The first thing to be said is that at long last the conundrum-di-dum surrounding Mutt and Jeff’s much postponed Second Song Syndrome has been solved. And not, sez you, before 3-4 time neither.
–Dá fhad an lá clúdaítear an trá..
The lengthly hiatus, now that you ask us, between their initial monster hit – ‘Ebony and Irony’ – and its follow up was down almost entirely to the inevitable squabbles. Such as? Such as those which copyright lawyer chaps with their bulging dewlaps do so like to indulge in, for the longer they prolong the bewigged process, yes, the bigger the baubles they get to gobble.
As the noted legal eagle with a yen for the telling phrase, one Senan Connell, aka the one-hit pundit, has been known to note:
-Simple as.
Though it must be also mentioned that the song eventually decided upon was almost wrong-footed by a last mintue twist in the story. Call it, almost, one insists, the Top of the Hitch Parade.
That happened when a punning lyric wedded to a stunning melody landed on the roof top of Liberace, oops, Liberty Hall, at the eleventh hour. Having been dropped there by a drone: actually, Ali, the drone of a LOL bagpipe.
TALK BACK TRIMBLING LIPS
Teach fuar le fada a fuair na Fíníní
Is gualainn fhuar o na UberDaoine
Cor nua fos
Iníon a phos
Le brod bhi D.Uasal Nobel ag caoine’
(NB: the absence of the fada over each and every o be out of a dewy-eyed due consideration for the sensitivities of a snowflakey Fianna Failure, one, Timmy Dooooooooooooooooooooley, TD. One who’s all too prone to take achey offence and to go, erm, doolally, Mullally at the slightest linguistic provo cation)
Luckily, Mutt, aka Finchley Fintan of the Fuckáil Focal, spotted it just in time and out of the same consderation had the gumption to slyly paw it over the edge of the roof top, to plummet precipitously 17 floors down the architectural charts. All of this unknown to Jeff who, as a non-truant, is indeed more fluent in the Leprechaun than Mutt, being in possession of the gut instinct to go even beyond the cúpla focal, but. Having added Tánaiste to his Dáil Éireann while under the adept flute-friendly tutelage of the Harris Hack Academy of Crypt Writing.
Re-spect.
Prior, Jim, to this near impasse, a second Macca song was considered as a successor to ‘Ebony and Irony’. There being no lack of superb material from that prolific source. No, not ‘Give Ireland back to the Irish’ which had already been morphed into ‘Give Ireland back to the British Open’. Otherwise: no alteration an’ all, Saul, no knighthood, Sir Paul.
Macca, of course, being Macca, was playing the long game, where his Moherland, Éire was concerned, and by ear. Consider his classic ‘When I’m 32’, oops and oobladiooblada, ‘When I’m 64’ which is his double take on a United Ireland where the two warring tribes, The Irish and the Anti-Irish, will live in a harmony of sorts, even of lickarse all-sorts (from the Southern Yunes).
But, 64?
To explain to the omniscient and still young pupilist Mutt, in particular. Macca grew up in an era where his schoolboy reading was restricted almost entirely to the perusal of ‘64 ers’. These were pocket-sized 64 page comics which retailed tales of the Wild and Wooly West. Until such time as boys simply overaged and transitioned into being pimply teens. This change involved Taking 5, Olive, and going on to other things. Such as the tossing of curved balls.
But, 64 counties?
Macca was always ahead of both his time and the game. In this instance he was being prescient to the D-degree. He foresaw the D-Day for Dublin, home of the Dubs and those Anti-Samites alike who despise the Dubs (no names, no hack drill). These latter day quaints who have been shrilly screaming ‘it ain’t fair on the other 31 counties vis a vis D’s unfair city !’ for the Dublin Dinosaurs to be, erm, sub-divided into its number of frilly postal districts.
