TV On The Radio #6: Inspector Morse

I've been watching Inspector Morse again recently. I was always a big fan back in the day, both of the John Thaw / Kevin Whately double act of Morse and Lewis, and of Colin Dexter's clever novels with a melancholic tone. I've never watched either the sequel show, Lewis, or the prequel, Endeavour... but I may give them a go once I recover from the trauma of the final episode.

I've written before about how watching old TV shows, like listening to old music, is providing me a lot of comfort lately. An escape from the horrors of the modern world. And Morse definitely fits that bill. In one episode I watched recently, Lewis is horrified when he orders a couple of pints and gets charged £2! 

The show's theme tune, written by Barrington Pheloung, spelled out the character's surname using Morse code. While never a chart hit, it did shift a fair few soundtrack albums back in the late 80s...

 

Here are some songs that mention the Inspector, starting with Paul and Jacqui... and a video that features Brookside's Ron & Bev Dixon, TV fans!

Like chewing gum that's stuck to sole of shoe

Like cotton wool and tube of superglue

Inspector Morse or Sherlock Holmes to clue

You and me were meant to be together

Paul Heaton & Jacqui Abbott - You And Me (Were Meant To Be Together)

Another duo, Patrick & Eugene, have drawn comparison to both Monty Python and The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. This is how they spend their Saturday nights...

I don't have to go out drinking, could stay in of course

Feet up on the sofa, and watch Inspector Morse

Patrick & Eugene - Saturday Night

Next, a Scottish punk band who have been cussing up a storm since 1981. Fair to say they don't think that TV cops are true representations of the UK police force...

Oi Polloi - Anti-Police Aggro

Meanwhile, I'm not sure which TV show Strategic Plan are watching, but they wish it was as good as Inspector Morse...

This isn't Maigret or Inspector Morse

In fact it's more like Clouseau, without the jokes of course

Poirot and Miss Marple would have solved it all by now

But these cops haven't got a clue and they're still running round

Strategic Plan - Defective Detectives

For the kids (well, the kids 10 years ago), here's Skepta with his best chat-up line...

This ain't the drink talkin' here

But ever since I walked in here 

I've been investigating you like Inspector Morse in here

Skepta - Lush

And finally, the wonderful Grace Petrie, with another song Billy Bragg wishes he'd written...

Another day of keeping up this pretence 

Well, honey, it don't make any sense 

'Cause you don't have to be Inspector Morse 

To see that you and me, honey, we're flogging a dead horse

A pound a pint, Lewis!? That's definitely a crime!

Celebrity Jukebox #43: Lee Van Cleef

On Clarence Leroy Van Cleef Jr.’s tombstone, the inscription reads “The Best of the Bad”. Van Cleef played a hell of a lot of bad guys in his 38 year acting career after refusing to have his nose fixed for his debut role in High Noon. The producers offered him a more heroic part if he had the operation, Lee declined and was cast largely as bad guys from then on. Throughout the 50s he made his living getting shot in TV Western shows before hitting the big time when Sergio Leone cast him in For A Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad & The Ugly, leading to a long and lucrative career in Spaghetti Westerns.

When searching for songs about Lee Van Cleef, I had to watch out that I wasn’t confusing him with Reggae star Devon Perkins, aka Lee Van Cleef, Le Van Cliff, Lee Vancliff, Lee V And Cliff and Cleevan Cliff, among other variations on that theme. Last week, I said that country music was second only to rap for name-dropping other artists, but Reggae must come second when it comes to bigging your own name up in song. Here he is, rub-a-dub style, with the Reggae Sunsplash…

Lee Van Cleef – Reggae Sunsplash

Onto the real Lee Van Cleef then, and we start with Finnish indie band Vesterinen Yhtyeineen. I’ll let you google translate the lyrics yourself…

Vesterinen Yhtyeineen - Lee Van Cleef

No lyrics at all in this one, but you do get to hear Ron ‘Bumblefoot’ Thal (who’s played with Guns n Roses & Asia among others) strut his fret stuff…

Bumblefoot – The Legend of Lee Van Cleef

Here are some lyrical nods…

The Strypes – Angel Eyes

Well, I’d love to steal your heart away
But baby, I ain’t no thief
Well, I can’t be the bad guy
No, I ain’t no Lee Van Cleef

Sleaford Mods – Mysteron

They call me the Timbuktu Man
I shoot down Lee Van Cleef

The Fugees – The Score

Van Cleef must have been an irresistible name drop for Wyclef… I’m surprised he didn’t try to rhyme the names.

