Here's Denzel Washington with the answers to this week's quiz. I almost used his photo yesterday, but you guys are getting a bit too smart when it comes to the top of the page pic, so I went with Warren Beatty instead. Warren is a city in Ohio. There's also a Warren in Michigan. And one in Cheshire. Probably some others too.
Here are 15 more places that begin with W... Washington, Wales and Wuhan were conspicuous by their absence. Maybe in tomorrow's spillover edition...
15. Slightly longer than a Buzzcock.
Pete Shelley was a Buzzcock. This is almost his Namesake...
12. Revolutionary War singer, without his comrades.
60s band Paul Revere and the Raiders were named after a famous soldier from the American Revolutionary War. The band were also named after their keyboard player, whose real name was Paul Revere Dick. He dropped the surname on stage. Can't think why.
The lead singer of Paul Revere and the Raiders was...
I've no idea why he's singing about a town just a few miles down the M1 from me.
11. Lard, Sweet Pea & Ivy.
Lard was, of course, the nickname used by DJ Marc Riley when he worked with Mark Radcliffe in the 90s. He was also in The Fall. But whenever Mark E. Smith kicked him out, he returned to his own band...
Weavers used looms - or wanted to smash them. The Norfolk music festival is held at Houghton Hall... although these guys actually came from Westhoughton in Greater Manchester. Which might explain how they spotted the UFOs below...
I had to listen carefully to make sure Cheap Trick weren't signing "A long was to Wor-chester". Actually it sounds more like they sing "Wister" than "Wuster", but close enough, I guess.
No idea why though.
7. AU + a short Friar + Spider-Man, initially.
AU is Gold. The abbreviation for a Friar is Fra. Spider-Man is Peter Parker.
Welcome back. You know the drill. Songs with 22 in it. Remember that the Lime Green Rule now applies. Titles only, no more lyrical mentions. Unless I really, really like them.
Martin was first up this week, with a right old list...
No, you should have stopped before you got to Sting. As should Shaggy.
Hang on, though, here's Rigid Digit to second your suggestion - with added info...
...the second song of the "Charlotte Saga" (Charlotte The Harlot / 22 Acacia Avenue / Hooks In You / From Here To Eternity). The first two are Charlotte songs, the last two are a bit tenuous but still considered part of the ongoing story.
Fair enough. If we're going metal this week... here's my contribution.
But the real pick of the lot would be my Can-Con contribution ("Canadian Content", for those outside my home country, a term coined decades ago by government regulators of our airwaves to protect our ears from over-Americanization). How about the obscure and experimental b-side by Martha and the Muffins called "22 in Cincinnati"? Very moody, that one.
That's just weird. Is that a purring cat in the middle? (Amazingly Jim in Dubai seconded that rather obscure choice.) Still, we like weird here. That's why we keep The Swede around. Here he is with this week's even weirder selections...
'Room Twenty Two', a dubwise selection from the marvellous 'Black Market Meets Mired & Wise Owl in the Twilight Zone'.
Oh, and if we're getting lax about the Lime Green Rule now, what about the iconic opening lines of Billy Bragg's "A New England". A Classic, that one, though I suspect Billy's a bit older than 22 now.
It's worth pointing out that Billy Bragg is the easy way round most rules and regulations, lime green or otherwise.
The irony, of course, is that as of last week, we do have a new England (and Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland). Sadly, not the one Billy wanted though.
Of course, if we're playing that, we also have to play this...
So there I was, just a few weeks back, complaining about having to get up at 6am. I should have remembered that in the summer, when the wood pigeon outside my bedroom window gets up at 5 o'clock in the morning, 6am is a lie in...
Here's ten bleary-eyed tunes to celebrate the light mornings.
As with much of Parklife-era Blur, I loved Tracy Jacks at the time... but I find Damon's barking gets on my nerves these days. Still, for the good old days, it's worth pointing out that Tracy left home at 5 o'clock in the morning. And the bits where Damon sings rather than shouting are still quite nice.
From the same era (but aging slight better), I also offer Kenickie - 5 a.m.
In the early 80s, even The Village People had to accept that disco was dead. Their new wave change of direction (minus their signature costumes and camp) was greeted by derision (yeah, I know the idea of The Village People being treated with derision is hard to grasp) with one critic commenting the album was "simply an embarrassment that never should have seen the light of day." I've not heard the rest of the record, but I do like this song. Which only goes to prove that critics are... and I am... The video is brilliant.
You'd never guess that Charlotte was Serge and Jane's daughter. Not from watching this video, anyway. No siree. Maybe there was a mix-up on the maternity ward.
Sarcasm aside, you can pretty much imagine what she gets up to at 5:55. She's not doing the ironing.
Where do the French get their energy from? That's what I want to know.
