Celebrity Jukebox #80: Faron Young

I've made the argument before that certain celebrities are better known (in certain circles, at least) for the song that's named after them than for their own individual renown. I certainly discovered Faron Young through a song that took his name... though his fame (and notoriety) influenced many others, including Peanuts creator Charles Schultz who gave the name Faron to a cat in his long-running comic strip.

Iffypedia (and a number of other websites that have lifted their info straight off iffypedia) reports that: "A country song by Tex Garrison mentions Faron Young in his opening lyrics with the lines 'Got a stack of records when I was one, listened to Hank Williams and Faron Young.'" This, however, appears to be a good example of why we shouldn't believe everything we read on the interweb, since I can't find any other reference to that lyric... or the singer Tex Garrison... anywhere online. It appears to be a load of bunkum... unless you know differently.

Because country musicians love name-checking the great and good of their community, there are loads of records that do mention Faron... alongside the likes of Willie, Waylon and the rest. Here are a few examples...

Johnny Cash - Let There Be Country

Red Sovine - Freightliner Fever

Dale Watson - Nashville Rash

Tim Wilson - Acid Country

Jay Lee Webb - Tootsie's Wall

Then there's a couple than are a little more specific...

WD Miller - Barroom For A Shelter

They got a jukebox and a bar that's full of drinkers
But Faron Young's the only voice I hear
If misery loves company then why do I feel so lonely
With a broken heart as a souvenir

Summer Dean - Queen of the Clowns

The jukebox played Faron
And she started to think
If Faron Young were here
He would buy me a drink

Next, we have the Bottle Rockets, with a song all about choices...

Sometimes open sometimes closed
Sometimes young sometimes old
Sometimes begging sometimes proud

However, when they get to Faron... there doesn't appear to be any alternative.

Sometimes Faron... Faron Young.

The Bottle Rockets - Sometimes Found

But if country music isn't your thing... well, if country music isn't your thing then you're probably not reading this. Still, here's the modestly monikered One Star...

One Star - Astrolama (Faron Young Mix)

And now, the one you've all been waiting for: Paddy. But is Paddy a fan, that's the question? Well, clearly he's a country music fan, since the name "Prefab Sprout" came from mishearing the lyrics to Jackson: he really should have called his band "Peppered Sprout". But the song Faron Young isn't really about Faron. It's more about his biggest hit, Four In The Morning, and how things like that can become so ubiquitous they lose their original intent. In the song, Paddy is driving through America looking for something real, something new, something he's never experienced before... but all he finds are the clichés.

You offer infrared instead of sun
You offer bubble gum
You give me Faron Young, 
Four in the morning

Initially, Paddy had written the tune but didn't have a lyric. He asked the band's drummer, Michael Salmon, to give him a word to base the song on, and Salmon suggest "antiques". Which is why the lyric begins thus...

Antiques!
Every other sentiment's an antique
As obsolete as warships in the Baltic

Four In The Morning was a hit from 1971, yet it was still everywhere in the mid-80s... it was the first music video played on Country Music Television in 1983. So I guess it was an antique by then, and a perfect metaphor for what Paddy was saying. Perhaps Faron Young felt the same. By 1996, he felt so abandoned by the world of country music that he took his own life. 

Faron Young had the lowest chart placing of any of the singles released from Prefab Sprout's Steve McQueen album. But it's still a classic.

Postscript...

In 2016, The Blazing Zoos finally gave Four In The Morning the sequel it deserves...

It's four in the morning and I'm listening to Four In The Morning
Faron Young never sung anything quite like he sung this one
Don't string her along, Don't treat her wrong
Guilt pays you back in the end

You can see I'm past caring
Please tell me, Faron
Why am I still up at five?

The Blazing Zoos - Still Up At Five

Mid-Life Crisis Songs #64: 49

 

Do you feel completely abandoned and lost?

Ah, that's one of the great questions

Are you falling apart? Ahaha...

Not my words, just excerpts from today's featured tune, from Paddy McAloon's only solo album*, I Trawl The Megahertz, a very weird offshoot of the Prefab Sprout world, but more listenable with every passing year.

(It's recently been re-issued and repackaged as an actual Prefab Sprout release... which I suppose is fair enough, since Paddy is The Sprout.)

I'll choose one more line then let you listen to the whole thing... while I go away and cry into my pillow, as is only appropriate.

If you're in pain, music can work on the level of anaesthetic

Hot 100 #49

Many thanks to Jim in Dubai for suggesting this week's opening image and reminding us all of 90s Italo House band The 49ers... though, to be honest, I could have done without the reminder.

Far more interesting was Jim's second band-related suggestion, 49 Americans with the track Should Be More Ideal...

True enough, Alan... but at least it's not Italo House.

As for the 49ers... call me an old fogey, but I far preferred Douglas McClaren's latest, Canadian-themed suggested...

