Welcome back to the feature where distinguished members of the blogosphere decide whether certain dodgy-opinion-voicing records of the past deserve to be cast into Room 101 (or sent into exile, which as I'm sure you'll know, if you've read 1984 rather than just watched the BBC show with that name, is a very different thing).
After last month's weighty debate about whether domestic abuse should be excused via the medium of popular song, I thought I'd choose something a bit lighter this month. Of course, the danger of that was that nobody would have much of an opinion either way... or, as Swiss Adam put it, "I can't really come up with anything for Mungo Jerry - I'm pretty ambivalent about it."
Membership of the Cancel Culture Club is on an unpaid, and entirely voluntary basis. So if you ain't got no opinion, you are fully entitled to say that and watch the tumbleweed blow across your screen. But before we see if anyone did have strong feelings one way or t'other, let's remind ourselves of this month's defendant...
When I initially searched the web for "songs that should be cancelled", this was one that initially had me scratching my head. A radio staple from my youth - what could possibly cause offence?
I'd almost forgotten about this one, sorry! But I think it's because 'In The Summertime' doesn't elicit any strong response in me other than the memories of hearing this so much as a kid and being mesmerised by Ray Dorset's sideburns on ToTP performances. I'd never seen anyone like him. I've never really given it much thought other than to accept it as one of those catchy, singalong, happy sounding songs, part of the soundtrack to my childhood. And, apologies, but to use words that come up so frequently in this series, it's another one of those that's very of its time. Maybe we're being more conditioned to take things literally now, but to me this song is just too lightweight for the lyrics to be of concern that way.
Therefore - yes, it references drinking and driving, it's laddish and hedonistic, but it's just not a song to be taken seriously on any level. so I wouldn't cancel it.
I'd cancel his sideburns, but that's just me.
(I think their follow-up 'Baby Jump' may give more cause for alarm - although it's a great grungey track!)
Anyway, back to In The Summertime. I was just about to draw the shutters down on this particularly uninspiring edition of the Cancel Culture Club when a last minute missive flopped through my virtual letterbox. And boy oh boy... it was a doozy.
There are a lot of things wrong with ‘In the Summertime’. Obviously, there are the lyrics, but I’ll come back to them. But before all that, you’ve got the awful plinky plonky piano nonsense that is trundling along in the background and the stupid noises that Ray Dorset makes across the song and all his grunts and groans that make it sound like he is dry humping his pillow during the closing bits of the song – all that I suppose is bad enough to cancel not only this song, but the band, their entire back catalogue and most of the seventies with it. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if ‘In The summetime’ erm, popped up in one of those awful ‘Confessions…’ films starring Robin Asquith.
Anyway, let’s look at the lyrics, which were, even 50 years ago, depressingly stalkerish. You can imagine some crazed sex offender playing this track as he packed his little rape kit up and stuck it in the back of his Ford Anglia.
It starts, ok:
In the summertime, when the weather is high
You can stretch right up and touch the sky.
There is not much wrong with that to be fair, although I’m not sure how weather can be high, but we can skip over that. It’s the, well, rest of it that is a bit squirmy.
When the weather's fine
You got women, you got women on your mind
Have a drink, have a drive
Go out and see what you can find
Hmm, women on your mind, eh, well we’ve probably all been there, but have a drink, have a drive, go out and see what you can find…. I’ll refer you back to my line about the crazed sex offender and his Ford Anglia. It, unbelievably, gets worse.
If her daddy's rich, take her out for a meal,
If her daddy's poor, just do what you feel.
Speed along the lane, do a ton or a ton and twenty-five.
When the sun goes down
You can make it, make it good in a lay-by
So….Ray….rich girls, needs to be spoiled, before they let you have your wicked way, but those poor working class lasses, well they’ll probably put out for 50p and a bag of grapes, right??!?
You can tell he's the South West Correspondent. "Bag of grapes"? How posh is that. It'd be a bag of chips where I come from, lad.
