Songs: Praise The Traffic Warden

notes / gigs / releases

Call the police and form a cordon
Let's all praise the traffic warden
They keep our cities safe
If they should clamp you
You really should say "Thank You"
It's your own fault if you left your car too late

Leicester was the first place to have them
With their black and yellow suits
Double Yellow Lines are always on their mind
As they walk by in the smart Doc Marten's boots

Before they came to be the Bobby on the Beat
Was in charge of Traffic Control
But now they catch the crooks while the wardens fill their books
Leaving us all free to Rock and Roll

So, call the police and form a cordon
Let's all praise the traffic warden
They keep our cities safe
If they should clamp you
You really should say "Thank You"
It's your own fault if you left your car too late

It's your own fault if you left your car too late

Published by Wipe Out Music Publishing

In 1995 the organisers of Abbey Park decided to have a week of events beforehand, during which I organised the "History Of Life" rock opera, which was GRATE. The next year I tried to do a similar thing called "Leicester's GRATE!". Like "The History Of Life" this involved people from loads of bands in Leicester coming together to form new bands and write new songs based on topics they'd been given, all with a central theme. Unlike "The History Of Life" half of them didn't bother to take part and it didn't really go off as well although it did generate a couple of songs that had longer lifes, the other being a song called "Clocktower Lights", which was covered by Airport Girl. AUSPICIOUS eh?

Anyway, this is the only full-band song from the Say It With Words sessions which ended up on Milk & Baubles, possibly because all the members of The Durham Ox Singers were on The Focus Group, and so probably voted it down due to the TERRIBLE EVENTS that happened in the recording session. We tried to record them clapping along in the "break down" bit, you see and ... well, it wasn't pleasant, let's just leave it at that.

It does feature some pretty ace playing though I reckon - Ollie was extremely pleased with his bass playing on this one as it was a style very DIFFERENT from what he was used to playing in his own band, and who can feel anything but JOY upon listening to Mr Machine's AXEWORK on this one? I love the bit at the end, and have been known to try and pass it off as my own on more than one occasion, it's TWANGTASTIC!