Bank Holiday Bond

It’s a Bank Holiday Monday, and hopefully you’ll be well into your Bond Marathon (or similar) by now.

Which is, of course, a shameless excuse to post this:

I’ve posted this before, but it’s so good, so precise, it deserves a second outing:

“What was that? Too late!”

Which inevitably brings me here to (probably) the greatest Bond theme tune ever:

Carly Simon – Nobody Does It Better

More soon.

Ba Ba Ba Ba-Ba Ba Ba Ba

Today, I’ll be straying into the land of La La La, rather than the usual Ba Ba Ba’s you find in this occasional series. And with good reason.

For yesterday, the terribly sad news came that Tim Brooke-Taylor had died due to Covid-19.

Growing up in the 1970s, Tim was, along with Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie, an absolute hero of mine, for he was one of The Goodies.

You will often hear people say that ground-breaking, anarchic, anti-establishment comedy started with the likes of Not The 9 O’Clock News, or Spitting Image, or The Young Ones. But they’d be wrong, for the irreverance and disregard for form came a few years earlier with the hirsute threesome.

And just like The Young Ones did a few years later, The Goodies exploited their popularity by releasing a few singles, one of which I had bought for me, and which got played a lot, probably long before I was aware of the original:

The Goodies – Wild Thing

Althugh this was probably their best known contribution to the charts, a send-up of dance crazes like The Funky Chicken:

The Goodies – The Funky Gibbon

And I haven’t even mentioned this:

I was switched on to The Goodies because I used to listen to repeats of I’m Sorry, I’ll Say That Again when I was a kid; a radio sketch show predominantly featuring Tim with John Cleese and fellow Goodie Grame Garden, amongst others.

More recently, I had reconnected with Tim via his regular appearances on I’m Sorry, I Haven’t a Clue, the anti-panel panel show, now hosted by Jack Dee and which I cannot recommend you listen to enough, next time it crops up on the BBC Sounds app (which, given yesterday’s sad news, cannot happen quickly enough).

One of the many absolute highlights of the show – apart from the deeply unfathomable (and deliberately so) Mornington Crescent round – is the round where contestants are asked to sing the lyrics of one song to the tune of a completely different one.

Here’s an example, Tim singing The Smiths’ Girlfriend in a Coma to the tune of Tiny Tim’s Tip-Toe Thru the Tulips:

He’ll be sadly missed round these parts: rest in peas, Tim.

More soon.

I’m Not Too Keen on Mondays

Technically, since the purpose of this series is to give us all impetus to get up and out of bed at the start of another working week, there’s no need for me to write one of these today, Bank Holiday Monday as it is.

But those of us lucky enough to be a) working from home and b) not considered to be a key worker, there’s no rush today.

(By key worker I don’t just mean those working in the NHS – I mean them, of course, just not just them – I mean all those who are continuing to work throughout the current corona-crisis: our retail workers, stocking the shelves and then apologising when they’ve run out of bread, pasta, rice, toilet roll (although, is it just me, or have things been getting better on this front recently?); or postmen and women, diligently delivering all the crap we’ve bought online when bored/drunk/delete as applicable; our refuse workers, carrying away all of the packaging which encases the stuff we’ve bought etc etc etc.)

So, today, a balls-out 70s classic, guaranteed to make you want to shake your booty.

Ok, so it’s lyrically “of it’s time” and most definitely not on point with the whole #MeToo movement.

And strictly speaking, it’s a late night song. Well, it is for me anyway.

I’ll explain.

Back when I lived in Cardiff, I would often frequent Barfly on either a Friday or a Saturday night, a teensy tiny little indie venue, downstairs in a place opposite the castle that stayed open until or 2 or 3 in the morning. I’ve no idea if it’s still there or not, but I loved going there. Often there would be a band on, and I saw many wonderful acts there: Young Knives, The Dears, Graham Coxon, Cud, (ahem) Jet. Loads more that I can’t recall right now. (But yeh, I did remember Jet. Suck it up.)

Anyway, obviously there was the obligatory indie disco when bands weren’t playing, and, as the night went on and the club emptied I would inevitably sidle up to the DJ and ask him if he had his last record of the night sorted yet. He, equally inevitably, would look at me totally non-plussed and tell me he hadn’t. He didn’t need to ask what I was going to suggest, not because he knew what it would be, just that there was a request coming.

“Well, can I make a suggestion….?” I would proffer, and since by this time the venue had practically emptied, leaving just me, a couple of bearded alcoholics propping up the bar and taking full advantage of the late-night serving, and a gaggle of goths at the back of the room, none of whom were likely to dance, he would (inevitably, wearily) say: “Go on….”.

And I would suggest this record, and he’d play it, and I’d spend the last 4:40 seconds of my night out (excluding walking home or trying to flag a taxi down time), whirling around an otherwise empty dancefloor, trotting out every rock’n’roll trope you could name.

It’s a song which has more false endings than the bloopers reel on Smokey and the Bandit, so a new homage would commence with each: Pete Townsend’s helicopter whirl? Check. Chuck Berry’s duck-walk? Check. Quo’s legs astride heads down head-bang? Check. Morrissey’s finger-holding-hearing-aid-in-ear-whilst-brandishing-imaginary-gladioli? Check.

Shall I just play it and shut up?

Faces – Stay With Me

More soon.