Monday Snapshots #1

As Saturday Snapshots is by far the most popular feature on this blog, I decided to abandon all the other features from now on and extend Snapshots across the whole week. I will try to make it slightly different every day. Watch my clicks soar!

Here are ten photos randomly culled from my hard-drive's picture archive, along with ten songs. But what connects them?

10. Bahamas - Up With The Jones

9. Drunk Mums - New Australia

8. The Times - David Jones (Is On His Way)

7. Rocking Horse - Julian (The Hooligan)

6. Andrew Johnson - Ray Dalton's World Is Collapsing

5. Wilco - I Am Trying to Break Your Heart

4. The Reytons - Kids Off The Estate

3. Josienne Clarke - Done

2. Soft Cell & Pet Shop Boys - Purple Zone

1. The Westfield Mining Disaster - Greedy Bastards, Save Your Souls!

Answers... when you least expect them. 

Mid-Life Crisis Songs #106: Being Boring

And we were never being boring

We were never being bored

Pet Shop Boys - Being Boring

Every day at work, we gather in the staff dining room to eat our lunch, and my colleagues evaluate each other's victuals. 

"What have you got today?"

"That smells nice."

"Ooh, that looks a nice sandwich - what's in it?"

No one ever directs a comment or question my way since I always have exactly the same thing in my Spider-Man lunchbag: turkey and beetroot, with mayo, on two Warburtons sandwich thins. A bag of pop chips, sour cream and onion. An apple. A satsuma. A small Hulk lunchbox containing brazil nuts, walnuts and a small handful of apricots. The same lunch five days a week, with only the occasional variation: a bag of Skips instead of Pop Chips.      

The Shapes - Wot's For Lunch, Mum?

Am I boring?

I ask myself this question from time to time. Have done throughout my life. By other people's perspectives, the answer would be a definite yes. 

Paul Westerberg - Boring Enormous

Whenever Louise and I get together with other couples (rarely, to be honest), conversation inevitably turns to travel. Louise has been all around the world and has the stories to go with it: New York, Paris, Rome, Hawaii, etc etc... she even spent a couple of months working in an Aussie outback bar. I've been to France. Kefalonia. And on the school Sixth Form ski trip, we drove in a coach through Germany to get to the Swiss Alps. I rarely have anything to contribute to world travel conversations.

Hank Snow - I've Been Everywhere

I don't drink... haven't touched a drop since the turn of the Millennium, largely for medical reasons.

Don't drink, don't smoke, what do you do?

Adam Ant - Goody Two Shoes

And I don't like sport, particularly football, though I make an exception when Sam is playing.

The Beautiful South - I Love You (But You're Boring)

The only real hobby or interest I have is music, but even there I fail to be interesting. It seems I like too much, and not enough of the right stuff, to ever be considered cool. That's been the case as long as I've expressed any interest in pop songs. I remember telling kids in junior school I'd rather listen to Frank Sinatra than Madness. They'd sing "Roll out the barrel..." to represent my taste in music. I'm presuming one of my wag mates had heard the Vera Lynn version and thought it a good fit. Then in high school, while my cooler pals were heading off to investigate the Smiths and other John Peel delights, I was buying Huey Lewis records and getting into Springsteen. Other contemporaries started out liking pop music and then turned their back on it when they discovered more esoteric offerings. I kept a foot in all camps. As much time as I spend now delving into dusty 70s and 80s relics that even Peel might have only played once, I still won't hear a bad word said against Meat Loaf or Queen or even Jon By Jovi. My refusal to shun the music the cognoscenti has cast out will forever mark me down as someone with no taste.

Bahamas - Not Cool Anymore

Do I care?

Not really.

I make the same sandwiches every day because I like them, and they're easy to do. The last thing I want to do when I get home from work is spend ages thinking about or creating something new. It's lunch, it's not performance art.

Hall & Oates - Abandoned Luncheonette

There are places in the world I'd like to visit, but I don't feel particularly aggrieved by not having a fully stamped passport. New York, one day... beyond that, I'm happy enough trudging round the British Isles. In another lifetime, with other opportunities, maybe... but I don't lay awake at night bemoaning my provincialism.

Hank Snow - I Ain't Been Anywhere

And as to the music... I know this is a bugbear I return to a lot on this blog because of the chip certain individuals in the real world and the blogosphere have cemented to my shoulder, so there's not much more to add.

I will say this though... I may be boring, but I'm never bored. I honestly do not remember the last time I ever felt even remotely bored. There's always something to do or think about or listen to or read. Why would you ever get bored? I'll save that till I'm dead...

