It’s another Bank Holiday weekend here in the UK, so another long weekend which I will doubtless spend putting off doing all the odd jobs – like finish unpacking, or finally construct my bed (it’s only been seven months…) around the house which I’ll be cursing myself for not having done come Tuesday morning.
To soundtrack that, and whatever you’re up to, here’s another of the old mixes split down into manageable one hour chunks. I was surprised when I revisited this one to find that it the original mix was only two hours long, so we’ll have rattled past this one and on to anew one in no time.
I shan’t waste anymore time (except for the usual disclaimer which you all probably know off by heart by now: any skips or jumps are down to the mixing software; any mis-timed mixes are down to me; all record selections are mine) so here’s the link:
Yes, I know the titles implies this should be getting posted later today, but let me explain.
Today it’s Children in Need night in the UK, and that can mean only one thing: nothing to watch on TV, unless newsreaders performing poorly choreographed dance routines floats your boat.
It’s a worthy cause, don’t get me wrong, but once you’ve dipped your hand in your pocket, as I’m sure you undoubtedly will, there’s really no need to carry on watching.
Personally, I think they would make loads more money if, once you’d contributed, your TV programmes went back to the normal schedules. The whole thing could be over and done with in half an hour or so.
Anyway, I thought I’d help out with your evening entertainment after you’ve done your charitable duty, by giving you a top mix of tunes to while away a couple of hours. So here you go, just shy of 140 minutes of tunes to bop around your kitchen to and suffice it to say, it’s a real mixed bag, covering the contemporary to the antiquated, the oft-impersonated to the never-bettered, the cherished to the forgotten, the much loved to the…erm…not loved so much. You’ll see.
But – and I mean this most sincerely folks – I love every record included in this mix. Yes, even that one. And that one. And definitely that one. Yes! This mix includes (at least) three acts generally considered to be among the naffest of if not the late 1970s, then ever. But I’d invite you to give them a go with a fresh pair of ears: kitsch, maybe, but loosen up, you might find you quite like them too (NB: I would recommend having a few drinks to truly accomplish this turnaround in opinion. Also, there’s a fair bit of effin’ & jeffin’ on some of these, so if you have kids a) hard luck, and b) put them to bed before playing this, or you’ll have to explain to them exactly what Fiddy is getting up to in “da” club, or worse, just what is going on on the Cansei de Ser Sexy record).
And when I say “mix”, I don’t mean anything has been beat-matched, or scratched, or whatever the cool name for mixing is these days: we’re in purely fade-in/fade-out territory here.
(There are, of course, a couple of technical glitches, by the way. Sorry, but I didn’t have time to go back and re-record the whole mix to get rid of them. I would have done, had the mixing software I have not crashed when I was on the penultimate tune the first time around, forcing me to go back and start all over again. Hope they don’t spoil things – look on the positive side: they will, at the very least, give you that real club feeling as you spin round to face the DJ/your sound system and call him/it whatever rude name you plump for.)
Last time I did one of these, I put the songs on Spotify, only to find they didn’t have many of the songs anyway, so I’ve not renewed my free trial subscription with them (until next time they offer it to me); instead you should (if I’ve done it right…) be able to stream it via Soundcloud here, or you can just download or stream it from the Dubious Taste vaults here (as a WAV file), which should play just fine on iTunes or Windows Media Player.
To make it as close to a “going out” experience as you can, I’d recommend playing it from one of those two sources, rather than scrolling down here to see what I’ve included. You wouldn’t approach a DJ in a club and ask him what he intended to play for the next couple of hours, now would you? No.
But if you must, here you go, 34 songs, in the same running order as on the mix, and without any of my usual snarky comments. As with most of my mixes, its starts innocuously enough….
Sorry it’s been a bit quiet around here for the past couple of weeks. Nothing is wrong, as such, just…*gestures hopelessly at everything*…y’know….stuff.
When I was younger, my dear Mama taught me that if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. (Other pearls of wisdom: “Your face will stay like that if the wind changes”, “I can see you, you know” and “Keep doing that and you’ll go blind.” Mind you, when teaching me about road safety, my parents also once told me that one of my aunt’s had their head chopped off when they got run over by a cyclist. I remember challenging them on this: “But she’s got a head now?”, which elicted the response that “it had grown back but took a very long time”. It’s probably a good job I never challenged the “you’ll go blind” one, or Lord knows what I’d have been told.)
But I digress.
What I’m trying to say is that I try to be positive, especially here, but for the past couple of weeks I’ve found that an increasingly difficult façade to project. I didn’t want to come on here and just whinge and moan about how tough things are when pretty much everyone is feeling it; I wanted to be upbeat, overwhelmed by some notion that I was a guiding light to all who visit here. And if I couldn’t do that, I’d rather say nothing at all, to misquote Ronan Keating.
I’ve sat at my laptop several times over the last two weeks, determined to write something, anything, just to dislodge the blockage, but on each occasion I closed my laptop again, article half-written, no faith in what had splurged out, and returned to scrolling through Netflix or NowTV in the hope of finding something to cleanse the soul.
