Ted MacDougall Sports

Ted MacDougall Sports Ltd, 1971.

Looking through my old football programmes in the attic the other day, I came across an old AFC Bournemouth programme from October 1971. To be precise, AFC Bournemouth were actually still Bournemouth and Boscombe, and their programme was an "official journal" called Head For The Top With The Cherries! Chock-full of excitement, it's a ripping good read from cover to cover...grainy black & white photos of Cherries players in action...facts & figures galore (a 16,000+ attendance for a midweek League Cup tie v Blackpool!)...and adverts! Lots of old adverts!

Visit the Cherry Bees Shop for all your ash tray needs (official club badge inscribed!), also bob hats, cuff links and driving gloves (red and black)! There's a photo of the shop window display - Football League Reviews on sale for 1p each! I don't know much, but what I do know is that if time travel ever becomes a reality, I'm going to stuff my pockets full of shiny new pennies and go shopping at the Cherry Bees Shop!

And if I have any left over cash, I shall then pay a visit to Ted MacDougall Sports and splash it all on the Cherries' brand new look - short shorts! With string! Years before Sports Direct and their ilk firebombed every other sports shop out of existence, there was a store in every town owned by an ex-pro. In Havant, we had Bobby Tambling Sports. I only had a vague inkling of who Bobby Tambling was, but my dad knew, and whenever I needed new football kit for school, this is where we bought it from.

Whether my dad was able to buy directly from Bobby himself, I'm not entirely sure, but put in the same position myself, if Andy Awford or Kit Symons ran a shop now and I thought I might have the chance to chew the fat with them whilst buying a pair of football boots for my son, I'd be there like a shot!

The old days were better days in many many ways. See Got Not Got for details...

The Indiepop Map of Great Britain

View The Indiepop Map of Great Britain in a larger map

You know that feeling you get when skimming stones at the beach, and after a dozen or so flompers (they bounce once and then just flomp on their side, sinking both themselves and your heart at the same time...), you suddenly skim the perfect stone - it bounces once, twice...eighteen times! Your breathing stops and you leap in the air with a yell and a woot! And then there's another twenty flompers...

The perfect pop song is like the perfect skimming pebble. The perfect pop song can be old or new, but it has to have spirit, it has to have spunk, it has to have that bouncing feeling, as though the music is walking on water. A lot of so-called indiepop gives me that feeling. There may be buzzsaw guitar, there may be primitive drums, thumping away like a scared rabbit; it may be gentle and sweet, but it has to be special.

Often, you hear a geographical reference in a song - tears at Bellshill Station as a lover disappears up the railway track perhaps, or a song about it raining at a football match. I thought it would be interesting to compile these references on to a map, so I did (with a little help from my friend Louise)! The map is shown above, and I've opened it up for everyone to edit, so if you can think of any relevant additions, please feel free to add them!

The key to the different coloured pins goes like this:

Yellow: a place is named in the song title.
Blue: a place is mentioned within the lyrics.
Red: where a band lived (usually taken from addresses on old vinyl sleeves).
Green: record label or shop addresses.
Purple: old fanzine addresses.

Footnotes:

I've only added one Half Man Half biscuit song from the many available. There is a separate HMHB lyric map to be found here.

My definition of indiepop will be different to everyone else's. I've included songs from related genres, such as the tuneful end of punk. So long as there's some independently-minded and spirited pop going on, that's good enough for me.

No metal.

UK only. If anyone wants to create a map for another region (or expand worldwide), be my guest.

Now, thinking caps on...

Alfred and Svetlana Went to Sea in a Beautiful Pea Green Boat

Not exactly a pea green boat...

Alfred, formerly a fresh young carrot, had had an interesting life above ground. He could have bored for England with all the tales he had to tell of his evenings as an Elvis impersonator, of his nights as a superstar DJ, and of his days and days as a father to a can of whole baby carrots (and peas...can't explain that).

After their whole baby carrots had grown up and left home, Alfred and his model girlfriend Svetlana decided to buy a boat and sail the oceans, whale-spotting and generally soaking up the sun. They spent all their savings on a beautiful pea green boat (vintage, mint condition) off of eBay. But when it arrived, what a miserable surprise they had. It was neither beautiful, nor pea green. On the other hand, it was certainly vintage, as in "broken".

Ignoring their dream boat's woeful condition, they lashed themselves aboard anyway and set sail for who knows where. Nobody saw them go, and nobody has seen them since. I like to think that they're bobbing around on the Sargasso Sea, playing endless games of chess and feasting on fresh lobsters.

I suppose we'll never know.

Alfred and Svetlana

Alfred and his model girlfriend, Svetlana.

Alfred became more and more well-known on the party scene - a "face", a "number", a "dude"... He became an international superstar DJ for the hip young root vegetable set. His cheeky smile, witty banter and wads of cash attracted a raft of admirers, many of them female. He soon became inseparable from a tall, rooty* Eastern European model called Svetlana. He bought her the most expensive mohair jumper ever made, and then splashed out even more on a matching tiara and pink sunglasses. You could see how happy they both were in the photo.

Svetlana gave birth to a can of whole baby carrots (and garden peas...somehow...can't explain that). But the club music scene is unforgiving, and Alfred's style soon became old news. There were money troubles and psychological woes. His rise became a fall, and he fell hard...

* as opposed to "leggy". Carrots don't have legs.

Alfred, the Elvis Years

Don't you step on his blue suede shoes.

Carrots age quickly. It has been estimated that for every day that it's above ground and unrefrigerated, a fresh young carrot will age the equivalent of ten human years.

Thus it was that after only four days of partying, laughter and general mayhem, Alfred reached his Elvis impersonation stage. Dressed in his filthy cream jacket, hanging out with well-known pretend celebrities such as the fellas out of Nowaysis and Greenish Day, Alfred became a hit on the tribute act circuit, playing to frenzied audiences of frustrated accountants at Britain's barn conversion venues. He had a grand old time, but it couldn't end well, could it?