Snapshots #454: Settlement Songs

Welcome to a list of 15 songs about places we might choose to make a home in...

15. Mourning turtles and dodos.

Doves - Kingdom Of Rust

14. Mimosa.

Those of you who enjoy a nice cocktail will know that a Mimosa is another name for...

Bucks Fizz - The Land Of Make Believe

13. Strictly - new meets half of old.

Those of you who like watching celebrities dance on TV may well be horrified to have learned that the new Strictly host is Josh Widdecombe. Not a patch on the former host, old Wink' (Claudia Winkelman).

Josh Wink - Higher State Of Consciousness 

12. Novel prize and contemporary currents, tripled.

Booker Prize. New berries. (Yes, currants are berries. I googled it.)

Booker Newbury III - Love Town

11. What's Ben's tomato worth, under the current exchange rate?

"Ben's tomato worth" was an anagram.

The Boomtown Rats - Banana Republic

10. Glaswegian Manga.

Urusei Yatsura - Strategic Hamlets

9. Stewart, Dean and Joyce.

James - Hymn From A Village

8. Hymn to making her doubt her own sanity.

Gaslighting is not big and not clever.

The Gaslight Anthem - Biloxi Parish

7. Not an imaginary hatchback.

No, it's a Real Estate!

Real Estate - Municipality

6. The first search engine found rhymes for campanologists.

The first search engine was (apparently) called Archie. 

Archie Bell & The Drells - Soul City Walk

5. Deliver them from email.

The Postal Service - The District Sleeps Alone Tonight 

...or you could have had...

The Postal Service - Brand New Colony

4. Swollen Cindy needs to unwind.

"Swollen Cindy" was an anagram.

Edwyn Collins - Nation Shall Speak Unto Nation

3. From Sunnydale to Martinique.

Buffy came from Sunnydale. Sainte Marie is in Martinique.

Buffy Sainte Marie - I'm Gonna Be A Country Girl Again

2. Oddities.

Space - Neighbourhood

1. Fancy pants in Ginger.

Kenny sang about Fancy Pants, with Ginger Rogers.

Kenny Rogers - Coward of the County

Come back to the Snapshots settlement next Saturday.

Saturday Snapshots #151 - The Answers

Following the appearance by Doctor Jones ("the dog was called Indiana") on yesterday's Snapshots, I thought it would be nice to lead today with a woman who could always drink him under the table: Marion Ravenwood, aka Karen Allen. She was pretty good at dealing with Starmen too.

Here are this week's answers...


10. The first book of "Oy! I was watching that!"

The first book was Genesis.

Genesis - Turn It On Again

I'm not sure I can get behind the current yoof attempt to rehabilitate Collins, but Turn It On Again is still a cracking tune.

9. Smug tribes with Spanish heart.

Smug tribes is an anagram.

Corazón is Spanish for heart.

Tim Burgess - Oh My Corazón

8. Fictional world - anagram rejected on grounds of taste & decency.

I could not bring myself to come up with an anagram for Bucks Fizz.

Before you accuse me of scraping the barrel, Bucks Fizz will always have a special place in my heart as the band that encouraged my sexual awakening. This track is just pure cheese though...

Bucks Fizz - The Land of Make Believe 

7. High ranking Smurf priest seeks release.

Father Abraham becomes a Colonel.

Colonel Abrams - Trapped

6. Bird & Davies choose their favourite ice cream dessert.

Dickie Bird & Dickie Davies, sports fans!

The Dickies - Banana Splits

5. If you knew she married Bruce, it'd set your temperature soaring.

If you knew Peggy Sue... got married... to Bruce Lee... it'd give you a fever.

Peggy Lee - Fever

4. Powerful sweets, back to front.

The Mighty Lemon Drops - Inside Out

3. Like Williams with a Bad Attitude, lost on a mad stream.

Robbie Williams meets B.A. Robertson...

Robbie Robertson - Somewhere Down The Crazy River

2. Paltry cuts ban central haulage.

Paltry cuts = Petty Nicks.

The centre is the heart. Haulage is dragging things around.

Tom Petty & Stevie Nicks - Stop Dragging My Heart Around

1. Walking the dog on Lakeland Fells makes you realise what a beautiful planet this is.

Rufus Thomas went Walking The Dog.

Alfred Wainwright wrote lots of books about walking in the Lake District.




More next week.

Neverending Top Ten #2.8: I Feel Fine

So my mission to introduce Sam to as much of my musical back catalogue as I can (before his own musical tastes kick in and he starts hating everything his dad loves) continues, mostly in the car with my hand-curated CDs. We're now up to Sam CD 90 (we do also revisit the earlier ones) and he's often keen to hear the next.

"Have you made Sam 91 yet, Daddy? Will you make it this weekend?"

However, I'm not sure whether that's because he likes my musical choices... or because he's obsessed with numbers and is desperate for us to get to 100. I think more of the latter, though he has developed many favourite tunes along the way as well.

Friday night though, on the way back from swimming, was a bit of a milestone.

"Yay! My favourite band!"

In this life we will all have many favourite bands, and who am I to judge Sam's first self-proclaimed favourites... when mine may well have been Bucks Fizz?

(What can I say? I was 9 years old. That dance routine represented an inexpicable sexual awakening.)

Still, I have to confess, for just a moment, I was a little chagrined by Sam's choice.

I mean, the friggin' Beatles!? How bleeding obvious!

This passed very quickly, when I realised the selection said much more about the Beatles than it did about my son. Indeed, it reinforced why the Beatles were as big as they were and why they still maintain that untouchable ubiquity, even though proper musos (which I will OBVIOUSLY never be) know there have been far better bands in the history of pop. Like The Four Tops, The Housemartins and Huey Lewis & The News, to name but three. (You're not quite sure if I'm serious, I know. And I LIKE that.)

As mentioned before, despite going through an obligatory Beatles phase in my late teens, I've been down on the band for many years since. But choose a random song - particularly an early one - and judge it on its own pop merits, and the mass appeal becomes obvious. There's a simplicity and a clean, no-nonsense aesthetic to recordings such as this one which make it universal. There's no hemi-powered drones screaming down the boulevard in the lyrics, for a start, or punctured bicyles on hillsides desolate.

Baby's good to me, you know
She's happy as can be, you know
She said so
I'm in love with her and I feel fine

Of course you're gonna like a band that sings simple, catchy songs like this if you're a 6 year old. Or someone older who doesn't want anything more complex than a nice r 'n' b rhythm and clear, uncomplicated words to sing along to in a traffic jam.

And I Feel Fine is a great song for Sam to declare his allegiance to as well, because beyond the simplicity, it's got that Lennon edge, kicking off with the feedback, and the raw quality to his vocal that he softened in later years. Good video too - it finally made me see the point of Ringo.