See? I’m a man of my word, back again, with another spankingly good mix for you to get yer lug ‘oles round.
There are sleeve notes this week, but unless I can think of something hilarious, brilliant, pertinent or informative for every tune featured (which I really haven’t managed this time out), take it as read that there won’t be any more. Although I may resurrect them every now and again (hey, it is Easter after all).
And so my quest for the perfect record to kick off a Friday Night mix continues…this would be perfect, were it not about going out and being cool, which, if you’re actually listening to this on a Friday night, you’re not, just like me.
2. Everything Everything – Distant Past
My buddy Tim is often banging on about this lot on Twitter (seriously, does anyone actually call it X? Thought not), so this is for him.
3. Erasure – Victim Of Love
The first single by this lot that I bought. Yes, primarily bought to stick on a mixtape to entertain the 6th Form common room, but unlike others bought for the same reason (I’m looking at you, Bruce Willis and your cover of Under the Boardwalk), bought loving it.
4. Elvis Costello – (What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding
Speaking of loving it, if this isn’t my favourite Costello single, then it’s right up there, despite it not having beem written by the great man himself. Take a bow, Mr Nick Lowe.
So why do I love it so much? I reckon you can blame Bill Murray for doing it at karaoke in Lost in Translation.
5. Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger & The Trinity – Save Me (Parts 1 & 2)
Not had any Northern Soul for a while, so this more than makes up for it, I think
6. Definition Of Sound – Wear Your Love Like Heaven
Oh, c’mon, you knew I’d drop this next, right?
7. The Velvelettes – These Things Will Keep Me Loving You
And back to a Northern Soul belter.
8. Gabriella Cilmi – Sweet About Me
I mentioned earworms at the weekend, songs which you suddenly find yourself humming or singing apparently unprompted. This is another of my recent ones.
Back in 2008, on the back of this single, for a brief nano-second, everyone thought Aussie Gabrielle was going to be a huge star. She seemed sassy, cool, sexy, and had a video which highlighted these characteristics, even if it did take the “the world’s a better place when it’s upside down, boy” lyric a little too literally:
If memory serves, even that *coughs* style guru Liam Gallagher was a fan.
And then we heard her album, realised she only had this one catchy tune, and promptly ignored her forever.
9. Courtney Barnett – Elevator Operator
Craving an alternative cool and contempory antipodean female artist? Courtney’s what you’re looking for.
10. Sheryl Crow – All I Wanna Do
This is just…such a great record…Not only catchy country-tinged rock, but those lyrics really paint a picture like nothing else she has done since (although there are many other great tunes in her back catalogue).
11. Simon & Garfunkel – The Boxer
Back in my 6th form days, and throughout my college years (and for a year after I graduated) I earned myself some pennies working in a Happy Eater roadside restaurant. For the first few years this was at Sawtry (South), and I would usually get a lift to and from work with the manager, Jane.
Jane was a couple of years older than me, in fact she’d been in the same school year as my brother. He won’t remember this, he steadfastly refuses to remember anyone who wasn’t in a dodgy non-band with him, or a goth or a punk, like what he was. Jane and I found that we shared similar musical tastes, enjoyed singing along to a tune or two as she drove us to-and-from work, and if we had done the late shift, we would often end up at hers, where the three of us – me, her and her fiance, Andrew – would have a few wind-down beers, play a few records, and have a bit of a sing-song. Thinking about it, it’s probably when the seed of what you’re reading now was planted.
On occasions, we’d go to her friend Kathy’s house, where much the same would happen. We’d plunder her parents’ record collection (predominantly Simon & Garfunkel, The Carpenters, that kind of thing) and we’d take it in turns to pick one to play, and then we’d drunkenly sing-a-long. This was a favourite end-of-nighter.
All together now: “LI-LA-LI! LI-LA-LI-LI-LI-LA-LI!”
Happy times.
12. R.E.M. – Radio Free Europe (Original Hib-Tone Single)
This doesn’t need any explanation, does it? The birth of one of the greatest, most interesting (college) rock bands.
