Everything I know about Dr. Samuel Johnson, I learned from Blackadder. As an English teacher, I can say with some authority that it's really all you need to know. Except that he once wrote that, "when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life". And if that's the case, I know a hell of a lot of people who are fed up with living.
Over the last year, I have encountered a couple of fine songs that reference the first man in dictionary corner... so I was sure I'd be able to find some more with a little digging.
Meanwhile, today's finest discovery are called Tankus The Henge. Yes, they are.
Well there's old Dr. Johnson with a hole in his eye He don't know how to fight, but he knows how to die There's someone outside in the corridor now Pulls open the shutter, and takes a bow The window to the track is rivetted shut Poor old Dr .Johnson he ain't got much luck As the ticket inspector come along for the dead And sees the curves of a girl silhouetted instead
Now, when I extended my search to include Johnson's famous quote about London, all kind of things crawled out of the woodwork. All kinds of Dirty Pretty Things for a start...
How can they be tired of London? The scents in the air on a warm day Generation of hope that sees better days But moving along in the same old ways
The two artists I had in mind when I decided to feature Dr. Johnson here both mention him by name and reference his love of the capital... though they do seem to disagree with that quote somewhat.
Dr. Samuel Johnson You were very nearly right I was tired of London But I would never tire of life
That's not the album version, but a lovely live recording featuring Chris T-T on piano.
The coffee in my travel mug tasted off. Maybe I hadn’t
rinsed the Fairy Liquid out properly, or maybe it was just that off-tasting
water you get in the kettle sometimes, no real explanation for
it. Whatever the cause, I couldn’t handle the commute without a coffee, so I
decided to stop at the Co-Op petrol station and get a machine Costa. It was
Friday morning, the roads were quiet and Google Maps was telling me the journey
would only take an hour today, not 75 minutes, so an extortionately priced
“Signature Blend” was, if not exactly enticing, then at least better than
washing up water.
As I walked across the forecourt, a grubby-looking White Van
Man sprinted past me, clearly eager to pay for his petrol and be about his day,
ogling young women, driving aggressively close to other motorists, and
screaming obscenities at both. Except… that wasn’t why he was in such a rush.
Oh no. He wanted to get to the coffee machine first. Clearly he’d seen the look
on my face, assessed my need, and decided his was greater. Either that or he
was just an arsehole.
And so, I had to waste my time pretending to scour the Meal
Deal sandwiches, while standing just close enough behind him to be in a sort of
queue if anyone else with a desperate murder-you need for caffeine should try
to butt in. And of course, White Van Man didn’t just want one machine coffee,
he wanted three. My life was slowly ebbing away. And then he was done. At last,
I stepped up to the machine to order my elixir… and that’s when I noticed.
No big cups.
Only the small ones.
I stormed out of the Co-Op in a huff, back to my car, and my
off-tasting travel mug. Which didn’t taste so bad now, to be honest. Actually,
it was all right.
Laurie Shaw is another artist I discovered through compiling
those interminable posts about songs that randomly mention pop culture
ephemera. He’s from the Wirral but currently resides in Cork. He’s incredibly
prolific, having recorded over 100 albums according to bandcamp (7 of which
were released in 2022), and the one with the best title is If You’re So Good,
Then Why Haven’t I Heard Of You? Lately I've been very much enjoying Weird
Weekends, which sounds a lot like pre-fame Pulp. Slightly sordid tales of
yearning adolescent misadventures set to a lo-fi indie soundtrack. He’s even
mastered the Jarvis yelp. Quite wonderful. He's a wonderfully natural storyteller...
