9. "Right! Well, don't say I haven't warned you! I've laid it on the line for you time and time again! Right! So, this is it! I'm gonna give you a damn good thrashing!"
Banned by the BBC because of the repeated line "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me". Bruno Brookes then "accidentally" played the whole thing on the chart show. And in November 2008, it was "accidentally" played to shoppers in an Asda supermarket in Preston. Asda apologised.
8. Hooligan deflowers Tokyo... that's very disturbed!
(Don't even start me on the unforgivable "Your" / "You're" confusion.)
Can a bawdy joke spoil a great song?
This is the question I ask myself whenever I hear Dr. Hook's biggest hit. Because it's a great song - if you like that sort of thing, obviously, and growing up with Radio 2, I grew to love it - but the hokey pun innuendo soon outlived its welcome.
I was pretty certain I knew who wrote this song - but it turns out I was wrong. I was sure it must be another Shel Silverstein composition, given Shel wrote a number of Hook's hits, including their very best song...
Now that's a classic. Even if you don't care for Dr. Hook's particular brand of laid-back country pop, you have to at least appreciate the way Silverstein's desperate lyric is perfectly matched to Dennis Locorriere's plaintive vocals. I swear when he sings, "Please, Mrs. Avery," I feel his yearning right down to the tips of my toes. What a performance.
And it turns out Sylvia's Mother is a true story too - Shel was in love with a woman called Sylvia Pandolfi, but she ran off with another man and ended up as a curator at the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil in Mexico City. Shel tried desperately to rekindle that romance, but the only contact he had for Sylvia was her mum, and she wasn't having any of it. Nowadays, she'd probably report him as a stalker. I guess "Please, Mrs. Pandolfi" didn't quite scan, so Avery it was. And Mrs. Avery became such a famous figure, she even inspired a sequel song from The Men They Couldn't Hang...
But I'm not here to write about Sylvia's Mother, am I? Let's get back to the song in question. The reason I figured When You're In Love With A Beautiful Woman was a Shel Silverstein composition is that Shel was known for being a funny guy. As well as being able to break our hearts with songs like Sylvia's Mother and The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan, Shel wasn't afraid to write a song with a sense of humour. Like these...
You've got to admire the nerve of a man who can rhyme Loretta with Irish Setter, and then get Loretta Lynn to sing it. Silverstein was also responsible for another witty Dr. Hook hit, although it's one I have mixed feelings about...
Now the problem with this tune is the way the Hooksters laugh at their own jokes (or at Silverstein's jokes, anyway) as they sing them. Ironically, ...Rolling Stone is one of their only songs to feature Dr. Hook himself, Ray Sawyer, on lead vocals. Maybe that's part of the problem. Much as I wish to argue in favour of humour in pop songs, I have a problem with people who laugh at their own jokes. Now I've no problem with people laughing in songs, otherwise I wouldn't love this...
You hear Whitney giggling away (around 3'57" if you're in a rush) and you can tell she's genuinely having a good time. She's enjoying herself and having fun. The laughter is natural. Similarly, one of my favourite tracks by this up and coming pop hopeful...
Hey Stephen is a great "why are you wasting your time with those vain cheerleaders when I'm right here?" song, made even better by the line...
All those other girls, well, they're beautiful
But would they write a song for you?
The little chuckle Taylor gives after delivering those lines (approx. 2'50", busy folk) is priceless. And again, it feels genuine. Not so the self-congratulatory laughter in The Cover Of The Rolling Stone. I wish they'd played that song a little straighter. Or got Locorriere to sing it.
All of which brings us back to When You're In Love With A Beautiful Woman (It's Hard), which I'm still surprised to learn wasn't written by Shel... except, maybe not so surprised the more I think of it, because Shel was classier than that. Further warning bells sound when you discover the song was actually written by Even Stevens. No, no Evan. Even.
Stevens - real first names Bruce Noel - is a man who appears to love a good pun. He's clearly got a sense of humour, as demonstrated below...
...although, hang on, they were both written by Shel Silverstein too. Clearly Even Stevens' own songwriting was influenced by Shel... but I can't help but think Shel would have stopped short of the innuendo that upends When You're In Love With A Beautiful Woman, a sleazy 70s sexual allusion that's only "bettered" by this...
That one was written by David Bellamy himself. Well, gwapple me gwapenuts!
