Wednesday 31 May 2017

May #1: Coming Down Is The Hardest Thing



Saw my old gigging mate Dave at the weekend, for the first time in about 18 months. Yes, we went to a gig. Probably my only one for this year. More on that soon. Anyway, he was telling me how he's taken the plunge and booked a ticket for Tom Petty's only UK date this year: Hyde Park in July. With Stevie Nicks in support. (What are the chances they'll do Stop Dragging My Heart Around?) I'm jealous, because Petty is pretty much top of my wishlist for artists I still haven't seen, but there's no way I could get to that gig. Even if I could afford it, I'm on holiday that week.

Maybe next tour, Tom, you won't just do one UK gig...

After the video, there's a silly little story I wrote a long, long time ago based on one of Tom's biggest hits...

1. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Learning To Fly




Learning To Fly

Jonathan started flying to work the day after the M62 pile-up. Two lorries, five vans and fourteen cars, three of which were indisputably Audis. He didn’t get home ‘til after nine. Missed Property Ladder with Sarah Beeney, which Jess had asked him to video because they were doing Sheffield, so he caught hell from his girlfriend on top of everything else.
He was sick of it. The delays. The queues. The road rage. The utter lack of… civility. The vanity plates with their 4’s that were supposed to be A’s and 7’s straightened into T’s. The off-white vans with ‘I wish my wife was as dirty as this’ and ‘She is, mate’ finger-written on the back. The way that whenever you left a decent stopping distance on the motorway, some arsehole always pulled into it. The taxi drivers. The skip wagon drivers. The motorcyclists. And, yeah, the Audi drivers. Eight years he’d been doing this journey now, to and from a job that wasn’t worth half as much effort, and he couldn’t take it anymore. So the next day, he left his car at home and flew. It took him just over quarter of an hour, from Huddersfield to Leeds, as the crow flies. After that, he was kicking himself – why hadn’t he ever thought of this before?
            He tried to calculate his average speed by putting a ruler on his Big AA Road Atlas of Britain (pages 64 & 65 – rather annoyingly, his exact destination lay smack in the centre binding), but got pissed off because he couldn’t figure out the simple mental arithmetic that’d allow him to work out miles per hour. Throwing the Atlas across the living room, he knocked over the Aloe Vera plant on the windowsill, spilling soil down the back of the radiator. Genius! Similarly, he struggled to estimate the average height of his flight-path – high enough to be mistaken for a bird from the ground, he reckoned, but not so high he was in any danger of headlonging the jumbos circling for Manchester Airport. He half expected to be spotted lifting off, exiting every morning through the dormer window in the attic (riddled though it was with bastard woodworm) but he soon gave up worrying. People round here, they kept their eyes to the ground. Nobody looked up, not in this street. As for his landing, he touched down as a rule on the multi-storey carpark across from work. It rarely got so busy that anyone was parking on the top floor before nine.
            Bad weather could be a problem – but it had been when he was driving too. He didn’t get any wetter than if he were riding a bike to work, and he carried dry office clothes in his backpack, arriving in plenty of time to change in the Gents, even after that glorious extra half hour in bed. The rain didn’t bother him so much – OK, it bothered him shitloads, but he kept trying to tell himself it was invigorating. He thought about those crazy octogenarian Norwegians he’d seen in that documentary on Channel 5, starting each day with a naked dip in the icy fjord. They said it was good for you!
Low cloud was a pain though – not only was it like flying through a sauna (except one where the steam was freezing), but sometimes he ended up heading in the wrong direction entirely. One time he was halfway to Burnley, and only a near-collision with the Stoodley Pike monument set him right. Having broken a bone in his toe kicking the top of the monument in one hundred feet high dudgeon, he couldn’t put weight on that foot for a month, and really had to watch his landings.
            After a while, he started to take it for granted. Discovering he could fly had been an incredible moment (tapered by the irritating idea that if it’d always been possible, only he’d just never tried it before… he’d wasted so many unnecessary years walking, driving, and catching the bus), but that was as far as it went, and soon Jonathan wanted more. He tried out a few other incredible capabilities – breathing underwater, shooting laser-beams from his eyes, sending horny messages to Jess via telepathy – but nothing else took. It was the lack of physical strength that niggled him most, and not just because he should have been able to boot the top off that fucking monument… but because Jess wanted a lift.
            “Go on then, Storkman – take me for a fly!”
            But he couldn’t get off the ground with Jess in his arms, couldn’t even feel the boost from the soles of his feet.
            “You saying I’m too heavy?”
            “No… not at all. I couldn’t lift a skinny lass either…”
            So there was another argument. She wanted him to fly her to Paris. But even if he had been able to lift her, he didn’t think he could fly that far in one journey. He’d had to stop and rest for an hour in Kettering on his way to see Eric Clapton at Alexandra Palace (saved fifty quid on the train fare though!). What’d happen if he ran out of propulsion halfway across the Channel? Not that it really mattered, he had very little desire to go to Paris without Jess anyway (actually, he had very little desire to go with her, other than to stop her moaning about all the blasted romance – and was that any reason to do anything?) Anyway, after that, the flying really became an issue between them.
            “Maybe if you worked out – developed some kind of upper body strength – the stork could become an eagle…”
            But he wasn’t going to join a gym for anybody. And when Jess bought him the dumbbells from Argos, he lost it completely.
            “If you’re not happy with me physically, then sod off and find somebody else!”
            So she did. And two nights later, the police were at his door, with a warrant  for his arrest. His solicitor told him not to worry; the CPS couldn’t even decide what to charge him with. Public nuisance? Flying without a pilot’s license? Common assault was suggested, but no-one could take that very seriously. There was absolutely no precedent.
            “I haven’t assaulted anyone!” Jonathan protested.
            “They could try and argue,” his solicitor explained, in a drab, windowless office that really needed a good dusting, “that you’re putting anyone who witnesses you in the act of… ahem, ‘flying’… in direct fear of imminent force or criminal attack… though first the prosecution would have to demonstrate malicious intent on your part, or a propensity for violence which…”
            Jonathan hoped nobody had seen him booting the top of the Stoodley Pike monument; or kicking hell out of his neighbour’s dustbin that time it’d blown over, spilling yoghurt pots and teabags (how many teabags did that tosspot get through in one week anyway?) all over their shared back yard; or putting a brick through the windscreen of the green Audi with the ever-shrieking car alarm that was always parked on the end of their street, but didn’t seem to belong to any of his neighbours; or knocking over the temporary traffic lights up Scapegoat Hill that’d been stuck on red three nights running; or…
            In the end, he struck a deal. No more flying to work, and no charges would be pressed. MI5 wouldn’t be informed and The Sun wouldn’t be given his home address. Jonathan was resigned to the outcome; he’d always known it was too good to last. But he couldn’t go back to queueing on the M62 every morning, so he quit his job and went on the dole, supplementing his income while he waited for the first benefits payment to come through with various activities that he refused to feel any shame about. They’d driven him to it, after all, the bird-burglary (as opposed, you see, to cat-). Well, if they had him down as a bad guy anyway – why not?
He was cautious now though, taking care only to pursue such activities on dry nights, with no moon, so nobody would see him entering via the unlocked skylights, bedroom windows, and twelfth floor flat balconies that led to his loot. Wet nights, he stayed in and watched stolen DVDs.
            As for Jess, apart from the time she had to call out the chimney sweep to extract the dead stork from her flue, she never heard from Jonathan again. No great loss there. Her new bloke worked for Ryan Air, and flew her anywhere she wanted.  