Mark goes back to his Geordie roots. He will mostly be remembered as an axe-man. His lyrics deserve more attention.
The one armed bandit man Came north to fill his boots Came up from cockneyland E-type jags and flashy suits Put your money in Pull the levers Watch them spin Cash cows in all the pubs But he preferred the new nightclubs
A soul classic which is also a hilarious tale of hell having no fury like a woman scorned. When he gets home at five, his lady is all sweetness and light, even offering to make him some toast. Cut to the next verse...
Here am in the hospital Bandaged from fee to head In a state of shock Just that much from being dead Didn't think my woman would do something like this Didn't think my girl had the nerve Well, here I am I guess actions speak louder than words...
Apparently this was originally recorded by some obscure 60s combo: sadly I'm not enough of a muso to be familiar with their outfit and obviously their version couldn't have been as good as Billy and Cara's because it didn't even make the chart, unlike this smash hit Number One from 1988.
I'm sorry... Wet Wet Who?
1. Rialto - Monday Morning, 5.19
One of a clutch of classic Rialto singles from the Britpop era which has aged far better than Tracy Jacks. Heartbreaking too.
There are lots of songs that deal with fear... Don't Fear The Reaper, Fear of a Black Planet, Party Fears Two, The Pop Singer's Fear of the Pollen Count... but this week I want to look at songs that deal specifically with THE Fear.
What's interesting is that all these songs come from the last 20 years (pre- and post-millennial angst must be the driving factor). Be afraid... be very afraid...
Still the least annoying member of Blur, and pretty prolific as a solo artist. This is from his second album, way back in 2000, and it's obviously about being caught between Damon and Alex. What could be scarier?
Very popular with the young uns these days, and he certainly plays a mean guitar on this one. Not really sure he says anything to me about my life... but then, he was born in 1987*, so he's still a whippersnapper.
An ominous little angry-acoustic number from the main man of Deacon Blue, virtually impossible to find on the internet because of someone called Rick Ross who apparently is also rather popular with young people these days. The live version I tracked down is a little echoey, but at least you can hear Ricky's accent is still strong.
We'd all like to disappear every now and then. This is from Giant Steps, the album just before the Boo Radleys woke up the whole world (for fifteen minutes, anyway).
It's easy to pigeonhole Travis as the rather twee and jangly band they became, but there was a real edge to their first couple of albums, and I'd forgotten how much I liked this particular song from The Man Who.
And just in case you were wondering, they took their name from Harry Dean Stanton's character in Paris, Texas... not Bickle or Dave Lee.
The title almost disqualified it, but if you're familiar with the song at all you'll know that Ian is as obsessed with the definite article as any of the other songs on this list. Plis, if I was walking round Soho and a King Monkey came riding towards me, backwards, on a bicycle, I think I'd be pretty damned terrified.
It's weird when you consider that Doves started life as the (imho bloody awful) dance-pop combo Sub Sub. I far preferred Doves, and this was perhaps their finest moment - a Top 3 single that was deleted on the day of its release, meaning if you didn't buy it immediately, chances are you never got a copy.
If you're wondering what Doves fear, the video offers a few clues...
I heard Bob Harris play this among his usual mix of country, classic rock and Americana the other week... and it didn't stick out at all. Because like many other artists Bob plays (and unlike so much other contemporary pop music), Lily Allen actually has something to say in this song... and in her work in general. She may well be one of the most important pop stars we have in this country at the moment. With so much bland, anodyne and over-produced music clogging up what's left of the singles chart these days ("I was born in 1972, you know!"), it's great that Lily can still hit Number One with a song like this: a scathing indictment of contemporary society packed with wit, attitude and genuine pop hooks.
(*Lily was born in 1985, a much better year.)
1. Pulp - The Fear
This Is Hardcore remains my favourite album of the 90s. The opening track set the tone for the darkest Pulp record (which is saying something, if you've heard Freaks or Masters of The Universe), the one that marked the grubby death of Britpop just as Different Class had celebrated its heights. Radiohead had set the ball rolling a year earlier with OK Computer, but Pulp's wilful act of pop self-destruction was the audio equivalent of stage-invading Michael Jackson's messianic abyss at the Brits. Plus, at 26 years old, alone in a tiny one-up one-down hovel somewhere between the pylons and the motorway, this record really was the soundtrack to my life...
This is our Music from A Bachelors Den
- the sound of loneliness turned up to ten.
A horror soundtrack from a stagnant water-bed & it sounds just like this.
This is the sound of someone losing the plot -
making out that they're okay when they're not.
You're gonna like it, but not a lot & the chorus goes like this:
Extra points for quoting Paul Daniels there.
It's a weird thing, but I still think of the 90s as being within reaching distance... yet this was released 18 years ago now, and by then decade was almost done. When I realise that, I really do feel The Fear.
