Before I start a week of Listening Posts, a slight diversion.
I tried to leave a comment on JC's blog yesterday, and was hit with the following error message...
"Nonce verification failed."
And now I'm worried....
Meanwhile...
Did anyone watch the recent BBC drama The Cage starring Sheridan Smith and Michael Socha? A pretty decent show, both funny and quite heart-wrenching in places. Always good to see former Brookside stars getting work again in the supporting cast too.
Best thing about the show was the soundtrack though - which had an explanation in the script beyond "here's a bunch of songs the writer / director loves". Socha's character had an extensive record collection that played a pretty important role in the narrative.
Mostly 80s indie and post-punk tunes from the likes of The Cure, New Order, The Fall, The The et al. But this one from PiL - which I'd never heard before - was the stand-out track for me...
When I was a kid, the burning bush in the corner of our living room told me that Domestos kills ALL known germs: DEAD.
Nowadays, I'm disappointed to hear that it only kills 99.9% of those pesky germs, which makes me wonder about the mutant 0.1% that has grown resistant to the power of bleach. Presumably that includes the Covid germs, which is why Donald's Trump's plan for us all to guzzle Domestos like Night Nurse never caught on.
Let's keep George happy by starting with Mark E. Smith, lucid as ever...
If you deny that strong pot or ecstasy imbibed you will end up
Eyeball injecting with Domestos or household using chemicals that contain
However, it's me old pal Jim Bob, along with his old pal Fruitbat, who kills all other contenders dead this week, with two different tracks that reference Domestos on their album 101 Damnations. First there's a full church choir...
On Wednesday, George complained about the "recent lurch to modern times" this feature had taken by featuring contemporary celebrities such as Bill Bixby and Nerys Hughes (God help him when I do my Scarlett Johansson post). And so, to keep Celebrity Jukebox's biggest fan happy, I've chosen someone today he should be more familiar with.
Louise Brooks was a Ziegfeld Follies dancer who signed a five year movie deal with Paramount in 1925 and became one of the biggest female stars of the Silent Movie era, although her career never really transitioned into the talkies and her star fell quite dramatically in the 30s.
Coincidentally, I came across a song that I never knew was about Louise Brooks while compiling my Top Ten Greek Mythology Songs last week. The intro to the video of OMD's 1991 single Pandora's Box tells how the Louise Brooks movie of the same name was banned by Adolf Hitler as "degenerate art". I bet he kept a copy for himself though. The song tells Louise's life story far better than I could...
Born in Kansas on an ordinary plain
Ran to New York but ran away from fame
Only seventeen when all your dreams come true
But all you wanted was someone to undress you
And all the stars you kissed could never ease the pain
Still the grace remains and though the face has changed
You're still the same
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark don't mention Louise by name though. To find an actual lyrical mention, we have to listen to 15 minutes of post-Fish Marillion...
Or... you might subject yourself to some Campag Velocet. Now I'm just the right age to have been regularly reading the NME when they proclaimed Campag Velocet the next big thing. Which probably explains why nobody's heard of them since.
Are you wearing your whole badge collection out tonight?
That made me smile.
But I think today's winner is Nashville-based, Boston born "street rocker" Tom Ovans, who... and I'm just spit-balling here... might own a Bob Dylan record. Or two.
Well, she looked like Louise Brooks from one of them old silent movies
I think it was the one where she gets beaten to death
But when her eyes caught mine down in that city of crime
Without realising he'd done it, Charity Chic threw down the gauntlet yesterday when he chose three fine songs about Hard Times.
Here's another ten... and I still had to leave out the Human League! Sorry, Brian. (I also had to leave out Kiss, but I imagine you'll be less upset by that.)
Roger Daltrey illustrates this week's entry in our countdown - 57 Varieties, from The Who Sell Out.
There was an obvious answer this week, and a less obvious answer: both came from the same artist... who most of you will be aware is a favourite of mine. Which song did I choose? Wait and see. In the meantime, a few alternatives from you guys...
I can see Elvis, skinny like he was back in '57.
...and Firecracker by Sleeper, which has:
57 kids, and all of them ugly...
So, then: the winner. Most of you seemed to think I'd choose 57 Channels (And Nothing On) which is certainly a fine tune, even though it comes from Bruce's fallow period in the 90s.
For me though, this is even better. From his second album (his first with the E Street Band), this 8 minute epic points the way to Born To Run both in its length and its storytelling. It also contains what is for me one of the best lines Bruce ever wrote - or at least, one of those lines that pops into my head all the time and has done throughout my life...
"Johnny, it falls apart so easy and you know hearts these days are cheap"
There are certain lyrics that do that in my head. They've almost become part of my internal idiolect. (Other lines from Bruce that do the same thing are "if you can take a man's life for the thoughts that are in his head" from Johnny 99 and the lines at the top of the page from No Surrender. Plus most of Born To Run & Thunder Road.)
Anyway, with apologies to 90s Bruce... 70s Bruce will always win in my book...
Next week... 56? I can sense a Nobel Prize winning suggestion, but beyond that it's a pretty open playing field...
The screen door slams... and the answers to Saturday Snapshots arrive. Were these Tougher Than The Rest? Not for you lot...
This week's Early Bird was Lynchie... I'm stopping calling it "winner" as first up gets the pick of the crop. Congrats, anyway, Lynchie. And welcome along to first-time player, Walter. About time you guys got a bit of competition.
10. If you think this is The Man In Black, you probably need new spectacles.
The Man In Black was Johnny Cash. You can work out the rest yourself.
One of my favourite discoveries of the last 12 months: Guy Clark. Even though we lost him last year, there's much more where this came from...
