As George and Ernie are both out on manoeuvres, and because last week's bumper edition nearly finished me off, we're having a rest from Namesakes this week. All being well, it will return to bore you next Tuesday.
At the weekend, Louise and I went to see the new stage adaptation of To Kill A Mockingbird. It was excellent. I've long been a fan of Aaron Sorkin's sparky, snappy dialogue, and he found some excellent ways to use the themes of the novel to say important (if ultimately futile) things about the state of America today. If it comes to your neck of the woods, I'd highly recommend going along to see it.
Here are some tunes related, in one way or another, to Harper Lee's famous novel...
I called this series Self-Help For Cynics because I've always been very cynical about most kinds of Self-Help. The dictionary tells me...
The words misanthropic and pessimistic are common synonyms of cynical. While all three words mean "deeply distrustful," cynical implies having a sneering disbelief in sincerity or integrity.
I reckon I'm all three of those, but I'm trying to change... and writing this series is a big step towards doing that.
That said, I'm willing to accept that my cynicism has taken a bit of a back seat in recent editions of this feature. In fact, beyond the odd "that might not work for you, but it could be worth a try" sort of comment, I've pretty much gone along with everything I've read.
Today though, we cover an idea that has me raising an eyebrow like Roger Moore and scrunching up my face like Les Dawson. You might argue it's not possible to do both at the same time, but in my head at least, that's what I'm doing.
In the last few nail-biting editions of SHFC, we've discussed how it's best to confront your emotions head on rather than avoiding them, bottling them up or trying to distract yourself from them. The more I read, the more I see this advice given as a way of rewiring our amygdala / monkey brain, teaching it not to panic or feel anxiety in certain situations and gradually becoming a lot more chilled in the process.
"Feel the fear and do it anyway!" was the mantra that I rebuffed in my younger days. Now I'm grudgingly having to accept there might be something to it. However, there's a school of thought that takes this idea one step further and suggests we take time to actively welcome negative emotions. Monkey Brain Guru Dr. Jennifer Shannon explains...
When you experience fight-or-flight sensations but there is no immediate threat, it is a false alarm. Regardless of how urgent these sensations seem, resisting them will only prolong them. Pointless as they seem to be, uncomfortable sensations, like negative emotions, are necessary. The more we can welcome them, the more easily they will metabolise.
At best, this sounds to me like wallowing. At worst? Could it be a form of sadomasochism? Not according to the New York Times...
...researchers found that people who habitually judge negative feelings — such as sadness, fear and anger — as bad or inappropriate have more anxiety and depression symptoms and feel less satisfied with their lives than people who generally perceive their negative emotions in a positive or neutral light.
I took a moment to think about this in terms of music, and I wondered about famously "miserable" lyricists like Leonard Cohen, Townes Van Zandt or The Pope Of Mope himself, Stephen Patrick M-Word... were they actually happier because they "welcomed" their negative emotions? Although if that's really the case, welcoming didn't work for Nick Drake, Elliott Smith or Kurt Cobain, did it?
What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?
...and I thought... I thought... actually, maybe this provides an answer to that conundrum. Why do I like miserable music? Because it allows me to welcome negative emotions, thereby lessening their hold on me.
Look! I found a website called "HAPPIFY"! Pour your cynicism on that, fellow misanthropes! But first, let's hear their advice...
When you feel out of sorts, centre yourself with a few deep breaths and connect inward to the emotion you're experiencing. Give it a name, and allow it the space to simply be. Say, "Hello, sadness" if that's what you're feeling, and let it roam freely until it's ready to leave—because emotions are fleeting by their very nature.
Scientists have done a variety of studies to back this up, because that's what scientists do. One involved getting volunteers to dip their hands into an ice water bath. Half the group were told to try to ignore or deny the uncomfortable sensations they felt, while the other half were told to accept the discomfort of the freezing cold. Guess who managed to keep their hands in the bath the longest?
You might argue that actively seeking to accept or even prolong uncomfortable feelings could be rather counter-productive... or even self-destructive... but not according to that New York Times article I mentioned earlier.
