Snapshots #320: A Top Ten Café Songs

What do you mean, this is a Catherine, not a Café?

Am I bovvered?

Here are ten songs to sing in your local caff...

10. Pardon, Sir?

Deaf School - Capaldi's Café

9. Two snooker greats will grow up to be a bit of a perv.

Ray Reardon and Steve Davis get Kinky.

(Aren't you impressed with my sporting knowledge?)

Ray Davies - Working Man's Café

8. The McNamara brothers were also...

Danny and Richard McNamara are two members of the rock band Embrace. This lot, from the early 80s, were also In Embrace,

In Embrace - Shouting In Cafés

7. Vibrations that travel through the air or another medium and can be heard when they reach a person's or animal's ear.

Definition Of Sound - Moira Jane's Café

6. At best, they're golden.

The Eagles - The Sad Café

Not to be confused with these guys...

Sad Café - Everyday Hurts

5. Lads often found on a cake.

The Cherry Boys - Kardomah Café

4. Killer Michael's Mum?

Michael Fassbender is in The Killer, which I reviewed here (if you can call that a review). This isn't his mum, but it could be...

Susan Fassbender ‎– Twilight Café

#21 in 1981, folks.

3. Day & Wright, Thicke & Dick.

Robin Day, Robin Wright, Robin Thicke and Dick Grayson, aka Batman's original partner.

The Robins - Smokey Joe's Café

2. A Christmas tune fit for royalty.

A carol fit for a king.

Carole King - Hard Rock Café

1. Roy.

If you can get past the fact that the lead singer looks like a young David Cameron in the video (and you probably can't), this is is a great tune.

Keane - Sovereign Light Café

Saturday Snapshots #40 - The Answers

No!


Sleep!


Till Saturday Snapshots have all been answered.

Low attendance yesterday - I guess SS can't compete with the football. I think Charity Chic just nabbed the win. Half a point ahead of Lynchie. And Alyson... I think... scraped past the line first last week.

Thanks for playing...


10. God, the German trees in France are all conifers.

Tree in German is baum. Conifers are evergreen. The Normans came from France.

God is the spirit in the sky.

Norman Greenbaum - Spirit In The Sky

9. Emergency! There's knaves in the cellar!

Knaves are Jacks.

Basement Jaxx - Red Alert!

8. Is my belle surprised? I'll ask her.

Michelle is my belle, according to the Beatles. Does that shock you?

"My wife's going to the biggest city in America's northern most state."

"Anchorage?"

"I'll ask her..."

(Alaska.)

Badum-tish.

Michelle Shocked - Anchorage

7. These guys certainly don't own a Blue Nile album. And their disco is full of cotton wool.

Hats is an album by The Blue Nile.

If you wrap something in cotton wool, you are keeping it safe.

Men Without Hats - Safety Dance

6. Bah! Clomp is not a man.

Bah clomp is an anagram of Lambchop.

Lambchop - Is A Woman

5. Morrissey's window cleaner dines with bright kings.

Morrissey's window cleaner was Roy('s) Keen.

Keane - Sovereign Light Café

(Look, this is a good song. It's not his fault he looks like a young David Cameron.)

4. Saint swaps chainmail and dumps January's aviator.

Saint Joan is trading her armour.

January was a hit for Pilot.

Joan Armatrading - Drop The Pilot

3. B.A. hires The Cars for dim bulbs.

B.A. was Mr. T. If he hired a band he would be a booker. MGs were cars. The Cars were a band. Dim bulbs would be...

Booker T & The MGs - Green Onions

2. Little David Bowie's noisy band RSVP.

David Bowie was DB, with a little d. Decibels measure noise.

RSVP is Répondez s'il vous plait.

The dBs - Write Back

(One for Brian!)

1. Playgirl fantasies on Martha's beach run from the barber.

If Playboys liked bunny girls, presumably Playgirls would like Bunnymen.

Martha's beach was Echo.

Spare us the cutter!



You've Gotta Fight For Your Right to play Saturday Snapshots again next week...

My Top Ten Café / Diner Songs

Fancy coming down the caff?

Specials mentions to Tom Waits's excellent Nighthawks At The Diner (if albums were allowed, as well individual songs, that might have been Number One), Style Council's Café Bleu, and, of course... Sad Café.


10. Saint Etienne - Mario's Café

A cigarette, a cup of tea, a bun... lazy Tuesday mornings spent in cafés, chewing the bacon rind with friends.

9. The Coasters - Smokey Joe's Café

 Lieber & Stoller corker... you better eat up all your beans, boy, and clear right on out!

8. Ryan Adams - Starlite Diner

Ryan Adams arranges a midnight rendezvous at the Starlite Diner (you just wouldn't get a caff staying open that late in the UK)... but will he be stood up?

7.  Hall & Oates - Abandoned Luncheonette

An old couple relive their youth in an abandoned luncheonette. Quietly heartbreaking...

