I'd go down on my knees, but nobody's to blame

[sovay]

From the Department of Seriously, Who Knew: Tom Courtenay originated "Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter."

I can find no other information about The Lads (1963) except that it produced at least three other songs (also written by Trevor Peacock) which don't seem to have become famous at all and hey, there's Ronald Harwood again. (And again!) I'm guessing it was about a band? Anyway, I like him better than Herman's Hermits.

I am off to the Coolidge Corner Theatre to try for Mahler auf der Couch (Mahler on the Couch, 2010). Chances of me not returning with Tom Lehrer stuck in my head: probably close to nil.

Comments

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

I think it might be skiffle? That's a genre of music I'm not really familiar with, but the song has a sort of plinky, comb-and-paper sound to it.

That could be it. All I really know about skiffle is that various people--ranging from the Beatles to Andy Irvine--started their musical careers in it and later went on to do the more the sorts of things which I've heard them do.*

I suspect this would be in the direction of skiffle, at least, although my mind associates skiffle more with tea-chest basses and cheap acoustic guitars playing very basic chord-book chords and less with... whatever's going on in the accompaniment here--my first thought was "some sort of plectrum banjo, but probably not in either of the normal tenor tunings, maybe even a banjo ukulele but probably something lower pitched than the usual soprano banjo-ukes that one sees" but now I'm wondering if it's maybe a regular ukulele (maybe a baritone?) or a (shallow bodied?) guitar being played up the neck and with a lot of damping for a particularly "plinky" sort of sound?**

I hope that's made some sort of sense. I should go to bed now, in any event.

*I'm also acquainted with a band called the Jackson Pike Skifflers, but I suspect the connection to U.K. skiffle is tenuous--they're more or less residents of the fixed-intonation (guitar, fretted banjo, the odd bit of mandolin) end of American old timey music.
**In case nobody's figured this out, it's years since I've played anything besides trad and my life revolves entirely around various mandolin-type-things. I'm pretty much grasping at straws here.