See the wings unfolding that weren't there just before
On a ray of sunshine she dances out the door
Out into the morning light where the sky is all ablaze
This looks like the first of better days
Of
course, this being a George Jones song, you can pretty much guarantee
the better days are in the rear view mirror, disappearing into a blip at
a hundred miles an hour.
I don't hold John Lydon in the same esteem that many of my blogging buddies do. Nothing against him, but I was a bit too young to appreciate punk at the time and by the time I did get to know him, he'd become something of a figure of fun. That said, I like that side of him, the buttery part which seems completely unashamed to make a tit of himself in the service of popular music, and Home is a great example of that. The only song in this list not to feature a "Better Day" in the title: but that phrase is all over the chorus. Plus, you get to see Sideshow Bob trash a house in the video, and that's always worth the price of admission.
One of the best things about writing this blog is when I trip over songs in my record collection that I'd forgotten all about. This is from 1999, and I might not have heard it for 18 years. Brings back some fun memories of my time in radio though...
One foot in the hole One foot gettin' deeper crank it to eleven Blow another speaker And I ain't got, I ain't got much to lose
Cuz I've seen better days Been the star of many plays I've seen better days And the bottom drops out
Ocean Colour Scene were the first band I ever saw live.
(Yes, as with buying records, I was a VERY later starter when it came to
live gigs!) They had a very retro sound which worked perfectly in the
Britpop era but obviously couldn't last. Massively uplifting guitars and
choruses: we could use some of that right now.
The thing about that retro sound is: that's what a lot of present day indie bands are missing, in my humble opinion. I picked up the debut album by The Blossoms the other day and there are some decent indie pop songs on there but they're so glossily produced, there's just no edge to them. It's like they've been created using CGI rather than real actors... like (SPOILER) in that new Star Wars flick everyone is raving about but me. And don't even start me on The 1975! As I get older, I realise I prefer new records that sound old... which I guess is the end of days for me ever being a hipster. Not that I ever was. At least we still have Jack White doing stuff the old way...
One from the charity shop pile. The Jayhawks are a band I've been meaning to check out for awhile. This is from their 2001 album Smile, which I'm guessing is the one on which they filed off most of their folky, Americana edges and made a play for the mainstream. As a result, it's a bit bland in places, but there are some outstanding pop songs here too. Better Days (after a few listens) has a very powerful hook and some great harmonies. Further investigation required.
Back in the early 90s, Bruce lost his mojo a little. I think it was that classic thing of being a bit too happy. Having gone through a turbulent divorce (resulting in the classic Tunnel of Love), he'd found the woman he needed, Patti Scialfa, and they settled down to make a life together. The world seemed bright and so he pottered about in the studio making two records about how happy he was, then released them both on the same day. This was an odd thing a couple of big name artists did in the 90s. Guns 'n' Roses did it too, although - controversially - I think Use Your Illusion Volumes 1 & 2 were far better records than Bruce's Lucky Town and Human Touch. The weird thing is, Bruce has spent his whole career choosing only the very best songs to make up classic albums, then leaving hundreds of still-great tracks to gather dust (or eventually be reissued in collections like Tracks and The Promise). The one time he did a Prince and released virtually everything he'd recorded that week, he really should have used the same restraint. There are enough strong tracks on Lucky Town and Human Touch to make one classic album... not two.
Still, it's good to see him so happy. The video makes that abundantly clear. Watch it, and maybe some of that early 90s optimism will rub off on you too.
1. Billy Bragg - Tomorrow's Gonna Be A Better Day
Come on Billy, make us all feel better...
To the misanthropic misbegotten merchants of gloom Who look into their crystal balls and prophesied our doom: “Let the death knell chime, its the end of time” Let the cynics put their blinkers on and toast our decline. Don't become demoralized by scurrilous complaint, Its a sure sign that the old world is terminally quaint. And tomorrow’s gonna be a better day, No matter what the siren voices say Tomorrow’s gonna be a better day, We’re going to make it that way.
There's a scary story involving a saint and a snake going on in this track from Villagers' debut album... I'm not sure I know what it's all about, but I do know that Conor O'Brien looks about 12 in the video. It's not policemen who are looking younger as I get older: it's pop stars.
Can't find this on youtube, but Billy's having a big row with them at the moment over artists' royalties, so perhaps they're limiting his exposure. It's a pretty rare track though, from his internet only release 'Pressure Drop' that followed some of the major themes in his book The Progressive Patriot...
I walked down from the station 'cause I wanted to see, The kind of things that you might miss from the back of a taxi, There's just no way to tell you what these things mean to me This is home.
The place I threw my guts up outside the old wine bar, The junk shop on the corner where I bought my first guitar, The grass verge by the pig flats where we sat and revved our cars, This is home.
Imagine if everybody in the world was as cool as Iggy Pop...
1. Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros - Home
An irresistibly catchy whistling refrain (often used as backing music on TV programmes) grabbed my attention... but it's the cutesy, conversational boy-girl vocals from Jade and Alexander that kept me coming back.
Jade? Alexander? Do you remember that day you fell outta my window? I sure do ‒ you came jumping right out after me. Well, you fell on the concrete, nearly broke you ass, you were bleeding all over the place, I rushed you out to the hospital, you remember that? Yes, I do. Well there's something I never told you about that night... What didn't you tell me? Well, while you were sitting in the back seat smoking a cigarette you thought was gonna be your last, I was falling deep, deep in love with you, and I never told you till just now!
There were a bunch of other interesting Home songs in my library - including goodies from The Lilac Time and Hefner - but I couldn't find any of them online. Bloody useless internet.
