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...
Yesterday we had a picture of John Lydon at the top of the page because I thought he was surely the best / worst example of a pop star appearing in an advert. And then I discovered Snoop Dogg in the Money Supermarket ad. And John had some competition.
Here is George's choice of the best "pop" "songs" used in adverts... although George would like to qualify that, "I think the link is best described as “songs related to UK adverts”, as some of the songs were not actually used but were the basis for the advert. For example, “Que Será Será”, because I’m 100% sure Doris Day did not sing about mushrooms and fried onion rings."
We hope it's chips, it's chips, we hope it's chips...
1. Confused band, ft. Lelah.
"ft. Lelah" was an anagram for one of George's favourite groups...
The Fall - Touch Sensitive (Vauxhall Corsa)
Thanks again to George for suggesting this week's songs. As someone who worked in advertising for far too many years, I couldn't have done this one myself.
7. Play it again, Sam... and again... and again...
Humphrey Bogart (again) didn't actually say "play it again, Sam". He said, "You Played it for her, you can play it for me". Anyway, when he said that, he was talking to Dooley Wilson...
What is a Wallflower? Well, it's either the kind of pretty little plant pictured above, or it's "a person who has no one to dance with or who feels shy, awkward, or excluded at a party." Welcome to my teenage years! (To be fair, I over-compensated by becoming the class joker... I even went along to one school fancy dress disco dressed as Jack Nicholson's Joker... in full face paint, which played hell with my acne. Fortunately, no photos survive.)
When it comes to Wallflowers, Etta James put it best...
We'll start with some German Wallflowers, woah-woahing along to Little Jürgen, back in 1965...
THE WALLFLOWERS #2
Peter Brickley's band The Telephone Boxes supported The Smiths on their first tour in 1983. When they broke up, Brickley formed The Wallflowers, self-releasing "one of the great lost C86 tunes", Blushing Girl, Nervous Smile. A couple more singles followed, but the band took too much time over the album and everything fell apart. Brickley went on to become a movie extra, notable for spending "four months, six days a week, as a Celt in the film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves" yet never actually making it onto the screen.
THE WALLFLOWERS #3
Around the same time that Mr. Brickley was looking for blushing girls with nervous smiles in Slough, over on the other side of the pond, another group of Wallflowers were being discovered... by Snickers, of all people. That must have been some Marathon effort!
I can't find music info on the Snickers New Music Challenge, or about these particular Wallflowers... other than what they reveal on the clip below.
THE WALLFLOWERS #4
It must be tough being Bob Dylan's son. I mean, not so much if you want to be a butcher, a baker or a candlestick maker (is that still a job?)... but if you want to be a singer? Boy, that's one big shadow to haul your way out from underneath.
I reckon Jakob Dylan has done pretty well at carving his own musical identity, distinct from dad - he's certainly done a better job than Sean or Julian Lennon or any of Hank Williams' descendants. Forming a band, rather than initially going solo using the Dylan name as branding, was the key to his success. These Wallflowers got together in 1989, and although the line-up's ever-changing (the only constant being Jakob himself), they're still going strong, having produced one of my favourite albums of 2021 (and their first in 9 years), Exit Wounds.
THE WALLFLOWERS #5
Canadian Wallflowers who started out in the late 80s as the Edsels, changing their name, presumably, to avoid confusion with the 60s doo-wop group of the same name. After one album as The Wallflowers, they heard what Jakob Dylan was up to and changed their name again to The Barstool Prophets.
Here's one of the songs they initially released as Wallflowers, and then again as Barstool Prophets...
THE WALLFLOWERS #6
The late 80s were clearly a big time for being a Wallflower. Here we see the Australian variety, found in Sydney in 1989...
There were quite a few other Wallflowers listed on discogs - including the Austrian Wallflowers who released a song called Sandwichman in 1969 - but sadly I couldn't find any more audio evidence. Quite a few bands just called Wallflower too... it's obviously a name that's cherished by introverted musicians.
Which Wallflowers would you ask to dance? And which ones call for the weedkiller?
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?
