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Friday, April 20, 2012

Have you listened to Farse?

Farse clearly had to rely on their music and not their looks/money.

Farse are one of a few bands that received solid rotation on that most joyous of tv stations, P-rock, before disapearing into relative obscurity. But they are still revered by those of us who bust them out on road trips and drinking sessions on the reg. Ska is a dangerous genre to attempt, especially by a group of white lads from the UK without a brass section. Farse however didn’t let this hold them back and wrote some of the best ska-punk singles of all time, brilliantly encapsulating the formula of major keys, backing/dual vox hooks, song structures that are along the lines of ‘so, then we’ll play the same chords but like, heavy, with distortion and stuff’, and a vocal style with more rolls than Galway deli counters go through in a week.

Their biggest hit (or at least my favourite song) is Hopskotch, a minute and a half of energy and hooks!

  •  No idea of the lyrics..don't think there were any official lyrics..
  • DEM rrrrolls!
  • Such a DIY video, srsly, there's about 50 seconds of footage hacked together and copied/pasted
  • Is Rasta dude at 00.27 in the band or not? He pops up a few times...
  • And then it's over and I want moar!
And with wanting more of the same in mind, it's lucky that they stick tight to their forumula for most of their songs


  •  How should we start it...another drum intro? deadly.
  • 'hey how about you sing woahs instead of hah! at the end of my lines, and then we can sing back and over in the chorus, I mean it worked once..' 'sweet, yeah let's go with that.'
  • DEM RRROLLLS. Best thing ever.
  • 1.01 - harmonies, noice.
  • Bass/drum bridge with scratching over it = nevar not cool!
  • And back to the chorus, here we go again you say?
  • MOAR.
This is more punk rock I guess...


  • Srsly, you can't say they got attention for their looks..and is he wearing his own tshirt at 00.08
  • Super DIY videos ftw, clearly an old house belonging to a relation...
  • Yep I can confirm he's wearing a farse tshirt. Were they really that poor?
  • 00.36 lololol
  • I love that the one dude in the denim is clearly TRYING TO STAY TRUE to his metal/rock roots and probably joined just to be in a band.
  •  Makes me nostalgic for the days of playing in a shitty room in a band made up of ppl who just wanted to be in a band tbh
  • Wood pay top dollar for a farse t-shirt
  • Drummer is pretty good I think?
  • Dat miming to the outro, haha
I know they'll only appeal to a certain type of person who grew up not knowing that ppl who like ska aren't meant to like metal and you can't be punk without being super lame about politics and not having fun.

3 comments:

  1. I was really proud of them and miss the days when they played music together... My favourite members were Ollie (the singer), he sings and screams very well! and Chris Badham... he plays the bass very very veeeeeery well! And how cool were them! In my opinion Ollie is an handsome man and so is Chris!
    One of the last punk-rock band I ever heard! Sad they didn't get the fame they deserve!

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  2. Chris Badham was the bassist of the King Blues until they split last year. There are no official lyrics to Hopscotch - the band ran a competition on their website in 2003 for fans to submit their versions of the lyrics. Shame the site no longer exists. Boxing Clever is now on youtube in its entirety. Love Farse. One of my favourite bands of all time.

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  3. I remember reading about that competition!

    ["There are no lyrics to this song. Well, not exactly none, you can work some bits out, but Ol just makes it up each time we play it live, and pretty much made the verses up when we recorded it as well."]

    This is pretty accurate haha http://www.metrolyrics.com/hopskotch-lyrics-farse.html

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