One Track Summer #21: My Favourite

My old friend Adrian messaged me on the book of faces to recommend a tune, "I heard this nostalgic indie track which namechecks M&M, the trouble is it's hard to find out anything about the band because the name just brings up people's favourite bands."

Yes, calling your band My Favorite is probably not recommended in the internet age, but it turns out (with a little help from discogs) that these guys originated in 1993 - so before the downfall of civilization. 

My Favorite were from Long Island, New York, and I'm posting this here because I think it will appeal to certain readers (mainly Martin and JC, possibly Jim in Dubai). Definitely worth further investigation...

Rich kids hate the skinheads, and the skinheads hate the rich kids.

She gets thrown in with the deal.

She knows just how it feels when God hates you and mothers run away.

She says, "I'm gonna kill someone." 

Alone at school she sits and dreams of Johnny Marr and Morrissey. 

But tonight she'll wear his working class jacket over her prom dress 

And dance as the pop song sings,

"It's a crazy world, and you're a messed up kid, "

And that's why you're my favorite, and I believe in you.

One Track Summer #19: ...And Automobiles

To end the week, a handful of songs that follow on nicely from yesterday's post...

Iron & Wine - God Made The Automobile

Parliament - My Automobile

ZZ Top - She Loves My Automobile

The Blue Nile - Automobile Noise

Webb Wilder And The Nashvegans - Stay Out Of Automobiles

One Track Summer #18: Planes, Trains...

Everyone knows the signature tune of Gladys Knight & The Pips, the huge 1973 hit (although it didn't make the UK charts until three years later) in which Gladys catches a late train back to Georgia to be with the man she loves, because she'd "rather live in his world than live without him in mine".

Not everyone knows that the song originally featured an entirely different destination, and mode of transportation.

And even if you did know that, did you know that Jim Weatherly wrote the song following a conversation with Farrah "Jill Munroe" Fawcett, shortly after she'd started dating Lee "Steve Austin / Colt Severs" Majors? It sounds like Farrah would have gone anywhere to be with Lee, even if it involved taking a midnight plane to Houston...

One Track Summer #17: Cliff's Girlfriend

Cheers is probably my all time favourite sitcom, and the annoying, know-it-all postman Cliff Clavin, played by John Ratzenberger, is one of my favourite characters.

If you ever watched Cheers, you may remember that Cliff had a recurring on-again, off-again romance with a fellow postal worker,  Margaret "Maggie" O'Keefe. Well, I just discovered that the actress who played Maggie was actually Annie Golden, lead singer of New York new wave band The Shirts. 

(That's a great album cover.)

Here's Annie / Maggie a few years before she met Cliff...

One Track Summer #16: DMC

I'm reading a collection of true stories compiled by The Moth, a non-profit storytelling group from the US. Some of them are very good, some of them are rather annoying, some of them are full of self-aggrandizing bullshit... but I guess that's a pretty accurate representation of the human race.

One of the stand out stories for me came from Darryl McDaniels, aka the DMC of Run DMC. He tells how at the height of his fame, he found himself suffering from chronic depression, and the only thing that made him feel even slightly better was the music of Canadian singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan. He met her at a showbiz party and behaved like an embarrassed schoolkid, but she recognised him, knew his music, and that made him like her even more. After a while, he discovered the source of his depression, after learning that he was adopted and he had no idea where he really came from. That's when he had the idea of recording a song about how it feels to find out your parents aren't your birth parents, basing it on the old Harry Chapin tune Cat's In The Cradle... and what he really, really wanted was for Sarah McLachlan to sing the chorus. So he called her up and she agreed, inviting him out to her home to record it. And that's when she told him that she was an adopted child too.

DMC tells the story a lot better than that, obviously, but it was a really sweet tale, and the last thing I expected from one of the godfathers of hip hop.

One Track Summer #15: Breakfast On The Train

Sam and I visited Dudley a week or so ago. Our Premier Inn was evacuated on the penultimate day of our stay due to a brush fire on land behind the hotel. Fortunately, the fire brigade got the blaze under control and we were able to return to our room at night. 

Next week, the whole family is away in Pickering, one of our favourite holiday destinations, though I'm unsure whether we'll get to see the steam trains. Last time we visited, there were only diesel locomotives running due to the danger of sparks causing fires on the train line.

Considering the wildfire situation in Europe at the moment, missing the sound of the steam train firing up seems a small price to pay. Still, The Orange Idiot assures us that global warming is a "con job", so nothing to worry about there.

Former Go-Between Robert Forster's solo output is a continuing joy to me, even if some people get frustrated he won't revisit his old glories anymore...

My agent used to tell me 

You give people the shits

Why can't you be like everyone else? 