Not that David Bellamy, obviously. I might look more kindly on it if it was. To be fair, at least innuendo is the whole point of If I Said You Had A Beautiful Body... there's not a better song trapped underneath, begging for your respect. It is what is is and seems quite happy that way.
My contention then is that When You're In Love With A Beautiful Woman is a great song - especially the bridge, which is as heartfelt as anything Dennis Locorriere ever sang...
Maybe it's just an ego problem, problem is I've been fooled before
By fair-weathered friends and faint-hearted lovers
And every time it happens it just convinces me more
That's the bit I love. The bit that keeps me coming back to listen to this track again and again, the bit that gets me past the embarrassment of the smutty innuendo. (I particularly struggle with the "You know it's hard, you know it gets so hard" call-back - yeah, we get it, Even. No need to belt us over the head with it!)
Legend has it that Even Stevens followed Dr. Hook's manager into the studio bathroom to pitch this song. That says it all, really. If only he'd showed a little restraint... When You're In Love With A Beautiful Woman, It's Tough would have been much better, in my opinion. Or did this song only get to the top of the charts in the UK because of the lowest common denominator sales? If so, I hope Even Stevens sleeps soundly on his mattress stuffed with money, safe in the knowledge that he was one word away from writing a classic...
I've been re-reading The Shining by Stephen King recently. Two reasons for this. One, the last couple of modern novels I've read have left me underwhelmed and frustrated. Two, Louise keeps saying, "you have all these old books on the shelves that you never read," and I needed a little more evidence to back up my claims that, "I'll read them again someday". Otherwise: charity shop.
Anyway, I like reading books set in the world of my childhood. A pre-internet, pre-covid, pre-modern day bullshit world... simpler times. The Shining was first published in 1977, when I was 5, a world where a telephone in your home was apparently something of a luxury...
Wendy had insisted on a phone in spite of their unraveling finances. She had argued that with a small child - especially a boy like Danny, who sometimes suffered from fainting spells - they couldn't afford not to have one. So Jack had forked over the thirty-dollar installation fee, bad enough, and a ninety-dollar security deposit, which really hurt. And so far the phone had been mute, except for two wrong numbers.
I'm not sure when my parents got their first telephone installed, but it was there on the wall between the kitchen and the living room throughout my childhood. I remember standing there, when I could reach it, and rotary dialling the numbers... then waiting for a friend's mum to answer. "Hi Mrs. Brook. Is Liam in? Can he come to the phone?"
Of course, the alternative was the good old-fashioned phone box, recently celebrated in John's August Photo Challenge.
Now he dialed the operator and she told him that for a dollar eighty-five he could be put in touch with Al two thousand miles away for three minutes. Time is relative, baby, he thought, and stuck in eight quarters. Faintly he could hear the electronic boops and beeps of his connection sniffling its way eastward.
We take so much for granted these days. A lot of people don't even bother with a home phone anymore, and to be honest, the only time I take a call on ours is when Louise has taken Sam out and she's calling to tell me to put the tea on.
I remember explaining to a bunch of phone-addicted students a few years back that we never even had mobiles when I was a kid. A look of genuine panic crept over their faces.
"But what if you were at school and your mum needed to speak to you urgently?"
"Well, I guess she'd call the school office and someone would come down to pass a message on," I replied... but I couldn't think of any occasion when such a thing had been necessary. Nothing was so urgent that it couldn't wait a few hours back then.
"Or what about if you were meeting up with some mates in town?"
"Well, you'd arrange a time and a place and..."
"But what if they were late?"
"Then you'd wait. And if they still didn't show up, I guess you'd go home and call them later."
Here are some more songs about the telephones of our youth...
To mark the hundredth edition of Celebrity Jukebox, I'd prepared a special tribute to Glen Campbell, the man responsible for my all-time favourite song. I figured I'd run that ahead of Tony Bennett and whoever else might leave us in the meantime...
There's an awful lot of women In whose honor I would like to raise my glass to in a toast Some of them are still alive And some I hear their voices like a ghost
Still, the best tribute I could find was this one...
Read a book by Sinead O'Connor Stained the pages and stared out at the water I took a note when she said that songs are ghosts I guess if anybody knows she knows
Country must be the second most self-referential genre in
all of popular music. Only rap likes to talk about itself and name-drop other
noteworthy practitioners of the artform more than country… the difference being
that such references are largely positive in country, whereas rappers do like
to slag each other off any chance they get.
