Louise makes me buy Heat every Tuesday. (She only reads it for the TV section, apparently.) It's hard to tell which is the new issue since every week without fail the cover features either Kate, Meghan, Posh Spice or that woman who used to present This Morning.
7. My Father's Cars... abbreviated.
My father's car was a Jaguar. (It wasn't. He always drove Fords.)
I took Sam to see his first Shakespeare play on Monday night and he really seemed to enjoy it. Or maybe he was just saying that to keep his old man happy. Despite being an English teacher, I'm not a Shakespeare snob... in fact, apart from the plays I know well, I often struggle to follow them. I read Lear back at University but I'd forgotten more than I remembered about it, apart from the quote below...
As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods.
They kill us for their sport.
Anyway, we both came away happy. Good to see Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars as the King too... Ian McDiarmid is 82 now, but still full of vigour - and with that famous voice which struck terror into us when he was electrocuting Luke in Return of the Jedi. Given that he looked like this back in 1983, I reckon he's aged pretty well...
He was 39 when he originally played the Emperor. In case you were wondering... I certainly was!
I could only think of one song to accompany today's post... with the usual apologies.
Paloma Faith introduces our final selection of songs about ladies whose name begins with P, giving me an excuse to play another tune we used to perform in my brass band days...
No, we weren't going with the Jonathan King version.
Before we go any further, I will admit that I couldn't find any songs addressed to Prunella... but I did find a band named after everyone's favourite Sybil...
Don't judge me. That's one of their better offerings. If The Verve had recorded that song (and I can hear Richard Ashcroft singing it), we'd be calling it a classic. Much as I dislike Gary Barlow, he can write the odd decent pop tune.
When I'm putting Snapshot together, I try to get a mix of bands that haven't featured often before, which means that some of the usual suspects and old favourites end up on the operating room floor...
5. The city with the longest name is Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Yuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit. But we call it...?
There was also a question about what the following three cities have in common… New York, Mumbai, Istanbul. But I’ll give you the answer to that one… as I might have done to one of the questions above, being unable to resist an obvious tune.
On Saturday night, I attended the 50th anniversary reunion of the radio station I spent 21 years of my working life at. Although the station itself no longer exists (don't start me on the sad state of the UK radio industry), it originally turned on its transmitters in 1975... although I didn't start working there till I was 16 in 1988.
It was a very emotional evening, seeing so many old friends. I wouldn't go anywhere near a school reunion, and I hardly remember anyone from my university days, but I knew so many good people during my years in radio, I couldn't resist the opportunity to catch up with them. (I knew quite a few arseholes too, but thankfully, none of them attended. Which says a lot, really.)
The night was a blur. I couldn't stay late as Sam had a football match early the next morning, and the event was an hour's drive from home, so it all felt a bit of a rush. Looking back, I know I didn't get the chance to see everyone I wanted to, while those I did get to talk to, I would have liked to have much more time with. But it was wonderful, how easy it was to fall back into the old banter once we'd got past the "what are you doing now?" bit. It's at least 16 years since I've seen most of these people, but it might as well have been last week.
A lot of organisation went into the event, tracking down many different people who'd worked in all the different departments over the years. Sadly, it's unlikely there will be another reunion in the future, but I hope to stay in touch with some of the old friends I saw again on Saturday.
Working in radio had its highs and lows, and the lows took over towards the end, but it was a very special time in my life. We had a laugh, but we got the job done too. That's the best you can say about any workplace, I reckon.
You can't have failed to miss the latest desperate plea for attention from the deluded mind of the once great SPM, entitled A SOUL FOR SALE. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
Rol: I'm waiting for Morrissey's reply to my offer. £5.54 and a vegan pastie. Reckon I'm in with a shout.
Ben: I considered throwing a quid at him.
Ben: And a boiled egg sandwich.
Rol: Does a boiled egg sandwich trump a vegan pastie? Damn you for using your insider knowledge!
Ben: That's what they had to eat with him, wasn't it? I think I read an article a few years ago that he made them all eat only boiled egg sandwiches when they were touring the early years in the van. I think it was an interview with Rourke.And he was saying it smelt worse eating the sandwiches than the farts it would make them do.
