Hey there, schmucks, i thought i'd ease my way back into this here blog thing, which has taken such a long winter break i can't really remember what the point is or whether any of it is good or bad. I'd got it onto my head that it was all bad but i just reread some of it and you know, it was ok. Especially the lists of songs. Those are the best bits. Obviously.
Caught By The Fuzz - Supergrass
Police and Thieves - Junior Murvin
Get Myself Arrested - Gomez
Stay Too Long - Plan B
Fuck tha Police -NWA
I Fought The Law - The Clash
Highway Patrolman - Bruce Springsteen
99 Problems - Jay-Z
I Shot the Sheriff - Bob Marley
Cop Killer - Body Count
Now, being an unnervingly law-abiding fellow, my encounters with the filth have been sickenly few. I see plenty of them about South London but I'm afraid I'm one of those people who walks past police and gives them a smug look as if to say "you're not interested in me, are you, you can take one look at me and know that i'm not the kind of person you need to bother ..." What's worse is not that i don't look like i commit crimes but that i really have hardly ever done anything illegal even to the pettiest, pettiest degree.
And i don't really have an opinion on the police in general - i acknowledge that something with such immediate power over people's lives is going to be more corrupt than anything else, that there's going be any number of nasty scumbags in it, petty tormentors, institutionalised psychos etc but i also think it's obvious it's a great and noble profession we should all give thanks for every day. I'm not the kind of person that says or thinks things like "go catch some real criminals".
I experienced the police at close quarters a couple of times a) when my flat was broken into, when they were quick, competent, pleasant, amused at what a tip my room was in ("Did the thief do this, sir?" "No officer, i'm afraid this is the state the room was in anyway." "You might want to do something about that, sir") but ultimately useless and b) when i was on a jury for a robbery and there were various cops as witnesses and you realise what a drag it must be for them to be treated like corrupt criminals by defence lawyers desperately seeking to establish an element of doubt in the jury's mind. "When did you write those notes up, Sergeant? I put it to you that you wrote them up fifteen minutes later than you said you did and therefore your account cannot be used as accurate evidence ... etc")
But, like most people, mainly i've seen police on TV, which they are never off. Police shows make up so many of the great TV shows, it's unreal. Obviously The Wire is the best one, but there really are so many others it's not worth listing. I will mention Our Friends in the North, though, which wasn't a police drama as such, but it's expose of corruption in the Met in the 60s and 70s was one of the most eye-opening things I ever saw.
So, the songs, the songs, a fair bit of reggae and hip-hop, where trouble with the law is standard fare, and I love the Bruce Springsteen song, which belongs to this beautiful subgenre of the lonely noble American hero, the Wichita Lineman, the Engine Driver. It begins "My name is Joe Roberts, I work for the state" such a bold and disarming lyric. Many's the time I've sat down to write something and just started with "My name is Joe Roberts". There's something brilliant about it in a way I can't really describe - it tells you the kind of song it is, the kind of person the narrator is, the world we're inhabiting, there's so much loaded in starting a song with that line.
The other two songs I just mentioned begin in the same way - "I am a lineman for the county"; "I'm an engine driver ...". I didn't begin this below like that, perhaps i should have done. It's that kind of verse.
THE COLL POLICEMAN
The Oban ferry's two miles distant,
framed by suspicious sky of blue
but I can feel the storm from the west
conspiring to wreck the summer revels -
a tear winds tired down my cheek.
I've paperwork to do this morning
six drink/drives since midsummer's,
two small crashes, one more serious.
Work needs doing on the river road
but they can't make it till next week.
Each morning I thank the good Lord
this isn't Govan or Summerisle.
I hear there's a ceilidh band on the boat
who're making waves all over Argyll -
a long night ahead, not too long, I'm afraid.
I'm moving on to Tyree in October
then I'll be back home in the new year.
Megan turns two at Halloween,
but I can't be sure I'll make it back.
Maybe you could come visit instead.
It's hard, my dear, to be without you,
so hard to keep my thoughts on home.
You can't imagine how tired i feel.
I wasn't born to be alone -
I find it so hard here on my own.
There's more young folk on the island
than I've known before, all free and fair,
dancing, lauging, unresentful
of the tepid duties I carry out -
they're not like the young folks back home.
There'll be girls on the ferry who don't mind
the wind and the rain and wild reception.
They'll fling their bodies into the storm
and joke about the licensing laws
and what they'll do to dance 'til dawn.
I wish you'd come see me less seldom -
i don't know why the city binds you.
I find it so hard alone sometimes
I forget myself on this wild isle
just to feel human, just to stay warm.
Sunday, 28 March 2010
Saturday, 20 February 2010
84. 10 Songs About Fathers
Papa Don't Preach - Madonna
Father and Son - Cat Stevens
Bloody Motherfucking Asshole - Martha Wainwright
Papa Was a Rolling Stone - The Temptations
My Old Man - Ian Dury & the Blockheads
Daddy's Gone - Glasvegas
Dance With My Father - Luther Vandross
Alcoholic - Starsailor
Five More Minutes - Mull Historical Society
Dinner at Eight -Rufus Wainwright
It would probably be possible to create a whole list from the laundry washed in public of the Wainwrights, but i've just included a couple, though Beauty Mark is another good one by Rufus Wainwright. Dinner at Eight is an outstanding song, definitely my favourite by Rufus Wainwright, even though it sounds like it belongs in a musical.
There are also quite a few of these in the world of extremely adult AOR, what with Vandross, Clapton's My Father's Eyes and the beast that is Mike and the Mechanics' The Living Years. Hey, nothing wrong with it if people have got something to get off their chest.
It does strike me, though this is hardly a new thought, that the role of fatherhood has declined without measure in the last few decades and that we no longer live in a patriarchal society at all.
There are various different levels to this. First of all, how many people do we know or hear about whose defining parental relationship is with their father - this applies both to people we know and the number of celebrities who go on and on about how great their mother is in interviews. I suppose it was always thus that the father was a distant figure but his clear and defined status as head and provider of the household overrode that - it goes without saying that this is not so often true anymore, but next to that and linked in to it is, i think, the passing of the idea of a paternal god. If God was a father, that fed into the idea of one's own father - now it is not hippy-thinking to view "god" as female, whichever way you look at it, mainly in the sense that we are realise our status as a race is entirely wrapped up with the Earth, and the Earth has always been personified as female. I think both subconsciously and consciously people's highest power now is an alma mater rather than a pater familias. There are various other little factors governing this as well, like the fact the monarch has been a female for nearly 60 years - all this is pretty obvious stuff, I guess. I think, as fatherhood finds its new role, what's interesting is that the modern conception of a "good" father is a father who is able to take on several of the roles traditionally given to a mother as possible. All good stuff.
This is just an outsider's view looking in, on various levels, but i guess the fact that more and more people are outsiders to what fatherhood means is indicative of the point. The whole line of thought was triggered by what I wrote below, based on one of the great fathers of all time, Agamemnon, and the seemingly inescapable idea of the sins of the father passed down from generation to generation, whereas now I feel the sins of the father can, if lucky, be very easily escapable, and one no longer needs to put oneself before the judgment of Athena ...
This one is dedicated to some of the great fathers, Agamemnon, Royal Tenenbaum, and of course, our current "Daddies' Sauce Father of the Year", John "JT" "Captain Fantastic" Terry...
It's intended to be comical, rhythmical and littered with allusions that give value to my education ...
FATHER OF THE YEAR
They say that things get better.
The future is unwritten.
There's no cycle of violence.
Sometimes things just get better.
He named his son Orestes.
Wit was his only refuge.
The son he named Orestes
took beatings in the playground.
He said he had the illness
to end all feuds and bad blood.
It wasn't consequential
if that was true or not.
For years even the furies
bowed down to his royalty,
this king through generations
destroyed all things around him.
You see, Little Orestes,
this pattern that emerges.
There's really no avoiding
the judgement of Athena.
He died one summer evening
in mystery and in torment.
Orestes did not do it
if that's what you are wondering.
Sometimes things just get better.
The furies leave the mirror.
Succession is forsaken.
A new story is written.
Orestes became Duncan.
No one is any wiser.
Duncan had a girl called Jo,
not Iphigenia.
A king has many enemies
and chance has many allies.
He paid and was not paid back
on that summer evening.
Father and Son - Cat Stevens
Bloody Motherfucking Asshole - Martha Wainwright
Papa Was a Rolling Stone - The Temptations
My Old Man - Ian Dury & the Blockheads
Daddy's Gone - Glasvegas
Dance With My Father - Luther Vandross
Alcoholic - Starsailor
Five More Minutes - Mull Historical Society
Dinner at Eight -Rufus Wainwright
It would probably be possible to create a whole list from the laundry washed in public of the Wainwrights, but i've just included a couple, though Beauty Mark is another good one by Rufus Wainwright. Dinner at Eight is an outstanding song, definitely my favourite by Rufus Wainwright, even though it sounds like it belongs in a musical.
There are also quite a few of these in the world of extremely adult AOR, what with Vandross, Clapton's My Father's Eyes and the beast that is Mike and the Mechanics' The Living Years. Hey, nothing wrong with it if people have got something to get off their chest.
It does strike me, though this is hardly a new thought, that the role of fatherhood has declined without measure in the last few decades and that we no longer live in a patriarchal society at all.
There are various different levels to this. First of all, how many people do we know or hear about whose defining parental relationship is with their father - this applies both to people we know and the number of celebrities who go on and on about how great their mother is in interviews. I suppose it was always thus that the father was a distant figure but his clear and defined status as head and provider of the household overrode that - it goes without saying that this is not so often true anymore, but next to that and linked in to it is, i think, the passing of the idea of a paternal god. If God was a father, that fed into the idea of one's own father - now it is not hippy-thinking to view "god" as female, whichever way you look at it, mainly in the sense that we are realise our status as a race is entirely wrapped up with the Earth, and the Earth has always been personified as female. I think both subconsciously and consciously people's highest power now is an alma mater rather than a pater familias. There are various other little factors governing this as well, like the fact the monarch has been a female for nearly 60 years - all this is pretty obvious stuff, I guess. I think, as fatherhood finds its new role, what's interesting is that the modern conception of a "good" father is a father who is able to take on several of the roles traditionally given to a mother as possible. All good stuff.
This is just an outsider's view looking in, on various levels, but i guess the fact that more and more people are outsiders to what fatherhood means is indicative of the point. The whole line of thought was triggered by what I wrote below, based on one of the great fathers of all time, Agamemnon, and the seemingly inescapable idea of the sins of the father passed down from generation to generation, whereas now I feel the sins of the father can, if lucky, be very easily escapable, and one no longer needs to put oneself before the judgment of Athena ...
This one is dedicated to some of the great fathers, Agamemnon, Royal Tenenbaum, and of course, our current "Daddies' Sauce Father of the Year", John "JT" "Captain Fantastic" Terry...
It's intended to be comical, rhythmical and littered with allusions that give value to my education ...
FATHER OF THE YEAR
They say that things get better.
The future is unwritten.
There's no cycle of violence.
Sometimes things just get better.
He named his son Orestes.
Wit was his only refuge.
The son he named Orestes
took beatings in the playground.
He said he had the illness
to end all feuds and bad blood.
It wasn't consequential
if that was true or not.
For years even the furies
bowed down to his royalty,
this king through generations
destroyed all things around him.
You see, Little Orestes,
this pattern that emerges.
There's really no avoiding
the judgement of Athena.
He died one summer evening
in mystery and in torment.
Orestes did not do it
if that's what you are wondering.
Sometimes things just get better.
The furies leave the mirror.
Succession is forsaken.
A new story is written.
Orestes became Duncan.
No one is any wiser.
Duncan had a girl called Jo,
not Iphigenia.
A king has many enemies
and chance has many allies.
He paid and was not paid back
on that summer evening.
Sunday, 14 February 2010
83. 10 Songs for the Free Spirits
Ruby Tuesday - The Rolling Stones
Me & Bobby McGee - Janis Joplin
I'll Fly By the Seat of My Pants - King Creosote
The Freeest Man - Tilly & the Wall
King of the Road - The Proclaimers
Liza Radley - The Jam
Wherever I Lay My Hat - Marvin Gaye
Wild and Free - Curtis Mayfield
Free Man In Paris - Joni Mitchell
Restless Farewell - Bob Dylan
Of course, none of these are a patch on the theme from The Littlest Hobo, but I've already used that at least once, and I feel it's so universally applicable, it's cheating to overuse it.
It's hard to know what to feel about free spirits, for as Cliff Huxtable said "Theo, you've got to take responsibilty for your actions" and free-spiritedness is often just selfishness, isn't it, but I don't imagine there are many people who don't do their best to avoid being trapped, and free-spiritedness is one of the most enviable states. If you can manage it without messing too many people about, you've got it made.
When I was doing room service as a gap year job, we used to sit round for about 1/2 hour when shifts had finished at 2am, and I, a callow youth, used to listen in wonder and contempt to the self-aggrandising exploits of head waiter Eddie. He did at point actually say, with no irony "I guess I'm just too much of a free spirit for this institution" which is one of my favourite quotes of all time, one I've reused at every opportunity. He was a cock. A total cock. Which is perhaps why I, rather unfairly, assume anyone who is described as, or who describes themselves as, a free spirit is 99% certainly a total cock ... deep down.
Having said that, I've been described as a free spirit myself. There are two possible responses to this 1) Yes, I am a bit of a cock 2)I'm really not a free spirit in any way, I'm entirely self-conscious, hung up and linear, and all the better for it.
Perhaps one confuses free-spirited with free-mindedness. Then again, I can't exactly pinpoint what the distinction is, but i'm sure there is one.
Still, many paeans to free spirits have been written, the most famous of them being Ruby Tuesday, and I think it's a nice figure to idealise and idolise in song.
Frankly, I have no idea what the following is about, but I do recall that many years ago, when I wrote it, I called it
For the Free Spirits
so it must be appropriate in some ways
For the Free Spirits
These strictly suburban images etched
on this loosened memorial board
serve as the last cursed of this middling class
(bracketed with the trusted and ignored).
I never quite believe another life
sweats and shimmys and sulks elsewhere,
dances on mountaintops, sleeps in gutters;
In winter, sure, we shiver, stepping out
of the shower and into the towel,
and tritely talk over the all the disorders
of which we hope we can fall foul.
All those CDs and all those shoes -
a worthless search for discounts, bargains,
unnoticed, self-serving sins of our age -
save our souls from more pointed arguing.
Maybe, at night, our impoverished minds
unite and cry to the elemental.
Til then, I prepare, praise, check fore and aft
for one vague chance of the accidental.
Me & Bobby McGee - Janis Joplin
I'll Fly By the Seat of My Pants - King Creosote
The Freeest Man - Tilly & the Wall
King of the Road - The Proclaimers
Liza Radley - The Jam
Wherever I Lay My Hat - Marvin Gaye
Wild and Free - Curtis Mayfield
Free Man In Paris - Joni Mitchell
Restless Farewell - Bob Dylan
Of course, none of these are a patch on the theme from The Littlest Hobo, but I've already used that at least once, and I feel it's so universally applicable, it's cheating to overuse it.
It's hard to know what to feel about free spirits, for as Cliff Huxtable said "Theo, you've got to take responsibilty for your actions" and free-spiritedness is often just selfishness, isn't it, but I don't imagine there are many people who don't do their best to avoid being trapped, and free-spiritedness is one of the most enviable states. If you can manage it without messing too many people about, you've got it made.
When I was doing room service as a gap year job, we used to sit round for about 1/2 hour when shifts had finished at 2am, and I, a callow youth, used to listen in wonder and contempt to the self-aggrandising exploits of head waiter Eddie. He did at point actually say, with no irony "I guess I'm just too much of a free spirit for this institution" which is one of my favourite quotes of all time, one I've reused at every opportunity. He was a cock. A total cock. Which is perhaps why I, rather unfairly, assume anyone who is described as, or who describes themselves as, a free spirit is 99% certainly a total cock ... deep down.
Having said that, I've been described as a free spirit myself. There are two possible responses to this 1) Yes, I am a bit of a cock 2)I'm really not a free spirit in any way, I'm entirely self-conscious, hung up and linear, and all the better for it.
Perhaps one confuses free-spirited with free-mindedness. Then again, I can't exactly pinpoint what the distinction is, but i'm sure there is one.
Still, many paeans to free spirits have been written, the most famous of them being Ruby Tuesday, and I think it's a nice figure to idealise and idolise in song.
Frankly, I have no idea what the following is about, but I do recall that many years ago, when I wrote it, I called it
For the Free Spirits
so it must be appropriate in some ways
For the Free Spirits
These strictly suburban images etched
on this loosened memorial board
serve as the last cursed of this middling class
(bracketed with the trusted and ignored).
I never quite believe another life
sweats and shimmys and sulks elsewhere,
dances on mountaintops, sleeps in gutters;
In winter, sure, we shiver, stepping out
of the shower and into the towel,
and tritely talk over the all the disorders
of which we hope we can fall foul.
All those CDs and all those shoes -
a worthless search for discounts, bargains,
unnoticed, self-serving sins of our age -
save our souls from more pointed arguing.
Maybe, at night, our impoverished minds
unite and cry to the elemental.
Til then, I prepare, praise, check fore and aft
for one vague chance of the accidental.
Friday, 12 February 2010
82. 10 Songs about Blue Skies
Blue Skies - The Longpigs
Sky Blue Sky - Wilco
Let Those Blue Skies - Gorky's Zygotic Mynci
Mr Blue Sky - ELO
Blue Sky Blues - Ryan Adams
Blue Skies - Noah and the Whale
Blue Skies - The Young Republic
Sky Blue and Black - Jackson Browne
Into the Blue - Geneva
What a Wonderful World - Louis Armstrong
Funny how, in the depths of winter, there have been more and more posts about the elements - I've had this one ready for a while, but there were some striking blue skies this week - I could look out of my window and imagine it was the height of summer, only to go outside and it was so baltic you could barely feel your fingers. It reminds me of 'Winterlight' by Clearlake, which would be here if it hadn't been in "Winter" - "I can't explain in words, at least none that I've heard, the quality of light around this time of year".
Blue skies are obviously one of the most obvious and well-used symbols of good things and good times, hence the number of good songs about blue skies - and yet blue, in a general sense, itself still means bad. But people don't say "I feel blue like the sky" - the blue of the blues is, I suppose, a darker blue. Still, it's a slight anomaly.
I like the Longpigs song - "Blue skies and children keep you off my mind" - it begins. I always thought that was a great line. The Longpigs, often described as Britpop also-rans, but a band who could probably have been massive. The singer and guitarist have both gone on to have various types of success afterwards.
There was a kid at school called Day and he had sisters called Sky and Blue. Good? I suppose so. I'm sure they turned out well.
So, hmmm, this is about falling in love with someplace where the sky is always blue, though you probably get sick of constant blue skies if you're born with it.
My heart is in your hometown
where I, for once, was young
where winter had been banished
to a wry, unenvied memory,
a lament which went unsung.
My thoughts turn to your hometown
each time my squinting eyes
regret a change of season -
a ballast and a liferaft when
I'm drowning in blue skies.
The castle tower stands tall and proud,
the sailboats crowd the spit.
Who wouldn't love your hometown?
Who could think some grey expanse
would make a better fit?
Month after month your childhood
saw not a single cloud.
Your heart pined for a new land,
for wild, uncertain feelings,
mercurial times and sounds.