Play the hits!

That's a good question and it's a mystery to me

But I've come to see it positively as my destiny

Robert Forster - Such A Shame

That track is taken from last year's album Strawberries, an excellent collection of songs, my favourite of which is Breakfast On The Train, an 8 minute story song written during a train journey from London to Glasgow.

There was a family in the room next door

They were woken by the banging and the roar

They phoned Reception to complain

Reception said, "Over the volume of love we have no claim"

One Track Summer #14: Drink Problem

I haven't had a drink since the year 2000.

It's not good for me.

Did I have a drink problem before that? My liver thought so, because I have Gilbert's syndrome, which the AI Gods tell us "is a common, harmless inherited liver condition where the liver processes bilirubin more slowly than normal, leading to mild jaundice, fatigue, and occasional abdominal discomfort."

I would add that the fatigue I suffered, especially after drinking a little too much, was far worse than "mild", and lasted longer than any hangover you've ever had.

The Thin Yoghurts, on the other hand, clearly did have a drink problem back in 1980.

The A-side of today's song was this...

The Thin Yoghurts - Girl on the Bus

It's not bad. But the B-side is much better...

One Track Summer #13: It's OK To Punch Nazis

I'm guessing this was written around the time the Great Orange Idiot first took to the throne... 

Never thought it'd happen, but now look where we are
Rather have a rapist than a woman in power
When we got complacent in defending our rights
The Nazis changed their name, now they're called the alt-right

The racists got a PR firm

Hired men in fancy shirts

But have the same ideology

We've had to say a lot of stuff

We thought was fucking obvious

Like, "Yes, it's okay to punch Nazis!"

One Track Summer #12: Orville

No.

Not that Orville.

This one.

Orville Peck likes to wear masks.

They kinda suit his outlaw vibe.

And as an openly gay country singer, maybe he does it to keep the rednecks at bay.

Whatever, this South African born country star has a voice that puts most of his US contemporaries to shame. Just like another Big O. 

Could Orville be the natural successor to Roy Orbison? 

Judge for yourself...

One Track Summer #11: The Wedding Singer

Why did nobody tell me XXXXX had a new album out last year?

I could start a whole new series with that title. Forget the algorithms, they're useless. When I "LIKE" an artist, I'd expect the streaming service to tell me they've got a new record out. Maybe give it priority over another bloody Van Morrison live recording from 1969? 

It's just so hard to keep up.

Anyway, this time it's Jens Lekman, my favourite Swedish pop star, with apologies to Benny, Bjorn and Robyn. Songs for Other People's Weddings reveals that since 2004, Jens has been moonlighting as a wedding singer, and here he chronicles so of the bizarre experiences that's led to, with his customary wit and wisdom...

Waiting by the urinal
for my turn behind two guys
who are taking their time since they are
dressed in an oversized
tuxedo that combines
their bodies into one
Two arms, three legs, a bowtie
A smile as bright as the sun
As if they’ve been conjoined twins since time begun

Their names are Jun and Arthur, they’re getting married today
I’ve been hired as their wedding singer, they know me by the letter J
They’ve just learned that with a suit like this it’s hard to pee
So while one guy does his business, the other turns to me
And says sorry they couldn’t pay much and I say it’s fine
Cause I’m having the time of my life
The drinks are free and after all I
make a fortune from my streams on Spotify
And we laugh and they struggle to zip up their fly

If I'd known, I might have asked him to play at my wedding. Yeah, like I'd have been able to afford that...

One Track Summer #10: Geese & Cobras

Geese are from Brooklyn, and they've been kicking around for the past ten years, so I don't know why it's taken me so long to discover them. 

This track comes from their latest album, Getting Killed, released last year. It's wormed its way into my brain with repeated plays and it will not let go.

One Track Summer #9: Encyclopedi-ite

Billy Reeves was the songwriter and guitarist in 90s indie band theaudience, the group that gave Sophie Ellis-Bextor a leg up to stardom. This was their crowning glory...

theaudience - I Know Enough (I Don't Get Enough)

Billy left the group in '98 and he's had a pretty chequered history since then, including a near-fatal car accident in 2001 and a place in the Guinness Book of Records for releasing the world's first playable jigsaw puzzle with the band Sugar Coat in 2006.

Since then, he's worked as a journalist, a radio producer and a football commentator.

But he still makes music too, and this is from his lates album, Postwar, which will be out in August. And he's got the Bluebells backing him on this track, but don't let that put you off if you're George...

Your mum let me in

To your room

I felt like I was raiding

King Tut's Tomb

One Track Summer #8: Heavy Foot

Mon Rovîa is named after the place of his birth, the capital of Liberia, on the West African coast.

