Fanny Adams' grave in Alton cemetery In 1869 new rations of tinned mutton were introduced for British seamen. They were unimpressed by it, and suggested it might be the butchered remains of Fanny Adams. "Fanny Adams" became slang for mediocre mutton,Sweet Fanny Adams stew, scarce leftovers and then anything worthless. The large tins the mutton was delivered in doubled as mess tins.
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Her assailant, Frederick Baker, a local solicitor's clerk, was one of the last criminals to be executed in Winchester. Fanny Adams' grave can still be seen in Alton cemetery. The brutal murder, so the story goes, coincided with the introduction of tinned meat in the Royal Navy, and the sailors who did not like the new food said the tins contained the remains of "Sweet Fanny Adams" or "Sweet F A". The expression "sweet fanny adams" has an old-fashioned slang meaning of nothing.
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In 2007 the group played in Germany, Belgium, Austria and Italy. In May of that year, the band played in Porto Alegre and Curitiba, Brazil, their first and only South American shows. The tour was called the 'Sweet Fanny Adams Tour'. The band toured again in March 2008 under the name 'Sweet Fanny Adams Revisited Tour'.
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The Battle of Alton occurred in the town during the English Civil War. It also has connections with Sweet Fanny Adams and Jane Austen.
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These or cooking pots are still known as Fannys. By the mid-20th century, many working class men were pretending to their sons and social superiors that their own favored expression, "sweet F.A.", stood for "sweet Fanny Adams" with its commonplace meaning of total inaction or downtime, while they and their peers used that expression among themselves to mean "sweet fuck all". Sweet Fanny Adams has lingered as a euphemism for that expletive.
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Illustrated Police News portrait of Fanny Adams Fanny Adams (30 April 1859 – 24 August 1867) was an eight-year-old English girl who was murdered by solicitor's clerk Frederick Baker in Alton, Hampshire, on 24 August 1867. The murder itself was extraordinarily brutal and caused a national outcry in the United Kingdom. Fanny was abducted by Baker and taken into a hop garden near her home. She was then brutally murdered and her body cut into several pieces, with some parts never being found.
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Vincent Melouney (born 18 August 1945) is an Australian guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter. He joined the bands Billy Thorpe & the Aztecs, Vince & Tony's Two, Bee Gees, Fanny Adams and he formed his own band: the Vince Melouney Sect.
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" The album had provided a single, "Got to Get a Message to You", earlier in that year. However Fanny Adams had disbanded ahead of the album due to "ill-advised boasts of their imminent success... internal dissent and high audience expectations" and had followed a fire at a Sydney discotheque, Caesar's Palace, which destroyed the band's equipment. According to McFarlane, "The story of Fanny Adams encapsulates one of the great disasters of Australian rock music. What sounded like a brilliant idea in theory turned out to be an ill-fated and short-lived affair for all concerned.
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The song was covered by the 1970s glam rock band Sweet, whose version topped the Australian singles chart in 1974, and was included in their successful album Sweet Fanny Adams. Catarina Valente reached #8 in Germany with her cover version in 1962.
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The song was released on the UK version of the album Idea, but on the US version, it was replaced by "I've Gotta Get a Message to You". Melouney prefers the Gibson ES-355 guitar and can be seen in several Bee Gees videos and live performances from 1967 to 1968. In November 1968, it was reported by the UK music magazine, NME, that Melouney's final concert with the Bee Gees would be on 1 December, following the end of their current German tour. In 1969, he formed a short-lived group, Fanny Adams, with Doug Parkinson on lead vocals, Teddy Toi on bass, and Johnny Dick on drums who recorded one eponymous album Fanny Adams.
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Further investigations suggested that two small knives were used for the murder, but it was later ruled they would have been insufficient to carry out the crime and that another weapon must have been used. Used to express total downtime or inaction, the military, manual- trade and locker room talk phrase "sweet Fanny Adams" has been in use since at least the mid 20th century, vying with a stronger expletive. Unusually, the phrase is not a bowdlerisation; "Fanny Adams" arrived in 1860s naval slang to deplore unliked meat stews. It broadened to mean anything badly substandard, then further so as to merge with the expletive sharing its initial letters to mean nothing at all.
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According to McFarlane after Fanny Adams had disbanded "Such was MCA's dissatisfaction with the split that the label effectively prevented Parkinson from recording for two years." In December 1971 the line-up fractured when Kennedy and McGuire joined their former bandmate, Leo de Castro, in Friends; while Green joined Gerry and the Joy Band.