I first came to your hometown
proud only of my flaws
and cold contempt for virtues
but I'd never seen virtues
as clear and fair as yours.
You hardly need to tell me
the ways I let you down
but trust that for a short while
you held me up: the short time
I found myself your town.
And now I hear you're travelling
far above the highest cloud.
I'm told that I should follow
but the thought I'd ever catch you's
more than my mind's allowed.
I'm travelling to your hometown
now for the final time
There's a chance you'll return
and if that day should ever come
you'll find your hometown mine.
Sky Blue Sky - Wilco
Let Those Blue Skies - Gorky's Zygotic Mynci
Mr Blue Sky - ELO
Blue Sky Blues - Ryan Adams
Blue Skies - Noah and the Whale
Blue Skies - The Young Republic
Sky Blue and Black - Jackson Browne
Into the Blue - Geneva
What a Wonderful World - Louis Armstrong
Funny how, in the depths of winter, there have been more and more posts about the elements - I've had this one ready for a while, but there were some striking blue skies this week - I could look out of my window and imagine it was the height of summer, only to go outside and it was so baltic you could barely feel your fingers. It reminds me of 'Winterlight' by Clearlake, which would be here if it hadn't been in "Winter" - "I can't explain in words, at least none that I've heard, the quality of light around this time of year".
Blue skies are obviously one of the most obvious and well-used symbols of good things and good times, hence the number of good songs about blue skies - and yet blue, in a general sense, itself still means bad. But people don't say "I feel blue like the sky" - the blue of the blues is, I suppose, a darker blue. Still, it's a slight anomaly.
I like the Longpigs song - "Blue skies and children keep you off my mind" - it begins. I always thought that was a great line. The Longpigs, often described as Britpop also-rans, but a band who could probably have been massive. The singer and guitarist have both gone on to have various types of success afterwards.
There was a kid at school called Day and he had sisters called Sky and Blue. Good? I suppose so. I'm sure they turned out well.
So, hmmm, this is about falling in love with someplace where the sky is always blue, though you probably get sick of constant blue skies if you're born with it.
My heart is in your hometown
where I, for once, was young
where winter had been banished
to a wry, unenvied memory,
a lament which went unsung.
My thoughts turn to your hometown
each time my squinting eyes
regret a change of season -
a ballast and a liferaft when
I'm drowning in blue skies.
The castle tower stands tall and proud,
the sailboats crowd the spit.
Who wouldn't love your hometown?
Who could think some grey expanse
would make a better fit?
Month after month your childhood
saw not a single cloud.
Your heart pined for a new land,
for wild, uncertain feelings,
mercurial times and sounds.
I first came to your hometown
proud only of my flaws
and cold contempt for virtues
but I'd never seen virtues
as clear and fair as yours.
You hardly need to tell me
the ways I let you down
but trust that for a short while
you held me up: the short time
I found myself your town.
And now I hear you're travelling
far above the highest cloud.
I'm told that I should follow
but the thought I'd ever catch you's
more than my mind's allowed.
I'm travelling to your hometown
now for the final time
There's a chance you'll return
and if that day should ever come
you'll find your hometown mine.
Monday, 8 February 2010
81. 10 Songs About Monday
My Shadow Is A Monday - Lavender Diamond
Manic Monday - The Bangles
She Left On A Monday - Bic Runga
Monday - The Jam
Monday, Monday - The Mamas and The Papas
Monday Morning 5.19 - Rialto
Crying Like A Church On Monday - The New Radicals
Rainy Days and Mondays - The Carpenters
Monday - Wilco
Blue Monday - New Order
Sometimes I truly wonder at the banality of the subjects I pick - so now I have to write something about Monday, eh? Well, today's Monday, and generally people hate Mondays, but it's not quite as bad for me as it is for other people - in fact, it's often not that different from Saturday and Sunday. This is both a good and a bad thing.
Anyway, Monday must have enough symbolic significance to have produced all these songs, some fine songs, albeit pretty cheesy. Anyway, nothing screams of someone who bought too much music in their time than knowing a New Radicals album track. And knowing any songs by Rialto.
They're pretty much all about Monday being bad, apart from The Jam one and the Mamas and the Papas, and well, we all know they can't be trusted, the seedy fucks. I used to enjoy taking part in a pub quiz on a Monday. That was my way to make Monday fun. Getting drunk on Mondays and in the daytime are usually moments of release and triumph - it's a surprise it's not done more often.
But anyway, as you can tell, I'm struggling to elevate this ... erm, monday is named after the Moon, as in French, Lundi and most other European languages, though in Portuguese it's called Segunda Feira, as in the second market day cos let's not forget, Monday is actually the second day of the week.
But I thought what can I write about Monday, bearing in mind its all banal and meaningless and that, so I thought about the most profound and serious thing I've ever thought about Monday and that is in the last verse here.
Your last words ...
Some fine phrase from a Lambchop song
at their so-called commercial peak.
Gentle, doom-filled - wisdom, wit,
a way to add to your mystique.
Some pronouncement bold and strong
lest you should be judged as trite
"Envy alone can't be corrupted
and so, cruel world, I bid good night"
"In love alone we all endure" -
some balm for anyone who'll care.
Perhaps a song! one hummed bar
from, say, the Londonderry Air.
"La tristesse durere", or "Bugger Bognor",
self-knowledge to the very end.
"Stinks in 'ere", "farewell, sweet prince,
you've been my truest, finest friend."
Though prepared, you were not ready
and fluffed the line which was your last.
"Monday Night Football never caught on"
thus you spoke and so you passed.
Manic Monday - The Bangles
She Left On A Monday - Bic Runga
Monday - The Jam
Monday, Monday - The Mamas and The Papas
Monday Morning 5.19 - Rialto
Crying Like A Church On Monday - The New Radicals
Rainy Days and Mondays - The Carpenters
Monday - Wilco
Blue Monday - New Order
Sometimes I truly wonder at the banality of the subjects I pick - so now I have to write something about Monday, eh? Well, today's Monday, and generally people hate Mondays, but it's not quite as bad for me as it is for other people - in fact, it's often not that different from Saturday and Sunday. This is both a good and a bad thing.
Anyway, Monday must have enough symbolic significance to have produced all these songs, some fine songs, albeit pretty cheesy. Anyway, nothing screams of someone who bought too much music in their time than knowing a New Radicals album track. And knowing any songs by Rialto.
They're pretty much all about Monday being bad, apart from The Jam one and the Mamas and the Papas, and well, we all know they can't be trusted, the seedy fucks. I used to enjoy taking part in a pub quiz on a Monday. That was my way to make Monday fun. Getting drunk on Mondays and in the daytime are usually moments of release and triumph - it's a surprise it's not done more often.
But anyway, as you can tell, I'm struggling to elevate this ... erm, monday is named after the Moon, as in French, Lundi and most other European languages, though in Portuguese it's called Segunda Feira, as in the second market day cos let's not forget, Monday is actually the second day of the week.
But I thought what can I write about Monday, bearing in mind its all banal and meaningless and that, so I thought about the most profound and serious thing I've ever thought about Monday and that is in the last verse here.
Your last words ...
Some fine phrase from a Lambchop song
at their so-called commercial peak.
Gentle, doom-filled - wisdom, wit,
a way to add to your mystique.
Some pronouncement bold and strong
lest you should be judged as trite
"Envy alone can't be corrupted
and so, cruel world, I bid good night"
"In love alone we all endure" -
some balm for anyone who'll care.
Perhaps a song! one hummed bar
from, say, the Londonderry Air.
"La tristesse durere", or "Bugger Bognor",
self-knowledge to the very end.
"Stinks in 'ere", "farewell, sweet prince,
you've been my truest, finest friend."
Though prepared, you were not ready
and fluffed the line which was your last.
"Monday Night Football never caught on"
thus you spoke and so you passed.
Sunday, 7 February 2010
80. 10 Songs About Couples
Jack & Diane - John Mellencamp
Penny & Jack - The Essex Green
Donna & Blitzen - Badly Drawn Boy
'03 Bonnie & Clyde - JZ and Beyonce
When Johnny Met June - Shelby Lynne
The Ballad of John and Yoko - The Beatles
Johnny & Mary -Robert Palmer
Scenes From An Italian Restaurant - Billy Joel
Waterloo Sunset - The Kinks
Romeo & Juliet - Dire Straits
Check me out with my cool taste in music - Dire Staits, Billy Joel, Robert Palmer and John "Cougar" Mellencamp on the same tape - we're in MOR heaven.
Couples are awesome, but only if joined by an ampersand, like Peter & Katie, and not if they are merged together, like Brangelina, Bennifer or Jedward. These over-eager attempts to merge into one will only end in wretched wrenching apart, you mark my words. You need a cool, clean ampersand.
When I go to weddings and social events everyone is in a couple pretty much - except little old me, of course, so I get to be a louche, devil-may-care dandy before crying myself to sleep at the bitter sting of eternal solitude. It's pretty cool.
I ponder and puzzle at couplings of all sorts, but tend to be pretty impressed by how people keep it together. Did you know that divorce rates are at their lowest in years? Cheering news. Apart from for bitter misanthropes like me.
Who are my favourite couples of history, I hear you asking?
Well, there can only be one
Number 1 - Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince, of course. Friends, lovers, partners in music and comedy gold, every time Jazz got thrown out of the Banks household, separated from his beloved Big Willie, you felt a schism in everything good and noble in the world
Number 2 - David Gest and Liza Minnelli
Number 3 - Saint and Greavsie
Number 4 - Frank and Pat Butcher, especially when he was wearing only a bowtie. Hepburn and Tracy? Bogart and Bacall? Do me a favour
Number 5 - Pat and Mick, as in Pat Sharp -woowoo! - and Mick Brown, superstar DJs and late 80s chart stars, kind of a British version of Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince.
So those are some great couples. I also like Lennon & McCartney and Bacharach & David and Coen & Coen and Torvill & Dean.
Here is a song about Robson & Jerome ... it's called
The Ballad of Renee and Renato
You can't account for my unearned euphoria -
my ugliest face could shoot all the stars
up to a heaven that's out of the question
to the glorious despair I'd thought was ours
Oh love, what love, who's now more expertly
scornful of joggers in hers'n'his
but look at me, finding it hard to keep up such
mournful contempt to this wonder that is
to itself and for no perceptible purpose
yet wonder, o wonder, yes, nevertheless
(Now you condemn me as inconsistent -
Are you Melanie Phillips?) - but I digress,
Oh love, no love need be so shackled
that it finds its comfort in itself only
I can't cling to your respite every second.
I've eyes, they see wonder, got happy, still lonely.
Penny & Jack - The Essex Green
Donna & Blitzen - Badly Drawn Boy
'03 Bonnie & Clyde - JZ and Beyonce
When Johnny Met June - Shelby Lynne
The Ballad of John and Yoko - The Beatles
Johnny & Mary -Robert Palmer
Scenes From An Italian Restaurant - Billy Joel
Waterloo Sunset - The Kinks
Romeo & Juliet - Dire Straits
Check me out with my cool taste in music - Dire Staits, Billy Joel, Robert Palmer and John "Cougar" Mellencamp on the same tape - we're in MOR heaven.
Couples are awesome, but only if joined by an ampersand, like Peter & Katie, and not if they are merged together, like Brangelina, Bennifer or Jedward. These over-eager attempts to merge into one will only end in wretched wrenching apart, you mark my words. You need a cool, clean ampersand.
When I go to weddings and social events everyone is in a couple pretty much - except little old me, of course, so I get to be a louche, devil-may-care dandy before crying myself to sleep at the bitter sting of eternal solitude. It's pretty cool.
I ponder and puzzle at couplings of all sorts, but tend to be pretty impressed by how people keep it together. Did you know that divorce rates are at their lowest in years? Cheering news. Apart from for bitter misanthropes like me.
Who are my favourite couples of history, I hear you asking?
Well, there can only be one
Number 1 - Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince, of course. Friends, lovers, partners in music and comedy gold, every time Jazz got thrown out of the Banks household, separated from his beloved Big Willie, you felt a schism in everything good and noble in the world
Number 2 - David Gest and Liza Minnelli
Number 3 - Saint and Greavsie
Number 4 - Frank and Pat Butcher, especially when he was wearing only a bowtie. Hepburn and Tracy? Bogart and Bacall? Do me a favour
Number 5 - Pat and Mick, as in Pat Sharp -woowoo! - and Mick Brown, superstar DJs and late 80s chart stars, kind of a British version of Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince.
So those are some great couples. I also like Lennon & McCartney and Bacharach & David and Coen & Coen and Torvill & Dean.
Here is a song about Robson & Jerome ... it's called
The Ballad of Renee and Renato
You can't account for my unearned euphoria -
my ugliest face could shoot all the stars
up to a heaven that's out of the question
to the glorious despair I'd thought was ours
Oh love, what love, who's now more expertly
scornful of joggers in hers'n'his
but look at me, finding it hard to keep up such
mournful contempt to this wonder that is
to itself and for no perceptible purpose
yet wonder, o wonder, yes, nevertheless
(Now you condemn me as inconsistent -
Are you Melanie Phillips?) - but I digress,
Oh love, no love need be so shackled
that it finds its comfort in itself only
I can't cling to your respite every second.
I've eyes, they see wonder, got happy, still lonely.
Thursday, 4 February 2010
79. 10 Prayers about Song
Or the other way round
I Say A Little Prayer - Aretha Franklin
Wood Beez (Pray Like Aretha Franklin) - Scritti Politti
Down To The River To Pray - Alison Krauss
Idiot Prayer- Nick Cave
Pray - Take That
Like A Prayer - Madonna
My Lover's Prayer - Otis Redding
Praying for Time - George Michael
New Year's Prayer - Jeff Buckley
Pray - MC Hammer
Prayer seems to have produced a broader church than usual in the songlist, which is only fitting. I'm glad to have finally been able to include MC Hammer in this blog. I'd be nothing without you, Hammer.
Prayer is of great interest to me. It's one of those things you lose when you relinquish faith which you wish you didn't really have to give up, so you hold on to to it in other ways, like the five minutes peace of the cigarette, the sound of a cat purring, the quiet wish for good outcomes. This secular prayer is dealt with in a poem by our poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, who i'm not sure has made a terribly good start to her tenure - but is not to be disregarded. I came across this poem as a 17 year old, and I think, now I reread it, it has had greater effect on me than any other piece of verse not accompanied by music. That's not to profess its quality, necessarily, but just to look at it and think that it sunk deep, deep into me...
I'm loath to include poems by professional poets, as it breaks any illusion I might build up that I'm not hopelessly inept, but anyway, here it is
PRAYER
Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.
Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.
Pray for us now. Grade I piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.
Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer -
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.
We were told as teenage Christians about the four ways to pray - ACTS A Adoration C Confession T Thanksgiving S Supplication, but I imagine that 90% of prayers ever uttered have been supplication, so I used to try to discipline myself. I was told i should really do ten minutes a day, so 2 1/2 minutes on each, no overdoing the supplication. It's hard mustering 2 1/2 minutes of divine adoration every day, believe me. "God, you're great, really great, massive, awesome, honestly, i think you're great .... how long's that ... shit, only 20 seconds ... o yes, Jesus, you're great too, and the holy spirit, great, great, awesome, can I ask for stuff yet?"
So prayer is a multi-headed beast, out loud, in silence, ex tempore, palms clasped, head bowed, hands raised to heaven, swaying and crazy, desperate, calm, ordered, prescribed, freestyle - what is it? Our attempt to communicate with God, to feel God's presence, but really, as the poem above suggests, to many it's not really about God at all.
These days I never pray. Never. Not even in that romantic secular way. Not even in the five minute's peace cigarette way. I never ask for nothing from no one and nothing from fate. I never confess nothing or say sorry to the world for nothing. I never give thanks except to the appropriate authorities, and I never adore, I just think on, and witter on, and list on, and watch on, and type on. I'm not the better for it. Perhaps our tweets and our facebook updates are the prayers of today. That line was meant sardonically.
Prayer is all about God, after all, isn't it? Carol Ann Duffy and my vague sense of a secular prayer is an unearned cry into the abyss. You give up God, you give up the right to a prayer. That's only fair, isn't it ...
I used to pray my idiot prayers
with empty hopes for lost civilizations
I used to believe my idiot wishes
would not be lost to aimless ages
I used to wash my sins away
seldom, but with feasome intent
I envied the wild, mercurial virtue
of the Baptist out in the desert
I used to pray my soul to keep
itself clear from pride and ambition
That soul I've now for so long lost
would grant I've managed that with honour
I used to think I could be heard if
I could stay silent long enough
and though there was no answer back
still i'd pray to be less alone
I Say A Little Prayer - Aretha Franklin
Wood Beez (Pray Like Aretha Franklin) - Scritti Politti
Down To The River To Pray - Alison Krauss
Idiot Prayer- Nick Cave
Pray - Take That
Like A Prayer - Madonna
My Lover's Prayer - Otis Redding
Praying for Time - George Michael
New Year's Prayer - Jeff Buckley
Pray - MC Hammer
Prayer seems to have produced a broader church than usual in the songlist, which is only fitting. I'm glad to have finally been able to include MC Hammer in this blog. I'd be nothing without you, Hammer.
Prayer is of great interest to me. It's one of those things you lose when you relinquish faith which you wish you didn't really have to give up, so you hold on to to it in other ways, like the five minutes peace of the cigarette, the sound of a cat purring, the quiet wish for good outcomes. This secular prayer is dealt with in a poem by our poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, who i'm not sure has made a terribly good start to her tenure - but is not to be disregarded. I came across this poem as a 17 year old, and I think, now I reread it, it has had greater effect on me than any other piece of verse not accompanied by music. That's not to profess its quality, necessarily, but just to look at it and think that it sunk deep, deep into me...
I'm loath to include poems by professional poets, as it breaks any illusion I might build up that I'm not hopelessly inept, but anyway, here it is
PRAYER
Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.
Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.
Pray for us now. Grade I piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.
Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer -
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.
We were told as teenage Christians about the four ways to pray - ACTS A Adoration C Confession T Thanksgiving S Supplication, but I imagine that 90% of prayers ever uttered have been supplication, so I used to try to discipline myself. I was told i should really do ten minutes a day, so 2 1/2 minutes on each, no overdoing the supplication. It's hard mustering 2 1/2 minutes of divine adoration every day, believe me. "God, you're great, really great, massive, awesome, honestly, i think you're great .... how long's that ... shit, only 20 seconds ... o yes, Jesus, you're great too, and the holy spirit, great, great, awesome, can I ask for stuff yet?"
So prayer is a multi-headed beast, out loud, in silence, ex tempore, palms clasped, head bowed, hands raised to heaven, swaying and crazy, desperate, calm, ordered, prescribed, freestyle - what is it? Our attempt to communicate with God, to feel God's presence, but really, as the poem above suggests, to many it's not really about God at all.
These days I never pray. Never. Not even in that romantic secular way. Not even in the five minute's peace cigarette way. I never ask for nothing from no one and nothing from fate. I never confess nothing or say sorry to the world for nothing. I never give thanks except to the appropriate authorities, and I never adore, I just think on, and witter on, and list on, and watch on, and type on. I'm not the better for it. Perhaps our tweets and our facebook updates are the prayers of today. That line was meant sardonically.
Prayer is all about God, after all, isn't it? Carol Ann Duffy and my vague sense of a secular prayer is an unearned cry into the abyss. You give up God, you give up the right to a prayer. That's only fair, isn't it ...