And then it occured to me: at the moment, in these days of Covid-19 “lockdown”, this is my only outlet for venting. I’m still working from home, so the opportunity for a rant at the metaphorical water-cooler isn’t there; I can’t visit friends, who all live down in South London, as far away from me here in North London as possible (I’m really bad at taking hints); my parents have had enough on their plate without having to listen to me banging on about how frustrated I feel with the world right now; and God forbid you express an opinion on a social media platform like Twitter for fear of it being taken wildly out of context and misquoted as unequivocal evidence that you’re a racist transphobic mysoginistic homophobe. None of which I am, I hasten to add.
Which just leaves here.
So apologies to those of you who roll their eyes when I have one of my episodic rants, but I need to get a few things off my chest.
Here goes.
You’d think from what I have just said that I’d be delighted that “lockdown” restrictions are gradually being lifted. And you’d be wrong.
Before I go any further, I fully accept that these are unprecedented times, and that managing the country in such times is an incredibly difficult thing to have to do. And that the balancing act of the economy versus public safety is tricky, to say the least.
What would be nice right now would be to have a leader who was actually just that: a leader, rather than one who is just playing at being one and who looks increasingly out of his depth with every Wednesday PMQ’s.
So you won’t be surprised to learn that I also think the Government has got pretty much every important decision wrong from Day One.
This shouldn’t have been that complicated; I don’t know if you’ve noticed – although I think it’s a fairly safe bet that Dominic Raab hasn’t quite grasped it yet – but the United Kingdom is an island (or one big island, a slightly smaller island, and lots of teeny tiny ones, if you’re going to be pedantic) and so restricting the movement of potential virus carriers from coming into and going out of the country should be fairly straight-forwards.
Freedom of movement, that’s basically what Brexit was about, right? Stopping them pesky forreners from coming over here? Well here you go, here’s your chance to close the ports and airports, a dry run for when the Brexit transition period ends. Fill your boots.
But just as we failed to implement rules which were in place when we were in the EU (and then blamed the EU for that), so we failed to do anything. It’s only now, what, eleven, twelve? weeks in, that anyone entering the country who is displaying symptoms of the Covid virus must self-isolate for 14 days. Stable door, horse, bolted.
A couple of weeks ago, it was announced that if your job was one where you cannot work from home, then you must return to work, as long as you observed the social distancing rules at all times. Cue those in low-paid jobs – cleaners, retail workers – crammed onto public transport, where social distancing is simply not possible.
It’s hardly surprising that people in those kinds of jobs, who are more likely to come from BAME communties, have been found to be most susceptible to contracting the virus. Yes, because we’ve thrust them out into a potentially hostile environment to see how safe it is before us whities emerge. They are our canaries in a coalmine.
Let’s also not forget that at the start of the lockdown, we were told that wearing facemasks was a good idea, but might not have any real effect. And now, a couple of weeks after the poorly paid have been crowbarred onto buses, are we told that wearing a facemask when travelling on public transport is mandatory. Why wasn’t that in place when certain sections of our communites were told it was safe to return to work?
And this creates a ridiculous situation where some schools have reopened and teachers are told that they have to wear face masks should they travel to work on public transport, but not when they’re actually at work, as if a school is protected by some sort of force field which viruses bounce off of.
Plus, how disconcerting must it be for the children who have returned to school? It’s been sold to them as if they are returning to normal school life, when the reality is that there are whole load of new rules to observe. To them, right now, it must be unbearable, thinking that life will never get back to normal. I’m not sure we’ll ever know what psychological damage has been done to some of them.
See, much as I wish they were gone altogether, I don’t think restrictions should be getting lifted. Not yet. Not until we have a day, or preferably several days, when there are no new cases of people either contracting or dieing from the Covid virus. Which I fully accept is a very draconian position to take, but saving lives must take precedence here, surely?
The austerity measures we’ve all had to endure for the past ten years, the cutting back of social services, have been shown to be a lie. Remember when those on the right mockingly goaded that “there’s no magic money tree”? Well, we suddenly seem to have found it, not just to promote the notion of a No Deal Brexit (soon to be returning) but also to fund the furloughing of employees to save their jobs.
I’m not saying this is a bad thing. I’m saying this isn’t quite what we’ve previously been told.
And much as the Government try to claim that herd immunity – the idea that the virus should be allowed to spread throughout the country, until everyone has had it and (hopefully) can’t catch it again, and never mind that thousands may (and have) die – has never been the policy (and right at the start, it definitely was, I watched the press conference when they announced it), it seems pretty clear to me that’s exactly what’s going on now, albeit in a different name.
So brace yourself, for I fear there’s going to be a second wave, and all those lifted restrictions will slam back into place again.
Part of the problem here is the constant moving of goalposts, the flim-flam of governmental advice – and again, I totally get that as circumstances change, so does the advice.
The thing is, since “lockdown”, for the most part, the advice was quite consistent: Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives.
