Self-Help For Cynics #44: Get Out Of My Pub!

Over the Half Term holiday, I had a visit from our local Reform Councillor. The first one to be elected in our area, and he was obviously chuffed with himself and his shiny blue rosette. I was loading my car up in preparation for a trip to the tip when I saw him knocking on the neighbours’ doors, and though I didn’t immediately know what party he represented, I had my suspicions.

When he approached and identified himself, I gave him both barrels. 

“Turn around, go away and never come near my house again.”

“Very well, sir,” he replied, obviously accustomed to abuse, “that’s your right in a democratic society. But do you mind if I ask why you’re saying that?”

“Because I’ve seen what’s happening in America and I don’t want the same thing to happen over here.”

“Well, America’s very different to here.”

“It won’t be if you lot get in.”

This went on a bit more, and I ended up calling him and his brethren a “bunch of racists”, which he denied, quietly, as he moved on to the next house.

Afterwards, I regretted my outburst. I should have just turned away immediately and not let myself be drawn into any kind of discussion. Why didn’t I? 

Because he was outside my home. And as such, he was directly invading my Environment.

The Soup Dragons - Vacate My Space 

You may remember in the last couple of editions of this very sporadic series, I mentioned Dr. R. Douglas Fields’ list of nine triggers for anger, summed up in the acronym LIFEMORTS. I’ve previously looked at the first three letters – L for Life or Limb, I for Insult, and F for Family. The next is E – the anger we feel when something invades our environment, our home, our safe place – even our personal space. In a recent interview, Dr. Fields explained…

“… animals who are territorial will protect their territory with violence. And we can see that in many animals in nature. But humans are fiercely territorial. Trespassers will be shot.”

Nirvana - Territorial Pissings

An article in Psychology Today expands on this…

“One of the main functions of territorial behaviour for humans is the preservation of privacy. Having a place where we can control who has access to us and when is essential for normal day-to-day functioning, and a lack of such control can be quite dispiriting and stressful.”

It goes on to suggest that this is one of the reasons homelessness has such profound psychological effects on people. We are hard-wired to need our own safe cave to retreat to when the world gets too much. And when the sabretooth tiger steps into our cave looking for a meal… how can we ever feel safe there again?

The Beatles - Get Back

When I was in the Sixth Form and we’d just started passing our driving tests, we would occasionally get to borrow a parental car and give friends a lift home from school. I have a vivid memory of the time we dropped my friend Rachel off at her house only for her to come running back out in tears moments later. Her home had been broken into while everyone was at work / school, and the burglars had ransacked the place. The police even found a shotgun propped up against a wall in the living room, suggesting that the thieves might have had to leave in a hurry – perhaps when they heard us pull up outside.

Peter Gabriel - Intruder

Rachel and her family were obviously deeply affected by this, but they were tough Yorkshire folk, and I guess they got over it. Her parents stayed in that house for a good many years afterwards, but I know a lot of people never get over a burglary or home invasion, and their only option is to move.

The Pursuit of Happiness - No Safe Place

Scientists suggest we don’t have to be in a place for a long time for us to start feeling territorial. One study, cited in Psychology Today, reported that…

“…when a person seated at a table in a university snack bar for five minutes or less was approached by a stranger who asked them to move, they invariably complied and often offered an apology as well. However, if the person had been seated there for a much longer period of time, they usually refused to move.”

Simon and Garfunkel - I Am A Rock

Have you ever been sat on a park bench, just enjoying the sunshine and the birdsong, the breeze on your face… and someone else has plonked themselves down on the same bench? On your bench? How does that make you feel? Maybe you’re a sociable soul and you welcome the company. Or maybe it depends how long you’ve been sitting there.

The Police - Don't Stand So Close To Me 

Territorial rage can even exist on the interweb. I’m sure I’m not the only one who gets a bit miffed when I receive spam comments on my blog – but it’s worse still when Mr. Angry From Purley has a rant about something I’ve written. And check out all those people getting into heated arguments on social media – your Facebook account is another safe space. When some dickhead invades that with a comment they’d never make in real life… watch out!

Kate Bush - Get Out Of My House

Territorial anger is a natural human reaction then… so next time a Reform candidate comes knocking on your door, don’t beat yourself up about slamming it in his gammony face. 

Here's a song about someone who gets very angry when someone invades his space... be warned that it features a fair bit of bad language. Even worse than what I said to the Neo-Nazi.