“What one resists, persists,” said Amanda Shallcross, a naturopathic physician who studies emotion regulation at the Cleveland Clinic. When you avoid your emotions, “you’re bound to experience longer-term negative mental and physical health.”
Dr. Jennifer Shannon calls negative feelings "necessary feelings" and invites us not only to welcome them, but to provoke them. She suggests practicing by welcoming everyday anxiety-causing situations such as arriving late, listening to someone complain about you, or being in a long queue. I actually tried this final one last week when I was stuck on the M1 for an hour on my way to work. I sat there and I paid attention to what I was feeling, how my body was handling the anxiety... and I can honestly say that it did help, I didn't get as wound up as I normally would. It didn't stop me badly needing a wee though.
Taking this one step further, Dr. Shannon suggests "actually triggering your own negative feelings to welcome". Here are some of her suggestions...
Listen to a political candidate you dislike (to be fair, that could be any of them, but Trump's imminent return is enough to cause any sane person sleepless nights)
Watch a movie you know you won't like (life's too short for Tom Hanks, I'm sorry)
No. I'm sorry. This is too hard. Why would I want to do this again?
You are getting good at feeling bad.
Ah. Well, in that case...
Watching those three videos - welcoming the music of U2, you might say - did enable me to properly understand my reaction to this band. I realised it's not so much the music that causes me an unpleasant reaction... it's just Bono's smug, supremely punchable face. And that's useful, because as this series has proven time and time again, the more we understand our emotions and reactions, the easier they are to accept.
Here's something nice to wash that unpleasant taste out of your ears: Norwegian Americana hero Harald Thune, doing his own bit of welcoming...
(I think that photo was taken during his porn movie days. Not that I've ever seen a porn movie.)
3. Writing this blog... with a debt to Macca.
Writing this blog is my favourite waste of time.
I'm owing Paul.
(Alyson thought this was an answer two weeks ago. A bizarre coincidence, because I'd already compiled this post when she suggested it. I almost said "come back in a couple of weeks".)
The Swede recently ran a post about a 24 minute song and asked "Do we have time to listen to it?" Not at the moment, I'm afraid... work is still sucking all the joy out of my life.
So here's ten songs that all clock in at under 30 seconds. Easy enough to compile, I just got my music player to put my library in order by duration.
The only rule I had was it had to be a complete song - no excerpts, reprises, intros, fillers, talky bits or skits. Once I'd sifted all those out, here's what I was left with...
I want to be a field day for the Sundays so they can Fuck up my life Embarrass my wife And leave a bad taste Striped toothpaste can't remove on Monday mornings I want to be a target for the dailies so they can show Pictures of me with a nude on page three So lacking in taste Touched up near the waist, looking as limp as Monday morning Touched up near the waist, looking as limp as Monday morning
You could argue that the second side of Abbey Road is all one long track, but it's probably my favourite Beatles album and this is a fine coda.
1. Slaves - Girl Fight
Very loud, very funny - particularly the end... and I'm making it Number One because, despite being only 15 seconds long... they still made a video for it!
Any short songs you'd recommend? They have to be under 30 seconds... I may well do a follow-up post on songs under a minute.
Fortunately, this blog never gets enough traffic to cause congestion, so this is dedicated to all those bloggers who live life in the fast lane... and then have to pay to avoid blockages.
Special mentions, of course to Traffic and The Jam (although, we'll hear from one of those in just a moment).
Can't blame the so-literal-they-hurt lyrics of this one on Weller as it's a rare Bruce Foxton composition. Not sure how well thought out his solution to London traffic jams is though...
Take a look at our cityTake the traffic elsewhereLeave the city free from trafficGive the place a chance to surviveDirt and filth cover LondonGive it a chance to breathe again
Thirty odd years later, Weller would eventually tackle the subject himself in Fast Car, Slow Traffic.
Question: were The Jam named after a traffic jam... or strawberry, raspberry and boysenberry?
