Amy Rigby has a new album out and already it's shaping up to be one of my favourites this year. I only discovered Rigby a couple of years ago, but I've been making up for lost time ever since as she's one of the best lyricists out there at the moment... and a pretty damned good blogger too.
As evidence of this, I could offer the opening track from The Old Guys, From philiproth@gmail to rzimmerman@aol.com (no, that really is its title) in which the novelist comes to terms with the songwriter who stole his Nobel prize.
Or I could offer Are We Still There Yet? with its longing-for-simpler-times nostalgia ("turn the radio off / So we can choose between CD and cassette") - but I'll probably save that for a Mid-Life Crisis tune.
Or what about Bob, a eulogy to the old friend that introduced Amy to Lou Reed, who she remembers every time she drinks an egg crème? You won't hear a better "happy / sad" song this year...
Truth is, I could happily share any of the songs on this album as there's not a duff one among them, but my current favourite is this, a menacing revenge song with a chorus that will go down very well with fans of Boardwalk Empire, The Sopranos or Breaking Bad...
I get so sick at restaurants and on family vacations
And I leave every situation invariably feeling dumb
But you’ve got to be a little bit dumb
Otherwise you never get anything done
And you’ve gotta be kinda hit
Otherwise you spend your time smiling entirely too much
Wincing while you’re waiting
For that next soft punch
Ah, Fred... you can't half put your finger on it.
But after listening to every 87 song in my collection, I had to crown this one the winner. From Canadian indie-folksters, The Rural Alberta Challenge, the song creates a love story amidst an infamous 1987 tornado that tore through Edmonton in Alberta.
Be warned: the video is seriously creepy!
Next... 86? Could offer some interesting contenders...
"1972," says Sam, taking a break from his Blaze & The Monster Machines comic. "That's a long time ago."
"Daddy was born in 1972," I remind him.
"I was born in 2013," he reminds me. "You must have seen a lot more olden day things than me, daddy."
True enough, son. Here's an olden day thing you keep asking me to play again though, from the year before daddy was born...
3.1: Middle of the Road - Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep
Written and originally recorded by Lancashire born Larry Stott (who had a hit with it in Europe and Australia), this was also released by Mac & Katie Kissoon (who took it into the US Top 40) and this Scottish folk-pop band led by Sally Carr... who took it to the top in the UK and sold over 10 million copies in the process. It's an irresistible pop song with a nursery rhyme call-and-response hook... and I loved it when I was 4 years old too.
Charity Chic solved this one eventually... though C and Chris were typing the title at the same time.
1. Jazz label gets mixed up with Bill Hicks musical.
The jazz label would be Bluenote. Mix it up and you get Bluetone. This song is named after a Bill Hicks record. Slight Return also owed a debt to Hicks, which was C's guess, but I prefer the track Rigid Digit eventually identified...
(This has a truly awful video - what were they thinking? - so I've posted the audio only.)
By my reckoning, this week's joint winners with 2 1/2 points each are C and CC. Well done, guys. Excellent teamwork as always.
By the end of my first year as a full time (rather than weekends only) employee at the radio station - latterly a paid one! - I reached something of a turning point in my "career". For one thing, I think I was starting to realise that a full-time jocking role might well be out of my reach... or might not be as desirable as it had first seemed... much as I still enjoyed co-presenting the Saturday morning show.
That show was going pretty well, actually - there was talk of paying me for that too! I was also picking up a fair bit of weekend work as a T.O. / tech-op / technical operator. Sometimes even working on the Saturday afternoon Sport show... even though I had no interest in football. There was even talk of me claiming a few hours wages for my work in the record library... although I'd happily have carried on doing that for the free CDs. All in all, I was earning a fairly decent income for a 19 year old. But like all 19 year olds, I wanted more. Not necessarily more money though... just more future.
Added to this, there was still the dream. Working in radio was a dream job... but not THE dream job. That had always been to become a writer. To tell stories for a living. And I probably wasn't going to get to do that if I stayed in radio all my life. No, it was becoming increasingly clear that if I wanted to make a serious go of it as a writer, I had to take my education a bit further. Writers were smart and erudite types. For a start, they knew what erudite meant... and I didn't have a clue. I'd gradually come round to the idea that maybe I had to go to uni after all.
But... how could I do that and keep working in radio at the same time?
Did I have to go back to working only weekends?
And what would that mean for my glorious new expendable income?
This was a good few years before the nonsense that is tuition fees, when it was still perfectly possible to join a full-time university course for FREE, as long as you had the necessary grades... and if you did so in your home town, you could keep living at home and not rack up any student debt at all.
But still... could I live (and buy more records, comics, books, videos, cinema tickets: all those youthful necessities) just from a few hours of radio work at the weekend? Could I really go back to being skint most of the time and sponging off my parents?
And then...
And then an opportunity came up which saved me... and doomed me... all at the same time.
34. Marvin Gaye & Mary Wells - The Late Show
The internet says the album Marvin recorded with Mary in 1964 wasn't promoted well at the time. Mary was the bigger star (following her Number One with My Guy), but she left Motown soon afterwards (bad advice from her husband!), leaving Marvin to hook up with Kim Weston for his next, more successful collaboration. Marvin's star continued to rise, Mary slipped into obscurity.
Apparently there was a big horse race last weekend. I wouldn't know. I'm not a fan of horse races. But I do like the odd horse race song. Here's ten runners and riders... who'll be the winner?
(There's no Bob Seger in this countdown. I just like that album cover.)
One of my favourite James songs, though I've no idea why they stuck the famous tax-dodging jockey's name in brackets after the title. Various suggestions I've read online include that the beat of the song sounds like racing hooves (erm... not really) or that this was a phrase the roadie used to call out during soundcheck. We may never know, and any connection to horse racing seems tenuous at best (which is why I've placed it at Number 10)... but it's a cracking tune.
Look, if Sting wrote this, I'd be taking the piss out of him for writing a song from the second person perspective of a race horse... but I'll cut Dan Fogelberg a bit more slack because he doesn't have a stripy jumper. Make sure you've got your cheese-board ready for this one...
Born in the valley And raised in the trees Of western Kentucky On wobbly knees With mama beside you To help you along You'll soon be growing up strong All the long, lazy mornings In pastures of green The sun on your withers The wind in your mane Could never prepare you For what lies ahead
Let's face it, if you went down the racetrack and found Shane MacGowan there... well, you'd hardly be surprised, would you? You might be surprised if he won though...
Twenty fucking five to one Me gambling days are done I bet on a horse called the Bottle of Smoke And my horse won
You see, this is the problem I have with horse racing. What happens to those poor horses?
There's a racecourse in the sky And that's where all the racing horses must go by and by And I believe every steward, lord and groom I believe that they're calling her home
Good luck had just stung me To the race track I did go She bet on one horse to win And I bet on another to show
Odds were in my favor I had him five to one When that nag to win came around the track Sure enough he had won
Apparently, "Up on Cripple Creek is notable as it is one of the first instances of a Hohner clavinet being played with a wah-wah pedal". Which, I'm sure you'll all agree, is... erm... something.
