I figured there wouldn't be a shortage of songs that mentioned the world-famous, Bradford-born artist... and I wasn't wrong. There's even a song that beat Sting to the punch...
We're back with more great song titles dredged up from the darkest recesses of my hard drive... and some from yours too. Do any of them live up to their names?
For your consideration today...
1. Alice Cooper - I'm Alive (That Was The Day My Dead Pet Returned To Save My Life)
Brackets are a wonderful thing in song titles, aren't they? Although I have to admit there's a part of me that always hears the diabolical James Saville reading the title out as he used to do on the wireless, saying "open bracket... close bracket".
Sam and I were listening to an old compilation in the car last week. When Alice Cooper's Hey Stoopid! came on, Sam said, "good old Alice!"
I've also been listening to Mr. Furnier's latest record, Road. It's a lot better than a heavy rock album by a 75 year old man should be.
This one comes from way back in 1982 though, when he was younger than all of us. Taken from the wince-inducing album Zipper Catches Skin.
2. My Life Story - If You Can't Live Without Me Then Why Aren't You Dead Yet?
Jake Shillingford's My Life Story were firm favourites in my house for at least five minutes in the late 90s. This is from their third album, Joined Up Talking.
Because you can't copyright a song title - even a great one - American rockers Mayday Parade were free to write their own song with the same name, and that's the one you're more likely to come across via your search engine of choice. (Does anybody actually use Bing?) It can't hold a candle to My Life Story, if you ask me.
3. Gary Stewart - She's Actin' Single (I'm Drinkin' Doubles)
Charity Chic was keen to remind me that country songwriters are an excellent source of great titles, and he recommended one of his favourites from Gary Stewart. My hard drive is full of country singers drowning their sorrows in booze after getting dumped, but as Gary Stewart was the "king of honky tonk", he appears to have spent more time than most propping up the bar. He was also responsible for She's Got a Drinking Problem, Hey, Bottle of Whiskey and An Empty Glass (That's the Way the Day Ends) among many others.
Tragically, Gary Stewart took his own life following the death of his wife in 2003.
4. Captain Beefheart - I Wanna Find A Woman That'll Hold My Big Toe Till I Have To Go
Next up, George wants us to consider the late Don Glen Vliet, famed for his wacky song titles... well, wacky everything, I guess, including, presumably, 'bacca. We could be here all day with the likes of...
D12 (which stands for Dirty Dozen) was the rap band Eminem was in before he became famous. He got the old gang back together a few years later, notably for the song below...
Those of you with better memories than me (or The Swede) may remember that that song won #35 on the Hot 100 Countdown, and at the time I remarked: "don't expect it to show up again at number 12. I can easily think of a dozen songs that would come before it." Which may have been an exaggeration on my part, but I have to stick to my word.
That was obviously a popular suggestion with Alyson, who says: it was one of my first singles. I also had a Donny pillowcase and a Donny Cap (not a euphemism for a form of contraception as I was only aged 12 - apt).
Well, I suppose that's less embarrassing than Respect Yourself by Bruce Willis. Sadly, the only version I own of that song comes from this fellow...
Speaking of welcome returns, after my plea last week, Douglas McLaren returned to explain where he's been recently... and it seems as though life is pretty unpleasant for teachers in Canada... as I can attest it is in the UK. His explanation below sounds very familiar to these ears...
...our entire school system has moved during these times to an online platform, as we figure out how to get teenagers to do work from home while they are stressed and concerned about what is going on in the world beyond their doors. And that has meant trying g to figure out how to upload video lectures, hold virtual office hours online, screencasting, web-textbooks, and a whole lot of other insanely time consuming nonsense for an old dinosaur of the classroom like me to learn.
You have my sympathy, Douglas, as all this has nearly broken me over the past few weeks, not to mention the fact that Louise is also supposed to be working from home and we've got to home-school Sam while we're doing it. If I read one more article about "how to spend your free time" or "what to watch on Netflix now we're all at home, taking it east", I'm going to scream.
Anyway, here's Douglas to tell us about his suggestion for this week...
