Sad farewells to Mike Nesmith and Steve Bronski last week... December always robs us of a few more heroes, doesn't it?
Here's two classics...
But marking these sad departures can't stop the year end countdown train, which today pulls into Station #13, and some old favourites here at Top Ten Towers...
#13 The Hold Steady - Open Door Policy
While I miss the more literary and considered aspect of Craig Finn's solo output, the reformed Hold Steady have yet to put a foot wrong. Time away has obviously recharged their batteries and this is the second strong LP they've produced since patching themselves back together.
Still an acquired taste (like most of the bands on this countdown, I guess), Open Door Policy managed to rock as loud as their earlier efforts whilst continuing to allow Finn to tell his spiky tales of confused and disenfranchised Midwest losers. As always with Finn's lyrics, the devil is in the details...
St. Catherine's was a nightmare
You know they took away my headphones
Sure they let you keep your handset
But the courtyard is a dead zone
And the nurse that they assigned me had Eruption as her ring tone
Blasting out through built in speakers like it's bug spray
Look, this was the first thing I found when I put "Brazilian celebrities with cameras" into Google, OK. If I could have found a picture of Pele holding a camera, he would have been here instead of Gisele.
Honest.
10. Vadim's villain.
The villain in Roger Vadim's movie Barbarella was... Durand Durand.
8. Will Pakistan get zebras, Trudy wonders? The answers lie within.
The image above is, as revealed by Walter, Alain Delon and Romy Schneider, who have nothing to do with Brazil... though they did feature prominently in an image search for these guys...
Although it's named after the Brazilian beach, the Copacabana nightclub can't be in Brazil, since it's the hottest spot north of Havana. I'm not brilliant at Geography, but even I can work that one out.
3. Mad king steps down the peer.
Mad King George goes down the peerage to become a Duke.
You know that it would be untrue. You know that I would be a liar. If I were to say to you... I can't remember the answers to this week's Saturday Snapshots. Although, I did have to puzzle over some of them myself this week: I blame to post-viral lethargy. Or maybe they were particularly fiendish.
Mathematics proves impossible when your head is full of gunge, so I can't work out a winner this week, though everyone had a good go. Thanks for playing as always.
10. Pork from the top of the world leads you into a talent competition.
8. Climbing beanstalks after 10 leads to a sad, horny godson.
After 10 is 11, so that would make him Jack 11. If you're going to tell me it's pronounced Lee-ven, I'm going to say: it's a visual pun, not an auditory one.
4. Sweet on your tongue, a dancing football chant.
At football matches they (apparently) shout "Oggy Oggy Oggy". This is one of the many reasons I do not attend football matches.
The extra clue I gave involved a line from Smokey Robinson's I Second That Emotion, in which Smokey sings "A taste of honey is worse than none at all".
Solipsistic gangsters would say "I Am The Mob" since they would believe that only the self exists and thereby not believe in any other gangsters. Which then begs the question why they would need to be gangsters in the first place, and that is today's homework.
Anyway, if they couldn't wake up, they may be catatonic.
Ah, Cerys, were we ever that young?
This Is The End, Beautiful Friend... at least until next Saturday.