Currently there are 24 of same, but this number in time with inevitably rise to 33. Hence, do the math, Matt: 31 counties plus 33 postal districts and the All-Ireland Dinosaur Cup will be contested in time and in Times by 64 teams. Thus:
–When I’m 64.
Geddit, Edwina?
–Eamhain Macca abú !
However, this number had already been hung, drawn and, erm, quartered by mutual consent by Mutt and Jeff as a, erm, dung deal. Hence the chosen song for the steeple-high Chosen People is one consistent with the shared space and sacred principles of a city duly ring-fenced for daily offence-taking, to be henceforth known as.
– DUPlin.
Drum roll, ole maestro follow by Fanfare, trumpet player, in keeping with the razzamatazz due to an announcement such as, say, by the snazzy, anttention-seeking B.Á.C. Bainisteoir re a dystopian Diarmuid C. being back to train (at Connolly Station) with the Dubs:
–Only 16.
Yes, that imperishable song. A verse, led thoil, though not in Erse:
ONLY SIXTEEN
It was only sixteen, only sixteen
Last century was only sixteen
And still too young to Rise Up
And the country was too young to know.
(Copyright lawyers eventually gave way to the woof-woof guff of Mutt and allowed that dogmatic Revisionist to P-correct the original lyrics (see above). Even copyright lawyers have a limit to their capacity for endurance. Craftily taken care of, gan dabht, by appropriate insurance).
Taken from the Sam Cooke songbook it was, of course, SC (no copyright lawyer alas – for he was, but a humble hash-slinger of a singer) who first composed and recorded this humdinger of a hit. And it was that magical merge of names which swung it for his teen-defining toon, albeit for its original ‘irksome’ lyrics to be revised.
Anti-Samitism on Liffeyside, be it understood, is a moveable beast.
-Look down there, yapped Mutt, having already pawpointed out the Sam Beckett Bridge to Jeff at the east end of Liberty Hall, and now, yipped Mutt, pawpointing down to the storied Halfpenny Bridge on the west side.
Sam Beckett, sans doute, once described the Leprechaun as ‘a spalpeen babble’, much to the unbridled joy of Jeff when so informed with no little relish by a rabble-rousing in-form Mutt of Relish Island. Even unto slapping his knee and locking his jaw, did Jeff. With a hee-haw from the pawed one as chorus, Dolores.
Mutt then manned up and took pains (of the pleasureable kind) to point out that the planning laws of Dublin / DUPlin took, erm, unbridled Pride in deriding one singled-out form of inferior Pride, i.e,, the illegal flaunting of pro-Sam Maguire banners on the Halfpenny Bridge. Which had the ass-kicking audacity, Cassidy, of flaunting but two (a mere two !) colours of the space-sharing Rainbow:
-Blue and Bluer.
Which prompted Jeff’s rare venture into even the underwhelming realm of the half-witticism.
-No Maguiresbridge here, so !
But, then: hark ! This is where Mutt’s inner Sir Arthur Conan Crocodile failed to bark: by omitting to mention to Jeff that that (gulp) ‘camogie’ was fortunate enough to get a mench, blessedly with no shimmying fada, Timmy, after half time in (gasp) ‘Waiting For Godot’ by the benchmarked Lucky.
McGREEVY BÁBOG
Thosaigh Samuel Barclay Beckett ina shuí
Ag pleidhcíocht le dúfhoclaíocht is ag scrí
Ansin fado, fado
Tháinig GODOT
Chríochnaigh an té dána S.B.B. ina Shaoi.
But, Sam Cooke ?
Sam, of course, as Mutt tediously and needlessly reminds us, was the name of his much admired Pater. Once a conductor, seemingly of Toscanini standard, on a Dublin Double Decker Bus belonging to C.I.E. (Crush in Everybody).
