Thirty years ago, Damon and the Blur lads won that silly battle for Number One with the Neanderthal Brothers... but lost the battle in the album charts. The Friends theme tune made it into the charts, thanks to The Rembrants. And Take That had a song called Never Forget doing the rounds... but thankfully, I've forgotten it.
Better tunes were available in the late summer of 1995...
It's hard to believe any one of those songs is thirty years old.
Here's a song from 2025, all about 1995. The Tumbling Souls are from Stornoway in the Outer Hebrides. And that's about all I know... except this one's a cracker.
Quite a few songwriters choose Brian as a metaphor for the fine line between genius and madness. Take this one from Brendon Urie...
She said, "You're just like Mike Love But you wanna be Brian Wilson, Brian Wilson" Said, "You're just like Mike Love But you'll never be Dennis Wilson" And I said (Hey! Hey!) If crazy equals genius (Hey! Hey!) If crazy equals genius Then I'm a fucking arsonist (Hey!) I'm a rocket scientist (Hey! Hey!)
I used to think there was an answer In the music of my youth But I just read Brian Wilson's biography And now I know the truth Because his father never loved him And the band just wanted the money And Dennis was an alcoholic Who drowned looking for treasure And everyone who was around him Just gave him drugs and took his money He was dependent on social acceptance Just like every other human
1. Ash are desperate for a bit of radio airplay to remind folk that they're still out there, 30+ years on. (Ash formed in 1992, when Tim Wheeler was just 15.)
2. The members of Ash are now turning 50 and have stopped giving two hoots what anyone thinks of them, they just want to have some fun.
It doesn't really matter. This is great.
But then, so was the original. This isn't a comparison post. It is possible to have two great versions of a song in existence with the universe exploding...
When I was a young boy, my dad smoked cigars. He was doing pretty well financially at the time and those cigars were one of the perks of his job. Then, when I was about 8 or 9, he was made redundant and chose to set up his own business. Money was tight for a few years and the cigars had to go. He moved onto a pipe, which he smoked through most of my teenage years.
When he was about 60, the doctor told him, "you keep smoking that pipe and you'll be dead in ten years". So he quit. That day. Cold turkey. And he never smoked again. Ironically, his death certificate read "Chronic Obstructive Airways Disease", but that was more than 30 years later. The damage had been done, but he did what he had to do to mitigate his condition, and I'll always be thankful for that.
I'm not sure whether my dad ever smoked Henri Wintermans. I remember his cigars came in strong cardboard boxes with a hinged lid, and occasionally he'd get a special one that came in a metal tube. I looked through the list of famous cigar brands and none of them rang a bell. You don't come across cigar smokers very often these days, but if ever I catch that smell, it takes me right back to my childhood. There's a comfort to that. I never liked the smell of cigarettes, and I hate the sweet stink of e-cigs, but cigars or pipe tobacco, I still have a great affection for. I ought to buy a box, not to smoke, just to remember.
There's only one song I know that mentions Henri Winterman cigars, but it's a great one. Girl From Mars was Ash's first Top 40 hit in 1995, and the band played it live on Top of the Pops just two weeks after completing their A Levels. Like cigar smoke, this one takes me right back...
Roky Erickson's 13th Floor Elevators were an obvious choice to illustrate this week's edition of the Hot 100, though I could have also gone with short-lived indie also-rans Thirteen Senses.
(And for completeness' sake, the albums 13 by Teenage Fanclub & 13 by Blur were also suggested.)
Before we dive into the unluckiest edition of this feature to date... which is worrying, because none of us need any more bad luck at the moment... I just wanted to put a call out to our old pal Douglas McLaren in Canada. Not heard from you in a few weeks, Douglas, so I do hope you're OK. I'm presuming you're not still on the picket line given what's going on in the world right now, but I hope you're staying safe and well.
The same sentiment goes out to all regular readers and contributors of this feature. Let's hope we all make it through to Number One, and that things are starting to get back to normal by the time we get there...
Let's kick off with C this week, who treats us to some excellent '60s fuzz beat in the form of Swedish band The Renegades' song 'Thirteen Women'. If you check out the youtube video of the band larking about in a factory full of women it's nicely daft, and the length of the singer's hair at the time must have been outrageous! The Renegades - Thirteen Women
The weird thing is, I'd never heard of that song until C suggested it. But then, a couple of nights later, I heard this on the radio, from a few years earlier...
The same song, with a gender swap. Further research was required, and Lynchie pointed us back to both the Ann Margret version and the year 1954 when the tune was originally recorded by...
"This is a bizarre song which attempts to make light of the spectre of nuclear destruction. It appears to have been written in the wake of the explosion of the first hydrogen bomb, at Bikini Atoll on March 1, 1954, less than 10 years after the twin horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki."
Beat that, everyone!
Y'know, that could very well have been the winner, were I actually in my record collection (it will be soon) and were there not one other suggestion that trumps it this week. But we'll get to that shortly.
Lynchie had one other suggestion this week, and it was a fine one too...
All of which brings us to this week's leftovers from my own collection, starting with the gentleman who won last week. Imagine if Chuck Berry came from Essex...
Yes, I could have chosen the logo of Twenty One Pilots to illustrate this post, but I don't think they ever recorded a song as good as this. Feel free to disabuse me of that notion should you wish. Jim In Dubai also suggested another 12 group...
Personally though, The Swede concludes, I'd like to suggest Twenty One by The Apartments. What a truly wonderful band they are.
That is very nice, I have to admit it. Doesn't exist in my own record collection (yet), which is the one stipulation to be a winner on this series. But I definitely have to investigate it further.
Where's Lynchie? Putting all his eggs in one basket this week, it seems...
And... of course... this, which was our opening suggestion this week, from Charity Chic, who almost begged... The Adverts - No Time to Be 21, please, Rol.
C seconded that too, and, well... why not?
Life's short, don't make a mess of it To the ends of the earth, you'll look for a sense in it No chances, no plans I'll smash the windows of my box I'll be a madman It's no time to be 21 To be anyone
To be honest, even though I'm not particularly enjoying 47... I don't think I'd fancy being 21 again. Would you?
And so we finally reach the Top 20. On your marks... get set...
If you've got the Hair Like Brian May Blues this Sunday morning, don't feel Under Pressure. Here are the answers to the 100th edition of Saturday Snapshots to Keep Yourself Alive.
As I write this, nobody had spotted the Extra Special Bonus Mystery which connected 10 of the songs on this list... but I guess you'd have to be pretty sad to do that. (No offence to Alyson who came close to working it out.) Different photos, different clues and different songs, but the odd-numbered artists in this list all appeared in Saturday Snapshots #1, way back in September 2017.
I think Alyson just pipped Rigid Digit to the crown this week. I was intending to work out a league table of winners from the past 100 editions, but as you probably have realised by now, my time is rather restricted at the moment. Thanks for playing along as always, everybody. Remember: this quiz is Driven By You.
20. Lennie's pal in dire circumstance. I guess Tony must have shown him the way.
George & Lennie, as anybody who's done an English exam at school in the last 50 years will know, were the unlucky duo from Of Mice & Men.
Well, two of Donald's nephews. Dewey must have been sick that day.
Still one of the greatest pop songs ever recorded...
Well, that's it, folks. 100 seems a pretty good number to bow out on, don't you think? Time to call it a day on Saturday Snapshots, maybe? Give you all a lie in next Saturday morning?