12. LCD Soundsystem – Daft Punk Is Playing At My House
If I was being super-predictable, I’d play some Daft Punk next. But I’m not, so I won’t. Instead, this bleak little bastard:
13. Joy Division – She’s Lost Control
Again, no explanation required, you all know how important and influential this lot were.
14. Hot Chip – Over and Over
Rounding things off this week with a much more upbeat tune, even if it is a snarling response to criticism of their previous releases having been “laid back”. Which would be fine, had they released anything quite as un-laid back since (*awaits Comments directing me to a particular Hot Chip tune which isn’t laid back, of which there are many*).
Evening all. Nice to see you all made it through another week.
A nice mixed bag of pop and indie and indie pop awaits your delectation: this week, despite previous promises that I wouldn’t go off on a tangent/on a theme, that’s exactly what I’ve done here – not once, but twice – although I manage to reign it in after a tune or three. What can I say? I was feeling both Up and Groovy when I did this mix.
Elsewhere, we’ve got Franz Ferdinand remixed by Daft Punk (and, if I’m honest, the more I listen to it, the more I think they’ve ruined it, but it’s the first track so just grit your teeth and you’ll get through it); a tune by Razorlight (remember them??) which contains one of the dumbest lyrics ever; one by two of the characters from the brilliant sitcom Detectorists (are you sure about this? – Ed); one of the greatest records ever (I’ll let you decide for yourself which one I mean); one with the finest one-note keyboard motif ever, and we wind up with a track lifted from a very (overly) popular band’s third album – you know, the one where they did too much of the ol’ Columbian nose powder and ended up releasing singles like this which last over 9 minutes, and which unless I’m very much mistaken, is the UK #1 hit single with the longest duration (by which I most definitely do not mean the one that spent the longest at #1). Actually, we don’t quite end there, as I found I had another three minutes to fill, so slung in an old classic which just happened to have a word in the title which was also in the track before, and so really isn’t a third tangent/theme. So there.
Oh, before I forget, this one needs one of these stamped on it:
You’ll see why soon enough.
Anyway, I’ll stop wanging on, trying to keep the identity of the songs a surprise when I know most of you will have scrolled past this bit already to read the tracklisting. Honestly, I don’t know why I bother.
Simon & Garfunkel – The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)
The Driscolls – Groovy Little Town
The Farm – Groovy Train
Razorlight – Somewhere Else
Young Knives – Terra Firma
The Soup Dragons – Head Gone Astray
Oasis – All Around The World
Wreckless Eric – Whole Wide World
Ah. I’ve just found that apparently, in a previous mix, the final tune has already featured. I have therefore broken my rule about never featuring the same song twice. Too late in the day for me to redo the whole thing, and I don’t like any of the other mixes I have enough to post yet, so you’ll just have to put up with it. Sorry.
Some background: since he retired, my Dad has not only learnt to play the ukelele, he’s joined a local troupe, who gather together to learn songs and occasionally perform them to an actual audience. Once, they played on the back of a flat-bed lorry as it drove around various towns in their area. Perhaps not the best way to treat pensioners.
“Of course I know who James are,” I replied, wanting to add: ‘I’ve loads of their records and I used to own a long-sleeved white top with the word ‘Sit’ on the front and ‘Down’ on the arse.’
Back in the day, simply everyone owned a James top. If you owned the Come Home one, which had the word ‘Come’ on the front, and ‘Home’ on the back, you would undoubtedly be regaled with gags about how you had ‘Come’ on your shirt.
“So you know Sit Down then?”
I’m a bit confused by this conversation, truth be told. I can count my father’s previous forays into popular culture on approximately one finger. And when I say ‘popular culture’, I of course mean ‘anything from 1960 onwards’.
As it turned out, someone in his ukelele group – all in their 70s, at least – had suggested it as a song which they might perform.
