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.
I must apologise for being largely absent from the blogosphere over the summer, beyond Snapshots and Namesakes. I've been busy, and even now that I'm back in the normal routine, I'm not sure I have the energy. Bit of an existential blogging crisis. We have them from time to time, don't we?
Last week, we were in Wales, where I received my first speeding ticket in 34 years of driving. This was for going 26 mph in a 20 zone that appeared out of nowhere (the road went from 60mph to 20mph on a country lane with no buildings or pedestrians, just fields on either side of the road). It seems that the Welsh police are out to raise as much money as possible from unsuspecting incomers... but I'm not sure what this will do to the tourism economy. I doubt I'll be speeding to get back there any time soon.
Did have a nice visit to Portmeirion though...
Normal service may or may not be resumed, but in the meantime, here's a few songs about speed...
Tiberius isn't on Snappychat or Instagrass or any of the newer-fangled social networking sites. He checks in with the Book of Faces once or twice a day, mostly to keep up with old friends, drop the occasional witticism and play along with the daily quizzes one or two of his more eccentric peers post. And he quit Tweeter (which he'd rarely used anyway) when Elon Musk turned it into a dystopian autocracy named after an LA band featuring Exene Cervenka, John Doe, Billy Zoom and D. J. Bonebrake.
“If I went an hour without my phone, I would be really stressed.”
“I was talking to people online when I was ten.”
“I would much rather have been born in the Eighties. I would have been working a lot harder.”
“You get a buzz if someone likes your comment. So a phone does give you quite a lot of validation, which is unhealthy in large doses – but it does feel good.”
That last one brings us back to Tiberius. Because, as previously mentioned, Tiberius does write a blog. Something which he claims he only does as a way of relaxing and focusing his mind on his two main interests - music and writing. Tiberius frequently states that he does this purely for himself, that it doesn't matter if other people read his witterings or leave an agreeable comment, and yet... and yet...
Remember our discussion about the benefits and pitfalls of writing?
Remember our brief look at that wonderful feel-good brain chemical dopamine?
According to Dr. Anna Lembke of Stanford University’s dual diagnosis addiction clinic, we are all dopamine addicts when it comes to social media (and that must include blogging). According to the Grauniad...
She calls the smartphone the “modern-day hypodermic needle”: we turn to it for quick hits, seeking attention, validation and distraction with each swipe, like and tweet.
(I couldn't resist slipping that one in. I know: I'm beyond hope.)
Social media, and the internet at large, is directly responsible for the rise in unhappiness in the developed world over the past 30 years. Could the microcosm of the blogosphere be just as responsible for this as TikTok, Tinder and Pornhub? Surely it's not as bad as those appalling supervillains? Well, if it's encouraging our dopamine addiction... maybe.
Dopamine causes addiction because of how the brain works in response to it. After any pleasurable experience (which causes a dopamine release), the brain responds with a process called homeostasis. Which basically uses the lyrics of Pete Seeger's Turn! Turn! Turn! (or the Book of Ecclesiastes, if you want to get Biblical) as a template for self-regulation.
Or you might say it's following Newton's Third Law, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
In other words, for every up... there must follow a down. Or a downer, to be more precise.
When we binge on pleasurable things, homeostasis means “our brain compensates by bringing us lower and lower and lower,” says Lembke. Each time the thing becomes less enjoyable, but we eventually become dependent on those stimuli to keep functioning. We spiral into a joy-seeking abyss.
And when it comes to the internet, there's nothing to stop us feeding our addiction. If we're hooked on booze or drugs, eventually we'll run out of the substance in question, or run out of the funds needed to procure them. If you're addicted to social media because of the tiny dopamine spikes that come from a like or a thumbs up or a smiley... or a blogging comment... then short of them turning off your electric (and the batteries on all your mobile devices dying simultaneously), there's nothing to stop you gorging yourself to the point of gluttony.
Which makes Tiberius question... how much blogging is too much blogging? Is up to (and sometimes over) a thousand words a day just too much? In devoting so much time to the dopamine-inducing thrill of blogging, is he denying himself the comedown? What is that doing to his brain?
Yeah, it's been a pretty bad fortnight for music industry deaths - as CC commented earlier in the week, it's starting to look like 2016 all over again. First Kenny Rogers, then Bill Withers... and I hadn't even finished my Adam Schlesinger obit when I heard the news about John Prine.