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" Parkinson left to form another line-up of In Focus in February 1971. He is cited by Nichols regarding Fanny Adams: "we got into the studio and the truth came out. In my opinion Vince just couldn't play. Personal hang- ups... It was all done for Vince's production company... There was no musical freedom.
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It was on that foundation that Billy Thorpe earned his position as the unassailable king of Australia's early 1970s rock scene". By July 1971, Loyde with Johnny Dick on drums and Teddy Toi on bass guitar (both ex-Fanny Adams, Billy Thorpe & the Aztecs) performed as Wild Cherries, their set included "G.O.D." (aka "Guitar Overdose"). A five-minute version of "G.
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The American CD re-issue of this album includes the live version of the song "Need a Lot of Lovin'", apparently in error. The studio version was only available as a B-side of the single "Block Buster" and is available on the 2005 re-issue of Sweet Fanny Adams. The original American vinyl pressing used the studio version of "Need A Lot Of Lovin'".
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Fanny Adams recorded material for their eponymous debut album. It was produced by Melouney with all the tracks co-written by the quartet. The group relocated to Australia in December 1970; upon arrival Parkinson told national pop music newspaper, Go- Set, that "[we] will be the best band that ever trod this earth." They performed at the Wallacia and Myponga Pop Festivals in January.
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Fanny Adams (born 30 April 1859) and her family lived in Tanhouse Lane, on the northern side of Alton, a market town in Hampshire. The 1861 census shows that Fanny lived with her father and five siblings. The family were apparently locally rooted; a George Adams and his wife Ann, believed to have been Fanny's grandparents, lived next door. Fanny was described as being a "tall, comely and intelligent girl".
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An illustration of Fanny Adams' abduction by Illustrated Police News. The small market town of Alton had previously seen little crime during the 19th century. The afternoon of 24 August 1867 was reported as fine, sunny and hot. It was around this time that Fanny, along with her sister Lizzie and best friend Minnie Warner, asked Harriet Adams if she could go out to the nearby Flood Meadow.
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The Preto River is a river of Rondônia state in western Brazil, a tributary of the Jiparaná River. In 1827 British explorer Will Jenkinson was recorded to have canoed the length of the Preto River wearing nothing more than a cork hat, proclaiming in his diary, "It is hotter here than in Fanny Adams' bread oven." Part of the river's watershed is covered by the Jacundá National Forest, a sustainable use conservation unit.
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Outnumbered, the Royalists were forced into the Church of St Lawrence, where Bolle was killed along with many of his men. Over 700 Royalist soldiers were captured and bullet holes from the battle are still visible in the church today. Map of Alton, 1666 In 1665, Alton suffered an outbreak of bubonic plague, but soon recovered. On Saturday, 24 August 1867, an eight-year-old girl, Fanny Adams, was murdered in Alton.
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Several songs on the Sweet Fanny Adams album had to be sung by other members of the band. As time progressed issues between Connolly and other members of Sweet developed and he would find the band excluding him from decisions. Connolly developed a significant problem with alcoholism in the mid-1970s. During 1977, when no tours were undertaken and two of Sweet's most successful albums were recorded, the power struggle within the band became even more apparent.
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The Sweet toured Australia and New Zealand later in 1975, to much success. By the end of 1975, The Sweet had a number of albums in the charts plus two big hit singles, "Peppermint Twist" and "Fox on the Run". "Peppermint Twist" was also an Australian only release, being taken as a single, from the Sweet Fanny Adams album. The Sweet Singles Album itself was available right through the 1970s, before being deleted by RCA Australia, around 1979.
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Douglas John Parkinson (born 30 October 1946) is an Australian pop and rock singer. He led the band Strings and Things/A Sound from 1965 The Questions from 1966 and Doug Parkinson in Focus from 1968, Fanny Adams from 1971 and The Life Organisation from 1973. Doug Parkinson in Focus's cover version of the Beatles' track "Dear Prudence" (May 1969) peaked at No. 5 on the Go-Set National Top 40\. The follow up single, "Without You" / "Hair" (October), also reached No. 5\.
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Sweet Fanny Adams also featured compressed high-pitched backing vocal harmonies, which was a trend that continued on all of Sweet's albums. During sessions for the album, Brian Connolly was injured in a fight in Staines High Street. His throat was badly injured and his ability to sing severely limited. Priest and Scott filled in on lead vocals on some tracks ("No You Don't", "Into The Night" and "Restless") and Connolly, under treatment from a Harley Street specialist, managed to complete the album.
