the last on the album - Earlies. It is so simple in construction, it appears to be just two chords with the simplest embellishment from guitars over it. The chorus is mainly just la la la in terms of lyrics but the verses are just beauty. I adore even the way it begins, one snare hit then all swoons in together.
Evoking times that were probably hard at the time but fondly remembered now and sung in the most wistful, unhurried fashion. Lines like:
“Through t-shirt breezes walking home from work” and “Guinness elbows rest upon a tabletop” just paint instant pictures. There’s not really a bad line in the song so I’ll quote it below and leave a link in the title to listen to it too.
The funny thing is when I listen to it I see myself and my friends trudging across the fields in the early morning mist on our way to work in a hot factory to sweat for the day while laughing most of the time. It seemed hard at the time...
Cakebrick road in summer 1981,
We shared a house and garden
At the height of all the bombing,
on the run in busy, hazy London
Through t-shirt breezes walking home from work,
County Kilburn sun
Weekends we’d just wash away the dirt of busy, hazy London
The night grew cold,
the Thames is old
Found that manners count for nothing and it took,
A welshman in his forties
Guinness elbows rest upon a tabletop,
The two of us on earlies
Three feet of snow fell on the walnut road,
Two feet trudged
Round the corner came the sound of bad dreams
The flame is old.
the Thames is cold.
Cakebrick road in summer 1981,
we left a house and garden
On the corner boys,
best of friends?
On the corner boys,
Both of us on earlies
Songwriters: John Douglas / Frank Reader / Paul Livingston / Davy Hughes
Earlies lyrics © Go Discs Music
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