Take The Flags Down

Lyrics for all of the songs can be found on our web-site (see link on the left).

Nine of the tracks on “Season 2” were released previously on two EPs, “happy 4 less” and “Teenage Wasteland”. These EPs were reviewed on the BBC's Gloucestershire web-site.

A few quotes from the review:

"Television of Cruelty betray a typical English attitude to their songwriting that began with The Kinks and Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd, worked its way through to Blur and Pulp in the mid-nineties before landing in the hands of the likes of Franz Ferdinand and the Kaiser Chiefs."

"On the early-Pink Floyd meets Bowie meets Ooberman 'Teenage Wasteland', Television... [Of Cruelty] envisage a band’s line up of 'God was playing lead guitar/and Jesus playing bass/and angels doing vocals/singing right into your face'. But even here, the sense of quaint, English disappointment lingers."

"'Doncaster Sidings' features a wonderfully dreary lyric: 'I don’t think it rained that day/would’ve been too romantic/just dull, with the chance of more dullness later'. Pure Jarvis Cocker if ever you heard it."

"....let’s make a cup of tea, pass the cucumber sandwiches around and have another listen to some of the most English music on the planet."

(Note: We didn't really write the "essays" the reviewer complains about: they're actually snippets we found on the Internet that mention the concept of "the television of cruelty".)

Another article....

“UP THE JUNCTION”

Track-by-track guide to The Television Of Cruelty’s new album “Season 2”. Interview with Kurtz and G by Aaron Kelly for UK Radio Hostile fanzine, June 2006.

1. YOUR NAME HERE

Kurtz: I wrote this for a musical, actually. It was called “David Layne Is Going To Hell”, but apart from a couple of pages of dialogue, this is all I managed! It’s about being a 14 year-old boy and wanting a girlfriend. It’s a funny song, really. “How I love – YOUR NAME HERE!” Like those rubbish adverts for personalised mugs or something.

G: I think that it goes a bit deeper than that actually!

2. ENDLESS STREET

Kurtz: A lot of the songs are semi-autobiographical. This is about some people I met in Salisbury once. I went there for a job interview. I didn’t get the job, but I got a song! I was chatting to this barman about what Salisbury was like to live in when his ex-wife came in. They were quite young, and obviously they still got on really well, so it seemed sad they’d split up. She’d left the baby alarm on and the neighbours from the next flat were listening out for the kids. Then his new girlfriend came in and things got a bit frosty, so I left them to it. The next day I parked in a car park at the end of a street there called Endless Street. It all kind of tied in.
My mate Pete Brooks – he runs a design company called Z Design - has started a CGI video for the song, which looks stunning but it’s not finished yet. The album art’s taken from that.

3. SHOWGIRL

Kurtz: This is Lady M’s first big composition and it’s brilliant. That’s just not right, is it? My first song had three chords and a stupid lyric about driving round America. For me, this is Hollywood unhappiness, pressures of stardom, that sort of thing. We left the recording simple; I wanted to let the song speak for itself.

4. SWEET SUMMER RAINFALL

Kurtz: More partial autobiography! My wife Helen and I ran away to the seaside, years ago, when we were first going out. We just took off, hitch-hiked there on this really sunny day. In this story, they don’t stay together and years later the bloke wonders what their lives would’ve been like if they had.

G: The taste of gas takes me back to Freshwater Caravan park in the '70's, the waltzers to Folkestone seafront and the leafy lanes leading down to the sea to North Devon. This is holiday romance at its finest, and as English as seaside rock, fish and chips and days of rain.

Kurtz: For me, it’s a song about growing up.

5. TEENAGE WASTELAND

Kurtz: This was co-written with John Bingham. John and I were in a band called The Waiting List in the late 80s, early 90s. Helen was in the band too. We played a sort of mangled folk-punk. Had a few singles out. Real singles, on vinyl! And we were on a few compilation albums. John wrote the lyric as a history of Rock ‘n’ Roll in three verses – brilliant.

G: Great piano solo from Lady M.

6. DONCASTER SIDINGS

G: One of many almost meaningless journeys taken as a youth, totally at the mercy of incomprehensible timetables, humourless officials and inexplicable delays. This one has been immortalised in song.

Kurtz: I’ve slept on Doncaster station. Twice. It felt like this.

7. BIG GIRL’S BLOUSE

Kurtz: Lady M again. This one’s got a load of Northern English references in it. A big girl’s blouse is what? – a weak bloke, I suppose. She’s having a go at him. “Pull yourself together!”

8. GUILTY (NOT GUILTY)

G: Asks a serious question, weaves conflicting patterns and rhythms like the conflicting thoughts of the jurors, leaves everything unresolved and is yet positive and life affirming in spirit.

9. MIDSUMMER DREAMING

G: It’s about choices and reflections. Reflections of light on water and reflections on choices made, not made and still to be made. All set against the ever turning wheel of time.

Kurtz: This was recorded pretty much as soon as I’d put the tune to G’s words. Lady M came up with the harmony and we were off.

G: I wrote it on a drive through the Cotswolds on a bright and breezy day, it’s located in many places - in England of course - and firmly in the imagination.

10. TAKE THE FLAGS DOWN

Kurtz: This seems to say a lot about the 7th July bombings in London last year, but I wrote it before that happened. It’s actually about the Queen’s Golden Jubilee in 2002. Boo sings it brilliantly. Billy Bragg wrote a similar song at the time called “Take Down The Union Jack” – I didn’t find out ‘til later.

G: Brooding, ominous. Paints an impressionist take on the events of the times.

Kurtz: I was worrying that England was becoming more right-wing. There’s also a reference to the mad grief that went on after Princess Diana died.

11. SEVENSEVEN

Kurtz: This actually is about the 7th July bombings. I wanted sadness and war and defiance and summer sunshine, all mixed up. I love Jak’s sax part.