Self Help For Cynics #43: Family Fury

The Cranberries - Ode To My Family

A couple of years ago, I was in a charity shop with Sam. I was flicking through an uninspiring rack of CDs while Sam was looking at the kid’s books. When he found nothing to interest him, he came to get me – because I’m only allowed to stay in any shop as long as there’s something in it for him, after that we need to get out of there asap. When I didn’t immediately jump (there might have been an obscure CD by the Colourblind James Experience hiding in those final few CDs… that has happened to me before… once… it could happen again) Sam leant against a nearby shelving unit and demonstrated his boredom with a hefty sigh.

At this point, an elderly gentleman / fellow customer / Grumpy Old Bastard came storming over and shouted something at us both to the effect that if we weren’t careful, “that’s boy’s going to pull the whole shelf off the wall!” I turned, considered my response, then said to Sam – with a volume that turned heads across the shop – “Right, buddy, we’re going – we have to get as far away from this rude man as possible!”

Peter Gabriel - Family Snapshot

Afterwards, I did consider whether my reaction was setting the best example to my son, but frankly it’s not the first time Sam’s seen me lose my rag in a shop, and I doubt it will be the last. However, unlike more general frustrations about people blocking the aisle or pushing past me or spending ages reading the ingredients on a can of beans, this particular burst of rage was clearly triggered by the third letter in Dr. R. Douglas Fields’ angry acronym, LIFEMORTS. F… is for FAMILY.

Eels - I Want To Protect You

Now before you start thinking, yep, nothing more likely to get me wound up than certain members of my family… this isn’t about the anger we feel when our (pre-)teenage child ignores our wishes and does whatever the hell they want, specifically the thing we told them not to do. It’s not the anger we feel when our other half replaces the toilet roll so that the front sheet hangs down the back when any sane person in the world knows it should hang down the front – beard good, mullet bad! It’s not even the anger we feel when a previously level-headed sibling suddenly decides to stick flags up outside their house and starts telling us how that Nigel Farage has some quite interesting things to say, actually. 

Bennet - I Hate My Family

No, the Family trigger in LIFEMORTS is actually the complete opposite of all that. It’s the anger we feel when someone or something attacks, threatens or even insults someone in our family. Because our brains are genetically hardwired to protect those close to us. This is something scientists have noticed in many different species – often they characterise it as “maternal aggression”, where a female animal will act aggressively to protect its offspring from harm. But clearly it’s not just a female trait – mothers and fathers are both conditioned to keep their offspring safe. Not just from physical threat – but even from the threat of insult. (As to why we consider insult a threat, I refer you back to the last post in this series.) Scientists tell us that our brain does this because it’s fighting to preserve our genetic lineage. The survival instinct doesn’t just cover us as individuals, we also want to ensure “species survival”. 

Simon & Garfunkel - Save the Life of My Child

But I don’t think those are the only reasons we get angry when someone threatens our family. I think it also has a little to do with that key emotion science still has trouble with properly accounting for: love. And when it comes to a threat against our children… well, there’s no greater love. I was watching some TV show a while back – I wish I could remember what it was – and one of the characters said something about how all fathers secretly wish they could die to protect their child. The idea being that there would be no greater expression of paternal love. When I heard that – just a line in a TV show, nothing I can find any scientific research about – it connected with me. 

Marvin Gaye - Save The Children

The Family anger trigger isn’t just about parents and their children though. We feel a similar sensation whenever anyone in our immediate tribe is threatened. You may well have someone in your family circle who, in your opinion, is a complete dick. You may even have had occasion to tell them this to their face. And that’s fine. That’s just families. But if someone from outside your tribe upsets, attacks or insults them… you’ll probably still feel the urge to leap to their defence. Because our brains recognise that family units offer protection – safety in numbers, yeah, but numbers that are bonded together by blood or time or proximity… that’s even safer. This might even explain why people in abusive relationships might still feel the urge to protect their abusers from outside forces. And it definitely explains why otherwise non-aggressive kids get into fights at school because some big doofus has just insulted “your mum”. Or, as the wonderfully foul-mouthed Dr. Faith (remember her?) puts it…

“It’s the likely precursor for why we may hate everyone we are related to, but we still beat the shit out of anyone outside the family that messes with them.”

Wet Leg – UR Mum

How do we deal with this then? I’m not sure I’ve found an easy solution in my research other than the general piece of advice that always comes up when tackling our responses to emotion: recognise it, acknowledge it, understand it. So when that Grumpy Old Bastard came over and had a go at my son in the charity shop (while also casting aspersions on my own parenting), what I should have done is taken a step back – recognised that I was feeling anger because I saw this incident as a threat against my family and that my brain was conditioned to release the relevant stress hormones in a situation like this in order to facilitate a fight, flight, freeze or fawn response due to an ingrained, genetic predisposition to protect my child. And then I should have calmly assessed whether or not my reaction was valid or whether my brain was actually displaying an archaic evolutionary threat response which really wasn’t relevant in the modern world. And if I decided that to be the case, then the very best reply would probably have been to smile, defuse the situation with a vague apology for any unintentional upset caused, and carry on about my day.

