Reasons To Be Cheerful (ii): Good Vibrations

The world is what it is at the moment, and I'm not going to try to persuade you otherwise. We have to take our moments of joy where we can... even if they involve a little schadenfreude. Here then, are three more things that have made me cheerful this week...

1. A heated wheat bag for my stiff neck

As I write this, I have a stiff shoulder/back/neck combo going on. It's more annoying than painful, but it's a blessing having a nice warm heat pillow on it... and I relish the smell of slightly burned wheat when I microwave it for slightly longer than it says on the packet.

2. The Bad Place gets its comeuppance?

Remember how I told you we had a brief visit by the Ofsted folk last week at the new job? Well, guess where they've gone this week? In full force. 

Look up schadenfreude in the dictionary and you will see a picture of me, along with a number of my former colleagues (Ben included), warming our hands around a fire.

3. Good Vibrations

Here are The Vibrations, from 1972 (that's 50 years ago, for those of you who are counting... under two weeks to my birthday now), with one of my favourite tunes of the moment. It's like Let's Clean Up The Ghetto, only even more amazing. If so such a thing were possible. Which it probably isn't, but it's close. Very close.

This is what happens when the Vegetable Man goes on strike. God help us if the Chicken Man follows suit... he don't want no butter beans, that's for sure.

Positive Songs For Negative Times #19: The Tip

The tips have been closed since the lockdown began, but this week they were tentatively re-opened. Louise (who likes to regularly order me to throw out anything I haven't used in a week because she hates clutter) immediately ordered me to clean out the garage, fill the car with 6 weeks of garden waste, and make a journey to the nearest household waste site.

Tuesday morning, before work (from home), I did just that. The tips open at 8am round here and I arrived at 20 past... only to find a queue stretching round the metaphorical block. I turned around and headed home, thinking maybe I'd try again a little earlier the next day.

Wednesday morning, I was there at 7.40. There were approximately 20 cars in front of me. So I waited. 2 cars in, 2 cars out. At 8.50, I finally got to the front of the queue. I drove in and was waved to one of two designated parking bays where I was allowed to dump a good proportion of my rubbish. Not the glass, because the bottle banks were closed. Not the tetra packs, because I'd been directed to Bay 2 and the tetra pack disposal thing is in Bay 1. I wasn't allowed to walk past the driver in Bay 1 to use that, so I drove them home again. At least I got rid of that stinky garden waste.

I'm not writing this down in outrage - the restrictions are what they are. I'm writing it down to remember. Because these are the details we'll forget, and we shouldn't ever forget.

Here's my favourite song about household waste...


 

Saturday Snapshots #124 - The Answers

Faye hey - it's the answers!

Well done to C for getting up earlier than everybody else yesterday.


10. Thunder, and a westerly sunbeam, in chains.

Chain link + W ray...

Link Wray - Rumble

9. Flats, with external doors, down at the end of Lonely Street.

The Maisonettes - Heartbreak Avenue

8. Plaything brings sadness but longs for escape.

Toy... ah.

Toyah - I Want To Be Free

7. Global celebration in support of postmen.

World Party - Put The Message In The Box

6. Hey, O, 5xB... a brighter forecast.

Hey O BBBBB is an anagram.

Bobby Hebb - Sunny

Classic snare drum intro.

5. Not departed or gone, just rusting.

All the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone

They were waiting for me when I thought that I just can't go on

Sisters of Mercy - This Corrosion

Hey now... hey now now!

4. When Elvis gets Jolie, he takes Paracetamol.

Elvis Presley + Angelina Jolie...

Angaleena Presley - Pain Pills

3. God watches auctioneers prowl.

God watches us with the All Seeing Eye.

Christie's is a famous Auction House.

Panthers prowl.

The All Seeing I & Tony Christie - Walk Like A Panther

(Written by Jarvis Cocker... though that quickly becomes apparent.)

2. Tidy up where the snow flies, with celebrity soft cheese.

The snow flies In The Ghetto.

Philadelphia make soft cheese.

The Philadelphia International All Stars - Let's Clean Up The Ghetto

You can no longer depend on the man downtown...

1. Don't stop the traffic.

For knowing that someone in this world

Feels as desperate as me...

Dun(go)away - there'll be more Saturday Snapshots next week.

Kenny Wednesday #2 - The Gambler

No, we're not back to Kenny Rogers. Not yet. (Although The Gambler is a great song.)

Instead, for the second Kenny Wednesday, I bring you... Kenny G!

(No, not that one. Yet.)

2. Kenny Gamble

This Kenny was one half of the legendary songwriting partnership Gamble & Huff. Kenny & Leon (Huff) also formed Motown rival Philadelphia International Records and pioneered the Philly sound. They're the men responsible for many, many classic soul standards, including If You Don't Know Me By Now, Backstabbers, Me & Mrs. Jones, Show You The Way To Go and When Will I See You Again?

But there are two Gamble & Huff compositions which stand out above all others to me, and I really couldn't choose between them... so I'm going to play you both...

The first one reminds me of being a teenager, when I was neck-deep in my first full-on Motown phase. It also reminds me of a teenage crush, unrequited love... you know the sort of thing. But this was the song which could turn that around. The rules were all right there in the lyrics, I just had to follow them one step at a time...

