A Very Personal Music Report 2 “The Beautiful South”

The Beautiful South
1988-2007, GB

Paul Heaton & Jacqui Abbott
2013-

Jon Got The Tickets

        In the early summer of 2019, I was starting to feel sad most of the time. It was a freshly-arriving kind of sadness, which you don’t know how big and destructive it would be or how long it would be sticking with you. And it was not the kind you always have in your base, that you are familiar with and that you know you can ignore when you are happy and busy enough.
        My friend, Jon, often walks his dog in the Amsterdamse Bos, it’s a huge forest park. Axe, Maria-Jose, Tamsin and I joined him and his dog, when we wanted. Francien and Beli were usually too busy to come. Lola was already back in Madrid then. Arek was,......transparent. So often 3 or 4 of us were in the park, walking, chatting and spotting mushrooms, for about 2 hours, followed by a coffee and cake break near the goat farm. Joining this activity made me feel good. It was therapeutic. The sounds of birds, friends’ voices, crushing the dry or wet leaves on the ground, tall trees, dead trees, moss, squirrels, sudden drizzles of rain and unexpected rays of sunshine, ….. These things that my senses sensed combined to form something  a sort of cell membrane around me, in my imagination. This flexible, thin wall was ready to protect me from the new clouds of sadness that was looming over me.

        Anyway, maybe, the needing of those walks helped and I was the best in terms of participation. And Black-Jack, Jon’s dog, liked me the most. Probably, that’s why I, luckily, came up in Jon’s mind when he was looking for someone to go to a concert with.
        He had bought 2 tickets far in advance. His wife was not interested. Neither did his children. The tickets were for an English pop rock group called, The Beautiful South, performing in Paradiso, Amsterdam. Paradiso was formerly a church, but has been a place for pop concerts, a club and a cultural center for several tens of years. A beautiful, exciting place.
        The Beautiful South was very popular in England and was active between 1988 and 2007. Although in 2019 they had already broken up for a long time, 2 main performers among them came and played. Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbott.

Their Songs

        Their music feels really nice and comfortable to your ears. Although I think some of the lyrics are a little too vulgar to be appropriate for the country’s standard “Mind your language”, and I may be wrong, but I think British people may like it that way.
        I love the rust of “Good As Gold (Stupid As Mud)” that goes like this. (This one is not vulgar, just peaceful, nice and innocent.)

 I want my love, my joy, my laugh, my smile, my needs
Not in the star signs
Or the palm that she reads
I want my sun-drenched, wind-swept Ingrid Bergman kiss
Not in the next life
I want it in this
I want it in this

        I like how they rhyme the words, too, as in “Prettiest Eyes”. I think these ways of rhyming are difficult in my native language (Japanese) , thus not so common to try. (But it’s easy and used very commonly in Chinese, in case you think I am a Chinese.) So the rhyming sounds especially nice and interesting to me.
Examples of Rhyming ends from “Prettiest Eyes”.

Now you're older and I look at your face
Every wrinkle is so easy to place
And I only write them down just in case
You should die
------------
Well my eyes look like a map of the town
And my teeth are either yellow or they're brown
But you'll never hear the crack of a frown
When you are here
You'll never hear the crack
Of a frown

But most of all, my favourite is “Don’t Marry Her, Have Me”. No explanation.

Conclusion

         There is fun music everywhere. I should explore more and soak my head in it. By doing so, there will be no time left for getting depressed. Don’t be afraid, the woman in 2019!