I found this quite astounding, especially as he had previously told me that a group effort to play Simon & Garfunkel’s Cecillia had been blocked by one band member on the grounds that “making love in the afternoon with Cecilia”, only to find that when the singer got up to wash his face and then went back to bed somebody else stole had stolen their place, was obscene.
All of the other menfolk had shrugged whilst thinking how nice it would be to a) have been making love in the afternoon (or at all), and b) been able to have a nice sit down whilst somebody else had a go.
I may have inaccurately paraphrased their counter argument, there.
Anyway, what I’m getting at is that my father can now play this on his ukelele, a song which I used to regularly play when I DJ’d at college, always accompanied by an instruction to kick anyone who sat down on the dancefloor when I played it (as they often did, bloody students). I assume my Dad’s group don’t do the same.
This is the original release – so not the one which was a hit, that took a few goes, much like Cecilia did, it seems – which I bought at the time and stupidly leant to somebody I subsequently haven’t seen for about thirty years:
There’s not much more to tell you about my time in hospital, or rather there’s very little left that I can wring a bit of humour and/or a tune or two out of. So I’m going to rattle through the rest of the incidents of note and wrap things up.
Firstly, there’s something I omitted to tell you; in between the nurse’s call to my folks and them walking in on me mid-grease, there is some news as to what exactly I’m still doing there.
The nursing staff remain concerned about my vomiting episode. It is thought that I may have a tear ‘somewhere’ which has led to any liquid I’ve consumed to fall into places not intended to store liquid (you’ll let me know if I get too technical, won’t you?). I am to remain on a water only diet for the time being.
Added to that, and more definitively, on a couple of occasions, it has been observed that I get short of breath rather easily. Test results are now back in and I am told I have a pulmonary embolism, which is a blood-clot on my (left) lung to you and me. As a result, I am placed on a oxygen mask, which makes talking to my parents when they visit rather difficult.
For the record, I am not placed on an iron lung, but this post needs breaking up a little bit and I can’t think of any other songs which are even vaguely appropriate.
In other news, in a conversation with one of the consultants, I am told that my “sepsis is now under control”. This is a condition which has never been mentioned before and doesn’t crop up again; I assume at the time it is to do with the alarm over my blood tests which first led me to hospital, but it is also omitted from my discharge report.
However, a little research tells me that sepsis is not necessarily, as I thought, a blood problem, it’s a serious complication of an infection, which, if untreated, can lead to multiple organ failure and death. Not so funny anymore, right?
Symptoms of sepsis include:
– a high temperature
– chills and shivering
– fast heartbeat
– fast breathing
…all of which I have presented with or complained about at some point during my admission and stay in hospital.
Although it’s not specifically mentioned in my discharge papers, it seems pretty clear to me that the alarm the hospital showed when they got my blood tests back just before I was admitted was because I probably had sepsis due to the pulmonary embolism.
(After I’m discharged, I go to stay with my parents for a week or so, to convalesce. During that time, various family members visit me, including an aunt who for many years was a nurse, and whose opinion is gratefully received. She reads my discharge papers, and mentions that it was a pulmonary embolism that killed my grandmother. Later, she sends me a message where she mentions me having had a “near-death experience.” I show it to my mother, and flippantly comment that she’s exaggerating things a tad. “No,” says my mother, “I don’t think you realise how serious things were.” Having done the research, I get it now.)
No clever song for this bit, so you can let it sink in just as I did.
For the rest of the week, friends visit: Hel, Kay and Ian on Monday; Richie on Tuesday, Jo on Wednesday. It’s absolutely love to see them, to know friends are true friends concerned for my well-being (that’s not to sound like I’m dissing those who didn’t visit; I got texts from everyone who knew I was in hospital asking how I’m doing and wishing me well). I am snowed under with fruit, magazines, books and an ipod charger.
This last thing is essential as by Monday evening I’ve decided that the in-house entertainment leaves a lot to be desired. There is a television in my room, attached to one of those moveable crane-arms. But here’s the thing: you can only watch the terrestial channels (which is fair enough, I suppose a Sky subscription is a little too much to ask of a cash-strapped NHS), and you can only watch those between 7am and midday.
