Of course, not everyone agreed with everything Jesse had to say...
Jesse you say common ground, does that include the PLO? What about people right here right now who fought for you not so long ago? The words that flow so freely falling dancing from your lips I hope that you don't cheapen them with a racist slip, oh common ground Is common ground a word or just a sound? Common ground, remember those civil rights workers buried in the ground
Superman used to represent "Truth, Justice, and the American Way"... but many are questioning whether that's still relevant, and the press have put that point to the new movie's director, James Gunn, a man who has clashed with Donald Trump in the past.
“I mean, Superman is the story of America,” Gunn says. “An immigrant that came from other places and populated the country, but for me it is mostly a story that says basic human kindness is a value and is something we have lost.”
Superman has also been called a "strange visitor from another planet", that planet being, of course, Krypton. I couldn't find any songs named after Kal El's home planet, but there were quite a few that mention its most famous (and deadly) mineral...
No: where he's from doesn't matter. At his best, Superman is an example to us all. To be better people. I'm not even a big Superman fan - I much prefer Spidey or Bats. But when he's done right, I still appreciate the moral to his story.
This started a few months back, but I usually found that at least if I left a reply to someone else's comment and ticked the box, then I would receive subsequent comments in my inbox. Now even that has stopped working.
This isn't so bad for that day's post as I can check in and see if there are any comments to read and reply to, but as it also effects previous day's posts, I find myself having to check back through the past week and discovering new comments I've missed.
Is anyone else having the same issue? I've also found it to be true when I leave a comment on another blogger-based blog - like Charity Chic's. I no longer receive a notification to tell me if there's been a reply. One of the things I enjoy most about the blogosphere is the fun little conversations that crop up in comments boxes, but I'm finding it increasingly difficult to keep up with them now the notifications have stopped. I've checked my spam folder in case they'd started going in there, but no joy. Wordpress comments still appear to be working fine.
Those of you who are on blogger - is this happening to you also? And for anyone else who leaves a comment on this blog, do you still get notifications if someone replies? Is it just me?
As I mentioned a week or so ago, to celebrate the one hundredth edition of Celebrity Jukebox, I chose one of my favourite artists. But then we lost Sinéad O'Connor, and my plans were thrown out of the window.
Now though, I return to the man who gave voice to my Number One song, Jimmy Webb's amazing...
I won't say anymore about that tune today, but here's a post I wrote about it some years back. I will, however, share with you my review of the time I saw him live, on his farewell tour back in 2011 (this taken from my old blog, Sunset Over Slawit)...
It's long been my dream to see my all time favourite song performed live by the singer who made it famous. Friday at the Salford Lowry was my last chance to make that dream a reality. Unlike many "Farewell Tours" where you suspect the artist may well be "quitting" only to sell more tickets (before next year's inevitable "reunion tour"), Glen Campbell really will be hanging up his mike and guitar once this tour is done. You may have read how the 75 year-old star, famous in his younger days for his baby-faced looks and country choirboy vocals, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's late last year. His return to the road is seen by many as not just a farewell to fans but also a brave effort to publicise a disease which celebrities rarely make public.
It's clear when Campbell takes to the stage that this is not a man in the prime of health. Although joyful and enthusiastic, he does at times appear confused and his legendary guitar playing is no longer at its flawless best. Fortunately he's supported by a band that includes three of his kids: Cal, Ashley and Shannon who help keep him focused throughout the show. And what a show... all the hits that made him famous (many composed by the divine Jimmy Webb), topped off by a showstopping, standing ovation double bill of Wichita Lineman and Rhinestone Cowboy. It was impossible not to be moved to tears by the former, a song that's meant so much to me for so many years and now sounds more bittersweet than ever.
Glen died 6 years later, but he's a mainstay on my jukebox, and the Celebrity Jukebox honours him today with these choice tunes...
Every time I hear Glen Campbell, I think about you And in that moment I can always find "Southern Nights" coming up the hallway And I’m home again in such a simpler time Back when the world was ever "Gentle On My Mind"
Now some days I feel like an engagement ring Resting on the ocean floor Yet others just like that same Glen Campbell record Found in every second hand store
Here's a song about a young man who plays a Yamaha guitar in the Slee Cowboy Orchestra and knows all the lyrics to Glen's biggest hits... in French, I bet...
C'était un garçon des cantons Avec son étui plein d'chansons On pouvait l'voir tous les samedis Avec l'orchestre de cowboys Slee Y avait une guitare Yamaha Et un habit aux opéras Y connaissait toutes les paroles Des dernières tounes de Glen Campbell
When he got out of prison, country music outlaw David Allan Coe lived in a red Cadillac hearse parked in front of the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. He was clearly more of a badass than Glen Campbell, and I'm sure Glen would have agreed.