We were in your room And we were listening to your mum’s old records You put the White Album on And said this was their magnum opus I didn’t know what you meant But I could see down your vest And then the grooves got out of focus
“There’s a party on on Saturday night, You should come” I said “I’d love to, but the lift in’s a pain For my mum” She said “well, you could stay at mine And it might coincide with my mum Doing nights in the hospital”
If you’ve not caught it yet, Poker Face is very good. It’s
by the guy he does the Knives Out movies and it's basically Columbo for the 21st
Century. Natasha Lyonne brings her typically ramshackle Top Cat chutzpah to the
role of a human lie detector on the run, stumbling across murders wherever she
goes, then bumbling her way to delivering some kind of justice. Highly implausible, but
very entertaining, and Lyonne is a natural successor to the legendary Peter
Falk. Good soundtrack too, including…
My brother lost his wallet in the pub last week. I don’t
talk about my brother much, but here’s all you need to know to understand this
story: he’s a retired builder. Now when I tell you that there was £700 cash in
his wallet when he lost it… well, I just need to refer you back to the previous
sentence.
When he realised his wallet was missing, he returned to the
hostelry in question and asked if anyone had handed it in. They hadn’t, but the
staff were happy to take a look at the CCTV. Sure enough, there was my brother
enjoying his meal, and – whoops! – there goes his wallet onto the floor. Fast
forward to after he’s left the pub and another couple take his table. And… oh,
look, what’s this on the floor? Oh, it’s a wallet. I wonder what’s inside?
Well, we better keep that safe… tell you what, why not put in your handbag just
in case anyone unscrupulous should find it?
The police were informed, but my brother’s partner also
decided to enlist the help of the Local Vigilante Action Syndicate (aka
Facebook), posting a CCTV still of the woman with the wallet and asking if
anyone could identify her.
A few hours later, they received a private message.
“That’s my sister. We haven’t spoken in 20 years since she
shacked up with a former MP who’s also a paedophile, but she still lives next
door to me. Here’s the address…”
Rather than pass this information onto the police (see
paragraph #1), my brother instead chose to drive round to the address in
question… but there was nobody in. So he put a note through the door with his
phone number. I don’t know what the note said exactly, but something along the
lines of “Give me my wallet back and I won’t shop you to the bizzies.” Not that
my brother’s a Scouser, I just miss Jimmy Corkhill. A little while later he
received a phone call and was invited round for tea.
Well, not tea, but he did get his wallet and all its
contents back. When asked why the couple hadn’t handed it in to the bar, they
replied, “Oh, we didn’t like the look of the bar staff.”
Don’t ask me why, but I’ve been listening to Grand Funk
Railroad’s Greatest Hits lately. They’re a good time rock ‘n’ roll band, not
quite up there with Steve Miller’s lot, but ploughing a similar furrow. For
some reason, I always thought they were from Canada, which doesn’t make any
sense since their biggest hit was We’re An American Band, but logic was
never my forte. Here’s my favourite track from the compilation, originally
taken from the album 1974 album All The Girls In The World Beware!! Ah, the
70s…
How do you get from Mickey Dolenz to Brett Anderson with only two degrees of separation?
Metal Mickey first appeared on The Saturday Banana, a 1978 kids TV show I don't remember... probably because I was watching Swap Shop at the time. By 1980 he had graduated into his own sitcom, which also featured Irene Handl, Gary Shail from Quadrophenia and Margaret Omolola Young, the future Baroness Young of Hornsey as Janey. The show was produced, and at times directed, by one Mickey Dolenz...
As research, I watched bits of the Metal Mickey pilot episode on youtube. I didn't enjoy it as much as I did when I was 8, but Mickey seems more sarkily benign that the artificial intelligence of today.
Between 1979 and 1983, Metal Mickey released 6 singles. None of them appear to have troubled the singles chart. Here's one, which will cost you £20 for an original copy on discogs...
The Firm had a couple of novelty hits in the 80s based on the popular TV shows, Minder (Arthur Daley E's Alright) and Star Trek (Star Trekkin'... which went to Number One, which I can only apologise for, as I did buy a copy myself). Here's something else they did...