My morning routine now includes being woken and the lubed up, catching the end of the BBC’s Breakfast show (I’m ill, but not so ill that I’d choose to watch Piers Morgan on ITV), followed by a progam about celebrities tracing family members who fought in the First World War, followed by Homes Under The Hammer (seriously: what is former Manchester United striker Dion Dublin doing on that show?), followed by the first fifteen minutes of some sort of ‘criminals caught on CCTV’ show, hosted by short-arse slaphead do-gooder Dom Littlewood, and then the screen is filled with a message asking me to purchase credits if I wish to keep watching.
I pay my TV licence, and I pay my National Insurance contributions, so I feel a little put out by this demand. I decide I’m not sufficiently obsessed with Bargain Hunt or Flog It! to pay for (what I consider to be) a third time for the privilege of watching them. Thankfully, the radio is free, but none of the digital channels are provided as options. No 6Music then. I end up listening to Radio 2 from mid-day onwards, to idiots calling in to Jeremy Vine, and then Steve Wright, who I find hasn’t changed since the last time I listened to his show, around thirty years ago on the bus home from sixth form (this is not a recommendation).
Alarmingly, repeated exposure means I find myself quite liking the new Michael Buble single. Ipod it is then.
Over the course of the week, I have some physiotherapy, designed to help me walk better again. This is more because I have been laid up and have not actually used my legs for days, rather than addressing the pain, loss of strength and grip in both my hands. But still, on the second session, I progress from standing and walking from my bed to the door, to completing a circuit of the hosiptal floor.
On the Wednesday morning, I go to have a scan on my left arm, to see whether or not I have a blood clot there too. As I am wheeled out of my room, my physiotherapist happens to stroll by. He tells me that he probably won’t come to see me again today (as we had arranged) but he would definitely be back before I am discharged. He gives me the impression this is not going to be soon, that there’s no real rush, and that I’ll be here until the weekend at least.
Back in my room, I’m visited by a consultant who rather sheepishly tells me that they may have lost the results of the biopsies they did the week before. I think she is expecting me to kick off, but it’s not in my nature.
“Ah well, these things happen,” I say. “So you’ll need to do them again, I suppose?”
She looks at me, somewhat surprised.
“If we can’t find them, yes. We have got somebody going through all of the results trying to find them, though. I must say,” she adds,”you’re taking this very well.”
“Well, what’s the point in getting angry about it?” I reason. “It’s not going to make the results magic themselves back into existence. It’s an admin error, as far as I’m concerned, and I’m always blaming admin for things going missing at work, so I can’t really complain when I’m on the receiving end, can I?”
But the following day, before I can have any more physiotherapy, or find out whether my biopsy results have been located, I am told I am to be discharged. Given everything that has been said or alluded to previously, this comes as a bit of a surprise. But several hours later, after a lot of paperwork is completed (the discharge report lists not just the pulmonary embolism and the vomiting event, but also tells me I had pneumonia in my right lung. As far as I can recall, this is the first time this has been mentioned during my stay. I am given a load of medication and creams and strict instructions about how to use at least one of them, and then I am waiting outside for a taxi.
I can’t leave it hanging there, so let’s rewind a few days.
It’s just after my first session that my physiotherapist suggests the catheter should be removed so that I can build my strength up by actually having to get out of bed to go to the toilet. The day before, I had summoned the nurse and advised her that having not had a bowel movement of the solid variety for several days, the urge was now not quite overhwelming or urgent, but certainly imminent. She provides me with a bedpan, offers to help me position myself upon it (“No thanks!”) and then leaves me to my own devices.
I climb on board.
Have you ever tried to use a bed-pan? It’s really difficult. For although you know that everything is in place to catch whatever emerges, your mind remains resolute.
