This is the late River Phoenix. I was going to put his picture up here yesterday, but I figured it'd make the link too easy. I have to be so careful with you guys. Instead, I went with Mr. Bragg because...
Welcome back to the feature where distinguished members of the blogosphere decide whether certain dodgy-opinion-voicing records of the past deserve to be cast into Room 101 (or sent into exile, which as I'm sure you'll know, if you've read 1984 rather than just watched the BBC show with that name, is a very different thing).
After last month's weighty debate about whether domestic abuse should be excused via the medium of popular song, I thought I'd choose something a bit lighter this month. Of course, the danger of that was that nobody would have much of an opinion either way... or, as Swiss Adam put it, "I can't really come up with anything for Mungo Jerry - I'm pretty ambivalent about it."
Membership of the Cancel Culture Club is on an unpaid, and entirely voluntary basis. So if you ain't got no opinion, you are fully entitled to say that and watch the tumbleweed blow across your screen. But before we see if anyone did have strong feelings one way or t'other, let's remind ourselves of this month's defendant...
When I initially searched the web for "songs that should be cancelled", this was one that initially had me scratching my head. A radio staple from my youth - what could possibly cause offence?
I'd almost forgotten about this one, sorry! But I think it's because 'In The Summertime' doesn't elicit any strong response in me other than the memories of hearing this so much as a kid and being mesmerised by Ray Dorset's sideburns on ToTP performances. I'd never seen anyone like him. I've never really given it much thought other than to accept it as one of those catchy, singalong, happy sounding songs, part of the soundtrack to my childhood. And, apologies, but to use words that come up so frequently in this series, it's another one of those that's very of its time. Maybe we're being more conditioned to take things literally now, but to me this song is just too lightweight for the lyrics to be of concern that way.
Therefore - yes, it references drinking and driving, it's laddish and hedonistic, but it's just not a song to be taken seriously on any level. so I wouldn't cancel it.
I'd cancel his sideburns, but that's just me.
(I think their follow-up 'Baby Jump' may give more cause for alarm - although it's a great grungey track!)
Anyway, back to In The Summertime. I was just about to draw the shutters down on this particularly uninspiring edition of the Cancel Culture Club when a last minute missive flopped through my virtual letterbox. And boy oh boy... it was a doozy.
There are a lot of things wrong with ‘In the Summertime’. Obviously, there are the lyrics, but I’ll come back to them. But before all that, you’ve got the awful plinky plonky piano nonsense that is trundling along in the background and the stupid noises that Ray Dorset makes across the song and all his grunts and groans that make it sound like he is dry humping his pillow during the closing bits of the song – all that I suppose is bad enough to cancel not only this song, but the band, their entire back catalogue and most of the seventies with it. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if ‘In The summetime’ erm, popped up in one of those awful ‘Confessions…’ films starring Robin Asquith.
Anyway, let’s look at the lyrics, which were, even 50 years ago, depressingly stalkerish. You can imagine some crazed sex offender playing this track as he packed his little rape kit up and stuck it in the back of his Ford Anglia.
It starts, ok:
In the summertime, when the weather is high
You can stretch right up and touch the sky.
There is not much wrong with that to be fair, although I’m not sure how weather can be high, but we can skip over that. It’s the, well, rest of it that is a bit squirmy.
When the weather's fine
You got women, you got women on your mind
Have a drink, have a drive
Go out and see what you can find
Hmm, women on your mind, eh, well we’ve probably all been there, but have a drink, have a drive, go out and see what you can find…. I’ll refer you back to my line about the crazed sex offender and his Ford Anglia. It, unbelievably, gets worse.
If her daddy's rich, take her out for a meal,
If her daddy's poor, just do what you feel.
Speed along the lane, do a ton or a ton and twenty-five.
When the sun goes down
You can make it, make it good in a lay-by
So….Ray….rich girls, needs to be spoiled, before they let you have your wicked way, but those poor working class lasses, well they’ll probably put out for 50p and a bag of grapes, right??!?
You can tell he's the South West Correspondent. "Bag of grapes"? How posh is that. It'd be a bag of chips where I come from, lad.
Personally, I'm always impressed that they managed to get the word "lay-by" into a song, with all its sordid connotations. I was going to look if I could find any songs about dogging, but I decided to not risk putting that term into my search engine.
But not content with a planned molesting of a some really unfortunate female, you are also going to scare the life out of her by driving at a hundred and twenty fives miles a hour, after ‘having a drink’ and then pull into some layby for a bit of how’s your father…I’ll refer you back to my comment about Robin Asquith…
But its ok, folks, because Ray has a philosophy….Oh goody.
We're not grey people, we're not dirty, we're not mean.
We love everybody, but we do as we please.
When the weather's fine, we go fishing or go swimming in the sea.
We're always happy, life's for living
Yeah, that's our philosophy
Not quite sure which school of philosophy that comes from, possible Foucault and his Idea of Top Down Coercion or maybe Kant’s lesser known Theory of Blatant Misogynistic Bollocks.
Ray – love – you are grey, you are dirty and you are pretty mean. I don’t care if you love everybody, you really can’t do as you please, not now, not then. That’s why Dave Lee Travis can’t be on the radio anymore, he had that attitude and it wasn’t cool. Stick to your fishing and your swimming, at least then might get washed away by a rogue tidal wave.
Ah, I do love a good rant. They're the very oxygen this feature lives by. So thank you to SWC for that - and the rest of you, with your mild ambivalence: look what you're missing.
We might do another one of these next month. Or this might really be the last gasp. That's my philosophy.
Continuing the trawl through another of the randomly selected (by Martin) in-car CDs I created to ensure my song had a decent knowledge of popular music before he got too old to listen to his Dad's crap...
