Kylie Minogue featured in Saturday's quiz with the obvious selection of Kylie's Got A Crush On Us by BMX Bandits. I've probably confessed before to the fact that I bought Kylie's debut single back in 1988 even though I knew it wasn't very good. I was 16, Neighbours was on the TV every night when I got home from school, and Kylie was cool... even despite the insipid Stock Aitken Waterman production. I still think she's cool now - and should be praised for her longevity (Christmas Number One last year!).
Anyway, BMX Bandits wasn't my only choice for songs honouring Ms. Minogue. I could also have gone with this...
Another female pop diva whose records I obsessed over as a teen was Whitney. I'd still rate her second album as a pure pop classic. Then again, I've always been pretty insecure about voicing such things...
Janet Jackson, meanwhile, may be tainted by her brother's reputation... and that "shocking" incident at the Superbowl which got her cancelled for a time, while Justin Timberlake's reputation only soared. Sexist hypocrisy?
But it's back to the pop stars of our youth to close... and here's another lady who's it always been OK to admit to liking. My cool points remain intact.
Prepare to be chilled to the bone by the screaming wails of a right bunch of Banshees.
I'll be the first to admit that frequently this feature throws up a right load of old cobblers. This week is different though. There are some good ones. Honest!
THE BANSHEES #1
We start with these California high school students who formed a band called The Black Knights in 1962, changing their name to The Banshees two years later when they found a lead singer. They continued playing together, with some membership changes, throughout the 60s under a number of different names, including The Aerial, Kensington Forest and Gypsum Heaps.
From Belfast in 1965 - well, it's good to have some actual Irish Banshees on here, even if they sound more like they come from Nashville. Nothing wrong with that, of course. Male and female vocals provided by Dinkie O'Day and Mel Austin respectively, with Dave "Tiger" Taylor on bass. Grrr!
Released in June 1966, the only single from these Chicago-born Banshees sounds like it belongs ten years later. The term "proto-punk" is used in a couple of the texts I read, and it's clear this is considered quite an influential tune, even if it is their only surviving recording (except the b-side, which was a more typical 60s ballad). They broke up the following year.
Banshees traditionally herald the death of a loved one, so that could explain why Scottish folk singer Matt McGinn chose this particular backing band for his 1971 charity single, from which all proceeds were donated to the Lord Provost of Glasgow's Ibrox Disaster Fund.
The Banshees most people know come with the addition of one Susan Janet Ballion, aka Siouxsie Sioux... and in fact, she was the only constant member from their formation as a scrappy post-punk band in 1976 through their epic world-conquering goth-pop high in the late 80s / early 90s, to their eventual dissolution in 1996. To quote Paul Morley...
They sneaked hell into the pop charts, as well as a brittle, opulent heaven and a jarring lewdness. Considering their song topics included mental illness, medical terrors, surreal diseases, depraved urges, sinister intensity, unearthly energy, sexual abuse, childhood disturbances, sordid mysteries, unbearable nervous anxiety, fairytale fears, urban discontent and the bleak dignity of solitude, it was astonishing that they ended up as much as anything else a sublime singles band.
Whether they get your vote or not, I think we can all agree that they epitomise the Banshee ideal better than any other band here today.
Philadelphia Banshees who got together while at Uni back in 1992, then reunited 25 years later to have another go at it. I picked the track below because I figured it might resonate with some of you...
Liverpudlian Banshees formed in 2018, featuring singer/songwriter Vinny Pereira and guitarist Paul Anthony Holligan (not pictured).
"Harking back to the club scenes of the 90s - panic, punk and angst all mixed up into a journey of the mind." They sound a bit like Reverend & The Makers to me.
You can buy their full digital discography for just six quid on the Camp of Bands.
Inevitably, this week's Snapshots threw up a plethora of possibilities. Here's a few I couldn't find room for, starting with one about the lady above...
Those of you who are paying attention will realise that I also featured that song on Friday. It merits the double-exposure.
While we're with the girl groups, here's an important question to live your life by...
And I've got enough of these for another post, so that's Wednesday covered. Let's finish today with old Blog favourites Bowling For Soup, and a song about the biggest female pop star in the world right now...
Welcome, all you Divas, Single Ladies, Naughty Girls and... erm, Baby Boys. Whatever you class yourself as, you're welcome to another edition of Snapshots.
Take a look at the pictures below... say their names... then work out the connection between their songs.
15. Christ's sons' lay a band... that would cause a kerfuffle.
14. Poster boys.
13. Originally called Landscape: Noon.
12. Be happy in Italian, with Nina.
11. They gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives.
10. Part lion, part eagle - all Vicious.
9. Calendar Girls.
8. Often thought of as a Nancy boy.
7. Sand aggregates water.
6. They're not interested in your Bomber, your Burner, or your Chopper.
5. Go Wild, Hey-Billy-Poppa and Derek Dick.
4. What you talking about, Willis (junior)?
3. Sounds like a coal train for John and Andy in Tennessee.
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).
Instead of any of that funny business, I'd advise teenagers to enjoy a nice Crepe Suzette today. Because, yes, hard as it may be to believe, it's also National Crepe Suzette Day.
I was shocked by how many songs there were featuring Crepe Suzettes in the title... including offerings from Danny Kaye, Kenneth Williams and Cyril Watters with The New Century Orchestra. Thank God for The Descendents.
You may choose to wash your crepe suzette down with a nice beverage. Which is good because it's also National Beverage Day. The word "beverage" always reminds me of The Dude...
And what is The Dude's Beverage of choice, that he really doesn't want to spill?
A White Russian, of course... that's vodka, kahlúa and double cream (milk powder will apparently suffice if you don't have any cream) over ice.
Man cannot live on Bread alone, and that's a very good thing as there were far fewer bands named after our daily sandwich maker than you might expect... or, perhaps this is just what you'd expect.
I used to get upset when I could only find a couple of options for this feature... nowadays, I appreciate the breather. And I'm sure you do too.
Not much choice in the bread aisle then... there must be a shortage. I blame the Orange Crybaby.
BREAD #1
We start with some Swedish bread from 1967, using their loaf to mimic the Motown sound. The video features an extremely unimpressed Swedish pensioner in the audience for their impromptu street performance.
The thing I like most about doing this feature is that I learn something new every time. And today was the day I discovered that David Gates and Bread hailed from Tulsa, Memphis and LA... not Birkenhead, Birmingham and the Home Counties. I don't know why I always thought Bread were a British band - perhaps I was confusing them with Nigel Blackwell's least favourite 80s sitcom.
Apparently, the band chose the name Bread because a bread truck drove past the window just as they were scratching their heads wondering what to call themselves. They say they could just have easily have been called Bus or Telephone Pole.
There were some other Breads listed on discogs, including a rapper with a song called How Could I Die, which I was looking forward to featuring alongside a "brown bread" gag, but when I typed the title into the tube of you, I got redirected to The Samaritans again. And there was another hip hop Bread who would have won this week's best song title - "I Watched The Spy Kids Trilogy And Now I No Longer Fear Death" - but I couldn't find their tune anywhere. There were also way too many bands called Bread & Butter. And one called Breadbelly. But that's - mercifully - your lot this for week.