The 'eaves' business email address has been switched off due to the colossal response to Morrissey's announcement of his wish to pass his "Smiths" interests over to an investor. Although Morrisseys' love for the songs of the Smiths era will never waver, he is tired of the disagreeable and vexatious characters involved in "The Smiths" business. After thirty-eight years of insults and abuse, Morrissey has had enough. All (or most) of the 'eaves' emails will be answered in time.
That's good. I await my reply.
In all seriousness though... those songs are priceless. Such a pity that the one man most desperate to tarnish their memory is their co-creator.
Often, when I'm forced to discuss this subject, I end up quoting the lyrics to Rubber Ring...
The passing of time and all of its crimes
Is making me sad again
The passing of time and all of its sickening crimes
Is making me sad again
But don't forget the songs that made you cry
And the songs that saved your life
Yes, you're older now and you're a clever swine
But they were the only ones who ever stood by you
Today though, this one seems far more appropriate...
Madness in (formerly) great ones must no unwatched go.
When I began the Celebrity Jukebox, it wasn't just for celebs who had passed away. Living legends were also featured. Nowadays though, it's just a place to celebrate those who have left us. Sadly, this means I now have to revisit this edition from 2022. Rest in peace, General...
“Kneel before Zod!”
For most of my generation, our first encounter with Terence
Stamp was as the evil General Zod in Superman II. The Grauniad called him “the
master of the brooding silence”, and he certainly sent shivers down my spine. Gene Hackman’s Lex Luthor was a pussycat in comparison.
I was surprised General Zod didn’t get referenced all over
the place, but only Eminem (who’s the same age as me) was prepared to kneel
before him.
Terence Stamp had been around for a couple of decades by the
time he played that memorable supervillain, making his screen debut in
the movie Billy Budd, an Oscar-nominated performance that obviously made some
impact on a young Steven Patrick Morrissey…
Morrissey also used an image of Stamp in The Collector as
the cover of the third Smiths single, What Difference Does It Make?
Stamp
originally refused permission for the picture to be used, but relented in the
end… possibly after he’d seen Morrissey’s alternative.
Pete Townshend from The Who has a younger brother called
Simon who has occasionally play with big bro’s band, as well as ploughing his
own lonely solo furrow. Here he is with a track called Highness, which begins
thus…
I am what I am
I just happen to be related to the king
…before named dropping Bowie, Eddie Vedder and Rod Stewart,
as well as… yes, you guessed it, Terence Stamp.
There's a track on the new Manic Street Preachers album about Morrissey.
Dear Stephen, please come back to us
I believe in repentance and forgiveness
It's so easy to hate, it takes guts to be kind
To paraphrase one of your heartbreak lines
Songwriter Nicky Wire has gone to great pains in interviews to state that the song has nothing to do with Morrissey's controversial public persona these days, his nasty opinions that have driven away so many long-term fans.
I'm still ill, I'm cursed to stay
Under your spell for all my days
I'm still a prisoner to you and Larkin
Even as your history darkens
Wire claims, “The only moral judgement on this album tends to be about me...”
“The song is about many things and it’s multi-layered. It’s about me critically looking at my own reliance on the past – about why those years were so scorched onto me. It goes for a lot of people, to be honest, but being between 12 and 18, I don’t think I’ve ever shaken them off for the imprint they’ve had on my aesthetic appreciation of music, literature and film. It’s an investigation of that.
“The idea that I had this postcard off Morrissey as well that said, ‘Get well soon’ and I kept it, it was quite a worthless thing that I imbue with so much meaning. It’s about so many different things but mainly about not being able to get out of that, and the amazing comfort and joy it brings. It’s a love letter to my former self as much as it is everything else.”
Which is all very well, and I can see why Wire might want to tow this particular line in the press (particularly the NME), but it's blatantly obvious that there's another meaning to these lyrics, a meaning that goes beyond Wire's past and one that will touch the heart of lapsed Morrissey fans everywhere. Maybe not those who have cut him off completely, but those for whom his work meant so much in our earlier lives, that however we might want to hate the singer, we cannot hate the songs. I'm thinking of myself, of Martin, and of JC particularly here.