Track 8: The Lemonheads - Alison's Starting To Happen
Over at No
Badger Required, the esteemed gentleman known as SWC has been counting down
Rock’s Greatest artists beginning with the letter E. All his
blogging chums were asked to vote, and naturally a lot of my own choices fell
by the wayside (I didn’t expect the Eagles to make it into the Top 20, but I
was generally wounded by one voter's opinion that ELO were "the worst band in the world…
apart from Queen"). Still, such is the nature of democracy… which goes a long
way towards explaining why Donald Trump has been elected President of the USA
twice, while Bruce Springsteen hasn’t even been nominated. Whenever SWC asks
for my votes, I always feel unworthy of giving them, like I’m being invited to
play for the school football team only so that the jocks can have a good laugh
at my expense. But enough of my insecurities… what does all this have to do
with the Lemonheads?
Well, Mr. L-Head himself, Evan Dando, got enough votes to
make #12 on the list, though I doubt that was for his one solo album, Baby I’m
Bored, released in 2003… chances are it had far more to do with his band.
Sadly, his high ranking in the list arrived shortly after a sordid news report
revealed that Evan had been checked into a mental health hospital following
sexually inappropriate behaviour via video messaging. In light of that, SWC
took the decision to suspend any celebration of Mr. Dando’s work… and while I
understand that completely… for the benefit of this feature, art will
always be separate from artists. Which I’ll remind you all when the Manchester
Miserabilist makes an inevitable appearance at some point in the future.
Alison’s Starting To Happen was one of many stand-out tracks
on the Lemonheads’ breakthrough album, It’s A Shame About Ray, released in
1992. I played that CD till the paint wore off back in the day, and I’ll still
be playing it even if they never let Evan out of the nuthouse. (As someone who
works in the field of mental health, I feel qualified to use that term in
ironic fashion without any offence being intended.) If you’d asked me before
today, I’d have told you that Alison… was the lead single. Pff – shows what I
know. It was never released as a single. Well, it should have been.
Track 9: Lobo - Me & You & A Dog Named Boo
When evaluating these CDs, you must keep in mind that my aim was to engage a youngster. Although I’ve kept a spreadsheet (Alyson will be
proud) of the track-list of every CD I’ve created (to prevent repetition), it
doesn’t contain the date I brought them into the world. I’m guessing Sam would have
been about 8 or 9 when I made this one, so a song called Me & You
& A Dog Named Boo would surely appeal? I wonder if it coincided with us
getting our own dog, Bertie? Possibly not, CD87 probably came first.
Lobo’s real name was Roland Kent LaVoie and he started out
in a band called The Rumours, playing alongside Gram Parsons and Jim ‘Spiders
& Snakes’ Stafford. He also played in bands called US Male, The Uglies, and
the Other Guys… all of which I’ve added to my Namesakes to-do list. He enjoyed
a fair bit of success in the early 70s on both sides of the pond, and although
that faded as the 80s approached, he would later become inexplicably popular in
Asia, so I guess the bills were still paid.
Track 10: Dave Berry - Little Things
I’ve no idea why I included this one – it’s not really a
favourite, and pretty forgotten when it comes to 60s hits. It’s a jaunty enough
little number, raised above the average for me by the “You know…” refrain. But there are far better songs on CD 175, which I’m just putting the finishing
touches to. Maybe I’d heard it on the radio at the time or something.
Dave Berry came from Sheffield, and had a short run of hits
in the mid-60s, starting with a cover of Chuck Berry’s Memphis, Tennessee…
which was the only time that song ever made it into the UK charts. Frankly,
that’s scandalous because the Chuck Berry version should have been Number One
for a year.
Little Things was one of Dave’s three biggest hits – the other two being The Crying Game and Mama. They all reached #5. Bobby Goldsboro wrote and recorded the original Little Things, a Top 20 hit in the States the same year Dave took it into the UK Top Ten.
Dave was no relation to Chuck, Mike or Nick. Actually, his real name was David Holgate Grundy, but as far as I can tell he’s not related to Bill or Solomon either. Iffypedia tells me that whenever he appeared on TV, he attempted to perform with his face hidden, “to stay behind something and not come out" – his upturned collar and the microphone stand are mentioned as props used to achieve this unlikely end.
He also runs an antique shop. Or he did. He's 87 now, so hopefully taking it easy.
Track 11: The Kinks – Apeman
I don’t think the mix is particularly great on this CD –
after a solid run of 80s and 90s tunes, there’s a big chunk of older songs in
the middle. I normally prefer to jump between the eras a bit more… I wonder if
this particular CD was a little rushed, with not enough attention paid to
balance?
Anyway, you can’t go wrong with The Kinks, and Apeman is
bound to appeal to kids with its silly, singalong chorus. Like a lot of Ray
Davies’ more offbeat hits, it seems throwaway at first, but its message is more
profound than you expect… and just as relevant today as it was back then.
I think I'm so educated and I'm so civilized 'Cause I'm a strict vegetarian But with the over-population and inflation and starvation And the crazy politicians I don't feel safe in this world no more I don't want to die in a nuclear war I want to sail away to a distant shore and make like an
apeman
Apeman was the follow-up single to Lola in 1970, and it
appeared on the 8th Kinks album, Lola Versus Powerman and the
Moneygoround, Part One, which is surely in the upper echelon of album titles.
In 2018, the Daily Torygraph apparently judged it the second
greatest Kinks song, with one proviso: “Although the reggae-infused piano on
the track is still delicious more than 40 years later, the combination of Ray
Davies's faux-Caribbean accent and his 'apeman' references are not exactly
politically correct these days.” Any thoughts on that from the Cancel Culture
Club Committee?
Not sure how the fur coats from the video would be received these days either...
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