I used to pray my idiot prayers
with empty hopes for lost civilizations
I used to believe my idiot wishes
would not be lost to aimless ages
I used to wash my sins away
seldom, but with feasome intent
I envied the wild, mercurial virtue
of the Baptist out in the desert
I used to pray my soul to keep
itself clear from pride and ambition
That soul I've now for so long lost
would grant I've managed that with honour
I used to think I could be heard if
I could stay silent long enough
and though there was no answer back
still i'd pray to be less alone
Saturday, 30 January 2010
78. 10 Songs About the End
The End - The Doors
It's Not The End of the World? - Super Furry Animals
Talkin' World War III Blues - Bob Dylan
It's the End of the World As We Know It - REM
End of the World News (Dose Me Up) - Tom McRae
The Temptation of Adam - Josh Ritter
End of the World - Susan Motherfuckin' Boyle
End of the World - Ash
Doomsday - Elvis Perkins
We're All Going to Die - Malcolm Middleton
Although we've come to the end of the road, still I can't let go, it's unnatural, you belong to me, I belong to you.
Damn, i love that shit, but having Boyle and the Boyz on the same tape would just be toooo good.
Talking of tapes, i just threw out all my compilation tapes, just like that, my beautiful compilation tapes, lovingly constructed, labelled, titled, my proudest achievements, i just threw them out. Cos I'm moving, I'm at the end of the tenure (which is why i've done this post now) and I've decided to throw out everything of real emotional value to me (ie my tapes and my cds) and keep all the inconsequential shit which'll clog up my tiny new flat. Superfly!
By THE END, I don't mean any old end, I do mean THE end, beautiful friend, not just the death of one, but the end of all, woohoo, which might appear to occupy my thoughts, but actually doesn't in the slightest. Well, i suppose it must do a bit, but whenever you tell people that there are strong arguments that this has a significant chance of being the final century for mankind, for a variety of possible reasons, you get treated like a mad monk recruiting for a millenarian death cult. Which I'm not. I don't know much about science etc but i read some books and ... well, anyway, who cares?
But look - people say, every generation has its paranoia about some great cataclysm, in the 60s it was nuclear, it was the bomb etc and it didn't happen, did it? But just cos it didn't happen, doesn't mean it couldn't, and the possible ends now just multiply exponentially. One might suppose that things right themselves, self-regulation will prevent the ultimate disaster, but why would the earth's own self-regulation pay particular heed to humans. That's James Lovelock's idea, isn't it. vaguely, in brief.
Anyway, ironically, this isn't about the end of the world, or about death, or disaster, it's actually just about how it's very hard to know what's going on, we can't always be accountable for our omissions, cos we can't even tell what's going on in our best friend's head sometimes. You dig?
You may recognise the title, borrowed from a book within a book
THE WORLD WAS / SILENT WHEN WE DIED
The world was silent - all the bombs had faded
and I died quietly, as I'd always wanted
The fireworks had been unimpressive, and I
walked home alone as the crowds shouted dry
then, in silence, chose my last memories.
The world was silent, you say, when you died
Looking elsewhere, at its shoes, shamefaced
Too busy flitting through its own little tiffs
While you screamed in rage and pain
Disbelieving that no one was listening
And when you died, I, I was silent
Because sometimes my nothing's not enough
And grief and horror need meeting in kind
But i could muster no words when you died
Just dodged through crowds, deathly, dull,
Innocent or ignorant, both or neither.
The fireworks fire, the choirs sing,
There's beauty in places, why deny?
And the world groans, and I'm dancing
with my friends, and we're laughing
And I walk home alone and free to go
And I fall silent and you fall silent
And there's silence as the world dies.
so i can see how it might appear to be about the end of the world but honestly, it's not, not entirely ...
It's Not The End of the World? - Super Furry Animals
Talkin' World War III Blues - Bob Dylan
It's the End of the World As We Know It - REM
End of the World News (Dose Me Up) - Tom McRae
The Temptation of Adam - Josh Ritter
End of the World - Susan Motherfuckin' Boyle
End of the World - Ash
Doomsday - Elvis Perkins
We're All Going to Die - Malcolm Middleton
Although we've come to the end of the road, still I can't let go, it's unnatural, you belong to me, I belong to you.
Damn, i love that shit, but having Boyle and the Boyz on the same tape would just be toooo good.
Talking of tapes, i just threw out all my compilation tapes, just like that, my beautiful compilation tapes, lovingly constructed, labelled, titled, my proudest achievements, i just threw them out. Cos I'm moving, I'm at the end of the tenure (which is why i've done this post now) and I've decided to throw out everything of real emotional value to me (ie my tapes and my cds) and keep all the inconsequential shit which'll clog up my tiny new flat. Superfly!
By THE END, I don't mean any old end, I do mean THE end, beautiful friend, not just the death of one, but the end of all, woohoo, which might appear to occupy my thoughts, but actually doesn't in the slightest. Well, i suppose it must do a bit, but whenever you tell people that there are strong arguments that this has a significant chance of being the final century for mankind, for a variety of possible reasons, you get treated like a mad monk recruiting for a millenarian death cult. Which I'm not. I don't know much about science etc but i read some books and ... well, anyway, who cares?
But look - people say, every generation has its paranoia about some great cataclysm, in the 60s it was nuclear, it was the bomb etc and it didn't happen, did it? But just cos it didn't happen, doesn't mean it couldn't, and the possible ends now just multiply exponentially. One might suppose that things right themselves, self-regulation will prevent the ultimate disaster, but why would the earth's own self-regulation pay particular heed to humans. That's James Lovelock's idea, isn't it. vaguely, in brief.
Anyway, ironically, this isn't about the end of the world, or about death, or disaster, it's actually just about how it's very hard to know what's going on, we can't always be accountable for our omissions, cos we can't even tell what's going on in our best friend's head sometimes. You dig?
You may recognise the title, borrowed from a book within a book
THE WORLD WAS / SILENT WHEN WE DIED
The world was silent - all the bombs had faded
and I died quietly, as I'd always wanted
The fireworks had been unimpressive, and I
walked home alone as the crowds shouted dry
then, in silence, chose my last memories.
The world was silent, you say, when you died
Looking elsewhere, at its shoes, shamefaced
Too busy flitting through its own little tiffs
While you screamed in rage and pain
Disbelieving that no one was listening
And when you died, I, I was silent
Because sometimes my nothing's not enough
And grief and horror need meeting in kind
But i could muster no words when you died
Just dodged through crowds, deathly, dull,
Innocent or ignorant, both or neither.
The fireworks fire, the choirs sing,
There's beauty in places, why deny?
And the world groans, and I'm dancing
with my friends, and we're laughing
And I walk home alone and free to go
And I fall silent and you fall silent
And there's silence as the world dies.
so i can see how it might appear to be about the end of the world but honestly, it's not, not entirely ...
Wednesday, 20 January 2010
77. 10 Happy Songs
Time to redress the balance from all this wintry gloom
The Happy Song -Aliens
Overcome by Happiness - The Pernice Brothers
Happy - Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins
Happy - Travis
Everybody's Happy Nowadays - The Buzzcocks
Fragile Happiness - Super Furry Animals
If It Makes You Happy - Sheryl Crow
Shiny Happy People - REM
Get Happy - Judy Garland
Stupidly Happy - XTC
Having cleared up the mysteries of time a few blogs back, now it's time for me to put happiness in its place ...
Happiness is indeed, one imagines, a possibility, though I guess best treated as a welcome occasional guest, rather than something to be aspired to and held on to.
It would appear that many of us have been able to move fairly successfully towards the absence of unhappiness through various means and tricks of fate and that should probably be deemed good enough.
I think it's pretty hard for songwriters to be anything but ironic about happiness or face ridicule (like REM) so from that point of view the XTC song is particularly good fun, being unironic, altogether cheerful but not in the slightest cringesome.
I'm so happy and i can't quite believe it
forty-five years of despair and now this?
If I'd known it would be so simple to achieve it
I'd have climbed so much sooner from my hellish abyss.
I'm so happy and I wish I could spread it
I haven't been so happy since this time last week
when, begging and pleading, I extended my credit
and used toilet paper to part-stem the leak.
I'm so happy like a fairground attendant
I've the best of each possible world and season
I'm a lottery winner with no clue how to spend it
I'm the reason you've lost your faith in reason.
I'm so happy and I wish I could share it
What I'd give for you to be happy like me
but i worry your weak mind couldn't quite bear it
and your eyes would be blinded by what they might see.
I'm as happy as an X-Factor contestant
who knows they'll make it 'cause they want it so bad
I'm as happy as the villain in the classic western
who reckons he's the beating of Alan Ladd.
I'm so happy and I wish you didn't doubt me
Is there something you've misread in my demeanour?
There's no way you'll ever be happy without me
Your grass may be green but mine's so much greener.
The Happy Song -Aliens
Overcome by Happiness - The Pernice Brothers
Happy - Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins
Happy - Travis
Everybody's Happy Nowadays - The Buzzcocks
Fragile Happiness - Super Furry Animals
If It Makes You Happy - Sheryl Crow
Shiny Happy People - REM
Get Happy - Judy Garland
Stupidly Happy - XTC
Having cleared up the mysteries of time a few blogs back, now it's time for me to put happiness in its place ...
Happiness is indeed, one imagines, a possibility, though I guess best treated as a welcome occasional guest, rather than something to be aspired to and held on to.
It would appear that many of us have been able to move fairly successfully towards the absence of unhappiness through various means and tricks of fate and that should probably be deemed good enough.
I think it's pretty hard for songwriters to be anything but ironic about happiness or face ridicule (like REM) so from that point of view the XTC song is particularly good fun, being unironic, altogether cheerful but not in the slightest cringesome.
I'm so happy and i can't quite believe it
forty-five years of despair and now this?
If I'd known it would be so simple to achieve it
I'd have climbed so much sooner from my hellish abyss.
I'm so happy and I wish I could spread it
I haven't been so happy since this time last week
when, begging and pleading, I extended my credit
and used toilet paper to part-stem the leak.
I'm so happy like a fairground attendant
I've the best of each possible world and season
I'm a lottery winner with no clue how to spend it
I'm the reason you've lost your faith in reason.
I'm so happy and I wish I could share it
What I'd give for you to be happy like me
but i worry your weak mind couldn't quite bear it
and your eyes would be blinded by what they might see.
I'm as happy as an X-Factor contestant
who knows they'll make it 'cause they want it so bad
I'm as happy as the villain in the classic western
who reckons he's the beating of Alan Ladd.
I'm so happy and I wish you didn't doubt me
Is there something you've misread in my demeanour?
There's no way you'll ever be happy without me
Your grass may be green but mine's so much greener.
Monday, 18 January 2010
76. 10 Songs about Winter
White Winter Hymnal - Fleet Foxes
Winter in the Hamptons - Josh Rouse
Winter Wooskie - Belle and Sebastian
Winter Home Disco - The Pictish Trail
A Winter's Sky - The Pipettes
Walk out to Winter - Aztec Camera
A Hazy Shade of Winter - Simon and Garfunkel
Winter is Blue - Vashti Bunyan
winterlovers - Manic Street Preachers
Winterlight - Clearlake
Right, the blog's hitting a determinedly downbeat stride now, cos winter is, after all, just cack in every way. Snow is, as previously attached, cack, rain is cack, cold is deeply cack, central heating is, in its own way, cack, and Celebrity Big Brother is cack. That's winter.
And I am not a softie. I didn't put my heating on till the start of December. Grrrrr. But January and February are just never good months. Good things never happen in those months. It's a time for starting smoking again, for drinking on your own, for not being able to communicate properly, alienating people, wishing you were far away. The best thing about winter is the fact the Oscars are at the end of February, so there are always lots of good films to see in the few weeks before. That's good. And the fact that when you're young-ish, healthy-ish, not homeless, not a softie and living in South London, pretty much everyone else in the UK has it worse than you. That's good, too.
But it's still cack. I knew a few Scottish winters, they were rather silly, and i developed a whole different way of walking back then. Some of these songs are Scottish - Scotland invented winter and sold it to the rest of the world.
I remember when i was at university coming down to London in March for holidays, during which period winter changed into spring, then going back to Scotland in April - and it was still winter. And so it would remain until mid-May, albeit crisp, sunny winter by that point.
A great song here is Winterlight by Clearlake - it's the potential of southern English indie-rock which southern English indie rock never seems to achieve, epic and imaginative, not Razorlight, not Keane, not Coldplay. Although, having said that, it strikes me that those three bands are very wintry- perhaps if examined in those terms, they might be reevaluated. Perhaps.
Anyway, i doodled this out several years ago about how cack winter was. It could be about any winter really - apart from 2007-8, when for some reason winter didn't happen in London, that was a weird one. I didn't miss it, but i did wonder if it meant the end of the world was coming. But last winter was more archetypal, and this one is worse.
It was a rough season; the hole in the window
let winter run riot, and the cigarettes i needed to need
didn't improve the shivering humour.
No one went to church and the communities
quietly slipped their hands out and shrugged
and all the little girls and boys shuddered
at their future. It was a savage season
though no snow fell and London never rocked
with horror, like it's forgotten it will someday soon.
I hid in pubs first, but giggsy shrank and
all my teams sank, then cinemas,
but i couldn't bear the promptu reviews,
so i nestled 'mongst indies and nmes and dusty cushions
on the sofa, trusting in dvds and freeview
flitting through fads (yoghurts and fruit teas,
guitars and sit-ups) and - unconscious- alienating
all i once held precious.
I asked and begged beneath my notice
and pushed myself toward some worthy suture,
while the hungover streets filled with discarded coins
and everything got ever coarser,
optimism exposed - the best you can say
is that fear may be conquered, the worst
I will say is, I fear, yet to come.
Wow, i'm so fun, i'm such a fun guy, who couldn't warm to someone who wrote something as plain FUN! as that ...
Winter in the Hamptons - Josh Rouse
Winter Wooskie - Belle and Sebastian
Winter Home Disco - The Pictish Trail
A Winter's Sky - The Pipettes
Walk out to Winter - Aztec Camera
A Hazy Shade of Winter - Simon and Garfunkel
Winter is Blue - Vashti Bunyan
winterlovers - Manic Street Preachers
Winterlight - Clearlake
Right, the blog's hitting a determinedly downbeat stride now, cos winter is, after all, just cack in every way. Snow is, as previously attached, cack, rain is cack, cold is deeply cack, central heating is, in its own way, cack, and Celebrity Big Brother is cack. That's winter.
And I am not a softie. I didn't put my heating on till the start of December. Grrrrr. But January and February are just never good months. Good things never happen in those months. It's a time for starting smoking again, for drinking on your own, for not being able to communicate properly, alienating people, wishing you were far away. The best thing about winter is the fact the Oscars are at the end of February, so there are always lots of good films to see in the few weeks before. That's good. And the fact that when you're young-ish, healthy-ish, not homeless, not a softie and living in South London, pretty much everyone else in the UK has it worse than you. That's good, too.
But it's still cack. I knew a few Scottish winters, they were rather silly, and i developed a whole different way of walking back then. Some of these songs are Scottish - Scotland invented winter and sold it to the rest of the world.
I remember when i was at university coming down to London in March for holidays, during which period winter changed into spring, then going back to Scotland in April - and it was still winter. And so it would remain until mid-May, albeit crisp, sunny winter by that point.
A great song here is Winterlight by Clearlake - it's the potential of southern English indie-rock which southern English indie rock never seems to achieve, epic and imaginative, not Razorlight, not Keane, not Coldplay. Although, having said that, it strikes me that those three bands are very wintry- perhaps if examined in those terms, they might be reevaluated. Perhaps.
Anyway, i doodled this out several years ago about how cack winter was. It could be about any winter really - apart from 2007-8, when for some reason winter didn't happen in London, that was a weird one. I didn't miss it, but i did wonder if it meant the end of the world was coming. But last winter was more archetypal, and this one is worse.
It was a rough season; the hole in the window
let winter run riot, and the cigarettes i needed to need
didn't improve the shivering humour.
No one went to church and the communities
quietly slipped their hands out and shrugged
and all the little girls and boys shuddered
at their future. It was a savage season
though no snow fell and London never rocked
with horror, like it's forgotten it will someday soon.
I hid in pubs first, but giggsy shrank and
all my teams sank, then cinemas,
but i couldn't bear the promptu reviews,
so i nestled 'mongst indies and nmes and dusty cushions
on the sofa, trusting in dvds and freeview
flitting through fads (yoghurts and fruit teas,
guitars and sit-ups) and - unconscious- alienating
all i once held precious.
I asked and begged beneath my notice
and pushed myself toward some worthy suture,
while the hungover streets filled with discarded coins
and everything got ever coarser,
optimism exposed - the best you can say
is that fear may be conquered, the worst
I will say is, I fear, yet to come.
Wow, i'm so fun, i'm such a fun guy, who couldn't warm to someone who wrote something as plain FUN! as that ...
Saturday, 16 January 2010
75. 10 Songs about Old Men
Old Man - Neil Young
Me and the Major - Belle and Sebastian
Streets of London - Ralph McTell
Battered Old Bird - Elvis Costello
Old Man - Love
When I'm 64 - The Beatles
Help the Aged - Pulp
My Old Man - Ian Dury & the Blockheads
Old - Dexys Midnight Runners
I'd Rather Be An Old Man's Sweetheart (Than A Young Man's Fool) - Candi Staton
Must be tough being an old man. I mean, really, I wouldn't wish it on anyone. Especially these days when they're not even old enough to have war stories and the respect that'll be accrued from that to fall back on.
Old women tend to be much more automatically beloved and respected and cherished. I don't think one so automatically assumes an old woman will be racist, either. Has anyone ever had a conversation with an old man which was lasted over half an hour where thry haven't ended up saying something mildly - or not mildly - racist. Or is that just me?
At least great old actors do tend to get a few last great parts as they enter their dotage - though Robert de Niro's escapes him so far - and Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash have guaranteed that any aging rock star can get together with a hip producer and do an album which'll suddenly make them vaguely cool again.
This is songs about old men, rather than by old men, though often they're one and the same thing. Anyway, some beautiful songs by old men are If I Could Only Fly - Merle Haggard, Not Dark Yet - Bob Dylan, That Lucky Old Sun - Johnny Cash, Don't Give Up On Me - Solomon Burke, Losing You - Randy Newman ...oldish, anyway. Bob Dylan has occupied the voice of an old man since he was about 18, and even Not Dark Yet is a middle-aged man really.
I very much like the Neil Young song which, one presumes, is about his father, and very much laugh at the Ralph McTell song ... "sun don't shine". Ralph McTell apparently got lost driving Billy Connolly from Putney to Knightsbridge and Connolly said "didn't you write 'let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of London'" Hoho. That was in last week's Observer, as i expect you read.
I feel sad for old people sometimes, i feel pretty old myself sometimes, however i believe this hasn't been a bad time to grow old these last few decades - most of them, who were the baby boomer generation, have made a mint from houses and have a fun old age to look forward to while the world warms up a bit, and then when it's time for us lot to grow old, it will all go to shit. Hoho again.
Anyway, this is kind of imaginary, tho i did see something horrific on the tube recently ...
"What with all the basics unlearnt
and the myriad that can go wrong ..."
is a lecture still appropriate? As
The years are closing up on us.
"Two stops on the Victoria Line
shouldn't have been such a trial
but the old man, old man, shuffled
off to universal wincing."