The passing of time and all of its sickening crimes
Earlier on in my blogging career, I spent many hours trying to defend Morrissey's slow descent into fascism as a mis-reading of his intentions. I was wrong, and I've got to own that now. But I still can't let those songs go, those songs that meant so much to me, that spoke to me like nobody else's ever have...
Yes, Nicky, songs are about many things and [they're] multi-layered. But this one is clearly saying what so many old Morrissey fans are thinking. Although the very fact that you steal a line from I Know It's Over suggests you know it's all just wishful thinking... too late, was the cry.
More songs and stories about teachers, by a teacher. School's back now after a far too short Easter holiday...
Thank you for your suggestions last week. Our resident Maths teacher reminded of this sweet ode to teachers from Reg Dwight. "I think it is probably very inappropriate," says George. I think, in this day and age, most songs about fancying your teacher would be cancelled... but isn't that just part of adolescence?
I was sitting in the classroom Trying to look intelligent In case the teacher looked at me She was long and she was lean She's a middle-aged dream And that lady means the whole world to me
Meanwhile, The Blogfather weighed with a suggestion based on an artist we both used to cherish... until we all had to cancel him. JC says...
As much as I can't abide what he's turned into, Morrissey did pen a mighty opus about the profession.....turns out some clever clogs has recently made a video marrying the song to very old clips of 'Grange Hill'. Thought it might be of particular interest to you, Rol.
Those old Grange Hill clips certainly bring back memories. How times have changed, eh? Then again, Morrissey's lyrics reflect that...
Say the wrong word to our children...
We'll have you, oh yes, we'll have you
Lay a hand on our children
And it's never too late to have you
Mucus on your collar
A nail up through the staff chair
A blade in your soap
And you cry into your pillow
To be finished would be a relief
Because here (or 1995, when this was written), it's the teachers he feels sorry for... whereas just ten years earlier, he wrote a very different song in which his sympathies lay far more squarely with the pupils.
Belligerent ghouls run Manchester schools
Spineless swines, cemented minds
Sir leads the troops, jealous of youth
Same old suit since 1962
He does the military two-step
Down the nape of my neck
I want to go home
I don't want to stay
Give up education
As a bad mistake
Mid-week on the playing fields
Sir thwacks you on the knees
Knees you in the groin, elbow in the face
Bruises bigger than dinner plates
Please excuse me from gym
I've got this terrible cold coming on
He grabs and devours, he kicks me in the showers
Kicks me in the showers and he grabs and devours
In 1985, I'd be 13, just starting my Second Year in High School. I'd grown up watching Grange Hill and was quite terrified of what to expect when I went to the big school, but as I arrived the winds of change were blowing. I remember an older kid getting the slipper when we were in the First Year, but that sort of thing had gone the way of the dinosaurs only a couple of years later. The schooldays Morrissey recalls in The Headmaster Ritual (and ones many of you may have been familiar with) were already on their way out by the time the album Meat Is Murder was released.
But just because things change... it doesn't necessarily mean they get better.
I've never been anti-American. I grew up on American culture - Spider-Man and Springsteen, Motown and Moonlighting. For much of my youth, I felt more American than I did British. And considering the sorry state of the UK at the moment, I don't believe we're in any state to judge.
This isn't an anti-American post then. It's just an anti-American idiots post. Because the lunatics appear to be taking over the asylum once more, and given recent events, nothing's going to bar their way. "God" help us all.
It's been a particularly busy week and I've been worrying about the fact that I didn't have a post ready for today. I know that's ridiculous. It's really not worth worrying about...
As a follow-up to yesterday's post about the power of boredom, here are some song titles in similar vein. As we've got Barbra Streisand socking it to Ryan O'Neal above, in the 1979 movie The Main Event, I thought we'd let Babs kick off proceedings today...
That one was written by the songwriting team of Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen who also wrote a bunch of classic Frank Sinatra hits including High Hopes, Come Fly With Me and the majestic All The Way. Nothing boring about those guys.
Still, at least Babs only finds love boring. These guys are bored with pretty much everything...
I always admire a title that spills over onto the next line. The Front Bottoms are from New Jersey. Iffypedia explains their name, in case you can't work it out for yourself. They also quote singer Brian Sella: "This is our name. If you don't like it then you don't like it."
