Here are some more songs about struggling through 'til payday... starting with the obvious one, clocking in at less than 90 seconds... Album #1, Side #1, Track #1...
We lost Michael Parkinson while I was away on holiday, but I couldn't find a single song that mentioned him... and I wanted to spare you all Parky's favourite, Jamie Cullum. Oh, very well then, in his honour... here's my favourite Jamie Cullum song, the one where he admits to being a Morrissey fan...
However, the day I heard about Gary's passing, news also reached me about the death of a personal favourite: the legendary Jimmy Buffett. You may well roll your eyes incredulously, but I'll never tire of this tune...
Having dipped more than a toe into his back catalogue over the years, I could name you many more great Jimmy Buffett tunes, but none are quite as good as Margaritaville, a song that gave birth to an entire industry of restaurants, hotels, casinos and even retirement homes. For a man whose music championed an idyllic beach bum lifestyle, he certainly knew how to make money. And he made quite an impression on the Celebrity Jukebox too...
When I heard of the Jimmy's passing though, one song immediately sprang to my mind. It's recorded live (or made to sound that way) and features a perfectly timed guest appearance by the great man himself. It also asks that very important question, "What would Jimmy Buffett do?"
(And it's not the only song to do that, as Keith Robinette will tell you.)
So let's raise a glass to Jimmy, for whom heaven must surely be Margaritaville. And if you think it's too early in the day, just remember: It's Five O'Clock Somewhere...
I know a lot of people found the joke of the Ben Folds Five - that there were only three of them - to be rather smug, but they're still my favourite band with a Five in their name... yes, I like them even more than 5ive.
Sad to say, every one of those can be found in my hard-drive (except Five Hand Reel, I'm afraid). That's what I was doing while the rest of the male population were out drinking beer, watching football and meeting girls.
"But what about the Five songs?" I heard nobody cry.
I think you can probably work out for yourself why I'm not allowing that one. Not just because it already featured here in Week 55, but because if I started allowing every mention of a 5 as part of a bigger number, not only would that contravene the Tom Robinson Rule, it would also mean revisiting every song we featured in Week #15, #25, #35, #45, all the 50s, etc. etc. etc. My brain just melted at the very prospect.
Oh damnation - Just realised that the Tom Waits song is 55 so we've probably done that one. And suppose Manfred Mann's "5-4-3-2-1" is no use. *sigh*
That's more like it. Although there's something rather disturbing about the character described therein... and it probably contravenes all kinds of size-ist PC rules these days.
I wrote about bands with 5 in their title a while back when I published my 101st post - as has been pointed out around here before (by George I think) the binary number 101 equates to the decimal number 5 so the 101ers could be a contender.
I don't understand binary because I'm not a robot. These guys seem to understand it though...
My personal favourite is this one although it won't qualify I'm sure - George was at his best here and it made for a memorable performance shared many times in the aftermath of his death.
Les Georges Leningrand - George 5 (First time i heard this song it was on quite loud at home, came on a Rough Trade CD, i had to turn it down as i was worried i would scare the neighbours. It is one of the strangest songs i have ever heard but i love it, took a few listens though).
It was looking like Rigid Digit was definitely going for this week's booby prize... until he unearthed this little gem. An absolute cracker. I liked it so much, I wrote a short story with the same title.
Flagrant abuse of the rules there, RD. Watch out, Charity Chic will start comparing you to Dominic Cummings if you're not careful. Speak of the devil (CC, not DC, thankfully), here he is again...
Or what of "Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue (Has Anybody Seen My Gal?)", which since its penning in 1914 just about everyone has covered, but for the sake of argument here let's suggest Dean Martin's version as well as Guy Lombardo's. Not sure which of those two version my dad had in mind as he went about the house singing it throughout my childhood...
Sadly, I didn't have time to listen to or comment on any of The Swede's suggestions this week, because it's already 8.30 on Monday evening and I've not had my tea yet. I'm sure they were all lovely. I'm also not going to spend too long scraping my own hard drive this week. But here's a few...
However, much as I love that, I'm going to have to plump for the one suggested by C and Swiss Adam this week, mainly because it was the first one I thought of. Yes, it's a cover version of a track mentioned earlier. Or, more accurately, it's two cover versions in one, since it segues effortlessly into Petula Clark's I Know A Place about halfway through... and that's one of the reasons I love it.
As cover versions go there, it manages that rare trick of being better than the original. I think it may well be one of the most exciting songs I've ever heard (I know, I'm delirious from lack of food, humour me).
OK... who's ready for a little four-play?
(Apologies for any typos this week. I had no time to proofread!)
In which Jon King gets rather upset by the evening news...
How can I sit and eat my tea, with all that blood flowing from the television? At a quarter to six, I watch the news, Eating, eating all my food As I sit watching the red spot In the egg which looks like All the blood you don`t see on the television.
Post-Diana, Motown drafted in Jimmy Webb to work with The Supremes. Although the resulting album didn't set the charts alight, it contains some absolute gems. Let's face it: it's The Supremes and JIMMY WEBB. What's not to love?
