Taken from their forthcoming album Hold Fast, set for release on August 21st 2020, Stick in the Wheel have shared a new animated video for their latest album single Villon Song.
They tell us that Villon Song is a cant song, translated into London slang by W.E. Henley: Villon’s Straight Tip To All Cross Coves. Francois Villon was a 15th Century French poet who although well versed in the arts found himself on the wrong side of the tracks and the law. William Ernest Henley was a late Victorian poet who was also one-legged and apparently the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson’s Long John Silver in Treasure Island.
For those unfamiliar with cant, you can always head to the British Library and check out George Andrews’ ‘A Dictionary of the Slang and Cant Languages: ancient and modern, as used by … every class of offenders’ from 1809. It contained words and phrases spoken by the underworld…a sort of secret language which, for anyone that has read Oliver Twist (who had trouble understanding the cant language) was spoken frequently by the Artful Dodger thanks to Dickens’ well-trained ears. It was also referred to as ‘flash’, a term given by British convict James Hardy Vaux who also wrote a vocabulary of the Flash Language in 1812 which you can read online here.
In the sub-text description for the video Stick in the Wheel outline the warning behind the Villon’s verse.
For all your efforts to get money it’ll only be your ruin: “Booze and the blowens cop the lot”.
BLOWEN is “a prostitute”.
It’s made all the more menacing by the brilliant video by ZEROH who are Daniel Hardiker/Neil Hetherington. “This year is their 20th anniversary and they will be celebrating their diverse portfolio of work which includes collaborative and commission-based experiences working alongside Andrew Kotting/ Richard Billingham/ Kate Tempest/ Shelly Love/ The Who and others.”
It has a lovely raw hardcore edge…a far cry from the censored folk songs for the classroom. Something worth celebrating in my book…
And it’s deadly!
Pre-Order/Pre-Save Hold Fast: https://stickinthewheel.lnk.to/holdfast