To extrapolate: remain indoors, only venture outside to buy food or medicines. This will lighten the load on the (criminally underfunded and underprepared) NHS, and by extension, save (some) lives.
Which of course leads me on to Dominic Cummings.
We all know what happened by now, but to recap: on 27th March, Cummings and his family drove from his London home to his parents’ property in Durham, at a time when the public were being told to stay at home to stop the spread of the coronavirus. As it all unravelled, it also became clear that Cummings had driven to Barnard Castle, a thirty-minute each way trip, to check that his eyesight was good enough to allow him to drive back to London. Witnesses, however, described seeing him and his family enjoying a picnic at the half-way point of this hour long round journey.
As calls for Cummings to be removed grew louder, Boris defended his plotter-in-chief’s action, refusing to sack him, and instead claiming that he had “acted on instinct” and that that was fine.
This was a massive slap in the face to all of us who had observed the very rules which Cummings had been part of devising. Regular readers will know that on April 19th, just days before his 80th birthday, my Dad had a fall which resulted in a five-week stay in hospital. Because of the lockdown rules, I could not visit him, nor could I visit my Mum, who – and I don’t think she’ll mind me saying this – alone for a sustained period of time for the first time in their many years of marriage, was perpetually worried and at a loose end throughout. We all felt helpless, impotent, useless. I took a few days off work, because whilst sometimes it’s good to have something to take your mind off whatever is going on in your life, I simply could not focus and I worried that I might be making expensive mistakes.
I can, but don’t, drive, so to visit my Mum would have involved me getting a train; I knew that at all London stations, police were out (not socially distancing or wearing PPE, I should add) challenging people as to the worthiness of their journey. I know damned well that had I rocked up at London St Pancras and told the enquiring officer that I was acting on my instinct I would have been sent back home pretty sharpish.
But it’s okay for Cummings, because he’s the puppeteer pulling Boris’ strings.
It was with much amusement and indignation that I read an entry from Brewer’s slang dictionary which said “Barney Castle” was existing slang for a “pathetic excuse” deriving from a 16th century general’s refusal to leave his fortified position there to engage in battle. I have no idea if that’s true or not – I suspect not, it’s just too delicious. But still, in these days of Fake News, worth repeating.
So here’s one for you and your ridiculous excuse of driving to check your eyesight, Cummings you absolute cretin:
And so to the other main event from the last two weeks: the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests in America, here in the UK, and all across the world.
Anyone who has seen the footage of the death of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer cannot help but have been horrified. I would only recommend that you seek it out if you have a strong stomach and really, really need verification.
There’s a tendency with such things to say “Well, they must have been doing something….”, but I have watched a lot of footage of peaceful protests where the police response has been alarmingly disproportionate. If I linked to every one, this page would never load for you to read.
Here’s some lowlights. Firstly, a car, containing a pregnant woman and in no way involved in the protests, has pepper spray fired at it by US Police:
Here’s your friendly Minneapolis police firing tear gas at journalists:
And here’s some footage of Minneapolis police slashing the tyres of parked cars, irrespective of whether the owners are or are not, involved in the protests:
Meanwhile in Houston, a protestor is nonchalantly trampled by a police horse:
Many years ago, I was in a protest in London where the horse-mounted police were sent in to disperse the crowd. It was – and excuse my language, for I have managed to get this far without the need for expletives – fucking terrifying. I’ll save this story for another day, because this is not about me.
Let’s not forget how we got here: by peaceful protestors being dispersed so that Trump could dog-whistle to his Bible-belt redneck supporters, by awkwardly holding up a book he has never read at a photo-opportunity:
And how do I know he’s never read it? Because of this:
This should have been sorted out years ago. In the 1990s, there were riots after the beating that Rodney King took at the hands of the LAPD, and it was promised that things would change. But they didn’t.
If you only watch one of the clips I’ve posted here, make it this one:
There’s only one song to play when faced with such horrors:
Okay, there’s more than one song. This is perhaps a more expected one. It came out in 1971, when there was genuine hope that the civil rights movement might have some long-lasting effect. And yet here we are, almost fifty years later, fighting the same fight:
And so to the protests on this side of the pond. In spirit, I’m with the protestors, of course. Systemic authoritarian racism is not limited to America, much as we might want to kid ourselves that it is.
But I have concerns.
Firstly, that if there is a second wave of the virus, that the Government will be able to point to the UK BLM protests as the cause, rather than any failing on their part.
Secondly, that solicitors Berryman Lace & Mawer (BLM) are going to be getting way too much business come their way.
And thirdly, that, as seems to be happening already, the dialogue is shifted away from matters of such great social importance as racial inequality, to a discussion about which statues are good and which are not.
I lived in Cardiff for many years, and visited Bristol many times, often going to see gigs at a venue called Colston Hall. I had no idea who Colston was, and even less of an idea that there was a statue erected to his memory and his legacy somewhere in the city.
For the uninitiated, we’re talking about Edward Colston, who amassed a personal fortune and subsequent notoriety on the back of his involvement in slave trading.