Personally, I'm always impressed that they managed to get the word "lay-by" into a song, with all its sordid connotations. I was going to look if I could find any songs about dogging, but I decided to not risk putting that term into my search engine.
But not content with a planned molesting of a some really unfortunate female, you are also going to scare the life out of her by driving at a hundred and twenty fives miles a hour, after ‘having a drink’ and then pull into some layby for a bit of how’s your father…I’ll refer you back to my comment about Robin Asquith…
But its ok, folks, because Ray has a philosophy….Oh goody.
We're not grey people, we're not dirty, we're not mean.
We love everybody, but we do as we please.
When the weather's fine, we go fishing or go swimming in the sea.
We're always happy, life's for living
Yeah, that's our philosophy
Not quite sure which school of philosophy that comes from, possible Foucault and his Idea of Top Down Coercion or maybe Kant’s lesser known Theory of Blatant Misogynistic Bollocks.
Ray – love – you are grey, you are dirty and you are pretty mean. I don’t care if you love everybody, you really can’t do as you please, not now, not then. That’s why Dave Lee Travis can’t be on the radio anymore, he had that attitude and it wasn’t cool. Stick to your fishing and your swimming, at least then might get washed away by a rogue tidal wave.
Ah, I do love a good rant. They're the very oxygen this feature lives by. So thank you to SWC for that - and the rest of you, with your mild ambivalence: look what you're missing.
We might do another one of these next month. Or this might really be the last gasp. That's my philosophy.
Indeed. So it has. It came as no surprise that the group spearheading this revolution is Bauer Media – compared by many of my former radio colleagues to The Empire in Star Wars for the way they systematically swallowed up smaller radio stations that were delivering local content and then drained them of life, homogenising them to the point where they were identical to every other local station on the dial.
I’m not claiming to be any kind of clairvoyant, but back in the 90s I wrote a comic called The Jock about a society that was ruled by a corporation called YOURENT, a media company which controlled the population through bland identikit radio output that played only computer-generated mind-control muzak. The Jock and his small group of “rebel DJs” fought against YOURENT by playing the old songs / “real” music in the hopes of waking people up and reminding them of their lost freedom. But it was a losing battle…
It’s only a matter of time until more and more of our radio stations jettison human content altogether in favour of robots. Meanwhile, Paul McCartney, Kate Bush and Sam Fender are leading the fight against AI music… but I’m sure the record companies will be glad to see the back of those trouble-makers.
Does it matter if our traffic and travel bulletins are delivered by machines? Bauer Media reply:
“This development is a natural evolution of our long-standing services. Bulletins are generated through INRIX’s traffic intelligence and automation systems, with delivery informed by the tone and style of our experienced broadcast journalists to ensure continuity and familiarity for listeners.”
“The result provides clear, consistent and recognisable traffic updates, delivered faster than ever before and opening the door to even more precise and personalised information in the future.”
They might just as well have said, “This development is a natural evolution of our long-standing commitment to maximising profits.”
Putting aside the loss of human jobs, radio is also losing all its humanity. I stopped wanting to be a radio presenter the day I realised a lot of radio bosses were no longer interested in personality, innovation, creativity or humour. When they started timing DJ links, restricting the number of times a presenter could speak within an hour, scripting the output to remove any potential for spontaneity or wit. “It’s only a travel bulletin,” you might well reply. But I’ve enjoyed many a travel bulletin delivered by human beings in the past, when presenters and journalists have been allowed to chat to each other like real people. I’m thinking of Sally Traffic on Radio 2, or Terry Wogan’s hilarious Janet & John stories, inspired by newsreader John Marsh.
Will there come a day when we can no longer hear a human voice on our radios? I asked the AI-Gods. Here’s what they told me…
It is highly unlikely that radio stations will soon use only AI voices. Instead, the industry is moving towards a hybrid model where AI voices handle repetitive tasks and behind-the-scenes production, while human hosts remain crucial for live interaction, genuine emotional connection, and creative, unscripted content.
How much do you bet the AI Overlords stole that bit from an article written by a human? In other words, they’re just telling us what we want to hear.
