Louise and I celebrated the 20th anniversary of our first date back in February, but though we've been together through thick and thin since then, we've never got married. Neither of us are really a fan of the ceremony, the expense, or being forced into the limelight. If that's what you wanted, good on you, but it was never for us.
Today though, we're getting married. It's a small registry office thing in the Town Hall - me, Lou, Sam, her Mum and partner as witnesses. No big do. No suit or dress. Not even any rings. No expense... well, a little expense, but you can't do anything for free, can you? We're doing it for a very boring reason - inheritance tax, so that if one of us dies, the other one (and Sam) will be a little better off than if we'd not tied the knot. Who says romance is dead?
There were many times in my life I thought I'd never meet anyone who'd want to stay with me. Since we met, Louise has always been there for me... even when I've done her head in. You can't ask for more than that, I don't think. And if you think this is a particularly unsentimental post, well, all I can tell you is that Louise wouldn't thank me for writing anything soppy.
I'm really hoping Billy Idol might ride his motorbike through the Town Hall window, but I'm betting he'll be bleaching his hair today. Then again, neither of us will be wearing white.
When I say that, you probably picture an average garden shed, maybe 6 foot by 8 foot or a little bigger… well, let me stop you there. My dad was both a farmer and a joiner, so when he built a shed, it was often bigger than the average house, certainly big enough to house half a dozen cows for the winter or to store enough bales of hay to keep said cows fed while the grass wasn’t growing. Such incredible buildings regularly sprang from the earth as if by magic when I was growing up… and I took them in my stride.
The old barn, with mistel / cowshed attached. That was demolished when the barn was converted. Pictured is my nephew Gary, stood on the muck midden, and some random builder nicking the asbestos sheets from / mending the roof.
Wait, let me clarify that. My dad was in his early 60s back at this point, and had walked away from the car auction business. He’d started working as a joiner again, for my brother (the house builder of the family), but Dad didn’t have much of a pension and was worried about financial stability for his retirement years… so he decided to sell the big old rambling farmhouse I’d grown up in and downsize us all into the barn next door. He handled this conversion pretty much by himself (calling in my brother and a few other tradespeople for occasional assists) and within a year, the old hay loft I’d played hide and seek in as a child was now my teenage bedroom. It was a lot smaller than the house of my youth, but my brother and sister had long since flown the nest and my parents figured I’d soon follow (although that didn’t happen quite as soon as they’d expected). Anyway, with the barn out of action, other cattle sheds and hay storage buildings soon appeared to replace it… and again, I took it all for granted. Looking back now it seems miraculous, particularly given how much of this work my dad did on his own… with only the occasional assist from Mr. Bagley.
A memory came back to me earlier this week of a journey Dad took us on one misty Saturday… to buy a shed. For this expedition, he borrowed a truck from my brother, and drove me and my mum halfway across the country… I can’t remember exactly where, but it took a good few hours to get there. When we arrived, we met a man who was selling a huge wooden outbuilding that would soon become my dad’s joinery workshop (home to a table saw that would one day almost sever his thumb). This building must have been at least thirty feet long, by about ten feet wide. We set about dismantling it, piece by piece, then loaded it onto the back of the truck and drove it home. I’m guessing this would be some time in the mid-80s, so I’ve no idea how my dad found out about this shed for sale, in the pre-internet days… perhaps there was a classified ad in the back of the Farmers Guardian newspaper I picked up from the local Newsagents along with my weekly stash of comics. Likewise, I’ve no idea how much he paid for this enormous wooden edifice. All I remember is, he needed our help to get it on and off the truck. Beyond that – taking the shed down and reconstructing it on a long concrete foundation he poured and flattened a good three feet above the ground (with steps leading up to it, to keep it from flooding)… he did all that himself.
Some more random, ramshackle sheds I grew up around. Not pictured: the fancy joinery workshop shed
we travelled so far to buy. That replaced the hen-hut shed on the right of this picture.
Did my back in at the weekend. I went to the tip with a car-load of post Christmas junk, including a single mattress, and managed to unload them all with no trouble. Once back, trying to refit Sam's car seat in the pouring rain, I twisted in slightly the wrong way in the confined space and bingo.
I'm hoping it'll be better by the time this post runs, but in the meantime, here are some of the songs I listened to while stretching out on a cold hard floor...
There are loads of different versions of this old blues standard, and the lyrics change depending on who's singing it. I've been listening to Nina's 1961 album Forbidden Fruit lately, and this is one of my favourite tracks.
