It's only taken me 15 years to work out that it's Tim Roth holding a camera on the cover of the Manic Street Preachers album Postcards from a Young Man. By my standards, that's pretty good.
Anyway, here are a bunch of artists that have nothing to do with either Tim or the Manics. But who are they, and how are they connected?
Richard Herring's question of the week, from his excellent book Emergency Questions...
What's the best museum you've ever been to?
Rich's answer to this is the Keswick Pencil Museum, which I have to say takes some beating. He's probably being sarcastic, although maybe not, because I'm sure he appreciates a good pencil like the rest of us. Having been there myself, I can highly recommend it.
The photo at the top of the page was taken in the Weston Park Museum in Sheffield, which was probably the first museum we ever took Sam to... but we still enjoy visiting it today. The woolly rhino is worth the price of admission on its own... or it would be, if admission wasn't free.
A more local museum that we still pop into from time to time, even though it'll only kill half an hour or so is the Tolson Musuem in Ravensknowle Hall, Huddersfield. There are a few old cars, an old trolleybus and... best of all, a horse that has been cut in half to reveal its skeleton. From one side, it's a horse, from the other... brrr!
The South Yorkshire Aircraft Museum has also become a regular summer stop for Sam and I. An excellent collection of old planes and helicopters, some that you can sit in and pretend you're a pilot.
I like a museum that allows you to step back in time and see the world as it was in days gone by. One of the best of these is Ryedale Folk Museum in North Yorkshire; it's like wandering around an old village and you can go into the old shops, farm buildings and cottages and really feel like you've gone back in time.
Finally, there's the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford - formerly known (back when I worked in the city) as the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television. They have lots of ever-changing interactive exhibits, but the best thing is the Hall of Mirrors. They were closed last year for extensive renovation, so I'm looking forward to seeing what's new in the summer holidays.
Having listed some of the best museums Sam and I have visited over the years, I still haven't answer Richard Herring's question. My favourite museum? Well, it'd have to be this one...
Do you know the history of the trench coat? What it represents and who it's for? What I want to know is who would want a coat So close to the floor? I went to the Trench Coat Museum to see 'em A thousand different cuts Like pelts from another dream Stuffed and bursting at the seams Cause I'm fishing for a theme If it's somewhere in between A day's honest graft and constantly fleeing the crime scene...
When I started the Celebrity Jukebox feature (and back then, it wasn't just for recently deceased stars), the idea was to measure a celebrity's fame or notoriety through the number of times they've popped up in pop lyrics.
With Brian Wilson, the cultural impact is beyond compare. Yes, you can hold up Elvis, or John Lennon maybe, Marilyn or James Dean, as icons who have had more songs written about them than Brian. But they were marquee names. Brian Wilson's marquee name was The Beach Boys. I haven't even looked to see how many songs there are that mention his band... but I'm betting there won't be as many as mention the man himself. What a legacy...
There were plenty more where they came from - as always, I listened to them so that you don't have to. And let's not forget the bands who took his name... although not in the best of taste sometimes. Still, fame is fame.
Best video today comes from Canadian musician Rich Aucoin. The title might seem inappropriate right now, until you realise the acronym stands for All Living Instantly Vanquish Everything. Which I can interpret as "Brian beats everyone" (even if he's dead)... though I'm happy to concede that might not have been Rich's interpretation. The video's a wonderful tribute to the life of the legend though.
These were just the songs that mention Brian in the title. There's a whole other post about lyrical name-drops... I bet you can hardly wait.
She was the primary teacher, you may recall, who insisted I drink my free school milk even when I told her I didn't drink milk because it made me throw up. And Mrs. Kaye never made me drink it last year! "Drink your milk," ordered Mrs. Tebb.
Maybe this set the tone of our relationship and explained why Mrs. Tebb didn't like me for the rest of the year. She thought she knew better than a 7 year old, but actually... guess what, Mrs. Tebb... sometimes you don't.
Then last week, while discussing knocking down walls in Emergency Questions, Alyson jogged my memory about another incident - one in which I was far more culpable - which cemented the animosity Mrs. Tebb felt towards me. The time I pushed Andrew Lodge through the classroom wall.
I'm pretty sure it was Andrew Lodge, but I might be wrong about that. Either way, my apologies to him. And my apologies for the time that he attended my birthday party and I threw a dart in his eye, almost blinding him. Believe it or not, Andrew Lodge was a good mate of mine in junior school. But these things happened.