Despite the technological advancements, the "human touch" remains a cornerstone of successful radio broadcasting:
Spontaneity and Improvisation: AI is not yet capable of the seamless, real-time banter, empathy, and improvisation that define live radio, especially during breaking news or call-in shows.
Building Community and Trust: A host's ability to share personal anecdotes, build a genuine connection with listeners, and show empathy during local tragedies is a fundamentally human skill that AI cannot replicate.
Cannot yet?
Audience Preference: Listeners are generally more accepting of AI for informational content but prefer a human voice for personality-driven shows. Transparency about the use of AI is also crucial for maintaining audience trust.
If human beings trust Donald Trump enough to elect him to the White House twice, then I’m sure we can grow to trust SKYNET and its Terminators in no time at all.
The use of AI in radio also raises ethical considerations regarding job displacement and the need for transparency. Industry experts and professional bodies are emphasizing the need for clear guidelines and the upskilling of the workforce to manage the new roles that AI creates, such as AI Voice Managers and prompt engineers.
What do you want to be when you grow up, Timmy? A DJ?
No chance. How about training to be an AI Voice Manager instead?
In conclusion, while AI is fundamentally changing how radio content is produced, it is seen as a powerful tool to augment, not completely replace, human hosts. The future of radio is a collaboration between human creativity and AI efficiency.
Summer's over and the time is right to bring back some of the ongoing series I abandoned just prior to my holiday from teaching (aka the Exhaustion Weeks). It's a cliché that I go back to work for a rest, but...
As usual, I'm stealing another query from Richard Herring's book EMERGENCY QUESTIONS and trying to answer it with added songs. Here's today's question...
What age would you like to be when you get to heaven, presuming there is a heaven and you get to choose what age you'll be when you're up there?
Putting aside whether or not we believe in any kind of afterlife, this is a thought-provoking question. If we're lucky enough to live to an old age, we wouldn't want to be stuck at that age, for eternity, with all the frailties, disabilities and marble loss that might come with it. We'd want to be young and strong and ready to take best advantage of our nirvana...
No thank you very much. I wouldn't mind going back and reliving a good day of my adolescence, safe in the knowledge that I could return to where I am right now before the bad days kick in. Because I did have a good many bad days as a teenager, days of self-doubt, embarrassment, humiliation days and crushing loneliness.
In answer to Rich's question then, I'd probably choose to be mid-30s. Some time just before I fell down the stairs and broke my arm, also causing a slipped disc in my back which still bothers me today. Some time before the aches and pains set in...
It's not so long since I covered The Man From U.N.C.L.E. here, and for most that would serve as a fitting tribute to the actor David McCallum, who died, aged 90, earlier this week. Particularly as I couldn't find any songs that mentioned him by name. Although any excuse to play this again...
Growing up when I did, my first encounter with David McCallum came not through U.N.C.L.E., but through his starring role alongside Joanna Lumley in Sapphire & Steel, surely one of the weirdest TV shows of the late 70s and early 80s.
All irregularities will be handled by the forces controlling each dimension. Transuranic heavy elements may not be used where there is life. Medium atomic weights are available: Gold, Lead, Copper, Jet, Diamond, Radium, Sapphire, Silver and Steel. Sapphire and Steel have been assigned.
So went the intro to the show... and that was about as much explanation as writer PJ Hammond ever gave to his characters. Basically, Sapphire and Steel were some kind of time agents who turned up and solved weird, spooky sci-fi-related mysteries. Were they human? Were they aliens? Were they ghosts? Who could say? But I found it gripping as a kid... especially the episode set in an abandoned railway station, the plot of which remains with me to this day, despite the show having never been repeated. (It's available on Britbox / ITVX though, and I keep meaning to rewatch it.)
Sadly, I couldn't find any pop songs that mentioned this wonderful series, but then I remembered another David McCallum show I watched as a kid... one that predated even Sapphire & Steel. It only lasted one series... but there are quite a few songs named after it (or at least, the HG Wells novel it was based on). So I'm going with those today. It was that or I started looking for songs that mention NCIS, a show which gave him a resurgence in popularity in his later years, and one which my dad watched regularly. Rest in peace, David, you were anything but The Invisible Man...