Tuesday 30 May 2017

Randy Tuesdays #7: Taking It To The Limit

Steady on, ladies.

7. Randy Meisner

There's a game I like to play whenever I listen to an Eagles song: I try to guess who's doing lead vocals. Henley or Frey? I'm aware that occasionally it might be Joe Walsh, but rarely do I expect it to be Randy Meisner.

Mesiner came to the Eagles from the band that paved the way for them, Poco. He quit that band in the late 60s before their first album was released and was replaced on the album cover by a dog. He was a founding member of the Eagles along with Henley, Frey and Bernie Leadon, and co-wrote songs for each of their first five albums, most notably the one below on which he also sang lead vocals (the first Eagles hit not to feature Henley or Frey on lead).

Randy was described by other members of the band as a sweet, shy guy who didn't like being in the spotlight and the degree of fame the Eagles achieved in the mid-70s was too much for him... hell, when you read the stories, it must have been too much for any of them. He was replaced by the bloke who replaced him in Poco: Timothy B. Schmidt.




Sunday 28 May 2017

My Top ∞ Radio Songs #8: Wright Or Wrong?


At some point in my teens, I made the switch from Radio 2 to Radio 1. Perhaps it happened when Terry Wogan left radio for his TV chatshow... which was never the ideal medium for him, though I watched it regularly from the age of 10. You did back then. 7 - 9pm, you watched whatever your parents were watching. Wogan. Corrie. Dallas. Blankety Blank. The Two Ronnies. They say kids these days watch too much TV, but we watched a hell of a lot of it when I was growing up. Yet I still found time to read - lots of books and comics. And play computer games. Atari. Spectrum 48K. And play out too. Maybe there really was more time back then. We managed to cram so much in...

