Continuing the tracklist of the 32nd in-car compilation I created to introduce my son Sam to as wide a variety of pop music as possible… this one from about 5 or 6 years ago, I’m guessing.
5. The Who - Won't Get Fooled Again
“Meet the new boss – same as the old boss.” Is that the best
line Pete Townsend ever wrote? I’d be tempted to say it ties with “I was born
with a plastic spoon in my mouth”. The line itself sounds anti-establishment
(indeed, I used it prominently in my old comic strip The Jock), but Townsend
himself is a conservative who apparently sneered at the hippy idealism of the
Woodstock generation because he didn’t think they’d do any better than the people in power.
“As an English teacher though…” I always try to argue that
there’s a clear divide between an author’s intent and the way readers choose to
interpret, and that the latter will generally become the accepted reading. The
only way to stop that happening is a) be blatantly transparent and leave no
room for ambiguity in your writing (boring!) or b) stop letting anyone read /
listen to it.
Rather than being an anti-establishment rant though, Won’t
Get Fooled Again speaks more to a cynical detachment from the whole political
process – a sense that whoever’s in charge, they’ll fuck it up or put their own
selfish needs ahead of the public at large. In that, it’s more appropriate
today than it ever was.
I’ve probably mentioned this before, but my Dad was never a fan of rock music. He’d be in his late 20s when rock ‘n’ roll broke, so too old for the teenage rebellion of it. He was a Frank Sinatra man through and through. But in his latter years, he came round to The Who, only because this – and a couple of their other hits – were used as theme tunes to the myriad of CSI shows he used to watch. He was less impressed with their Glastonbury performance in 2015 though – “bloody racket!”
6. Prince - Little Red Corvette
A few weeks back when I did the Snapshots about Synonyms For
Sex, I put Prince at the top of the page, because… well, every Prince song is
about sex in one way or another, and most of them don’t even try to disguise
the fact. (Despite Gett Off being in my Top 5 Prince songs, I don’t think I’ll
ever have the nerve to include it on one of Sam’s compilations… especially now
he’s knocking on the door of teenagerdom.)
Little Red Corvette is about a one-night stand, but it’s not
just a song about shagging. There’s an undercurrent of vulnerability,
awkwardness, embarrassment even that often made Prince’s sexy songs more
layered than a lot of 80s cock-rock records. And it also has that cheeky humour
that allowed Prince to get away with stuff other lyricists would have been
called out for.
I guess I should have known
By the way you parked your car sideways
That it wouldn’t last.
I love those opening lines. You’re hot, I’ll definitely
sleep with you, but there’s no way we’re having a meaningful relationship when
you can’t even park your car straight.
Despite all the barely-concealed euphemism in this song, I had no compunctions about including it on a compilation aimed at a seven-year-old, because… it’s a car song,
right? That’s all. Just a song about a car. And Sam’s favourite movie series when
he was little was Pixar’s Cars, so there were a lot of car songs on these CDs.
Plus, car songs are made for driving, right?
(I read a great article about Little Red Corvette while
compiling this piece. I could have quoted it extensively, but in the end I
decided just to post
a link.)
7. The Wedding Present - Kennedy
There aren’t many tracks on the early volumes which will impress the average Peel fan, but this was a good one
to get Sam into because of it’s catchy “too much apple pie” refrain. Can
you ever have too much apple pie? Clearly the answer is no… unless it’s
metaphorical apple pie… in which case…
I hate the phrase “I was today years old when I learned...” Hate it with a passion. Especially since I heard a DJ say it on ASDA FM this
morning. However, despite joyfully singing along to this tune for many, many
years, it was only today that I stopped to ask myself why David Gedge called it Kennedy. I just took it to be another Classic Wedding Present
Kitchen Sink Relationships Gone Wrong ™ Song. I didn’t ever consider that “And
now Harry's walked away with Johnny's wife” might actually be “And now Ari's
walked away with Johnny's wife”, that being Aristotle Onassis. And if you go
down that route, the subsequent lines, “But if Lee's name does come up, oh well, I really want to know” take us way beyond the regular Wedding Present milieu,
don’t they?
Too much apple pie, indeed.
8. Jackson Browne - Doctor My Eyes
Why didn’t you put the cover version by The Jackson 5 on, Rol? Surely that’s likely to be more appealing to your target audience than the original?
Hmm. Yeah. I s’pose. But it’s one of those times that the perky
little kid vocals grate on me. That’s not always the case with The Jacksons – I
won’t have a word said against ABC or I Want You Back – but it is here. And
besides, the lazy sunshiney Laurel Canyon vibe of early 70s Jackson Browne is
just too much for an old man to resist. Plus, for a song that the interweb
tells me is about disillusionment and loss of innocence, I’m not sure a
15-year-old vocalist can properly do it justice. Then again, Jackson Browne was
only 24 when he wrote this, so hardly a G.O.M. And maybe that ironic
juxtaposition was the point of the cover version. Or maybe Michael's Dad just
liked getting his kids to sing songs by other artists called Jackson (see also Blame
It On The Boogie).
It’s later than it seems…