I instantly regret your sleeve
hitched half up now to highlight
an archipelago of eczema -
you're challenging me now, alright.
"I could never love anyone,
anyone who could ever love me" -
what you're expecting I can't give,
I'm just taking notes, you know.
I've some stories I will tell -
that's the shift you ask about,
it's all about the wince these days,
the hinted whiff of excrement.
"You and him, you could be brothers"
I am not too old for mischief
as you're all too keen to point out;
"not too young either" - the first shared smile.
Me and the Major - Belle and Sebastian
Streets of London - Ralph McTell
Battered Old Bird - Elvis Costello
Old Man - Love
When I'm 64 - The Beatles
Help the Aged - Pulp
My Old Man - Ian Dury & the Blockheads
Old - Dexys Midnight Runners
I'd Rather Be An Old Man's Sweetheart (Than A Young Man's Fool) - Candi Staton
Must be tough being an old man. I mean, really, I wouldn't wish it on anyone. Especially these days when they're not even old enough to have war stories and the respect that'll be accrued from that to fall back on.
Old women tend to be much more automatically beloved and respected and cherished. I don't think one so automatically assumes an old woman will be racist, either. Has anyone ever had a conversation with an old man which was lasted over half an hour where thry haven't ended up saying something mildly - or not mildly - racist. Or is that just me?
At least great old actors do tend to get a few last great parts as they enter their dotage - though Robert de Niro's escapes him so far - and Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash have guaranteed that any aging rock star can get together with a hip producer and do an album which'll suddenly make them vaguely cool again.
This is songs about old men, rather than by old men, though often they're one and the same thing. Anyway, some beautiful songs by old men are If I Could Only Fly - Merle Haggard, Not Dark Yet - Bob Dylan, That Lucky Old Sun - Johnny Cash, Don't Give Up On Me - Solomon Burke, Losing You - Randy Newman ...oldish, anyway. Bob Dylan has occupied the voice of an old man since he was about 18, and even Not Dark Yet is a middle-aged man really.
I very much like the Neil Young song which, one presumes, is about his father, and very much laugh at the Ralph McTell song ... "sun don't shine". Ralph McTell apparently got lost driving Billy Connolly from Putney to Knightsbridge and Connolly said "didn't you write 'let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of London'" Hoho. That was in last week's Observer, as i expect you read.
I feel sad for old people sometimes, i feel pretty old myself sometimes, however i believe this hasn't been a bad time to grow old these last few decades - most of them, who were the baby boomer generation, have made a mint from houses and have a fun old age to look forward to while the world warms up a bit, and then when it's time for us lot to grow old, it will all go to shit. Hoho again.
Anyway, this is kind of imaginary, tho i did see something horrific on the tube recently ...
"What with all the basics unlearnt
and the myriad that can go wrong ..."
is a lecture still appropriate? As
The years are closing up on us.
"Two stops on the Victoria Line
shouldn't have been such a trial
but the old man, old man, shuffled
off to universal wincing."
I instantly regret your sleeve
hitched half up now to highlight
an archipelago of eczema -
you're challenging me now, alright.
"I could never love anyone,
anyone who could ever love me" -
what you're expecting I can't give,
I'm just taking notes, you know.
I've some stories I will tell -
that's the shift you ask about,
it's all about the wince these days,
the hinted whiff of excrement.
"You and him, you could be brothers"
I am not too old for mischief
as you're all too keen to point out;
"not too young either" - the first shared smile.
Monday, 11 January 2010
74. 10 Venomous Songs
In fact, it seems better to split this into two different playlists - one for Bob Dylan and one for everyone else, since no one has such a rich collection of venomous masterpieces as Bob Dylan.
So first, Bob's ten
Positively Fourth Street - Bob Dylan
Masters of War - Bob Dylan
Ballad of a Thin Man - Bob Dylan
When the Ship Comes In - Bob Dylan
She's Your Lover Now - Bob Dylan
Ballad in Plain D - Bob Dylan
Just Like A Woman - Bob Dylan
Idiot Wind - Bob Dylan
Like A Rolling Stone - Bob Dylan
It's All Over Now, Baby Blue - Bob Dylan
It's no exaggeration to say that four or five of those are among my favourite songs ever. Bob Dylan's nasty songs were fundamental and formative for me in getting to understand what songs ought to be like.
Anyway, plenty of other folk have had a good go at bitterness, anger and spite in song too. Here are 10 of them - not necessarily the most venomous, but 10 of the best, in my opinion.
There, There, My Dear - Dexys Midnight Runners
The Rat - The Walkmen
Patience - Micah P Hinson
I Want You - Elvis Costello
Archives of Pain - Manic Street Preachers
Punka - Kenickie
He's Misstra Know-It-All - Stevie Wonder
Take Your Carriage Clock and Shove It - Belle and Sebastian
Death or Glory - The Clash
Bang - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
It's just a selection, I'm sure there are plenty of others. Shame to miss Morrissey, most of hip-hop and other greats such as Ugly Kid Joe. Hoho. And the Delgados ... their sweet songs dripping with poison.
You can write nasty songs which are just condescending and sarcastic (Bang), you can write them in a way that the self-loathing is unmistakeable(I Want You), you can even write then with just a tint of empathy to make the ultimate put-down even worse (Just Like A Woman) - there is something delicious about a really powerful song of venom, as the pleasure so many people take from Rage Against The Machine's recent coup demonstrates.
I really don't have the gift for sarcasm and making people feel bad I used to - sadly, adulthood often makes us go soft. Even the so-called song of venom below is full of messages of peace and love once it gets going.
And I'll sing a song of venom, of joy and precious venom
As I leave some hotel on some frosty morning,
overwritten textbooks curling on the bonfire
with the vanished phrases of my final warning
And the words I longed to speak will have flowed like lava,
Days of bitten tongue so well forgotten,
And the foes who had no fear until that final hour
will be looking downwards from the very bottom.
And the toothless pariahs will be freed to fan the fires
and the icons of the age will shield their eyes
and from their shelters, all those quiet underbargained heroes
will come banquet on their truths they'd thought were lies.
And doubt will rule desire and power will be for hire
to the lowest bidder and to the quietest talker
And there'll be no succour other than the loved one for the lover
and the body'll cry for nothing but blessed water.
So first, Bob's ten
Positively Fourth Street - Bob Dylan
Masters of War - Bob Dylan
Ballad of a Thin Man - Bob Dylan
When the Ship Comes In - Bob Dylan
She's Your Lover Now - Bob Dylan
Ballad in Plain D - Bob Dylan
Just Like A Woman - Bob Dylan
Idiot Wind - Bob Dylan
Like A Rolling Stone - Bob Dylan
It's All Over Now, Baby Blue - Bob Dylan
It's no exaggeration to say that four or five of those are among my favourite songs ever. Bob Dylan's nasty songs were fundamental and formative for me in getting to understand what songs ought to be like.
Anyway, plenty of other folk have had a good go at bitterness, anger and spite in song too. Here are 10 of them - not necessarily the most venomous, but 10 of the best, in my opinion.
There, There, My Dear - Dexys Midnight Runners
The Rat - The Walkmen
Patience - Micah P Hinson
I Want You - Elvis Costello
Archives of Pain - Manic Street Preachers
Punka - Kenickie
He's Misstra Know-It-All - Stevie Wonder
Take Your Carriage Clock and Shove It - Belle and Sebastian
Death or Glory - The Clash
Bang - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
It's just a selection, I'm sure there are plenty of others. Shame to miss Morrissey, most of hip-hop and other greats such as Ugly Kid Joe. Hoho. And the Delgados ... their sweet songs dripping with poison.
You can write nasty songs which are just condescending and sarcastic (Bang), you can write them in a way that the self-loathing is unmistakeable(I Want You), you can even write then with just a tint of empathy to make the ultimate put-down even worse (Just Like A Woman) - there is something delicious about a really powerful song of venom, as the pleasure so many people take from Rage Against The Machine's recent coup demonstrates.
I really don't have the gift for sarcasm and making people feel bad I used to - sadly, adulthood often makes us go soft. Even the so-called song of venom below is full of messages of peace and love once it gets going.
And I'll sing a song of venom, of joy and precious venom
As I leave some hotel on some frosty morning,
overwritten textbooks curling on the bonfire
with the vanished phrases of my final warning
And the words I longed to speak will have flowed like lava,
Days of bitten tongue so well forgotten,
And the foes who had no fear until that final hour
will be looking downwards from the very bottom.
And the toothless pariahs will be freed to fan the fires
and the icons of the age will shield their eyes
and from their shelters, all those quiet underbargained heroes
will come banquet on their truths they'd thought were lies.
And doubt will rule desire and power will be for hire
to the lowest bidder and to the quietest talker
And there'll be no succour other than the loved one for the lover
and the body'll cry for nothing but blessed water.
Saturday, 9 January 2010
73. 10 Songs About Snow
The Snow It Melts The Soonest - James Yorkston
Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! - Vaughn Monroe
I Wonder If The Snow Will Settle - Clearlake
Fox in the Snow - Belle and Sebastian
Goodbye England (Covered in Snow) - Laura Marling
Snow Angel - Ron Sexsmith
Pisshole in the Snow - Pernice Brothers
Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
The Last of the Melting Snow - Leisure Society
Snow is Gone - Josh Ritter
Informer!! Anyway ... I can be topical, see. Though these are a rather beautiful collection of songs, snow is lame - I always suspected it and this year has conclusively proved it. It looks nice, but lots of things look nice. Even at school, when everyone got excited about it and would throw snowballs I never had appropriate gloves and I remember trying to throw them with my cricket gloves ... not easy and not fun. And I remember sledging in Gloucestershire and not being able to stop the sledge and going out on to a road and almost going over a cliff and only being able to stop by scraping my hand along the ground then jumping off. Again, not fun, not fun in the snow.
And I don't ski. Never got to go on the ski trips. I kind of hate skiing. As a sport, it's quite fun to watch, I guess, Ski Sunday, Alberto Tomba, Pirmin Zurbriggen, Marc Girardelli, Bode Miller etc but I am a man who loves sport, after all, and there's plenty of sports I prefer to skiing, and skiing as a holiday/culture i always have a mixture of env and contempt for. A bit rich from someone who loves cricket, but skiing hardly transcends barriers of class and finance, does it?
And the number of people who tell me I'd love skiing, and I say, "No, I wouldn't" and they say "I'm sure you would" and I know I wouldn't. And sometimes I say "Well, i definitely won't now i broke my leg" and they say "Oh, that doesn't matter" and I bet they wouldn't ski again if they broke their leg. Fuckers. Ski Fuckers. And skiing is the best use of snow there is. So clearly snow is lame. It means proper sport gets cancelled, it means old people fall over and break their hips, it means children have an excuse to be violent to each other.
Edward built an igloo
bigger than his house
Tom played a snowplough
and knocked it all down
William built a snowman
chubby, smiling, kind
Tom added fingers
flicking the V-sign
Peter laughed and looked on
the snowball that he'd thrown
Tom's ball made Peter cry -
it contained a stone
Richard showed the whole class
his smart and sleek new sled
Tom loosed its screws and
the white snow was stained red
Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! - Vaughn Monroe
I Wonder If The Snow Will Settle - Clearlake
Fox in the Snow - Belle and Sebastian
Goodbye England (Covered in Snow) - Laura Marling
Snow Angel - Ron Sexsmith
Pisshole in the Snow - Pernice Brothers
Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
The Last of the Melting Snow - Leisure Society
Snow is Gone - Josh Ritter
Informer!! Anyway ... I can be topical, see. Though these are a rather beautiful collection of songs, snow is lame - I always suspected it and this year has conclusively proved it. It looks nice, but lots of things look nice. Even at school, when everyone got excited about it and would throw snowballs I never had appropriate gloves and I remember trying to throw them with my cricket gloves ... not easy and not fun. And I remember sledging in Gloucestershire and not being able to stop the sledge and going out on to a road and almost going over a cliff and only being able to stop by scraping my hand along the ground then jumping off. Again, not fun, not fun in the snow.
And I don't ski. Never got to go on the ski trips. I kind of hate skiing. As a sport, it's quite fun to watch, I guess, Ski Sunday, Alberto Tomba, Pirmin Zurbriggen, Marc Girardelli, Bode Miller etc but I am a man who loves sport, after all, and there's plenty of sports I prefer to skiing, and skiing as a holiday/culture i always have a mixture of env and contempt for. A bit rich from someone who loves cricket, but skiing hardly transcends barriers of class and finance, does it?
And the number of people who tell me I'd love skiing, and I say, "No, I wouldn't" and they say "I'm sure you would" and I know I wouldn't. And sometimes I say "Well, i definitely won't now i broke my leg" and they say "Oh, that doesn't matter" and I bet they wouldn't ski again if they broke their leg. Fuckers. Ski Fuckers. And skiing is the best use of snow there is. So clearly snow is lame. It means proper sport gets cancelled, it means old people fall over and break their hips, it means children have an excuse to be violent to each other.
Edward built an igloo
bigger than his house
Tom played a snowplough
and knocked it all down
William built a snowman
chubby, smiling, kind
Tom added fingers
flicking the V-sign
Peter laughed and looked on
the snowball that he'd thrown
Tom's ball made Peter cry -
it contained a stone
Richard showed the whole class
his smart and sleek new sled
Tom loosed its screws and
the white snow was stained red
Friday, 8 January 2010
72. 10 Songs of Solipsism
One Man Guy - Rufus Wainwright
Solitaire - The Carpenters
I Am a Rock - Simon and Garfunkel
The World Should Revolve Around Me - Little Jackie
Loneliness - Ed Harcourt
I Am the Resurrection - The Stone Roses
Speak to Me, Someone - Gene
The One and Only - Chesney Hawkes
Faster - Manic Street Preachers
All By Myself - Eric Carmen
Or, perhaps more accurately in some ofe these cases, narcissism. Of course, loneliness and not wanting to be lonely forms - rightly - the subject matter to many great songs, but in these cases, whether deliberately or otherwise, it's taken a little bit further, either to be a monumental howl of self-pity, a monumental cry of self-aggrandisement, a combination of the two, or a wry look at the state of solipsism.
I happen to like most of these songs a lot, which says something about me, but i do stop short at the Eric Carmen one, though it is a good source of comedy.
One Man Guy is a rather wonderful case, originally written and performed in a comedy folk style by father Loudon Wainwright III to be a rather scathing and selfish track, then reinvented by son Rufus, with the aid of magical backing vocals by sister Martha, to have a much greater sense of ambiguity and longing.
Some people will say we're all alone in this life, some people would say we're never alone, and really it's just a matter of semantics, isn't it? There's a myth in Ovid's Metamorphosis where Philemon and Baucis, an old married couple, as a reward for welcoming Jupiter and Mercury, are granted their wish to die at the same time, when they turn into interlocking trees, and I guess Romeo and Juliet is, less happily, along the same lines.
So, the former tale was on my mind when I wrote this. Also, I was thinking of that phrase so beloved of soap operas "You're going to die a bitter, lonely, old man". I was also keen that all the words in this should be one syllable, or at most two. I should do that more often; I found it very satisfactory. I like the fact that the first seven lines begin with I. I also tried to make it entirely free of quirk, for quirk is my everlasting curse:
I lived alone when I was young,
I was alone in every breath.
I thought in moments, so moments passed,
I passed on life, and looked to death.
I never saw you come, my love,
I blinked and saw you go.
I stretched my gaze out for a moment,
but you kept on; and I looked below.
Please breathe in me as I die
so I shall not die alone.
My own breath was enough when I was young
but now I'm not that strong.
You breathed on me as I sat beside you;
I looked away and prayed for rain
and it came, and you went to find the sun.
You lived, while I breathed again.
I slept alone, but every night
in my dreams, you breathed in me.
I woke alone, and when I woke
I dreamed you dreamed of me.
I dreamt you called me on the breeze
but each night, I would not follow
'til one night, in colour, I moved toward you
but I awoke; the dream was hollow.
Breathe in me when I dream no more -
as I lived, I shall not die.
Each breath has been despite itself,
to hasten this lonely life by.
Let me die with your breath within me
so I do not die alone.
I believed I could live on hollow dreams
but am not, nor have been, that strong.
Solitaire - The Carpenters
I Am a Rock - Simon and Garfunkel
The World Should Revolve Around Me - Little Jackie
Loneliness - Ed Harcourt
I Am the Resurrection - The Stone Roses
Speak to Me, Someone - Gene
The One and Only - Chesney Hawkes
Faster - Manic Street Preachers
All By Myself - Eric Carmen
Or, perhaps more accurately in some ofe these cases, narcissism. Of course, loneliness and not wanting to be lonely forms - rightly - the subject matter to many great songs, but in these cases, whether deliberately or otherwise, it's taken a little bit further, either to be a monumental howl of self-pity, a monumental cry of self-aggrandisement, a combination of the two, or a wry look at the state of solipsism.
I happen to like most of these songs a lot, which says something about me, but i do stop short at the Eric Carmen one, though it is a good source of comedy.
One Man Guy is a rather wonderful case, originally written and performed in a comedy folk style by father Loudon Wainwright III to be a rather scathing and selfish track, then reinvented by son Rufus, with the aid of magical backing vocals by sister Martha, to have a much greater sense of ambiguity and longing.
Some people will say we're all alone in this life, some people would say we're never alone, and really it's just a matter of semantics, isn't it? There's a myth in Ovid's Metamorphosis where Philemon and Baucis, an old married couple, as a reward for welcoming Jupiter and Mercury, are granted their wish to die at the same time, when they turn into interlocking trees, and I guess Romeo and Juliet is, less happily, along the same lines.
So, the former tale was on my mind when I wrote this. Also, I was thinking of that phrase so beloved of soap operas "You're going to die a bitter, lonely, old man". I was also keen that all the words in this should be one syllable, or at most two. I should do that more often; I found it very satisfactory. I like the fact that the first seven lines begin with I. I also tried to make it entirely free of quirk, for quirk is my everlasting curse:
I lived alone when I was young,
I was alone in every breath.
I thought in moments, so moments passed,
I passed on life, and looked to death.
I never saw you come, my love,
I blinked and saw you go.
I stretched my gaze out for a moment,
but you kept on; and I looked below.
Please breathe in me as I die
so I shall not die alone.
My own breath was enough when I was young
but now I'm not that strong.
You breathed on me as I sat beside you;
I looked away and prayed for rain
and it came, and you went to find the sun.
You lived, while I breathed again.
I slept alone, but every night
in my dreams, you breathed in me.
I woke alone, and when I woke
I dreamed you dreamed of me.
I dreamt you called me on the breeze
but each night, I would not follow
'til one night, in colour, I moved toward you
but I awoke; the dream was hollow.
Breathe in me when I dream no more -
as I lived, I shall not die.
Each breath has been despite itself,
to hasten this lonely life by.
Let me die with your breath within me
so I do not die alone.
I believed I could live on hollow dreams
but am not, nor have been, that strong.
Tuesday, 22 December 2009
71. 10 Christmas Songs
Damn, I was hoping to get in a fair few more this month, but I really have hit a bit of a wall, not in ideas, but in expression of ideas, so I may as well do Christmas now.