I've always been the Rhinestone Cowboy I don't care what Glen Campbell has to say
James Reyne is quite a big deal down under, first as lead singer of Australian Crawl, then as as successful solo artist. Glen's influence travels far and wide...
Couldn't tell if I was dreaming When I woke before the dawn Thought I heard Glen Campbell screaming Where have all the flowers gone?
Canadian pop punks Chixdiggit win the prize for Band Name of the Week...
I can't be with you tonight, it ain't right Got home, one message for me, our song was on the machine Now I got a song in my head, a mix of Glen Campbell and Queen
Jeremy Warmsley is from London. He's in the band Summer Camp, writes soundtrack music, and releases his own stuff. This is a pretty perfect 60's pastiche...
You swore that you would never tour again Just stay home in bed and write the songs Glen Campbell sat in and sang the high parts While the interband relationships fell apart
Definitely the most famous song to mention Glen - and arguably the best - comes from the legendary Gil Scott Heron. It's a cursory mention in a list of performers who are symptomatic of the "white-washing" of US TV in the 70s, so hardly a tribute to Glen... but always worth a spin.
All of which brings us to these guys. Back in 1980, Melody Maker called Any Trouble "the most exciting new rock 'n' roll group since the Pretenders". They signed to Stiff, then EMI... but never broke the big time. They reformed in 2007 and released two new albums. This track comes from their 2015 album Present Tense. I wonder if it was in response to Glen releasing a song coincidentally named after their band on his final album in 2011...?
Buck Rogers was created in 1929 as a comic strip hero who eventually translated into radio and movie serials. However, he is best remembered as the star of the late 70s TV show Buck Rogers In The 25th Century starring Gil Gerard and Erin Grey. In this show, Buck is a NASA pilot who's thrown 500 years into the future, arriving in a world where everyone wears sexy jump-suits and the robots are really annoying. And I mean, really annoying...
In the "You Learn Something New Everyday" Department: Twiki, the really annoying robot above, was actually voiced by Mel 'Bugs Bunny' Blanc.
Music in the 25th Century will also be particularly annoying...
...so Buck will probably listen to quite a few oldies on whatever kind of listening device 1979 creatives imagined we'd be using in 500 years time... I doubt they predicted Spotify.
Let's start with a band named after characters from a science fiction board game, with a song about making a sandwich...
Been out all night, I needed a bite
I thought I'd put a record on
I reached for the one with the ultra-modern label
And wondered where the light had gone
It had a futuristic cover, lifted straight from Buck Rogers
Next up, someone who's no stranger to name-dropping popular TV shows in his lyrics, the mighty Gil Scott Heron, with a song about Reagan's re-election campaign...
Ah yes, they're off and running again. The campaign trail
This week's raison d'etre obviously comes from Feeder though, a Welsh indie band with just enough welly to keep them out of the landfill, and still be filling medium-sized venues almost 20 years after they formed. This is their biggest hit, and definitely their best song...
When I started looking up famous actors and actresses for this feature, I was shocked by just how few of them were people of colour. It's only in the last couple of years that diverse on-screen representation has really caught on, to the point that we're now starting to hear white male actors whinging they can't get the parts anymore. Here's the World's Smallest Violin playing just for them.
Singer, actor, professional footballer and game-changing political activist Paul Robeson is held up by many as the first true African American superstar, paving the way for the likes of Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte. Of course, he paid the price for being a pioneer when the FBI blacklisted him as a subversive during the McCarthy era.
Woody Guthrie was naturally an admirer of Robeson's, although his song wasn't recorded until Billy Bragg and Wilco took charge of his archive in the 90s...
Black 47 were a controversial white American Celtic rock band who counted among their roster former Dexys saxophonist Geoff Blythe. This was their own tribute to Robeson...
I was surprised not to find loads of black stars name-dropping Robeson (Sidney & Denzel are far more frequently rapped about). Here's a couple of notable exceptions...
...and only slightly less so that he'd be a hero of the Manics, considering both his long career of political activism, spurred on by his support of Welsh miners in the 1930s. Their tribute samples Robeson's spoken word performance of Freedom Train from that time. Powerful stuff.
What about Edward G, indeed? Bogie gets name-dropped all over the place, but I'm struggling to find another mention of Edward G. Robinson in a pop song. Unless you know different...
Tom Waits, meanwhile, mentions Jimmy not once, but twice...
Ah, my old friend, Jack. So long parted.... 20 years since we spent any real time together. Not that I think you'd do me any good if you and I were still together. Not right now, anyway.
Welcome back to the Hot 100. Before Christmas we got as far as #27, so basic accounting dictates we move on to number 26, as illustrated by Australian band... erm... 26. Appropriately enough, here is their song A New Beginning. Muse fans may want to give that a spin.