I creep like a thief
No doubt the man’s swift
I’m more magnificent than Lee Van Cleef

Paul Heaton & Jacqui Abbott – When I Get Back To Blighty

The real Clint Eastwood
The real Lee Van Cleef
Ended up in a bar in Hull
Minus all their teeth

Should you be interested in such things, that’s the same song that ends with a repeated call that “Phil Collins must die” for his tax-dodging days.

John Hiatt – Bite Marks

Don’t need to teeth to eat my beef
I’m tender-hearted, ain’t no Lee Van Cleef

It strikes me that most times Lee gets mentioned in songs, it’s for his bad guy status, so it’s nice that weirdo funk-rock band Primus have a more positive take…

There ain’t never been one quite like Clint
There’s really only one Clint
But I really did like Lee Van Cleef
I sure did like Lee Van Cleef
Whatever happened to Lee Van Cleef?
Whatever happened to Lee?

Lee Van Cleef died in 1989, aged just 64, from a heart attack and throat cancer. His gravestone reads: The Best of the Bad.

My Top Ten Songs About Killing Pop Stars

I've been planning this one for a while, but Charity Chic finally forced my hand.

Ten songs about killing (or at least seriously wounding) pop stars. Shoot!

Special mention to Mark E. Smith, who once memorably sang...

And if I ever end up like Bono,

Slit my throat with a kitchen knife...

10. Altered Images - Dead Pop Stars

An obvious place to start, although this one doesn't go so far as to name names. The rest aren't so coy...

9. The Cranberries - I Just Shot John Lennon

The most famous of all murdered pop stars. The Cranberries give a voice to his killer, Mark David Chapman, but their sympathies remain with the Walrus.

"I just shot John Lennon!"

He said, "I just shot John Lennon!"

What a sad and sorry and sickening sight

It was a sad and sorry and sickening night

8. Keith Top Of The Pops & His Minor UK Indie Celebrity All-Star Backing Band - Two of the Beatles Are Dead

My favourite line in this goes...

Don't count Stuart Sutcliffe or the original Paul

...which always makes me smile.

7. Chumbawamba - Slag Aid

I never quite got Chumbawamba's message here, other than that - in their opinion - famous pop stars are hypocrites for getting involved in charity appeals. (By their calculations, Live Aid, Band Aid and Sport Aid raised less than half of Michael Jackson's "personal amassed fortune", "or about the same as the world spends on arms every two hours, forty minutes".

Most of the lyrics just do what it says in the title, but they do nail Cliff Richard to a cross towards the end... and there's another version where they do the same to John Lydon, for balance.

6. Jackie Balfour - Sting's Dead

An amusing anecdote, if not an actual song. Still...

5. The Wonder Stuff - Rick Astley In The Noose

Poor old Rick Astley. Back in the late 80s, I hated him in his role as SAW poster-boy, but I've developed a weird respect for him over the years. Even Nick Lowe feels bad about writing these lines in All Men Are Liars now...

Well do you remember Rick Astley?

He had a big fat hit it was ghastly

He said I’m never gonna give you up or let you down

Well I’m here to tell you that dick’s a clown

4. Leonard Cohen - A Singer Must Die

Here's Leonard turning the gun on himself... in reaction to his own critics.

"This song is for my critics and for my judges and for those who give marks to us everywhere, who evaluate our performance whether it is in the courtroom or the cloakroom or the bedroom. This is for the judges."

3. Paul Heaton & Jacqui Abbott - When I Get Back To Blighty

Paul Heaton's trick is to get someone with a much sweeter voice to sing his most poisonous lines, hence Jacqui Abbott's the one who gives voice to this hugely topical song (even more so today than when it was written 5 years ago) about the perils of Little Britain's fake-nostalgic jingoism which ends up making a figurehead of Mr. Collins, esquire.

A white T-shirt and faded jeans

Just, just an ordinary guy

But prisoner to his tax returns

Oh, Phil Collins, Phil Collins must die

2. The Indelicates - Waiting For Pete Doherty To Die

Simon & Julia don't actually want the notorious Libertine to drop dead. This is more a comment on media vultures and a public over-obsessed with celebrity death. Apparently.

1. Chris T-T - Dreaming Of Injured Pop Stars

A similar sentiment powers Chris T-T's somewhat dated (pop-reference wise) yet still ESSENTIAL Number One (sorry, CC). Always raises a smile in this house anyway...