The perfect Christmas album is a live idea - I've made many Christmas albums and am still trying to create the perfect one, which is all at once classic, cool, christmassy and unexclusive. I guess a few more great Christmas songs need to be written first
Just Like Christmas - Low
Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas - Judy Garland
Donna & Blitzen - Badly Drawn Boy
Sleigh Ride - The Ronettes
Santa Claus is Coming to Town - Bruce Springsteen
Everything's Gonna Be Cool This Christmas - Eels
The Christmas Song - Nat King Cole
Corpus Christi Carol - Jeff Buckley
Fairytale of New York - The Pogues ft Kirsty MacColl
That Was the Worst Christmas Ever - Sufjan Stevens
Christmas is fine with me. Always has been, always will be. I could even say that I love it. But why do I still love Christmas? What did I love about it? And do those reasons still exist? Down the years, the following have been reasons to love Christmas, and so I shall address whether they exist as reasons
- Father Christmas giving me gifts ... no, sir
- My Family giving me ace gifts I couldn't otherwise afford ... i still get some nice gifts, but you know ...
- Family Get-together and putting aside differences ... unusually, my family get together pretty often and don't have many differences, so this happens less at christmas than other times of the year
- School Holiday ... sadly no longer, and tho one does enjoy the break christmas affords, it's not in essence different from other time off
- celebrating the birth of our Lord Jesus ... not a going concern for me for some time
-vicariously celebrating the birth of their lord Jesus - i've often been a sucker for midnight mass, but not so much anymore, so not going this year
- seeing old school buddies around on Christmas Eve ... not many around any more, and to be honest, you often find yourself being greeted affectionately by folk you've not that much affection for
- the distant possibilty of snow ... well, it's happened this year, and everyone hates it
- great TV specials ... the Dr Who Christmas special is always the worst Dr Who, and everything else is cack, and we don't watch TV at Christmas anyway
- people being nice to people ... I'm nice to people all the time, frankly, so if people are nicer to me at Christmas, it just bugs me
- Carol singing ... haven't done for years
-Mulled wine ... guaranteed hangover
- the smell of a Christmas tree ... don't have a tree
- my mother cooking a massive roast ... doesn't only happen at Christmas
- but what about red cabbage and that particular stuffing? ... yes, yes, that's it!! That's it! I still love Christmas because of red cabbage!
And that's enough for me ... it really is
Anyway, poems about Christmas, there's loads of them, and what could be more ghastly than something po-faced about "the true meaning of Christmas" or how there won't be snow in Africa this Christmas.
The Night Before Christmas is from the early 19th century and gives the lie to the notion that Coca-Cola created Christmas as we know it - most of the traditions of Christmas are there in the poem.
So, this isn't about Christmas really, it's from way back, but the first line has always been one of my favourites, which i've used in conversation as much as possible - aprt from that, this is pretty weak ...
Tired like it's Christmas morning
I can feel it in my throat.
I can see it in my bones.
Winter slammed, slammed like a fist
but I'm hungover, happy, barely afloat.
... actually, there's way more verses, but they're naff as hell, so I'll leave it there
The perfect Christmas album is a live idea - I've made many Christmas albums and am still trying to create the perfect one, which is all at once classic, cool, christmassy and unexclusive. I guess a few more great Christmas songs need to be written first
Just Like Christmas - Low
Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas - Judy Garland
Donna & Blitzen - Badly Drawn Boy
Sleigh Ride - The Ronettes
Santa Claus is Coming to Town - Bruce Springsteen
Everything's Gonna Be Cool This Christmas - Eels
The Christmas Song - Nat King Cole
Corpus Christi Carol - Jeff Buckley
Fairytale of New York - The Pogues ft Kirsty MacColl
That Was the Worst Christmas Ever - Sufjan Stevens
Christmas is fine with me. Always has been, always will be. I could even say that I love it. But why do I still love Christmas? What did I love about it? And do those reasons still exist? Down the years, the following have been reasons to love Christmas, and so I shall address whether they exist as reasons
- Father Christmas giving me gifts ... no, sir
- My Family giving me ace gifts I couldn't otherwise afford ... i still get some nice gifts, but you know ...
- Family Get-together and putting aside differences ... unusually, my family get together pretty often and don't have many differences, so this happens less at christmas than other times of the year
- School Holiday ... sadly no longer, and tho one does enjoy the break christmas affords, it's not in essence different from other time off
- celebrating the birth of our Lord Jesus ... not a going concern for me for some time
-vicariously celebrating the birth of their lord Jesus - i've often been a sucker for midnight mass, but not so much anymore, so not going this year
- seeing old school buddies around on Christmas Eve ... not many around any more, and to be honest, you often find yourself being greeted affectionately by folk you've not that much affection for
- the distant possibilty of snow ... well, it's happened this year, and everyone hates it
- great TV specials ... the Dr Who Christmas special is always the worst Dr Who, and everything else is cack, and we don't watch TV at Christmas anyway
- people being nice to people ... I'm nice to people all the time, frankly, so if people are nicer to me at Christmas, it just bugs me
- Carol singing ... haven't done for years
-Mulled wine ... guaranteed hangover
- the smell of a Christmas tree ... don't have a tree
- my mother cooking a massive roast ... doesn't only happen at Christmas
- but what about red cabbage and that particular stuffing? ... yes, yes, that's it!! That's it! I still love Christmas because of red cabbage!
And that's enough for me ... it really is
Anyway, poems about Christmas, there's loads of them, and what could be more ghastly than something po-faced about "the true meaning of Christmas" or how there won't be snow in Africa this Christmas.
The Night Before Christmas is from the early 19th century and gives the lie to the notion that Coca-Cola created Christmas as we know it - most of the traditions of Christmas are there in the poem.
So, this isn't about Christmas really, it's from way back, but the first line has always been one of my favourites, which i've used in conversation as much as possible - aprt from that, this is pretty weak ...
Tired like it's Christmas morning
I can feel it in my throat.
I can see it in my bones.
Winter slammed, slammed like a fist
but I'm hungover, happy, barely afloat.
... actually, there's way more verses, but they're naff as hell, so I'll leave it there
Thursday, 17 December 2009
70. 10 Songs about Floating in Space
Ladies & Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space - Spiritualized
Do You Realize?? - Flaming Lips
Space Oddity - David Bowie
Rocket Man - Elton John
He's Simple, He's Dumb, He's the Pilot - Grandaddy
We Are All Made of Stars - Moby
Float On - Modest Mouse
Country Disappeared - Wilco
Another Girl, Another Planet - The Only Ones
Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Is In) - First Edition
It's all a bit scientific for me to write anything interesting. I'm a bit lost when it comes to anything that requires actual understanding.
Floating in space has many meanings. I've tried to avoid space as an explicit drug reference, tho failed, i suppose with the last two, and I guess, the first one. This post was created in honour of the reissue of that classic album, including the originally intended "I Can't Help Falling In Love" sample on the title track. All too beautiful.
Most of these songs have something ineffably sad about them, which i suppose you get from looking down on the Earth and the idea of just floating. The Flaming Lips and Modest Mouse have made the floating a positive thing - i think it's the best song by far for both of them. I rather like the idea in 'Do You Realize??' that in a sense you gain grounding from spacey realisations. I suppose it's just the idea that contemplation of the universe enables you to realise your own insignificance. Blah-de-blah.
i think once you've done it once you shouldn't continue to, though. Don't get lost in heaven, keep your nose to the ground etc
When the wind almost caught me
with the rope frayed and fragile
I saw you might have let me go
in kindness and impatience
You're not the first to realise
we're floating in space, my friend
I'm not the last to wonder when
it all became so precarious
We're not the first to shut our eyes
and disappear completely
Wiser men than us have tried
never to be seen again
And now I can see everything -
the hard rain and the soft clouds
and you make me fall up and down
when i think i've found my balance.
Do You Realize?? - Flaming Lips
Space Oddity - David Bowie
Rocket Man - Elton John
He's Simple, He's Dumb, He's the Pilot - Grandaddy
We Are All Made of Stars - Moby
Float On - Modest Mouse
Country Disappeared - Wilco
Another Girl, Another Planet - The Only Ones
Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Is In) - First Edition
It's all a bit scientific for me to write anything interesting. I'm a bit lost when it comes to anything that requires actual understanding.
Floating in space has many meanings. I've tried to avoid space as an explicit drug reference, tho failed, i suppose with the last two, and I guess, the first one. This post was created in honour of the reissue of that classic album, including the originally intended "I Can't Help Falling In Love" sample on the title track. All too beautiful.
Most of these songs have something ineffably sad about them, which i suppose you get from looking down on the Earth and the idea of just floating. The Flaming Lips and Modest Mouse have made the floating a positive thing - i think it's the best song by far for both of them. I rather like the idea in 'Do You Realize??' that in a sense you gain grounding from spacey realisations. I suppose it's just the idea that contemplation of the universe enables you to realise your own insignificance. Blah-de-blah.
i think once you've done it once you shouldn't continue to, though. Don't get lost in heaven, keep your nose to the ground etc
When the wind almost caught me
with the rope frayed and fragile
I saw you might have let me go
in kindness and impatience
You're not the first to realise
we're floating in space, my friend
I'm not the last to wonder when
it all became so precarious
We're not the first to shut our eyes
and disappear completely
Wiser men than us have tried
never to be seen again
And now I can see everything -
the hard rain and the soft clouds
and you make me fall up and down
when i think i've found my balance.
Saturday, 28 November 2009
69. 10 Songs to the Left
Look Left - Salako
Left of Center - Suzanne Vega
Southpaw - Morrissey
Pass The Dutchie - Musical Youth
A Nervous Tic motion of the Head to the Left - Andrew Bird
If You're Feeling Sinister - Belle and Sebastian
Ziggy Stardust - David Bowie
Upfield - Billy Bragg
Sleep on the Left Side - Cornershop
Pancho & Lefty - Townes Van Zandt
And then there's "Ryan Giggs, Ryan Giggs, running down the wing." I mean Left like that. But also like that.
I'm Left. In every way, unavoidably and inexorably of and from the left. If I were ever, God forbid, to have to answer the command "Tell us about yourself in five words" with a degree of seriousness, Left would be the first thing I'd say, more defining than race, upbringing, job, anything. Less than 10% of people are left-handed, but that includes me and my three siblings. My father is left-handed too, but growing up in Ireland in the 40s/50s, he was made to use his right hand. The Latin for left is sinister, the French is gauche. Left has not only got associations with awkwardness and uncoordination, it also had connotations of ungodliness.
Funnily enough, the one thing about me not quite lefty is that I'm right-footed, but as a 7/8 year-old I didn't like that fact, so i used to say I had "two left feet" thinking that was a good thing which made me left-footed in a sense. I ended up mainly playing as a left-winger, being basically two-footed and, when i think about it, scoring most of my good goals with my left. An educated left foot in the sense I educated myself to use it.
A phrase like educated left foot emphasises the shift in perception on leftism in the last century. Left is now cool, thank goodness - arty, bohemian, seen as stylish and elegant in sport. Giggs, Maldini, Maradona, McEnroe, Lara, Gower etc but there's a bit of an illusion to this, I think, which has linked the oddness of looking at someone doing something the wrong way round with the so-called artistic temperament. I don't necessary think lefties are inclined to be more stylish in sport. Furthermore, someone like David Gower was actually right-handed, using his stronger right hand as guiding top hand, and Rafa Nadal is actually right-handed as well but switched to gain an advantage on double-handed backhands.
Which is one of the other things about leftism in sport - sometimes, as with batting in cricket, it's an advantage (bowlers not being able to bowl their natural line to you, harder to get out LBW) so there are a disproportionate number, while sometimes, as with golf, (lack of good equipment growing up, courses built for right-handers) it's a disadvantage, so there's a very small number of successes. In golf, to be fair, it's growing all the time.
Obviously, despite the best efforts of Ned Flanders, many things are set up for right-handers, which puts us lefties (incidentally, i kind of have a love/hate relationship with the word Lefty. If I'd grown up in America in the middle of the 20th century, i suspect I'd be known as Lefty McGee - how splendid that would have been) at an inherent disadvantage - household implements, writing paper, hockey sticks, musical instruments. The great Gruff Rhys, i think, just changed round all the strings on a right-handed guitar so he could play it left-handed. Genius, Anyway, i suppose you wouldn't say Jimi Hendrix, Paul McCartney, Noel Gallagher etc were at too much of a disadvantage.
I'd be very interested in a study on the relationship between left-handedness and leftness of politics. I can't help but imagine there'd be a huge correlation, for various reasons. Having said that, I've just looked up that the number of recent US presidents who are left-handed is heavy, including Ford, George Bush Sr, (Reagan ambidextrous) who don't illustrate my point - Clinton and Obama though, pleasingly.
Left of Center - Suzanne Vega
Southpaw - Morrissey
Pass The Dutchie - Musical Youth
A Nervous Tic motion of the Head to the Left - Andrew Bird
If You're Feeling Sinister - Belle and Sebastian
Ziggy Stardust - David Bowie
Upfield - Billy Bragg
Sleep on the Left Side - Cornershop
Pancho & Lefty - Townes Van Zandt
And then there's "Ryan Giggs, Ryan Giggs, running down the wing." I mean Left like that. But also like that.
I'm Left. In every way, unavoidably and inexorably of and from the left. If I were ever, God forbid, to have to answer the command "Tell us about yourself in five words" with a degree of seriousness, Left would be the first thing I'd say, more defining than race, upbringing, job, anything. Less than 10% of people are left-handed, but that includes me and my three siblings. My father is left-handed too, but growing up in Ireland in the 40s/50s, he was made to use his right hand. The Latin for left is sinister, the French is gauche. Left has not only got associations with awkwardness and uncoordination, it also had connotations of ungodliness.
Funnily enough, the one thing about me not quite lefty is that I'm right-footed, but as a 7/8 year-old I didn't like that fact, so i used to say I had "two left feet" thinking that was a good thing which made me left-footed in a sense. I ended up mainly playing as a left-winger, being basically two-footed and, when i think about it, scoring most of my good goals with my left. An educated left foot in the sense I educated myself to use it.
A phrase like educated left foot emphasises the shift in perception on leftism in the last century. Left is now cool, thank goodness - arty, bohemian, seen as stylish and elegant in sport. Giggs, Maldini, Maradona, McEnroe, Lara, Gower etc but there's a bit of an illusion to this, I think, which has linked the oddness of looking at someone doing something the wrong way round with the so-called artistic temperament. I don't necessary think lefties are inclined to be more stylish in sport. Furthermore, someone like David Gower was actually right-handed, using his stronger right hand as guiding top hand, and Rafa Nadal is actually right-handed as well but switched to gain an advantage on double-handed backhands.
Which is one of the other things about leftism in sport - sometimes, as with batting in cricket, it's an advantage (bowlers not being able to bowl their natural line to you, harder to get out LBW) so there are a disproportionate number, while sometimes, as with golf, (lack of good equipment growing up, courses built for right-handers) it's a disadvantage, so there's a very small number of successes. In golf, to be fair, it's growing all the time.
Obviously, despite the best efforts of Ned Flanders, many things are set up for right-handers, which puts us lefties (incidentally, i kind of have a love/hate relationship with the word Lefty. If I'd grown up in America in the middle of the 20th century, i suspect I'd be known as Lefty McGee - how splendid that would have been) at an inherent disadvantage - household implements, writing paper, hockey sticks, musical instruments. The great Gruff Rhys, i think, just changed round all the strings on a right-handed guitar so he could play it left-handed. Genius, Anyway, i suppose you wouldn't say Jimi Hendrix, Paul McCartney, Noel Gallagher etc were at too much of a disadvantage.
I'd be very interested in a study on the relationship between left-handedness and leftness of politics. I can't help but imagine there'd be a huge correlation, for various reasons. Having said that, I've just looked up that the number of recent US presidents who are left-handed is heavy, including Ford, George Bush Sr, (Reagan ambidextrous) who don't illustrate my point - Clinton and Obama though, pleasingly.
My own leftness took a bit of a detour recently - i suppose it's just a natural burst of cynicism you get at my age, but I'm through the worst of it. And the fact is, it is hard these days to hold a consistent line. What you align yourself with or find contemptible may be on either side of the spectrum on any given day, and I think the main mistake people these days is making their enemies' enemy their friend. Who can be entirely immune to this? I've certainly found myself, disillusioned with kneejerk liberal positions, taking some fairly odd right-wing stances at points, a bit too immersed in the role of devil's advocate.
So i read this book 'What's Left' by Nick Cohen, a real disillusioned lefty text, which got the author some real hatred in liberal circles. There are some really excellent, powerful sections in it, but it's not full of much joy and love, that's for sure.
I'm naturally inclined to people of the left -of whatever sort - and there was a time where I had a pretty weird understanding, a sense of leftism, which informed my own movements and choices, and meant i could often pretty quickly discern other left-handers - and not just from watching them writing .... That's faded entirely, and it's pretty hard to explain it now.
i haven't talked about the songs at all, a nice little voyage through the various meanings of left. Ziggy Stardust "played it left hand, but made it too far, became the special man, then we were Ziggy's band" in case you were wondering.
WHAT'S LEFT
You grabbed the paper from my hand,
a toddler tired of his own toys,
you're asking - what's that?
just another lament for
the death of the left
as if there aren't
bigger things to deal with
as christmas passed christmasless-
a kiss lost in listlessness
I'm asking - what's left?
as shadow replaces doubt
your faith fluttered in then out
What's left? my world, my mind,
and five fingernails chewed to the bone.
WHAT'S LEFT
You grabbed the paper from my hand,
a toddler tired of his own toys,
you're asking - what's that?
just another lament for
the death of the left
as if there aren't
bigger things to deal with
as christmas passed christmasless-
a kiss lost in listlessness
I'm asking - what's left?
as shadow replaces doubt
your faith fluttered in then out
What's left? my world, my mind,
and five fingernails chewed to the bone.
Saturday, 21 November 2009
68. 10 Songs about Time
Time - Tom Waits
Time Has Told Me - Nick Drake
Time Passes - Paul Weller
Out of Time - Blur
I'm Outta Time - Oasis
Who Knows Where The Time Goes - Fairport Convention
Turn Turn Turn - The Byrds
Time - David Bowie
Time is on My Side - The Rolling Stones
Time Passes Slowly - Bob Dylan
Well, I've brought out the big guns on this. Universal subject, everyone's had a go at it (could have gone for loads of different artists, loads and loads, but i chose the big ones - even my cousin wrote and sung a very pretty song about time, called Time). Time, time, time ... time, eh? Oooh, love a bit of time ... can't get enough of it.
I mean, really, what's to say? It seems a bit moronic to have this as a topic - Here are David's thoughts on time. Really, they're very interesting.
According to Bob Dylan, Time is a jet plane, it moves too fast. The great wordsmith of popular music, ladies and gentlemen.
So, everyone has time on their mind all the time, I assume, just like I do. I used to be unable to go through a day without thinking "Gosh, it's so weird that such-and-such happened a year ago" or "Gosh, it's so weird that I was younger five seconds ago than I am now" or "Gosh, it's so weird that a minute ago, the past was the present" but, you know I'm a tiny little bit less ridiculous than I used to be.
I think the challenge most of these songs overcome successfully is exactly that - to turn what will inevitably be truism into something profound.
Who knows where the time goes? Just a cliche, but one of the most beautiful lines ever sung.
Time passes ... so quickly - just a cliche, but the most heart-wrenching line Paul Weller's ever sung
Time falls wanking to the floor - ok, well done, Mr Bowie, that's not a cliche.
Anyway, time it's like really big and like deep and stuff.
