Despite buying both Stone Roses albums and a variety of the Primal Scream records he contributed to, I have to confess I knew very little about Gary Mounfield. Fortunately, I knew when it came to eulogising him that Swiss Adam would do a top job.
There's not much more I can add, except that when you think about the Stone Roses sound, so much of it clearly comes from the basslines. That must make Mani more important than a lot of bass players. Others will doubtless express that better than I can.
It's not a Stone Roses track I've chosen today though, it's this: one of my favourites from Primal Scream... and a tune very unlike the kind of thing I usually go for. Back in 1997 though, I was rather obsessed with it. And I reckon that's all down to Mani...
Last weekend, Louise and I had a bit of an argument. It wasn't a particularly important one, just one of the hundreds of squabbles most human beings living under the same roof as other human beings will subject themselves to over the course of the year. I can't even remember what it was about now, but at the time I was livid.
I'm kinda putting off tackling the subject of anger in this series, because it's a huge kettle of anchovies. I'm avoiding it because it looks like it'll be hard work... and those of you who read last week's post will realise that's rather counter-productive of me. Hey, I'm not claiming to be following my own advice all the time - take your "physician, heal thyself" comments and stick them where the sun don't shine.
Anyway, after the argument, I took myself off to stew in the living room. I hate any kind of disagreement, so will take the first opportunity to run away and do whatever I can to avoid it starting up again. This will usually involve not discussing the subject of the argument or anything else for as long as possible, since any form of communication might re-trigger the aggro. Some people might call this sulking. I prefer to term it Crisis Management.
After about a minute though, Louise came to find me. "Here we go again," I thought, at which point Louise said...
"Are you finding those new tuna tins hard to drain? I find they leave a ring and you have to press down and it doesn't get all the water out so you end up with really mushy tuna and..."
I'll spare you the rest, but it was as though our earlier disagreement hadn't even happened and instantly we were back to discussing the trivial annoyances of day to day living. Well, Louise was, anyway. Me... I find it much harder to reset my emotions like that.
In her immensely readable book Unf*ck Your Brain, the delightfully foul-mouthed Dr. Faith G, Harper tells us...
"Our emotions influence our thoughts and behaviours. They are meant to be a physiological signal to the rest of the brain. Once they have done their jobs, they are then meant to dissipate.
Do you know how long an emotion is actually meant to last?
90 seconds.
Seriously, just one and a half minutes for an emotion to run its course.
But you are calling "bullshit" right now, I know. Because if that were really the case, why do our emotions last hours, days, or years? 90 seconds? Not so much.
Emotions last longer than 90 seconds because we continue to fuel them with our thoughts. We do this by telling ourselves the same stories about the triggering situation over and over. This is when they stop being emotions and start becoming moods."
So how do we stop our 90 second emotions becoming full-on hissy fits, extended bouts of pout, or lock-yourself-in-the-toilet meltdowns?
The answer, according to the experts, presumably people who never experience more than 90 seconds of negative emotions at any one time, is to take control of our own feelings and become emotionally self-aware.
This all seems like a shed-load of work to me, but here's a few tips from Psychology Today about how to stop 90 seconds of upset ruining your entire day...
“Look at the second hand on a watch. As soon as you look at it, you’re now observing yourself having this physiological response instead of engaging with it. It will take less than 90 seconds, and you will feel better. Of course, you can always go back to thinking those thoughts that re-stimulate the loop. There’s probably a thought somewhere in your brain of somebody who did you wrong 20 years ago. Every time you think of that person it still starts that circuit. When things are getting hot and you’re getting hot-headed, look at your watch. It takes 90 seconds to dissipate that anger response.”
We keep coming back to this on Self-Help For Cynics. Make yourself aware of what your brain is doing as a first step to taking back control. But how easy is that to do in the heat of the moment when your brain is fired up with the matter at hand? I reckon it'll take practice.
Sweary Dr. Faith takes this idea one step further. She suggests facing your emotions head on. Sitting down and wallowing in them. relishing them, living them to their full potential.
Not avoiding them.
Not just putting up with them.
Actually grasping the nettle and saying to yourself, "Hey, I'm angry / frightened / sad / etc. right now. This is what it feels like. It might feel pretty awful, but I know it won't last, so let's just give it a bit of time, give it its space."
Again, hardly the easiest course of action - particularly for those of us who are Professional Conflict-Avoiders. But, Dr. Faith assures us...
"If you attend to what you're feeling, you get over it way more quickly than if you avoid it. I've noticed I'm bored with myself about three minutes into committing to sitting with my feeling for five. I'm ready to go make a cup of coffee, read a book, find the cookies I hid from myself, or do anything other than perserverate."