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By February 1970 Green and McGuire had returned and Rogers and Stacpool had left. The group issued another single, "Baby Blue Eyes" (May), which reached No. 36. The group disbanded when Parkinson and Dick relocated to the United Kingdom where, in June 1970. In 1970 Parkinson and Dick joined Fanny Adams with Vince Melouney on guitar and vocals (ex-Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs, the Bee Gees) and Teddy Toi on bass guitar (ex-Max Merritt and the Meteors, Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs).
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By 1974, Sweet had grown tired of the management team of Chinn and Chapman, who wrote the group's major hits and cultivated the band's glam rock image. The group and producer Phil Wainman, assisted by engineer Peter Coleman, recorded the album Sweet Fanny Adams, which was released in April 1974. Sweet's technical proficiency was demonstrated for the first time on self-penned hard rock tracks such as "Sweet F.A." and "Set Me Free". Sweet also adopted a more conventional hard rock sound and appearance.
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The band did not publicise the incident and told the press that subsequent cancelled shows were due to Connolly having a throat infection. This incident reportedly permanently compromised Connolly's singing ability, with his range diminished. No previous singles appeared on the album, and none were released, except in Japan, New Zealand and Australia, where "Peppermint Twist/Rebel Rouser", apparently released by their record company without their knowledge, gained a No. 1 chart position in the latter. Sweet Fanny Adams would be Sweet's only non-compilation release to break the UK Albums Chart Top 40.
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Their third album, Desolation Boulevard, was released later in 1974, six months after Sweet Fanny Adams. By that stage, producer Phil Wainman had moved on and the album was produced by Mike Chapman. It was recorded in a mere six days and featured a rawer "live" sound. One track, "The Man with the Golden Arm", written by Elmer Bernstein and Sylvia Fine for the 1955 Frank Sinatra movie of the same name, featured drummer Mick Tucker performing an 8 and half minute solo (although this was not included in the U.S. release).
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This line-up issued a cover version of "Jumping Jack Flash" in April with Meldrum producing, but it did not chart. McFarlane noted it was a "potent, six-minute rave-up fired by blazing guitars and crashing drums." The group broke up in September and de Castro formed a briefly existing band, Flite, with Capek on piano (by then ex-Carson), Barry Harvey on drums (Thursday's Children, Wild Cherries, Chain, King Harvest), Vince Melouney on guitar (Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs, Bee Gees, Fanny Adams, Cleves) and Barry Sullivan on bass (Thursday's Children, Wild Cherries, Chain, Carson).
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He also joined the Peucinian Society, a group of students with Federalist leanings. A member of the Phi Beta Kappa academic honor society and a brother of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity, Chamberlain graduated in 1852. Chamberlain married Fanny Adams, cousin and adopted daughter of a local clergyman, in 1855, and they had five children, one of who was born too premature to survive and two of whom died in infancy. Chamberlain studied for three additional years at Bangor Theological Seminary in Bangor, Maine, returned to Bowdoin, and began a career in education as a professor of rhetoric.
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Aunt Fanny Adams, famed artist, is the most notable citizen of the tiny New England town of Shinn Corners. A noted proponent of the naturalist school ("I paint what I see") who only began painting at age eighty, her income props up the local church, school, and almost everything else in town. When she is found murdered, suspicion immediately falls on a passing tramp named Josef Kowalczyk, and a planned lynching is nearly successful. It takes the combined efforts of the town's second-most-notable citizen, Judge Shinn, and his house guest, Major Johnny Shinn, to insist upon a trial by jury.
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Loyde resurrected the name in 1971 as a three-piece hard rock outfit with Johnny Dick on drums and Teddy Toi on bass guitar (both ex-Max Merritt & the Meteors, Billy Thorpe & the Aztecs, Fanny Adams). The new line-up of The Wild Cherries issued one single on the Havoc label, "I am the Sea (Stop Killing Me)" in November 1971. Raven Records included "I am the Sea (Stop Killing Me)" on the compilation Golden Miles: Australian Progressive Rock 1969–1974 released in 1994. The band appeared at the inaugural Sunbury Pop Festival in January 1972, but disbanded a month later.
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Fanny Adams' founder, Vince Melouney had left the Bee Gees when in London, after three-and-a-half years as their guitarist, in 1968. He secured a solo album deal with MCA Records in mid-1970 and wished to form a group to play material similar to Led Zeppelin. He contacted his former Aztec bandmate, Toi: the ex-pat New Zealander was in London doing session work. Then he asked Dick and Parkinson to relocate from Melbourne; both had been members of Doug Parkinson in Focus, which had won the Hoadley's Battle of the Sounds in 1969.
