Songs: Good Cooking

notes / gigs / releases

I need some good cooking
Need some good cooking
I need filling up with Vitamins B12, C and A
I need some good cooking
But the back of my cupboard ain't too good looking
And a little bit of loving on the side wouldn't go astray

Well it's the end of the month and there's no money left
I've got a bag of chick peas and a loaf of bread
A knackered bag of lentils and a solitary can of beer
There's a pint of milk that's older than me
Something brown and furry that's supposed to be cheese
And a bit of frozen pizza in the freezer from the Thatcher years

I need some good cooking
Need some good cooking
I need filling up with Vitamins B12, C and A
I need some good cooking
But the back of my cupboard ain't too good looking
And a little bit of loving on the side wouldn't go astray

Well you can't make a curry from an oxo cube
There's no taramasalata in a toothpaste tube
The bank inside the sofa can't buy another bag of chips
I want to dine out in style but i'm bloody skint
I've got 27p and a polo mint
And a natural aversion to another buttered weetabix

I need some good cooking
Need some good cooking
I need filling up with Vitamins B12, C and A
I need some good cooking
But the back of my cupboard ain't too good looking
And a little bit of loving on the side wouldn't go astray

So I'll have a bit of beer and I'll boil the peas
Add a dash of gravy and avoid the cheese
Put them altogether and it tastes like crap
So I'll stick it in the bin and run around to your flat

I know that you get paid
On a different day
And if you let me in your Larder you can steal my heart away

Hey!

I need some good cooking
Need some good cooking
I need filling up with Vitamins B12, C and A
I need some good cooking
But the back of my cupboard ain't too good looking
And a little bit of loving on the side wouldn't go astray

Published by Wipe Out Music Publishing

It was the end of the month, I had no money to go out with, and so I found myself stood in the kitchen playing my guitar, wondering what on earth I was going to have for tea... and as if by magic, this song appeared. Who can understand the mysterious process of creation eh?

Well, most of the items listed in the song were actually in my kitchen at the time, so that helped, and the only really tricky bit came with the last line of the second verse - it used to be "a natural aversion to yet another ... weetabix" which didn't scan properly and, for me, dragged the whole song down. I worried about what to do with this, and then on the night I was recording the vocals, walking to the studio, the "buttered weetabix" bit hit me on the corner of King Richard's Road and Narborough Road (see FACTMAP). This line was based on the much-mocked Student Reminiscences of my dear step-dad, who always insisted that this was the only thing he could afford to eat when he was a student. During especially affluent times he'd soak his Weetabix in SOUP.

The tune makes it one of those Jolly 12 Bar Blues-Based songs I knock off every now and then (like "Red and White Sockets", or "Another Man's Laundry"), and the finished song hung around at the back of my mind for AGES. It appeared on two seperate demo tapes that I did for the band, but that was more because I enjoyed playing it than due to any serious intent to record it. When we DID record it it was for something else altogether - Ray Dann, a lovely chap who puts gigs on in Winchester, was thinking of doing a Country & Western Album, with bands either covering C&W songs, or doing new stuff in that IDIOM, and he asked me if we could do something. As it happened we were going into the studio to record "The Fair Play Trophy (again)" the next week, so we did the basic track for this whilst we were there.

It was EASY. Everything just flowed very simply, including Tom's FANTASTIC bit of FIDDLE playing. He did two takes of it and we SPLICED them together, but everything there is just him playing as if POSSESSED. He was amazed, we all were amazed, it just sounds PROPER. It was probably this that tipped the balance, and we decided to stick it on our album too.