“You learned a long time ago”, it says, “that having a shit in your bed really isn’t the done thing.” I’m not Spud from Trainspotting, for God’s sake. I have control.
And so my body resists, and I have to ease myself back off the bed-pan and admit defeat, mission unaccomplished, .
The next day the catheter is removed. Just so you know, it hurt more coming out that it did going in. Ouchies.
And the combination of these two events (the failure to crap, and the begrudging knowledge that I now have to get up to pee) leaves me with a song in my head, the title of which explains my thought process now I have to actually get up to perfom my daily ablutions in a normal way:
It’s weird how things pan out. We have various categories here, where I award points for (nobody’s counting, the points mean nothing, apart from giving a warm glow for the recipient) the following:
Worst/Cheesiest Record of the Week
Showboat Comment of the Week
The Next Record in The Official Chain
Well, this week, we have a suggestion for each of the above. All of them will receive points. Yes: one person correctly guessed the next song in The Official Chain. If I could afford Ray Winstone’s head to pop up to ask you to lay your bets “nahhhhh”, this is where he’d be.
To recap: last week, we ended up with “Bonny” by Prefab Sprout, from their “Steve McQueen” album. Plenty of food for thought there, you’d think? Well, we have the most tunes ever to get through this week, although that’s mostly because I kept thinking of new ones.
Oh and by the way, it was rather pleasing to note that absolutely nobody complained about my deliberate mistake last week, which was to omit the link for the Crazy Frog tune. My faith in humanity is almost restored.
But before we go any further, many of you will know that regular Chain Ganger Badger’s better half was Lorna was involved in a car crash last week. Needless to say, our thoughts and best wishes go out to them. Get well soon.
“Beans often come from sprouts so how about something by Sunflower Bean? Tame Impala perhaps…”
Yes, that’s Tame Impala by Sunflower Bean, rather that Sunflower Bean by Tame Impala. As it says on their Bandcamp page: “Tame Impala wrote a song called Led Zeppelin and now they have a song named after them.” You can’t fault their logic.
“I feel that this is as good a time as any to mention Jasper Carrott and Funky Moped, although I think that a fair proportion of its sales were down to the inclusion of the non-musical Magic Roundabout on the flip side.”
You’re probably right, GG, so let’s stick with the A-Side which is, by the way, the Worst Record of the Week:
There you go, that’s your five portions of vegetables sorted out for today. A reward for finishing off all of your Brussel Sprouts is deserved; here’s Jasper with a classic routine:
Of course, Brussels also leads us to Europe, and to Belgium. Here’s Michael:
“Brussels being the capital of Belgium….Arno is a legend, in Europe often singing in English , ‘Les Yeux de ma Mère’ is a beautiful song , so you could also argue the bonnie link.”
And since we’re in Belgium, here’s Charity Chic from Charity Chic Music:
“Plastic Bertrand is the only Belgian singer I’m aware of….”
What, you haven’t heard of Arno before, CC…..? Care to nominate a song by the most famous Belgian (after Hercule Poirot and Jan Vertonghen, both of whom would have done better than our actual defence did yesterday).
In a normal week, the next suggestion, from George, would win the Comment Showboat of the Week. Not this week though, oh no:
“Using the song title, Bonny, to the name Bonnie, which leads to child star of the 70s Bonnie Langford, who appeared on a TV show with Lena Zavaroni, one of Rothesay’s famous exports, and there is no way I’m suggesting ‘Mama He’s Making Eyes At Me’, NO WAY, because I am linking from Bonnie Langford to Jon Langford, founder member of The Mekons, and to the song ‘Prince Of Darkness’, who seems to be having a rare old time at the moment in the UK and the USA. (The Prince of Darkness, that is, not Jon Langford)”
See that? Biting satire as well a great suggestion:
“The obvious temptation with Bonny is to go the Tyler route, but who likes obvious when there’s the Bonnie Raitt route, maybe with ‘Something To Talk About’.”