Yearning melancholia from the Blue Nile frontman... or an old geezer whinging into his piano about all these new-fangled motor cars clogging up the roads? I remember when this was all fields, etc. You decide.
70s soul is always at its best when there's a long talky intro (this one even begins: "You know, baby...") and this one scores double points because both Peaches AND Herb get to have a mumble at the beginning.
While there was one ever one Herb Fame (real name... well, not really, but don't just wish it was?), seven different women filled the Peaches vacancy between 1966 and the present day. This is from their must successful album, 1978's 2 Hot (the one with Reunited on), when the third Peaches, Linda Greene, was doing her thang. Sadly, at no point in his career did Herb Fame ever consider hooking up with this particular Peaches...
...because, let's face it, that would have been monuMENTAL.
All that aside, I love this track. The lyrics feature a couple talking themselves out of an extra-marital affair because of how it'd hurt their respective spouses and kids.
Our story ends without kissing Fair thee well And a promise not to tell Because...
Leave it to Warren to hit the nail on the head always...
It's 5:00 PM on a weekday, friend I'm going home, but I don't know when I hate this traffic, and I hate this town Gotta honk my horn, try to get around I feel like going on a killing spree Tomorrow I'm going on the R.T.D. The traffic crawls, and the engine stalls I'm stuck on the edge of the urban sprawl
The Go-Go everyone remembers after Belinda Carlisle, Jane Wiedlin also released 4 solo albums, although this was her only hit single. Still it must be one of the biggest radio hits of the 80s, so I suspect she made a pretty penny from it.
Anyway, Jane likes traffic jams because it gives her an excuse to smooch her man. She obviously didn't like them enough to feature them in the video though. You can see how that meeting went...
"So, Jane, for the video, I thought we'd get a road full of cars..."
"I wanna swim with dolphins."
"Yeah, but it's about the rush hour. So I thought maybe we start with you behind the wheel of a nice, sexy Mercedes (I'm sure we can do a product placement deal)..."
"Dolphins!"
"Maybe you could stand on the hood of a Porsche playing your guitar...?"
Not, strictly speaking, about traffic jams as such, but included here for three very good reasons:
i) Traffic jams always give me road rage.
ii) Any excuse to hear Cerys's heartbroken Welsh growl again.
iii) It's a far better song than any of the alternatives I had which were more on target.
(By the way, I did reject some other fine songs which mentioned Traffic - Lloyd Cole and Ned's Atomic Dustbin come to mind - because they didn't mention jams at all.)
Incredibly, even though Slaves have only released one album to date, I had two songs to choose from for this Top Ten. The more obvious title would have been Despair & Traffic, but Do Something works better for me, from its apt chorus of 'If you're not moving: do something!" to the Fight Club-esque mantra (appropriately stolen from an advertising campaign, like most 21st Century wisdom): You are not stuck in traffic: You ARE traffic!" The band even close with a little safe driving advice, "cheers!"
Every time I think I'm getting too old for punky rackets and I'd be better off listening to nothing louder than my old Billy Joel records, a band like Slaves come along and blow the cobwebs away...
All hail James Marshall Hendrix and his tissue-paper & comb kazoo. Hendrix is often remembered only as a serious artist and guitar god, but there's a lot of humour to his lyrics too, and Crosstown Traffic is a great example. If you're going to use traffic jams as a troubled relationship metaphor, this is the way to do it...
I'm not the only soul who's accused of hit and runTyre tracks all across your backI can see you had your funBut darlin' can't you see my signals turn from green to red?And with you I can see a traffic jam straight up ahead
1. James Taylor - Traffic Jam
From James Taylor's most successful album, 1977's JT, this fun, jazzy little number is a great antidote to traffic jam blues.
When Gibbard's girlfriend moved out, to a whole different district of Washington, this was his response.
You seem so out of context in this gaudy apartment complex
A stranger with your door key, explaining that I am just visiting
And I am finally seeing
Why I was the one worth leaving
Glossy and as shamelessly bling as the worst of contemporary r 'n' b, it's hard to explain why I dig the poppiest artist in modern country music as much as I do. This one's an outrageously schmaltzy power ballad that harkens back to the 80s (with 21st Century production values) and, frankly, the video made me choke on my Wotsits. But Blake Shelton can do no wrong in my eyes, because he writes pop songs that are catchy as the plague and TELL ACTUAL STORIES. I have no further defence.