From his second album way back in 1974. What joy I felt when I heard this and recognised it from my childhood. I'm guessing Terry must have played it back in the day.
Shut up.
Finally, inspired by Charity Chic's recent Saturday Series, I've been listening to Townes Van Zandt's Roadsongs LP. Unlike CC's series, where we have to judge Townes' originals against covers, this is a live album on which Townes covers other people's songs... often improving on them. He does that here on my favourite version of The Stones' Dead Flowers, as immortalised in my favourite movie. The Dude abides.
I thought I'd saved the best of George's suggestions to last... until he came up with a whole new list, which I failed miserably at. You can't win 'em all.
Right now, it's Lana Turner, who was married seven times, which probably tells you all you need to know. Let's put it this way... The Postman Always Rang Twice for Ms. Turner.
Lana is the first of our stars to make an appearance on Madonna's own Celebrity Jukebox, although I'm sure she won't be the last...
Here's a member of the Partridge Family. Yesterday, we had Steve Coogan, aka Alan Partridge. I couldn't find a song with Partridge in the title, which almost derailed this quiz. And then I settled on the perfect solution...
12. Alias Harry & Jones.
Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby Jr. and David Robert Jones.
Check out the new video above, starring Mark Hammill, John Hamm and Weird Al Yankovich, among others. A lot of money was spent on it. I have no idea why.
(That wasn't actually a picture of Prince. But it was a Prince Christmas tree bauble. You can buy them on eBay. Or you might prefer to save your money.)
Two turtle doves...
1. Number One.
And because I couldn't find a song with a partridge in the title, I settled instead for this gentleman.
Andy Partridge.
Andy Partridge in a pear tree.
Here's a seasonal song from the man in question.
And, to close, the very best version of The Twelve Days of Christmas, from Father Jack himself, Frank Kelly...
Driving home from work last night, despite the fact that I'd stayed late for a training session, despite the fact that the traffic was even heavier than usual, despite the fact that the journey took me 75 minutes... I had a thought, a feeling I haven't had in a long, long time.
I like my job.
Those of you who've stuck with the relentless wall of misery this blog has been over the past few years will get why that is such a big deal.
Top Ten bands with (lead) singing drummers, anyone?
8. Open people's minds (with poppies), at the angelic skatepark.
OPM stands for "open people's minds", apparently... or "other people's money". It has nothing at all to do with opium.
A half-pipe, as you will all know, is that curved thing skateboarders and bmx-kids do stunts on. It has nothing at all to do with drugs, despite what I thought when this record originally came out.
This is POWER pop taken to its ridiculous extreme.
Sam likes this song because it features in the movie The Secret Life Of Pets (or Pets At Home as we call it), one of the better kids films I've seen in recent years.
"There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone."
And when you get there, these ten songs may well be playing from a broken radio...
The only song on this list actually inspired by a specific episode of The Twilight Zone: and it's one of my favourite episodes too. You know, the one where bibliophile Burgess Meredith wishes people would leave him alone so he could have more time to read his books. Emerging from a basement library one lunchtime, he discovers the bomb has dropped and he's the only survivor. Everyone else is gone... and now there's no one to interrupt his reading! Joy! Then he stumbles and drops his reading glasses and they shatter...
Some will tell you Charlie's The Legend of Wooley Swamp is better Twilight Zone material, but it's a bog standard tale of revenge from beyond the grave, if you ask me (though still very entertaining). The Devil Went Down To Georgia, on the other hand, is not only the real deal - it was Daniels' biggest hit. The song owes a lot to the legend of Robert Johnson - although it's a fiddle rather than a guitar that Johnny's risking his soul for in this version. The great thing about it is that the Twilight Zone twist is apparent from the first line - people often think of the Twilight Zone as a show where the stories turned weird at the end, whereas very often they started with a twist... and then the ending was anybody's guess.
And he played fire on the mountain, run boys, run. The devil's in the house of the risin' sun. Chicken in the bread pan, now they're pickin' out dough. "Granny, will your dog bite?" "No, child, no."
Everyone knows this song, of course. But have you heard the sequel, The Devil Comes Back To Georgia? It almost doesn't work... but Daniels pulls it off by casting Johnny Cash as the narrator. That move definitely beats the devil.
Nina relocated Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's bloodthirsty tale of Jenny the Pirate Girl from Germany to South Carolina and turned it into a violent Tarantino-esque revenge fantasy about a young slave girl who's mad as hell and just won't take it any more. Then a ghostly pirate ship arrives in the harbour and things get really dark. The final verse, with Jenny riding away on that ship, is more chilling than anything you'll have seen on Tales of the Unexpected.