All this makes me think that the brain is like a small child that wants our attention when we're otherwise occupied. You can try to ignore the child's continued efforts to disrupt your day... or you can try to muddle along, balancing the thing you're doing with giving the child a bit of attention. Or you can drop everything and give the child your full attention - blatantly. "OK, I'm watching you... what are you doing? Can I watch you do that too? Show me more! Let me watch YOU!"
I've actually done this with Sam on occasion, and often he'll get bored with this sudden bout of hyper-attention and actually want to be left alone for a bit. The people in the know tells us that our brain will do exactly the same thing... if we give it the attention it craves.
If your relationship with Saturday Snapshots is a Love Story - then You Belong With Me.
Martin returned to the game this week and stole a victory from early birds Alyson & Charity Chic, who spent most of their time arguing over how to spell Labi Siffre. Chris remembered Nina Persson's other band, narrowly pipping Brian to the answer, who'd obviously had a very late night on Friday. Was that 1 a.m., Brian? You can still party like the young 'uns!
Lynchie has been missed these last few weeks though. Maybe he's got a Saturday morning paper round?
Shake It Off - it's time for this week's answers...
Turns out there are quite a few Route 66 Bands out there, most of them doing covers and tribute acts. But are there any "non-Route 66" 66 songs? Quite a few, as it turns out...
Rigid Digit throws in an extra 6 for Iron Maiden - The Number Of The Beast. Second Iron Maiden tune this month, but this one is PROPER metal, complete with a silly spoken intro. Class.
Over to Lynchie, who, until he gives the public what they demand and starts writing a blog of his own, is always welcome to contribute a paragraph or two to mine...
The best version of "Route 66" is to be found on the "Got Live If You Want It!" EP released in Summer 1965. Honest!
Back in 1999, I saw The Stones live for the last time. There were 2 stages - the main stage and a smaller one (which they crossed to via a small bridge - it was the Bridges to Babylon tour!) slap bang in the middle of the crowd . They blew the place away with the the small stage opener - "Route 66". It was righteous - like hearing them do their R&B stuff for the first time!
Onto 65 next week, and with no blatantly obvious contenders (unlike this week), it could be anybody's game. Your suggestions are welcome as always...
Probably the most famous example of using movie clips in a hit song... but if you strip them out, there's little else in Flash beyond John Deacon's bassline, Brian's typically OTT guitar solo... and, of course, Freddie belting out the chorus like he's strapped to a rocket hurtling into the sun. But it's the quotes that make this track... not least, Brian Blessed giving uncharacteristic understatement to the most famous line of his career: "GORDON'S ALIVE!"
If you're gonna sample movie dialogue, then at least steal from the best... in this case, Quentin Tarantino. Huey & co.'s breakthrough hit sampled numerous clips from two Tarantino classics: Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. The fact that both the movie dialogue - and Huey's lyrics - contained a variety of very bad language somehow wasn't a barrier to airplay... though the edited version did leave very little to the imagination.
Less a song, more a cobbling together of various tracks from the Batman soundtrack, this always divides both Prince and Batman fans (especially the latter who were expecting Tim Burton's 1989 movie to use Neil Hefti's famous 60s Batman theme tune). Being that I was a huge fan of both back in the day, I devoured Batdance on first hearing: bought the single, the album, the T-shirt... even went to the 6th Form fancy dress disco as the Joker with full face paint (not a good idea - my teenage acne went wild).
Listening back to it now, this track sounds utterly, utterly mental. Only Prince could have got away with it and made such a crazy concoction work in the way it does. The video is insane as well, featuring the kind of language and behaviour that again ONLY PRINCE WOULD GET AWAY WITH. There's even a bit where he appears to repeatedly shout "Get the fuck out!" but I'm reliably informed he says "funk", so that's OK. Incredibly, he took this infernal mishmash to #2 in the UK singles chart - and #1 in the States.
Partyman, from same album, is a much better song (though the video omits the Jack Nicholson quote that opened the original) but it wasn't anywhere near as big a hit.
The most famous BAD song features their most famous use of movie sampling - with a variety of quotes taken from Nic Roeg's movie Performance starring James Fox and Mick Jagger. Like many people, I used to believe the samples were Michael Caine dialogue... which made more sense of Einstein's equation, if you think about it.
This wasn't the only time BAD using movie sampling though - their entire debut album was peppered with film quotes, including The Good, The Bad & The Ugly; A Fistful of Dollars; and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
Some men you just can't reach. So you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it.
