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...
As George and Ernie are both out on manoeuvres, and because last week's bumper edition nearly finished me off, we're having a rest from Namesakes this week. All being well, it will return to bore you next Tuesday.
At the weekend, Louise and I went to see the new stage adaptation of To Kill A Mockingbird. It was excellent. I've long been a fan of Aaron Sorkin's sparky, snappy dialogue, and he found some excellent ways to use the themes of the novel to say important (if ultimately futile) things about the state of America today. If it comes to your neck of the woods, I'd highly recommend going along to see it.
Here are some tunes related, in one way or another, to Harper Lee's famous novel...
Another Thursday, another Guest Post. And we welcome back George, who's getting all mushy on us...
George's Top Ten Heart Songs
Rol made the huge mistake of saying I would be welcome to do
another piece for his blog.
And I have chosen My Top Ten Heart songs so I could shoehorn
in one of My Favourite Songs Of All Time, brought to me by Andy Kershaw many
many years ago. I was thinking originally of a Top Ten Meal songs but that led
to me that huge pile of old pish Breakfast In America, which would never ever
be included in such a list but I had to banish that song from my mind. And
instead we have this top ten. Spoiler alert: No Supertramp. Actually, that’s hardly
a spoiler, but hopefully you get the point.
That’s a picture of a cow’s heart. Something I have cooked up for the dogs and cats, who could not scoff it quickly enough. When I told Talho Jorge that I was vegetarian it caused great amusement. We used to get a great slab of heart-and-lung (different butcher) which I just could not deal with. Enough of this offal talk. On with the music:
A Top Ten Heart Songs has to have this in it. Peerless. Well, almost.
(George has now redeemed himself for dissing Ms. Tyler & Mr. Steinman. That is one of my all time favourite songs, as featured here many times before. - Rol.)
I was something of a Hendrix obsessive in my youth, amassing 26 albums by the age of 19. This is from the Royal Albert concert of 1969, on the same day as Denis Law’s 29th birthday:
It’s amazing how clean that guitar sounds, and how all you need for a fantastic blues song are three people. No embellishments, just Hendrix playing the blues, bass and drums.
There might be one or two people reading who don’t actually
own Feast Of Wire. You really should catch yourselves on and rectify that right
now. It is frequently considered The Best Album Ever Made In The Entirety of Recorded
Music. That title has also been bestowed upon ABC, Rod Stewart, and The
Turbines. At the momentum it belongs again to Calexico. And this song replaced
a Clyde McPhatter and The Drifters song, THAT is how good it is:, it’s the
slow, sweeping orchestration, the almost tortured painful vocal, it’s a
glorious and dark, dark song...
It’s after this track that the realisation dawns that the entire album is something special.
Now for some, this song might have been rather spoiled by the bloody ghastly ITV programme of a few years ago, but listen to it now, it’s a fantastic, simple love song, beautifully played and sung, 2 minutes and 7 seconds of pure pop perfection. Come on, who amongst you will not sing the “piddle dee pat” bits. And the rest of it???
This song is from the completely over the top and self-indulgent double album Wheels of Fire album (one track involves an especially tedious Ginger Baker drum solo), but this a great psychedelic/rock song, showing what a great vocalist Jack Bruce was, really powerful, there’s no unending guitar noodling from Clapton, just a brief interlude, and those huge thumping drums of Ginger Baker.
I love how that song seems to begin with Jack Bruce launching into the vocal and Clapton and Baker are almost caught unawares.
I was thinking about not including this, because the singer appeared in my previous outing here. I played it again and thought that if this is to be a Top Ten and not just Ten Songs with Heart In The Title, then it would be ridiculous to exclude it.
(Agreed. - Rol.)
It’s a tremendous song, but remarkably not his best! Another song that can move me to tears. If you don’t like this, you’ve got no heart...
And here’s the shoehorn - I jettisoned the Top Ten Meals Songs idea for the rather easier Heart Songs just so I could include this song. Well, it has been one of my (and I suspect Charity Chic’s) Favourite Songs Of All Time since first heard 30 or so years ago. Like the Dwight song above (OK, I know that’s a cover) I can sing along, or “sing” along, to this word-perfectly. Almost word-perfectly. It’s meant to be sad but it always makes me smile, the cheery music just does not go with the sentiment of the song. Now THIS is a peerless song...
Two minutes and 50 seconds of country music genius. You’ll not hear a better song today.
“I opened up my sack, and lord there it was, my baby’s goodbye note, heartaches for lunch”
“Teardrops change the flavour of things I loved once”
Where else but in country music do you get such great lines??
So, no Jayhawks (Two Hearts) which was briefly a contender. No Joy Division (very very briefly a contender, but not as strong as The Jayhawks). No Bruce Springsteen, obviously.
There might, just possibly, be something that I missed, but looking at the list the only tracks that could possibly be replaced are the Neil Young and Cream songs, the others are nailed on surefire bets for being in any Top Ten Heart Songs.
And thanks to Rol for allowing me again to pollute his pages.
No, thank you, George. For anyone who's interested, I did a Top Ten Breakfast Menu Songs back in 2013... and promised I would include Supertramp in a future Top Ten that never materialised. One day, Supertramp fans, one day. Now I never even thought of tackling a Top Ten Heart Songs because there are so many available options. George did nail a couple of my favourites above... but if he missed out any of yours, feel free to contribute a list of your own for a future instalment of Guest Post Thursday.
I've got your picture for next week sorted, said Charity Chic. I have an album by a band called 16 Horsepower.
And you know what? I thought I did too. But it appears to have disappeared from my music library. Anyway, thank you for the reminder.
The biggest problem about the Number 16 on our countdown was summed up by Lynchie that many suggestions might be "a bit dodgy - older men singing about mid-teen girls."
In more cynical / enlightened / post-Glitter & Saville times, we may now find these songs creepy... but part of me thinks they were never actually meant that way. Oh for a return to innocence...
For your information though, Charmain Carr was 23 when that was filmed. Which takes us back to a point I raised last week. (Go look it up yourself, it takes me long enough to write all this stuff down once without going back and reading it again.)
Looking back on being 16 is something that gets harder as the years go by. There are a few songs written from that perspective, and C was the first to offer this very popular suggestion, saying, So good, in so many ways, and no dodgy lyrics about young girls! First heard when I was still 14 and sixteen sounded old...
The Swede also nominated this one. Brian added: It was No. 15 on my Festive 50 for 2019, and indie couple Amelia and Rob deserve a moment on top of the heap.
A new band to me, but one that immediately went on the Check Out pile...
That has to be the strangest video I've seen in a long time, featuring some reasonably big name actors, in some kind of bizarre SNL sketch that doesn't fit the song at all.
Anyway... the winner. Which will probably be obvious by now. It was first suggested by Lynchie, then seconded by Swiss Adam, though I'm sure a few others would have given it consideration.
Not sure what my final verdict is on Dave Matthews... but he's no Eddie Cochran. He's not even Hootie & The Blowfish.
Onto those of you who accepted the inevitable but offered alternatives for variety, starting with Martin (who only owns one Bruce Springsteen album, so I might have to send him some more in the post)...
And I was born in the back seat of a Greyhound bus
Rollin' down Highway 41
All of which brings us to today's obvious choice, as identified by The Swede, Alyson, Lynchie and Martin. Inspired by the death of Amadou Diallo, an innocent young black man who was mistaken for a rape suspect by plain clothes police officers in 1999 and shot dead.
