I am well know for being a little bit of a pedant. It comes with being an English teacher... and a blogger. But at least I've never written a pedantic song. Unlike these people...
Good on Weird Al for parodying the hideous Blurred Lines... and turning it into a pedantic rant about grammar crimes.
Say you got an "I","T" Followed by apostrophe, "s" Now what does that mean? You would not use "it's" in this case As a possessive It's a contraction What's a contraction? Well, it's the shortening of a word, or a group of words By the omission of a sound or letter
Kevin Barnes has a pedantic mate he really doesn't like...
He'd explain to you but it would take too long Why he is right and everybody else is wrong He'd endeavor friend to make your mind correct He'd try but he thinks it would take too long too long It's probably simple math That keeps him on his elevated path
Yes, I know I should have gone with Fred & Ginger. Or Louis & Ella. But I have a special fondness for the HCJr version, even though he's arguing with himself. Seriously though, have you EVER met anyone who says 'po-tah-toe'?
Scroobius Pip tells you how to live your life... and gets his knickers in a twist over how the Oxford English Dictionary spells the word 'phoenix'. (He's wrong though.)
I defy you to find a more pedantic songwriter than Nigel Blackwell. This is just one example... there are many more available.
I finally managed to reach the station Only to find that the bus replacement service had broken down After wondering to myself whether or not it should actually be called a train replacement service...
FJM gets rather bent out of shape about a lady friend's use of one particular word...
She says, like literally, music is the air she breathes And the malaprops make me want to fucking scream I wonder if she even knows what that word means Well, it's literally not that
He does have a point. Quite literally.
1. Barton Carroll - Past Tense
Barton's girlfriend dumps him when she gets her Master's Degree. She's a grammar nazi too. He's probably better off without her. But the strict ladies do make him weak at the knees...
Now if I ask what's wrong You say, "It's not you, it's me" And if I ask who's him? You say, "It's not him, it's he." My sentence composition is so far from refined My participles dangle Like a fish on a line
OK, my fellow pedants... which pedantic song did I miss out?
Thank you all for the kind words about my imminent sabbatical. I've never seen so many happy comments! Just to clarify though: I'm not going away completely. It'll just be one or two posts a week rather than five or six, until I've charged my batteries. In the meantime, we've reached #1 for June, so it's time for another song-based story. I originally titled this one Rockwell, which was a cleverer title, but Andy Williams has the far more obvious title. It was written nine years ago, so I've left the topical references as they were. I'm sure you can all remember George Bush Jr. What a great president he seems now, given the gift of Trumpian hindsight.
Anyway, today's story is about an age old quandary, and I'm not here to suggest any solutions, just tell the tale. I was amused to see some of the youtube comments about the "blatantly sexist" (from our present day perspective) video. The comments from men are often about how "feminists" will hate the video because of its portrayal of women. The comments from women tend to be more about how good the women in the video look and how all different kinds of body types were celebrated in days gone by. Make of that what you will.
1. Andy Williams - Music To Watch Girls By
Music To Watch Girls By / Rockwell
On Tuesday the 23rd of September, 2008, at precisely 10.45 in the morning, it happened. Every man on planet Earth went blind, and it all started with Dan. Daniel Tull, 27 years old, from Leeds, West Yorkshire. He was the first male to lose his eyesight completely – and then, in less time than it takes to butter a slice of toast, the blindness spread out from him like a shockwave. Like a bad CGI special effect, like the sudden blooming of a time-lapse stop-motion mushroom.
“Oh my god – this is like Day Of The Triffids, but for real, Keisha! What do you think’s gonna happen next?”
“Big tongued plants walking down the street zapping everyone with their evil phallic stamen, Jacs. Gotta be. Give it till nightfall, for the spores to start… sporing…”
Over in the corner of their Headingley flat, Lola sat shivering in that big, mouse-bitten sofa chair, the one they’d tried to throw out when they first got the place but hadn't been able to get down the stairs, even with the help of Jacqui’s ex, Ed. Lola was used to ignoring her housemates when they talked geek, a language she’d never taken at high school and could quite happily have gone the rest of her life without even hearing… but right now, she needed the distraction. Anything to take her mind off what she’d done.
“What are you two… on about?” she asked, pausing to clear her throat mid-question and stop her voice breaking like a spotty fourteen year-old lad. Like the ones who hung out around outside the Washeteria, shouting comments about her knickers through the glass as she dropped them into the machine.
“Classic John Wyndham novel—“
“Made into superior 1970’s BBC drama—“
“About an invasion of walking plants from another planet,” Lola’s housemates explained, tripping over themselves in their eagerness to engeek their normally geekproof sister.