Had I known that, would that have been enough to stop me going to gigs at a venue named after him? Probably not, if I’m honest.
But when you have an historical figure held up as someone to be respected, by way of statues or public buildings or whatever, there has to come a time when their actions are scrutinised. The question has to be asked: does this person, with whom our city is so closely linked, continue to characterise and epitomise how we feel now?
Last weekend, protestors in Bristol gave a resounding thumbs down to this question, pushing over the statue of Colston and dumping it in the river.
Do I agree with it being removed? Absolutely. Do I agree with it being tossed into the Avon? Absolutely not.
What should have happened is that the statue was removed from public display and placed in a museum, where their fame, wealth and actions can be viewed and explained in a correct social context.
A statue says: We, as a city, respect and agree with this person’s actions. A museum place says: this person did a lot for this city, which is appreciated, but it’s complicated and here’s why:….
It’s all about the context.
Which is why I don’t have an easy answer to the question of Winston Churchill and the many statues erected in his honour. This is much more complicated: he is undoubtedly, and rightly, considered a hero of our wartime efforts. But at the same time, he held a lot of views which in the current climate would be considered racist. Because they were. Does one cancel out the other? Does his WW2 leadership mean that we should ignore the unpleasant stuff?
I have no answers on this point.
I do have a song though, which shouldn’t be taken too literally:
There. That’s caught you all out. The Chain on a Wednesday morning.
Don’t get used to this. I’m at a work conference this afternoon and won’t get back until late, so I figured if I didn’t get it done before then, it’d end up being another week before it appeared. So, I started writing it earlier than usual (but still a week late, if you’re being ungratefully picky).
Anyway, we’ve lots to get through this week – 63 new suggestions in total – and so, as has become usual, we’ll start off with a reminder of the source record for the week:
Yet again, one of you correctly guessed the next song in The Chain, but we’ll come to that later. Or, more specifically, at the end.
But first, where to begin? Link-wise, I can think of no finer place than with therobster from Is This The Life? although, as you will see, the first tune of the week can only be partly credited to him:
“I’ve gone down the ‘intentionally misspelled animal-related band name’ route. How about some Def Leppard? No…?”
Yes! But with no actual one-armed suggestions forthcoming from the robster, in stepped Rol from My Top Ten:
“If therobster isn’t going to suggest one, can I suggest…”
“…let’s have the Monkees. As the Beatles were from Liverpool, I reckon ‘Randy Scouse Git’ would fit well. Plus, it’s actually about a party the band went to that was hosted by The Beatles”
Now, just in case any of you were planning on pulling me up on using that sleeve, let me explain. RCA Records bosses told the band that they would not release the song with the title “Randy Scouse Git” (which, incidentally, is taken from 1960s sitcom “‘Til Death Us Do Part”), and demanded they gave it an alternate title. “Okay”, said drummer/singer Mickey Dolenz, “‘Alternate Title’ it is.”
Here’s another band that fits nicely into the category:
Now, as therobster quite right points out, The Beatles is indeed a mis-spelling, and a pun, on a group if insects, but this seems to have completely passed Kay by:
“I’m going down the insect/bug route” she announces, and then names these two tunes:
But whilst we’re on links from The Beatles to the beetles, we may as well have Mrs GMFree, who suggests: “A Beetle is a VW car which is German, so are krautrock masters Kraftwerk…”
(NB. I tried to track down a video clip of just the Partridge – Kraftwerk introduction, sadly to no avail. But imagine my surprise when typing the words “alan partridge introduces kraftwerk” into Google to find that the fourth link it offers is to…The Chain #28!)
But I digress. GMFree seizes the opportunity to do the old Chain link one-two shuffle:
“Which leads me to my [next] suggestion with the recent death of Holger Czukay…”
“…which I first heard covered by The Jesus & Mary Chain, one of many bands influenced by the experimental Germans.”
And GMFree isn’t done there, providing “a Beatle link to a Captain Beefheart cover”, which contains one of the rarest sounds ever committed to record – Mark E Smith giggling:
Ah yes, Apple Records. Alex G picks this up and runs with it:
“‘Martha, My Dear’ is from The Beatles’ eponymous 1968 LP, their first on their own Apple Records imprint. So from one artist-owned label named after a fruit, to another: Ray Charles’ Tangerine Records. I do wonder whether the Beatles got the idea from him, though nobody else seems to think so. Anyway, let’s go for Ray Charles’ version of…”
And the bloke leaning over my shoulder at the bar is called Dave, amongst other things
So let’s switch on the Magimix ™ and see what delight we get
………… and the winner is
David Soul ‘Silver Lady'”
Much as I love that record, it’s featured before, way back in The Chain #8, and as such has to be disqualified. But since GMFree has done the old Chain link one-two shuffle, I suggested Julian might want to follow suit. So, since, he’d got to David Soul, perhaps one of his other songs? Nope. That’s too straight-forward for our Julian:
“David Soul starred in a short lived TV show called ‘Casablanca’, so how about…”
I must say, I’m not in the least bit surprised that Julian has suggested a song from a film which contains the line “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”
Anyway, he’s riffing by now:
“…coincidently [Casablanca] was the record label that released…”
Having valiantly chipped in to assist therobster earlier, Rol’s back with a suggestion all his own doing:
“‘Martha My Dear’ is from The White Album. Another band who released a ‘White Album’ (following on from their Blue, Green and Red albums… even though all of them were actually just eponymous) were Weezer. From that, I’ll suggest…”
Do any other White albums spring to mind? Well, no, although there is, of course “The Whitey Album”, by Sonic Youth off-shoot Ciccone Youth (I really thought this would get suggested, especially as I posted a track from it in a recent post).
