It's been a busy week, so this is the earliest opportunity I've had to pay tribute to singer and songwriter Chip Taylor who died towards the end of March. I write a lot of these eulogies lately, and every one of them affects me in some way or other (otherwise, I wouldn't write them), but even then... the news of Chip's death hit me hard. Because through the songs he wrote in the latter part of his career, I felt like I knew him. Whenever I listened to one of his new records, it began to feel like I was catching up with an old friend. I felt like we had a certain simpatico, even though he was thirty years older than me and lived half a world away. I knew where he was coming from.
I only really discovered Chip Taylor in 2019 when I heard the above song on the radio. But it turned out that I'd known his songs much, much longer.
And then, a couple of years later, he wrote this, a song I became very familiar with as a child because the 1981 version by Juice Newton was a firm favourite of my old friend Tel...
Chip released a number of solo albums in the 70s, and then apparently spent most of the 80s playing blackjack and betting on horse races, only curing himself of that particular addiction following the death of his mother in the mid-90s. After that, he returned to recording and released some wonderfully individual and idiosyncratic solo records, as well as a string of excellent collaborations.
If you appeared in The Godfather, even if it was a relatively small role, chances are that'll take top billing in your obituary. For me though, when I think of Robert Duvall, I think of the man who loved the smell of Napalm in the morning. Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore from Apocalypse Now.
And taking us back to a story I wrote about a couple of weeks back, Bob Duvall also played one of the most famous fictional characters to give his name to a 90s indie band in the 1962 adaptation of To Kill A Mockingbird.
And in case you're wondering (as I did), he was no relation to Shelly Duvall from The Shining (although her Dad was called Robert). But he did star in the TV adaptation of Larry McMurtry's western Lonesome Dove... and that gives me an excuse to play another tune by Larry's son, James. And if they ever made a movie out of the song below, Robert Duvall would have been the perfect casting...
I drink my coffee black, because that's how I prefer it. Despite my previously discussed aversion to cold milk, I can have milk in coffee... I just don't like it. Also, less calories, so it's win/win for me. I also don't have sugar, because... why would you?
The song at the top of this post, by Sinéad, was written by Sonny Burke and Paul Francis Webster back in the late 1940s. This is the original version...
...but it's also been recorded by all the usual suspects: Frank, Ella, Petula... Tricky.
Back when I drank tea, I used to take it black with no sugar as well. I couldn't find any songs about Black Tea, so here's some Pennyroyal Tea for you tea drinkers.
Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld
So I can sigh eternally
I'm so tired I can't sleep
I'm a liar and a thief
Sit and drink Pennyroyal Tea
I'm anaemic royalty
(Be warned though, although Pennyroyal leaf extracts are relatively harmless, Pennyroyal Oil can cause syncope, seizures, coma, cardiopulmonary collapse, acute liver injury, renal insufficiency and multiorgan failure. You might be better sticking with a nice cup of coffee.)
The big question is... why did I call this post “Dead Pheasant”? Not because the pheasant had been eating from the Pennyroyal plant, I assure you.
No, this comes from an amusing story my mum told me at the weekend, about the time my dad hit a pheasant with his car on his way home from work. If you drive the country lanes round here, kamikaze pheasants are a constant risk. They really are the stupidest of birds, and appear to have a pathological desire to run out in front of oncoming traffic. Watch them run and you can also see how they’re clearly descended from dinosaurs. Although thankfully, they do less damage to your car than hitting a velociraptor.
Anyway, my dad hit the pheasant, and being a Yorkshire farmer, he brought it home for tea. Waste not, want not. “I lit some candles,” Mum told me, “and we had a nice romantic meal.”
I've been dying to feature The Six Million Dollar Man on TV On The Radio, but I haven't been able to find any decent tunes that mention him. (A lot of tunes do, just no decent ones. Unless you know different...?)
Anyway, here's the man with the Bionic Eye, which the interweb tells me "has a 20:1 zoom lens and infrared capabilities", so there must be a camera in there too, right? And here are ten songs which also proclaim their value in dollars...
Prodigies are young geniuses (google it - it's not genii). In a patriarchy though, they would only recognise the smart boys. Although the lads don't even know how to use capital letters, so what hope is there?
I've not been a big fan of recent movies based on DC Comics, but I thought The Flash was OK... despite being a box office bomb. It was good to see Michael Keaton back in the Batsuit, and the Nicolas Cage cameo was worth the ticket price alone. Controversial star Ezra Miller was rather irksome though... I doubt they'll be back.
If Ezra wanted to buy some sable though, they'd probably go to the fur man.
A grand probably wouldn't even pay for the dress these days.
1. Tommy, in chains.
It never ceases to amaze me that we're now healthily into the 300s, and I'm still discovering big name artists who have never appeared in Snapshots before. Even more incredible is when it's artists I actually like.