Time for The Robster from Is This The Life? with a bit of a history lesson:
“The only thing I’m coming back to is ‘My Bonnie’, the 1961 debut single by Tony Sheridan. He was backed on this by some young upstarts called The Beat Brothers (as the label credited them). Apparently they went on to become quite famous under a slightly different name…”
There was a distinctly outlawish theme to a few of the suggestions; step forward Lynchie:
“Bonny made me think more of one of Billy The Kid’s aliases – William H. Bonney – so I’d like to put in a good word for Joe Ely’s ‘Me and Billy the Kid’.”
In the movie ‘Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid’, the Kid is played by one Kris Kristofferson, who regular readers will know is a hero of mine, so here’s one by him:
Many of you weren’t content at simply linking to Bonnie, plumping for songs which reference, or are just plain about, famous outlaws Bonnie and Clyde. Here’s another one of mine to kick this batch off:
Okay, are you all sitting comfortably? Good, because I’m about to go off on a bit of a tangent, and hog the limelight for….oooh…the next five songs.
In the movie about the outlaws Bonnie & Clyde, pithily titled “Bonne and Clyde” Bonnie was played by Faye Dunaway, and Clyde was played by Warren Beatty. Beatty may, or may not have been the subject of this record:
And, of course, her co-star in The Thomas Crown affair was one Steve McQueen, which is, of the course, the name of the album that this week’s source record comes from.
(If I could award myself the Comment Showboat of the Week for that little lot, I would. Guess I’d better give it to one of you lot instead. Harumph.)
Go on then George, do your stuff:
“From Steve McQueen to Alexander McQueen, the designer, whose partner was George Forsyth, which is also the name of a long dead American General, and also of a Peruvian footballer. And also from Peru was Daniel Alomia Robles, who wrote the song El Condor Pasa, which was made famous by Simon And Garfunkel as ‘El Condor Pasa (If I Could)’.”
“Shaun Ryder cribbed the opening to the Happy Mondays’ ‘Step On’ (“You’re twistin’ my melon, man…”) from a documentary about Steve McQueen. ‘Step On’ is, of course, a cover of a John Kongos number that I believe has featured on these pages before [it hasn’t, so we could have it…] Happy Mondays also covered Kongos’ Tokoloshe Man. So that instead, please.”
Fair enough. This featured on “Rubáiyát”, which was released to mark record label Elektra’s 40th Anniversary:
Okay, where shall we go next? I know, let’s have some suggestions relating to Prefab Sprout themselves, and to kick things off, here’s Alyson from What’s It All About, Alfie?
“I always thought that their ’88 hit ‘King of Rock ‘n’ Roll’ was called ‘Albuquerque’ as the word comes up so often in the lyrics – Whenever watching the TV show Breaking Bad which was set in Albuquerque I thought of the song ‘A Horse With No Name’ by America (from Ruislip) and sure enough it popped up in the third season (and is my suggestion for this week). A tenuous double link is that the America band members back in the early ’70s would have worn the fashionable trouser of the day – loon pants – and Prefab Sprout’s main man was of course Paddy McAloon!”
“I should go from something by Prefab Sprout to the *original* Prefab Four, i.e. The Rutles, but I’m not actually familiar with their output. ‘Cheese and Onions’ is a mildly infamous song of theirs, though, so I’ll go with that.”
Now, we’ve had numerous links to Steve McQueen, the album that the source record features on, but what about other albums by Prefab Sprout?
“Prefab Sprout’s next album was ‘From Langley Park to Memphis’ and one of the singles from it was aforementioned ‘King of Rock ‘n’ Roll’. Elvis of course was the KORNR and he lived in Memphis so an alternative suggestion is ‘Walking in Memphis’ by Cher (as she dressed up as Elvis on ‘Top of the Pops’ back in the day).”
And what about the album after that….? Over to Martin again:
“‘Protest Songs’ … which is all the excuse I need to pitch ‘The Internationale’ by Billy Bragg, and hope that it scores extra points for being more relevant now than ever.”