Next we have Jason Lytle, with a song he presumably wrote about The Supreme Leader of North Korea...
Blimey. What a bunch of bores. Still, as the aforementioned Manchester miserablist turned dubiously-opinionated bore once had it...
What really lies Beyond the constraints of my mind? Could it be the sea With fate mooning back at me? No, it's just more lock-jawed pop-stars Thicker than pig-shit Nothing to convey They're so scared to show intelligence It might smear their lovely career
King Cnut could not hold back the tide, and I cannot hold back society's full-throttle descent into dystopia. All I can do is watch helplessly from the sidelines, and nod my head sagely when others hold a mirror up to the madness.
We live on top of a moor looking down on the picturesque Yorkshire town jumped-up village of Holmfirth. By the way, before I begin today's rant, I discovered my first Holmfirth song earlier this week...
I do like folk music, but that's probably a bit too folky even for me. And it makes the town village sound even more yokely than Last of the Summer Wine managed, which is going some. We are way more cosmopolitan than the Watersons give us credit for. The police were called to investigate a couple of weekends back because some Huddersfield gangster fired a gun outside one of the local hostile-ries. They shut the road for over 24 hours while forensic teams combed the area for a bullet. I'm not sure they found it, but they probably found lots of dog shit. Clearly we're less sedate than Chatteris...
Car crime's low, gun crime's lower, The town hall band CD, it's a grower, You never hear of folk getting knocked on the bonce, Although there was a drive by shouting once.
Who knew there could be so many songs relating to this particular kind of social irritant?
Do I need to add much more? We live up on top of a moor, and though the road that passes our house is just a link connecting two main roads, the boy racers still love to floor their pedals as they pass us by. I'll never understand this, or why your car needs more than one exhaust pipe, or why you prefer a car that rumbles like a jackhammer. If my car made that kind of noise, I'd be taking it to the garage.
Anyway, the purpose of this post isn't just to whinge about boy racers. It's to highlight another excellent song by Wolves of Glendale. Be warned, I will probably find any excuse to feature this band over the next few months. Those of you who feel that comedy and popular music should never mix, feel free to look away now. The rest of you... well, all I can add is that Louise generally has very little time for much of the music I feature on this blog, but she loves this. Then again, she hates boy racers even more than I do. Here's a tip - don't switch it off until it's well past the 90 second mark...
Oh, would some
Power the gift give us To see ourselves
as others see us! It would from many
a blunder free us, And foolish
notion: What airs in dress
and gait would leave us, And even devotion!
So ends one of Robert Burns' most famous poems (well, the English translation of it anyway, which I'm sure will horrify some of you), in which Burns writes about seeing a louse crawling on a woman’s bonnet in church. At first
he’s disgusted by the sight, though by the end of the poem he turns more
philosophical. If we could see ourselves through other people’s eyes, he argues,
we would lose all our pretensions and realise that no one person is better than
anybody else…
Nice idea, Rabbie, but many of us spend far too much time
worrying about how other people see us. Welcome to FOPO – Fear of Other People’s
Opinions. Here’s a for instance…
Someone I know – we’ll call him Tiberius – finds it hard to
make small talk with colleagues or discuss his life outside work. He can handle
more formal discussions about work-related matters in a relaxed fashion, making
jokes when appropriate, and generally feels like his opinion and experience is
valued in those circumstances. But when everyone starts chatting about what
they did last night, what they’re doing at the weekend, what they’re watching
on TV or what music they like… he clams up. If someone raises a topic he has an
opinion on – say they mention a TV show he’s actually watched or a band he has
some knowledge of – he’s not afraid to chip in. What he won’t do is set the agenda.
He won’t mention a show nobody else has been talking about, and he certainly
won’t tell them he’s been out to see Craig Finn or Lucinda Williams over the
weekend. (In case you’re wondering, Tiberius goes to a lot of the same gigs I
do. We don’t go together because, to be honest, I find him rather tedious company.)