“It occurred to me that The Beatles ‘White Album’ reminds me of Mr Barry White…I can’t find any dog-related [this will get explained soon – Ed] Barry songs or ones about a girl called Martha [I think we pretty much used them all up last time – Ed] so it’ll have to be the next most appropriate for this place:”
Now, all this white stuff is all well and good, but let me draw all of your attention back to something Alex G said earlier: ‘Martha, My Dear’ is from The Beatles’ eponymous1968 LP…” And he’s quite right: the album in question is colloquially known as ‘The White Album’ but it’s actually, officially, called ‘The Beatles’.
Which takes us back to George, who suggests a new category: “…the ‘eponymous album that wasn’t a debut’ route.” And specifically he suggest this, from Blur’s 1997 album, the fifth that they released:
I must say, this is my favourite link of all that were suggested this time. It had never occurred to me before that most acts, when releasing an eponymous album, made it their debut, presumably to double the impact of their name, get it “out there” as a recognisable brand. So I did a little digging and found these acts also released eponymous albums, but not first time around:
Yes, everyone calls their fifth album “The Black Album”, but it’s not called that, it’s called ‘Metallica’.
And at the other end of the musical spectrum, this lots’ first album was 1973’s “Ring Ring”, but it wasn’t until two years later, when they released their third album, that they released an album called…well, you can figure the rest of that sentence out for yourselves:
Now, remember how in her suggestion Alyson mentioned something about dogs in songs? Well that’s where we’re going next and here’s Dirk from sexyloser to explain why:
“..the title ‘Martha My Dear’ was inspired by McCartney’s Old English Sheepdog, named Martha.”
Which leads us nicely into a whole batch of songs about dogs. Sort of. But before we get to Dirk’s suggestion, here’s The Great Gog, awake at 02:31am and thinking about dogs:
“All this talk of Martha has me thinking of my one of my sister’s dogs, which goes by that moniker. Martha is a spaniel, no idea what type of spaniel though. One type is a cocker spaniel which immediately led me to thinking of…”
The Songs (Sort Of) About Dogs category is (almost) the largest category, so strap yourself in for some canine capers. You could say that we’ve gone dog crazy, in fact:
“Another famous Old English Sheepdog was Alfie, who starred in ‘Serpico’, so – of course – did Al Pacino. And Al Pacino will always be remembered – at least in my household – not for Serpico, but a) [for the sex scene he had with the fabulous Ellen Barkin in] ‘Sea Of Love’, the film being named after a single by Phil Phillips from 1959. I prefer The Heptones’ version from 1968 though, also we don’t have enough Rocksteady on ‘The Chain’, I’m sure you’ll agree!”
Sorry, I stopped paying attention at the mention of Ellen Barkin. (I was wondering you were linking to her surname)
“We could also have something by Blondie as well…‘cos contrary to what everyone thinks, the band didn’t choose their name because Debbie Harry was blonde, no, they named themselves after Adolf Hitler’s German Shepherd, Blondi (the ‘i’ – ending was generally regarded as being too uncommon for American ears, so much so that the ‘-e’ was added)!”
Which is good enough for me. Here’s the Blondie track Dirk suggested:
“…if we go the ‘dog’ road there will be a lot of songs recommended, i.e….:”
And as it happens, nobody else suggested any of the three Walter mentioned, (although I had one lined up as one of my oh-so many choices) so here they are:
Ok, brace yourself. It’s time for the undisputed Worst Record of the Week award, and to present the award here’s all round nice guy and not a white supremacist enabler at all, Sean Spicer accept the award and explain what the hell he was thinking when he sent me this suggestion is Rigid Digit from Stuff & Nonsense:
“…sticking firmly to the Dogs route (and a contender for Worst Record Of The Week)…”
Not just a contender, Rigid, but so nailed on The Worst Record Of The Week that nobody else even bothered to try to think of any more because this was so obviously unbeatable.
But first some context.
The song is about Barbara Woodhouse, a dog trainer who found celebrity status in the UK in the late 1970s/early 1980s, back when celebrities were required to have some semblance of talent (see also celebrity steeplejack Fred Dibnah). Here’s a clip to give you an idea:
And here she is, interviewing William Shatner, teaching his dogs a thing or two, and then revealing a little too much about her bedtime habits for my liking:
And here’s Rigid’s suggestion. Remember: in the world of The Barron Knights, a man putting on a ladies voice = funny:
And here’s two actual funny women, Rebecca Front and Joanna Scanlon, parodying Ms Woodhouse directly and subtly:
I’ll leave the last word on that Barron Knights song to Charity Chic who quipped:
“I think you missed an H out of the title.”
