Victoria Wood - Lucky Bag

[Darrell]

Here is a special download for you - my rip/remaster/encode of Victoria Wood's classic 'Lucky Bag' LP, released in 1983 and recorded during her first ever solo tour. Never reissued on CD (for no adequately explained reason), this offers over an hour of absolutely flawless standup, monologue and songs both comic and straight.

Anyone dismissing Ms Wood as cosy, blunt or safe could do worse than to hear this set - absolutely vitriolic in places, and displaying an absolute refusal to suffer fools gladly. Pretty much entirely still relevant today too - the song 'Northerners' for instance could work perfectly as a barbed attack on the recent career of Peter Kay.

1. Opening
2. Put It Out Of Your Mind
3. Playtex Discontinued
4. Thinking Of You
5. Funny How Things
6. Keeping Fit
7. Don't Do It
8. What We Find
9. Fourteen Again
10. Love Song
11. Depressed
12. Dear God
13. Brontes
14. Had It Up To Here
15. School Debate
16. Bastards
17. Music And Movement
18. Northerners

Download here:
http://download.yousendit.com/90933F4E27BB67D2

[Pinball]

A very talented woman, and a superb download - thanks Darrell! :-)

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

Brilliant, Darrell - I have a vinyl copy, but it's scratched to fuck in places.

[peet]

Ta very much. I would ask to have your babies, but fickle biology won't allow it.

[alan strang]

An utterly fantastic little album. All those marvellous Vic Wood songs which seldom get an outing these days - magnificent.

Cheers to bits.

[neveragain]

The same from here, oh so much so and putrid words could never as much as begin to reach the still-unobtainable heights of even the tiniest of all the majesties inside of your smallest.. et cetera. Ta!

[Bert Thung]

Cheers Darrell, I gave up 20 years ago on ever being able to hear this bloody album. Only ever heard an extract of The Brontes (on an Adrian Juste Show), so looking forward to hearing the full thing.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

They're absolutely incredible, those songs. And there's a slight edge to them which, fantastic though she was later years, is sort of unique to her early 80s stuff.

I came out at a lesbians' ball
Didn't feel glad to be gay at all
Whoever said that - Tom Robinson was it?
I couldn't agree, and got back in the closet

And a reference to Jonathan James Moore's beard! Well, presumably.

'I've had trouble with...well, snot. Hey, that's why we come to the festival so we can use these words...'

'I'm sorry, I don't find humour funny...'

And 'Bastards' is scary as hell. 'The coq au vin reminded me of both'

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

My first exposure to Thinking Of You was in the 1989 Comic Relief scriptbook - I remember reading the lyics and wondering how on earth it all scanned. Very cleverly, as it turned out.

[Paul Dee]

Thanks for this Darrell! Ooh, I've never heard 'Fourteen Again', it being the inspiration behind The Smiths'  'Rusholme Ruffians'.

[Darrell]

Thanks for this Darrell! Ooh, I've never heard 'Fourteen Again', it being the inspiration behind The Smiths'  'Rusholme Ruffians'.

Yes, it's worth mentioning that this is one of Morrissey's favourite LPs!

[Godzilla Bankrolls]

Amazing! I recently picked up those little Wood sketchbooks so I've been on the hunt for some more Lucky Bag material. Thanks Darrell!

[lazyhour]

I came out at a lesbians' ball
Didn't feel glad to be gay at all
Whoever said that - Tom Robinson was it?
I couldn't agree, and got back in the closet

That's an odd one, though, because Robinson's "Sing if you're glad to be gay" was supposed to be a rather ironic and satirical statement, wasn't it?  So did Miss Wood misunderstand it, or pretend to misunderstand it for the purposes of her song?  Or am I double-misunderstanding?

Thank you very much for this, Darrell!  I very much look forward to hearing V Wood's early, angry material.

[alan strang]

So did Miss Wood misunderstand it, or pretend to misunderstand it for the purposes of her song?

The latter I think. She's not singing in the first person there - it's supposed to be the observations of an old schoolfriend.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

Glad to be Gay was Robinson's dig at complacent gay people who pretend that homophobia doesn't exist, but he also intented it as an anthem in its own right. Either way, I think it works.