Above is a young Vincent Furnier, and his puppy, before he adopted his more distinctive stage persona...
Tommy Cooper + Alice In Chains =
Alice Cooper - Billion Dollar Babies
I bet you a dollar you come back for more next Saturday...
Yesterday we had Butch Cassidy, today it's the Sundance Kid. See? Easy when you know how. And he's got a pair of those special binoculars with a camera inside. You ought to get a pair yourself.
Here are ten songs I had to group together under the rather long-winded title of "Famous Wild West Heroes & Outlaws".
Not much of an anagram. Not much of a picture. But the tune is a solid gold classic...
And that's how you do a video, Godley & Creme. You ride a motorbike through a stained glass window! It's the video with everything AND a kitchen sink. An exploding kitchen sink, naturally.
Do you take these Snapshots, to have and to hold, for richer or poorer, till death do you part?
Interesting noise. I like it when the bass comes in.
"I also have an album called 27 Passports by The Ex. There is no title track and, as far as I can recall, no lyrical reference to the number 27 on any track, so I'm guessing that this doesn't really count?"
Probably not. But we can hear the full album on that link.
Alyson & C appeared next, not with a song, but a rather more morbid link to The 27 Club, a list of artists who tragically died at that very young age, including...
New to me, that lot, Jim. They don't pass because the 27 is a band not a song (see The Swede's SEctor 27 suggestion above). However, I don't disqualify years anymore. So you could have had this...
He put a spell on some poor little Crutchfield girl
And stayed like that for 27 seven years
As for your third suggestion... we'll come back to that.
Last week I said I was certain I knew what Martin's suggestion would be. But I reckon Martin was too busy preparing for his Land's End to John O'Groats bike ride to make the suggestion. (Wouldn't it be easier to do it the other way round? Surely there's more down-hill if you start in the Highlands?) Here's what I thought you were going to suggest anyway...
The other thing I pondered last week was where our Canadian pal Douglas had got to. Holiday? Sadly not...
"For the record, I have not in fact been on holiday, but rather on strike. I am a teacher in the province of Ontario, Canada, and we are currently in the midst of troubled contract negotiations with the government over quality of education issues, and have been so for a while now, I regret to report.
Much to my surprise and chagrin, I have discovered that standing in a picket line in the midst of a Canadian winter is in fact not much like a holiday at all. The occasional cheery mid-finger salute from passing cars, the cheap coffee roasting on an open fire, the magically diminishing pay-checks as we prepare for the Yuletide season...very festive those.
But as we have gone from province wide strikes to rotating board-by-board strikes as of today, I had a chance to look in, and after being inspired immediately to think of "Never Had No One Ever", I realized that I was, sadly, late to the game, and it had been taken! (So perhaps in the spirit of having a horse in the game for that song, I will bypass the obvious Smith's version (perhaps the fact that a certain singer seems to be persona non grata in some quarters at the moment will mean a second-stringer may get a chance off the bench?) and suggest Billy Bragg's cover?
Other than that, I place my real serious cash down on John Denver's "Rocky Mountain High", which of course opens with some delightfully contradictory lyrics...
And I am going big money on this bet as I am confident I am on to a winner; I did my research once again, and discovered that on a certain 10th of May in 2018, Mr John Denver placed 1st in a Top Ten list with a different song, "Leaving On A Jet Plane", so I am hoping there is a soft spot there for all things Denver.
Now, back to the "job action" (and what a delightful term that is!)."
Firstly, you have my sympathy - and solidarity, Douglas. As a teacher myself - and one constantly under attack - I wish you every success in your action. Even though, realistically, we're all doomed.
As to your suggestions... can I come back to those too?
First, the inevitable trawl through my own hard-drive...
And to be honest, I'm really torn this week. The Queen Is Dead is still my favourite album of the 80s. But Never Had No One ever is probably the bleakest song on there, and do we really need more misery this week?
Rocky Mountain High, meanwhile, is a fine entry from Mr. Denver... but can I really choose it over The Smiths, even in the era of Mozaggedon?
Probably not. But it was closer than you'd think...
Next week - the final letter of the alphabet. #26. Go!
War, war is stupid and people are stupid... but not you guys, because you solve Saturday Snapshots every week! (Well, as I type this there are two still oustanding... but I'm hoping someone will solve them overnight). I may be a man without conviction, but I appreciate you playing along every weekend... and I think we can all agree that C is this week's undisputed Karma Chameleon. Well done, C!
10. Tomorrows' last page.
The placement of the possessive apostrophe is important as it indicates more than one Sunday.
Mrs. Reagan's son would be Nancy's Boy... which always reminds me of an old Spitting Image sketch about Larry Speakes, of which the title of this song is the punchline. But I can't find it on youtube, sadly.