Anyway, Radio 1, when I started listening to it... I couldn't tell you who was on the Breakfast Show, because I never listened to that. But I do remember Simon 'Our Tune' Bates, 'Ooh' Gary Davis and his Bit In The Middle, Janis Long (particularly her Friday Night Selectadisc show, which I've mentioned here before) and Steve Wright.

I loved Steve Wright when I was a kid. Mr. Angry from Purley. Sid The Manager. Gervais The Hairdresser. (Different times.) The Perv. Dave Doubledecks. God, I loved Steve Wright In The Afternoon. I used to tape it while I was at school so I could listen to it when I got home. More than anything else, that was the show that made me want to be on the radio.

I can't listen to Steve Wright today. Of all the current Radio 2 DJs, I find his self-aggrandising "Big Show" the most switch-offable. Even Evans, who I've loathed since the days of TFI Fridays... I can even listen to him, in small doses, without wanting to chuck the radio out of the window. But Steve Wright...

Has Steve Wright changed or have I changed? I think a lot of both, actually. His current show isn't the one I grew up with. Arguably that "zoo format" became old hat and needed to be retired. I think there's still potential in it, but not for someone as smug as Wrighty. Nowadays, the DJs I gravitate towards are the ones who love their music and let that show. Music has always seemed like an unnecessary interruption for Steve Wright... and let's not even get started on Panic again. (I wonder if Steve Wright was one of the reasons I was so against The Smiths back then? He obviously hated them, and like all impressionable teenagers, I went along with the opinions of my heroes.)

Back then, I used to dream about being part of Steve Wright's "Posse". We'll come back to that another time, because there's a rather embarrassing story connected to it.

8. The Sports - Who Listens To The Radio?

I don't know where I came across this song. Somewhere on the blogosphere. Possibly The Dude... or maybe Brian. It strikes me as the kind of thing Brian would dig. I love it, anyway, and really want to track down more by the band, Aussie New Wavers from the late 70s and early 80s. Very reminiscent of early Elvis Costello, who obvious has a few radio songs of his own which we'll get to eventually.



Friday 26 May 2017

My Top Ten Roger Moore Songs


The best tribute I've read to Sir Roger Moore came from The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw, who concluded: "The Connery Bond was feared and admired... but the Roger Moore Bond was loved."

Roger Moore was the Bond of my childhood, and he will always be my Bond. Yes, those films might seem cheesy and corny now, they certainly don't have the grit of Connery, but they have a lot more warmth. And let's face it: Bond is essentially a ludicrous character. He works if you play him with a raised eyebrow (and no one had better eyebrows than Roger Moore), but take him too seriously and he becomes an unpleasantly violent, misogynist killer with little regard for the lives of innocents... which pretty much sums up the last two Daniel Craig films for me.


10. ELO - Can't Get It Out Of My Head

Sir Roger's first starring role on TV was in a BBC children's series based on Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe. Way before my time, but probably not before Jeff Lynne's...
Bank job in the city
Robin Hood and William Tell
And Ivanhoe and Lancelot
They don't envy me...
Apparently, Roger felt "a complete Charlie riding around in all that armour and damned stupid plumed helmet".

9. Robbie Williams - The World's Most Handsome Man

I know lots of people can't do with Robbie's cheeky chappie routine, or his humongous ego... but I find both quite endearing... in small doses... because I really don't think he takes himself at all seriously. Just like Sir Roger...
Y'all know who I am
I'm still the boy next door
That's if you're Lord Litchfield and Roger Moore...
8. The Toy Dolls - James Bond Lives Down Our Street

I tried to avoid songs that just reference James Bond for this chart: there are loads of them and I wanted my tribute to be more about Roger than his most famous role. However, The Toy Dolls do mention Roger (and Sean) in this ridiculous cartoon punk song, so...

7. Mansun - Moronica

Roger wasn't just Bond. Here's Paul Draper name-dropping the role that made him famous... The Saint.
You've got more halos than Simon Templar
You've said more Betty's than Frankie Spencer
Your gun is bigger than Captain Scarlet's
Your face is covered in cheap mascara
6. Scouting For Girls - I Wish I Was James Bond

As if Robbie Williams wasn't bad enough, let's further irk the musos with a pure slice of noughties piano pop. In my defence, Scouting For Girls may be annoyingly catchy, but they don't really sound like anything else that's been successful in the 21st Century. In fact, they remind me of Gerard Kenny...
Since I was a boy I wanted to be like Roger Moore
A girl in every port, and gadgets up my sleeve
5. Supergrass - Prophet 15

In which Gaz Coombes gets trapped in a cloud with an eclectic selection of heroes, including Peter Cooke, Oscar Wilde, Marvin Gay, Joan Of Arc, David Banner... and good old Rog.