All me mates are on a diet And I think I'd like to try it But they take the Metal Mickey out of me I tried to lose weight from me hips By cutting down on silicon chips And just the one expansion module in me tea
I always assumed that the title of Suede's first Top 20 hit was some kind of 90s drug culture reference. A rave culture equivalent of a Mickey Finn, perhaps, the knockout drug of choice in all the old detective films I loved. Turns out it's actually a reference to the TV show... but why, I've no idea, since the lyrics have nothing to do with a smart-mouthed boogieing robot, and were apparently written as an ode to KatieJane Garside, the lead singer of Daisy Chainsaw.
She sells hearts She sells meat Oh, dad, she's driving me mad Come see, ay-ay
I've no idea if KatieJane worked in Brett Anderson's local butcher's shop on a weekend (the video suggests she might have done) but I always thought "Oh, dad, she's driving me mad" was a great chorus line.
Neighbours... everybody needs good neighbours... or so the theme tune goes. And yet... since Louise and I got together, we've lived in five different houses, and one of the deciding factors each time we've moved (though not always the main one) has been bad neighbours. Like the neighbour who had a paddling pool in her back garden and sat out in it, drunkenly singing, late at night when we were trying to get baby Sam to sleep. Or the neighbours who hated us for no apparent reason and turned their back if we passed them in the street. And let's not even revisit the horrors of the last house we lived in...
While researching this feature, I came across quite a few bands named after bad neighbours. Like the Unfriendly Neighbours, the Nasty Neighbours, the Miffed Neighbours and, my favourites, the Shitty Neighbours. But what about bands named just (the) Neighbours... or Neighbors if you're American?
NEIGHBORS #1
The old slave song, dating back way into the 19th Century, and also recorded by Bruce on his Pete Seeger tribute album, We Shall Overcome.
This is a typically 50s white-washing of the tune, but it still raised a smile. No info on the Neighbours themselves, but they appear to have also released a song called I Won't Go Until I Get Some, which I was very disappointed not to find anywhere online.
NEIGHBOURS #2
German free jazz from 197-nein*. Do you see what I did there? Never mind. I'm making it up as I go along. That's free jazz.
(*Actually it's from 1978. But the gag wouldn't have worked then.)
THE NEIGHBOURS #3
Perfectly serviceable New Zeland pop from 1981. Discogs describes them as a soul band, but I reckon they sound more like The Cars with a female singer.
THE NEIGHBOURS #4
Clearly these guys lived in the same neighbourhood as The Specials and Madness. They were on Tyger Records in 1982, a lost label that often throws up gems.
THE NEIGHBOURS #5
Irish Neighbours from 1985. They released one single, There's A Bell, on Bus Records. I can't find it, but I did find the B-Side, No More Raggae (sic) On The Radio. They appear to be unhappy about that.
THE NEIGHBORS #6
Also from 1985, here's some power pop from Arlington, Virginia. Taken from their debut album Famous Potatoes.
THE NEIGHBORS #7
Hardcore San Diego punk rock from 1995.
NEIGHBOURS #8
21st Century Danish Soft Rockers. I mean, basically just look at the picture and imagine what kind of music these guys make. It'll save you from having to press 'Play'.
NEIGHBORS #9
This was released in 2010 and found its way onto the soundtrack of the US remake of the British TV show Being Human. Beyond that, I know nothing.
NEIGHBORS #10
Smart-suited neighbours from Pittsburgh in 2012. From their Facebook page, it appears they played live Dungeons & Dragons more than they did actual shows.
Which Neighbours would you be happy to have living next door... and which ones would you send an anonymous letter to the week before Christmas, asking them to get their hedge cut?
The Grim Reaper has been so busy lately, I'm having to do triple time.
GLENDA JACKSON
Women In Love. A Touch of Class. The Morecambe & Wise Christmas Show. Was there anything Glenda Jackson couldn't do? And that was before she became a Labour MP in the Blair government... though she went on to be openly critical of her boss, the war-mongering liar, so that's OK too.
Let's forgive Glenda for the film that gave its title to a song by The Irish Band and listen instead to Scouse band Noctorum...
