Here are some more tips from popular musicians about how to change your life for the better... starting with a band who chose Self Improvement as a way of life...
A Top Ten Frog songs to enjoy before we all croak. I'm glad to see you all Kermit yourself to answering these...
10. Samuel L. Jackson promises to leave before Bonnie gets home.
What, you never saw Pulp Fiction?
Jimmie: No, no, no, no, no, don't you ****ing realize, man, that if Bonnie comes home and finds a dead body in her house, I'm gonna get divorced? All right? No marriage counseling, no trial separation, I'm going to get ****ing divorced, okay? And I don't want to get ****ing divorced! Now man, you know, ****, I wanna help you, but I don't want to lose my wife doing it, all right?
Jules: Jimmie, Jimmie, she ain't gonna leave you--
Jimmie: Don't ****ing "Jimmie" me, Jules, okay?! Don't ****ing "Jimmie" me! There's nothing that you're gonna say that's gonna make me forget that I love my wife, is there?! Now look, you know, she comes home from work in about an hour and a half. Graveyard shift at the hospital. You gotta make some phone calls? You gotta call some people? Well, then do it! And then get the **** out of my house before she gets here!
Jules: Hey, that's Kool and the Gang. We don't wanna **** your shit up. All we wanna do is call my people and get them to bring us in, that's all.
Yes. That's Ian McShane. And Grace Jones. Together on track three of the Slave To The Rhythm album. Although, to be fair, Ian does most of the work, reading extracts from the biography of Jean-Paul Goude, the French artist who designed Jones's album sleeves and directed her videos.
We went to Manchester today for a special VIP screening of Paddington 2, arranged by Louise's former employers. By the time we got back, the answers were all but sorted...
10. Political liars give Muffet top marks.
Spin Doctors are political liars.
If Little Miss Muffet got top marks, she would be Little Miss Can't Be Wrong.
One of those bands the musos always turn their noses up at, but I always loved this one - more than their bigger hit, Two Princes. At least Martin has no shame.
I probably over-egged the clue on this one, but I wasn't sure you'd remember it otherwise. Charity Chic probably recognised the picture and didn't even read the clue...
8. Crazy clerics on the road to narcissism.
Way too easy, but I couldn't resist this picture. I'll give this one to Rigid Digit just to stop Martin hoovering up all this week's points.
A Captain in the Navy is one rank below a Commodore (or something... go look it up yourself).
Children of the 80s will remember the Commodore 64 (although I myself had a Spectrum 48K - keeping it British... and crap).
There is a colloquial expression "built like a brick shithouse"... I'm not sure whether they say this in America, but Brian seemed to know what I was talking about.
I never learned to touch type. In fact, though I can type pretty damned fast, I only do it with one finger (two if you count the one on the shift key). If I was learning to touch type though, I might use this pangram...
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
Mykonos is "The island of the winds" (according to Iffypedia, anyway).
I didn't know that Gloria Jones was also Marc Bolan's girlfriend until I researched this post.
2. Russian landmark turns 3D because of the U.S.
Red Square is a famous Russian landmark... which would become Red Cube... or Red Box in 3D.
Martin got that too... but couldn't work out the rather obvious song "because of the U.S.". Really Martin? They only had two hits! Luckily, RD came to the rescue.
1. Resignation In Lieu Of an old Neighbour. Serving up food for #4.
Really difficult to come up with a clue for this band. I have no idea what Rilo is: the internet tells me it related to the above acronym, but I don't know if that's anything to do with the name of Jenny Lewis's former band... or if Miss Minogue was an inspiration either. But I do love this song, it has one of the best guitar hooks I've ever heard (specifically the bit after she sings "And then there is no mystery left" about 45 seconds in... and it crops up again later). I don't know why it affects me so much; I don't normally get hung up on guitar riffs.
Well done to CC, anyway.
Thank you all for taking part, as always. I'm glad you try to guess them before clicking on the comments section and reading everybody else's answers.
In a change to the advertised Top Ten (we'll get back to Gene songs next week), here's a Top Ten for Number 10. You might call it schadenfreude... I call it just desserts. But then, I'm from Yorkshire, and as Dodgy Dave will tell you... we hate everyone.
