Part of an irregular series of bite-sized posts about 7″ singles I own – shameless nostalgia from the days of vinyl. (Search ‘Backtracking’ to collect the set!)
ROBERT WYATT – Shipbuilding b/w Memories Of You (Rough Trade, 1982)
| “Somebody said that someone got filled in For saying that people get killed in The result of this shipbuilding.” |
This is the best looking single in my collection with its handsome gatefold colour sleeve that opens to a colour reproduction of a detail from Stanley Spencer’s painting from the 1940s – ‘Shipbuilding On The Clyde : Riveters’.
Apparently it was released with four different editions; mine shows a worker with a brazier on the cover, others show workers with ropes , with tarpaulins or hammering.
The words are by Elvis Costello, the music by Clive Langer and the inimitable voice is by Robert Wyatt’s which draws out the beautifully judged mix of the vernacular and the poetic.
Shipbuilding is rated number 9 in the New Statesman’s Top 20 Political Songs and that magazine stiffly describes the song as a “Complex examination of the futility of war combined with empathy for soldiers in the Falklands conflict”. Continue reading