And here's one of my heroes, the great Warren Zevon, with an early draft of his biggest hit...
I saw Oliver Reed walking with Glenda Jackson
They were doing nothing, ha!
I did find a couple of tracks that mentioned Glenda in the title, by bands called Hooker and Fish From Tahiti. Sadly, I couldn't find them online. So I'm left with this...
Treat Williams came to fame playing Danny Zuko in the 1972
Broadway production of Grease, but I guess he was too old for the role by the
time they got around to casting the movie. Having said that, Travolta was only
three years younger, so who knows. Williams enjoyed a pretty respectable career
in the movies, across all genres, though I pretty much think of him as a
B-movie guy from shlocky fluff like The Phantom and Deep Rising. That is, the kind of movies my brain prefers.
Here’s Swedish rapper Niello…
Och dansa, dansa
psycho Som Treat Williams
på ditt middagsbord
Which translates thus…
And dance, dance
psycho Like Treat
Williams on your dinner table
The ultimate tribute to Treat comes from John Grant…
He could call me
up If he wants to
chat You know I waited
so long Now I'm up to bat He's no Treat
Williams, but neither am I It might be
wishful thinkin', but you got to try
CORMAC McCARTHY
There is an American folk singer called Cormac McCarthy, but he's not the one who left us this month. Still, because he's worth a listen...
I've only read one book by the other Cormac McCarthy, but it was a doozy. That said, I'm not sure I would rush to read The Road again, because as engaging as it was, it was also pretty grim. Here's a song inspired by that Pulitzer Prize-winning novel...
Now for some Math(s) rock. Which sounds to me like when you're listening to one track on your computer but another track is still playing in the background and you don't realise.
And finally... I feel like I've come across The Burning Hell before, yet a quick trawl through the search box reveals no past blog references. Regardless, this is my favourite song of the day, and possibly the week.
The band was as blue as the melted Joni Mitchell cassette
On the dash of the van they had nicknamed regret
Touring round the United Kingdom
Selling compact discs to the people of England
And Wales and Scotland,
Oh it’s hard to be a rock band these days
People like to spend their evenings in different ways
The road is a lot like the Cormac McCarthy book
Less cannibalism but a similar look
There’s nothing more post-apocalyptic
Than a landscape of truck stops and rock critics
To paraphrase Joni on the first track of that melted cassette
It's 10 years since I last did a Top Ten Weather Forecast Songs, and although I did re-use a couple of the tracks from that old list this weekend, I also skipped some of the more obvious selections, including The Weather Girls, ELO, and... of course... this...
Every week I try to include a mix of well-known artists alongside artists that have never featured here before... otherwise, you guys get them all immediately, and where's the fun in that? Hence why I always call it "A Top Ten..." rather than "My Top Ten...", since chances are, I might include a track or artist I don't really care for. Although even the ones I might not choose to listen to in my own time uusally spark a brief nostalgic smile. Even the worst bits of the pop past look better from a distance.
Anyway, with thanks to C for suggesting it, here are ten songs about weather forecasting...
As Robert Palmer told me in a dream last night, Don’t Explain. That was a Billie Holliday song
originally, but for me it’ll always be by Batley Bob, because I heard him do it
first, at an impressionable age.
I stopped at Morrisons last week for a few bits. Went to the self-service checkout so I didn't have to make conversation. After I'd paid, the following message flashed up on the machine...
Lovely to see you. Bye for now.
This offends me in so many way, I can't even begin to count. If a cashier said this to me, I'd think it was weird... but a machine?
The chances of me getting around to featuring the stylistically extravagant action movie director John Woo on Celebrity Jukebox any time soon seem slim. Hopefully for him anyway, since the jukebox has become a hectic requiem in recent weeks. Anyway, here's a song with his name from new London band My Fat Pony.
Love the home-made video.
Louise bought me some socks for Father's Day. My initial reaction was, "I'm not sure I can wear these for work..."
"Oh," she said. "Sorry. I didn't know they said that on them."
I told Ben. He replied with two words.