4. The Kinks - Daylight

Being one of the greatest chroniclers of the English disease, it's inevitable that Ray Davies should namedrop Roger at some point...
Middle-aged bankers crack their backs and wish they were young and in their teens,
Lonely spinsters dream of dating Roger Moore or Steve McQueen.
3. Amy Winehouse - You Know I'm No Good

When asked why he thought Amy had included him in the lyrics of her hit single, Roger quipped that she must have wanted a word that rhymed with 'door'... or couldn't think of one that rhymed with 'Connery'.
By the time I'm out the door,
You tear men down like Roger Moore...
2. Pulp - 97 Lovers

Originally released in 1986 (yes, Pulp were around back then: this was just before their second album), just after my Bond hung up his Walther PPK for good. Roger Moore apparently hated guns and was often quoted, post-Bond, saying how he hated the way the franchise glamorised "men with guns". Maybe that's why he played up the comedic elements of the character. And I'm sure that's why he appealed to Jarvis, who always likes a good Roger...
I know a woman with a picture of Roger Moore 
In a short towel and dressing-gown pinned to her bedroom wall
She married a man who works on a building site
Now they make love beneath Roger every Friday night... oh!
1. Wings - Live & Let Die / Carly Simon - Nobody Does It Better

The two best Bond themes of the Moore era, from the band The Beatles could have been and the lady who found clouds in her coffee...




Now put your clothes on and I’ll buy you an ice cream.


Thursday 25 May 2017

May #2: Laughing & Crying With Brad


First off, I know: that is one freakin' awful album cover. I mean, you already decided not to bother with this post, right? And if that wasn't enough... this is Brad Paisley. The current king of Nashville. Glossy, corporate country music with not a drop of authentic Americana in sight. I should stop right here...

But...

But...

I love Brad Paisley. He's not only my favourite contemporary country star, he's also become one of my favourite recording artists of the 21st Century. He seems like a genuine bloke, not a spangly Stetson poster boy; a singer who's got where he is by playing all the obvious country cards... then opening up a second pack and dealing out songs about subjects country music rarely covers. The internet. The environment. Workplace sexism. Near death experiences. Bad people winning lotteries. Searching each other for ticks as a prelude to getting it on...

Brad regularly manages to make me laugh... and cry. Big, genuine, monster pipette tears. Yeah, I know, I cry a lot these days. At the stupidest things. I keep meaning to do a Top Ten Songs That Make Me Bawl Every Time I Hear Them... but I'm worried it would be too traumatic to listen to them all back-to-back.

Anyway, here's a song that has managed to evoke both those reactions... which you've got to admit is pretty rare. But it's probably just me...

2. Brad Paisley - Last Time For Everything

The tears came first. I was driving to work when I first listened to this song. And here was Brad - who's exactly the same age as me, minus six months - listing all the great experiences in his life that he'll never have again. That's what this song is about, beginning with the big teenage experiences that you quickly grow out of... or no longer need to worry about...
Using a fake ID at a college bar
Getting caught with a girl in the backseat of a car
Running out on the field for the senior game wearing number 17
There's a last time for everything
Yes, they're very American experiences. But I grew up in the 80s, my teenage years were filtered through over-exposure to American TV shows and teen movies. I can relate. Things get more universally emotive in verse three when Brad evokes memories of your grandparents and first pet you'll never see again. But it's the last verse when he really kicked me in the gut...
Kissing goodbye on her porch and driving away
Introducing her as your fiancee
Getting woke up at 5 am to see if Santa came
There's a last time for everything
Throughout the song he namedrops a couple of artists no longer with us - Glen Frey and Little Jimmy Dickens - remembering the last time he saw them perform live. We're reminded that any time could be our last time, for anything. Something I guess we've all thought about this week. So the song's final line... well, I won't spoil it, but by then I was blubbing. (And remember: this guy is called Brad Paisley...)

OK, so here's the song. I'm sure you won't end up a quivering mess like I did, but give it a try...



Then... prepare yourself for the actual video. Which turned the song on its head for me and actually had me grinning, even laughing by the end. Again, I'm the same age as Brad, so the cultural references he chooses to pepper the visuals with are right up my street. Knight Rider. Ghostbusters. Back To The Future. Raleigh Choppers and Sony Walkmans. Even a bit of Huey Lewis & The News. (Plus, as you may have already noticed, the song is built round a guitar riff which melds Run To You with Every Breath You Take.) But this time the kicker comes with the video's wonderfully timed celebrity cameo - a fluke, as it turns out, since the celeb in question apparently just turned up when he heard Paisley was filming because he's a big fan. It'll only make you really smile if you're the same age as me and Brad... but I watched the video four times in a row the day I discovered it. (If you dig it, make you sure watch right to the very end.)