Tells basically the same story as the Blake Shelton number, but without the glitz. You see, you can't really believe Blake Shelton would be the guy in this story. Dennis Locorriere, though? He's a true hard-luck hero.
Every time I think there might be a little justice in the world, I remind myself of Harry Chapin: a supremely talented singer-songwriter from the 70s who should have been as big as Elton John or Billy Joel, but for whatever reason never quite made it. (The same could be same of Harry Nilsson. Maybe there's a curse on Harry's. Maybe Cliff was right to change his name.) There's A Lot Of Lonely People Tonight is from the excellent album Short Stories, and while it's nowhere near the best track on there, it's still beautiful. There's a fragility to Chapin's work you don't find elsewhere. You feel like he's lived these stories, every one of them.
Top Charity Shop Buy of the week, the 2012 album Nothing's Gonna Change the Way You Feel About Me Now by Steve Earle's son, Justin (his middle name is a tribute to legendary country singer Townes Van Zandt). Excellent acoustic Americana that reminds me very much of Ryan Adams' debut (and best) album, Heartbreaker. The CD cost me 75p, but I'll definitely be buying more of this artist's work in the future. If I ever have any money again.
Nobody else does loneliness like Sheffield's answer to Roy Orbison. This is from his first full-length album, released in 2001... though it could just as easily have been released in 1957.
Originally written in 1927, and recorded many times before The King got his hands on it, Are You Lonesome Tonight? was a huge hit in 1960... but is arguably remembered more for the live version recorded in Vegas in '68 where Elvis cracks up laughing and can't make it through the song.
A single from probably my favourite Mellencamp album, 1985's Scarecrow, this was apparently inspired by the Paul Newman film Hud. Apparently, the wife of one of JM's pals told him not to feature "pretty girls" in the video as it wouldn't be realistic to suggest they had lonely nights. Mellencamp responded by offering her a role. She accepted, and played his girlfriend.
She calls me baby She calls everybody baby It's a lonely ol' night But ain't they all?
Now. Is it a better song than Elvis's masterpiece? Definitely not. But it means a little bit more to me - and that's what this blog is all about.
1. Paul McCartney - No More Lonely Nights
Well, here's a first. As previously mentioned, I have a kind of love/hate relationship with Sir Paulius Thumbs-Aloft, and though I respect all he's given us... sometimes, he doesn't half get on my wick. No More Lonely Nights - a majestically schmaltzy slice of 80s balladeering that Collins would have given his right drumstick for - really ought to be awful. You may well argue that it is. And yet, I have a huge fondness for it, from the shiver-inducing a cappella intro to the Dave friggin' Gilmour guitar solo at the end. Plus, if you read between the lines, it's as good a stalker anthem as Every Breath You Take...
And I won't go away until you tell me so No, I'll never go away...
The video, which begins with a long sequence in which Macca plays some kind of lonely but jolly Clive Dunn character working the nightshift as a projectionist in a low rent cinema... before jumping into a Victorian dream sequence in which Ringo goes over a waterfall in a rowing boat (and then things get really weird)... almost made me bump it down to #2. (Although it's not as bad as the video to One Lonely Night by REO Speedwagon, which was SO bad it got them disqualified from this whole Top Ten.)
Hopefully, those ten songs made you feel a little less lonely tonight...
Hola, amigos, gringos and muchachos... and other stereotypical Mexican greetings. This week, in lieu of anything resembling a decent summer in the UK, I thought I'd go somewhere hot...
Always keen to sieze the role of the underdog, Moz finds empathy for Mex when he senses "the hate from the Lone Star State". (As we'll see later, not all Texans are enemies of Texas.)
It seems if you're rich and you're white You think you're so right I just don't see why this should be so
Sometimes I think he writes songs like this just to confuse the NME.
