Hey, Gilbert, where's your berry vest?
I've been listening to lots of cool music lately that I really should be writing about here, when I can find the energy. But I'm also suffering from a repetitive earworm that has been drilling into my cranium for the past couple of weeks and I've no idea where it came from or how to get shut of it.
Get Down is not one of my favourite Gilbert O'Sullivan songs. It's from the self-consciously wacky side of his catalogue that also brought us Ooh Wakka Day and Mr Moody's Garden. The same Gilbert who thought it would be a good idea to call his Greatest Hits album "The Berry Vest..." (do you see what he did there?)
The thing is... (as Sam would say, only for me to continue "...a member of the Fantastic Four"), when he's not being wacky, Gilbert can break you heart into a million pieces. Case in point, two of the saddest songs of the 70s... Alone Again (Naturally) and Nothing Rhymed. If you don't believe me, ask Paul Weller, who called them, "two of my favourite songs, great lyrics, great tunes".
In an effort to remove my earworm then, I'm going to play these two on loop for a couple of hours, and wallow in the blissful misery of them...
Paul Weller only knows what the rest of us know. If you get 5 mins, Rol, I'd love you to listen to this and tell me what you think...
ReplyDeleteVery nice. He does an impressive take on Wichita Lineman too.
DeleteThe sound quality is poor, but I take it you've heard he who shall not be named covering Nothing Rhymed?
ReplyDeleteOf course. It's where he got a lot of his ideas!
DeleteMartin Carthy covered 'Nothing Rhymed' on his 'Because It's There' LP in 1979 and again as an older man with the Jools Holland Orchestra in 2011. I'm very fond of both interpretations.
ReplyDeleteI will try and leave the comment that disappeared last week, again!
ReplyDeleteJohn above shared Nothing Rhymed over at his place and the discussion began around what a Bonaparte Shandy was. Turns out it was a thing back then - Brandy and lemonade but he couldn't use the word Napoleon as it was a trade name. A touch of the Berry Vest - Kind of unnerves me seeing Gilbert with his shirt open as I remember the shirt/tie and cap look best.