I think he lives in Nashville now. He's certainly taken to playing Grand Ole Opry... but his sound isn't immediately the kind of thing you'd expect to hear there. 

There was a time when a lyric like this might have been more appropriate for certain parts of Africa than the USA. Nowadays... well, what do you think?

Do you see the man on the street

Just fighting for a meal to eat

You can write him off as a lunatic

But it coulda been you or me

If we didn't ever find our feet 

Love me now

Hold me down

And the government

Staying on heavy foot

And they tried to keep us all down

No they never gonna keep us all down

One Track Summer #7: Better Things

Here's wishing you the bluest sky

And hoping something better comes tomorrow

Hoping all the verses rhyme

And the very best of choruses, too

Follow all the doubt and sadness

I know that better things are on the way

Here's hoping all the days ahead

Won't be as bitter as the ones behind you

Be an optimist instead

And somehow happiness will find you

Forget what happened yesterday

I know that better things are on the way

The Kinks really are a gift that keeps on giving.

One Track Summer #6: Watching Your Workplace Burn To The Ground

Is it a common fantasy to imagine your workplace burning to the ground?

Certainly, when I worked at The Bad Place, I would regularly hear the idea mooted, especially every time we had to go stand out in the car park for a fire drill. "Maybe this'll be the time...?"

Durry are from Minnesota. Here's a song they wrote about being a slave to the paycheque and hoping your workplace might one day become just a pile of ashes...

One Track Summer #5: I Got A New One

This is Elizabeth Nichols. She's country, but with a serious sense of humour.

John Prine would be proud.

 

One Track Summer #4: Wile E. Coyote

If I had to pick a favourite cartoon character, it would probably be Overconfidenti Vulgaris, aka Famishius Famishus, aka Nemesis Ridiculii, aka Wile E. Coyote.

Not only is he a grandiose metaphor for the futility of existence and a glorious anthropomorphism of the persistence of the human spirit, but he is also the inspiration for one of the best comics I ever read.

I don't know if Wild Billy Childish ever read that comic, but he's definitely a fan of the Coyote. He first recorded a tribute back in the 80s with one of his many bands, Thee Mighty Caesars. 

Recently, he revisited the track with his latest band CTMF (I don't know what it stands for, and frankly I'm afraid to ask). It's the perfect encapsulation of the Wile E. Coyote spirit...

One Track Summer #3: Promenade

Today I'm going to stick to the rules of this new feature - just one song.

Another excuse to play a track from the Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage, and his mates in LYR. Simon's greatest achievement in poetry is the way he effortlessly weaves the Northern vernacular into his work - like I keep telling the kids, it's poetry that doesn't sound like it was written by the Oxbridge elite, yet it's just as (if not even more) affecting.

Here Simon imagines himself (remembers?) being a young man stranded in a Barnsley nightclub, hoping he might meet a girl. But he was never any good at "hook a duck".

I've no idea why a lad from Marsden would spend his nights out in Barnsley... unless he was too embarrassed to go on the pull in Huddersfield.

One Track Summer #2: Loose Articles

Loose Articles are from Manchester. They're one of an increasing number of punky girl&guitar bands that are leaving the boys in the shade at the moment. (See also Panic Shack, Twat Union, The Pill et al.) They also have a lot of fun in their videos, like here...

...and here...

However, the song I'm most taken with at the moment is this one, which doesn't appear to have a video... yet, at least. I'm fascinated with it because it appears to start with the intro to Run To You by Bryan Adams... and then segue into Come As You Are by Nirvana. Or is it Teen Spirit? It definitely sounds Nirvana-ey. That's some audacious theft right there. More power to the Loose Articles!

 

One Track Summer #1: How To Keep Your Husband Happy

As we approach the summer holidays, I'm going to have less time than usual to blog. Partly because of summer fun, partly because I've got another writing project I want to get cracking with. I've spent the last few weeks getting ahead on Snapshots and Namesakes so they should take care of themselves... but in between, other regular features will probably be on hold.

I will be posting the final edition of the Cancel Culture Club soon though - so if anyone else has any thoughts on whether Dreadlock Holiday by 10CC needs cancelling, please let me know by the end of this weekend.

To help fill the gaps, there will be a series of short posts in which I play one song I've been listening to recently and tell you why I like it.

Let's start with this...

The Cosmopolitans were a New York new wave / burlesque dance band famous for their live shows featuring live shows featuring go-go dancing, baton routines and "buffoonish acts". There's not enough buffoonish acts in pop music these days. Their most popular single (above) offered some useful, if tongue-in-cheek, advice for young women everywhere.

They also enjoyed Wild Moose Parties...

OK, so that was two tracks. I've already broken this feature's only rule. Bodes well...