Massive Attack ft. Tracey Thorn - Protection 

Or maybe I should have decked the old bastard, pushed him into the very furniture he was so desperate to “protect”. “Oh, look what you’ve done now – you’ve made a right mess of those shelves.” Hulk smash threats to Hulk’s people. F can stand for more than just Family.

Snapshots #393: Natural Disasters In Song

Call the National Guard - this week's Snapshots has been a disaster!

15. A fetching skyline.

Bring Me The Horizon - Avalanche

14. Definitely not The Numbers!

They're not numbers - they're free men!

The Prisoners - Hurricane

13. Frankie in a submarine.

Frankie Valli goes deep...

Deap Valley - Drought

12. Shades of sadness.

Bluetones - Mudslide

11. Their story's seldom told.

"I am just a poor boy, though my story's seldom told..." is the opening line of The Boxer.

Boxer - Blizzard

10. Imprisoned businesswoman found in lad's navel.

Martha Stewart ended up in the nick. "Lad's navel" was an anagram...

Martha Reeves & The Vandellas - Heatwave

9. Stargazing tools.

The Telescopes - Tornado

8. This fishtank's in a right state!

State, as in United States...

American Aquarium - Wildfire

7. Important component in both telecaster and stratocaster guitars.

TeleCASTer and stratoCASTer...

Cast - Sandstorm

6. Lancaster con man invests in Lou Reed libretto.

Burt Lancaster played the religious con man Elmer Gantry. Lou Reed was in the Velvet Underground. A libretto is the words from an opera.

Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera - Volcano

5. Luggage for a German Underground singer.

Still with the VU, that would be a Nico case...

Neko Case - Middle Cyclone 

4. Cook up some Manchester rat recipes.

"Manchester rat recipes" was an anagram...

Manic Street Preachers - Tsunami

3. How Travolta expressed his love for Cortinas.

John ❤︎ Ford.

John Hartford - California Earthquake

2. Bloodsuckers move across your eyeline.

Transvision Vamp - Landslide Of Love

1. Turn the terrible page...

"Terrible page" was an anagram...

Peter Gabriel - Here Comes The Flood

It'd be a disaster if you weren't back here next Saturday for more of this nonsense...

Memory Mixtape #29: Man In A Shed

View from inside one of the newer, better quality sheds.

Nick Drake - Man In A Shed

My Dad loved a good shed. 

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. 

Fire - Father's Name Was Dad

Besides, a proliferation of outhouses became especially necessary when I was 19 and our family moved into the barn. 

Nina Simone - My Father

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.

The house that replaced the barn.

K's Choice - Dad

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.

Tashan - Thank You, Father

But this was just my dad, and it was what he did. I just presumed everyone else’s fathers did exactly the same thing.

White Plains - Dad, You Saved The World

Jesse Dayton - Daddy Was A Badass

TV On The Radio #15: It's A Knockout

Even as a six year old, I found little point to It's A Knockout. Surely I was the ideal target audience for a ridiculous game show about people dressed in ridiculously over-sized costumes trying to race and falling in water? But no, even at that age, I found myself thinking, "This is stupid". I'm convinced that the only person who really enjoyed It's A Knockout was Stuart Hall, and the less said about him, the better.

Back in 1996 though, it was still OK to name-drop him in a tune...

Brotherhood is back from their sabbatical

Dramatical and hit, we're here to take it all

Three rounds of verse, it's a knockout, Stuart Hall

The Brotherhood - Mad Headz

The North Sea Scrolls was a 2011 collaboration between Luke Haines, Cathal Coughlan and Andrew Mueller. They only did one album, but if you like twisted 70s nostalgia or things that are mad as a fish driving a lorry, then it's a wonderful, wonderful record.

Blakey and Olive

Freaks and fascists

It's A Knockout

With tiny moustaches

The Mosley frontbench

Cheered on by the masses

Take on the cast of

'On the Buses'

A cry goes up

"I'll get you, Butler"

Mosley leers:

He's played his joker

The North Sea Scrolls - Enoch Powell Space Poet

It's A Knockout was, as I'm sure you all know, based on the French game-show Jeux Sans Frontières. I'd argue that the only decent thing to come out of the whole sorry affair was the tune below, in which Peter Gabriel uses the show's puerile farce as a metaphor for world politics. Games Without Frontiers, with Kate Bush on backing vocals (she's the one who sings 'Jeux sans frontières'), is another classic from Gabriel... from an era when his albums took a bit of work. You come to those albums wanting every track to sound like Solsbury Hill, and when they don't it can be a little disappointing. Persevere though, and after a while a world of riches opens up.

