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...
The music I hear more often than anything else at the moment is nursery rhymes. Sam is particularly fond of The Grand Old Duke of York (popular gay icon - after all, he had 10,000 men), The Muffin Man (do you know him?) and Pop! Goes The Weasel (as close as Sam gets to pop music right now). Because my head is full of little else - I even wake up in the night with them drilling their way into my dreams - here are ten songs inspired to some degree or other by traditional nursery rhymes of yore...
(Special mention, for those of you who remember the 80s, to Cock Robin... who sound better than I remembered, despite their unfortunate name.)
And this is why I thank the pop music gods I was born when I was. Because, yes, today's teenagers may pride themselves on their love of the "classics" from the 60s, 70s or 80s... but how many of them will ever even hear this choice cut from Ray Parker Jr.'s original band? You could trawl youtube for decades and never stumble across this gem: cheesy 70s soul at its finest.
OK, so the old English nursery rhyme "Boys and girls come out to play" probably wasn't much of an influence on The Offspring. Sue me; I wanted to hear this again.
Stretching the theme a little, though this is the only song I can think of to mention Nursery Rhymes in the title. One of Terry Hall's less successful recording ensembles, yet just as wonderful as anything else he's ever lent his vocal talents to. Ha, happier times, ba, ba, better days.
I'd be prepared to hear an argument for this being at Number One, considering it not only involves the titular pepper-picker but also Jack 'n' Jill, Jack B. Nimble, Pinocchio, the Three Little Pigs and many other childhood favourites. They even throw in a reference to Weebles: "the turntables might wobble, but they don't fall down".
I wasn't familiar with the nursery rhyme "A-tisket, A-tasket, A green and yellow basket" as a child. I only discovered it through the epic, melancholic melodrama of the Shangri-Las, a band with a truly unique sound. If you're only familiar with Leader of the Pack, give this a spin... I doubt you'll ever have heard anything walk the tightrope between aching beauty and high camp hysteria quite so bewitchingly.
1. The Bluetones - Solomon Bites The Worm
One of the Bluetones' best, wherein a mightily chunky guitar riff supports a playful retelling of the story of Solomon Grundy, bundled up with a joyful "grab life while you can" message because "you've only got 7 days". Which only goes to demonstrate that Mark Morris and chums were always a far more interesting Britpop prospect than the Blunder Brothers of Oasis. (BTW, Britpop is 20 years old this year. What does that make us?)
So, those were the nursery rhymes Sam can investigate when he's a little older... and I managed to avoid all mention of Mary Had A Little Lamb by Wings.You owe me for that.
