Ted Chippington - To Fenton 1 Mile

It's been a long while since I featured Ted Chippington on the blog but those original posts still get plenty of hits, and it's worth mentioning that Ted has a new 10" vinyl record out (in the shops - if there are any left?)

To celebrate, I won't post any tracks but I will say that it has plenty of stuff on the record that isn't listed on the sleeve, so tuck in.

BUY Ted Chippington - Blues Fan 10"

Instead enjoy these scans of the legendary Ted fanzine that (I think) came with early copies of the Man In A Suitcase album. My copy is missing the back page for some reason

And as if that wasn't enough, here's a vintage bootleg of Ted at his best in front of a big crowd at Rock City in 1986 (supporting Fuzzbox on the Vindaloo tour)

Ted Chippington Live at Rock City 1986 - download

Edward Barton

Edward Barton scares me. Pictures of him scare me, his voice scares me and his songs scare me.

Even his Wikipedia Biography scares me a little bit.

Yet scary as I find him, there is something oddly compelling about his songs. This is one of his more instructional numbers, as he teaches you how to be a successful musician. Simon Cowell (who scares me only marginally less) should be taking notes.

Edward Barton - Listen To Edward

If you like that then check out the videos if you're feeling brave (including his bizarre appearance on Wogan as a member of Tears For Fears..)

He apparently has released a new CD recently called And A Panda but I'm not sure if I dare listen to it. Someone tell me if it's any good.

As a bonus - and because I've not mentioned anything Ted Chippington-related for a long while, here is Ted's only marginally unnerving cover version of Barton's "Z-Bend"

Ted Chippington - Z-Bend

The Frankosonic Christmas Compilation 2009

Isn't Christmas great? Those who know me best know how much I love Christmas..particularly the way it dovetails so neatly and conveniently with my birthday..

So here is my christmas gift to you all - the best festive album in the world ever, containing some of the less frequently heard Yuletide hits

Just over an hour and 15 songs to play on Christmas morning when you're opening the presents. Your Nan will love it.


01 The Kinks - Father Christmas

02 MC Chris - Fuckin' Up My Christmas

03 The Maytals - Happy Christmas

04 The Research - For Christmas I Got Pityriasis Rosea

05 King Missile-Jesus Was Way Cool

06 AC-DC - Mistress for Christmas

07 Edward Schreiber - It's the Most Jesusful Time of the Year

08 Cristina - Things Fall Apart

09 Basement Five - Last White Christmas

10 Ted Chippington - Tesco Christmas

11 The Fall - (We Wish You) A Protein Christmas

12 Run D.M.C. - Christmas In Hollis

13 Ed's Redeeming Qualities - Christmas In Vermont

14 Can - Little Star Of Bethlehem

15 Stina Nordenstam - Soon After Christmas

Download a tidy zip file here

Half-time Round-up

Whilst I've not exactly been setting the world of speed-blogging alive, I am still on the case and have a couple of new posts planned this week. Honest I do.

Big excitement for me personally on the blog front though when I received a comment on my Better Beatles post from a "JeanpSmith" - who it turns out was the original vocalist from The Better Beatles and she hints that the full Better Beatles session (they recorded an albums-worth) getting a release soon!

As I said at the time, info on the band was scarce (YOU try googling them..) but armed with a name I quickly found a great post on Crud Crud which contains a little more of the history and a longer comment from Jean explaining the origins of the band.

I never really intended to just blog old stuff, but I'm a sucker for reminiscing - and I don't like passing judgement on new stuff until I have the benefit of hindsight. Baggy has served me well in that respect. Nonetheless it seems that I've had a pretty good hit rate when it comes to digging up the past.

A comment on my inaugural Seymores post alerted me to Dave Fera's new band Big Blue Marble. Great stuff that retains a lot of the melody and melancholy of The Seymores

Since my first Ted Chippington post, he's come out of retirement, done a load of gigs, been on TV and released a boxset of his work! Last week I got a nice package through from Ted with recordings of a couple of the latest gigs and a little note signed "cheers chief"...priceless

Dave Howard Singers have also apparently just re-released their back catalogue (including various mixes of Yon Yonson) and Dave is still recording new music. Check his Myspace and snazzy new official site

A kindly soul sent me a copy of some more amazing stuff by Those Naughty Corinithians after my post thereof. It's just served to make me wish I knew a bit more about them though..