Nostalgia's weird. It can make you laugh and cry in the same song. Enjoy it while you can.

This could be the last time... I don't know.


Wednesday 24 May 2017

May #3: If It's Wednesday, Mark Kozelek Probably Has A New Album Out



3. Sun Kil Moon - Seventies TV Show Theme Song

I gave this post that title as a jokey reference to the fact that Mark Kozelek has now stolen Prince's crown as the most (over?)-productive songwriter / musician in the music business. I mean, this guy makes Ryan Adams look like Evan Dando. (That's a muso joke. I figure I can get away with  a muso joke on a Sun Kil Moon post.) Ironically though, as I sat down to write about the new Sun Kil Moon album - which, to be fair, came out in February, so I admit to being behind the curve - I discovered Kozelek had actually released another new record that very day (a second collaboration with ex-Godflesh rocker Jesu). Keeping up with Mark Kozelek is becoming a full time occupation: I may have to quit my job.

The weird thing is, I only really got into Kozelek a couple of years back when Steve recommended Benji as one of his favourite albums of 2014. I fell in love with that album and MK's rambling, stream of consciousness narratives about all the people who'd died in his life in the last few years. For an album centred around death it was both very funny and packed with honest human detail. It sounded real. Realer than Richie Manic carving '4 Real' into his arm, albeit not quite as rock 'n' roll.

Since then, I've gobbled up anything I could get my hands on from Kozelek, some of which has left me cool (Benji's immediate follow-up, Universal Themes), some of which left me more than pleasantly surprised (Mark Kozelek Sings Favourites, last year's piano-based covers album which I listened to for about 6 months).

Which brings us to Common As Light And Love Are Red Valleys Of Blood, which could well be as good as Benji, though in a very different way. It's a lot funnier than Benji, for a start. Kozelek has refined the rambling to the point it sounds like a well-planned stand up routine in places. Elsewhere, it's as dark and angry and personal as you'd expect. All human life is here, from hometown nostalgia to true crime to Donald Trump to transgender bathrooms to the nice letter a promoter sent Mark one time after a show. Whatever Kozelek wants to sing / talk / rap about, he does... often in the same song. Because he does not have an off button. This album has 16 tracks, the shortest of which is just over 5 minutes in duration. The longest, almost three times that. Listen to the whole album in one go and... well, I've been on shorter holidays. If Mark Kozelek hadn't become a songwriter, he'd have been an excellent blogger.

This is a record I've enjoyed a lot over the last few weeks, and I suspect I'll keep listening to it for a good long while because there's so much in it to discover. It's also a lot more immediate than some of his other albums. I didn't have to work at it; tracks like the one below, I loved the first time I heard them. Maybe you will too. I dunno... maybe not.



Tuesday 23 May 2017

Randy Tuesdays #6: Why Don't You Cut Your Hair?



6. The Monkees - Alternative Title (Randy Scouse Git) 

As has been previously established by Kenny Wednesdays, I can also feature songs with Randy in the title in this feature. So you may have been expecting this one... except that, of course, it wasn't called Randy Scouse Git on the radio as the record company thought the title might lose the song airplay in the UK. The irony being, of course, that Micky Dolenz stole the title from Alf Garnett in Til' Death Us Do Part, so British audiences were well used to hearing it.

I do like a bit of timpani...




Sunday 21 May 2017

My Top ∞ Radio Songs #7: In The Beginning...


It should come as no surprise to me that last week's radio post drummed up a few memories. It made me happy to hear how radio reminded you all so much of growing up, of listening late at night under the covers, of your parents and families...

Me too. Here are a few of my earliest radio memories:

  • Terry Wogan in the morning before school. I wrote about Tel last year on his untimely passing. He started on the Radio 2 breakfast show in 1972, the year I was born, so he was there all through my childhood. We were never a Radio 1 household, my parents being that much old and my brother and sister both having left home, so Terry's musical choices helped shaped my own in my formative years.
  • Jimmy Young after Terry. I remember hearing the famous Terry / JY handovers a lot when I wasn't at school. I remember my dad had a radio in his shed and he listened to JY in there once he retired from the motor trade (when I was a teenager) and went back to being a joiner. JY's musical choices were a bit more old school than Terry's, so he was more likely to play my dad's favourite: Frank Sinatra. If the radio wasn't on in my dad's shed, you could place money on the chances of him whistling Strangers In The Night to himself... if the circular saw wasn't whirring.
  • John Dunn and Ray Moore too. Oh my father had a rabbit and he thought it was a duck...
  • Friday Night Is Music Night. My dad worked as an auctioneer for a big motor auction company before being made redundant when I was about 7. After that, he set up his own car auctions (with a couple of former colleagues), though it was a bit of a struggle to get that business off the ground at first. They couldn't even afford a cleaner, so dad, mum and me used to go over there after school on a Friday night and clean the offices, stopping off for fish and chips on the way home. Friday Night Is Music Night reminds me of that, and my dad's love of the big bands. He was a trombone player himself when he was a kid and I followed his footsteps into the local brass band as a teenager, playing tenor horn. 
  • Late night radio. I'm not sure I remember exactly who was on Radio 2 at nights when I was a kid (I should probably look it up), but I do know that from an early age I kept my bedside clock radio on all through the night. Not for me, hiding the pocket-sized tranny under the covers. Late night radio was legit in my house... maybe that explains why I still need music to help me get to sleep forty years later. More on that another time though...