Well, he gets it.
I don't like it any more than you men.
Then again, I used to think that that Axl's closing question, "What's so civil about war, anyway?" was evidence of what a deep thinker he really is... so what do I know? Or Bono or Sting delivered that line, I'd be pissing myself...
The album version of Chumbawamba's biggest / only hit begins with a rousing clip from the movie Brassed Off, featuring the late, great Pete Postlethwaite giving it everything he's got.
The truth is, I thought it mattered. I thought that MUSIC mattered.
But does it bollocks! Not compared to how PEOPLE matter.
Sadly, the record company edited that off the single version and went straight into the whiskey drinks and lager drinks, making the song sound like an anthem for pissheads, which went down very nicely in the late 90s... but wasn't the band's intention at all.
We wanna be free - we wanna be free to do what we wanna do
And we wanna get loaded
And we wanna have a good time
Normally, this is the sort of thing that gets my back up, not being the biggest fan of either dance music or remixes. Credit where it's due though, Weatherall created a far more interesting record... one that virtually defined an era. More about that here, if you're interested.
Primal Scream & Andrew Weatherall pulled the same trick a few years later with Kowalski, sampling the movie Vanishing Point. Another great example of this sort of thing done right.
This post took longer than expected, but I'm pretty positive I missed out some other famous tracks featuring dialogue culled from movies. If you can think of any, do let me know in the comments.
Swiss Adam suggested the Primal Scream cover... pretty trippy... I always like it when the Scream go mental like this.
Nobody went for the other two versions in my record collection: Garland Jeffreys or The Inspiral Carpets, but both are worth the odd spin. (That organ solo must have been irresistible to Clint Boon!)
Once you start digging around on youtube, you can find all manner of treats, including Aretha, Iggy... even Bruce. But for me, it goes back to my first love. The version I first heard. The version I bought on 7" inch single back in 1990. Congrats to Alyson and Rigid Digit for guessing right this week.
Take it away, Hugh...
95's going to be a bit tougher to guess, I reckon. Any takers?
After flight, invisibility would be my super power of choice. Still, while I may never soar like a bird... lately there are times I do feel extremely invisible.
When I started planning this post, I felt sure there'd be space for Genesis - Invisible Touch and The Police - Invisible Sun. And you know me, usually I'd have no shame about such inclusions. However, neither really made the grade this time round. Apologies to Sting and Phil Collins fans. You must feel just awful.(Heh.)
This year's "new" Bruce album turned out to be a bit of a contract filler, containing a bunch of songs left over from his last LP and some re-recordings of earlier stuff (the new, rockier version of The Ghost of Tom Joad was arguably better than the original).
Therefore, because Bruce didn't have to spend any time writing new material, he chose instead to become an actor and filmmaker. The internet seems divided on whether that was a sensible move or not. For all its fancy filmmaking, this feels like a Bon Jovi video. And hey, I have nothing against Jon Bon... but Bruce has always been a step above.
Bobby Gillespie goes for a wander round town and chronicles the charming inhabitants he encounters along the way...
Flashing lights, police cars Polysexual gutter stars Brutal stares, skinhead crops The corner boys look like their dogs Kebab shops, pubs and mosques Lapdancing clubs, synagogues Police stations, crack house zombies Readers' wives, suburban orgies Pissed up girls, Kia-Ora tans Mini skirts, one night stands Up the duff, sun bed thighs Missing father all their lives Rain wet streets Hallucination, stretched faces Like a Bacon painting...
Another song about growing old. I've been listening to a lot of these lately, for some reason...
There was a time I though every hair on my body was alive Yes it was Now you can't even see The grey and the dye I'm not one to give up But I feel I'm at a loss
No Grecian 2000 here... just in case you were wondering.
There are a lot of crass numpties comparing Alison Moyet to Adele purely because both have enjoyed huge success despite not being stick insect thin... or taking their clothes off all the time in their videos. There's even a ridiculous internet rumour going around that Alison is Adele's mum. Sometimes, people are just too stupid to be allowed to draw breath.
Anyway, Alison Moyet - what a voice! It's a shame that the 80s production makes some of her best records sound a little tinny to modern ears, but Invisible is still a classic.
Remembered fondly from the height of my Queen-addicted adolescence, this one owes much to John Deacon's throbbing bassline... ironic as, in many ways, Deacon was (and remains) the Invisible Man of the group. Also featuring an amazingly tacky computer-game influenced video that could only have been made in the 80s. Amazingly, Freddie makes those sub-Max Headroom shades look cool.