No extra points, I’m afraid Martin, but I will take this opportunity to nudge you in the direction of Swiss Adam’s Bagging Area, where he has just finished posting a week of protest songs. Worth a visit, in my opinion.
Anyway, that’s your lot for this week. Except, a little while ago, Rigid Digit mentioned the Steve McQueen film and Blur album “The Great Escape”, but didn’t actually nominate a song from said album. Magnanimous host that I am, I asked him if he had one particular song in mind:
“My choice would be the peerless ‘The Universal’ (despite it’s continuing usage on the British Gas advert)”
And that, as you will have gathered by the number craftily placed at the start, is the next record in The Official Chain, so congratulations, and bonus points, to Rigid Digit.
So, your suggestions, please, for songs which link to “The Universal” by Blur, along with a brief description of the link, via the Comments Section down below, in time for next Sunday’s edition.
Day 2 of my big weekend is done; Friday night was spent watching Super Furry Animals at The Roundhouse (and after a few days of feeling like death with some kind of bronchial fluey nastiness, I can extol and endorse the virtues of going to a very sweaty gig to purge the body of such lurgy), and last night was me and my buddies’ Christmas gathering.
Normally, we have this in the Dublin Castle in Camden, but this year we moved to the Effra Social in Brixton. We had reserved a table, and got there to find that a Ska disco was going to be on.
It turned out we were misinformed; what we actually got was a rather fine Northern Soul night instead. Now, I love a bit of Northern Soul, but consider myself very much a novice, on a learning curve, and there are many other bloggers who know much more and can write far more eloquently than I about it than I, which is why it rarely features on these pages.
But one of the oh-so-many utter tunes that got played last night was this, an indisputable classic floor-filler:
I got chatting to the DJ at the end of the night, a lovely chap called Gareth. If anybody in the London area wants to book themselves a Northern Soul DJ and have a bloody great night, let me know, I’ll happily pass on his contact details.
Two nights on the lash have taken their toll on me, however. I now officially have no voice left.
Which leads me to this rather fine cover version of another song that you’ll all know:
Some would argue that if you’re going to do a cover version, you need to do radically rework it, so that to the untrained ear it sounds like something you wrote yourself.
Substitute the acoustic guitar on the original for an electric one on your track.
Upgrade the soft folky lilt of the original for a rip-roaring rollicking rock riff.
Maybe even shorten the title by, say, one vowel.
Trim out some of those rather unnecessary verses.
And then get Rick Rubin to produce it and pop it out on the uber-cool Def Jam label:
Of course, it was only a couple of weeks ago that I mentioned I was reluctant to do any posts involving Christmas songs. My how times have changed.
There was a reason for this, other than thinking you’d all be sick of hearing Christmas songs by now. Let me take you back a few years.
I was still sharing a flat with Hel, and she, along with our two other flatmates (I say two, I actually mean one other official flatmate and his girlfriend who practically moved in on the same day as he did) suggested we had a Friday night in, just the four of us (so I’m reluctant to call it a House Party, although that’s exactly what it was) and they asked me to do a Christmas playlist to last the night.
I spent the next few weeks finding songs to fill a few hours, my idea to be structure them into sequences of three or four upbeat cheerful ones to have a bit of a dance to, then a slower one or two for us to sit down, catch our breaths, and of course, have a ciggie. And more booze.
Alas, time caught up with me, and I didn’t have chance to fashion them into any kind of order, so I elected to simply put the playlist on shuffle and hope for the best.
You can guess what happened next. My iPod decided to get the ratios the wrong way round, merrily skipping to six or seven slow, depressing Christmas plodders in a row, then chucking in Shaky’s “Merry Christmas Everyone” to lull us into a false sense of security, before reverting back to the death dirges again.
Needless to say, it was not the joyous Christmas knees-up that had been requested. I think we were all in bed by 10.30.
Well, they say that what doesn’t break you makes you stronger, so I thought I’d post a few of the less cheerful songs today, just to temper those Christmas spirits, you understand.