In the meantime, here's another favourite radio song. Art Alexakis from Everclear is a little bit older than me, probably nearer the age of some of you guys who left comments last time. His radio flashback begins in 1970 when all we had was the AM radio (or Medium Wave, as it was known in my house).

7. Everclear - A.M. Radio
I'd be in bed with the radio on
I would listen to it all night long
Just to hear my favorite song
You'd have to wait till you could hear it on the
AM radio




Friday 19 May 2017

My Top Ten Paper Round Songs





I never had a paper round when I was a kid. I did, however, have a special fascination with the newsagents where I bought my weekly Spider-Man comics... I even went and interviewed the owner, Mr. Hudson, about his job, for a school project.

Here are ten songs about getting your papers delivered... which, I guess, not many people do these days. Bloody internet.

Special mention to Eli 'Paperboy' Reed, someone who's definitely worthy of further investigation, if Name Calling is anything to go by.


10. Jilted John - The Paperboy Song

Graham Fellows never fails to make me laugh. I love his description of getting his papers from the newsagents...
I walk into the paper shop
And say good morning, Keith
"Good morning, Keith!"
"Good afternoon!" Keith would shout.
Keith marked the papers out
A boy called Gary helped him
But he just pissed about.
9. The Marvelettes - Paper Boy

Not content with pestering the postman, The Marvelettes also went after the paper boy...

8. Soft Cell - Kitchen Sink Drama

A lonely housewife who imagines herself as Elizabeth Taylor has an eye on the paper boy while her husband's out at work. Does exactly what it says on the tin. 

7. The Courteeners - Take Over The World

He's only a paper boy from the north west, but he scrubs up pretty fine in his Sunday best.

Liam Fray may be a bit of an egomaniac, but he does know how to write a good song.

6. July Talk - Paper Girl

OK, here's my discovery of the week. While researching this post, even though I had loads of songs to go at from my own collection, I couldn't think of any that featured Paper Girls. So I did a little search and came up with this Canadian alt-rock band who are pretty amazing. In fact, I just bought their first album. Can't afford their second one (from last year) just yet, but it'll be on my wishlist if the tracks I've heard so far are anything to go by. Love the mix of vocals by Leah Fay and Peter Dreimanis, who sounds not unlike this next gentleman...

5. Tom Waits - Saving All My Love For You

Not the Whitney Houston song... but wouldn't it be cool if Tom covered that?

Anyway, here he gets up so early that everyone's sleeping but the paper boys... poor kids are gonna be scared out of their wits if they bump into Tom on their round.

4. Guillemots - Made Up Love Song #43

My favourite Guillemots song. I love its theme of finding magic in the everyday, even if it can't help but remind me of the end of American Beauty.
You got me off the paper round
Just sprang out of the air
The best things come from nowhere
I love you, I don't think you care
3. Morrissey - I Have Forgiven Jesus

Much has been made lately of the fact that Morrissey is actually a bit of a dick. Even my (local) poetry hero Simon Armitage, on his recent 6Music show, after saying how Morrissey and Dylan were the two songwriters he felt were closest to being actual poets... then went on to remark, "Morrissey, who I had the great pleasure of meeting earlier this year... hmm." Never meet your heroes, Simon!

Anyway, despite all this, Moz will always be the second most important songwriter in my record collection, and I'll always love him for songs like this... which at the time of its release spoke to me more than just about any other song I'd ever heard.
I was a good kid,
I wouldn't do you no harm,
I was a nice kid, 

With a nice paper round
Forgive me any pain,
I may have brung to you,
With God's help I know,
I'll always be near to you...
Don't worry, Moz. I'll always forgive you. 