Mrs. Tebb didn't have a classroom in the main school. She taught her class in a portacabin out in the school garden. It was a very nice portacabin in a very nice garden (we had school chickens too, provided by my mate Simon, whose dad was a chicken farmer). Far be it from me to suggest that the Head had arranged it that way to keep Mrs. Tebb away from Gen-Pop... or the other teachers... but if he had done that, I could easily understand why.
Anyway, as you entered the portacabin, there was a small cloak room, then a door that led into the main classroom. One morning, I was messing around with Andrew Lodge (or someone else whose name has been lost to antiquity, but Andrew Lodge is taking his place), playfighting, and... y'know, I had a bit of a temper when I was a kid, and maybe things got a bit out of hand... so I pushed Andrew Lodge straight through the cloakroom wall (which to be fair, was obviously made of an amalgam of tissue paper and spit) and into Mrs. Tebb's store-room.
Looking back, I'm starting to understand why Mrs. Tebb didn't like me. She was never going to teach me love, to quote Rockpile...
As actor, songwriter and game-show* host Alan Thicke once put it...
(*Not to mention being the father of that doofus Robin. He must be so proud.)
Now, the world don't move to the beat of just one drum What might be right for you, may not be right for some A man is born, he's a man of means Then along come two, they got nothing but their jeans
But they got, Diff'rent Strokes It takes, Diff'rent Strokes It takes, Diff'rent Strokes to move the world
Yes, Alan was the man behind the theme tune to popular 80s sitcom Diff'rent Strokes. You know the one...
And what Alan said was very true. But which of these diff'rent Strokes will rule your world? There's not many to choose from, but after last week's Odyssey epic, I figured I'd give you a break...
THE STROKES #1
I lament the fact that I can't find audio for our first Strokes and their 1979 single I Am A Plastic Carrier Bag... though I did find the lyrics, above. Sing them out loud and imagine what the tune went like. Or buy a copy of the 7" for £171 on discogs. One reviewer who has it heard tells us, "this seems like the cigarette ash of studio musicians rather than the fire and brimstone of underground visionaries."
The Strokes - I Am A Plastic Carrier Bag
STROKES #2
Tennessee's Vinny DeGeorge formed a band called Strokes in 1981. They started recording an album in New York, but only two songs were finished before their producer died. DeGeorge would go on to front a number of other bands, including Technical Difficulty, Jambox and Starfighter... he also wrote the music for a horror film called Night of the Living Dean (sic). And he's still gigging today, folks.
The Strokes most people know, New York post-punk revivalists Julian Casablancas, Albert Hammond Jr., Nick Valensi, Nikolai Fraiture, and Fabrizio Moretti. They got together in 1998, and their first EP led to a frantic bidding war among record companies. I hope the boys made a penny or two out of that.
These Strokes are apparently still together, though they're more often seen indulging in solo projects these days.
I was born too late for the 60s, but as I grew up and started to discover pop music (often through my sister's record collection), there were two bands that stood out for me. Two bands which came to define 60s music for me. Music that is timeless. Music that represents the very best pop could be.
For me then, the passing of Brian Wilson last week is very hard to process. Words don't seem adequate to express how I feel about the Beach Boys, and without Brian, the Beach Boys wouldn't have existed.
Brian Wilson envisioned a USA that anyone would want to live in. A land of sun and surf and love and promise. Bruce Springsteen recognised that, and carried on the work in many of his own songs. When I was a kid, I dreamed of living in their America. Of course, it's a myth... today more than ever. But I don't think the UK is any better. It's just the way the world is turning. And at least America had that myth to strive towards... the Britain I grew up in didn't even have that. Instead, we had a bitter hankering for the days of the Empire... or a justifiable guilt for the same. Today, I'd still choose to live in Brian Wilson's America if it were an option... I hope his heaven is just like that.
Back in 2012, I compiled My Top Ten Beach Boys Songs. I'd stand behind most of that list today. The Number One is indisputable. 13 years ago, I questioned whether it was "the greatest love song ever written". There is, of course, another contender to that title, that being my favourite song of all time. Objectively speaking, God Only Knows is probably even better than Wichita Lineman... but there's more to our favourites than objectivity. Still, God Only Knows is in my all time Top Ten... and this whole paragraph is the kind of nonsense a certain type of muso (myself included) spends far too much bandwidth worrying about.
If you should ever leave me
Well, life would still go on, believe me
The world could show nothing to me
So what good would living do me?
Rest in peace, Brian. You had a tough life, but a wonderful one. And your legacy is eternal...
Back in July 2021, we did an edition of Snapshots about song titles which featured the name of the singer or band performing them. It was high time for a sequel...
20. Like a Sonic Youth offshoot.
Ciccone Youth was a side-project of Sonic Youth. This is Louise Ciccone, first name...
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