The bit about the Stereophonics is my favourite. Poor old Kelly Jones.


Got any pop star hit lists of your own? Share with the group.

My Top Ten Albums of 2014 - #10

'Tis the season to make lists, tra-la-la-la etc.

However, this year has been a bleak one in terms of my finances, so I haven't bought half as much new music as usual. Neither have I listened to that much new music - partly through time constraints, and partly because it may finally be happening... middle-aged ennui: as Eddie Argos put it, "popular culture no longer applies to me". There's no Eminem album in my countdown this year to keep me Radio One friendly and the Lana Del Rey record I'd pinned my hopes on fell flat when I grew tired of her sleazy shock shtick. As a result, the majority of this list will be comprised of the usual suspects, mostly artists even older than me. (I had a look through the NME year end Top 50 earlier this week and only recognised about 7 names. Though a few of the ones I didn't recognise did sound quite interesting...)

Still, of the records I have heard, there have been some corkers. Here's the first...

10. Paul Heaton & Jacqui Abbott - What Have We Become?

Since breaking up The Beautiful South due to "musical similarities" back in 2007, Paul Heaton has released a series of acerbic, amusing and always socially aware solo albums - plus one bizarre musical, The 8th, roping in everybody from Cherry Ghost to Reg E. Cathey from The Wire. But though each record was entertaining in its own way, none has quite scaled the heights of 0898, Blue Is The Colour or Miaow. There was always something missing.

Jacqui Abbott was the second of three female singers to perform in The Beautiful South alongside Heaton and third vocalist Dave Hemingway. She followed Brianna (You Keep It All In) Corrigan and preceded Alison (Stars In Their Eyes) Wheeler who joined when Abbott left to look after her young son. Although some fans preferred Corrigan's feisty Kirsty MacColl style, the band enjoyed the height of its success during Abbott's time. When she was suckered out of retirement to take part in The 8th, many fans wondered whether a full-on BS reunion would result. But sadly, Heaton's co-songwriter Dave Rotheray seems unlikely to return while Hemingway, Wheeler and the rest of the old band are plugging away on the tour circuit as The South (no longer Beautiful).

All of which brings us to the Heaton / Abbott reunion, a resounding success and Heaton's best album in any guise since 1998's Quench. It's wrong to label Abbott his muse, but as the man himself explained in interviews, sometimes it helps if his sharper lyrics are sung by someone other than himself. Particularly when that someone has the angelic tones of Abbott.

It's 11am
It's blue upon blue in the sky
But everyone around agrees
Phil Collins, Phil Collins must die

White t-shirt and faded jeans
Just an ordinary guy
But prisoner to his tax returns
Phil Collins, Phil Collins must die
He must die, he must die

Let's face it, if Heaton had sung the above verse (from state-of-the-nation closer When I Get Back To Blighty), it would have come across as just another socialist rant. Abbott's vocals give it an entirely different texture. Like if Morrissey wrote Life Is A Pigsty and then handed it to Rumer to perform. A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.

But the record's success isn't purely down to Abbott. Even on the tracks Heaton performs solo, he brings his A-game, most notably on the blistering I Am Not A Muse in which he takes aim at the daft and pretentious shit "serious" rock stars often say when getting interviewed...

I am not in a band
Because daddy didn't understand
I did not gain from others' pain
And then sell it back to them again
I'm not mad or insane
I'm not into early Miles Davis or John Coltrane
I'm not a muse

...as well as bursting a few of the myths about his own "leg end".

I am not a northern star
I do not greet my friends
'Aye ups' and 'alright la's'
I don't sit outside
Italian style bars
And talk about The La's and The La's and The La's

Elsewhere, it's business as usual. Twisted duet love songs comparing relationships to overgrown gardens, bad DIY and fading romance on the 'Costa Del Sombre'. (The latter would have been a Top 10 hit for the old band in the late 90s, but those days are gone.) Savage digs at people whose lives are ruled by car adverts, outlet malls and twitter. Anger, pathos and resignation. Loadsa laughs.

Sadly, I only bought the standard edition of the album (it was very cheap and so am I)... now Heato's released one of the tracks from the Special Edition as a single, and damn if it I'm probably going to have to save up for another copy. These bloody pop stars - even the socialist ones are out to bankrupt me!




Coming next, at number 9... an Englishman in New York. (No, I promise, it's not Sting.)