Rigid then goes on to mention the Dogs d’Amour, but doesn’t actually suggest a record by them. Luckily for us him, babylotti steps in with three suggestions by the band; I’ve picked the one he cited as his favourite. Because I’m nice like that.
I must say I always get the Dogs d’Amour mixed up with The Quireboys. Were they around at the same time? (NB: This is a rhetorical question, the type where instead of already knowing the answer, I already know that I don’t really care.)
So let’s have some more doggy-do’s, and one which I was surprised nobody else suggested. A song which is famously about a dog, although the name in the title was changed from ‘Brandy’ in the first draft (who sounds more like a stripper than a dog, if I’m honest) to:
Count yourselves lucky I didn’t post the Boyzone version. Or the Westlife version. Whichever one of them recorded it. They’re the same thing really anyway, aren’t they?
Oh, and innuendo fans, check out the title of that B-Side. Parp!
Since we appear to be in 1970s softie ballad territory, here’s another from Rigid Digit:
“What the world needs is more acoustic guitar playing beardy blokes…”
which is debatable, but he means that as an introduction to this:
It’s no wonder that Cat Stevens changed his name. A cat admitting to loving a dog is always going to be given the cold shoulder by the feline community.
Now, I must admit that when Rigid suggested that song, I actually thought he was talking about this:
(I was going to post a Buzzcocks tune and had settled for the (s)punky little burst that is ‘Orgasm Addict’, until I realised how that might look when played after the previous two songs…)
Time for another one that I was surprised nobody else came up with. The original version has featured on The Chain before, so I would have had to disqualify it. But, as with the helping hand I tried to give Julian earlier, had the original been suggested than I would doubtless have given you a nudge towards this:
Their record label initially refused to release that, on the grounds that it was trying just a bit too hard to sound like The Small Faces. Harsh, but fair.
But as Rigid astutely concludes:
“There ain’t many songs whose last words are: ‘lovely buttocks'”
A fair point, well made. But just think of the songs which could be improved by the inclusion of those words. “God Save The Queen” springs to mind.
Speaking of which…
Often, the suggestions link from one song to another by way of one word in the title. But there wasn’t much to work on here, just three words, and one of them, Martha, was pretty much done to death last time. But there was one more song to link to that name, from Swiss Adam over at Bagging Area:
“I have a niece called Martha. Her Mum, my sister, was born in June 1977. My parents sometimes say that if she’d been born on the Queen’s jubilee day they’d have called her Jubilee. At least I think they’re joking. So [this] seems an appropriate link (Pistols obvs).”
Having mopped up the last of the Martha’s, we’ll edge towards the end of the song title now with a “My” or two. Or three, actually. And two of them are from me.
So, where to start with this little lot. Well, let’s split them down into songs which feature the word “Dear” in the title (or prominently elsewhere in the lyrics) and, first, songs which can in some way be linked to Deer.
And, after missing last times linkage, it’s a warm welcome back to SWC, who proffers this:
“I never checked the spelling and assumed Paul was singing about a ruminant mammal on his Scottish Croft . The Beatles released a b-side “Rain” and Bambi was a deer, know the song yet?
Blind Bambi… no idea
Dead blind Bambi… still no idea…?”
I must admit, I assumed at this point that Julian was about to suggest this:
(Except it’s not really the Sex Pistols, is it? It’s got Eddie Tudor-Pole on lead vocals for a start. And it’s from ‘The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle’. And it’s title and that picture are clearly meant to shock, but it’s shocking for the sake of being shocking. Not cool.)
But no, Julian was in fact going here:
“Ok it’s the rain song from Bambi”.
This caused a little confusion at Chain HQ, as the song that Julian actually wanted was this:
…which, confusingly, was not going to be in the original film, it was going to be a song called “Rain Song”, which was ditched in favour of “…April Showers”, and which you can see/hear here:
And then, just to confuse things even further, Julian goes and suggests this:
I have a confession to make: I’ve never seen Blade Runner. Sacrilege, I know. But it’s one of those films that everybody bangs on to me about how amazing it is that it can never live up to expectations. I guess I’d better rectify that before the new one comes out later this year, right?
Over to babylotti now, who suggests these two:
“[I’m] going to fall back on Marvin Gaye’s divorce settlement album, ‘Here My Dear’, with obvious reference to Martha my dear….I’ll suggest the title track rather than any of the singles.”
Martin from New Amusements snuck his suggestion under the wire just in time:
“Keith Moon used to call everybody “Dear Boy” and he did a pretty fair cover of Beatles track ‘In My Life’ for his lone solo album ‘Two Sides of the Moon’ (even if it was played with too straight a bat). Anyway, a double-linker!”