They sat together in the empty diner
Filled with cracked china
Old news was blowing across the filthy floor
And the sign on the door read "this way out", that's all it read
That's all it said...

6. Ray Davies - Working Man's Café

Ray laments the death of olde England now that all our town centres "look like America".

Looking for the working man's café
In the shopping centre of the town
Looking for somewhere to fit in
In among the retail outlets
Bought a pair of new designer pants
Where the fruit and veg man used to stand
I always used to see him there
Selling old apples and pears
Chatting up the pretty girls
With knocked off goods in the van...

5. Keane - Sovereign Light Café

Often damned with faint praise of the "poor man's Coldplay" variety, not helped by the fact that the lead singer looks like a 20 year old David Cameron. But if you can put all that aside, this is a fantastic "you can't go home again" song celebrating the band's hometowns of Battle and Bexhill on Sea, near Hastings. It does, of course, steal all its best ideas from Glory Days era Springsteen, but you won't hear me complaining about that...

Let's go down to the rides on East Parade,
By the lights of the Palace Arcade
And watch night coming down on the Sovereign Light Café

Let's go down to the bandstand on the pier
Watch the drunks and the lovers appear
To take turns as the stars of the Sovereign Light Café

4. Joni Mitchell - Chinese Cafe / Unchained Melody

Joni meets her old friend Carol at the Chinese Café and puts Unchained Melody on repeat play on the jukebox. What an amazing lyricist. This week's contractual "I'm getting older every say" song...

This girl of my childhood games
With kids nearly grown and gone
Grown so fast
Like the turn of a page
We look like our mothers did now
When we were those kids' age
Nothing lasts for long...

3. Suzanne Vega - Tom's Diner

Suzanne's biggest hit, due to the nasty DNA 90s dance-beat remix that took it to the top of the charts. I, naturally, prefer the a capella original... which youtube tells me was used by the developer of the mp3 as his reference track. Making it the first mp3 ever... apparently.If you can believe anything you read on t'internet.

2. Dean Friedman - The Deli Song

Recorded "live" in a genuine New York Deli (or not), where Dean meets the woman of his dreams at 4 in the morning... but gets interrupted quite a lot by the noisy waitresses.

Hey, Louie - there's a weirdo at table four in the back...
He's singing!

1. The Handsome Family - The Snow White Diner

The first Handsome Family track I ever heard (on a free Uncut CD) and still one of my favourites... although they have done many other great records. Creepy Gothic Americana at its finest...

I am eating hash browns in the Snow White Diner
Outside cars are honking, flashing lights on the bridge
They're pulling a car up from the bottom of the frozen lake

A woman drove her Saturn into the black water
Killed herself and her two kids trapped in the backseat
She'd lost her job and didn't want her kids to be poor

The diner is noisy, black coffee and sugar
Baskets of dinner rolls, outside the crowd is growing
Waiting by the drawbridge, hoping to see the dead woman's face...

Which one's on your specials board?

My Top Ten Last Time Songs

After our first time, so often comes our last time...



10. Keane - This Is The Last Time

The listeners of Radio 2 recently voted Keane's Hopes & Fears(from which this song hails) as the second greatest album of all time... after Clocks by Coldplay and just ahead of Rio by Duran Duran.

WTF?

9. Glen Campbell - The Last Time I Saw Her

Written by Gordon Lightfoot, who had a mighty fine voice. But not quite as fine as Glen Campbell.

8. Eels - The Last Time We Spoke

Haunting. Seriously haunting.

7. Kris Kristofferson - The Last Time

Legend.

6. Shea Seger - Last Time

If Shea wakes up with you... it'll be the last time.

5. Squeeze - Last Time Forever

From 28 years ago - when Glenn Tilbrook looked like David Coverdale, Chris Difford looked like Matt Smith and Jools Holland looked like... Jools Holland.

4. Rory Gallagher - For The Last Time

There is some serious guitar playing on this track.

3. Morrissey - Pregnant For The Last Time

The only Top 30 hit ever to appear in the UK singles chart with the word "pregnant" in the title, and it never officially appeared on an album.

Phlegm lapels for the last time
Corn beef legs for the last time

2. Joni Mitchell - The Last Time I Saw Richard

The last time I saw Richard was Detroit in '68,
And he told me all romantics meet the same fate someday
Cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark cafe

Genius. And if that isn't proof enough, try this...

Richard got married to a figure skater
And he bought her a dishwasher and a Coffee percolator
And he drinks at home now most nights with the TV on
And all the house lights left up bright
I'm gonna blow this damn candle out
I don't want nobody coming over to my table
I got nothing to talk to anybody about
All good dreamers pass this way some day
Hiding behind bottles in dark cafes
Dark cafes

1. The Rolling Stones - The Last Time

Inevitable, I know. But still great. Just listen to Jagger's swagger...



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