Why won’t Tiberius tell his colleagues about the great time
he had watching Craig or Lucinda? Why would he rather pretend he’s done nothing
at the weekend? Why won’t he ask them if anybody’s watching the final series of
Curb or if they saw Fargo Season 5 – the best one yet? Well, only Tiberius
would be able to answer those questions for sure. But here are a couple of
suggestions…
1. Tiberius doesn’t feel that his own life would be of interest
to anybody else. (There’s a huge irony here in that Tiberius spends a great
deal of his time chronicling said life on a blog that very few people read – I’m
not linking to it, to spare you the agony. But he does that, he claims, purely
for his own mental health, and it’s a bonus if other people read it, though he
really can’t understand why they would.)
2. Tiberius does not wish to be judged by his own interests
or opinions. If he tells people he watches Curb, they might think he’s a sociopathic
misanthropist like Larry David. And mentioning any kind of musical interest
outside the mainstream is a certain way of finding yourself stereotyped or
pigeon-holed, labelled and tagged. You like country music, Tiberius? Yee-haw!
You like ROCK? Do… I… need… to… talk… more… slowly… so… you… understand? You
like Taylor Swift too? Sad old man desperately trying to cling onto his youth
by appearing hip? Bruce Springsteen? I never liked Born In The USA… too
jingoistic for me. No, expressing any kind of musical preference just opens one up to stereotyping, prejudice and general all-purpose ignorance… and the last
thing Tiberius wants is to get into an argument defending his tastes… because
that would just make him look touchy.
Why does Tiberius care what other people think? To answer
that question, I turned to our old friend Mr. Google, who directed me towards psychologist
Michael Gervais at The Harvard Business Review. Gervais has written a couple of
articles that jumped out at me, one called How
to Stop Worrying About What Other People Think of You and one called Stop
Basing Your Self-Worth on Other People’s Opinions. The first of those is a
bit too Inspirational for me – it concludes by suggesting we tackle self-esteem
issues by cultivating our own “personal philosophy” or mission statement… but
then, this is The Harvard Business Review, and Gervais’s clients do include “world
record holders, Olympians, internationally acclaimed artists and musicians,
MVPs from every major sport, and Fortune 100 CEOs”… so what do you expect? (Clearly he's overcome any of his own self-esteem issues a long time ago.)
Still, best
not to consult Dr. Gervais if you're a mediocre loser like Tiberius. His article did
however reiterate something we’ve discussed here before – how the monkey brain
fears being ostracized by the “tribe”.
Unfortunately, FOPO is part of
the human condition since we’re operating with an ancient brain. A craving for
social approval made our ancestors cautious and savvy; thousands of years ago,
if the responsibility for the failed hunt fell on your shoulders, your place in
the tribe could be threatened. The desire to fit in and the paralyzing fear of
being disliked undermine our ability to pursue the lives we want to create.
The second article was more enlightening, particularly when
it discussed the core principles of self-worth, and how everybody judges
themselves by a different yardstick. For some, academic prowess trumps everything
else. For others, it’s physical appearance. It could be financial stability or sporting
ability or just being a nice, caring person… we all have an internal barometer
of success, and they’re all attuned to a slightly different wavelength. Which,
when you think about it, makes seeing ourselves through other people’s eyes a
bit of a non-starter. Someone with an athletically-attuned mindset might look
at Tiberius and think, you’re getting a bit flabby, mate, isn’t it time you hit
the gym? But if that doesn’t match Tiberius’s own metric… he'd rather people thought he was a good writer and a genuine human being... so what’s the point in
even trying to make a comparison?
Other people's lives Seem more interesting 'cause they ain't mine
Gervais gets to the crux of the matter when he discusses “externalising
your self-worth”, in other words, trying to conform to other people’s metrics.
Externalizing our self-worth,
when it works, can yield short-term benefits. We get emotionally and chemically
rewarded when we succeed. Our hypothalamus produces dopamine, often referred to
as the feel-good neurotransmitter. Our self-esteem gets lifted, leaving us
feeling safe, secure, and superior.
But dependency on external validation
and social approval has a dark alter ego that reveals itself over time because
outsourcing our self-worth undermines the basic human needs of competence,
autonomy, and relatedness.
Woah. There’s quite a lot to unpack there. I fear we may
have to return to Tiberius next week…
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