Time for C from Sun Dried Sparrows tune now, and this is an example of me saving the best ’til (almost) last; I think this is my favourite song by this lot. I love a good bracket (see?)
“I went down the ‘dear’ route too and another song whose title ends in the word ‘dear’ (there can’t be many, surely?). “Dear” is such a charming, old-fashioned word, I always thought it sounded a bit out of place for Blondie to use it but I love that they do. So I’d like to suggest…”
Now, when the suggestions start coming in, I will often have a little bet with myself as to who I think will suggest what. I’m rarely right, of course. For example, this week I was sure that Dirk would suggest this:
…which, given it’s a cover of a song from The Beatles’ “White Album” and features the word “Dear” is unquestionably a double-linker (Points!!).
And I wouldn’t be so sure about neither of your suggestions being right, CC, for you’re right on the money with your second one. The official link is, quite simply “From one Dear to another…” and the next record in The Official Chain is this:
I’d forgotten how great that record is too, as it goes.
So, CC, congratulations. A huge bag of non-existent points is winging its way to you. Hopefully that makes up for The Chain making you late for work last time. And today, too.
Ok, you know what happens now. This is the bit where I invite your suggestions, please, for songs which link to “There, There, My Dear” by Dexys Midnight Runners, along with a brief description of the link, via the Comments Section down below, in time for the next edition. Who knows when that might be.
When I was younger, I always thought that to be a perfectly passable cover version. But then, when I was younger, I’d never actually heard the original. And once I had, I realised it really was nowhere near as good:
As I’ve previously mentioned, whenever I used to venture into town as a kid, my time would mostly be spent meticulously working my way through the racks of the second hand records section in the basement of Andy’s Records, and it was there that I remember first encountering today’s choice.
There was something about the sleeve of The Slits’ “Cut” album which caught my eye, but which also prevented me from buying it for fear that the person behind the counter might think I was some kind of a pervert.
Of course, I now know that I was missing out on one of the defining releases of the post-punk era. And the original vinyl edition didn’t include today’s track, a glorious reinterpretation of a Motown classic, though it has subsequently cropped up on CD reissue, reissue, repackage versions:
I mention this today because it’s another Field Day moment; at some point, either in the pre-Avalanches DJ slot or more probably in the actual Avalanches set (I’m leaning more towards the latter, but I’d had quite a few beers by this point, so the memory is a tad on the fuzzy side) this got dropped.
You know those moments when a DJ kinda slips something in, when you hear little bits of the next track just bubbling through and your ears prick up? That’s what happened here. I was talking to my friend Llyr about who knows what when suddenly I caught a snatch of the bassline and my sub-conscious whispered “Here come The Slits” to me.
Hence Llyr’s confused look when, mid-conversation, I suddenly said “Oh my God, they’re playing The Slits!”, just a nano-second before the previous song was faded out and the throbbing – there’s no other word for it, it throbs – bassline kicked in.
I could, of course, waffle on now about how this record got a new lease of life when it was used in an 80s ad campaign by Levi’s, an act which gave the world the musical genius that was Nick Kamen. (I’m hoping that you can sense the tone there. No?)
Well, here’s his first (of two, before our patience ran out) UK hit records, which was co-written by Madonna (who clearly knew it wasn’t good enough to release herself):
And here’s the advert that started it all:
Oh, and here’s the advert that rather finely sent it up:
So today’s lesson is this: cover a Marvin Gaye record, but make sure it’s utterly different to the original.
Hello, good evening and welcome to what is for us lucky folks in the UK is that rarest and most beautiful of things: a bank holiday weekend.
For those of you outside the UK, that means we have Monday off.
And for what I think is the first time in my working life, I have been astute enough to book today off too, giving me a glorious 4 days off on the trot.
And how will I be spending it, I hear you ask? Predominantly, perched in front of my laptop writing guff for you all to enjoy read, interspersed with the occasional missive to the agency who manage the flat I live in about where they can stick the £150.00 “administration fee” they want to charge me to renew my tenancy agreement.
So before, I get all grizzly about that, let’s get going with a non-themed, just tunes Friday Night Music Club.
But first some admin: inspired by The Robster over at “Is This The Life?” I’m using a different file-sharing service this week. I’ve grown a little tired of people telling me they can’t use the Zippyshare link to songs on their phones, and even more so about the pop-ups that Zippyshare seem to generate, and the content of some of the ads they insert, which I definitely do not approve of, and which I hope none of you have clicked. I’ve road-tested the new one and it seems to be waaaaaay better, but I’d be grateful for your feedback (Cath, Llyr, Kay) as to whether it’s an improvement or not.
When I was in my final year at college, I would often spend a Friday night round at my mate Daints’ flat. Daints was the singer in the band that I attempted to play lead guitar in, and I would often seek sanctuary round at his. Occasionally we would rehearse or, heaven forbid, write a song; more often we would sink a few beers, smoke a few fags (USA folks: that doesn’t mean what you think), play a little Tetris (this does nothing to negate any nerd thoughts you may have had about me, does it?) and indulge in what today is annoyingly termed “banter” but back then was just some mates having a laugh.