How long have we been waiting for the light to change? Long enough to know that green is dubious Long enough to know that there's no sense to us And the line is pretty long, yeah
Your starter for ten: name another song which features the word 'dubious' in its lyrics. (It is possible.)
This is one of those Jam singles that I always forget... and forget how good it is.
From this window I've seen the whole world pass From dawn to dusk I've heard the last laugh laughed I've seen enough tears to wash away this street I've heard wedding bells chime and a funeral march When as one life finishes another one starts... Alright then, love, so I'll be off now It's back to the lunchbox and worker / management rows There's gotta be more to this old life than this Scrimping and saving and crossing off lists...
1. Julian Cope - 5 O'Clock World
Originally recorded in 1965 by The Vogues and covered by any number of people since (The Proclaimers, Hal Ketchum, Bowling For Soup, David McCallum... sadly I can't find that last one online, so please help me out if you have it). However, it's Lord Julian of Cope who gives the definitive reading, rewriting the lyrics to include 80's nuclear war paranoia and mixing in a little Petula Clark along the way.
Here's a quick story for you. I know I usually only do these once a month, but it seems most appropriate to post this now because it forms the perfect bridge between my last post, My Top Ten Five a.m. Songs and the next one... My Top Ten Five p.m. Songs. Its title was based on one of the songs in that countdown... well, this one:
Alan Jackson & Jimmy Buffett - It's Five O'Clock Somewhere
I love this song, even though I'm not the biggest Alan Jackson fan. A bit too Stetson-country, even for me, usually. But this is a great working man's hymn, made one hundred times better by the arrival of slacker king and Florida-country icon Jimmy Buffet. If you're one of those people who sits in the office all day waiting for the hands of the clock to hit five... or five thirty... this is the song for you.
What would Jimmy Buffet do?
It's Five O'Clock Nowhere
Sometimes it felt like even the second hand was fighting a
losing battle. Karl spent much of his working day scrutinising the clock on the
wall opposite his desk, and the more he watched it, the more it seemed like
every single tick was a struggle against the inevitable, some wild Canutian
battle to continue the forward progress of time when all around them – the
clock, and Karl - everything else was trapped in amber.
Now every day was indistinguishable from the ones that
surrounded it. The same unremitting routine. For Karl, it always began with
email. Five minutes for work (he deleted many of the office memos without
reading them, he’d been here long enough now to have read them all before), at
least half an hour for his own private hotmail account. A few games of
solitaire to get him in the mood, then, if he really felt like it, he might
breeze through a couple of reports. He took regular breaks to check certain
websites, monitor his eBay bidding, and to see if anyone new had poked him on
Facebook, then went for a stroll around the building on the pretext of doing
some photocopying or delivering a wrongly sorted item of mail or retrieving an
important document from the archive room in the basement. He liked it down
there in the archives, though the building work that was going on in adjacent
rooms meant it wasn’t as peaceful as it’d once been. Still, he liked the
snowflake pattern on the grill outside the windows, and how, if he got up on a
box, he could stare out into the street, a feet-level view of the carefree
world beyond. He liked to watch the people and wonder why they weren’t in work.
Disregarding the kids, pensioners, and housewives, many of the passers-by
remained unaccounted for. Deliverymen, council workers, window cleaners –
people whose jobs involved moving about the city from one place to another –
they made up another percentage, sure, but still not enough to answer for all
of them. Some of them, Karl realised, just didn’t have an excuse. They were
free, and that was all. Independently wealthy or dole-sponging layabouts, they
were one and the same in Karl’s mind. The lucky ones.
After lunch (eaten at his desk because Head Office frowned on
employees leaving the building in their lunch hour: what if there was a rush and
no-one was around to deal with it?), Karl’s afternoon began with a brief spate
of internal correspondence (some of it work-related, much of that deleted
unopened, though mostly it was gossip, and the forwarded jokes, pictures and
film clips that his colleagues had chanced upon over their sandwiches) before
he set into the internet proper. He usually left his favourite worksafe
websites ‘til the afternoon sag, the longest part of the day, when Karl needed
all the distraction he could get. But even after scanning through all his
various bookmarks – news sites, shops, blogs and games; even after downloading
and burning another CD’s worth of not-strictly-legal mp3s he’d probably never
get time to listen to; even after voting for all the new Hot Or Not girls and
wondering for the five hundred and seventy fifth consecutive workday just why
the plainer ones put themselves up for it (though he did always take this into
account when voting, marking up the mooses, and downgrading the dolly birds)…
even after all that: by 3pm, he still hit the flats.
The flats were when Karl had exhausted every possible
diversion the office had to offer, but there were still two hours left to kill.
By this point in the afternoon his biorhythms and blood sugar were low, his
exasperation and listlessness were high, and if Karl wasn’t careful,
moribundity could set in. Sometimes, if absolutely necessary, he’d do a little
work to distract himself. Take his mind off the incessant stain of his life,
the chronic howl of it all. Other times, if there wasn’t any work that couldn’t
be put off, he’d go back down to the archive room and stare out into the
street. Wish himself out there, among the foot-loose and fancy-free. A man of
means, or a man of no means. From this point in the afternoon, either seemed an
occupation devoutly to be wished for.
