#stackridge

7/21/25.

Many years ago I was watching Chico greats Vomit Launch play - they did an amazing version of The Bats' "Block of Wood". On that night, after each song, I kept yelling "Bats! Bats! Bats!". Larry Crane, the bassist, looked at me and finally said, "Alright, calm down." And they launched into "Block of Wood."

The Bats (3/4 Christchurch, 1/4 Dunedin...all New Zealand) mean a lot to me. When I got the email announcing their new album, "Corner Coming Up", I was sitting in the waiting room at my doctor's office, so I did not scream, "Bats! Bats! Bats!" out loud, but, in my heart I did.

"Lucky Day" and "Loline" are the two initial singles that will serve to tease/entice us until the rest of the album comes out in mid October on Flying Nun.

FLOSTRE: This Pythagoras was an interesting character. Everything is numbers – that's quite a smart idea. And he had his theorem – Pythagoras's Theorem, you know the one. Where would we be without it? Let's hear it for the square on the hypotenuse.

[The more suggestible contingent among the audience bursts into applause and cheering on cue.]

MUFFLED VOICE OFF-STAGE: Never mind the hypotenuse. Where are the dancing girls?

FLOSTRE: As I was saying before I was interrupted, Pythagoras has his theorem. But as well as that, he had some… comment dire? Outré ideas. He founded a sort of monastery at a place called Croton, where his followers had to obey lots of rules. Above all, they had to avoid eating beans. This was very important to Pythagoras.

MUFFLED VOICE OFF-STAGE: Why not tell them about his golden thigh?

FLOSTRE: We are not concerned with wild stories, just the facts. His followers were forbidden to eat beans. But the main thing for Pythagoras was metempsychosis.

MUFFLED VOICE OFF-STAGE: Sounds as if he should see a psychiatrist.

FLOSTRE: En effet, but metempsychosis really means the transmigration of souls. The idea that the soul is immortal and, after death, is transferred to another body. Which brings me to Stanley Green. [A solitary whoop from the back of the auditorium. Flostre acknowledges the cheer with a grin.] Somebody knows Stanley, I see.

[The band plays a few bars of Do The Stanley. Nobody recognises it except an elderly audience member, who is instantly transported to the beer-soaked dance floor of Churchill College disco in 1974, to the consternation of his wife who suddenly finds herself next to an empty seat.]

Stanley Green was – as you say in English – a nutcase. Although that's perhaps not the mot juste, because Stanley didn't approve of nuts. Nor of any protein: meat, fish, eggs, cheese, peas – and beans. He used to stand in Oxford Circus holding up a placard exhorting the passers-by to avoid all these foods. He said that they promoted lust, and that was something Pythagoras didn't like either. At least, not for his followers. So we know what happened to Pythagoras's soul.

MUFFLED VOICE OFF-STAGE: But we don't know what happened to his golden thigh, do we?

FLOSTRE [In a more sombre tone.]: Poor Stanley's been dead for some years now, so Pythagoras's soul has been transferred to yet another body. So if you come across somebody preaching against eating beans, transmettez-lui mes amitiés. Give him my regards.

- “Nueva ola setentera. Buena canción, creo que de los  Squeeze. Debe ser bastante rara porque jamás la había escuchado y talo y cualo…”.

- “Pues mire, no, son Stackridge en 1974, uno de los grupos de la “temible” era prog. Pero en el fondo tiene vd. razón, porque para el caso es lo mismo. Y en 2 mins, 37 secs”. 

“Fundamentally Yours“ es la canción que abre “The Man In The Bowler Hat”, tercer larga duración del grupo de Bristol. Más motivos para profundizar en su música. Otro pillado, pero en versión USA "Pinafore Days", grr... ¿Stackridge baba? Pues pónganme un litro. Y no lo olviden nunca: Teruel es sixties.

Stackridge: “Do the Stanley” (1973) If Monty Python’s Flying Circus had been a progressive folk-rock band… Meet southwest England’s Stackridge, the band who had the distinction of being both the opening and closing act at the first Glastonbury Festival in September of 1970. Their singular, quirky stylings sound a bit like a musical bridge between the Kinks’ more lighthearted fare and…