With that in mind, I’m not going to pretend to have listened
to every song that mentions Loretta Lynn in passing. She was a legend, and an
inspiration, so it’s only right she be immortalised in many, many tunes.
Here are just a handful… and they're not all straight down the line country songs either.
I ain’t a coal miner’s daughter But I’ve sung it all my life I ain’t been a widow But I’ve been an ex-wife And I hear your truth And I feel your pain Now I know why you sang that way
Like any other would be country singing sensation I had no visible means of transportation One Saturday morning I was searching the ads When I found one that I wanted and I wanted it bad I called up the salesmen, he said, c'mon in I've got the Lincoln right here belonged to Loretta Lynn The Coal Miner's Daughter used to drive it to town It's yours for a song and five hundred down
Don't you think it's time we put a woman in the White House With a whole new attitude? Just look at the mess we're in Heck, I'd vote for Loretta Lynn I guarantee that we'd all be Singing a different song
I am leaving Mississippi in the evening rain These Delta towns wear satin gowns In a high beamed frame Loretta Lynn guides my hands through the radio Where would I be in times like these Without the songs Loretta wrote?
Sittin' in the kitchen, a house in Macon Loretta's singing on the radio Smell of coffee, eggs, and bacon Car wheels on a gravel road
As I said at the top, I could be here all day. Perhaps only
Hank Williams and Johnny Cash get name-checked in more country songs than
Loretta. And here she is with Johnny, in one of my favourites.
When Loretta Lynn goes dancing With the ghost of Johnny Cash Father Time takes forever And to make it look like less than lightning flash Violins bow into fiddles Two iconic symbols crash When Loretta Lynn goes dancing With the ghost of Johnny Cash
Country legend. Feminist icon. Very tough, very funny, very smart lady.
The news of Loretta Lynn's passing came through late yesterday afternoon, but I wanted to pay tribute as quickly as I could. Off the top of my head then, here are ten of her best. I'm sure I've missed some classics, but how am I supposed to compress seven decades of music making into just one post?
Also recorded last year, the title track of her 46th solo album, guest starring Reba McEntire and Carrie Underwood, just two of the many, many contemporary country stars who owe their careers to Loretta.
I think it's fair to say that Raquel Welch must be the oldest actress I've ever featured here. After all, she has been acting since One Million Years BC.
When Stephen King wrote the novella that The Shawshank Redemption was based on, the poster on Andy DuFrense's cell wall was Rita Hayworth. In the movie, to better show the passage of time, he has three posters: Hayworth, Marilyn... and the iconic image above of Raquel Welch in One Million Years BC, surely one of the most famous posters ever printed... after that one of the tennis player scratching her arse. Iffypedia tells us "Welch helped transform America's feminine ideal into its current state", a statement which is as questionable as it is disputable. To her credit, Welch herself once said, "I was not brought up to be a sex symbol, nor is it in my nature to be one. The fact that I became one is probably the loveliest, most glamorous and fortunate misunderstanding".
Whatever you think of Raquel Welch, it's fair to say that poster may well have decorated the bedroom walls of many of the songwriters below...
Not actually about Raquel Welch, just a girl with the same first name as her. However, Ms. Welch does get a mention... and extra points for rhyming her surname with "squelch".
(In case you're wondering, Gruff did his research. Raquel's parents are Bolivian daddy Armando Carlos Tejada Urquizo and Irish mummy Josephine Sarah Hall.)
OK, so those are the only songs I found with Raquel in the title. What about lyrical nods?
Oh, look, here's a song with Two Parts! You have to scroll through to the beginning of Part 2, around the 4 minute mark, to hear a brief reference to Raquel... but I think it's just a playful nickname for Freddie's co-singer.
Loana was the name of the character Raquel played in One Million Years BC. Clearly they're not Christian fundamentalists, otherwise they'd be rubbishing the film's depiction of dinosaurs which, clearly, never existed.
Oh, and here's our token Mark Kozelek track for this week...
There's a new dating show on TV this week in which couples act out erotic scenes from big hit films as a way of auditioning prospective partners. And another one where they choose a mate based on their karaoke voices alone. I presume these are a follow up to the one where people stare intently at the naked bodies of potential soulmates (but not their faces) before deciding the best one to go home with. You may prefer to swipe left on both. It's hardly Cilla, is it?