And finally since I posted the BOB Peel Session, Richard from the band contacted me to say they were also resurrecting plans to release a BOB retrospective due to renewed interest from the weird wide web. Official website on the way and some unreleased tunes on their new BOB Myspace. Richard also has some great solo stuff on his own Captain Black Myspace which is well worth a listen if you loved BOB.

Thanks to everyone who has left comments and got in touch so far, it really does make it all worthwhile! Keep it coming..

Ted Chippington - News

My original Ted Chippington post has been by far the most downloaded of my occasional ramblings on here (possibly because someone included the link on Ted's Wikipedia entry?). So, as there is a fair bit of Ted news going down at the moment, I thought I'd offer a quick round-up and a brief excerpt from his Leicester gig at the back end of last year.

First up, Stewart Lee is doing a piece about Ted on BBC2's The Culture Show on Saturday 3rd Febraury at 7.20pm where they will presumably be plugging both Ted's gig at The Bull & Gate, Kentish Town and also the Tedstock benefit gig at London's Bloomsbury Theatre on 5 February in order to raise money to fund the release of "Walking Down The Road - A History Of Ted Chippington" 4 CD boxset retrospective available now from Big Print Records at gigs or via mail order to bigprint@hotmail.com.

Tedstock will include performances from Stewart Lee and Richard Herring, who will also be performing together as Lee and Herring for the first time in seven years, as well as Kevin Eldon, Simon Munnery, Simon Amstell, Phill Jupitus, Josie Long and Robin Ince.

Stewart Lee's new piece in The Guardian about Ted is HERE

As if that wasn't excitement enough - someone has also posted Ted's legendary appearance on BBC's Pebble Mill At One back in 1986 doing "She Loves You" and being interviewed by a smug idiot in a neck brace.

From Ted's Leicester gig last year - a tender new song about world politics and a tale of life in Torquay.

Ted Chippington - World Politics

Ted Chippington - Life In Torquay

Ted Chippington - Pull Up

Apologies for posting about Ted AGAIN...but I just got a copy of the SnubTV performance and uploaded it to YouTube.



Also to help plug the 3 gigs Ted is doing at the end of November

Nov 24 2006 Little Civic Wolverhampton
Nov 25 2006 Exeter Hall Oxford
Nov 27 2006 The Criterion Leicester

More details via Ted's MySpace page

Ted Chippington - update

Further to my post about Ted Chippington a couple of weeks back it's now been confirmed that he's BACK (and now he's a Reverend apparently..) with a few support slots on the new Nightingales tour!

Oct 7 2006 The Junction, Bristol
Oct 8 2006 Joiners ,Southampton
Oct 9 2006 Cavern Club, Exeter

Sadly I won't make any of these as they're way down south, so fingers crossed for some more dates soon

He's now also got a MySpace here

A 4 CD boxset of Ted's collected work is still due to come out but no scheduled date yet.

Also, cheers chief to Tom at the (always excellent) IndieMP3 blog for the link

Ted Chippington

The first thing that struck you about Ted Chippington's stand-up routine was the way people would give a cheer, a few seconds into a gag (more often than not his signature joke "Can you tell me how far it is to the Railway Station from here mate?") in much the same way that (I imagine) Robbie Williams gets a cheer when his band strike up the opening bars of "Angels".

Also you would leave the show, ever so slightly disappointed if you didn't hear your favourite variation of the "walking down the road the other day" gag. And this was long before Newman & Baddiel told us Comedy was the new Rock'n'Roll...

In between the stand-up he would self-consciously boogie over to his cassette player, press play, and then deliver his interpretation of a rock'n'roll classic over the cheesy backing track. A sort of twisted West Midlands karaoke in monotone.

I think these were always my two favourite tunes of his - the anti-version of Dion's "The Wanderer" and a heartbreakingly sad (but at the same time hilarious) rendition of Alvin Stardust's "I Feel Like Buddy Holly"

Ted Chippington - The Wanderer
Ted Chippington - I Feel Like Buddy Holly

Half the fun of a Ted gig was his interaction with the audiences who were generally either baffled, overly aggressive or laughing so hard they were in physical pain.

Rather than slip out of character, Ted would deal with hecklers using the same deadpan technique that was winding them up so much in the first place.

Ted Chippington - The Front-End Of An Ass
Ted Chippington - I'm Ted Chippington

There is a rumour going round that Ted might be forced out of retirement to do some more shows in 2007 to promote a boxset of his work which is supposedly being planned on the back of The Nightingales reunion. Personally I can't wait. A forgotten comic genius.

Rockin With Rita Video (with Fuzzbox & The Nightingales)
Ted Chippington on Wikipedia