If you only know Nina when she's Feelin' Good... take a listen to when she's feelin' bad.
In the lonely jungles of Viet Nam, a young Private First Class on a search patrol gets separated from his platoon and soon finds himself surrounded by Charlie. Luckily there's a big marine called Camouflage on hand to save him... with superhuman powers to boot. With Camouflage's help, the soldier finds his way back to base where he discovers, "things are never quite the way they seem".
The weirdest song Frank Turner has ever written spins an eerie anecdote about the death of Challenger astronaut Christa McAuliffe. As the O rings fail and Christa "dies", she sees another world...
For the next agonising two minutes and forty-five long seconds
She called out the truth on a broken radio:
"I'm alive, I'm alive, I'm alive".
Tragically, the only one to hear Christa's last broadcast is a four year-old radio-ham operator 4000 nautical miles away. In the loft of his Hampshire family home, this young boy hears her final words...
"The darkness up above
Led me on like unrequited love,
While all the things I need
Were down here in the deep blue sea."
And that boy's name? Frank Turner, of course...
(Only a live version available on youtube, but it's worth tracking down the original - from last year's superb Positive Songs For Negative People - to hear Christa's words sung by the divine Esme Patterson.)
The most famous Eagles song has inspired endless debate about just what's going on in its lyrics - it's up there with American Pie for inspiring the conspiracy theory crackpots. But it's spooky as hell and certainly involves a journey to another dimension, replete with a freaky cast of Twin Peaks characters - from the girl with the Tiffany-twisted mind to the strange guests in the Master's Chambers, gathered for a terrible feast.
Stay at the Hotel California ("Such a lovely place!") and you're guaranteed to be woken in the middle of the night by ghostly voices; room service will never deliver your wine ("We haven't had that spirit here since 1969..."); and the dancers just want to forget...
Most of all, in classic Twilight Zone tradition...
You can check out any time you like... But you can never leave.
Of course, it could all just be one big metaphor... but them, so could much of Rod Serling's best work.
Neil Hannon's cheeky pop hit of the late 90s sounds like a typically jaunty bit of Noel Coward-esque whimsy, particularly when it begins with a giggling girl and Hannon's best Leslie Phillips impression. But wait a minute... what's that breathing in the woodshed? Is it a monster? The girl's seen it. Dare Neil go take a look...?
OK, the twist is a little bit more down to earth than many of the songs here, but it's certainly a cautionary tale about the monster lurking inside pretty girls everywhere...
Many Harry Chapin songs have a twist in the tale - or a sting in the tail. But none are quite as spooky as this tale of John Joseph, an old homeless man waiting for his long lost love to return. He tells the story of Corey to a young man who isn't quite sure whether to believe him... especially when the local townsfolk tell him John Joseph has always lived alone. When the old man dies, the narrator is the only one present at his funeral... until he looks up from the grave to behold a surprising figure. At which point he learns... "Reality is just a word."
And like I told you, when she holds you
She enfolds you in her world.
I used to have a boss called John Josephs. I try to not let this song remind me of him.
Lol Creme finds himself at a deserted railway station in a terrible thunder storm and takes shelter in an old broken-down train carriage. But he's not alone on that train, there's a ghost on board too. The ghost of a woman who takes to screaming out the train window, "Don't wanna be under your thumb forever...!"
At which point, sod the rain, most sane people would have got off and got wet. Lol, however, decides to stick around, light a cigarette, and pick up an old newspaper. What he reads there will chill you to the bone...
1. Helen Reddy - Angie Baby
If you heard it on the radio and weren't paying much attention, you'd think Angie Baby was just another innocuous, country-tinged ballad from the 70s. Until you actually listen to the lyrics and pay attention to the story... At which point, you are so deep in the Twilight Zone, you start to ask yourself if Rod Serling himself penned this tune.
Angie's a lonely girl who rarely leaves her bedroom and her only escape is through the songs she hears on her tinny old radio. She's never had a boyfriend and probably never will. But that doesn't stop one of the neighbourhood lads eyeing her up, with wicked intent. What happens when he knocks on her door? Something seriously trippy...
The Uncle Devil Show (Justin Currie along with Kevin and Jim McDermott) did a pretty cool cover of this twisted classic back in 2004.
There are lots of songs with twists at the end - from Lola to A Boy Named Sue to The Velvet Underground's twisted masterpiece The Gift - but none of those belong in the Twilight Zone. However, if you can think of any more that unlock the door to another dimension... I'd love to hear them.
