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).
I figured there would be low attendance at yesterday's Saturday Snapshots, given that many of you will Fly Away to other pursuits at this time of year. This allowed Rigid Digit and Charity Chic to virtually clean up, leaving only a couple for Brian and C to solve. (By the way, if you enjoy Saturday Snapshots, be sure to check out the latest instalment of C's Mystery Lovechild quiz.)
Still, It Ain't Over Till It's Over... so here are this week's answers.
There are lots of songs that deal with fear... Don't Fear The Reaper, Fear of a Black Planet, Party Fears Two, The Pop Singer's Fear of the Pollen Count... but this week I want to look at songs that deal specifically with THE Fear.
What's interesting is that all these songs come from the last 20 years (pre- and post-millennial angst must be the driving factor). Be afraid... be very afraid...
Still the least annoying member of Blur, and pretty prolific as a solo artist. This is from his second album, way back in 2000, and it's obviously about being caught between Damon and Alex. What could be scarier?
Very popular with the young uns these days, and he certainly plays a mean guitar on this one. Not really sure he says anything to me about my life... but then, he was born in 1987*, so he's still a whippersnapper.
An ominous little angry-acoustic number from the main man of Deacon Blue, virtually impossible to find on the internet because of someone called Rick Ross who apparently is also rather popular with young people these days. The live version I tracked down is a little echoey, but at least you can hear Ricky's accent is still strong.
We'd all like to disappear every now and then. This is from Giant Steps, the album just before the Boo Radleys woke up the whole world (for fifteen minutes, anyway).
It's easy to pigeonhole Travis as the rather twee and jangly band they became, but there was a real edge to their first couple of albums, and I'd forgotten how much I liked this particular song from The Man Who.
And just in case you were wondering, they took their name from Harry Dean Stanton's character in Paris, Texas... not Bickle or Dave Lee.
The title almost disqualified it, but if you're familiar with the song at all you'll know that Ian is as obsessed with the definite article as any of the other songs on this list. Plis, if I was walking round Soho and a King Monkey came riding towards me, backwards, on a bicycle, I think I'd be pretty damned terrified.
It's weird when you consider that Doves started life as the (imho bloody awful) dance-pop combo Sub Sub. I far preferred Doves, and this was perhaps their finest moment - a Top 3 single that was deleted on the day of its release, meaning if you didn't buy it immediately, chances are you never got a copy.
If you're wondering what Doves fear, the video offers a few clues...
I heard Bob Harris play this among his usual mix of country, classic rock and Americana the other week... and it didn't stick out at all. Because like many other artists Bob plays (and unlike so much other contemporary pop music), Lily Allen actually has something to say in this song... and in her work in general. She may well be one of the most important pop stars we have in this country at the moment. With so much bland, anodyne and over-produced music clogging up what's left of the singles chart these days ("I was born in 1972, you know!"), it's great that Lily can still hit Number One with a song like this: a scathing indictment of contemporary society packed with wit, attitude and genuine pop hooks.
(*Lily was born in 1985, a much better year.)
1. Pulp - The Fear
This Is Hardcore remains my favourite album of the 90s. The opening track set the tone for the darkest Pulp record (which is saying something, if you've heard Freaks or Masters of The Universe), the one that marked the grubby death of Britpop just as Different Class had celebrated its heights. Radiohead had set the ball rolling a year earlier with OK Computer, but Pulp's wilful act of pop self-destruction was the audio equivalent of stage-invading Michael Jackson's messianic abyss at the Brits. Plus, at 26 years old, alone in a tiny one-up one-down hovel somewhere between the pylons and the motorway, this record really was the soundtrack to my life...
This is our Music from A Bachelors Den
- the sound of loneliness turned up to ten.
A horror soundtrack from a stagnant water-bed & it sounds just like this.
This is the sound of someone losing the plot -
making out that they're okay when they're not.
You're gonna like it, but not a lot & the chorus goes like this:
Extra points for quoting Paul Daniels there.
It's a weird thing, but I still think of the 90s as being within reaching distance... yet this was released 18 years ago now, and by then decade was almost done. When I realise that, I really do feel The Fear.
There are hundreds of songs that feature the word "mountain" in their title, and climbing mountains as a way of demonstrating your love is one of the biggest songwriting clichés going. But these are my favourite songs about specific mountains, ones you could actually go climb... if you so wished.
Turns
out there are dozens of Mount Washingtons in North America - 15 in the
USA alone, plus one in Canada. They'd all have to go some to be as
beautiful as Beth Orton's song though.
Another Welsh mountain, otherwise known as Twmpa (hence "Could this be heaven, would that be the Severn? Twmpa, Twmpa, you’re gonna need a jumper"), inspires one of Nigel Blackwell's many songs about hill-walking and mountain-climbing... with a smattering of innuendo to warm the cockles.
Ever since the chattering classes invaded Hebden Bridge
And priced the likes of me and mine
To the pots of the Pennine Ridge
To South East Wales I was forced to flee
And now I have no job
That’s why tonight I’m sitting on top of Lord Hereford’s Knob
See also Kilimanjaro by the Teardrop Explodes which is a classic album, although the title track wasn't on the original track listing and isn't available to link to anywhere on t'internet.
And now for something even older than The Mountains of Mourne - a truly majestic piece of Classical music, though there's some debate over whether the Russian translation of the title should be 'bare' or 'bald'... or, indeed, whether the version we're all familiar with owes slightly more to Rimsky-Korsakov than Mussorgsky. I don't claim to be an expert.
1. The Supernaturals - Everest
The world's biggest mountain... and one of the best songs the Supernaturals ever recorded, gently mocking the whole "my love is bigger than a mountain" metaphor mentioned earlier.
I bought a goldfish to keep me company In these dark days when you're not here with me I walk round Safeway on my own Look in the freezer cabinet, see my reflection and I'm all alone You dropped me like a waitress drops a tray...
Those were my SPECIFIC mountain songs... remember, Ain't No Mountain High Enough doesn't count.
We Brits don't call them highways... and they're the antithesis of freedom and romance. And yet... there's more songs about motorways than you'd expect. Remember these next time you're stuck in a three hour tailback on the M6...
There are obvious nods to Kraftwerk in the backing track (and no, an Autobahn is not a motorway), but the lyrics take us in a much more bizarre direction, updating a biblical journey to a world of solar-panelled rooftops and crumbling cooling towers... ivy-clad reminders of a long-forgotten power. Metaphors aplenty to keep your mind active when the cones crowd round.
...obviously sounds like it's going to present a more realistic, less romanticized vision of the English motorway system. And apart from the incongruous reference to 'gasoline fumes' (petrol, surely, Ray) you'd struggle to find truer words than these...
Motorway tea is warm and wet, The rain is a pouring and it's four in the morning, And it's all I can get. You've never seen loos like motorway loos, Thousands of people passing through, It's enough to put you off of your motorway food.
OK, so strictly speaking, this isn't about a motorway. It's about taking the A-road, the OK-road, that's the best. Hence, it's about NOT going on the motorway. Which is fine with me...
You may hate the M25. You may have nightmares about the M6. But the motorway that has been the bane of my existence for the last twenty-five years is the M-bloody-62. I truly believe it to be the worst motorway in the country, especially the stretch between Manchester and Leeds.
This would have been a much nicer song had they not named it after Satan's Driveway.
Every time I listen to The Long Blondes now, I get sad they aren't around anymore.
Wipe your eyes darling, it's OK Meet me on the dual carriageway Separated by motorways The A14 and the A1 Separated by motorways Two lonely girls go on the run