2. Don McLean - American Pie

There are whole websites devoted to the lyrics of American Pie. I'm not sure why, its meaning seems pretty straightforward to me: the British Invasion stealing away the American monopoly on rock 'n' roll soon after Buddy Holly's death. It all begins though with a very young Don delivering the fateful headlines that mark "the day the music died". No wonder February made him shiver. 

1. David Bowie - Modern Love

Of course, we should never take Bowie's lyrics literally. However, the intro to Modern Love always puts a very specific image in my head of the Dame chasing after his paper boy, presumably for chucking his copy of the Observer into the rose bushes outside Bowie Towers one time too many. He knows when to stay in; he knows when to go out... he definitely knows how to catch a paper boy.

If your paper round went past David Bowie's house, you'd have probably wished he would chase after you. That'd be the equivalent of having Prince turn up on your doorstep on a Sunday morning with a copy of Watchtower.




Which one gets ink on your fingers?


Thursday 18 May 2017

May #4: Huey Au Naturel


4. Huey Lewis & The News - Naturally

These guys were one of my favourite bands when I was growing up, and the album Fore! remains one of my favourite albums of the 80s. There is no better feel good band than Huey Lewis & The News. They make me smile just thinking about them; Huey was and is a thoroughly likable, all-round decent bloke with zero pretensions.

I'm sure you know all the singles from the album, and love them as much as I do. If not, drink lots of water and seek medical assistance immediately. Hip To Be Square. Simple As That. Stuck With You. The Power Of Love. (If you don't love The Power Of Love, your doctor cannot help you. Try a shaman, visit Tibet or consult a ouija board.) You may, however, be unfamiliar with Naturally. You poor, poor thing.

When Sam was a tiny baby, just out of the hospital and trying to settle into a sleep pattern (we can't complain: compared to most babies, he's been pretty much a champion sleeper), I used to sing this to him at bed time. I probably didn't do it justice like Huey and the guys did. 80s doo wop doesn't come any finer than this...


Wednesday 17 May 2017

May #5: Aimee Goes Mental


5. Aimee Mann - Patient Zero

I'm proud to say I've been an Aimee Mann fan since I found her first solo album in the radio station chuck-out box way, way back in 1993. I've followed her ever since, from a distance since the restraining order was enforced (that gag never grows old), and I can honestly say that her new album, Mental Illness is one of her best. If you want to know why she called the record that, or what her inspirations were this time round (mostly acoustic guitars, lush strings and 70s oohs), Aimee explains all here.

Lyrically, there's a lot going on in this new album, mental or not... if you can decipher those damned fine metaphors. Aimee's rarely one to tell a story literally. If you're not bothered about what songs mean, just lie back and enjoy that voice, smokey and sultry as ever.

Here's the first "single", Patient Zero, which scores extra points for featuring Bradley Whitford in the video. Cat lovers might prefer Goose Snow Cone... but keep your tissues at hand.




Tuesday 16 May 2017

Randy Tuesdays #5: Not Actually A Member Of The Band


5. Randy Fitzsimmons

Randy Fitzsimmons is chief songwriter and manager for Swedish band The Hives, although he doesn't appear to actually play or perform with the band. As such, finding a photo of him was rather difficult. The internet claims that's him in the middle, with the glasses on, standing in between Iggy and Ringo. And, let's face it, if you get to stand in between Iggy and Ringo, with Jimmy Page close by, you've pretty much made it.

I like The Hives a lot whenever I listen to them. I don't listen to them a lot. Somehow, I manage to have accumulated four CDs by them, which I guess means they end up in charity shops a lot, since I've never bought one through more legitimate means. No surprise then, to see Charity Chic feature the band earlier on this month... although I was rather miffed when he selected my two favourite songs: Main Offender and Hate To Say I Told You So. Still, there's plenty more to go at, even though they do all start to sound the same after a while.

One thing I really like about The Hives is that they must be the most self-referential band in rock. I can find about half a dozen song titles wherein they directly reference themselves, and I only own a fraction of their output. These include: T.H.E. H.I.V.E.S.; The Hives Meet The Norm, The Hives Introduce The Metric System In Time, The Hives Declare Guerre Nucleair (which I'm guessing is French for the main aim of Donald Trump's presidency) and this... which is an instrumental. I don't often feature instrumentals here because, you know, I'm a lyrics kid. So whenever I do feature an instrumental, it has to be pretty cool...



Oh, and finally, I thought I'd throw in a link to lounge supremo Richard Cheese's cover of HateTo Say I Told You So because it's... niiiiice.

That's half my Randies done. Have I included your favourite yet?


Sunday 14 May 2017

My Top ∞ Radio Songs #6: I'd Sit Alone, And Watch Your Light...