I'm gonna do all the things for you
A girl wants a man to do, oh baby
I'll sacrifice for you
I'll even do wrong for you, oh baby
Every minute, every hour
I'm gonna shower
You with love and affection
Look out it's comin' in your direction...

The restraining order still stands, thirty years later.

And then there's this, which I discovered quite a bit later. A charidee record, released in 1977 when the New York City dustbin men went on strike... it led on to a lot more socially-conscious work for Gamble & Huff, putting their money back into regenerating parts of Philadelphia to really clean up the ghettos Gamble grew up around...





That really is an All-Star line up: Teddy Pendergrass, Archie Bell, Billy Paul, The O'Jays, Dee Dee Sharp... and the peerless Lou Rawls doing that incredible spoken intro.

My Top Ten Ghetto Songs

I've been listening to loads of old soul music lately, from the 60s (the obvious culprits: Motown, Atlantic) to the 70s (Philly, Barry White!) and even the 80s (George Benson). Much of this I remember hearing on the radio in my youth and I find it's good to unwind to at the end of a hectic day / drop off to sleep to. However, even though I have lots of this music in my collection, it often doesn't feature in these lists, probably because the primary subject matter is love and loss... not a lot of soul records about vampires, record companies or... pigeons. 

But here's a Top Ten that ended up pretty soul heavy... which says a lot about the artists in question and the social conditions that shaped them. 

Special mention to Dreamers of the Ghetto... not a soul act, but still pretty soulful.



10. Gil Scott Heron - The Get Out Of The Ghetto Blues 

"I know you think you're cool
Just 'cos they bus your kids to school
But you ain't got a thing to lose
You just got the get out of the ghetto blues..."

9. Jimmy Webb - High Rent Ghetto

Jimmy Webb is God. 

8. Isaac Hayes - Out of the Ghetto

"I took you out of the ghetto - but I could not get that ghetto out of you."

Funkylicious. Gotta love Isaac Hayes.

Also covered by Donald Fagen on his "lost" 2012 album Sunken Condos (I didn't even know it existed till I stumbled across it in the library over the summer). 

7. The Clash featuring Allen Ginsberg - Ghetto Defendant

Possibly the strangest thing The Clash ever recorded, this collaboration with beat poet Allen Ginsberg is a fascinating oddity. Only the Manics would get away with releasing something as politically charged and offbeat as this these days.

6. Donny Hathaway - The Ghetto

Best known (by me, at least) for big soul duet ballads with Roberta Flack, I hadn't heard much else from Hathaway until I came across this 7 minute funky jazz slab from 1970. Laid back and lovely.

5. Al Wilson - Queen Of The Ghetto

A popular songwriting theme - a grown up child looking back on a single mother who turned to prostitution to make ends meet. See also the amazing Son Of Hickory Holler's Tramp by O.C. Smith and What Would You Do? by City High (also covered by Bastille... see, I am down wit da kidz).

4. The Detroit Spinners - Ghetto Child

Known only as The Spinners in the rest of the world, 'Detroit' was added to their UK releases to avoid confusion (and legal wrangles) with the English folk group. This is a song about being ashamed of where you grew up... as are the next two soul classics.

3. Diana Ross & The Supremes - Love Child / I'm Living In Shame

Two songs that are thematically linked - the second was actually written as a sequel to the first. Neither mention the g-word by name, but both fit this list perfectly.

In Love Child, a young woman rejects the advances of a lover for fear of bringing a child into the world she can't afford to bring up. All this because of a deep shame over her own childhood...

I started my life in an old, cold run down tenement slum
My father left, he never even married mom
I shared the guilt my mama knew
So afraid that others knew I had no name

In I'm Living In The Shame, the same woman, now a little older and a mother herself, expresses guilt over the fact that her own mother died without ever knowing her grandchild.

Came a telegram
Mama passed away while making home made jam
Before she died she cried to see me by her side
She always did her best
Ah cooked and cleaned and always in the same old dress
Working hard, down on her knees
Always trying to please

2. Elvis Presley - In The Ghetto

You probably expected this to be Number One, didn't you? It's certainly the most famous Ghetto Song and one of the King's most moving records (shut up, cynics). Elvis always performed In The Ghetto with such conviction... even though he was living about as far from the ghetto as it was possible to get by the time this song was released.

Nick Cave also released a memorable cover of the track as his debut solo single.

1. The Philadelphia International All-Stars - Let's Clean Up The Ghetto

An addictive 8 minutes featuring some of the biggest Philly stars, including Teddy Pendergrass, Billy Paul, Archie Bell, The O'Jays... and the mighty, mighty, mighty Lou Rawls. What a voice - nobody does that deep, talky soul like Lou. They don't make charidee singles like this anymore... hell, they don't make soul music this cool anymore either!

I tell you, the garbage in some places
Was stacked up two, three stories high
At night, ha ha, boy, at night it weren't even safe to walk the street
'Cause they caught the rats, the roaches and the water bugs
I mean they were hustlin', baby, tryin' to get somethin' to eat, see?

Which one can't you forghetto?