Great Big Sea are from Newfoundland on Canada's east coast, with their lyrical and folksy "Come And I Will Sing You (The Twelve Apostles)", which I think is worth the listen.
This week's winner though. Alyson got it, but first to name it was Martin who normally spreads his bets over a whole load of tracks but this week was so certain of a win, he piled all his chips onto one bet. And guess what? It paid off...
Makes you wonder why they weren't huge... although I guess a band that size had to sell a heck of a lot of records to break even...
Next week, eleven. After that, things get really tricky. I might need to come up with some new rules...
I have to admit that when Jim in Dubai suggested a band called Seventeen to illustrate this week's edition of the Hot 100, I did wonder if he meant the Indonesian boy band.
Fortunately, he has a much better memory than me for bands long lost in the search engines of google...
Seventeen would, it turns out, grow up to become a little more famous as The Alarm.
Jim also suggested two other 17 bands, the first being an actual boy band... who were "alright" as boy bands go... although they did wear some ridiculous outfits.
I don't know if I should say this in a public forum frequented occasionally by those of the muso persuasion, but while I always appreciated the Sex Pistols for their comedy value... less so for their musical contributions, I'm afraid.
The Swede's next suggestion will definitely throw you down a hole in google if you start trying to find out more about them as I just did...
Brian wins prizes for the video. They wouldn't allow that these days. Although, to be honest, the woman in the video looks (thankfully) much older than 17, as most "teen" movie stars of the 80s actually were. Michael J. Fox was 24 in Back To The Future.
C seconded a couple of earlier suggestions, then offered up two fine ones of her own...
Rigid Digit was next to arrive, complaining that "Most of mine have gone again (my first vote is for Sex Pistols - Seventeen. The Regents in second place.) So what have I got left on me list?"
Seventeen has a proper emotional heft, capable of giving you a bit of bump and stopping you in your tracks (you meaning me I guess), there's something about the rising chords and Sharon's voice that goes hits the bullseye. The 80s production is what must have sounded familiar to me. I never thought that a song that seems to reference mid- 80s Springsteen would appeal to me so much. In the song Sharon addresses her seventeen year old self and her freedom/ naivety, wanting to warn her about what lies ahead and the poor decisions she'll make but still knowing that she has to go through it all. She also gets pissed off with her younger self who she thinks wouldn't fully like her as she is now, would think she's lost it or sold out or something similar. One of the lines goes 'I used to be free/ I used to be seventeen' and judging by the comments on Youtube it seems that the line and the sentiment affects those much older than that and those around that age equally. I'm eleven years older than Sharon, turn fifty in a few months, and this song definitely nails a feeling, a sense of the loss of youth and the pain of looking back. That's the literal definition of nostalgia isn't it? Nostalgia usually evokes a sentimental looking back, feelings of wistfulness, the rosy glow of the past. But it's literal translation involves looking back with feelings of sadness, of something lost and gone. I don't want to be a person who's nostalgic for being seventeen- there are other 'better' ages to be nostalgic about, it's an age where you're still not fully sure of yourself in a lot of ways, I certainly wasn't, and an age where you know so little despite being so sure you know so much- but this song really does push all those buttons.
Brian suggested this one, and for a while now I thought it would be my front-runner... but only because my memory is shot and I'd neglected to consider this week's winner. That said, I do think this is Ms. Nicks' finest moment... and not just as a solo artist.
The song was a big hit for Janis in the US in 1975, and although it never appeared in the UK charts, it soon became a staple of the airwaves. The song is about a girl who is somewhat of a social outcast in high school, and so it became a kind of anthem. She was inspired to write the single after reading a newspaper article about a young woman who believed her life would improve after a debutante ball, and her subsequent disappointment when it did not. All these years later nothing has changed, and with social media to muddy the waters, if anything, things have got worse. I remember the year my daughter and her friends turned 17 and were experiencing the kind of anxieties as recounted in the song. I got them to listen to this song, as I think it summed up how they were feeling. Many nights were spent bemoaning the fact they were not one of The Populars, that group of girls with “clear skinned smiles” who always seem to get the boy.