My antipathy towards U2 is well documented so you may be surprised to find them at the top of the page this week. But really, there weren't a whole lot of strong contenders... and I did want to give U2 some credit to make up for years of taking the mick. There was a point sometime in 1988/9 where I thought they may be OK. Not earlier - I still think The Joshua Tree is one of the most overrated albums ever recorded... but Rattle & Hum... that, I didn't mind. So here, for the record, is my favourite U2 song. It's not a long list...
Truly the late 80s / early 90s were a dire time for chart music. I was in my late teens at the time and the tracks above largely forced me to venture outside the charts for the first time in my musical history.
No other song will touch that, if only for the sheer majesty of Pearl's vocal (and Carl's ability to use only one side of his mouth whilst singing).
Initially, I couldn't find that anywhere on the internet, but George was kind enough to send me a link so you can enjoy it in all its glory.
That was the first thing to spring to my mind too, C. Though I still have nightmares about the awful Rod Stewart / Tina Turner version. The Sonny & Cher version (as suggested by Martin) is quite fun though.
I don't suppose anyone will mention that song about little boys by a certain person...although it was covered by Splodgenessabounds.
I loved that song when I was young. It breaks my heart that we can't listen to it anymore without awful connotations.
Martin was the first to observe that I have my work cut out for me this week.
As for "two", there are going to be loads, aren't there? Don't envy you collating them.
I'll let you into a secret... last week was training / CPD week at work. I attended all the training sessions online. But I also... multi-tasked. Which is why there was no pause in transmission this week.
So here are some. No doubt I'll forget something again this week, my mind is getting soft.
I think that goes for all of us after the past few months.
Yes, I know that's a 97... and we did feature it way back in 1984 when we were doing that week of the Hot 100 on Ceefax, before the interweb. But it's based on the two songs above, so I'll break loads of rules and throw it in.
Time for Douglas, who made the journey from Canada in record time this week...
Oh my, I somehow got here before The Swede published a list a clothyard long! I just have to get a few early suggestions in, then perhaps come back later after some real thought. For starters, since I (indirectly) promoted The Lucksmiths last week, here are two solid suggestions from the Australian artists of winsome wordplay:
Then of course there is the master of meticulous songcraft himself, the creative genius behind The Blue Nile (who births an album roughly every fifteen years):
Makes one want to smile and cry at the same time. And perhaps me especially after I discovered that the vinyl copy of the album from which it comes (2012's "Mid Air") which I purchased on release date for under $30 is now going on Discogs for something in the mid $300's. A better investment than real estate. And speaking of which, there is:
And for my usual Canadian offering, you could do worse than save some room for Montreal's beloved and finest indie rock band (no, don't worry, not Arcade Fire):
I'm allowing those last two, but I didn't want to open the can of worms that was "second songs" or we really would have been here all week.
On to Alyson, who was missing in action last week but returns full force this week...
So, so many 2 suggestions. I am struggling to come up with anything better than Party Fears Two so agree with that one and here's a little extract from when I wrote about that song after my trip to Dundee.
'It’s certainly a strange title for a song and tricky to understand the lyrics other than that a party is involved. Billy did explain the origin however, 'My wee brother was at a party watching two girls who wanted to come in. They were smashing windows and attempting to kick the door in with their stiletto heels, which he admired, so he christened them the Party Fears Two and I pinched the title from him.''
That's a great explanation. I love that song, especially the opening line.
Sadly, Alyson's other suggestions all fall foul of the the Tom Robinson Rule.
I figured there would be a load more 2am song, but it seems only Iron Maiden are hard enough to stay up that late. Anyone else who stays up that late appears to not be happy about it...
It's at this point that I have to give Rigid Digit a special award this week, for nabbing most of my top contenders in a very short space of time. Any of these could have been this week's winner. In fact, I had them listed together in almost the same order you presented them, RD...