These kind of things make me feel very old. And yet, curiously, rather glad to be very old. I mean, who would want to be a young person trying to navigate the sexual quagmire that is the dating world in the 21st Century? A world where people can dress in as blatantly sexual a manner as they choose, and yet expressing a romantic interest in the wrong person could end you up in hot water?
It was so much easier in the good old days, when folk just went to bars to pull. Not that I ever did that. Not that I ever pulled anyone, anywhere, to be honest. But much as it seemed a pipe dream back then, it did at least seem a more realistic prospect than what goes on nowadays. Old man shouts at sea.
There is a sub-genre of music (mostly country or Americana, though I'm sure it crosses over into other genres - there's probably half a dozen Arab Strap songs that deal with it) about hooking up with people in bars. Take Todd Snider & Loretta Lynn's Don't Tempt Me for a start...
Or Charity Chic's favourite, Parallel Bars, by Robbie Fulks and Kelly Willis (although there is a twist of Pina Colada to that one)...
My favourite at the moment comes from Hayes Carll, from the amazing KMAG YOYO album (look up the meaning behind that title title: I wanted to do a Top Ten Acronym Songs just to make that track Number One... but I couldn't come up with any others).
Here's Hayes, alongside Cary Ann Hearst, showing how opposites really can attract... if you're pissed.
(I find the video a little distracting, to be honest. I'd recommend closing your eyes and concentrating on the lyrics. But not as a method of choosing a date.)
As a contrast to yesterday's post which displayed the emotive, heartstring-tugging powers of country music and Americana... here's the feistier side of the coin. Loretta Lynn, in all her savage "don't mess with me or my man" glory.
In these dark and depressing times, there's quite a few people I'd like to send to Fist City myself... starting with a few of the higher ups at my workplace. Maybe I'll send Loretta round to sort them out...
Put your Umbrella away and stop staring at your Diamonds (maybe put some clothes on too) because it's time for the answers to this week's Saturday Snapshots.
Some fierce competition yesterday morning between Rigid Digit and George... I think RD just clinched it, but it was pretty close. Good support from the rest of you, although I don't think anyone cracked my fiendish cryptic crossword clue for the Eddie Reader song. Thanks for playing, as always, guys...
It took me ages to remember what Dido had to to with Otis, since it seemed obvious that "resting on the harbour wall" referred to (Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay. Then I remembered: "Dido resting" was an anagram.
Take A Bow if you got them all right... more next week.
(Who knew both Madonna & Rhianna had songs called Take A Bow? Made my job much easier this weekend.)
I'm sure there are hundreds of pop songs which have caused a conception or two (Barry White's entire back catalogue?) but here are ten that might help stop you getting pregnant...
According to iffypedia, "Gang of Four's music brought together an eclectic array of influences, ranging from the neo-Marxist Frankfurt School of social criticism to the increasingly clear trans-Atlantic punk consensus". Fortunately, the music they made was nowhere near as pretentious as some of their fans! Plus, they were from Leeds, so extra marks for that.
Down on the disco floor
They make their profit
From the things they sell
To help you cob off
And the rubbers you hide
In your top left pocket
I was ten when The Belle Stars released The Clapping Song. Oh, the fun we had on school trips singing "And she won't buy me a rubber Johnny" on the coach home... much to the consternation of our teachers. It was right up there with "Charlie had a budgie".
Who knew Paul Heaton was so kinky? No one, actually. This is him playing the role of a sexist oaf to criticise mile chauvinist wankers who sew their seeds wherever they can and care little for the consequences.
"You're married with a kid when you could be having fun with me": as chat-up lines go, Terry & Jerry, that takes some beating. Got anything else to add?
Take control of the population boom
It's in your living room
Keep a generation gap
Try wearing a cap!
(I know a radio station that edited the last line off this track if they ever played it on air.)
1. Madness - House of Fun
It had to be really, didn't it? Arguably Madness's finest moment: getting to the top of the charts with a song about a 16 year old trying to buy condoms from the chemist. Genius.
I'm sorry, son
But we don't stock
Party gimmicks
In this shop.
Try the House of Fun
It's quicker if you run
This is a chemist
Not a jokers' shop!
Any planned parenthood anthems in your pack of three?
I'm waiting for someone to suggest This Mortal Coil.
And I'm ready to argue that Rubber Ring is about vinyl records...
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