I say
You draw a line
on a sheet of A4
to tell me all
about my God
a trick of the eye
at the Science Museum
baffled me
into submission
A blank expanse
that hurts the brain
beyond my and
your comprehension
but, after all,
time's only numbers
and it's numbers
that are everything
Time Has Told Me - Nick Drake
Time Passes - Paul Weller
Out of Time - Blur
I'm Outta Time - Oasis
Who Knows Where The Time Goes - Fairport Convention
Turn Turn Turn - The Byrds
Time - David Bowie
Time is on My Side - The Rolling Stones
Time Passes Slowly - Bob Dylan
Well, I've brought out the big guns on this. Universal subject, everyone's had a go at it (could have gone for loads of different artists, loads and loads, but i chose the big ones - even my cousin wrote and sung a very pretty song about time, called Time). Time, time, time ... time, eh? Oooh, love a bit of time ... can't get enough of it.
I mean, really, what's to say? It seems a bit moronic to have this as a topic - Here are David's thoughts on time. Really, they're very interesting.
According to Bob Dylan, Time is a jet plane, it moves too fast. The great wordsmith of popular music, ladies and gentlemen.
So, everyone has time on their mind all the time, I assume, just like I do. I used to be unable to go through a day without thinking "Gosh, it's so weird that such-and-such happened a year ago" or "Gosh, it's so weird that I was younger five seconds ago than I am now" or "Gosh, it's so weird that a minute ago, the past was the present" but, you know I'm a tiny little bit less ridiculous than I used to be.
I think the challenge most of these songs overcome successfully is exactly that - to turn what will inevitably be truism into something profound.
Who knows where the time goes? Just a cliche, but one of the most beautiful lines ever sung.
Time passes ... so quickly - just a cliche, but the most heart-wrenching line Paul Weller's ever sung
Time falls wanking to the floor - ok, well done, Mr Bowie, that's not a cliche.
Anyway, time it's like really big and like deep and stuff.
I say
You draw a line
on a sheet of A4
to tell me all
about my God
a trick of the eye
at the Science Museum
baffled me
into submission
A blank expanse
that hurts the brain
beyond my and
your comprehension
but, after all,
time's only numbers
and it's numbers
that are everything
Friday, 20 November 2009
67. 10 Songs about Dogs
Black Dog -Led Zeppelin
Black Dog on My Shoulder - Manic Street Preachers
Black Eyed Dog - Nick Drake
Hellhound on my Trail - Robert Johnson
Hounds of Love - Kate Bush
Visit from the Dead Dog - Ed Harcourt
I Wanna be your Dog - Iggy and the Stooges
Hound Dog - Elvis Presley
Dog on Wheels - Belle and Sebastian
Maybe Tomorrow (theme from The Littlest Hobo) - Terry Bush
So, Man's Best Friend, eh? Elvis (Leiber/Stoller) and Robert Johnson rather set the template for how dogs might be used in the lexicon of rock'n'roll. Then, the Black Dog of Nick Drake and the Manics is depression (inspired byWinston Churchill). That's one of the prettiest Manics songs, one of their last really good songs.
Sadly, hardly any of these songs are about actual dogs. I ought to have included I Love My Dog by Cat Stevens.
Talking of which (doubly) we had cats and a dog when i was a child. My mother's name is Stevens, and yet, somehow or other, in the 17 years that both or one of them were with us, it never crossed my mind to call either Cat Stevens. How did that happen? I called them everything else under the sun. Life is full of lost opportunities.
And our dog was called Tramp. She was female, a mongrel, a bit mental, could run very fast, a year older than me, managed a good 14 years. One time, she was very ill, and I was home alone one night and i stayed up all night sitting with her under the stairs reading her Oliver Twist. I kept on checking her nose and it was dry, very dry, and she was shivering and whimpering. But in the morning her nose had a bit of dampness to it and she went on to live almost a year more after that. Well done, Charles Dickens.
I guess that was my first Dark Night of the Soul, albeit a 12 year old's version.
Here's a man about a dog ....
The muzzled dog went running
through the conquered streets of Ealing
she growled and showed her anger
to all who'd dare to listen
She cursed and struck her life blows
and she never would be beaten -
I know what you are thinking
but you can't know how i'm feeling.
The muzzled dog is pawing
at the unforgiving pavement
and all she's got's this nothing
this ever-raging nothing,
there's no rock for her to cling to
no truth she has recourse to
and she keeps on running madly
chasing crazier slights and triumphs.
Only comfort's been this nothing
and that's no refuge at all.
The old black cat's still sleeping
but she can't hear him purring,
there's no rhythm to her footsteps,
no target to her anger.
she's so far from where she started
no sense to all this knowledge,
no tenets to the trivia,
and the jealousy's unceasing
and the present is a nothing
but the muzzled dog keeps running.
Black Dog on My Shoulder - Manic Street Preachers
Black Eyed Dog - Nick Drake
Hellhound on my Trail - Robert Johnson
Hounds of Love - Kate Bush
Visit from the Dead Dog - Ed Harcourt
I Wanna be your Dog - Iggy and the Stooges
Hound Dog - Elvis Presley
Dog on Wheels - Belle and Sebastian
Maybe Tomorrow (theme from The Littlest Hobo) - Terry Bush
So, Man's Best Friend, eh? Elvis (Leiber/Stoller) and Robert Johnson rather set the template for how dogs might be used in the lexicon of rock'n'roll. Then, the Black Dog of Nick Drake and the Manics is depression (inspired byWinston Churchill). That's one of the prettiest Manics songs, one of their last really good songs.
Sadly, hardly any of these songs are about actual dogs. I ought to have included I Love My Dog by Cat Stevens.
Talking of which (doubly) we had cats and a dog when i was a child. My mother's name is Stevens, and yet, somehow or other, in the 17 years that both or one of them were with us, it never crossed my mind to call either Cat Stevens. How did that happen? I called them everything else under the sun. Life is full of lost opportunities.
And our dog was called Tramp. She was female, a mongrel, a bit mental, could run very fast, a year older than me, managed a good 14 years. One time, she was very ill, and I was home alone one night and i stayed up all night sitting with her under the stairs reading her Oliver Twist. I kept on checking her nose and it was dry, very dry, and she was shivering and whimpering. But in the morning her nose had a bit of dampness to it and she went on to live almost a year more after that. Well done, Charles Dickens.
I guess that was my first Dark Night of the Soul, albeit a 12 year old's version.
Here's a man about a dog ....
The muzzled dog went running
through the conquered streets of Ealing
she growled and showed her anger
to all who'd dare to listen
She cursed and struck her life blows
and she never would be beaten -
I know what you are thinking
but you can't know how i'm feeling.
The muzzled dog is pawing
at the unforgiving pavement
and all she's got's this nothing
this ever-raging nothing,
there's no rock for her to cling to
no truth she has recourse to
and she keeps on running madly
chasing crazier slights and triumphs.
Only comfort's been this nothing
and that's no refuge at all.
The old black cat's still sleeping
but she can't hear him purring,
there's no rhythm to her footsteps,
no target to her anger.
she's so far from where she started
no sense to all this knowledge,
no tenets to the trivia,
and the jealousy's unceasing
and the present is a nothing
but the muzzled dog keeps running.
Friday, 13 November 2009
66. 10 Songs about Dead Males
What a Wonderful Man -My Morning Jacket
Oliver James - Fleet Foxes
A Friend of Ours - Elbow
Boulder to Birmingham - Emmylou Harris
Danny Callahan - Bright Eyes
The Leader of the Pack - The Shangri-Las
It Just Is - Rilo Kiley
Henry Lee - PJ Harvey & Nick Cave
Local Boy in the Photograph - Stereophonics
Tonight's the Night - Neil Young
Again, there are more than enough of these to choose from. I guess the rock'n'roll people know a lot of friends and peers who've died before their time, and it may be a badge of honour to compose a fitting tribute.
I think these are all fine songs. Danny Callahan just floors me, a song with a real sucker punch. At his best, Conor Oberst really is quite something as a lyricist. One could use this as an opportunity to slag the Stereophonics and say this is their one decent song, but in recent times I've been thinking they got rather a rough deal from us post-Britpop indie kids. I think they've probably got a reasonable amount of decent songs, they just got a bit too big, and were liked by "the wrong sort of people".
Henry Lee is pretty much an inversion of Where the Wild Roses Grow, Boulder to Birmingham is about Gram Parsons and What a Wonderful Man, well that is just a great tune.
I'd also like to note a possible mistake in my previous post. I had The Trapeze Swinger as about a dead girl, but I now think it's the dude himself that's the dead one, so I guess that could be in this category. Bloomin' great song, though.
So, here's one about a dead dude. Perhaps it's relatively obvious which one. Doesn't really matter.
Another elegy ticked off, my inane grin
well practised casts the darkest shadow.
Another drink with a drunk in a lunchtime pub
stumbles off to noteless nowhere - I've learnt at least
not to cry for my own grim lifeblood as it fails.
Another cult, a stately fraud I barely halt
at joining, then thrust my tossy pronouncements
forward to general embarrassment, or worse.
Another cult, a single scene, a study in loss
which restores life to all briefly, too briefly.
Another life, I'd have the grace not to laugh
at one man's tatty tragedy enacted on
the least glamorous streets of inner London.
O brother, you ain't looked at me in years
and I can't bring myself to bring myself down for it.
Another pompous word too soon, causes natural,
restlessness traps you too early, quietly
on the most glamorous streets of downtown New York
your rictus grin as ill-fitting as mine, poor soul.
You deserve better, both best left alone.
Oliver James - Fleet Foxes
A Friend of Ours - Elbow
Boulder to Birmingham - Emmylou Harris
Danny Callahan - Bright Eyes
The Leader of the Pack - The Shangri-Las
It Just Is - Rilo Kiley
Henry Lee - PJ Harvey & Nick Cave
Local Boy in the Photograph - Stereophonics
Tonight's the Night - Neil Young
Again, there are more than enough of these to choose from. I guess the rock'n'roll people know a lot of friends and peers who've died before their time, and it may be a badge of honour to compose a fitting tribute.
I think these are all fine songs. Danny Callahan just floors me, a song with a real sucker punch. At his best, Conor Oberst really is quite something as a lyricist. One could use this as an opportunity to slag the Stereophonics and say this is their one decent song, but in recent times I've been thinking they got rather a rough deal from us post-Britpop indie kids. I think they've probably got a reasonable amount of decent songs, they just got a bit too big, and were liked by "the wrong sort of people".
Henry Lee is pretty much an inversion of Where the Wild Roses Grow, Boulder to Birmingham is about Gram Parsons and What a Wonderful Man, well that is just a great tune.
I'd also like to note a possible mistake in my previous post. I had The Trapeze Swinger as about a dead girl, but I now think it's the dude himself that's the dead one, so I guess that could be in this category. Bloomin' great song, though.
So, here's one about a dead dude. Perhaps it's relatively obvious which one. Doesn't really matter.
Another elegy ticked off, my inane grin
well practised casts the darkest shadow.
Another drink with a drunk in a lunchtime pub
stumbles off to noteless nowhere - I've learnt at least
not to cry for my own grim lifeblood as it fails.
Another cult, a stately fraud I barely halt
at joining, then thrust my tossy pronouncements
forward to general embarrassment, or worse.
Another cult, a single scene, a study in loss
which restores life to all briefly, too briefly.
Another life, I'd have the grace not to laugh
at one man's tatty tragedy enacted on
the least glamorous streets of inner London.
O brother, you ain't looked at me in years
and I can't bring myself to bring myself down for it.
Another pompous word too soon, causes natural,
restlessness traps you too early, quietly
on the most glamorous streets of downtown New York
your rictus grin as ill-fitting as mine, poor soul.
You deserve better, both best left alone.
Monday, 9 November 2009
65. 10 Songs about Dead Females
Fire and Rain - James Taylor
For a Dancer - Jackson Browne
Candle in the Wind - Elton John
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll - Bob Dylan
Julia - The Beatles
Goodbye Suzie - John Howard
Jenny Was a Friend of Mine - The Killers
Casimir Pulaski Day - Sufjan Stevens
The Trapeze Swinger - Iron and Wine
Where the Wild Roses Grow - Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue
Cheerful, eh? But this has been a very fertile theme for great songs. I really love pretty much all these songs and there are way more I could have chosen. And, in case you were wondering, this will soon be followed by 'Songs About Dead Males'.
Being a sentimental fellow, I'm a big fan of the elegiac sentimental ballads among these, especially For a Dancer and Casimir Pulaski Day, very sad songs which ring true.
Then there are the ones where the death itself is more the issue, whether Nick Cave, master of Murder Ballads, or the news song Hattie Carroll, which many consider one of the Dylan's greatest, for all that it's not entirely factual.
I liked the poems of Carol Ann Duffy when i studied them - she quite often got inside the head of unreliable psychotic male narrators, and the tale of hinted at violence would gradually unfold. So I could have tried to write some kind of murder ballad rather more comfortably than Elton John's Ode to Jade Goody, or whatever - but in the end the idea of getting inside the head of a psychopath and putting that in words didn't appeal to me.
It was Keith Richards who said Elton John could only write songs about dead blondes, which is relatively funny, and does set one thinking if a whole album of such material could have been produced. Dando, Smith, the list goes on ... Anyhoo
I fell between two stools. I had a nice idea, but this is just one of those times where I very much wish I was better at writing, as I liked what i thought of, but the words really don't do justice to the idea.
You wanted to hire bikes but I don't like to cycle
so we drove from St Davids up to Crackington Haven
That's where you'd spent your best days of childhood
and you weren't the only one - it took an hour to find a space.
Couples out walking on the cliffs over the bay -
but one of us forgot to bring along the sun cream.
The beer was called Doom Bar, you can get it in London -
the pub was packed and we had to drink out of plastic.
You wanted to play tennis but there wasn't enough space
and besides. I'd have got a headache, running after drinking.
I said I could see why you liked the place so much and
you looked away and said it was not like you remembered.
It took half an hour to get the car back to the main road,
you told me to be careful of the glare and weekend drivers.
"Weekend drivers like me?" I asked with just the wrong tone
I always seem to acquire on a couple of afternoon pints.
You sighed; I'd heard that sigh so much in the last two months
and neither of us could have got back to London soon enough.
I asked if I could put on the end of the football,
you said "please do" in that tone you'd use to counter.
It was 0-0 between two teams destined for mid-table
and i sped up as we came close to some place called Okehampton
and only saw the golf ball bouncing down the road
soon enough to swerve and spin into the dry-stone wall
We were nowhere near a golf course, just a kid in his garden
practising his chipping and wildly overhitting.We'd have
split up, I reckon, within a couple of weeks and
you'd have been free to start again with someone a bit better who
you'd cycle with to Crackington Haven and walk along the cliff
and tell them "it's just as beautiful as i ever remembered."
For a Dancer - Jackson Browne
Candle in the Wind - Elton John
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll - Bob Dylan
Julia - The Beatles
Goodbye Suzie - John Howard
Jenny Was a Friend of Mine - The Killers
Casimir Pulaski Day - Sufjan Stevens
The Trapeze Swinger - Iron and Wine
Where the Wild Roses Grow - Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue
Cheerful, eh? But this has been a very fertile theme for great songs. I really love pretty much all these songs and there are way more I could have chosen. And, in case you were wondering, this will soon be followed by 'Songs About Dead Males'.
Being a sentimental fellow, I'm a big fan of the elegiac sentimental ballads among these, especially For a Dancer and Casimir Pulaski Day, very sad songs which ring true.
Then there are the ones where the death itself is more the issue, whether Nick Cave, master of Murder Ballads, or the news song Hattie Carroll, which many consider one of the Dylan's greatest, for all that it's not entirely factual.
I liked the poems of Carol Ann Duffy when i studied them - she quite often got inside the head of unreliable psychotic male narrators, and the tale of hinted at violence would gradually unfold. So I could have tried to write some kind of murder ballad rather more comfortably than Elton John's Ode to Jade Goody, or whatever - but in the end the idea of getting inside the head of a psychopath and putting that in words didn't appeal to me.
It was Keith Richards who said Elton John could only write songs about dead blondes, which is relatively funny, and does set one thinking if a whole album of such material could have been produced. Dando, Smith, the list goes on ... Anyhoo
I fell between two stools. I had a nice idea, but this is just one of those times where I very much wish I was better at writing, as I liked what i thought of, but the words really don't do justice to the idea.
You wanted to hire bikes but I don't like to cycle
so we drove from St Davids up to Crackington Haven
That's where you'd spent your best days of childhood
and you weren't the only one - it took an hour to find a space.
Couples out walking on the cliffs over the bay -
but one of us forgot to bring along the sun cream.
The beer was called Doom Bar, you can get it in London -
the pub was packed and we had to drink out of plastic.
You wanted to play tennis but there wasn't enough space
and besides. I'd have got a headache, running after drinking.
I said I could see why you liked the place so much and
you looked away and said it was not like you remembered.
It took half an hour to get the car back to the main road,
you told me to be careful of the glare and weekend drivers.
"Weekend drivers like me?" I asked with just the wrong tone
I always seem to acquire on a couple of afternoon pints.
You sighed; I'd heard that sigh so much in the last two months
and neither of us could have got back to London soon enough.
I asked if I could put on the end of the football,
you said "please do" in that tone you'd use to counter.
It was 0-0 between two teams destined for mid-table
and i sped up as we came close to some place called Okehampton
and only saw the golf ball bouncing down the road
soon enough to swerve and spin into the dry-stone wall
We were nowhere near a golf course, just a kid in his garden
practising his chipping and wildly overhitting.We'd have
split up, I reckon, within a couple of weeks and
you'd have been free to start again with someone a bit better who
you'd cycle with to Crackington Haven and walk along the cliff
and tell them "it's just as beautiful as i ever remembered."
Thursday, 5 November 2009
64. 10 Songs from my 10 Favourite Albums of the Last 10 Years
So, it is that time again, irrestistible to an inveterate lister like myself, when the lists and polls come out, whether in a fun small personal way or a big annoying publication way.
Uncut has already done their Top 150 albums of the 21st century, and as is obvious from my taste, I've been an avid Uncut reader for many years and it's informed my music taste more than most.
Their list, however, was sufficiently irritating to make me, for the first time, write a letter of complaint, or warning to the editor.
It's hard to put my finger on what was wrong exactly (i did attempt to, at length, in the letter, but i won't bore you with too many details) and I wasn't so out of step with the list, as I owned 100 of the 150, but I felt that rather qualified me to comment on how awry some of the choices at the top of the list were compared to some much lower down or ignored entirely. Indeed, i noted that most of the albums that really were my favourites of the last ten years weren't there at all.
This prompted me - well, ok, it didn't prompt me, i'd have done it anyway - to list my favourite 10 albums of the last 10 years, and then, for the purpose of the blog, to choose one song from each. The order isn't in terms of favourites, but in terms of what'll make the best compilation tape order.
I will attempt to explain and offer excuses for exclusions afterwards
To be Young, is to be Sad, is to be High - Ryan Adams (Heartbreaker)
The Shining - Badly Drawn Boy (Hour of the Bewilderbeast)
Shining Light - Ash (Free All Angels)
Bryte Side - The Pernice Brothers (The World Won't End)
Hummingbird - Wilco (A Ghost is Born)
Van Occupanther - Midlake (The Trials of Van Occupanther)
More Adventurous - Rilo Kiley (More Adventurous)
Jesus Etc - Wilco (Yankee Hotel Foxtrot)
Sad Eyes - Josh Rouse (Nashville)
Dinner at Eight -Rufus Wainwright (Want One)
OK, so two Wilco. Boo, you might say, but, both these albums really are just better and better every listen and inseparable. Indeed, Wilco (The Album) was a fair contender too. And no Furries? But i love the Furries! Yes, but I will admit they haven't released a defining album this century, nor really have B and S.