[alan strang]

Sing along, y'all...

[La Tristesse Durera]

Thank-you so much for this, I listened to it last night in bed, and the damn place has never felt so warm. She's nothing short of a genius, she's one of my idols, although I can't help feeling that because of my age, I've all but missed out on the career of someone I know I would have cherished (this LP comes from two years before my birth). After having heard this though I'm going to definitely track down some more of her stuff.

Thanks again, truly commendable effort, Darrell.

[All Surrogate]

Thanks, Darrell; had no idea about the Morrissey connection. :-)

[Bert Thung]

Namesakes (incomplete) - Victoria Wood Radio 4 (1991)

Fourteen minutes of a 1991 Radio 4 documentary series.

"Now if you're fortunate, or unfortunate enough to have a famous namesake, you've probably suffered more than your fair share of embarrassment and misunderstandings. But for six namesharers at least some of the mysteries surrounding their famous counterparts has been lifted. With Nick Baker, they've been to meet their namesakes, and find out what they can about the private person behind the public image. First up, the two Victoria Woods"

EDIT - I appear to have accidentally wiped over the second half (sorry) with a Chain Reaction, where John Cleese interviews William Goldman. Is this in circulation? Also, another lengthy interview with Cleese from the late eighties/early nineties where he chats about faith (more interesting than it sounds, he almost re-enacts the entire church sketch from Meaning of Life).

[Jemble Fred]

I went to Uni with a girl called Victoria Wood (plus a Jennifer Saunders) and there's another Victoria Wood where I work. They're multiplying!

[Godzilla Bankrolls]

Does anyone know if those scriptbooks I mentioned above were from actual drafts? Because some of the directions are great.

SHE DIES AGAIN, RELUCTANTLY

[Bert Thung]

Kaleidoscope Special - Victoria Wood On Tour (1993)

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=8NQWLLOK

Running Time - 28mins 41secs

   * First broadcast on 1993-05-15
   * Recorded on 1993-05-07

Description
In a rare interview Victoria WOOD talks to Paul ALLEN as she embarks upon an eight month countrywide tour. Produced by Adrian Washbourne."

http://open.bbc.co.uk/catalogue/infax/programme/FK+93820_1

[Bert Thung]