She knew.
Speaking of Ben, he recommended I listen to Tim Heidecker, an artist he saw on tour earlier in the year. Heidecker's an American actor and comedian, so the first half of his set is a world weary stand-up routine. Then he comes back on and does a set of upbeat, nostalgia-focussed Americana Ben figured would be right up my street. He's not wrong.
Back when I taught in college at The Bad Place, I had a student who regularly called me Brendon. When I asked why, he said it was because I looked like Brendon Urie, lead singer of Panic! At The Disco. I don’t. Brendon’s much younger and prettier than me. The most I can say is that my hair goes back in a similar way.
Despite being named after Smiths lyrics, P!ATD are a band who have said little to me about my life since they emerged from the provincial town of Las Vegas in 2004… however, I’ve been strangely taken by their latest album, Viva Las Vengeance. It’s a tribute to the bands Urie loved when he was a kid, and on first listen the obvious influences (to me, anyway) were Queen, Costello, Thin Lizzy and Steinman. Reviewers have cited The Beatles and The Police, among others… but after repeated listens, the homages coalesce and it all starts to sound like a Panic! record. But a really good one, and a really catchy one. Shame it’s their last, as Urie has announced his retirement… at least until the inevitable comeback tour beckons.
Here's the title track, which immediately made me think of vintage Costello...
So sang George Bernard Shaw with his 21st Century Canadian dream-pop band... or perhaps I'm mixing up my sources. The insane pop culture reference library that is my brain is getting a little clogged up with an abundance of trivia... no chance of remembering what I'm having for tea tonight then.
When we’re young, we have all the time in the world… and yet we fritter it away. We don’t realise how valuable it is, because life seems endless. So we do whatever the hell we want and don’t worry about tomorrow. Many’s the pop song that has been written about this subject, but this is the one that best captures that sense of youthful headonism… or it’s the first that springs to mind today, anyway.
I don't recall many nights like the ones Nate Ruess sings about there. A few, I guess, but not as many as most. I spent a large part of my wasted youth chasing the twin fantasies of a radio career and best-selling authordom.
And it's important to remember what Eleanor Roosevelt said, "Today is the oldest you've ever been, and the youngest you'll ever be again."
The only problem with inspirational quotes (and Crazy Eleanor had a box full of them) is that they don't work on the terminally cynical. Still, they obviously made an impression on Jim...
We've gotta' fast, we were born out of time Born out of time and alone And we'll never be as young as we are right now Runnin' away and runnin' for home
When I was a small boy, I drank a whole bottle of Old Spice aftershave and had to go to hospital. Or so the story goes. I'm not entirely sure how this was possible, since in my memory, Old Spice bottles only allowed a few drops out at a time, so I must have been sucking on that white plastic teat for ages. You might well ask "Was Old Spice so delicious to a 3 year old that he wanted to keep on suckling that bottle till he'd drained it dry?" To which I have no real response. An easier question to deal with is, "Where were your parents?" We all know the answer to that one: it was the 70s.
I do wonder if this early escapade put me off alcohol and stopped me joining the teenage drinkers in High School... I was vehemently tee total until I turned 21. Made up for it in the 90s, then quit at the turn of the Millennium for health reasons. Haven't touch a drop since: booze or Old Spice.
Back in the 70s, men only really had the choice of two aftershaves, as far as I can tell. It was Old Spice or Brut... which cost more, because you had to "splash it all over". Old Spice was my dad's choice back then, and it definitely had the classier advert...
The music was O Fortuna, the opening section of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, which (like many people, it seems) I always thought was used in The Omen. It wasn't, but it was later used in The X-Factor, so there's definitely a satanic connection.
My dad stopped wearing aftershave when I was a teenager. But the scent of Old Spice still takes me back to my childhood... thankfully not my trip to Casualty.
Here are some songs that mention Old Spice... none of them are about Victoria Beckham or Geri Halliwell. (That gag wouldn't have worked for Emma.) This first one is particularly apt...