Games Without Frontiers comes from his third eponymous album, one the record company knocked back as "commercial suicide"... until today's song started picking up airplay, when suddenly they became interested. That's when Gabriel told them to bog off and took his master tapes elsewhere. Games Without Frontiers went on to become his highest charting single in the UK (tying with Sledgehammer), so nyah nyah nyah to you ignorant record company bigwigs.

If looks could kill, they probably will

In games without frontiers

War without tears

Celebrity Jukebox #26: Rosanna Arquette

In 1985, Rosanna Arquette won the best supporting actress BAFTA for her role in Desperately Seeking Susan. I'm not suggesting this was made easier by the fact that her co-star wasn't really great shakes in the acting department... then again, Sean Penn was also in that movie, so Rosanna did have some competition. 

Desperately Seeking Susan is a mistaken identity movie, based on the premise that someone might think Madonna and Rosanna are the same person because they wear the same jacket. Well, Mary Prankster has a few thoughts about that...

Mary Prankster - Breakfast

"Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?" he said

"Rosanna Arquette doesn't look like a thing like Madonna

And you'd have to be a moron

To desperately seek either one."

Rosanna Arquette also appeared in Pulp Fiction, After Hours, Crash and a bunch of other movies and TV shows. She also has a few famous siblings, meaning this might not be the last time an Arquette features here. However, her biggest claim to immortality surely comes from the fact that she inspired not one but two huge 80s songs. 

The first is the most obvious. Rosanna was dating Toto keyboard player Steve Porcaro at the time this was written by the band's other keyboard player, David Paich, and sung by Bobby Kimball. Could have been awkward, although Paich claimed the song was actually about his old high school girlfriend and Not About Rosanna Arquette At All. 

Many years later, he confessed that might have been a bit of a lie... by which time, Rosanna and Steve Porcaro were history anyway.

All I wanna do when I wake up in the morning is see your eyes

Rosanna, Rosanna

I never thought that a girl like you could ever care for me

Rosanna

All I wanna do in the middle of the evening is hold you tight

Rosanna, Rosanna

I didn't know you were looking for more than I could ever be

Soon after, Rosanna ended up in a relationship with Peter Gabriel. When director Cameron Crowe wanted to use a song from the album So in his movie Say Anything, Rosanna apparently persuaded Gabriel to let him have it. (Apparently Gabriel asked to see a rough cut of the movie first and was willing to let them use his song, although he didn't like the downbeat ending... but the production company had sent him the wrong film anyway.) All this led to a particularly iconic (and much parodied) scene featuring John Cusack and Ione Skye...

In your eyes

The light, the heat (in your eyes)

I am complete (in your eyes)

I see the doorway (in your eyes)

To a thousand churches (in your eyes)

The resolution (in your eyes)

Of all the fruitless searches (in your eyes)

The cognoscenti are convinced Gabriel wrote this song about Rosanna Arquette, although Pete has refused to Say Anything. Rosanna married film composer James Newton Howard the following year, So... 

Not wanting to end on such a downbeat note, I found one more song that mentions Rosanna Arquette, by the French answer to Neil Hannon, Vincent Delerm. This is from his 2004 album, Kensington Square, although the title rather dates it. "Les filles de 1973 ont trente ans" translates as "The girls of 1973 are thirty years old". Well, next year, they'll be 50, Vincent. Will they still be wearing their bandanas and Rosanna Arquette Reeboks then? Let's hope so...

Snapshots #244: A Top Ten Frog Songs

A Top Ten Frog songs to enjoy before we all croak. I'm glad to see you all Kermit yourself to answering these...

10. Samuel L. Jackson promises to leave before Bonnie gets home.

What, you never saw Pulp Fiction?

Jimmie: No, no, no, no, no, don't you ****ing realize, man, that if Bonnie comes home and finds a dead body in her house, I'm gonna get divorced? All right? No marriage counseling, no trial separation, I'm going to get ****ing divorced, okay? And I don't want to get ****ing divorced! Now man, you know, ****, I wanna help you, but I don't want to lose my wife doing it, all right?

Jules: Jimmie, Jimmie, she ain't gonna leave you--

Jimmie: Don't ****ing "Jimmie" me, Jules, okay?! Don't ****ing "Jimmie" me! There's nothing that you're gonna say that's gonna make me forget that I love my wife, is there?! Now look, you know, she comes home from work in about an hour and a half. Graveyard shift at the hospital. You gotta make some phone calls? You gotta call some people? Well, then do it! And then get the **** out of my house before she gets here!