First up, breathy songstress Isobel Campbell and gravel-throated Mark Lanegan, from their excellent third album “Hawk”:
Next up, a slightly more upbeat track by an actual couple (at the time anyway, I’ve no idea whether they still are) from what is one of my favourite Christmas albums of recent years:
A few songs by female artistes now, and taken from her breakthrough album “I Speak Because I Can” (I call it her breakthrough album partly because it was the first thing I ever heard by her, but also because by now she had ditched Mumford & Sons, who I seem to remember used to be her backing band at some point, but I’m buggered if I can find any reference to this anywhere, so maybe I dreamt it):
Moving swiftly on, here’s a bona fide female icon performing a rather over-looked single. Released back in 1980, shortly after her second album “Never for Ever”, I think I had managed to completely avoid hearing this until one of those Top of the Pops 2 Christmas Specials came on last year. You know the kind of thing, where Steve Wright, or more latterly Mark Radcliffe, make super lame jokes about the clip he’s introducing. Whoever would do such a thing? (*coughs…looks guiltily around*) Needless to say, it’s an absolute joy:
A word of warning. When I was searching for the sleeve for that single, I actually mistyped her name, writing Hate Bush by mistake. Let me tell you, that brings up a whole different set of search results than I had been expecting, only about 2% of which referred to the former US President.
Mind you, “Hate Bush” would be an excellent slogan for a t-shirt, like those “Brian Maiden” ones which were doing the rounds a few years ago. Does me typing it here count as my having copyrighted it?
(Why do I think there was one of those t-shirts about Motorhead too…? Ah yes, a certain someone I know once got Iron Maiden and Motorhead mixed up and accidentally referred to them as “Maidenhead”. Pffft! You know who you are!)
Anyway, you want iconic female singers doing slightly unhappy songs about Christmas? Well, you came to the right place, I got ’em. How about some nice Joni Mitchell:
Actually, I have a confession to make about that choice: I was rather hoping I’d be able to track down Michael Ball’s version somewhere, but have had no joy. Ho Hum. There’s always next year.
Anyway, never mind that its opening melody is “Jingle Bells” in a minor key and that the lyrics begin with a seasonal scene: “It’s coming on Christmas, they’re cutting down trees/They’re putting up reindeer, singing songs of joy and peace.” Ultimately, “River” is a bereft song about a broken romance and a woman who desperately wants to escape her heartbreak, saying repeatedly: “I wish I had a river I could skate away on.”
For the unitiated, that’s Tom Smith – lead singer from Editors – and Andy Burrows who you will no doubt recognise as being the drummer from Razorlight (and now of We Are Scientists, apparently). So, proper indie royalty then (*ahem*)
Speaking of Indie Royalty, hands up who remembers this lot? Pretty huge a little while back weren’t they?
Three to go for today, two of which are from artists that I have banged on about an awful lot on these pages. Firstly it’s Gruff Rhys, lead singer of Super Furry Animals, from his bloody-wonderful-but-then-I-would-say-that-wouldn’t-I? “Atheist Xmas EP”:
Think yourself lucky I didn’t post (and I shit you not, I haven’t made this up) “Slashed Wrists This Christmas” from the same EP. Still brilliant, but maybe a little too dark for tonight’s post.
Instead, something which could quite easily have cropped up in my “From Leeds With Love” series, had I actually been arsed to write any of them for a while; yes, it’s The Wedding Present covering Sir Elton:
And lastly for today, before you get all cheerful again, this, two minutes of a newscaster reading horrible headlines about how terrible everything is whilst the evil ones from The Detectorists sing “Silent Night” in the background:
Now, tomorrow is Christmas Eve, and I’ll be travelling home to spend Christmas with my parents, so there may, or may not, be a post-tomorrow, depending on whether I get all of the things done in time that I need to. Which you could take to be a cover story to obscure the fact that I am actually Father Christmas. You might think that, I couldn’t possibly comment.
A History of Dubious Taste 