I don't know much about Cinco De Mayo I'm never sure, what it's all about But I say I want you and you don't believe me You say you want me but I've got my doubts
Apparently, Cinco De Mayo is the day the Mexican army thrashed the French. Seems reason enough to celebrate to me. (Only kidding, French readers.)
I'm often vocal in my defence of contemporary country against naysayers who claim it's cheesy, overblown, jingoistic nonsense.
I will stand up and make a claim for the best of the genre representing the kind of classic storytelling guitar pop Squeeze, Kirsty MacColl or Pulp once brought into the UK charts: the kind of songs you might think nobody writes anymore.
Toby Keith is an interesting case though. At times he commits all the crimes named in that first paragraph - sometimes egregiously. He has neither the wit nor the smarts of Brad Paisley nor the sincere pop cool of Blake Shelton. But on occasion, he writes a clever, amusing ditty like this one that I just can't get out of my head. It's about a couple of strangers who meet in a Mexican bar. Both are married, but not to each other...
One more tequila And they were falling in love One more is never enough...
I was amused by a review quoted on iffypedia saying the song was "great until you process the depth of its immorality; then, you’re just sick to your stomach." Yeah, like nobody's ever written a pop song glorifying infidelity before...
Guy Garvey wishes a love rival dead... if only he was tough enough to take some kind of action...
Your sweet reassurances don't change the fact
That he's better looking than me
Yet he'd look ideal 'neath the wheels of a car
Oh, Mexican standoff, I wish I was hard
One of the best lines in the second series of True Detective came from Vince Vaughan...
"That's one off my bucket list: a Mexican standoff with actual Mexicans..."
Love the Fountains - surprised they don't show up here more often. This is from the excellent album Welcome, Interstate Managers (one of their best) and it showcases their always entertaining mix of power pop guitars and Douglas Coupland-esque lyrics...
He was killed by a cellular phone explosion
They scattered his ashes across the ocean
The water was used to make baby lotion
The wheels of promotion were set into motion
1. Blake Shelton - Playboys Of The Southwestern World
A few weeks back I was singing the praises of Shelton's Austin, but here we go a little bit further south as he and his old buddy John Roy take a Mexican vacation and end up with "a little change of plans... like when Paul McCartney got busted in Japan". With a little help from Van Morrison's Brown-Eyed Girl along the way (I love the way Shelton sings those sha-la-las kinda out of tune, like a couple of drunk mates would). A great song about friendship, with a wicked sense of humour and a wonderfully flawed narrator too.
Ah we're still best friends (Temporary cell mates...)
With a new baby on the way, there's a lot of decorating and DIY needed in our house. Sadly, I've never been particularly good with a hammer or a drill... but I can knock up a damn fine Top Ten.
Neil Young believed A Man Needs A Maid... but most blokes would be happy with a shed to hide in. Nick's shed, of course, was where he hid from the world. I doubt he had a large selection of power tools in there.
I can't believe that B&Q hasn't used this in an advertising campaign. Maybe they tried to and Pete refused permission. Good on him, if that's the case.
You do it to yourself, you do
And that's what really hurts
Is that you do it to yourself
Just you and no one else
You do it to yourself
You do it to yourself
I've seldom been mistaken
For being good with my hands
So it's all so convenient
That you have your own wrench
And I know not to mention
Things that clearly I don't understand
David Shah wisely leaves the DIY to his other half.
Bruce will mow your lawn, clean out your drain, mend your car, harvest your crops... he'll even shoot your bank manager, should you so desire it.
1. Billy Bragg - Handyman Blues
When Louise first heard me playing this track from Billy's new album, she said, "he's written that for you". Well, Billy's been writing songs for me most of my life... but this one goes out to men of a certain age everywhere... as represented in the new video by Kevin Eldon, Johnny Vegas, Stewart Lee, Phil Jupitus and various other men of a certain age who'll never be the man around the house their father was.
Don't be expecting me to put up shelves
Or build the garden shed
But I can write a song that tells the world
How much I love you instead!