Prompting Mutt, no doubt, to climb the winding stairs to the dizzying heights of Chief Inspector of the Non-ticket holding Nats, na daoine dána lamsuigh den PC Pale. Having first served his Times as the Sir Simon of Shoneenism who so loved to, erm, rattle the cages of the clod hoppers who, by jingo, felt the odd compulsion to prattle in the cod lingo of Leprechaun.
The Bog-Oak Monolith, as Mutt’s predecessor, sole hero and role model in that exalted posish, CCOB, so delicately gobbed it. CCOB, whose wit and width of dollarship made kosher racism for the posh so racy of the Ranelagh soil, with his oval-balled vowels. Which he, oops, He, the Sandford Park old boy with the Sandy Row mentality, if not accent, used to let loose on the Lessers.
CCOB, of course, conducted the Number 31 bus. In which posish he thrived, turfing the not-an-inch Nats off his ‘car’ (which is conductor-speak for bus), and could be heard, at the end of his tether, counselling them to ‘hie tither, swine-herds, to the turf mines’.
The non-monoglot Monolith who probably thought, and so hadn’t bought, on first arriving in Occidental England’s iffy Liffeyside capital, a bus ticket which cost:
-A pinny from shtop to shtop.
So much for Mutt.
Cooke? This was a no brainer for the brainy Jeff (no cheap jibes of the ‘Pull the U.D.R. one’ puleeeze !). A lump, the length of a bicycle pump, jumped in Jeff’s throat as he immediately plumped for that song, ‘Only Sixteen’, composed and sung by some Sommy he’d never heard of till then, called Cooke.
Another Cooke from Hell’s Kitchen, not, would long have been one of his heroes. Indeed, in front of Reverend Henry’s (for it is he!) ironic statue in B-Fast our Jeff has been known to selfie stick his own cute, delph-delicate features for a bevy of same Kodak moments.
The Rev. H. Cooke, of whose huge iconic ebony statue we speak, was a contemporary of Ebeneezer Scrooge. His Rev’s reaction to the mere mench of Papes mirrored that of Punch’s depiction of them. Angelic Evangelicals to Le Chef du Jeff were bonfire-bright and psalm-itchy rich for having seen the light. For hymn-singing him the motto of the candle-quenching Roman C lot whom he saw as St. Peter’s pence-pinching not-an-inchers, and from whom perennially rose the stench of anti-sanctity, was:
-Darkness is cheap.
Mutt barked;
-I’ve already made moves to have that machless statue swopped with the implacable plaque of Fr. Pat Noise (sic) on Liffeyside and which appeals to my own uniquely funny boniness, on a timeshare basis between B-Fast and DUPlin.
Yet another one of Mutt’s crass-border initiatives.
-Why? asked Jeff.
-Because, replied the unflappably infallible Mutt, the Cooke Statue is known ‘The Black Man’ while the original name of DUPlin was ‘Blackpool’.
-Gotcha ! answered Jeff.
All in the name of Aloysius, aka Cuddly Anti-Catholicism (C.A.C.) , for which DUPlin has been designated a Shared Space, going forward and backward, in shareness.
Furthermore, Craig Douglas.
-Craig Douglas?
The checked fact in a check shirt was that Craig Douglas had an OK hit with his UK cover version of:
–Only Sixteen.
(Actually, a UQ verson; for one does not require a 17-storey high IQ such as Mutt’s to know that UQ is the correct acronym for the UK. An ack assiduously avoided, and understandably so, by the loyal and servile Hausfrau-proud hacks of the Nodalong Newsmedia in Occidental England. Because, mar is léir le cloisteáil, it is pronounced like a non P.C: ‘Uck’ )
Craig it was who appealed to Jeff, the reason for which no Bill need be Posted. Douglas, of course, was the Man who was an Island of sanity for Mutt to, erm, gauge his tail-wagging reaction by, Times out of number. Watch the Dog tooling after his own tail in a three-legged race even as a Manx cat laughs.
Miaow, too, before we even knew it.
TUILLEADH LE TEACHT: TO BE CONTINUED
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