Saturday Snapshots #109 - The Answers

Nananana nananana nananana nananana... Answers!

10. Jimmy Nail loses a dollar to Elvis's bear on the lawn. And it all goes dark.

Jimmy Nail was Spender. Removed a $ and you get Pender... on the lawn makes Pender-grass.

Elvis sang Teddy Bear.

Teddy Pendergrass - Turn Off The Lights

Rub me down with some hot oils, babe...

9. A minor, candy coloured clown.

"A minor" is a chord.

The suffix "ette" means "relatively small size"... which would also related to a minor.

Roy Orbison sang about a candy coloured clown they call the Sandman who tiptoes to his room each night.

The Chordettes - Mr. Sandman

8. Elf with midlife gender change? That's preposterous!

Elf changes from L(ady) to M(an)? Unbelievable!

EMF - Unbelievable

7. Lost? Trust the window screen.

A window screen would be a blind.

Blind Faith - Can't Find My Way Home

6. Octogenarians die laughing.

Killing Joke - Eighties

5. The week starts early in central Venice.

Rialto is in central Venice.

Rialto - Monday Morning, 5.19

4. Occasionally breaking the Hammer rule, Benny's kung fu rating.

Benny Hill.

Dan is the ranking system used in martial arts.

MC Hammer said U Can't Touch This.

Dan Hill - Sometimes When We Touch

There is no such thing as a guilty pleasure.

3. No, it's Britain. For the time being, anyway. I'd avoid web & eat nymphet.

I'd avoid web & eat nymphet are anagrams.

David Bowie & The Pat Metheny Group - This Is Not America

(I loved Chris's idea that "I'd avoid web" suggested this wasn't from Spiders-era Bowie. I wish I could claim to have been smart enough to come up with that myself.)

2. Dick & Spencer - 2 blokes in a Lambo.

Dick & Spencer Tracy are 2 blokes - a chap and a man.

A Lambo goes very fast.

Tracy Chapman - Fast Car

1. Les quits top pop band after catching his reflection in the Gents.

If Les quit The Beatles, all you'd have left is The Beat.



More Snapshots next week - same Snap-time, same Snap-channel.

My Top Ten Shower Songs

Time to take a shower... oh, wait, there's already someone in there...


10. Stockard Channing - There Are Worse Things I Could Do

Stockard Channing could wait home every night and wait around for Mr. Right, take cold showers every day and waste her life away... but she chose not to. No wonder she ended up as First Lady in The West Wing.

9. Jane's Addiction - Standing In The Shower... Thinking

Frankly, Perry, there's a litte too much detail about what you get up to in the shower in this song.

That said, it's preferable to the shower story Julian Cope told in his autobiography, Head On. Anyone who's read that will, I'm sure, know what I'm referring to.

8. Lefty Frizzell- Shine, Shave, Shower (It's Saturday)

You may never have heard of him, but William Orville Frizzell is considered one of the most influentuial artists in the history of country music. He was a bit of a wild one too, by all accounts.

7. PWR BTTM - Dairy Queen

More high camp garage punk tomfoolery from these goofballs...

We can do our make up in the parking lot
We can get so famous that we both get shot
But right now
I'm in the shower

6. Sheena Easton - Modern Girl

Sheena fixes his coffee while he takes a shower. How modern.

No, I have no shame. You should know that by now.

5. Juliana Hatfield - Singing In The Shower

I apologise for being in the grip of my own desperately sad mid-life crisis. As I type these words, I find it awfully hard not to think about Juliana Hatfield singing in the shower.

4. Prince - Xtraloveable

Originally recorded in 1982, this track finally emerged 30 years later in two slightly different versions. This is the version taken from the last Prince album released in his lifetime, Hit n Run Phase 2, which I've been listening to quite a bit of late. It's pretty damned good, too.

If ever honey you need someone to take a shower with girl
Call me up and scream
Extra lovable, honey don't you wanna, don't you wanna
Take a bath with me?

3. The Smiths - The Headmaster Ritual

Morrissey has painful memories of P.E. lessons at school... don't we all?

Please excuse me from the gym
I've got this terrible cold coming on
He grabs and devours
Kicks me in the showers
and he grabs and devours
I wanna go home
I don't want to stay

2. Teddy Pendergrass - Turn Off The Lights

Lenny Henry based his character Theophilus P. Wildebeeste on Teddy Pendergrass (with a bit of Barry White). Tonight, Teddy's in a sexy mood... and when he is, he makes Prince look like a Benedictine Monk.

Let's take a shower, shower together, yeah
I'll wash your body and you'll wash mine, yeah
Rub me down in some hot oils, baby, yeah
And I'll do the same thing to you...

Eurrghh.

1. Jason Isbell - Songs That She Sang In The Shower

Jason Isbell has a new album out today. I'm waiting for my copy to arrive. I hope it's as good as his last one. What a storyteller...

On a lark
On a whim
I said there's two kinds of men in this world and you're neither of them

 

And his fist
Cut the smoke
I had an eighth of a second to wonder if he got the joke

 

And in the car
Headed home
She asked if I had considered the prospect of living alone

 

With a steak
Held to my eye
I had to summon the confidence needed to hear her goodbye 

And another brief chapter without any answers blew by

 

And the songs that she sang in the shower all ring in my ear
Like "Wish You Were Here"
How I wish you were here.

 

And experience robs me of hope
That she'll make it back home
So I'm stuck on my own
I'm stuck on my own

Who's in your shower?

Kenny Wednesday #2 - The Gambler

No, we're not back to Kenny Rogers. Not yet. (Although The Gambler is a great song.)

Instead, for the second Kenny Wednesday, I bring you... Kenny G!

(No, not that one. Yet.)

2. Kenny Gamble

This Kenny was one half of the legendary songwriting partnership Gamble & Huff. Kenny & Leon (Huff) also formed Motown rival Philadelphia International Records and pioneered the Philly sound. They're the men responsible for many, many classic soul standards, including If You Don't Know Me By Now, Backstabbers, Me & Mrs. Jones, Show You The Way To Go and When Will I See You Again?

But there are two Gamble & Huff compositions which stand out above all others to me, and I really couldn't choose between them... so I'm going to play you both...

The first one reminds me of being a teenager, when I was neck-deep in my first full-on Motown phase. It also reminds me of a teenage crush, unrequited love... you know the sort of thing. But this was the song which could turn that around. The rules were all right there in the lyrics, I just had to follow them one step at a time...

I'm gonna do all the things for you
A girl wants a man to do, oh baby
I'll sacrifice for you
I'll even do wrong for you, oh baby
Every minute, every hour
I'm gonna shower
You with love and affection
Look out it's comin' in your direction...

The restraining order still stands, thirty years later.

And then there's this, which I discovered quite a bit later. A charidee record, released in 1977 when the New York City dustbin men went on strike... it led on to a lot more socially-conscious work for Gamble & Huff, putting their money back into regenerating parts of Philadelphia to really clean up the ghettos Gamble grew up around...





That really is an All-Star line up: Teddy Pendergrass, Archie Bell, Billy Paul, The O'Jays, Dee Dee Sharp... and the peerless Lou Rawls doing that incredible spoken intro.