When I started this series, I said I was going to use it as an opportunity to write about my years in radio. Then I realised I'd already started doing this, ten years ago, on the old blog. I only got a couple of posts into it - partly because I was still working in the industry back then and I was too close to it all; and partly because I didn't think anyone would be interested in reading my autobiography.

Lately though, I've come to realise that the posts I enjoy most from my fellow bloggers are often the ones when they tell me a little about their life. That's one of the reasons I've started doing that more, the other being the insane notion that one day my son might stumble across these ramblings and come to understand his old man a little better. Yeah, I know, that's probably never going to happen... but just on the off-chance you're reading this 50 years from now: Sam, you're the best thing that ever happened to me.

That out the way, let's talk radio gaga...

6. Queen - Radio Gaga

I know the blogosphere is roughly divided into two types of people when it comes to Queen.
  1. Those who think they were all right in the 70s but lost it in the 80s, around the time Radio Gaga was released...
  2. ...and those who never liked them anyway.
This makes me sadder than you'll ever know, but I'll press on regardless. Chances are you all skipped this post as soon as you saw the picture at the top of the page anyway. Or maybe you recognised the quote...
I’d sit alone and watch your light, 
My only friend through teenage nights
And everything I had to know
I heard it on my radio...
Everything you need to know about why I got into radio is contained in those lines above.



The rest of the story will follow...

Friday 12 May 2017

My Top Ten 'Who's To Blame?' Songs


When you look at the state of the world today, you have to ask yourself... who's to blame? Here are ten possible answers...


10. The Jacksons - Blame It On The Boogie

Let's start with the obvious one. If you can't blame it on the sunshine or the moonlight... maybe you should blame it on Jarvis Cocker for waggling his bottom in Earth Song. If he hadn't done that, perhaps Michael The Messiah might have saved us all...

9. Lambchop - Blame It On The Brunettes

Come on, Kurt... surely the blondes have more to be blamed for?
Research and radios
Divide my world at best
Peanut butter relationships
No kids no food no pets
Adequate understanding
Ample cigarettes
Blame it on the brunette 
8. Johnny Johnson & The Bandwagon - (Blame It) On The Pony Express

Kind of like blaming Postman Pat. Which, come to mention it, is not a bad idea since it does generally appear to be his fault. He's lucky that he lives in a village full of idiots who never fail to say, "don't worry, Pat won't let us down," no matter how many times he does just that.

I feel so sorry for Jess the cat.

7. Bon Jovi - Blame It on the Love of Rock & Roll

I know, I know. It ain't cool, but I still love it.

I mean, come on...
It feels so good that it ought to be illegal
I got my vaccination from a pornograph needle
I'll never grow up and I'll never grow old
Blame it on the love of rock & roll!
No?

Suit yourself.

You don't know what you're missing. 

6. Idlewild - Blame It On Obvious Ways

Sometimes I forget just how good Idlewild were...
I'm forced into a sponsored silence
Where I'm only paid if I don't say
What I want to say
Been there, bought the T-shirt.

5. Lloyd Cole - Blame Mary Jane

 This is how innocent I was back in 1990. I honestly thought this song was about...


Rather than...


4. Cosmo Jarvis - Blame It On Me

Love Cosmo Jarvis. Very disappointed that he appears to have packed in the music biz in favour of acting. I'm sure he's very good in Lady Macbeth, but I'd rather hear a new record from him. I do blame him for that.

See also Blame It On Me by George Ezra which is pretty good too, but not Cosmo-level good.

3. Kris Kristofferson - Blame It On The Stones

Written just after Altamont, when the whole of America seemed intent on blaming it on The Stones...
Mister Marvin Middle Class is really in a stew
Wond'rin' what the younger generation's coming to
And the taste of his martini doesn't please his bitter tongue
Blame it on the Rolling Stones.


Mother tells the ladies at the bridge club every day
Of the rising price of tranquilizers she must pay
And she wonders why the children never seem to stay at home
Blame it on the Rolling Stones.
2. Elvis Costello - Blame It On Cain

Love the rawness of Elvis's debut album.
Once upon a time, I had a little money
Government burglars took it long
Before I could mail it to you,
Still, you are the only one
Now I can't let it slip away
So if the man with the ticker tape, he tries to take it
Well, this is what I'm gonna say...
1. Carter USM - I Blame The Government
I blame the government
For making me this way
Bitter and twisted and crap
Bored psychopathic
At the end of the day
I blame the government for that
Poor education, death on the roads
The writing thats not on the wall
The war in The Balkans
The war in The Falklands
Its not like The Waltons at all
 Well, quite.
If I had the wings of a sparrow
If I had the arse of a crow
I'd fly over Whitehall tomorrow

And... ...on the bastards below



Who do you blame it on?


Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...