When I say that, you probably picture an average garden shed, maybe 6 foot by 8 foot or a little bigger… well, let me stop you there. My dad was both a farmer and a joiner, so when he built a shed, it was often bigger than the average house, certainly big enough to house half a dozen cows for the winter or to store enough bales of hay to keep said cows fed while the grass wasn’t growing. Such incredible buildings regularly sprang from the earth as if by magic when I was growing up… and I took them in my stride.
The old barn, with mistel / cowshed attached. That was demolished when the barn was converted. Pictured is my nephew Gary, stood on the muck midden, and some random builder nicking the asbestos sheets from / mending the roof.
Wait, let me clarify that. My dad was in his early 60s back at this point, and had walked away from the car auction business. He’d started working as a joiner again, for my brother (the house builder of the family), but Dad didn’t have much of a pension and was worried about financial stability for his retirement years… so he decided to sell the big old rambling farmhouse I’d grown up in and downsize us all into the barn next door. He handled this conversion pretty much by himself (calling in my brother and a few other tradespeople for occasional assists) and within a year, the old hay loft I’d played hide and seek in as a child was now my teenage bedroom. It was a lot smaller than the house of my youth, but my brother and sister had long since flown the nest and my parents figured I’d soon follow (although that didn’t happen quite as soon as they’d expected). Anyway, with the barn out of action, other cattle sheds and hay storage buildings soon appeared to replace it… and again, I took it all for granted. Looking back now it seems miraculous, particularly given how much of this work my dad did on his own… with only the occasional assist from Mr. Bagley.
A memory came back to me earlier this week of a journey Dad took us on one misty Saturday… to buy a shed. For this expedition, he borrowed a truck from my brother, and drove me and my mum halfway across the country… I can’t remember exactly where, but it took a good few hours to get there. When we arrived, we met a man who was selling a huge wooden outbuilding that would soon become my dad’s joinery workshop (home to a table saw that would one day almost sever his thumb). This building must have been at least thirty feet long, by about ten feet wide. We set about dismantling it, piece by piece, then loaded it onto the back of the truck and drove it home. I’m guessing this would be some time in the mid-80s, so I’ve no idea how my dad found out about this shed for sale, in the pre-internet days… perhaps there was a classified ad in the back of the Farmers Guardian newspaper I picked up from the local Newsagents along with my weekly stash of comics. Likewise, I’ve no idea how much he paid for this enormous wooden edifice. All I remember is, he needed our help to get it on and off the truck. Beyond that – taking the shed down and reconstructing it on a long concrete foundation he poured and flattened a good three feet above the ground (with steps leading up to it, to keep it from flooding)… he did all that himself.
Some more random, ramshackle sheds I grew up around. Not pictured: the fancy joinery workshop shed
we travelled so far to buy. That replaced the hen-hut shed on the right of this picture.
Even as a six year old, I found little point to It's A Knockout. Surely I was the ideal target audience for a ridiculous game show about people dressed in ridiculously over-sized costumes trying to race and falling in water? But no, even at that age, I found myself thinking, "This is stupid". I'm convinced that the only person who really enjoyed It's A Knockout was Stuart Hall, and the less said about him, the better.
Back in 1996 though, it was still OK to name-drop him in a tune...
Brotherhood is back from their sabbatical
Dramatical and hit, we're here to take it all
Three rounds of verse, it's a knockout, Stuart Hall
The North Sea Scrolls was a 2011 collaboration between Luke Haines, Cathal Coughlan and Andrew Mueller. They only did one album, but if you like twisted 70s nostalgia or things that are mad as a fish driving a lorry, then it's a wonderful, wonderful record.
It's A Knockout was, as I'm sure you all know, based on the French game-show Jeux Sans Frontières. I'd argue that the only decent thing to come out of the whole sorry affair was the tune below, in which Peter Gabriel uses the show's puerile farce as a metaphor for world politics. Games Without Frontiers, with Kate Bush on backing vocals (she's the one who sings 'Jeux sans frontières'), is another classic from Gabriel... from an era when his albums took a bit of work. You come to those albums wanting every track to sound like Solsbury Hill, and when they don't it can be a little disappointing. Persevere though, and after a while a world of riches opens up.
Games Without Frontiers comes from his third eponymous album, one the record company knocked back as "commercial suicide"... until today's song started picking up airplay, when suddenly they became interested. That's when Gabriel told them to bog off and took his master tapes elsewhere. Games Without Frontiers went on to become his highest charting single in the UK (tying with Sledgehammer), so nyah nyah nyah to you ignorant record company bigwigs.