Not much I can add to that, except... this is a heartbreaker.
Sweet little sixteen next week... I shudder at the prospect.
As I compile these results, nobody has got this. I fully expect Martin to swoop in at the last minute and nab it.
UPDATE: Just before I was about to turn off the computer and go to bed (hey, listen, 9.30 is all I can manage on a Saturday night), my prediction came true. I knew I could count on you, Martin!
7. Beware of this (unabbreviated) spinning lady... she's coming for New York!
A Spinning Jenny, unabbreviated, would be Jennifer.
General agreement that this must be The Alexander Brothers with Nobody's Child... a song I'd never heard before, but I can see why you might think I'd like it. Having watched the video, I reckon there's a distinct possibility Aiden & Malcolm posed for that photo with said brothers in mind.
It took my extra "Think Belle & Sebastian" clue to direct RD to the correct answer.
1. What Bond got LOADS.
Sometimes the clues just write themselves.
George took a couple of shots, but nailed his target in the end.
Congratulations to this week's undisputed champion: Charity Chic. Thanks, as always, for playing along.
Back next Saturday with ten more badly disguised "classics" from the depths of my music library...
I am well know for being a little bit of a pedant. It comes with being an English teacher... and a blogger. But at least I've never written a pedantic song. Unlike these people...
Good on Weird Al for parodying the hideous Blurred Lines... and turning it into a pedantic rant about grammar crimes.
Say you got an "I","T" Followed by apostrophe, "s" Now what does that mean? You would not use "it's" in this case As a possessive It's a contraction What's a contraction? Well, it's the shortening of a word, or a group of words By the omission of a sound or letter
Kevin Barnes has a pedantic mate he really doesn't like...
He'd explain to you but it would take too long Why he is right and everybody else is wrong He'd endeavor friend to make your mind correct He'd try but he thinks it would take too long too long It's probably simple math That keeps him on his elevated path
Yes, I know I should have gone with Fred & Ginger. Or Louis & Ella. But I have a special fondness for the HCJr version, even though he's arguing with himself. Seriously though, have you EVER met anyone who says 'po-tah-toe'?
Scroobius Pip tells you how to live your life... and gets his knickers in a twist over how the Oxford English Dictionary spells the word 'phoenix'. (He's wrong though.)
I defy you to find a more pedantic songwriter than Nigel Blackwell. This is just one example... there are many more available.
I finally managed to reach the station Only to find that the bus replacement service had broken down After wondering to myself whether or not it should actually be called a train replacement service...
FJM gets rather bent out of shape about a lady friend's use of one particular word...
She says, like literally, music is the air she breathes And the malaprops make me want to fucking scream I wonder if she even knows what that word means Well, it's literally not that
He does have a point. Quite literally.
1. Barton Carroll - Past Tense
Barton's girlfriend dumps him when she gets her Master's Degree. She's a grammar nazi too. He's probably better off without her. But the strict ladies do make him weak at the knees...
Now if I ask what's wrong You say, "It's not you, it's me" And if I ask who's him? You say, "It's not him, it's he." My sentence composition is so far from refined My participles dangle Like a fish on a line
OK, my fellow pedants... which pedantic song did I miss out?
Ten songs about April Fool's Day, along with ten amazing facts about the artists in question. But which ones are true and which ones are the APRIL FOOL?!?
It was only after failing the audition to play bass in Soul Asylum that Kurt Cobain decided to form Nirvana. As a result, Soul Asylum's place in rock 'n' roll history is set in stone.
Following her acting debut in the film Blues Brothers, Aretha Franklin briefly considered taking the Kathy Bates role in the film adaptation of the Stephen King novel Misery. She was talked out of it by her good friend George Michael (with whom she duetted on the 1987 Number One, I Knew You Were Waiting For Me).
When 90s singer-songwriter Patti Smyth had a big hit with her Don Henley duet, Sometimes Love Ain't Enough, the original Patti Smith sued her for the right to the pronunciation of her own name. When Patti the first won the case, Patti the second was forced to change the i sound in her name to a y sound to avoid confusion.