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British law at the time required that in the case of sudden death, an immediate inquest must be held under the jurisdiction of a coroner. In the case of Fanny Adams' inquest, Deputy County Coroner Robert Harfield was in charge of the proceedings which were held at the Dukes Head Inn in Alton on 27 August 1867. Alton's divisional police superintendent William Cheyney was in attendance, along with acting Chief Constable superintendent Everitt, who was representing Hampshire Constabulary. Coincidentally, the pub where the initial trials were held was opposite the solicitor's offices where Baker worked and very close to the police station.
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Sweet F.A. mostly exchanged Hot Trip to Heaven's electronic sound for a harder rock sound, showcasing more conventional songwriting. Despite the presence of loud guitars common to the airwaves in the late 1990s ("Sweet Lover Hangover" was a minor alternative radio hit), the album follows the structure of a classic head album, growing more experimental and disjointed as it progresses, culminating in the aggressive electronic dance of "Here Come the Comedown" and the chaotic "Spiked". The title refers to "Sweet Fuck-All," a modern variant of "Sweet Fanny Adams", which is common British naval slang for "nothing". "Fuck all else" is prominently sung by Daniel Ash throughout the title track.
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Sometime between 7:00 and 8:00 pm, Fanny had still not returned home, prompting Harriet Adams and a group of neighbours to search for her missing child. As the evening was setting, the group began the search in The Hollow, to no success. In the nearby hop garden, however, labourer Thomas Gates (a Crimean War veteran who partook in the famous Charge of the Light Brigade) found the head of Fanny Adams stuck on two hop poles, while he was tending to the crops. An ear had been severed from the head, which had two large cuts, from mouth to ear across the temple.
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The late 1971 line-up of McAskill, Carlos, Henson, Jeffrey and Stirling, also worked as Barrie McAskill's Bear Brigade or McAskill's Marauders. They toured to Adelaide but folded in early 1972 after Carlos and Henson the Australian production of Jesus Christ Superstar, in Sydney in May 1972. Carlos remained with the production until it closed in 1976. In early 1972 McAskill put together a short-lived group, Barrie McAskill's People, with Michael Barnes on guitar (ex-Nutwood Rug Band), Ken Firth on bass guitar (ex-Tully), Vince Melouney (ex-the Aztecs, Bee Gees, Fanny Adams, Cleves, Flite) on guitar and Kevin Murphy on drums (ex-Wild Cherries, the Aztecs, King Harvest, Chain).
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Their manager Robert Stigwood says, "Barry is the Bee Gees coordinator, I used the word advisedly, as there is no leader of the group as such. He has a tremendous feel for soul music a la his composing work for The Marbles, but he is also a fantastic solo singer in his own right". The first song recorded for the album was "I Laugh in Your Face" on 12 July 1968, the same day the group recorded "I've Gotta Get a Message to You" (released from the American version of the group's fifth album Idea). After recording eight songs for the album, guitarist Vince Melouney left the group amicably and joined the group Fanny Adams, wanting to pursue a more bluesy direction.
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The Sweet was a compilation album released as Sweet's debut album in the US and Canada, substituting for the 1971 UK album Funny How Sweet Co-Co Can Be. (The band's second album, Sweet Fanny Adams was also not given a US release, but tracks from that and the band's third album Desolation Boulevard were combined on the US version of that album to compensate for this.) The album consisted primarily of singles and B-sides released in the UK and Europe in 1972 and 1973. One of the singles, "Little Willy", was Sweet's first and biggest hit single in the US. The singles "Wig-Wam Bam", "Hell Raiser" and "Block Buster" were also on the album. Commercially it did not do well, only reaching No. 191 in the Billboard 200.
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With the opening of the novel, the island of Leshp, which had been submerged under the Circle Sea for centuries, rises to the surface. Its position, exactly halfway between Ankh- Morpork and Al Khali (the capital of Klatch), makes the island a powerful strategical point for whoever lays claim to it, which both cities do. In Ankh- Morpork, a Klatchian Prince named Khufurah is parading through Ankh-Morpork, where he will be presented with a Degree in Sweet Fanny Adams (Doctorum Adamus cum Flabello Dulci), but an assassination attempt occurs, and the Prince is wounded. Sir Samuel Vimes, Commander of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, begins investigating the crime, originally suspecting both a Klatchian named 71-Hour Ahmed and a senior Morporkian peer, Lord Rust, of being involved.
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