In 1985, Rosanna Arquette won the best supporting actress BAFTA for her role in Desperately Seeking Susan. I'm not suggesting this was made easier by the fact that her co-star wasn't really great shakes in the acting department... then again, Sean Penn was also in that movie, so Rosanna did have some competition.
Desperately Seeking Susan is a mistaken identity movie, based on the premise that someone might think Madonna and Rosanna are the same person because they wear the same jacket. Well, Mary Prankster has a few thoughts about that...
"Rosanna Arquette doesn't look like a thing like Madonna
And you'd have to be a moron
To desperately seek either one."
Rosanna Arquette also appeared in Pulp Fiction, After Hours, Crash and a bunch of other movies and TV shows. She also has a few famous siblings, meaning this might not be the last time an Arquette features here. However, her biggest claim to immortality surely comes from the fact that she inspired not one but two huge 80s songs.
The first is the most obvious. Rosanna was dating Toto keyboard player Steve Porcaro at the time this was written by the band's other keyboard player, David Paich, and sung by Bobby Kimball. Could have been awkward, although Paich claimed the song was actually about his old high school girlfriend and Not About Rosanna Arquette At All.
All I wanna do when I wake up in the morning is see your eyes
Rosanna, Rosanna
I never thought that a girl like you could ever care for me
Rosanna
All I wanna do in the middle of the evening is hold you tight
Rosanna, Rosanna
I didn't know you were looking for more than I could ever be
Soon after, Rosanna ended up in a relationship with Peter Gabriel. When director Cameron Crowe wanted to use a song from the album So in his movie Say Anything, Rosanna apparently persuaded Gabriel to let him have it. (Apparently Gabriel asked to see a rough cut of the movie first and was willing to let them use his song, although he didn't like the downbeat ending... but the production company had sent him the wrong film anyway.) All this led to a particularly iconic (and much parodied) scene featuring John Cusack and Ione Skye...
In your eyes
The light, the heat (in your eyes)
I am complete (in your eyes)
I see the doorway (in your eyes)
To a thousand churches (in your eyes)
The resolution (in your eyes)
Of all the fruitless searches (in your eyes)
The cognoscenti are convinced Gabriel wrote this song about Rosanna Arquette, although Pete has refused to Say Anything. Rosanna married film composer James Newton Howard the following year, So...
Not wanting to end on such a downbeat note, I found one more song that mentions Rosanna Arquette, by the French answer to Neil Hannon, Vincent Delerm. This is from his 2004 album, Kensington Square, although the title rather dates it. "Les filles de 1973 ont trente ans" translates as "The girls of 1973 are thirty years old". Well, next year, they'll be 50, Vincent. Will they still be wearing their bandanas and Rosanna Arquette Reeboks then? Let's hope so...
A Top Ten Frog songs to enjoy before we all croak. I'm glad to see you all Kermit yourself to answering these...
10. Samuel L. Jackson promises to leave before Bonnie gets home.
What, you never saw Pulp Fiction?
Jimmie: No, no, no, no, no, don't you ****ing realize, man, that if Bonnie comes home and finds a dead body in her house, I'm gonna get divorced? All right? No marriage counseling, no trial separation, I'm going to get ****ing divorced, okay? And I don't want to get ****ing divorced! Now man, you know, ****, I wanna help you, but I don't want to lose my wife doing it, all right?
Jules: Jimmie, Jimmie, she ain't gonna leave you--
Jimmie: Don't ****ing "Jimmie" me, Jules, okay?! Don't ****ing "Jimmie" me! There's nothing that you're gonna say that's gonna make me forget that I love my wife, is there?! Now look, you know, she comes home from work in about an hour and a half. Graveyard shift at the hospital. You gotta make some phone calls? You gotta call some people? Well, then do it! And then get the **** out of my house before she gets here!
Jules: Hey, that's Kool and the Gang. We don't wanna **** your shit up. All we wanna do is call my people and get them to bring us in, that's all.
Yes. That's Ian McShane. And Grace Jones. Together on track three of the Slave To The Rhythm album. Although, to be fair, Ian does most of the work, reading extracts from the biography of Jean-Paul Goude, the French artist who designed Jones's album sleeves and directed her videos.
I don't have much to say for myself at the moment. Maybe the cat's got my tongue. Or maybe I can only write the autobiographical side of this blog when things aren't going too well. It's certainly nice to not dread going to work anymore... though I could do without the killer commute. Perhaps I'll devote a few Cnut Songs to road rage and traffic jams...
In the meantime, that's Cosmo above. Longtime readers will remember when he was just a tiny kitten. Now he's a bit of a bruiser, prefers to be out rather than in ("Open this door!", he's saying in that picture), though he wasn't fond of last week's fireworks at all.