While Marr took his inspiration for Rusholme Ruffians wholesale from Elvis Presley, so Morrisey borrowed freely from the work of his latest idol, Victoria Wood.  He had already joked about the possibility of marrying the comedienne, and she had publicly responded with the witty announcement "Morrisey and I have been married for 11 months, though due to touring commitments, we have yet to meet". He paid here th ultimate "compliment" by hijacking her song "Fourteen Again" and transforming its sardonic nostalgia into a lacerating satire on mind-numbing proletarial leisure.  In Morrisey's landscape, the fair becomes a carnival of violence tinged with bitter romance ("someone falls in love and someone's beaten up") ; the scene is viewed through a jaundiced eye, dulled by the oppressive atmosphere and stimulated senseless by flashing lights nad whirling sounds. Morrissey, as the detached and cynical observer, displays a prudish attitude towards female vanity ("Her skirt ascends for a watchful eye. it's a hideous trait on her mother's side") and a wariness of moneygrubbers ("an engagement ring doesn't mean a thing to a mind consumed by brass [money]"). These lines recall that "fat girl" in William, It Was Really Nothing. who asked "Would you like to marry me and if you like you can buy the ring?" and whome, we were told, didn't care about "anything".  By the end of Rusholme Ruffians, Morrisey's Mock  misogyny and pessimism about human relationships is not quite sufficient to destory his devout faith in love, even if he has to walk home alone in dulled submission.
The images presented in Rushholme Ruffians are sordid, aggressive and doom laden, in striking contrast to Wood's more chirpy, undetached nostalgia.   Morrisey significantly begins his song with a violent scene ("The last night of the fair/by the big wheel generator/a boy is stabbed / and his money is grabbed"), which undercuts the humouress innocence evoked by Wood ("The last night of the fair/French kisses as the kiosks shut/Behind the generator with your coconut"). Similarly, whle Morrissey focuses on girlish guiles, Wood suggests a more transparent form of mutual exploitation ("Free rides on the waltzers off the fairground men/For the promise of a snog"). Wood reminisces fondly about the French kissing exploits during which "The coloured lights reflected the brylcreem in his hair". Such requited passion has no place in Morrissey's fairground. Although he concedes that "the grease in LOL NO hair of a speedway operator is all a tremendous heart requires" sexual fulfillment is thwarted and a spurned schoolgirl ends up contemplating romantic suicide by leaping from "the top of the parachutes". At least Wood and Morrissey agree on the importance of self-mutilation (cf "I want to be 14 Again/Tattoo myself with a fountain pen" and "scratch my name on your arm with a fountain pen/this means you really love me"), but otherwise their perpective and experiences of Manchester fairgrounds could hardly be more contrasting.
It si fascinating to observe Wood's characteristic self-effacing, but affectionate, adolescent recollections juxtaposed to Morrissey's almost cinematic melanchony. They both share an appealing laconic style and dour wit, but Morrisey's world view is more threatning, pessimistic and painful. Wood looks back with comfortable bemusement, whereas Morrisey engages totally and frighteningly with his own past. The extent of Morrissey's borrowings from the comedienne is noticeable, but less important than the subtle way in which he uses such material.  This is "functional plagiarism" at its best - an art familiar to writers from Sterne and Wilde to Elliot.  Rusholme Ruffians remains the most extreme example of blatant adapion from both Morrisey and Marr. Beneath the song's structureare the twin ghosts of '(Marie's The Name) His Latest Flame' and 'Fourteen Again', strangely united in unique, and not entirely unmischievous hybrid.
- Morrissey and Marr  The Severed Alliance by Johnny Rogan (pages 219-220)

[Bert Thung]

Some great VW clips for you all

University interview - Love this sketch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AwsegxfzN8

Kelly Marie-Tunstall - The original Vicki Pollard
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20ESChkImDA

And a couple absolute masterclasses in how to do naturalistic comedy. Two spoof documentaries you used to get at the end of "As Seen on TV"

Flatmates - VW, Christopher Strauli and Deborah Grant as gormless, Southern English flatmates. "Who are the be-atles?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVrksPx_qLs

A very funny young man indeed - A fantastic spoof of a working man's club comic more obsessed with his perm than what his actual comedy's like. I assume this is based on some of the twats VW had to share a New Faces with.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sGpI6Eth-U

[Bean Is A Carrot]

An Audience with Victoria Wood's on at 10:50pm on ITV3 tonight, incidentally.

[Bert Thung]

An Audience with Victoria Wood's on at 10:50pm on ITV3 tonight, incidentally.

Cheers for reminding us. I wish people would go on about that as much as they do Richard Pryor concert films, cause it's amongst the best hour and a bits of stand up ever.

Anyway, here's another great sketch
   
Just An Ordinary School
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4OtdcqyDVw

Spoof documentary of public school girls from 'Victoria Wood As Seen on TV' from 1985.

Stars Felicity Montague (later to become Lynn in 'I'm Alan Partridge' (and sharing the same headmistress with 'Mind Your Language')

[The Mumbler]

I only watched An Audience With again about six months ago, but it was that or Spamalot, and I think I made the right decision.  It's great, especially the first 20 minutes ("We've got some friends of Wincey Willis, and some people from Guildford.").  I miss her being on TV immensely.

[Jemble Fred]

Well she'll be back on soon – except in a wartime drama with probably only intermittent flashes of wit. Still, I'll be watching.

Why the fuck aren't ITV doing more Audiences With? It's one of their strongest brands, they should be making at least a few a fucking year. So many dream names you could line up for it.

[Bert Thung]

It's one of their strongest brands

Was, until The Spice Girls, Tarby and Al Murray came along.

[Jemble Fred]

Well I'm not dropping my dream of An Audience With Fry & Laurie for anyone.