Neil Young & Crazy Horse - My Darling Clementine

In a cavern, in a canyon 

Excavatin' for a mine, 

Dwelt a miner, 49-er

And his daughter, Clementine.

I have to say I never knew Neil Young had recorded that... but it's a bloody marvellous version, so it is.

Speaking of Neil, Marie suggested this fine track from some old mates of his...

Crosby, Stills & Nash - 49 Bye Byes

Back to the 49ers... here's a couple more...

The Quireboys - 49er

The I.L.Y.s - 49er Lighter

The Swede, meanwhile, returned to Old Faithful...

Bob Dylan - The Days of 49

And then, on a different hard-drive, but the same theme...

Wilco - Bob Dylan's 49th Beard

(When you've got more than one hard-drive full of music, you may need to ask yourself if you've got enough. Or at least buy a bigger hard-drive.)

The Swede also kindly provided this week's (soulful) jazz suggestion...

The Lightmen - Luke 23 32 49

...which, he assures us, we'll be hearing from again (and again) in a few weeks times.

Lynchie was up next, with one song... and loads of artists...

Big Joe Williams - Highway 49

Bukka White - Highway 49 (couldn't find that version)

Eric Clapton (with Howling Wolf) - Highway 49

Omar and The Howlers - Highway 49

To which Rigid Digit added...

George Thorogood - Highway 49

Take your pick... I'm rather partial to the Omar & The Howlers version.

Of course, Chris Rea might have been in with a shout there... had he not got lost on the way...

Chris Rea - Somewhere Between Highway 61 & 49

Lynchie also suggested my favourite lyrical suggestion of the week, and I've got to admit I was sorely tempted to run with this one...

Bruce Springsteen - Cadillac Ranch

James Dean in that Mercury '49

Junior Johnson runnin' through the woods of Caroline

Even Burt Reynolds in that black Trans Am

All gonna meet down at the Cadillac ranch

That's not our only classic car this week though, because Swiss Adam had this one...

I love the bit in Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros song Johnny Appleseed where he sings 'there it goes, Buick 49....'

Can't argue with that - probably my favourite Joe Strummer solo track.

Later, after consulting his many hard-drives, Rigid Digit returned with these beauties...

Stiff Little Fingers - Gate 49 

The number of the Departure Gate at Heathrow songwriter Henry Cluney regularly walked through to get back home to Belfast 

10CC - Rubber Bullets 

Down at Precinct 49
Having a teargas of a time

Phil Lynott & Gary Moore - Parisienne Walkways 

I remember Paris in 49
The Champs Elysees, St Michel
And old Beaujolais wine

Some serious fretwankery going on in that last track.

OK, what did I have left? How about this lot...

The Jazz Butcher - Lot 49

Jonathan Wilson - 49 Hair Flips

Paddy McAloon - I'm 49

Only a couple of years to go that on last one.

Meanwhile, lyrically...

Billy Joel - Leningrad

I was born in '49

A Cold War kid in McCarthy time...

Kind of like Russians by Sting, but not as embarrassing. (I know some of you will debate that.)

And speaking of Billy Joel...

Tom T. Hall - Don't Forget The Coffee, Billy Joe

Well, they wonder why there ain't no rabbits left this day and time

To tell the truth I guess we ate 'em all in '49

Was that yesterday or was it over 20 years ago

"Don't forget the coffee Billy Joe"

The Who - Too Much Of Anything

I can't remember before '49

But I know that '48 was there

Brilliant mathematicians, The Who.

This week's winner though was correctly identified by The Swede. Proof, if further proof were needed, that Joe Walsh was far more interesting than the Eagles gave him credit for. Remember: this man ran for President against Ronald Reagan (even though he was too young at the time to have been elected).


I have an obvious cool answer and an obvious slightly-less-cool answer for 48... but I'm sure we'll find some others too. Over to you.

2018 Latecomers: Spend Monday In The Bahamas

I almost didn't have a post today. I realise that's hardly the end of the world, and I've let days gone by without posts before, but this time was different. Because I had posts... only other people had already written then.

Originally I'd planned on doing a Grumpy Old Men / 2019 Contenders post about the new Specials album, but Rigid Digit and  John Medd said pretty much everything I have to say about that at the moment (for the record, my opinion falls somewhere in between theirs - RD seems to like it a lot, while John Medd questions whether it's actually The Specials at all, more a reformed Funboy 3 who realised the name of their earlier band would make more headlines).All I can add to that is that while I enjoyed the record, I did feel there were times that it came across as a Guardian journalist's wet dream. The tracklist runs like a checklist of society's ills and sometimes the message seems more important than the music. I don't object to any of the songs on their own, but crammed together on one disc it does feel a bit like being lectured by a 6th former at times. Maybe it's the grumpy old man in me... that's probably why I like this track best of all.

The Specials - Embarrassed By You

Bloody kids, eh?

