The Complete Flanders & Swann

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a b Williams, Michael (2011). On the Slow Train: Twelve Great British Railway Journeys. Random House. p.1. ISBN 9781848092082 . Retrieved 5 June 2018. First and Second Law"—a jazzy setting of the first and second laws of thermodynamics. "Heat is work and work is heat..." "Heat won't pass from a cooler to a hotter / You can try it if you like but you far better notter / Cos the cold in the cooler will get hotter as a ruler..." "Heat is work and work's a curse / And all the heat in the universe / is gonna cool down / because it can't increase / so there'll be no more work / and there'll be perfect peace" / [Swann] "Really?" / [Flanders] "Yeah, that's entropy, man."

By Air"—about the vogue for air travel. "I agree with the old lady who said, 'If God had intended us to fly, He would never have given us the railways. '" British singer-songwriter Frank Turner covered "The Armadillo" in his "Mittens" EP. [16] See also [ edit ] A Transport of Delight"—with an increasing refrain about the "Big six-wheeler, scarlet-painted, London Transport, diesel-engined, ninety-seven–horse-power omnibus". (The bus was probably the AEC LT-type, which served London from 1929 until the 1950s, and had six wheels instead of the more normal four. [13]) Have Some Madeira M'Dear"—an old roué sings to an ingénue about the merits of that wine, hinting that he has seduction in mind, with complex word-play, including three oft-quoted examples of syllepsis. The Gasman Cometh"—a verse-and-chorus song in which a householder finds that no tradesman ever completes a job without creating another, related job for another tradesman. The melody quotes from " Dashing Away with the Smoothing Iron". [7] The title may have been inspired by that of The Iceman Cometh (1946).Slow Train"—an elegiac song about the railway stations on lines scheduled for closure by the Beeching Axe in 1963. A Song of Reproduction"—about the then topical mania for do-it-yourself hi-fi as an end in itself. (Making much of the jargon of the hobby: "woofer", "tweeter", "wow on your top", "flutter on your bottom" and in a line added for the stereo remake: "If you raise the ceiling four feet, put the fireplace from that wall to that wall, you'll still only get the stereophonic effect if you sit in the bottom of that cupboard.") The closing verse references singers who were not necessarily in the contemporary public consciousness, Enrico Caruso having died in 1921 - "With a tone control at a single touch/ I can make a Caruso sound like Hutch". In December 1956, Flanders and Swann hired the New Lindsey Theatre, Notting Hill, to perform their two-man revue At the Drop of a Hat, which opened on New Year's Eve. [3] Flanders sang a selection of the songs that they had written, interspersed with comic monologues, accompanied by Swann on the piano. An unusual feature of their act was that both men remained seated for their shows: Swann behind his piano and Flanders in a wheelchair (having contracted poliomyelitis in 1943). [3] The show was successful and transferred the next month to the Fortune Theatre, where it ran for over two years, before touring in the UK, the United States, Canada and Switzerland. [3] Ill Wind"—Flanders's words sung to a slightly cut version, with cadenza, of the rondo finale of Mozart's Horn Concerto No. 4 in E flat major, K.495. It has to be sung since Flanders's French horn was apparently stolen. Los Olividados— a satire on bullfighting, about "the almost unbearable drama of a corrida d'olivas, or festival of olive-stuffing". "A cruel sport: some may think it so. But this is surely more than a sport, this is more than a vital artform. What we have experienced here today is total catharsis, in the acting out of that primeval drama, of man pitted against the olive." The title is a reference to Los Olvidados, or The Forgotten Ones, a 1950 movie by the director Luis Buñuel.

Flanders and Swann's songs are characterised by wit, gentle satire, complex rhyming schemes, and memorable choruses. Flanders commented during the recorded performance of At the Drop of Another Hat, Tried by the Centre Court"—a Wimbledon match between Miss L. Hammerfest and Miss Joan Hunter-Dunn, as told by an exasperated umpire. "They are bashing a ball with the gut of a cat". Although most of the stations mentioned in Flanders's song were earmarked for closure under the Beeching cuts, a number of the stations were ultimately spared closure: Chester-le-Street, Formby, Ambergate, and Arram all remain open, and Gorton and Openshaw also survives, now called Gorton. Some stations referred to in the song have since been re-opened, notably Chorlton-cum-Hardy. It had closed in January 1967, but re-opened in July 2011 as Chorlton tram stop. Flanders and Swann both attended Westminster School (where in July and August 1940 they staged a revue called Go To It) [2] and Christ Church, Oxford, two institutions linked by ancient tradition. The pair went their separate ways during World War II, but a chance meeting in 1948 led to their forming a musical partnership writing songs and light opera. Flanders provided the words and Swann composed the music. Their songs have been sung by performers such as Ian Wallace and Joyce Grenfell. In 1963, Flanders and Swann opened in a second revue, At the Drop of Another Hat, at the Haymarket Theatre. [3] Over the next four years they toured a combination of the two shows in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, the United States and Canada, before finishing at the Booth Theatre on Broadway in New York City. On 9 April 1967, they performed their last live show together. [3] Ten days later, they moved into a studio and recorded the show for television.Over the course of 11 years, Flanders and Swann gave nearly 2,000 live performances. Although their performing partnership ended in 1967, they remained friends afterwards and collaborated on occasional projects. Holimakittiloukachichichi"—another (short) song of implied seduction, this time in the kingdom of Tonga, where the word means "no". Built-up Area"—a prehistoric inhabitant of Salisbury Plain complains about a new development: Stonehenge.

Davies, Serena (20 October 2007). "The Armstrong & Miller Show". The Daily Telegraph . Retrieved 7 November 2012. The Wompom"—a tale about a fictitious all-purpose plant each of whose parts is an excellent raw material of a different kind.Du Noyer, Paul (2003). The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Music (1sted.). Fulham, London: Flame Tree Publishing. p.421. ISBN 1-904041-96-5. Kirby Muxloe is regularly proposed for re-opening with the freight-only Ivanhoe line remaining between Leicester and Burton; however, a scheme re-appraisal by Scott Wilson in 2009 suggested there was little likelihood of the line reopening to passengers. [11] Williams, Michael (2011). On the Slow Train Again. Random House. p.1. ISBN 9781409051244 . Retrieved 5 June 2018.