Unlucky to miss out are Funeral, victim of me not really liking Arcade Fire's second album and so going off them, Come on Feel the Illinoise, an extraordinary work, but just a bit too busy, Is This It and Fleet Foxes, both just a bit too ... popular, Strangers by Ed Harcourt, which I love, Hate by the Delgados and Moving Up Country by James Yorkston, and Josh Rouse, Ryan Adams and Rilo Kiley both also could have had two albums on the list, in 1972, Gold and Execution of all Things.
And you can say Badly Drawn Boy? Really? But remember how good it was when it came out, and how well it all fitted together. Ash I make no apology for, that's just an album full of golden tunes. Rufus Wainwright might elicit the same response as Badly Drawn Boy - i think Want One is his one great album, its follow-up unspeakably poor.
For once, I haven't tried to be fair and show i was eclectic - there really are no hip-hop, soul, pop, dance albums anywhere near it (and I have bought a few), it's pretty much all alt-country for me. I am slightly disappointed that these albums don't stand out more, they're hardly definitive or breathtaking, they're just my favourites. I'm drawn, in an way, to quite middling music ...
Anyway, this blog was started with the idea of me trying to establish some orthodoxy of critical judgement, a basically impossible task. Lists are always going to be vexing bullshit to a greater or lesser extent.
Amusingly, what I wrote below is actually from exactly 10 years ago, in response to some bullshit Channel 4 Music of the Millennium Poll, where, as I recall, Robbie Williams was judged the 6th most significant artist of the Millenium. Behind the Vengaboys. Not really.
I'd hope that I'd matured since then and i was more capable of restraining my apoplexy, but although it's modified, and I wouldn't expect better of Channel 4, with Uncut it really was a case of "I expected better of you".
This is funny: it's like some crazy rhyme heavy performance stuff, like Scroobius Pip or something. Talking of lists, his list song Thou Shalt Not Kill, that's fun.
I'd like to dismiss as
ridiculous these tricksters
who pick pocket polls -
but they're taking their toll.
What kind of shit is this?
Whose Christmas wishlist?
What sickness infects us
that taste is so restless?
Maybe I'm twisted,
listless and pissed off,
a stickler for mistakes
in critic list pisstakes
so wearyingly risque,
focus-group risk takes -
but if these lists didn't exist
I'd miss what they miss.
Uncut has already done their Top 150 albums of the 21st century, and as is obvious from my taste, I've been an avid Uncut reader for many years and it's informed my music taste more than most.
Their list, however, was sufficiently irritating to make me, for the first time, write a letter of complaint, or warning to the editor.
It's hard to put my finger on what was wrong exactly (i did attempt to, at length, in the letter, but i won't bore you with too many details) and I wasn't so out of step with the list, as I owned 100 of the 150, but I felt that rather qualified me to comment on how awry some of the choices at the top of the list were compared to some much lower down or ignored entirely. Indeed, i noted that most of the albums that really were my favourites of the last ten years weren't there at all.
This prompted me - well, ok, it didn't prompt me, i'd have done it anyway - to list my favourite 10 albums of the last 10 years, and then, for the purpose of the blog, to choose one song from each. The order isn't in terms of favourites, but in terms of what'll make the best compilation tape order.
I will attempt to explain and offer excuses for exclusions afterwards
To be Young, is to be Sad, is to be High - Ryan Adams (Heartbreaker)
The Shining - Badly Drawn Boy (Hour of the Bewilderbeast)
Shining Light - Ash (Free All Angels)
Bryte Side - The Pernice Brothers (The World Won't End)
Hummingbird - Wilco (A Ghost is Born)
Van Occupanther - Midlake (The Trials of Van Occupanther)
More Adventurous - Rilo Kiley (More Adventurous)
Jesus Etc - Wilco (Yankee Hotel Foxtrot)
Sad Eyes - Josh Rouse (Nashville)
Dinner at Eight -Rufus Wainwright (Want One)
OK, so two Wilco. Boo, you might say, but, both these albums really are just better and better every listen and inseparable. Indeed, Wilco (The Album) was a fair contender too. And no Furries? But i love the Furries! Yes, but I will admit they haven't released a defining album this century, nor really have B and S.
Unlucky to miss out are Funeral, victim of me not really liking Arcade Fire's second album and so going off them, Come on Feel the Illinoise, an extraordinary work, but just a bit too busy, Is This It and Fleet Foxes, both just a bit too ... popular, Strangers by Ed Harcourt, which I love, Hate by the Delgados and Moving Up Country by James Yorkston, and Josh Rouse, Ryan Adams and Rilo Kiley both also could have had two albums on the list, in 1972, Gold and Execution of all Things.
And you can say Badly Drawn Boy? Really? But remember how good it was when it came out, and how well it all fitted together. Ash I make no apology for, that's just an album full of golden tunes. Rufus Wainwright might elicit the same response as Badly Drawn Boy - i think Want One is his one great album, its follow-up unspeakably poor.
For once, I haven't tried to be fair and show i was eclectic - there really are no hip-hop, soul, pop, dance albums anywhere near it (and I have bought a few), it's pretty much all alt-country for me. I am slightly disappointed that these albums don't stand out more, they're hardly definitive or breathtaking, they're just my favourites. I'm drawn, in an way, to quite middling music ...
Anyway, this blog was started with the idea of me trying to establish some orthodoxy of critical judgement, a basically impossible task. Lists are always going to be vexing bullshit to a greater or lesser extent.
Amusingly, what I wrote below is actually from exactly 10 years ago, in response to some bullshit Channel 4 Music of the Millennium Poll, where, as I recall, Robbie Williams was judged the 6th most significant artist of the Millenium. Behind the Vengaboys. Not really.
I'd hope that I'd matured since then and i was more capable of restraining my apoplexy, but although it's modified, and I wouldn't expect better of Channel 4, with Uncut it really was a case of "I expected better of you".
This is funny: it's like some crazy rhyme heavy performance stuff, like Scroobius Pip or something. Talking of lists, his list song Thou Shalt Not Kill, that's fun.
I'd like to dismiss as
ridiculous these tricksters
who pick pocket polls -
but they're taking their toll.
What kind of shit is this?
Whose Christmas wishlist?
What sickness infects us
that taste is so restless?
Maybe I'm twisted,
listless and pissed off,
a stickler for mistakes
in critic list pisstakes
so wearyingly risque,
focus-group risk takes -
but if these lists didn't exist
I'd miss what they miss.
Monday, 26 October 2009
63. 10 pretty songs with sweary titles
It's a Motherfucker - Eels
Your Fucking Sunny Day - Lambchop
How Fucking Romantic - Magnetic Fields
Bloody Motherfucking Asshole - Martha Wainwright
Fuck the Universe - Ryan Adams
The Man Don't Give a Fuck - Super Furry Animals
Fuck this Shit - Belle and Sebastian
Fuck it, I Love You - Malcolm Middleton
Cunts - Aidan John Moffat
Grudge Fuck - Pernice Brothers
It's been a relatively long time since I posted anything, the reason being simply that I've been very busy, rather than that I'm running out of ideas - though they are slowing down somewhat, I've still got a few stored up. The thing is, it's not the start bit of each post or the end bit that takes the time, or ought to take the time, it's the middle bit, the real meat, and too often lately I've found myself rushing out some incoherent nonsense, which hasn't expressed anything interesting about the subject in question.
So, I thought, this subject might offer some kind of opportunity to write something coherent about swearing, which has always interested me. Unfortunately, I'm right in the eye of a cold, which, though hardly debilitating, is befuddling and wearying.
So, this post may well end being fairly piecemeal all round. Sorry.
Still, good set of songs. I'll see what I can wring out of the subject. What's interesting about using "fuck" or another swear in a songtitle is that you are necessarily courting controversy and demanding attention even though the phrase you have used might well be one of the most natural and simple imaginable. As soon as you've put the swear in the title it will be commented on in those terms.
I like the idea of this blog because it really comes close to exemplifying the difference between the perceived "danger" of a swearword and its actual place in our language. The Eels song is as barely beautiful as anything by Nick Drake or Joni Mitchell or anyone, and the tacit meanings expressed by the central phrase "It's a Motherfucker" is what gives the song a lot of its power.
Elsewhere, to be fair, some of these songs do use "fuck" with more aggressive intent eg Martha Wainwright and Ryan Adams - the Ryan Adams isn't actually pretty, it's kind of ghastly and compelling, but i truly think it is the sound of a man at lowest ebb, but still putting it into a coherent song.
They're all "fuck" apart from the Moffat song, which isn't really a song at all, more a brief discourse on the use of the word itself.
There's a view that cunt remains the last taboo, swearwise, and while it's still perceived, i guess it's still true, while it's still the one which will get a disapproving glance for or which you'll hold back from saying in front of certain people, but its place as a no-go area, as a word of particular offence, is built on nothing really.
I've softened somewhat in my attitude to swearing, or rather my attitude to people's attitude to swearing. While in the past, I'd have argued about absurdity and hypocrisy and ignorance giving language more power than it merits and giving children easy lines to cross, I do see that not swearing in front of children/ at work etc is, like the royal family, a convention that, though basically silly, serves moderate purpose and will be around for a while to come.
I also acknowledge that when you see comedians live who you've seen on TV not swearing, and they're f-ing and blinding away, thy look silly and forced in their effort to either a) look natural or b) look adult or c) look edgy, and likewise, swearing often looks bad on the page when writers use it to capture a vernacular.
So, there we go, that's it. No poem, i don't think. I don't really know how i could exemplify the issue without looking smug or naff or both. If anything comes to me, I'll come back to it, but I'll just end with ****.
Your Fucking Sunny Day - Lambchop
How Fucking Romantic - Magnetic Fields
Bloody Motherfucking Asshole - Martha Wainwright
Fuck the Universe - Ryan Adams
The Man Don't Give a Fuck - Super Furry Animals
Fuck this Shit - Belle and Sebastian
Fuck it, I Love You - Malcolm Middleton
Cunts - Aidan John Moffat
Grudge Fuck - Pernice Brothers
It's been a relatively long time since I posted anything, the reason being simply that I've been very busy, rather than that I'm running out of ideas - though they are slowing down somewhat, I've still got a few stored up. The thing is, it's not the start bit of each post or the end bit that takes the time, or ought to take the time, it's the middle bit, the real meat, and too often lately I've found myself rushing out some incoherent nonsense, which hasn't expressed anything interesting about the subject in question.
So, I thought, this subject might offer some kind of opportunity to write something coherent about swearing, which has always interested me. Unfortunately, I'm right in the eye of a cold, which, though hardly debilitating, is befuddling and wearying.
So, this post may well end being fairly piecemeal all round. Sorry.
Still, good set of songs. I'll see what I can wring out of the subject. What's interesting about using "fuck" or another swear in a songtitle is that you are necessarily courting controversy and demanding attention even though the phrase you have used might well be one of the most natural and simple imaginable. As soon as you've put the swear in the title it will be commented on in those terms.
I like the idea of this blog because it really comes close to exemplifying the difference between the perceived "danger" of a swearword and its actual place in our language. The Eels song is as barely beautiful as anything by Nick Drake or Joni Mitchell or anyone, and the tacit meanings expressed by the central phrase "It's a Motherfucker" is what gives the song a lot of its power.
Elsewhere, to be fair, some of these songs do use "fuck" with more aggressive intent eg Martha Wainwright and Ryan Adams - the Ryan Adams isn't actually pretty, it's kind of ghastly and compelling, but i truly think it is the sound of a man at lowest ebb, but still putting it into a coherent song.
They're all "fuck" apart from the Moffat song, which isn't really a song at all, more a brief discourse on the use of the word itself.
There's a view that cunt remains the last taboo, swearwise, and while it's still perceived, i guess it's still true, while it's still the one which will get a disapproving glance for or which you'll hold back from saying in front of certain people, but its place as a no-go area, as a word of particular offence, is built on nothing really.
I've softened somewhat in my attitude to swearing, or rather my attitude to people's attitude to swearing. While in the past, I'd have argued about absurdity and hypocrisy and ignorance giving language more power than it merits and giving children easy lines to cross, I do see that not swearing in front of children/ at work etc is, like the royal family, a convention that, though basically silly, serves moderate purpose and will be around for a while to come.
I also acknowledge that when you see comedians live who you've seen on TV not swearing, and they're f-ing and blinding away, thy look silly and forced in their effort to either a) look natural or b) look adult or c) look edgy, and likewise, swearing often looks bad on the page when writers use it to capture a vernacular.
So, there we go, that's it. No poem, i don't think. I don't really know how i could exemplify the issue without looking smug or naff or both. If anything comes to me, I'll come back to it, but I'll just end with ****.
Tuesday, 13 October 2009
62. 10 South London Songs
From one locale to another
Waterloo Sunset - The Kinks
Guns of Brixton - The Clash
Up the Junction - Squeeze
Latchmere - The Maccabees
Morden - Good Shoes
Electric Avenue - Eddy Grant
The Only Living Boy in New Cross - Carter USM
The Lambeth Walk - (Me & My Girl)
Battersea Odyssey - Super Furry Animals
The Wombling Song - The Wombles
Not a bad bunch - I'd wager there are a lot more classic songs with a very North London feel to them, what with Camden and all that, and probably even more with an East London feel. Still, South London's where I'm at right now and I think this lot do it proud. There might well be more South London hip-hop etc but it's not my specialist area. Roots Manuva is from Stockwell but i couldn't think of any of his songs which were location specific.
I've covered quite a wide area here - Up the Junction is the definitive South London song, I reckon, with its beautiful absurd couplets. Also, it was good to discover a song about Morden, a legendary place to most people as the end of the Northern Line, you usually hear people saying it the way they say Mordor in Lord of the Rings whch is like the way they said Murder in Taggart.
I moved to South London about six years ago (from my birthplace in the West, which i may cover in a way later) but I wasn't initially sold on it and envied my cooler brethren in the North. While your Camdens and Shoreditches and Islingtons and Crouch Ends and Stoke Newingtons remain favoured holiday hotspots, as a place to live I'm a big fan of my current area of the South. I think things rally pick up when you get south of the Common. It's an interesting one, South London - though there are obviously good and bad little bits all around, it wouldn't be unreasonable if someone taking the 37 from Peckham to Putney felt themselves gradually going from one end of the scale to the other - I've been to and seen nice places and parts of Peckham and Tooting and Dulwich and Brixton and Earlsfield and Wandsworth, but I do have my preferences, and Richmond and Camberwell are different worlds.
In a way, Clapham, the epitome to some people of South London, is the part that annoys me the most, Clapham as in Clapham High Street and also Clapham Junction area - that's the area of the rugby haircut and the dull bars and the overly rammed Saturday nights. That's probably what I had in mind here.
I woke, night time, to a window smashing
nearby, like I'm in a classic Jam song.
Round here, the trains don't rumble like Ealing
lets them - but cats still yowl and boots still crush
weak skulls. Blood drips outside the M and S -
is it middle class blood? What an affront!
to those coarsened voices waking families
with their braying baiting inanities.
I draw lines too, don't think I don't. Nos and
yeses, north and south, giggs or not quite giggs ...
Spare me my own stunted sober words in
average kitchens at those tortuous parties
where the invitation, marking not yet
total purdah, is the only pleasure
and dumb boys, turned nasty adults, working
as spin doctors for that sly fuck Cameron
are the window smashers and they are the
neighbour wakers, drunk on lifelong privilege.
I draw different lines, do I? Well, I can
resent any man or any woman -
that I'll say for my part. Sketchy hatreds
withhold madness, smashing windows barely
interrupt my barely troubled slumbers
Grr, angry ... i think it was a time i wasn't really drinking so was envious of all the drunk people out having fun. That's all really.
Waterloo Sunset - The Kinks
Guns of Brixton - The Clash
Up the Junction - Squeeze
Latchmere - The Maccabees
Morden - Good Shoes
Electric Avenue - Eddy Grant
The Only Living Boy in New Cross - Carter USM
The Lambeth Walk - (Me & My Girl)
Battersea Odyssey - Super Furry Animals
The Wombling Song - The Wombles
Not a bad bunch - I'd wager there are a lot more classic songs with a very North London feel to them, what with Camden and all that, and probably even more with an East London feel. Still, South London's where I'm at right now and I think this lot do it proud. There might well be more South London hip-hop etc but it's not my specialist area. Roots Manuva is from Stockwell but i couldn't think of any of his songs which were location specific.
I've covered quite a wide area here - Up the Junction is the definitive South London song, I reckon, with its beautiful absurd couplets. Also, it was good to discover a song about Morden, a legendary place to most people as the end of the Northern Line, you usually hear people saying it the way they say Mordor in Lord of the Rings whch is like the way they said Murder in Taggart.
I moved to South London about six years ago (from my birthplace in the West, which i may cover in a way later) but I wasn't initially sold on it and envied my cooler brethren in the North. While your Camdens and Shoreditches and Islingtons and Crouch Ends and Stoke Newingtons remain favoured holiday hotspots, as a place to live I'm a big fan of my current area of the South. I think things rally pick up when you get south of the Common. It's an interesting one, South London - though there are obviously good and bad little bits all around, it wouldn't be unreasonable if someone taking the 37 from Peckham to Putney felt themselves gradually going from one end of the scale to the other - I've been to and seen nice places and parts of Peckham and Tooting and Dulwich and Brixton and Earlsfield and Wandsworth, but I do have my preferences, and Richmond and Camberwell are different worlds.
In a way, Clapham, the epitome to some people of South London, is the part that annoys me the most, Clapham as in Clapham High Street and also Clapham Junction area - that's the area of the rugby haircut and the dull bars and the overly rammed Saturday nights. That's probably what I had in mind here.
I woke, night time, to a window smashing
nearby, like I'm in a classic Jam song.
Round here, the trains don't rumble like Ealing
lets them - but cats still yowl and boots still crush
weak skulls. Blood drips outside the M and S -
is it middle class blood? What an affront!
to those coarsened voices waking families
with their braying baiting inanities.
I draw lines too, don't think I don't. Nos and
yeses, north and south, giggs or not quite giggs ...
Spare me my own stunted sober words in
average kitchens at those tortuous parties
where the invitation, marking not yet
total purdah, is the only pleasure
and dumb boys, turned nasty adults, working
as spin doctors for that sly fuck Cameron
are the window smashers and they are the
neighbour wakers, drunk on lifelong privilege.
I draw different lines, do I? Well, I can
resent any man or any woman -
that I'll say for my part. Sketchy hatreds
withhold madness, smashing windows barely
interrupt my barely troubled slumbers
Grr, angry ... i think it was a time i wasn't really drinking so was envious of all the drunk people out having fun. That's all really.
Saturday, 10 October 2009
61. My 10 Favourite Fence-Related Songs
Aah, 61, my favourite number. The number of my football shirt in St Andrews, so appropriate that this tape should be St Andrews-related.
