Subject: Lyr Add: THE DEAR GREEN PLACE (Adam McNaughtan)
From:
Susanne (skw)
Date: 02 Jan 05 - 08:30 PM
Happy New Year everybody!
I've put the days off to good use by working out, on the basis of Robinia's and Steven's info, most of the lyrics of Adam's song. Maybe Steven and John can help with filling in the last blanks:
THE DEAR GREEN PLACE
(Adam McNaughtan)
Chorus:
The Glasgow I belong to is the dear green place
It's the Capital o' Culture, it's a damn disgrace
It's Kelvinside and Calton, pan loaf, plain breid
It's the Tron and the Tramway and the Sarry Heid
I was born in Dennistoun, Glasgow E1
I made butter in the boattle, jumped the dykes and kicked the can
At dodgie-ball I ducked, at Whitehill I dived
There was naeb'dy then tae tell you that your childhoood was deprived
For my uni education I went over tae the west
Walkin hame frae union dances is the bit that I mind best
Two o'clock in the morning has a magic all its own
Even in the Woodside Road and Dobbie's Loan
I began my teaching in the northern housing scheme
That neighbourhood unit of the corporation's dream
Their plans were well intentioned but tae say the least bizarre
Twenty thoosand drinkers and no a single bar
I've looked on the southside now two decades and a hauf
You can tell the way I'm talking that I've became a toff
It just only goes to show you how one lives and learns
You'd swear I'd been born in Claxton? or in Newting [Newton] Mearns
Workers' City, Merchant City, Glasgow on the Clyde
It's the workshop of the Empire, East End, Soothside
Frae Castlemilk tae Possil, Drum tae ?rovin Mill
I belong to Glasgow and I always will
The CD (yes, it's on 'Last Stand at Mount Florida') fortunately has extensive notes by Adam:
[1996:] Glasgow developed as a city of over a million inhabitants. The present population of 670,000 could do with a city two or three sizes smaller, which would need fewer buses, fewer schools and lower rates. It is confidently predicted that the city will be bankrupt within a decade, but you would never guess this from the rate at which we are opening art galleries. This epidemic of art is a minor trouble; we also have problems of unemployment, drugs and violence. [...] The chief function of my singing is to cheer myself up. [...] Drugs and violence you can read about in the papers.
In 1990 Glasgow became 'Cultural Capital of Europe'. As soon as it had been nominated for the title, an opposition group was set up to claim that this was simply a public relations exercise to benefit the bourgeois establishment. They saw the newly-created city centre residential area called 'The Merchant City' as the stronghold of the moneyed classes and so adopted the title 'Workers' City' for their group. I just enjoyed the confrontation. Confrontation is in Glasgow's nature.
'Dear Green Place' is the commonly accepted meaning of the Celtic place-name Glasgow. The chorus of the song opposes East End (Calton) to West (Kelvinside), and middle class theatres (the Tron and the Tramway) to a working class pub (the Saracen's Head). Pan loaf, as well as its obvious meaning of a loaf with crust all round, refers to posh pronunciation; to talk pan loaf is much the same as to talk with a bool in your mouth. The plain, or batch, loaf has a crust top and bottom.
The verses are reasonably accurate autobiography and range round the districts, which in pre-computer days were designated by a compass point and a number, as in Glasgow E1, which is more meaningful and memorable than G52. The reference to making butter was to a playground activity when you walked round shaking a medicine bottle half-full of milk until the milk curdled and solidified and was impossible to remove without breaking the bottle. My only regret about verse 2 is that I did not manage to work in the name of Bill Lambert's band, who were resident at the dances in the University Union throughout my student days. North Woodside Road and Dobbie's Loan form the route from West End to East. In verse 3, the 'neighbourhood unit' was the Corporation euphemism for housing estate. In a book issued to schools for use in Civics Lessons ('Glasgow Our City') it was applied to the then new Pollok scheme. The 4th verse picks up the linguistic confrontation hinted at in the chorus, echoes of which will be heard in several other songs. In older days when accent varied according to where you stayed rather than by class, one of the markers of the accent of the South Side was the retroveolar 'r', pronounced with the tip of the tongue turned back. 'The Drum' is an abbreviation of 'Drumchapel', the name of a housing scheme in the far west.
The most readable introduction to Glasgow is still 'The Second City' by Charles Oakley, the last edition of which was published in 1990. A mine of information is 'The Words and the Stones' by Carl MacDougall, (1990) though some readers may be irritated by the book's quirky arrangement. (Adam McNaughtan, notes 'Last Stand at Mount Florida')
And, Robinia, the CD title is a probably a play on words:
a) the contrariness that Adam is known to take pleasure in (see his comment on 'Cholesterol' as a small example), and
b) the demolition of the 'twin-towered stand' of Hampden Park football stadium up in Mount Florida, Glasgow (friends used to live just round the corner), which Adam, as a traditionalist and a football enthusiast, disapproved of. (See his song 'The Twin-Towered Stand' on the same CD.)
(Corrections below, please.)
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sj