Jules: Hey, that's Kool and the Gang. We don't wanna **** your shit up. All we wanna do is call my people and get them to bring us in, that's all.

Kool & The Gang - Electric Frog

9. Sacked in America for switching off the air con.

If you were sacked in America, you might be canned. For turning up the heat.

Canned Heat - Bluefrog Blues

8. Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand clues.

Yes. That's Ian McShane. And Grace Jones. Together on track three of the Slave To The Rhythm album. Although, to be fair, Ian does most of the work, reading extracts from the biography of Jean-Paul Goude, the French artist who designed Jones's album sleeves and directed her videos.

Grace Jones - The Frog & The Princess

That said, I almost preferred C's Jesus Jones answer.

7. A century clamp.

Anagram! Silhouette!

Paul McCartney & The Frog Chorus - We All Stand Together

6. Good for receiving Alecia Beth.

Alecia Beth Moore is the real name of Pink! You receive things with an aerial.

Ariel Pink - Exile On Frog Street

5. Holden's nan.

Anagram!

Del Shannon - Froggy

And if you've never heard that before, it's guaranteed to make you Runaway.

4. Created by Anne-José Madeleine Henriette Bénard.

Anne-José Madeleine Henriette Bénard is the real name of French actress Cécile Aubry, the creator of the Belle & Sebastian characters.

Belle & Sebastian - Funny Little Frog

3. Strength of God.

That's the meaning of the word "Gabriel".

Peter Gabriel - Kiss That Frog

That video pretty much shows where James Cameron got the idea for the movie Avatar. Fortunately, Gabriel's video is much shorter and far less boring.

2. Held up by Hinge & Bracket.

No, not these two...

These two...

The Doors - Peace Frog

1. When half way through the journey of our life, I found that I was in a gloomy wood, because the path which led aright was lost.

Those are the opening lines of The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. But you knew that.

The Divine Comedy - The Frog Princess

Hop on back next Saturday for more...

Positive Songs For Positive Times #64: Boom Boom Boom

I don't have much to say for myself at the moment. Maybe the cat's got my tongue. Or maybe I can only write the autobiographical side of this blog when things aren't going too well. It's certainly nice to not dread going to work anymore... though I could do without the killer commute. Perhaps I'll devote a few Cnut Songs to road rage and traffic jams...

In the meantime, that's Cosmo above. Longtime readers will remember when he was just a tiny kitten. Now he's a bit of a bruiser, prefers to be out rather than in ("Open this door!", he's saying in that picture), though he wasn't fond of last week's fireworks at all.

I don't know why, but I ended up listening to the first Peter Gabriel solo album a lot recently. I discovered Gabriel with So, so never really checked out any of his earlier long players until now. I wasn't sure about it at first, because musically it's all over the place. But slowly the disparate elements are growing on me. Perhaps my initial disappointment was down to the fact that I wanted ten tracks that sounded just like this one, surely one of the best singles of 1977, and one that never grows old.

Today I don't need a replacement

I'll tell them what the smile on my face meant

My heart going boom boom boom

Saturday Snapshots #131 - The Answers

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.

New Model Army - No Rest 

9. Ghost fishing.

Spirit - I Got A Line On You

8. Will a sweetener help you arrive at a different conclusion?

Sugar - If I Can't Change Your Mind

7. This clue is... on the dole.

A UB40 was a form you had to fill out when you signed on in the 80s.

This clue is One In Ten.

UB40 - One In Ten

6. Quartz snowflakes for James Dean.

Quartz and snowflakes are both crystals.

James Dean was a rebel (without a cause).

The Crystals - He's A Rebel

5. Party time for absolute nutters.

Mental As Anything - Live It Up

4. He will laugh, with Maddie, and Ray or Rod.

The name Isaac means "he will laugh".

Maddie Hayes was in Moonlighting. Well, I got that clue, anyway.

Rays and rods are both shafts.

Isaac Hayes - Theme From Shaft  

3. I'm gonna whup yer, then shoot that bloody elephant. Is that profound enough for you?

Whup yer = Tan yer (hide).

I'm then gonna do Nelly.

I know, that's pretty deep.

Tanya Donelly - Pretty Deep

2. Hire DJ in mix to drive through city.

"Hire DJ in mix" is an anagram.

Jimi Hendrix - Crosstown Traffic

1. Smashing angel.

The Angel Gabriel with a Sledgehammer...

Stay safe until next Saturday...