"If, like me, you are a bit of a sucker for just about anything sung in French, then I give you Stereolab's OLV 26."
And then came Douglas, still freezing his elbow patches* off on the picket line...
(*I'm presuming Canadian teachers have elbow patches on their threadbare blazers, just like teachers in the UK.)
"I don't recall if it has been mentioned many times already for other numbers, but Roger Miller's song Got Two Again is chock full of numbers and sums, including this verse containing our beloved number 26:
For the second verse
I need someone to give me a number
Between 12 and 14, I'll make a verse (13!)
13, ah, 13, well, 13 multiplied by 1
You still got 13 but wasn't that fun?
Now, take that same 13 multiply by 2
26 hours the train's overdue…
Never heard that before, Douglas, but I approve.
"And if the train is indeed 26 hours overdue, then that would make R.E.M.’s 26 hour road trip described in the song Departure unfortunately twice as long, at 52 hours (keeping with the sums theme, though I suspect that if they are going via Singapore and Spain to Salt Lake City I suspect their mode of travel is more likely a plane?):
Just arrived Singapore, San Sebastian, Spain, 26-hour trip
Salt Lake City, come in spring
Over the salt flats a hailstorm brought you back to me
Salt Lake City, come in spring
Over the salt flats a hailstorm brought you back to me
"And that's all I got, folks."
Both good suggestions. Not heard Departure in ages.
Finally, Rigid Digit returned with another fine lyrical offering...
However, for this week's suggestion I'm going with 12 minutes of protest song, from Gil Scott Heron, reacting to the election of President Ronald Reagan in 1981. Listen to this today and change a few names and statistics and it can surely apply to a couple of more recent election results as well..
Well, the first thing I want to say is..."Mandate My Ass!"
Because it seems as though we've been convinced
That 26% of the registered voters
Not even 26% of the American people
But 26% of the registered voters form a mandate...
Or a landslide...
The idea concerns the fact that this country wants nostalgia
They want to go back as far as they can ...
Even if it's only as far as last week
Not to face now or tomorrow, but to face backwards
Next week, we reach the last quarter in our century. Your 25s will be much appreciated...
No prizes for guessing that week 42 of our countdown would be illustrated by Level 42, though Walter did suggest Love Games as a less obvious song choice than Running With The Family or Lessons in Love.
Level 42 took their name from Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy in which an enormous supercomputer called Deep Thought took 7.5 million years to work out "the meaning of life, the universe and everything". The answer it came up with was 42.
The songs my own giant super-computer (i.e. you guys) came up with for the number 42 were as follows...
C kicked us off with a certain lady whose measurements were 42-39-56 (I never understood lady's measurements, but very little imagination is needed here)...
It was Alyson, however, who raised the issue of 42nd Street, so certain I wouldn't be making a stop there this week. As she says...
Of course I know it's not going to be your pick, but the song 42nd Street has been around for nearly ninety years and was written by Harry Warren, who has been mentioned often over at my place as he certainly was prolific, and wrote many of the songs covered by other artists over the decades (I Only Have Eyes For You a favourite of mine). Also the Ruby Keeler story is one that never goes away, it just gets updated for a new generation.
Although Alyson is correct that the original 42nd Street song won't be this week's selection, I did find a number of other songs that stopped off on that particular thoroughfare, including...
I wouldn't normally post a picture of a young lady in the bath, but given she's the answer to one of this week's questions and she appears to have taken the photo herself, I thought it would be allowed. Sharp-eyed readers (i.e. those of you who don't just come here on a Saturday and/or Sunday) will have noticed that she's already featured on this blog earlier this week anyway. But Snapshots are prepared well in advance of regular postings for reasons too mundane to explain.
For balance, if you want to send me a photo of your favourite male pop star in the bath holding a camera, I'll be sure to feature that some time in the future. As long as it's not Bono.
Anyway, it was pretty much a three horse race this week, with a returning George first out of the raps, followed swiftly by Rigid Digit and Martin, with Lynchie getting half a point to keep him happy. Even though Martin got more correct answers, I'm going to - somewhat controversially - award the crown to George this week because he went above and beyond the call of duty in trying to explain (at least half of) my convoluted clue to #1. And the referee's decision is final...
1. Buck Rogers teleports into Michael's disturbing house to find Billy refusing to let his T-shirt be filmed. (Most convoluted clue ever: extra marks if you can explain it all. Or any of it.)
Buck Rogers was played by Gil Gerard.
Mr. Scott worked the teleporter on the starship Enterprise.
REM (and Michael Stipe) sang about a Disturbance At The Heron House.
Billy Bragg sang that "the revolution is just a T-shirt away". (I own that T-shirt.)
The revolution will not go better with Coke The revolution will not fight the germs that cause bad breath The revolution WILL put you in the driver's seat The revolution will not be televised