“Before the Triffids attack, there’s this spectacular meteor shower which virtually everyone on the planet stays up to watch—“
“Only radiation from the meteor shower makes them all go blind—“
“Well, all the ones who watch it – there are some people who were either too pissed to get up, or living underground, or in hospital with bandages over their eyes or—“
“Just plain lucky, I suppose—“
“And they can still see, see—“
“A raggle-taggle group of survivors who lead the resistance battle against the Triffids until…”
Keisha scratched the stud on her left nostril and gave Jacqui a puzzled look. “What happens at the end?”
“I can’t… do the Triffids all catch, like, a cold or something?”
“No, you’re thinking of War of the Worlds.”
Jacqui and Keisha stared at each other, each scrunching their mouth over to one side of their face as a desperate-yet-futile memory retrieval aid.
“I can’t remember!”
“We should check the book out of the uni library, they’re bound to have it.”
“Unless someone’s already got it out.”
“Some boy?”
“–who can’t even read it anymore…”
On the television: more crashed airliners, derailed trains, motorway pile-ups. Kate Adie interviewing a brave Sir Trevor McDonald about his first hours without sight. Deputy Labour Leader Harriet Harman, standing in for the PM, urging everyone to remain calm.
“But it wasn’t just the men?” said Lola, sitting forward now but still hugging herself, still shivering, still semi-paralysed by the guilt. “It wasn’t just the men who went blind?” She was wearing what had become her uniform in recent weeks: a chunky Arran cardigan (despite the early Autumnal heatwave), baggy cargo pants, and heelless grey shoes. Her hair was cut short and not a lick of make-up tasted her face: the shadows round her eyes were entirely natural.
“No,” said Keisha, “in that regard, this is more like Y.”
“Oh yeah,” said Jacs, “very Y.”
“Why?” said Lola.
“Y, The Last Man,” Keisha explained. “Great comic—“
“Excellent comic—“
“Where all the men on earth are killed by this mysterious plague, except this one hot escape-artist bloke called Yorick, and his monkey—“
“Hot?” said Jacs. “You think Yorick’s hot?”
“Well, as pencil and ink cartoon drawings go—“
“Don’t you think that’s a little desperate, hon’?”
“What? Like you’ve never – little miss ‘I’ve Got A Puddle In My Pocket For John Constantine’!”
“Ahhh – get away from me – you said you’d never–! Not Keanu, let me make it quite clear, Lola – I never fantasised about Keanu!”
“Nobody fantasises about Keanu, Jacs. Even his fellow floorboards don’t get wood from Keanu—“
“How did it happen!?” said Lola, loud enough to make them both sit back in the collapsing sofa. On TV, George Bush was giving a speech about how Franklin Delano Roosevelt had served his country after being stricken with polio and Woodrow Wilson hadn’t let a series of severe strokes prevent him from seeing out his term in office, so nothing was going to stop him leading America in this time of international crisis. He did however question whether either of his potential successors were up to the job, and put it to the country that perhaps a change of leadership really wasn’t in the national interest at this time. ‘Perhaps this is a matter for the American people to decide,’ he concluded, before being led offstage by a disturbingly chipper Condoleezza Rice. The report cut to Hilary Clinton.
“The plague,” said Lola, when neither of her housemates seemed to understand the question, “in the story – what exactly caused all the men to die like that?”
“Oh,” said Keisha, “well, I reckon it was cloning. Once scientists had been able to successfully clone a human female, the entire male gender became obsolete – and in a Darwinian sense—“
“No way,” said Jacs, “it was the Culper Ring. Biological warfare gone way wrong, simple as that.”
“No, you see I prefer the interpretation that Gæa herself – the earth mother, who even in patriarchal Greek mythology is presented as a woman – chose to tackle head-on the infection blighting our planet—“
“Bollocks!” said Jacs.
“Exactly!” said Keisha.
“Wait a minute,” said Lola, “do you mean they never properly explained… I mean, there wasn’t actually a definitive—?“
“It’s open to interpretation,” said Jacs, “as so many things are in science and the natural…”
“So many of the theories on which we build our knowledge of the world are, in the end, unproven – it’s just, as yet, nobody’s been able to prove them wrong.”
Lola stared at them both for a very long time. It was the kind of stare that ruled out further conversation. Her eyes were tiny little bombs with the timers stuck on 00:01. The room held its breath.
