Final batch of these, because frankly I've wasted more than enough time browsing the newsagents' shelves this week.
I was a regularly subscriber to Empire Magazine in the 90s, but I fell out of love with them when they gave 5 stars to The Phantom Menace. I think I'd sold my Empire collection (or binned it) by the time Attack of the Clones came out.
We close today though with a band named after a magazine..
...and when you take a look down their discography, it's amazing how many of their songs could well be (or feature) magazine titles. New Life. Master And Servant. Stripped. Strangelove. Personal Jesus. People Are People. In Your Room. That's like a whole magazine rack right there. Not to mention...
Yesterday was May 4th - Star Wars Day. (Because: May The 4th Be With You. Don't blame me. I didn't come up with that.) Did you need The Force to crack these clues...?
12. Flaming satellite.
Named after a Russian street gang, the "sigue sigue" meaning "burn burn"...
6. Home security camera rotates more than half way.
I've got Blink security cameras on Top Ten Towers, in case you were thinking of coming round to steal my CD collection. If you rotate something through half a turn, that's 180 degrees. Just over that would be...
We're getting into haymaking season. When I was a kid, that would mean that my dad and my brother would wake the tractor from hibernation and drag out all the other ancient haymaking contraptions. The mower. The turner. The baler. Inevitably, one - if not all - of them wouldn't be in working order, and so began the lengthy process of getting them ready for the job at hand. Although even when they were ready, they rarely lasted. They usually broke down halfway through the job, stranded amid the dusty rows of hay like a ship on a sandbank, waiting for someone who knew more about fixing farm machinery to come and sort them out.
Afterwards, my dad would return to the house and scrub down his hands with Swarfega, from a rusty square tin just like the one above. Other 80s kids might see green slime and think of Ghostbusters or Tiswas, for me it'll always be reminiscent of summer.
Here are some songs that mention Swarfega, starting with some instrumental try-hardery from a band I never really got...
Today's most appropriate song is this one. You'd definitely need some Swarfega after a lawnmower death. And it's surprisingly listenable... albeit only 26 seconds long...
After all that, I'm crying out for a biscuit. Here's half of one, with a song about remembering you need a tin of Swarfega when you're hiking up a famous Shropshire hill...
Under normal circumstances, that would have been the winner. But then Alison Goldfrapp turned up with an offer I couldn't refuse...
I want to run away with you Your caravan and rabbit stew Don't buy me candyfloss or bears Swarfega fingers, I want you there
Steady on, love. Men of a certain age, and all that. Although it turns out Ms. Goldfrapp was born in 1966, so I'm still young enough to be her toyboy...
And we're back - with songs featuring specific (rather than generic) dinosaurs. Thanks for your suggestions... even with them, this week's Top Ten proved a lot trickier than expected. Probably because dinosaurs don't obviously rhyme with anything else - except other dinosaurs. Unless you're Prince. Anyway, these may not be the best ten tunes I've ever featured, but they do all feature specific dinosaurs. No Triceratops or diplodocuses though, sadly.
I'll grudgingly put this at #10, because I never really got Kasabian... or velociraptors. I was convinced when Jurassic Park first came out that they were just a figment of Michael Crichton had made up. Seriously, had you ever heard of a velociraptor before then?
I'm presuming this is their tribute to Marc Bolan... but it could be about an actual T-Rex. Always hard to tell when it comes to Ash songs - they could be about anything. Nice noise though.
The Swede offered Hit & Run, with lots of dinosauric lyrics to choose from, including a bit about "Pterodactyls flying round my attic"... but surely I can trump that with Psyclone…?
Pterodactyl, Brontosaurus Tyrannosaurus Rex gather around The sound of thunder now awaits us A meteorite is coming on down