I added the second Joe Jackson tune myself and seriously considered giving them joint winner status in the same way I had three winners last week. Sadly, a more obvious choice presented itself. But any other week...
Over to Jim in Dubai...
I fully endorse Swiss Adams choice of Party Fears 2, still sounds great and would be a worthy winner.
Now at this point in proceedings, I was feeling pretty smug about being way ahead of the game and well on track for a timely post with no overtime required.
Hi folks. Sorry I'm late. I culled this list of appropriate tunes from my hard-drives a couple of weeks back and have attempted to take out anything already suggested - apologies for any I've duplicated...
OK, time to pull an all-nighter!
At least The Swede started with two he knew would be on my list...
Let it be known, that in line with me keeping my sanity, I am going to heretofore limit The Swede to only 600 suggestions per week.
And after all that, I doubt very much that anyone will want to read my shortlist... although I think there's a couple at the top of my list that will a few of you kicking yourselves...
This week's winner was first suggested by John Medd, then seconded by Martin. It wasn't my first thought, but once it was out there, I couldn't think of anything any more appropriate.
Sam has taken to singing this song thus...
Woohoo! Abbamebaddawawa!
Woohoo! Dabbaweewawameme!
I've told him what the actual words are and he sings them once or twice, then goes back to the nonsense. Actually, I think the nonsense words are even more appropriate, since pure pop should be nonsense... and this is a contender for the purest indie pop song ever written.
Pleased ta meetcha!
Only one more to go. And there can be only one winner... but what will it be?
This week proved to be most problematic. Normally, I just put a number into the Search Title box on my music player and it gives me a clear list of all songs with that number in the title. When I did that for 19 though, I got thousands of songs - including all the year songs from the 20th Century, from 1901 to 1999, plus any Live recordings that featured a date (Live 1987) or similarly dated remixes (1996 remix). As such, finding songs that featured the number nineteen in the title became an impossible task. I kinda gave up and went by ones I could remember off the top of my head and your suggestions. Luckily, there were some crackers among those.
Bandwise, it proved similarly tricky. The 1975, 1990s and 1910 Fruitgum Company were all disqualified for having their 19 in the wrong place, and the only caveat I allowed for a dated 19 was that I would allow the year 1919. Fortunately, there was a postpunk band from Bradford with just that name...
Girl -19
Sadly, John, I couldn't find that anywhere on the internet, since putting the words "girl" and "19" into
a search engine led me nowhere. The only info I have is what you gave me...
I used to love this when I was, er, 19. It was their riposte to Alice Cooper's 18. Speaking of which...
Hold your horses, John, we'll get to next week soon enough.
OK, still before we get to the obvious choices, here's the few leftovers I managed to scrape from my hard-drive before the exercise became too futile...
To be honest, all three of those were in contention this week... along with the above-mentioned belter by The Courteeners... but it's Martin who takes the prize this week for recalling one of my favourite minor hits from the post-Britpop era, although lyrically it owes a debt to 70s singer songwriters such as Rupert Holmes... and a splash of Scott Walker to boot.
Next week we become adults at last... or do we? Your 18 suggestions are welcomed... and yes, I will allow the 18th Century to get a look in, as I'm hoping there are far fewer songs with dates in from that century than this one... and not many 18th century remixes or live recordings either.
Apologies. I got two thirds of the way through this countdown before life got in the way. But I don't like leaving things unfinished, so the Hot 100 is back... maybe not every week, but whenever I get the time. Your suggestions, as always, are very welcome.
Wretch 32, pictured above, is a popular grime star, apparently. We used to have grime round these parts, then we got a new window cleaner.
Way back in July, George wondered whether the unsavoury lyrics in this oldie might make it unpalatable...
And here's the Charlatans with the same song... but not The Charlatans you and I know, the Manc band fronted by Tim Burgess, no, this is the original Charlatans...
And that was it for your suggestions. But what did my record collection throw up? Let's see if we can go even lower than Mr. Mister to start with, and climb up from there, shall we?