Finally, Keisha broke. “Are you OK, Lol’? You look…”
“What about wishing?” said Lola, so quiet it was like listening to a mouse in another county. “Is there anything in any of your stories about wishing? Because that’s how it happened. They were always looking at me, wherever I went. Every day. Any time I stepped outside the house… I covered up, I stopped wearing anything that could be considered even remotely provocative… but still they kept on looking at me. Sometimes they’d try and be subtle about it, stealing glances as I walked by, watching my reflection in shop windows, rubbing their eyes but spying through the cracks in their fingers… but I always knew. I couldn’t go anywhere, do anything without…”
“People… looking at you?” said Jacs, her glasses making the frown in her eyes even bigger.
“Not – people,” said Lola, “not people – men! Men! Some of them were subtle, others… others were just so blatant! Staring – like, goggle-eyed, drooling…”
“Lols… you’re a pretty girl.”
“You’re a babe is what you…”
“I’d give my eye teeth to look like… and I don’t even know what my eye teeth are…”
“You say that that, yeah… but you’ve no idea. Neither of you. You don’t know what it’s been like for me, you don’t—“
“Yeah, well, we may not be total Heathers like you, Lols, but we do still get blokes eyeing us up, you know. Hard as that may be to—“
“Blokes really aren’t all that – I mean, I think they’re pre-programmed to pretty much ogle anything.”
“It’s genetic – really it’s back to that whole Darwinian—“
“You don’t see what I’m saying,” said Lola, “you don’t… This isn’t about me being a… I didn’t mean to compare myself to… I just meant, I caused all this. Don’t you see? I was in town this morning, and there was this guy off our course… Dan, Daniel something… guy with the glasses and that weird little moustache and…”
“Oh yeah, I know him—“
“I think he’s cute, actually—“
“Jacqui!!!”
“What? I do. I wouldn’t mind him staring at my—“
“I did it!” said Lola, shouting now to make them understand, standing up and using her hands and everything. “I caught him looking at me, even though I wasn’t even wearing anything remotely… He was watching me as I… Staring at me like I was an animal in the zoo or… and that’s when I did it. I wished. Don’t you see? I wished they’d all stop. Every single one of them. I closed my eyes and clicked my fucking heels and wished, harder than I’ve ever wished anything before in my whole fucking life… I wished they’d stop staring at me! And they did. All of them. At exactly quarter to eleven… they stopped. And now look what I’ve done…”
So I'm cutting back a little bit as of next week. There are a number of reasons for this, which I will now bore you with. I'll try to put a nice tune at the end of the post to liven things up a bit. Feel free to skip ahead to that now.
Last September, I upped the postings on this blog because I wanted to start writing about the songs I was listening to right now, rather than just the random tunes that were thrown up by my topic of the week. To keep with the blog's Top Ten theme, I decided to do a monthly Top Ten of the songs (new and old) that I was listening to that month. This was all very well until I also decided to kick off a few new series like Kenny Wednesdays / Randy Tuesdays, My Top Ten Songs I Hated When I Was A Kid and My Top ∞ Radio Songs. And suddenly I was writing almost a post a day and struggling to keep up (I don't know how JC and CC do it). Plus, I was finding that ten posts a month just on stuff I was listening to at that moment was proving a bit of a struggle... particularly as money's been pretty tight lately and I've only bought one new CD over the last 6 weeks (which hasn't arrived yet!). The (completely unnecessary) necessity of writing ten such posts a month was also preventing me from writing more of the posts I found myself enjoying (such as the series mentioned above, and some others I've had planned for ages but never found the time for... like The Top Ten Songs I Bought Because I Fancied The Singer, which will plumb new depths of embarrassment if I ever get round to it).
The obvious answer is just to drop the monthly Top Ten and concentrate on the other stuff, right? Except I know that if I do that, as soon as I get a new CD... or hear something on the radio that I haven't heard in years but brings back a particularly set of memories... I'll end up wanting to write about it.
Luckily, I think I've come up with a solution to all of this... but first, I need to take a breather. Summer's here and the time is right. I have a couple of weeks off work coming up, and I don't want to spend all my time sat at a computer screen. (Not when there's DIY to be done!*) So don't be surprised if there's tumbleweed blowing through these parts once July arrives. I'll be back. Eventually.
Like our very first Randy (Mr. Newman), the last on the list has made a successful career for himself in Hollywood composing scores for films such as Ghostbusters II, Twins, Kindergarten Cop, My Cousin Vinny and Vin Diesel's XXX. He even wrote the theme tune to MacGyver.