Sometimes I think about my daddy And his Old Spice grin Cleaned pressed shirts, and a farmers tan
I don't know if I have more respect for Kanye, knowing that he's sampled Billy Joel, or not. Also, "young people" - dude is 46 now. Almost as old as another artist I'll always think of as a "youngster", even though she'll be 50 next year...
But it's John Grant who wins the prize today. A year's supply of Old Spice is winging its way to Iceland... don't drink it all at once, John.
You'd better watch out sugar, 'cause I'm about to get my Old Spice on
John Grant (featuring Midlake) - Chicken Bones
There is a video for that tune, but it breaks the song up to create a (very entertaining) narrative, so I linked to the album version instead. He still gets his Old Spice on in the video though.
Last week, we looked at Dean Wareham's band, Galaxie 500, and another group that chose exactly the same name. When Galaxie 500 broke up, Dean went on to form Luna. And... you can guess the rest.
LUNA #1
Free Jazz. 1967. USA. Free Jazz. Jazz Free. FrJaeezz. The composer tells us, "This piece is about getting smaller than getting bigger then getting smaller." JFraezez.
LUNA #2
Boston rockers from 1978, formerly known as Orchestra Luna.
LUNA #3
Italian "Space Rock" from 1983. Clearly Luna-tics.
LUNA #4
Spanish synth-pop, also from 1983. Youtube compares their sound to OMD. Can't really hear it myself.
LUNA #5
"Cult dark-wave band" from the former Yugoslavia. I'm guessing they owned a Joy Division record or two. This is what they sounded like in 1984...
LUNA #6
Japanese duo from 1985 who had clearly taken a couple of French lessons before taking over the asylum.
LUNA #7
Rolling Stone described Dean Wareham's Luna as "the best band you’ve never heard of", though I swear I've heard that epithet applied to hundreds of bands over the years, and I've probably used it myself multiple times. They made some fine records between the early nineties and the mid noughties, and apparently they reformed in 2015 and are still touring today.
LUNA #8
Serbian Euro-pop-pop-popsters, formed in 1996, but have released a heck of a lot of "bangers" since then.
LUNA #9
"Funeral Doom Metal" from the Ukraine. I wouldn't have included this were it not for the song title, There Is No Tomorrow Gone Beyond Sorrow Under a Sheltering Mask, which is about as "Funeral Doom Metal" as you get.
I'm going to stop there, although I could go on. And on. And on. Discogs appears to have more than 150 different credits for the name Luna, although a lot of them appeared to be dead ends. Which Luna sends you into orbit?
The name John Romita won't mean much to most people reading this blog, but of all the celebrity deaths I've written about this year, his is the one that's hardest for me to process.
John Romita was the second regular artist to draw the original Amazing Spider-Man comic. He took over from Spidey's co-creator, Steve Ditko, in the late 60s, and set a template that defined the look of the character for over a quarter of a century. Although you probably don't know his name, you will have seen his art, since it was generally his work that was licensed for T-shirts, lunch-boxes, candy wrappers and anywhere else that Spidey showed up in the 70s and 80s. Although other art styles came in and out of fashion, Romita's Spider-Man seems timeless. His son, John Romita Jr. went on to follow in his father's footsteps with a looser, more contemporary style, but one that sticks pretty firmly to the template. He's still drawing the character today.
I don't often write about comics here, but as with the passing of Stan Lee a few years back, I wanted to mark the death of one of my heroes. The only lyrical mentions I found were rappers quoting his name as the co-creator of The Punisher. Big John did, however, draw the covers of two albums I used to own on vinyl, but haven't listened to in years: Spider-Man: Rock Reflections Of A Superhero by Hero (a made-up group that included Marty Nelson from Manhattan transfer and David Sanborn on sax) and The Amazing Spider-Man: From Beyond The Grave - A Rockomic by Ron Dante (formerly of The Archies) & The Webspinners. Neither are classics, but they meant a lot to me growing up.