On one such occasion, Daints was ribbing (again, not what you USA folks might think) one of his flat-mates (a nice enough girl called Paula, who my friends and I all referred to, rather unkindly I can see with the benefit of hindsight, as “Baked Potato” because of her resemblance to one) about her love of The Cure, by pointing out that there out-put at the time (i.e. when this came out) was nothing more than “chart music”. He spat the phrase out with such distaste that she had no chance of recovery.
Still, it’s perfect Friday Night fodder, and let’s be honest, whilst I have no clue about what bothers the charts these days, there’s nothing wrong with our favourite bands being successful, right? Hence it’s inclusion here.
Next, an oft-overlooked single from what I think is one of the greatest debut albums in recent history:
Let’s just examine some of the lyrics for a second:
“You’re A Vegetable (You’re A Vegetable) Still They Hate You (You’re A Vegetable) You’re Just A Buffet (You’re A Vegetable) They Eat Off Of You (You’re A Vegetable)”
Erm, okay Michael.
Who knew he had so much in common with Thatcher?
Or the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for that matter (Let’s not go there – Legal Ed.)
Ma Ma Se, Ma Ma Sa, Ma Ma Coo Sa indeed.
Ok, moving on to my favourite type of record to play when DJ’ing.: long ones.
The benefit of dropping long record are threefold:
You don’t have to think about what to play next for a while;
You can dash off to the toilet and get back in plenty of time for the next tune;
Generally, people don’t like to walk off the dancefloor mid-record, as it makes it look like they didn’t know what they were dancing to in the first place. Long records test their endurance in a way that Bear Grylls can only dream of, allowing you chuckle about those who start dancing and who then feel compelled/become determined to see it out to the end of the song, however knackered they may look 3/4 of the way through.
That’s just shy of 12 minutes worth of funky grooviness right there, and if you can’t make it to the Gents and back in that time, then I’d suggest you contact your GP.
Next up, a song you will all know, but a remix of it that I first came across when I picked it up on a compilation CD in a Virgin megastore sale, and which has such a fantastically 80s bass-line it almost makes me want to be the next Mrs John Taylor:
And for all you lonely people (by which here’s the original video, directed by 10cc’s Godley and Crème and banned by the BBC for what will become fairly obvious reasons if you watch it (by which I mean Dad, do not watch this when Mum’s around):
Moving swiftly on….and following on from my recent Kate Bush posts, here’s a remix of a 1992 tune by Utah Saints, which samples La Madame Bush, this version released in 2008:
I first came across the next record when I was DJ’ing at college; originally called “Pro>Gen”, it got it’s first release when the band’s sort-of original line-up was still intact, by which I mean before Will Sinn had tragically drowned off the coast of Tenerife.
Truth be told, it did little to bother the charts on it’s first release, but post-Sinn, in that way that records tend to do when someone involved with creating them dies, like the general public rubber-necking a car crash, it was much more successful when it got re-released as “Move Any Mountain”.
I worked with The Shamen once. *CLANG* Name-dropping alert!!
We booked them on the Synergy Tour when I was at college and one of my many duties was to ensure their rider demands were met. On this occasion, one of them was that all of the performers were provided with a hot meal.
No problem, I thought: they can have something from the college refectory, same as every other band that had come through our doors. If it’s good enough for the Manic Street Preachers, The Blue Aeroplanes and Carter USM (CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!), it’s good enough for this lot, reasoned I.
So, they were provided with menus of the day’s delicious offerings, from which they all ordered, and I dispatched a couple of members of my team to go and collect their chosen sustenance.
Mr C. was, I recall, not happy about the standard of the slop that he was given, ranting off about how he hadn’t eaten properly for days and how he couldn’t eat what he had been given.
I stood up and looked him in the eye.
“We have to eat this shit every fucking day, mate” I said.
Mr C sat down again.
I still love his rap in this though.
After the gig, I ventured into the dressing room. Now I’m not saying that they weren’t all diabetics, but there were an awful lot of syringes laying around in there.
I once played “Pro>Gen” at a house party, and the now ex-girlfriend of one of my best mates started singing “E’s are Good” when it got to the chorus, not in any ironic “they all sound the same” kinda way, but in a genuine “that’s what this record is, right?” kinda way.
Lucky escape, mate.
At the same house party (shout out to the Hilldrop Massive!!), I played this, and a man I’d never met before, or since, practically exploded with excitement, came and hugged me, and then would not shut up about the fact I’d played it for the rest of the night. So, in his honour:
Two more songs for tonight. Firstly, the song which they invariably use to mark the end of one of their gigs; this is essentially the sound of The Charlatans flicking the lights on and off, stacking chairs and starting to mop the floor around you:
But it’s not our end of night tune. That honour goes to another act that needs no introduction, and which, if you timed listening/reading to all of this just right, will be pretty much perfect:
A History of Dubious Taste 