Prior to this, back in the 70s, he was a songwriter whose work was recorded by The Carpenters, Barry Manilow, Dionne Warwick and Olivia Newton-John, among others. He also had a big solo hit covering Unit 4+2's 60s hit Concrete & Clay.
But it's his lesser-known "hit" single (it just scraped the UK Top 30 in 1976) which has scarred itself onto my subconscious. To the point that I was truly amazed when so many of you failed to guess his identity. Really! How could you forget...?
10. Randy Edelman
Why do I love Uptown, Uptempo Woman so much? It fits my love of 70s piano balladeering, scratching my Billy Joel itch. It spins a moving, finely detailed yarn like Harry Chapin did so well. It's another Wogan song, I guess. It must be Terry who planted it in my brain. It tells a complete love story, from infatuation through to passion, cooling off to loathing. When the protagonist tries to leave, to avoid a bitter confrontation... that's the day his lady comes home early. Really, it breaks my heart. To me, it's a true story. I feel honest emotion every time I hear it.
I know. I'm weird.
Plus, it's got one of those lyrics that I always amusingly misunderstood as a kid. In the opening verse, when Randy first meets his Uptown, Uptempo Woman in New York, he tells us...
A thousand people crammed in one place But the only face was you I grabbed your hand and we raced out Hardly said a word I’d only seen you for a minute But I was roundin’ third
That last line is obviously the popular American romance/baseball metaphor, but I didn't hear it that way as a kid. I thought he actually sang, "But I was round in third" and I always wondered why he couldn't get his car up to fourth gear? Was his gearbox knackered? Was that a metaphor? No, no, don't spoil this song with innuendo too...
All of which brings us to the end of Randy Tuesdays. Thank you for sticking with it. I hope your favourite Randy had their moment of glory. I don't know what I'm doing next... or even if I am doing another one of these for the time being. Haven't made my mind up yet, and I'm going to be shaking things up here from July, probably cutting down the number of posts I wring out every week to give you all a break. We'll see.
That's Gary there. He's getting down to business, apparently. Like this. Kind of reminds me of Jermaine in Flight of the Conchords. It was Business Time For Him too. But only on a Wednesday.
When I were a lad, pop songs used to allude to matters sexual. Subtly. You know, like My Ding-A-Ling. Subtle. You listen to what the young people are listening to these days and they're doing it in the kitchen, in the hall, in the back of a Vauxhall Astra... they've got no shame. And they just come right out and say it! Where's the fun in that? Where's the phnarr? Honestly, things were so much better back in the day...
Anyway, here's ten songs that would have Kenneth Williams crying, "Matron!"
I'm really not sure I believe this one or if it's all just an internet myth, but apparently, the lyrics to Chain Reaction are really, really smutty. Barry? Maurice? Robin? DIANA!?
The opening to this song / video is puerile, offensive and ridiculous. I feel ashamed for admitting it makes me laugh every time I hear / see it. Actually, there's very little innuendo here, it's just pure smut. But Steven Tyler is such a rock star caricature, it's hard to be offended by it.
Mama's got a squeeze box She wears on her chest And when daddy comes home He never gets no rest 'Cause she's playing all night And the music's all right Mama's got a squeeze box Daddy never sleeps at night
From the same band who were just looking at their Pictures of Lily, nothing else.
Not one to use an innuendo when he can be Prince (Gett Off, Cream, Come, etc. etc. etc.), Chocolate Box is actually Prince at his most restrained. It's not about a box of chocolates.
I will hold my hand up and say that for years, I had absolutely no idea there was anything remotely sordid about this track. It's just about a traffic jam, isn't it? Isn't it?
David Gedge is on about a one night stand here, not an ice cream. And the perils of doing that when you've reached a certain age... or had too much beer, I guess.
He stole the title from a dodgy 60s farce, by the way...
One of those songs which got away with it for years because nobody really listened to what Alison was singing.
Show me one direction I will not question again For a warm injection Is all I need to calm the pain
What seed must I sow To replenish this barren land Teach me to harvest, I want you to grow in my hand Let's be optimistic, Let's say that we won't toil in vain If we pull together We'll never fall apart again...
Phew. Cold flannel, anyone?
1. Squeeze - Pullin' Mussels From A Shell
What goes on behind the chalets should stay behind the chalets.
Everybody knows that this is a nudge-nudge, wink-wink song... but have you EVER heard anyone use the title as innuendo in real life? Iffypedia tells us, "the phrase 'pulling mussels' is British slang for sexual intercourse, mainly used in England". Really? Not where I live, mate.
I have a load more big ones if anybody wants to see them.