Comedian and Pointless presenter Alexander Armstrong was a member of Jake Shillingford's My Life Story orchestra. He played trumpet on a number of MLS songs, though not, sadly, this one.
Del
Amitri's lead singer & songwriter Justin Currie is a distant relative of
infamous Spitting Image puppet and John Major bit on the side, Edwina Curry.
(Seriously, April Fool's gags aside... imagine going down in history as
"John Major's bit on the side". You've got to have some sympathy for poor Edwina...)
Loudon Wainwright III is actually the fourth generation of Loudon in his family. He just thought III sounded cooler. Then he decided to mess with tradition and call his own son...
Rufus wrote the lyrics to one of his best songs, Going To A Town, while under general anaesthetic for an operation on a particularly nasty ingrowing toenail.
Lambchop mainman Kurt Wagner was such a fan of Marvel's X-Men comic book in his youth that he wrote a fan letter to the book every month. In recognition of his dedication, writer Len Wein named an X-Man after him. Kurt Wagner: Nightcrawler.
Following the success of their 1983 hit New Year's Day, Bono and Thedge briefly considered recording a whole album based around days of the year. The project was soon abandoned, but this track did later resurface as the b-side to their 1987 release, In God's Country (not a big hit, probably because it was the SEVENTH single from The Joshua Tree). I'm not the world's biggest U2 fan, but I do think this is one of the best things they ever recorded.
1. Kenny Rogers & The First Edition - Just Checked In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)
My favourite April Fool's song doesn't actually have April Fool in the title. It does feature in the lyrics though...
Someone painted April Fool in big black letters on a Dead End sign I had my foot on the gas as I left the road and blew out my mind Eight miles outta Memphis and I got no spare Eight miles straight up downtown somewhere I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in
When Kenny disbanded the First Edition in the early 80s to go solo, several other members of the band went on to form New Edition and top the charts with the song Candy Girl.
I'll reveal the answers next week. In the meantime have fun guessing the April Fools...
Karen O believes in gender equality when it comes to insults...
Boy, you just a stupid bitch, And girl, you just a no good dick
Not to be confused with Black Tongue by Mastodon which makes Karen's lyrics sound like a Hallmark card... or Silver Tongue by Zulu Winter, who (like many bands) steal their best video ideas from David Lynch and the Coens.
Mary regrets getting caught up in the moment and saying something she didn't quite mean...
When I said, "I love you" It was a slip of the tongue Love is more than a feeling It's a way of living everyday It's the hardest thing I ever gave away
Don't remember this being released as a single - but Monster had so many great tracks. The rule with Michael Stipe lyrics is that I don't even try to tell you what they're about. Just go with the organtastic groove.
In which Jack White auditions for a guest spot on Jerry Springer. He can talk that trash with the best of them (and Karen O).
Oh well, your mama was a bastard
Had your plastered face all over the scene
You got hassled by your daddy
Always pushing, trying to make you come clean
Apparently the video was directed by Gary Oldman... but as it's a live performance, I guess he didn't have to do much more than show up and tell Jack to get on with it.
One of the great lost bands of Britpop, and this was only a b-side, so I was extra pleased to find it on youtube. I wish Britpop was remembered more for bands in the literate/glam Pulp/Suede vein, like MLS, rather than the poshboy pretenders and northern neanderthals...
David Byrne cops off with his neighbour and she performs various acts of a metaphorically culinary nature that get him so excited he asks his friends round to watch.
The divine Ms. Lewis finds herself faced with a sleazy chat-up line as this song begins - from a shoe repairman at that!
I went to a cobbler
To fix a hole in my shoe
He took one look at my face and said
"I can fix that hole in you."
Luckily, she's more than capable of dealing with this creepy cordwainer and goes on to deliver another classic story song about dropping acid in Dixie and meeting a man with soft hands (unlike, presumably, the cobbler) to soothe her pain.
To be lonely is a habit
Like smoking or taking drugs
And I've quit them both
But man, was it rough
So... which one makes you stick your tongue out like Gene Simmons?
