Celebrity Jukebox #76: Ray Liotta

Nancy Sinatra, and her sister Tina, once sent Ray Liotta a horse's head in the post after he turned down the chance to play their father in a TV mini-series they were developing. Ray would later play Old Blue Eyes in HBO movie The Rat Pack. Here he is giving it his best Frank..

Liotta is best known for his role as Henry Hill in the movie Goodfellas... though as movies go, I prefer Field of Dreams, in which he plays the ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson. And I'm very much looking forward to his forward to his final movie, Cocaine Bear, filmed just before his death last May. Well, better that than Ray's starring role in an Ed Sheeran video...

Lots of rappers who always wanted to be gangsters have mentioned Ray Liotta in their lyrics, but we'll skip those guys, 'cos they're just a Neighborhood Full Of Nobodies. Still, it's not just rappers...

The crew and I will hang on the steps
Outside a chippy shop in Oldham
I'd make mistakes; they'd clean up the mess
We'll play Texas hold-em and talk about religion

I wanna be Ray Liotta
And live another day in the mafia

BC Camplight - I Want To Be In The Mafia

Here's what else will be playing on the jukebox in tribute to Ray, starting with this jazzy little number from Martin Sexton...

We meet at 3pm by the ATM on Saturday
You pick out the show
Then it's off we go to the matinee
You'll be who you want
I'll be who you want
I'll be your Ray Liotta
It's my lucky day

Martin Sexton - Diggin' Me

Followed by the inevitable titular name-checks...

Lomepal - Ray Liotta

French rappers sound so much more sophisticated, don't they?

Well, more sophisticated than German rappers anyway...

LX & Maxwell - Ray Liotta

As to music with guitars, I can offer you this...

King Of Summer - Ray Liotta

Nuch better is this, from a band who featured in Namesakes not so long ago... although they didn't go down particularly well. Perhaps this one will persuade you...

Namesakes #22: Linoleum

Last week, we had a bunch of Valentines. If you received one that made your heart flutter, you're the real winner.

This week (following on from Felt, a fortnight ago) here's another material you can cover your floor with. Can there really be more than one band named after Linoleum?

Yes, there can.

LINOLEUM #1

Caroline Finch, Paul Jones and Emma Tornero formed the crux of our first slab of Linoleum back in 1994 in ye olde London Town. Their first two singles were released with linoleum sleeves. And their drummer was called Dave Nice. Not to be confused with his namesake...

I was reminded of this particular Linoleum as a result of Martin's second volume of Thank You For The Days. Here's the song I'd nominate for that feature. It fits very much into the Elastica / Sleeper stable, and the video features Caroline making a call from a red phone box. Like we used to do back in the good old days...

LINOLEUM #2

Skip forward a year or two and across the world to Melbourne where our next Linoleum released two albums of "tuneful indie powerpop" in the late 90s, one of which gets extra points for being titled "Floored".

No video, I'm sad to say, but here's a link to their bandcamp...

Linoleum - Floored

LINOLEUM #3

And here we have some pretty cool Indonesian punk rock from 2010...

I also found a Bulgarian punk band with the same name from a couple of years later... can't seem to find any of their music online though.

Which one would be in your festival line-up... and which one do you think should lie low?