Not That One Friday #3: I Got You Babe

Arguably the most famous duet of the 60s, given a whole new lease of life again... and again... and again... in the soundtrack of Groundhog Day, Sonny & Cher's greatest moment is a stone cold classic. Echoing Bill Murray's Groundhog Day moment, Sonny apparently wrote the song late at night and, according to iffypedia, "When Cher was woken up to sing the lyrics, she hated the song and didn't think it would soon be a hit [so] immediately went back to bed".

Laid-back Canadian groover and full-time Prince afficionado, Bahamas, released a collection of "Live To Tape" tracks recorded during Lockdown last year, having roped in Jason Isbell's band The 400 Unit to perform with him remotely from their home in Athens, Georgia. (Other artists also joined him from their hometowns via the internet's version of a can on a string.)

One of the 400 Unit tracks shares its title with the Sonny & Cher hit. It's not quite as iconic, but it's still a great tune...

MId-Life Crisis Songs #60: Where There's A Will...

 

There's nothing more guaranteed to make you feel the mid-life dread than when your other half convinces you it's time to get a will.

What do I need a will for? If I die, it all goes to you.

Yes, but what if we both die?

Then it all goes to Sam.

But who's going to look after him till he's an adult?

Er...

And what if all three of us die?

If all three of us die, what do we care where - what little we have - goes after that? It's no use to us.

We have to decide.

Thank god there's a practical one in this house, I guess, who can think about such things. Me, I just go along...

But if this blog suddenly goes quiet next week... can I just ask you all to call a snoopy-nosed detective?

The final stinger?

How much you have to pay a bloody solicitor to write your wills!

After that, we won't have anything left to leave anyway.

Here's a song from that Bahamas album that made it into my Top 20 Albums of 2020. It's about money, and how we spend it, and where that leads us. It's a simple morality tale in 4 minutes ten, and it's very funky.

Yes, we had the house

And we have the car

And paid for it all

On some credit card

Now that ain't right

My second home

Your student loan

And every year I got myself a brand new phone

Can't do without

Don't have the nerve

I tell myself that these are things that I deserve

My Top Twenty of 2020: #19

 

What was wrong with the old house?

Let's start with the local youth club, shall we? The local youth club without an actual clubhouse, or any adult supervision, who instead chose to make the short cul de sac outside our house their hangout till all hours of the night. Skateboarding, screaming, playing football, riding their bikes increasingly close to our cars, just sitting around and laughing. While we were watching TV on an evening. While I was working online during lockdown. It got to the point where the sound of a skateboard set my nerves on edge. Even now... weeks after we last saw them... the sound of a skateboard brings it all back. The frustration. The feeling of being powerless... because they're teenagers, so they're predisposed not to listen to you, to want to hand around outside your house and not their own because that way their parents don't know what they're up to. And god help if you if you did go out and challenge them...   

Canadian Afie Jurvanen, aka Bahamas. I dug his last album, Earthtones, a lot. But Sad Hunk is a step up. For a start, it's called Sad Hunk. For a second, how can you resist an album cover like the one above? And as for the tunes...

Is there some trick to being happy?

Now there's a question I ask more and more these days...

2018 Latecomers: Spend Monday In The Bahamas

I almost didn't have a post today. I realise that's hardly the end of the world, and I've let days gone by without posts before, but this time was different. Because I had posts... only other people had already written then.

Originally I'd planned on doing a Grumpy Old Men / 2019 Contenders post about the new Specials album, but Rigid Digit and  John Medd said pretty much everything I have to say about that at the moment (for the record, my opinion falls somewhere in between theirs - RD seems to like it a lot, while John Medd questions whether it's actually The Specials at all, more a reformed Funboy 3 who realised the name of their earlier band would make more headlines).All I can add to that is that while I enjoyed the record, I did feel there were times that it came across as a Guardian journalist's wet dream. The tracklist runs like a checklist of society's ills and sometimes the message seems more important than the music. I don't object to any of the songs on their own, but crammed together on one disc it does feel a bit like being lectured by a 6th former at times. Maybe it's the grumpy old man in me... that's probably why I like this track best of all.

The Specials - Embarrassed By You

Bloody kids, eh?

With that idea abandoned, I thought about featuring another Long Song as last Monday morning... until I realised (I had to check!) that Drew had already featured both of them. (I'd already written one of them, but I'll spare you... go read Drew's instead.)

Paddy McAloon - I Trawl The Megahertz

Isaac Hayes - By The Time I Get To Phoenix

All of which led me to the Bahamas, a late musical discovery from 2018 that may have troubled my end of year countdown if I'd heard it sooner.

Canadian musician Afie Jurvanen, aka Bahamas, has been making records since 2009, but his fourth album, Earthtones, is the first one to be picked up on my radar. He obviously listened to a lot of Prince as a kid but also has a cheerfully tongue-in-cheek approach to his lyrics, reminiscent of John Grant or Father John Misty without the egomaniacal side. Hopefully it'll brighten up your Monday morning (what's left of it)...