This is the delightful Audrey Tautou, star of Amelie. Think up your own puns, I'm too tired.
Here are this week's answers...
10. Civil war soldiers refuse to sleep.
"The New Model Army of England was formed in 1645 by the Parliamentarians in the English Civil War." I'm ashamed to say I don't know much about history, but I read about these guys in one of Sam's books.
Being an old X-Files junkie (I even have Fox Mulder's "I Want To Believe" poster on the wall in my office), I've always had a fascination with the "secret" air force base in the Nevada desert where strange things happen involving crashed alien spaceships, experimental aircraft using salvaged alien technology and autopsies of alien corpses. [Redacted by the U.S. government.)
Let's start this week with a couple of tunes that escaped from Area 51. Curiously, both are instrumentals. Perhaps their lyrics were redacted too?
Back in the real world, and onto your suggestions, the most obvious of which this week was suggested - not by The Swede - but by Martin...
Highway 51 Blues, by Bob Dylan which, in its guitar motif at least, seems to owe a debt to the Everly Brothers.
Not a Dylan original that, it was written by Curtis Jones. Personally, I always get it mixed up with Highway 61 Revisited... too many numbered highways in the Dylan canon.
Martin also offered the following, helpfully including links to make my life easier...
The atypical I Move On by Cowboy Junkies contains the line "51 years, a child upon the Earth, trying to find the answers without digging in the dirt..."
12:51 by The Strokes sounds exactly how you'd expect (no bad thing).
...and one more...
Koka Kola by The Clash starts with the line "In the gleaming corridors of the 51st floor..."
Lynchie, meanwhile, claims to have been eagerly awaiting number 51 in this countdown so that he could suggest this...
They got a vintage Victrola 1951 Full of my favorite records that I grew up on They got ole Hank and Lefty and there's B24 Set 'em up Joe and play "Walking The Floor" Set 'em up Joe and play "Walking The Floor"
I'll definitely save that for when I do my second volume of jukebox songs.
But it seemed clear we had to deal with Little Britain this week, or the 51st State of the United States as we've often cruelly been dubbed due to the "special relationship" which isn't really that special anymore. A number of songwriters have commented on this, including...
And, of course, these guys, this week's unanimous winners thanks to block-voting, hanging chads and Russian facebook interference from Charity Chic, C (obviously!), Lynchie and others...
Next week: we're halfway there! Numero cinquanta! Your suggestions are welcome as always. No need to be coy, Roy...
OK, so I know L7 weren't named after a Liverpool postcode... but my cred is already in tatters, I'm not about to open a post with a picture of East 17.
Anyway, songs named after (British) postcodes. A challenge I just couldn't resist. I couldn't think of any named after American postcodes... or zip codes... though I'm happy for you to suggest them. The closest I came was Kitchen by The Lemonheads, because they were "thrilled to be in the same postcode as you".
Here's ten songs that even Postman Pat should be able to deliver to the right address...
"A parody of the Sex Pistols." Which is all very good, but if ever there was a band that were perfectly capable of being a parody of themselves without any help from anyone else, it was the Sex Pistols.
Inner city Manchester... although the person who uploaded the song to youtube filled the video with pictures of the South Bank. You can imagine the comments!
Lets the stars shine on Until the break of dawn Let the stars shine on And let her move, move like a queen Of Longsight M13
I was disappointed to learn that M5 by The Fall is about the motorway, not Salford.
Ray writes a letter to the editor from his home in Muswell Hill, complaining about the state of Britain today... a recurring theme from the infamous Little Englander.
I close my eyes and lay back and I think of England I dream about that green and pleasant land we knew as England That throne of kings, that sceptred isle set in a silver sea Has turned into a laughing stock divided without harmony
I've never been a football fan, but I'm a huge fan of Matt 'Skint & Demoralised' Abbott, and although I've no interest in Leeds United (despite them being a local team to me and the team my dad followed when he was younger) I can hear Abbott's passion in every word of this chant.
I'd love to think this track was an autobiographical account of Shane's arrival in Hampstead...
When I got down to the smoke It was 1963 I got a job doing meals on wheels Round NW3 I was terrorising grannies For ten lousy bob a week I was smashed and blacked And drunk and yawning in NW3
...except that he would have been 6 at the time. Still, this is Shane MacGowan we're talking about, so anything's possible.
I stayed in Hampstead once. Walking down the street, I saw the "comedian" Michael McIntyre talking very loudly into his phone. I'm not a violent man, but I had to be physically restrained from punching him hard in the nose.
1. New Model Army - BD3
The track that inspired this particular Top 10, so I thought it deserved to be Number One. Despite working in Bradford for 20+ years of my life, I never really listened to one of the city's biggest bands while I was there (I was always more of a Terrorvision man) but I stumbled across this pretty recently and couldn't stop listening to it. Further investigation required...
We close early when the nights are slow Hit the Shell garage, Thornton Road Take a long drive up on the moors Park up in a place we know In the back seats getting stoned To forget everything at home Mess about with the bleeping phone Gazing down on the city below Where no one's really sure if this is home
And it's not where you're from or where you've been It's not a matter of blood or of family tree Everybody believes what they want to believe But they come from some kind of refugee Running from something, turned out of somewhere All looking for somewhere, exiled from something And no one's really sure if this is home
Very appropriate lyrics for anyone living in Bradford. Unfortunately, when I google search Pudsey (BD3), all I get is hundred of pictures of the Children In Need bear. The video below is probably more accurate...
Know any other songs named after postcodes? Send your answers on a postcard.