With that idea abandoned, I thought about featuring another Long Song as last Monday morning... until I realised (I had to check!) that Drew had already featured both of them. (I'd already written one of them, but I'll spare you... go read Drew's instead.)

Paddy McAloon - I Trawl The Megahertz

Isaac Hayes - By The Time I Get To Phoenix

All of which led me to the Bahamas, a late musical discovery from 2018 that may have troubled my end of year countdown if I'd heard it sooner.

Canadian musician Afie Jurvanen, aka Bahamas, has been making records since 2009, but his fourth album, Earthtones, is the first one to be picked up on my radar. He obviously listened to a lot of Prince as a kid but also has a cheerfully tongue-in-cheek approach to his lyrics, reminiscent of John Grant or Father John Misty without the egomaniacal side. Hopefully it'll brighten up your Monday morning (what's left of it)...

My Top Ten Longest Songs

As today is the longest day of the year, I thought I'd try something different. Rather than my favourite songs on any particular subject, these are simply the longest tracks in my music player. I've discounted any that were lengthy due to a huge block of silence before a "hidden" track at the end of an album. Each of these really are as long as they say they are...


10. The Hours - See The Light

14 minutes, 17 seconds.

Title track from the second (and last?) Hours album, the full LP version clocks in at just under quarter of an hour. A much shorter version was released as a single, remixed by Calvin Harris (i.e. not as good) and featuring Sienna Miller going bonkers in the video.

9. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Babe, I'm On Fire

14 minutes, 46 seconds.

Everyone says it, from the horse and the pig to the judge in his wig, the blind referee and unlucky amputee to the giant killer bee landing on my knee... and so on and so on and so on...

See also the majestic O'Malley's Bar which clocks in at a mighty 14 minutes 28 seconds and remains one of my all-time favourite Nick Cave recordings.

8. Spiritualized - Cop Shoot Cop...

16 minutes, 12 seconds.

From an album that originally came sealed in a huge, CD-shaped blister pack that you had to pop open / tear the foil before you could play the record. The track is listed as being 17 minutes 13 seconds long but it actually ends at 16' 12" before a minute's silence. Which is nice.

7. Joni Mitchell - Paprika Plains

16 minutes, 19 seconds.

Side 2 of the album Don Juan's Reckless Daughter, Mitchell apparently improvised the piano on the initial recording of this epic before adding orchestral flourishes to the finished mix. It's the sort of record you have to turn the lights down and listen to from start to finish... the sort of record our attention-span deficit way of listening to music these days means we'll rarely see the like of again.

6. George Gershwin - An American In Paris / Rhapsody In Blue

16 minutes, 34 seconds.

I left out the classical music from this countdown (yes, there is some in my collection!) as it would have unfairly dominated. I couldn't exclude Gershwin however, that wonderful bridge between classical and pop. There are various versions of An American In Paris (many full orchestra versions are over 18 minutes) but I stuck with the Gershwin Plays Gershwin version I own, though the one on youtube isn't quite up to mine.

Even better is Rhapsody In Blue at 14 minutes, 24 seconds... sheer bliss!

5. Neil Young - Ordinary People 

18 minutes, 12 seconds.

From the album Chrome Dreams II, which also features the 14 minute, 33 second No Hidden Path, which would have squeezed its way onto this chart had I not restricted myself to one long song per artist.

4. Love - Revelation

19 minutes, 4 seconds.

The whole of Side 2 of Love's second album is this one track. Originally named John Lee Hooker, it's pretty much Arthur Lee and mates jamming in the studio till the tape runs out, though the title suggests it has something in common with our Number One song too.

3. Sonic Youth - The Diamond Sea

19 minutes, 36 seconds.

From the album Washing Machine. A five and a half minute single edit was released also (along with a 26 minute "alternative ending" version that would have put this at Number One, except I don't own that version). A pretty cool song, though the last ten minutes is largely piano and feedback, so all in all I'll stick with the single.

2. Paddy McAloon - I Trawl The Megahertz

22 minutes, 6 seconds.

I'm a huge Prefab Sprout fan, so when I first heard Paddy's solo album, I was slightly disappointed. It's very different from the Sprout, but I guess that's the point. Paddy only actually sings on one song and the title track features a story poem narrated by Yvonne Connors. It's a haunting listen, made all the more poignant when you realise it reflects McAloon's worsening eye condition and the lonely nights he spent with only voices on the radio for company.

1. Genesis - Supper's Ready 

22 minutes, 54 seconds.

Originally from the album Foxtrot, though my copy comes from the 3-disc Platinum Collection. To be honest, I've only listened to this all the way through a couple of times. It's interesting in places, but perhaps a little bit too prog even for me. Gabriel described it as, "a personal journey that ends up walking through [The Book of Revelation]". Amusingly though, it all begins with him walking across his sitting room and turning off the telly...



Of course, it's not the length that matters, it's what you do with it.

What's your longest song?