By four, he’d be back at his desk – and that was when the
serious clock-watching began. With only an hour to go, the atmosphere in the
office changed to an unusual mix of electricity and ennui. Postures slumped,
eyes drooped then blinked violently alert, but conversations turned to the
evening ahead. The drinks, the friends, the bars, the lovers. Films and music
and life. Release. By ten to the hour, Karl had his things packed and ready.
His final emails sent and websites browsed, he powered down his computer and
made ready for escape. This part of the day always reminded him of being back
at school, of waiting for the bell that launched everybody from their desks and
spewed them out into reality. The tougher teachers always made you wait. Made
you sit back down ‘til they’d finished their sentence, checked that you
understood the homework, drew out your pain as far as their power could reach.
But there were no teachers here, and middle management was just as eager to
blow this joint come five o’clock as everybody else. Most days, they were the
first ones out the door and into the carpark (unless somebody from Head Office
was visiting, in which case they’d mock up devotion and switch on their desk
lamps like there was a long night ahead).
Then finally, the silent bell rang. The notional whistle
blew. And for a few short hours, this irrelevant enterprise relinquished its
hold upon them. Time was no longer for frittering: it was for filling. That
most of them went straight home and zombied in front of a flickering box was
not the issue - the issue was that had they so wished it, they could have done
or gone or been anything else they pleased. At least until the second hand
(cracked from its amber, getting only green lights ‘til dawn)
double-quicked back to the 9am capture, where it all started
over again. Until then, they were free.
And then one Monday, on the twenty-third of a month like most
others, something changed. Karl noticed it first around lunchtime (potted beef,
Monster Munch, and a can of Diet Pepsi from the machine), a hiccough in the
daily routine of his workmates that became ever more pronounced as the
afternoon went on. He tried to distract himself with the usual medley of
myspace and minesweeper, but by three o’clock he could feel it in his guts and
his water and his chest, in a heartburn those chalky pocket Rennies couldn’t
assuage and an urgency in his bladder that usually only came in the middle of
the night, when sleep was disturbed by apprehension of the coming grind.
Something was different, and by correlation, something was wrong. Four o’clock
came and by now it was unquestionable, though part of him was too scared to
ask. Part of him didn’t want to know. Why everyone was behaving so strangely,
like it was still 10am or 2pm, not nearly 5. Why today there was no late
afternoon buzz, no pre-release expectancy, no excitement at all. The electric
was off, and the whole place was running on emergency generators only.
Then finally it happened. Or rather, it didn’t. Five o’clock
came and nobody moved. Karl, who’d been ready to spring for the last half hour,
picked up his things and looked around the office. Still nobody moved. Mice
clicked and eyes stared and feet shuffled and everything maintained. Karl
didn’t understand. He tapped his watch, but it told the same story as the clock
across from his desk, and he’d been watching that tick (like a lame man wading
through mud) through the hour. It couldn’t have stopped. He didn’t understand.
But neither did he care. He had places to go, even if they didn’t. He had
people to see, he had—
“Where’re you going?” asked Lena, looking up from her
Mah-jong with a curious pout.
“It’s five,” said Karl, with a tone that added, ‘where do you
think I’m going’.
“What?” said Lena. “Didn’t you get the memo? Don’t you watch
the news?”
And so she explained it. The new company policy. “In line
with recent government legislation, to help make us a more competitive force in the
international marketplace post-Brexit, and stave off the tide of outsourcing that’s driving
so much of our industry and so many of our jobs overseas, Head Office has
instituted a new twenty-four hour working day, commencing this morning at 9am.
They’re calculating a projected increase in productivity across the week of… I
think they said twenty-five per cent. I can’t quite remember now. God, Karl,
where have you been?”
“But, that’s… We can’t… I mean, when do we sleep?”
“Well, obviously, that’s been taken into account. If you need
more than a catnap at your desk, the company’s provided us with a comfortable
new dormitory in the basement. Though they are asking us to sign up to a rota
so that everybody isn’t trying to get in there at the same time – surely you
got that email?”
“But…”
“Look, if you don’t like it, you’re allowed to opt for
voluntary redundancy if you so… Go and take it up with Michael from HR. Just…
I’m very busy!”
Karl left her to her Mah-jong and returned to his desk. He
switched his computer back on and waited for it to boot up. He couldn’t just
quit – how would he pay off his mortgage? His car? His three grand overdraft
and five grand credit cards? Getting another job wouldn’t be that easy. Not one
as relaxed as this, with as much freedom to do as he pleased, with no-one
breathing down his neck, without the pressure of deadlines and paperwork and…
well, work. Sometimes it takes the threat of losing it to make you
realise how much of a good thing you’ve got going.
Back down in the archives, after filling in his name on the
dormitory rota, Karl climbed up on a box and stared out into the world. Late
evening sunlight fell through the grill, the pattern of the snowflakes warming
his skin. And though it was almost six o’clock, the street wasn’t any busier
now than it had been at eleven, or three. The rush hour was off. People just
carried on about their day as though the clock no longer held any dominion over
them. And in that respect, at least, now Karl was just as free as everybody
else.