I've opted to include only one song by each artist, with just one reasonable exception
Not One Bit Ashamed - King Creosote
Setting Sun - The Aliens
I Don't Know Where to Begin - The Pictish Trail
False Alarm - KT Tunstall
Amsterdam - U.N.P.O.C
St Patrick - James Yorkston
Melonbeard - The Lone Pigeon
Lovelife - Barbarossa
Dry the Rain - The Beta Band
And the Racket They Made - King Creosote
I assume that most readers are well-versed in Fencelore, so I don't have to give too much of the background story.
Some may carp at the inclusion of the Beta Band and KT Tunstall but they are certainly Fence-related artists, albeit not on the Fence label, and part of the story.
What has struck me in putting together this list is that, after it was initially interesting that the folk who ran the music store downstairs had a record label and made music, I now look at what has been produced from this small enclave of Fife and it really does include several of my favourite, favourite songs of all time. Genuinely and truly and, I think, disregarding bias.
St Patrick, Amsterdam, Not One Bit Ashamed are modern classics in their way and I truly believe Dry the Rain is one of the greatest, most influential songs ever written. It was the first song on the first Beta Band EP. Where could they go from there?
"If there's something inside that you want to say, say it out loud, it'll be ok, I will be your light, I will be your light, I will be your light, I will be your light"
That bit was written by Gordon Anderson aka The Lone Pigeon aka the lead singer of The Aliens. I've seen him in action a few times and the results have been very variable, but occasionally exceptional. I used to think he was the genius of it all, but I've rather changed my mind to think it's the brother Kenny, King Creosote, the founder and centrepiece of the collective. He seems to be able to thrive within so many different styles, has a far prettier voice and is a much better lyricist. Not One Bit Ashamed is a superb pop song, which i've seen wake up many mid-afternoon festival crowds, but at the moment I love And the Racket They Made even more.
This is its lyric [As you can see from the comment before, I've misattributed the lyric, it's HMS Ginafore who wrote it, not King Creosote. I haven't heard her version, I do love his. Anyway sorry for getting that wrong. What a klutz I was]
And your words chased round and round in my head last night
They chased their own tails
And your words jigged round my mind all night
To look at me now, I'm quiet as sound
And the tide shrinks back into its womb
and i hope the empty shells and bones of your stories
will litter and clutter the shore
and I hope that when I find them I'll remember how they danced
and the racket they made when they were alive
For my task, I have tried to write more in the nonsense-lyric style of the Lone Pigeon. Nonsense in a good way. I've noticed recently I've often excused my own patchiness by saying it is pastiche, which is a bit of a cheat really, but so be it. Another way i've been cheating recently is that if lists are about artists, I've been incorporating lots of their lines. Kind of weak.
I've written things about the Fence Collective before, because I like the story so much, but they were a bit too intrusive. I've also tried often to write in the style of James Yorkston, who is a master of words in the folk idiom, but generally failed.
There are several other great Fence songs which don't make this 10 - Robot Man, Jumping at the Cats, Woozy with Cider, Here on My Own, Beeeswing Summertime, Words Fail Me Now, Happy Song, Rox, Lonely Vagabond, Boats, When the Haar Rolls In, Touched by Tomoko, O Catherine, Friday Night in New York to name but a few. Then there is Sweet Jesus by James Yorkston, such a tremendous song I can't believe I haven't put it on the list.
O well. Here is my nonsense song
See how the wind blows
east sands up south street
down through the west port
walking like a rainbow
here's a funny wee man
with a funny wee beard
listen to the song cycle
down in the cellar bar
simple wineglass symphony
simple as a rainstorm
built in a kingdom
year upon cold year
See how the sun shines
down table mountain
yellow t-shirt, melon
bearded moonbeam man
here's a funny wee tale
with an awkward ending
beeswing summertime
brothers trying to work it out
take the time to dry the rain
end of the rainbow time
shine of the beacons
till who knows when.
I've opted to include only one song by each artist, with just one reasonable exception
Not One Bit Ashamed - King Creosote
Setting Sun - The Aliens
I Don't Know Where to Begin - The Pictish Trail
False Alarm - KT Tunstall
Amsterdam - U.N.P.O.C
St Patrick - James Yorkston
Melonbeard - The Lone Pigeon
Lovelife - Barbarossa
Dry the Rain - The Beta Band
And the Racket They Made - King Creosote
I assume that most readers are well-versed in Fencelore, so I don't have to give too much of the background story.
Some may carp at the inclusion of the Beta Band and KT Tunstall but they are certainly Fence-related artists, albeit not on the Fence label, and part of the story.
What has struck me in putting together this list is that, after it was initially interesting that the folk who ran the music store downstairs had a record label and made music, I now look at what has been produced from this small enclave of Fife and it really does include several of my favourite, favourite songs of all time. Genuinely and truly and, I think, disregarding bias.
St Patrick, Amsterdam, Not One Bit Ashamed are modern classics in their way and I truly believe Dry the Rain is one of the greatest, most influential songs ever written. It was the first song on the first Beta Band EP. Where could they go from there?
"If there's something inside that you want to say, say it out loud, it'll be ok, I will be your light, I will be your light, I will be your light, I will be your light"
That bit was written by Gordon Anderson aka The Lone Pigeon aka the lead singer of The Aliens. I've seen him in action a few times and the results have been very variable, but occasionally exceptional. I used to think he was the genius of it all, but I've rather changed my mind to think it's the brother Kenny, King Creosote, the founder and centrepiece of the collective. He seems to be able to thrive within so many different styles, has a far prettier voice and is a much better lyricist. Not One Bit Ashamed is a superb pop song, which i've seen wake up many mid-afternoon festival crowds, but at the moment I love And the Racket They Made even more.
This is its lyric [As you can see from the comment before, I've misattributed the lyric, it's HMS Ginafore who wrote it, not King Creosote. I haven't heard her version, I do love his. Anyway sorry for getting that wrong. What a klutz I was]
And your words chased round and round in my head last night
They chased their own tails
And your words jigged round my mind all night
To look at me now, I'm quiet as sound
And the tide shrinks back into its womb
and i hope the empty shells and bones of your stories
will litter and clutter the shore
and I hope that when I find them I'll remember how they danced
and the racket they made when they were alive
For my task, I have tried to write more in the nonsense-lyric style of the Lone Pigeon. Nonsense in a good way. I've noticed recently I've often excused my own patchiness by saying it is pastiche, which is a bit of a cheat really, but so be it. Another way i've been cheating recently is that if lists are about artists, I've been incorporating lots of their lines. Kind of weak.
I've written things about the Fence Collective before, because I like the story so much, but they were a bit too intrusive. I've also tried often to write in the style of James Yorkston, who is a master of words in the folk idiom, but generally failed.
There are several other great Fence songs which don't make this 10 - Robot Man, Jumping at the Cats, Woozy with Cider, Here on My Own, Beeeswing Summertime, Words Fail Me Now, Happy Song, Rox, Lonely Vagabond, Boats, When the Haar Rolls In, Touched by Tomoko, O Catherine, Friday Night in New York to name but a few. Then there is Sweet Jesus by James Yorkston, such a tremendous song I can't believe I haven't put it on the list.
O well. Here is my nonsense song
See how the wind blows
east sands up south street
down through the west port
walking like a rainbow
here's a funny wee man
with a funny wee beard
listen to the song cycle
down in the cellar bar
simple wineglass symphony
simple as a rainstorm
built in a kingdom
year upon cold year
See how the sun shines
down table mountain
yellow t-shirt, melon
bearded moonbeam man
here's a funny wee tale
with an awkward ending
beeswing summertime
brothers trying to work it out
take the time to dry the rain
end of the rainbow time
shine of the beacons
till who knows when.
Wednesday, 7 October 2009
60. 10 Songs about the 1970s
1970's - Aberfeldy
1970 - The Stooges
1972 - Josh Rouse
1973 - James Blunt
1974 - Ryan Adams
74 -75 - The Connells
1975 - Gene Clark
1977 - The Clash
1979 - Smashing Pumpkins
Born in the 70s - Ed Harcourt
Perhaps I should have waited until Post Number 70. Perhaps. But I become impatient.
And I've had to include James Blunt. Dear me.
I don't remember the 1970s. Not one second of it. I think my first memory is of whacking my head in 1980. When I was born 'You're the One that I Want' was Number 1.
A lot of my favourite music is from the 1970s. The good thing is one doesn't have to care about punk being Year Zero and one can like music from before and after. You can see it is a major cultural shift, though. A modern film which chose to set itself in 1972 would arguably be trying to do something very different from something set in 1977. That's my impression, anyway.
So it is that 1972 by Josh Rouse (feelin 1972, grooving to a Carole King tune) and 1977 are very different songs (no Elvis, Beatles or Rolling Stones).
Ash named their debut album 1977 as the year of their birth and the year of Star Wars. In films, the mid 70s saw the dawn of the Blockbuster Age, whereas in music it's a bit like the opposite.
There are a lot of images from the 1970s imprinted on my mind like I feel I was there. The summer of 1976 particularly. A summer of heatwave, the cricket pitches as Clive Lloyd's West Indies team toured were parched, something you'd never see now. We used to call it the Ladybird Summer, which I'd assumed was a wellknown term, but i can't find it anywhere else, so it must have just been us.
And so, and so, and so
this has got couplets like Squeeze, a fine late 70s band. It has a refrain of sorts.
it's called
LADYBIRD, LADYBIRD
Born at the end of the Ladybird Summer
weaned on the wise words of Weller and Strummer
Dad spent the day at the Kennington Oval
watching Viv Richards make Tony Greig grovel
...& o, you've got to be careful, so careful
what you might say and how you might phrase it
back then before widespread use of crash helmets
when your head gets hit your little brain stays hit...
Mother was schooled in the best west of London
her twenties were spent with the good work being undone
by 76 all the lessons were unlearnt
heavily pregnant and heavily sunburnt
Lost dad somewhere and couldn't find a replacement
entered the 80s in a rough Camden basement
hardly the life that your Grandad had planned out
he kept you from squalor with irregular handouts
...and O, you've got to be so careful, so careful
what you accept and how you accept it
kind words from charmers and car rides from strangers
and life-changing moments'll go undetected...
Ambrose and Walsh replaced Holding and Garner
Strummer took leave and along came Nirvana
made your own way through the last days of Thatcher
streetwise and smart to your own growing stature
Learnt to discern between angels and devils
learnt far less from GCSEs and A Levels
saw through the mirage of Cool Britannia
summers were spent dealing drugs in Espana
...and you've got to be careful, so careful
what you might sell and who you might sell to
there can be changes in luck and in judgement
making your deals with the hand that life's dealt you...
Back in the city for the start of the century -
connections remade with the new English gentry
for the clueless but rich; it's no wonder they need you -
earning your name as a star of new media
The 70s saw no year headier or hotter -
owned by Clive Lloyd and ruined by Johnny Rotten -
by 77 it was colder and wetter
and the life you were born to got steadily better
Now your word's worth more than YouGov and MORI
selling the future to Labour and Tory
Ladybird, Ladybird, child of the scorched grass
born lost and solemn, determined to laugh last
But o, you've got to be careful, so careful
when you might laugh and who you might laugh at
One wrong move will take a billionaire's fortune
and coldly and casually slice the top half of it
1970 - The Stooges
1972 - Josh Rouse
1973 - James Blunt
1974 - Ryan Adams
74 -75 - The Connells
1975 - Gene Clark
1977 - The Clash
1979 - Smashing Pumpkins
Born in the 70s - Ed Harcourt
Perhaps I should have waited until Post Number 70. Perhaps. But I become impatient.
And I've had to include James Blunt. Dear me.
I don't remember the 1970s. Not one second of it. I think my first memory is of whacking my head in 1980. When I was born 'You're the One that I Want' was Number 1.
A lot of my favourite music is from the 1970s. The good thing is one doesn't have to care about punk being Year Zero and one can like music from before and after. You can see it is a major cultural shift, though. A modern film which chose to set itself in 1972 would arguably be trying to do something very different from something set in 1977. That's my impression, anyway.
So it is that 1972 by Josh Rouse (feelin 1972, grooving to a Carole King tune) and 1977 are very different songs (no Elvis, Beatles or Rolling Stones).
Ash named their debut album 1977 as the year of their birth and the year of Star Wars. In films, the mid 70s saw the dawn of the Blockbuster Age, whereas in music it's a bit like the opposite.
There are a lot of images from the 1970s imprinted on my mind like I feel I was there. The summer of 1976 particularly. A summer of heatwave, the cricket pitches as Clive Lloyd's West Indies team toured were parched, something you'd never see now. We used to call it the Ladybird Summer, which I'd assumed was a wellknown term, but i can't find it anywhere else, so it must have just been us.
And so, and so, and so
this has got couplets like Squeeze, a fine late 70s band. It has a refrain of sorts.
it's called
LADYBIRD, LADYBIRD
Born at the end of the Ladybird Summer
weaned on the wise words of Weller and Strummer
Dad spent the day at the Kennington Oval
watching Viv Richards make Tony Greig grovel
...& o, you've got to be careful, so careful
what you might say and how you might phrase it
back then before widespread use of crash helmets
when your head gets hit your little brain stays hit...
Mother was schooled in the best west of London
her twenties were spent with the good work being undone
by 76 all the lessons were unlearnt
heavily pregnant and heavily sunburnt
Lost dad somewhere and couldn't find a replacement
entered the 80s in a rough Camden basement
hardly the life that your Grandad had planned out
he kept you from squalor with irregular handouts
...and O, you've got to be so careful, so careful
what you accept and how you accept it
kind words from charmers and car rides from strangers
and life-changing moments'll go undetected...
Ambrose and Walsh replaced Holding and Garner
Strummer took leave and along came Nirvana
made your own way through the last days of Thatcher
streetwise and smart to your own growing stature
Learnt to discern between angels and devils
learnt far less from GCSEs and A Levels
saw through the mirage of Cool Britannia
summers were spent dealing drugs in Espana
...and you've got to be careful, so careful
what you might sell and who you might sell to
there can be changes in luck and in judgement
making your deals with the hand that life's dealt you...
Back in the city for the start of the century -
connections remade with the new English gentry
for the clueless but rich; it's no wonder they need you -
earning your name as a star of new media
The 70s saw no year headier or hotter -
owned by Clive Lloyd and ruined by Johnny Rotten -
by 77 it was colder and wetter
and the life you were born to got steadily better
Now your word's worth more than YouGov and MORI
selling the future to Labour and Tory
Ladybird, Ladybird, child of the scorched grass
born lost and solemn, determined to laugh last
But o, you've got to be careful, so careful
when you might laugh and who you might laugh at
One wrong move will take a billionaire's fortune
and coldly and casually slice the top half of it
Saturday, 3 October 2009
59. 10 Songs for Chicago
Dear Chicago - Ryan Adams
Via Chicago - Wilco
Chicago - Frank Sinatra
Chicago - Joseph Arthur
Frankie's Gun - The Felice Brothers
Lake Michigan - Rogue Wave
Old Man Chicago - Alberta Cross
Take Me Back to Chicago - Chicago
Sweet Home Chicago - Robert Johnson
Chicago - Sufjan Stevens
I'm posting this one now for two reasons 1) the city's failed bid to host the Olympics (the post had been devised in anticipation of the bid not failing). Obama slightly ill advised on this one. I think the US can't expect to host it every decade or two really 2) I was there almost exactly a year ago, having a very nice holiday, enjoying the Obama hype, wondering at the huge array of big buildings, not being able to walk very well. I'd like to go back some time - it seemed to be a great city.
My list above pretty much bypasses the two genres for which Chicago is most famous - jazz and house. I even thought about including something from the musical Chicago, but Frank Sinatra and Robert Johnson will have to do. Apart from that, it's the usual indie suspects. Wilco, the greatest band in the world, are from Chicago, so I could have included more from them and Sufjan Stevens has released his tremendous 'Come On Feel the Illinoise' album, which includes songs like 'The Seer's Tower'. Did you know the Sears Tower has recently been renamed The Willis Tower. My hotel was pretty near it. It's tall. It wasn't long after I ran past it that my troubles began ...
Where things end up is often defined by their starting point.
I started with "Lake Michigan seems like a dream to me now ..." which has two consequences 1) what i wrote had to be fractured, uneven and in some way dreamlike 2) since that line is an allusion to a lyric, what i wrote had to be full of such allusions and half-quotations.
So that is how it is. If this was a truly interactive forum followed by more than about "pi" people,
i'd suggest trying to spot all the quotes
NOTES FROM CHICAGO (I fell in love with the place, I made a lot of mistakes)
Streets heaving with gatorade
October pressed a hated heatwave
walls closing in, all the walls cramping us
now the window of the tallest tower
allows no limits to my vision
Lake Michigan seems like a dream to me now
Glazed eyes raised from river green
my favourite album cover framed
curved towers unbroken, voices escaping
One too many hot bright mornings
shaved too close, knees still creaking
where's the breeze, the freeze when you need it?
Trapped in running, punning hell
the crippled voice inside my head mocks
Pheidippidehydrated, Pheidippidehydrated
Three hours seems like a dream to me now
four hours is a nightmare
i made a lot of mistakes
i fell in love with the place
Via Chicago - Wilco
Chicago - Frank Sinatra
Chicago - Joseph Arthur
Frankie's Gun - The Felice Brothers
Lake Michigan - Rogue Wave
Old Man Chicago - Alberta Cross
Take Me Back to Chicago - Chicago
Sweet Home Chicago - Robert Johnson
Chicago - Sufjan Stevens
I'm posting this one now for two reasons 1) the city's failed bid to host the Olympics (the post had been devised in anticipation of the bid not failing). Obama slightly ill advised on this one. I think the US can't expect to host it every decade or two really 2) I was there almost exactly a year ago, having a very nice holiday, enjoying the Obama hype, wondering at the huge array of big buildings, not being able to walk very well. I'd like to go back some time - it seemed to be a great city.
My list above pretty much bypasses the two genres for which Chicago is most famous - jazz and house. I even thought about including something from the musical Chicago, but Frank Sinatra and Robert Johnson will have to do. Apart from that, it's the usual indie suspects. Wilco, the greatest band in the world, are from Chicago, so I could have included more from them and Sufjan Stevens has released his tremendous 'Come On Feel the Illinoise' album, which includes songs like 'The Seer's Tower'. Did you know the Sears Tower has recently been renamed The Willis Tower. My hotel was pretty near it. It's tall. It wasn't long after I ran past it that my troubles began ...
Where things end up is often defined by their starting point.
I started with "Lake Michigan seems like a dream to me now ..." which has two consequences 1) what i wrote had to be fractured, uneven and in some way dreamlike 2) since that line is an allusion to a lyric, what i wrote had to be full of such allusions and half-quotations.
So that is how it is. If this was a truly interactive forum followed by more than about "pi" people,
i'd suggest trying to spot all the quotes
NOTES FROM CHICAGO (I fell in love with the place, I made a lot of mistakes)
Streets heaving with gatorade
October pressed a hated heatwave
walls closing in, all the walls cramping us
now the window of the tallest tower
allows no limits to my vision
Lake Michigan seems like a dream to me now
Glazed eyes raised from river green
my favourite album cover framed
curved towers unbroken, voices escaping
One too many hot bright mornings
shaved too close, knees still creaking
where's the breeze, the freeze when you need it?
Trapped in running, punning hell
the crippled voice inside my head mocks
Pheidippidehydrated, Pheidippidehydrated
Three hours seems like a dream to me now
four hours is a nightmare
i made a lot of mistakes
i fell in love with the place
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