I don't know why, but I ended up listening to the first Peter Gabriel solo album a lot recently. I discovered Gabriel with So, so never really checked out any of his earlier long players until now. I wasn't sure about it at first, because musically it's all over the place. But slowly the disparate elements are growing on me. Perhaps my initial disappointment was down to the fact that I wanted ten tracks that sounded just like this one, surely one of the best singles of 1977, and one that never grows old.
This is the delightful Audrey Tautou, star of Amelie. Think up your own puns, I'm too tired.
Here are this week's answers...
10. Civil war soldiers refuse to sleep.
"The New Model Army of England was formed in 1645 by the Parliamentarians in the English Civil War." I'm ashamed to say I don't know much about history, but I read about these guys in one of Sam's books.
Thank you to C for suggesting this week's band... 14 Iced Bears. She says...
I couldn't tell you any of their songs any more unfortunately, although have vivid memories of ordering in their singles for some devoted indie fans at the time of their release and (in my head at least) being very disparaging about their chosen name. Now I think it's rather lovely!
I would like to back up C and proclaim that the 14 Iced Bears were awesome. Unfortunately, their sleeves were nothing to write home about. Perhaps the cover for The Importance Of Being Frank EP would suffice for art.
I'm not sure what that is above, Brian, but it was the one with the clearest 14 I could find.
Another relatively quiet week on the countdown, compared to the excesses of 16 and 17, although we're all just girding our loins in preparation for the Top Ten.
Here's what you had for me this wee, starting with Martin, who's still smarting from forgetting two Gene tracks last week...
Hats off to you Rol for putting this together as my brain is incapable of concentrating on anything at the moment. Yes, my choices above not really my thing, but fitted the brief. From the same source I have just found something called:
Interesting, as dance remakes of Welcome To The Pleasuredome go. The lyrics you quote don't appear to come from that track though, Alyson. They come from Love Song To The Earth by Sean Paul, featuring Natasha Bedingfield & Paul "anything to stay cred" McCartney. As C remarks, it's apt to the current world situation... but doesn't have any 14s in it, I'm afraid.
Time for Jim in Dubai, who also found it tough this week...
Those last two are definitely worth a click. I'll let you get back to your virtual queue now, RD... because I bet you're still stuck in it, 7 days after you left that xomment.
Lynchie appeared equally stuck for inspiration this week...
I couldn't think of any songs with 14 in the title but then I discovered...
...on which is voice sounds nothing like it did on "Tiptoe Through The Tulips". It's a pretty deep voice which led me to believe it might be an imposter. The lyrics kick off with:
Fourteen!
Fourteen girls in baggy pyjamas
What if I'd gone to the south Bahamas
...and just get weirder.
I'm only guessing here, but I don't think that's the same Tiny Tim. But thank you anyway.
Thankfully, the Swede is here to restore us to sanity...
...from The Impossible Bird. I think this is his best album, and that's saying something.
I seem to remember there was some discussion about this over at your place recently, Brian. I'd still always plump for Jesus of Cool, but those later albums are pretty special.
OK, time to scrape the dregs from my own hard-drive...
All of which brings us to this week's winner... and to be honest with you, I pretty much thought that Rigid Digit had walked away with it. I was all set to crown this the champion...
...until a final scour through the library shook out this little gem. Frankly, I'm ashamed to say I'd forgotten it... and a number of my regulars will probably share that same shame.
Take it away, Billy...
Unlucky for all of us, next week is 13. Not that we need any more bad luck at the moment. Suggestions, please...
Back after exam-related delays, we turn to Number 37 on our countdown, illustrated by an album cover that will throw the fear of god into many of our resident musos, but I couldn't find any decent bands with 37 in their names, so sorry about that. Here's the title track from the above album, along with a choice selection of the lyrics... which may well have me agreeing with the musos for once.
When you kiss her goodnight 37 times That ain't nothin' but love
It might also be a bit annoying, Ricky... especially if she just wants to get in the house and watch Celebrity Love Island. Have some consideration, sir.
Jim in Dubai was next to arrive, with two very strong contenders from my own record collection...
Well, Simon le Bon stayed round my house before And he was sick on the plants and he was sick on the floor And he wouldn't go home until he'd sung his song With a backing harmony from Paul Young
However, I think we're all in agreement over what this week's winning song should be... even if there's some debate over which version is best. Lynchie recommended the Dr. Hook original while Charity Chic and Alyson preferred the Marianne Faithful cover. Alyson was correct in spotting that the track in question has already featured on this blog as one of my old Mid-Life Crisis Songs.
Here's both versions so you can decide amongst yourselves...