I thought long and hard about whether to include this one. The White Album is my favourite Beatles LP (on the days I don't prefer Abbey Road) and George is my favourite Beatle, so theoretically I should like it. In truth though, the lyrics sound like they've been written by a 6th Former who's read Animal Farm and is just discovering that people are pretty shitty... which is probably why the song was quoted by Charles Manson as justification for the murders of Sharon Tate et al.
In the end, I was swayed to give it a mention by the wag who has added the following line to its iffypedia entry this week...
"This is British Prime Minister David Cameron's favourite Beatles song."
What can I say...? I have a soft spot for ludicrous cartoon metal songs based on nursery rhymes, especially when their videos are made out of plasticine. Shoot me.
Despite being critical of my good friends in the Los Angeles Police Department, this hippie blues boogie from my Best of Canned Heat album wins a place on the chart (beating out fine contenders such as Black Sabbath, Nine Inch Nails, The Cocteau Twins, Jane's Addiction and Nina Simone) because it's the only pig song I own in which the singer performs pig snorts as part of his vocal - pretty authentic ones, too.
This track was banned by many US radio stations as it ends with a mock recruitment call to join the LAPD in which one of the band reads out the copshop's actual phone number... which is a cool bit of hippy protest nonsense the Dude would be proud of.
Big Elv's dalliance with "classical" music worked better than expected. Here, he lets the Brodsky Quartet do most of the heavy lifting before going off on what sounds like a typically vicious lyrical rant... although, apparently, he didn't write those lyrics alone: the quartet chipped in with all the words on this album, a series of letters to Juliet Capulet, of which this is probably the nastiest.
You're a swine And I'm saying That's an insult to the pig...
Class old rock 'n' roll number - if in doubt, invent a wacky dance and name it after a favourite foodstuff. Doug Sahm had a surprisingly long career (this is the only one of his songs I own, but it's not even mentioned on the band's lengthy iffypedia discography), though it appears he only had one actual hit (1966's She's About A Mover - also worth a listen if you have the time).
Philophobia is arguably the best Arab Strap album even if it does leave you feeling like you need a good wash after listening to it. Here, Aidan Moffat details what happens when he looks through his girlfriend's copy of Winnie The Pooh while she's in the shower... and discovers a terrible truth she's been hiding. Things go pretty bad from there and the song ends with one of the bitterest put downs ever committed to vinyl / digital media.
And when we were with your friends I just as might as well have been no
one. And you can't get over your dead dog Well, it takes one to know
one.
I'm still waiting on that new Meat / Steinman album that was promised earlier in the year. Here's one of their lesser collaborations: yes, it does sound a little Steinman-by-numbers with lines such as "they're the plugs and we're the sockets"... though apparently it was originally written for a Batman Musical he was involved with.
Can you imagine that? A Batman Musical sounds like a really bad idea (remember that dreadful Spider-Man one?)... unless you got Jim Steinman to compose the music. Then... it just might work, in a mad Tim Burton-esque. Sadly, it was never to be.
(Well, quite. Some might argue that the truth behind these outrageous allegations really doesn't matter... even if DC didn't do it to a dead pig, he and over-privileged ilk have been doing it to the people of this country for years. We are the pigs.)
We Are The Pigs is a weird Suede song. It was the debut single from their second album, released just as Bernard Butler quit. A much darker record than the first one, it came out while the rest of Britpop was having a knees up. I think it stands up pretty well with the passage of time, though there were stronger tracks on Dog Man Star. This video was also banned for awhile... for being "too violent" or criticising the establishment? Nobody in Suede read out any British police phone numbers (999?) during the recording.
I like to think of Admiral Fallow as a 21st Century Deacon Blue... which is a little unfair to Ricky Ross and his pals, since they're still in the go and producing fine records. It's a better comparison than the "Scottish Mumfords" tag I've seen them labelled with elsewhere though, especially considering the downward trajectory of Mr. Mumford and his offspring of late.
Squealing Pigs was AF's debut single and is still one of their best... though I haven't heard their new album yet.
1. Morrissey - Life Is A Pigsty
The epic centrepiece of Mozzer's 2006 album Ringleader of the Tormentors, and only he could have written a song with that title... at what point does it become self-mockery, eh, Moz? Reminiscent in places of Meat Is Murder (yet much more palatable), this actually goes a bit Space Oddity about halfway through... and is all the better for it.
I can't wait to hear what Moz thinks of Mr. Cameron now...