I've only really got into John Prine in a big way in the last couple of years. I was a fan of In Spite Of Ourselves and the duets album it came from, and I had a pretty cheap compilation of some of his biggest hits, from which Christmas In Prison became a festive favourite, but it's only recently that I began digging deeper into his back catalogue. His recent "comeback" album, The Tree Of Forgiveness, was my favourite record of 2018, and I was hoping we might hear more like that in the future. I guess we'll have to wait and see if there are any posthumous gems still to be released, but in the meantime the track below tells us not to be too sad at John's passing... I'm sure he'll be having a hell of a time in the afterlife.
And here's ten of my favourite John Prine tracks. I don't claim to have heard them all. I'm still working my way through his back catalogue, but already there were plenty I had to leave out to get this list down to ten.
Why do I like John Prine so much? I guess it's his wit, and his wisdom. With that in mind, I'll pretty much let his words do the talking on this tribute...
I don't know why Lake Marie is my favourite. It's not one of the obvious ones, but it was the first track I thought of when I heard of John's passing. It's funny, but also dark and sad... and it just goes off in weird directions as the story unwinds, and it feels very real because of it.
"You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow"
Quite a few of the songs featured in My Top Ten Humphrey Bogart Songs also made mention of his fourth wife and the greatest love of his life, Lauren Bacall. So you might think I'd struggle to put together a Lauren Bacall Top Ten without some crossover. Au contraire...
I will hold my hand up and say that I'd never heard of Kevin Roth until very recently. Iffypedia doesn't tell me much about him either, other than he's "is an American folk singer and Appalachian dulcimer player who has released forty-five albums".
FORTY-FIVE ALBUMS? Dude needs a bigger iffypedia page.
Imagine what could happen after this drink: I'm wearing wings Join Lauren Bacall, float up to heaven's gate Wearing danger smiles. She'll meet with the stars They'll break down doors Those shining pearls float off in space I'm raving beautifully
And all the other times That I wished that you were here And everything went crazy When my head filled up with beer I played that I was Bogart And that you were my Bacall And everything just shattered by curtain call
Here it is The not-so-happy-ending We've done Our picket fence defending We did Bogart and Bacall and now the spotlight's gone and anyway All those movie kisses just last too long
Of course, I don't like dance music. Yet I always had a soft spot for Norman, as far back as his Housemartin days. This is one of his best - particularly the bit where he dips the tune in his bath and lets it slowly float to the surface.
The theme tune to The Sopranos, of course. Although I never watched The Sopranos and I was into the A3 beforehand anyway. Really. I planted that flag. Shoot me if I'm lying.
You could probably fill a horse's head with gangster rap songs. This is the only one I had space for... perhaps 'cos Ice namedrops Marvel Comics halfway through.
Remember, if you want to squeal to the FBI, they can make a deal... make it worth your while. (And they like a guy who will stab a friend.) Ha-cha-cha-chaaa!
As Stephen Malkmus says in his excellent new song: "We grew up listening to the music from the best decade ever..."
Ah, Cerys, much as I enjoy your folky solo offerings and eclectic 6Music radio show, I'll always pine for the glory days of Catatonia. No one could sing "When duty calls, I'm gonna bust some balls," in quite the same way.
You probably expected this to be Number One, knowing your host, the Top Tenmeister General. It's certainly one of Mozzer's finest moments of the 21st Century: a touching love song to his Mexican gang chums / fanbase. And it's not his only gangster record either - I could easily have gone for Ganglord or the majestic Last of the Famous International Playboys, his slightly dubious ode to Reggie and Ronnie Kray. Ah, but, but, but...
1. Paper Lace - The Night Chicago Died
Go on, admit it, you really didn't expect this, did you? Not at Number One, surely? But they don't make 'em like this any more... some might say "for good reason". Me: I say, EMBRACE THE CHEESE!
Brother, what a night it really was Brother, what a fight it really was Glory be!
Sorry, Coolio fans, Paradise wasn't half a nice as any of these! But who's your Godfather...?
I remember when I was a kid and that
Way before I found beards and caps
Pencils came with erasers that
Could erase your mistakes erase, retract
But in the real world things just ain’t that easy
You can’t take back your mistakes so freely
You gotta take them in think about them deeply
Not ignore them and just move on discreetly
Because you'll never take enough of those pills You know you're too clever to be mentally ill You'll never fashion your damaged soul Because you're too clever to lose control