The title comes from Stephen King's The Stand. The song: an epic, building behemoth of jangling guitars and angry lyrics that express teenage frustration and alienation perfectly.
1. Elvis Costello - The Invisible Man
One of my all-time favourite Costello songs, from his finest album (imho). Not being one to include lyric sheets with his earlier records, I spent a fair amount of my teenage years with headphones glued on, puzzling over the playful intricacies of Elvis's songwriting. The Invisible Man is a pretty straightforward idea in which Mr. C is cast as The Invisible Man because, as the fade out lyric explains "Now you won't see me..." It's the lyrics prior to this that gave me the most joy though, particularly the glorious chorus...
But if stars are only painted on the ceiling above Then who can you turn to
and who do you love? I want to get out while I still can I want to be
like Harry Houdini Now I'm the invisible man
And then there's the backing - thundering piano rolls from Steve Nieve and the powerfully uplifting sound of the TKO Horns who backed much of this record and made it the brightest and most life-affirming in the Costello canon...
Can you see me? Do you hear me? Will you leave a comment so I don't feel quite so invisible today...
Strictly speaking, this shouldn't be allowed because of the homophone. However, I'm going to bend the rules and allow it because...
i) The opening lyric, wherein Kurtis raps about "brakes on a bus, brakes on a car".
ii) It's freakin' amazing.
Fans of 6Music will hear this song quite a lot. Even though it's 34 years old and was never a hit, breakfast show presenter Shaun Keaveny plays it about once a week.
Proper musos and indie kids will be horrified that this fares better than Joy Division and Primal Scream. I am an odd music fan, aren't I?
Anyway, I was amused to read that while this record was a big hit across the world, it failed to chart in the band's home country (the UK) because of a distribution problem caused by the record company. D'oh. Incredibly, despite being one hit wonders, Sniff 'n' The Tears appear to still be semi-active. Their last album was released in 2011.
Shows what an innocent child I was... I had no idea, until a few weeks ago, just how filthy this song is. I actually thought it was about a long black limousine pulling up to Grace's bumper and then... erm... driving inbetween.
On which Marshall "apologises" to his mum for all the nasty things he's rapped about her over the years. And who knew the bloke from Fun was Marshall's brother?
How about that - a two-fer at #2! Two genuine Jim Steinman epics, one from the original Bat Out Of Hell album, the other from its underrated sequel.
I've written about Paradise... before (I even gave it a much-deserved Number One) so here's a few words about Objects... or OITRM(MACTTA) if you're into that whole brevity thing:
Wow.
Amazing.
Tragic.
Haunting.
Heartbreaking.
And when the sun descended and the night arose
I heard my father cursing everyone he knows
He was dangerous and drunk and defeated
And corroded by failure and envy and hate
If this song doesn't tear your heart out like a Thuggee priest, then you just don't get the Steinman / Meat Loaf combo at their mad and melodramatic best.
She used her body just like a bandage,
She used my body just like a wound
I'll probably never know where she disappeared
But I can see her rising up out of the back seat now
Just like an angel rising up from a tomb
Make no mistake about it: that is superior songwriting in action.
1. Johnny Cash - One Piece At A Time
And yet, much as I love those last two records, much as I'd sell my soul to the devil for a Jim & Meat double-decker, I had to give this week's Number One to Johnny as he steals an entire Cadillac from the General Motors factory in his lunchbox... one piece at a time. Over a number of years.
What could possibly go wrong with that plan?
Now up to now my plan went alright 'Til we tried to put it all together one night And that's when we noticed that something was definitely wrong The transmission was a '53 and The motor turned out to be a '73 and When we tried to put in the bolts all the holes were gone
Someone actually built a working model of the car Johnny describes in this song - it's pictured below.
Leave a comment if you think you can do better than a Kwik Fit Fitter...
I don't approve of the band name, but the Morrissey-esque lyrics made me a fan...
Stay there for the whole day if you must.
May the seagulls take you,
Well, I don't mind.
Stay there for the whole day, you're not getting paid anyway.
Were getting tired of your antics,
Well, so am I.
Despite the fact that this song begins with Steve banging a bunch of pan lids in his kitchen... it's still a classic.
Various misheard mondegreens exist for this record, including "Bake me a pie of love", "Baked beans on high or low" and, my personal favourite, "Bring me an iron lung".
1. Jackie Wilson - (Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher & Higher
Now once, I was downhearted Disappointment was my closest friend...
Those were my higher loves (or iron lungs)... but which one takes you higher?
