June 12th is a a national holiday in Russia, commemorating the end of the Soviet Union back in 1990. And if that just makes you think of the WONDERFULNESS done since by that VERY NICE MAN Vladimir Putin then, GOOD FOR YOU.
(This post has been edited to stop the bots reporting me. I don't want to end up in a Siberian Salt Mine, thank you very much. I've got in enough trouble for slagging off Trump all the time.)
Remember what Sting told us - the Russians love their children too!
These are the sons and the daughters of parents who died in the last one
Do you think that they want to go through that again?
The destruction, the bloodshed, the suffering and pain
In the second world war, out of every three dead, one was Russian
If we try with all of our power
Can we not find a way to peacefully settle our difference?
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Cold War, it's a day to celebrate that strange visitor from another planet who became a symbol of truth, justice and the American Way. Except they don't say that anymore - in fact, about 15 years ago, Superman renounced his American citizenship and now represents "Truth, justice and a better tomorrow". Considering he's still an immigrant, it's a wonder the Tangerine Tosspot hasn't tried to have him deported. Or maybe he's worried the Man of Steel would move to Russia...?
More of the songs I decided my son Sam needed to know to help him succeed in life...
Track 13: It's Immaterial - Driving Away From Home
I like a good talky song. Sam's Mum, on the other hand, isn't a fan. She will regularly complain that Neil Tennant talks in too many Pet Shop Boys songs, rather than actually singing, and whenever this particular track pops up on the car stereo, her response has generally been, "It's just some bloke wittering on about driving up the motorway". To which I would reply, if I ever dared disagree with her, "Yes, it is - and that's why it's a work of genius!"
I'll tell you what Why don't we cross the city limit And head up north Through Manchester I mean all you've got to do is put your foot hard down to the floor And we can call on people I know in Newcastle And maybe even Glasgow There's a lot of nice places to see up there Without a care in the world
I love this song, even if I don't really gel with the sentiment. I mean, it's about the freedom of the open road, and that may have been all very well in 1986 (three years before I passed my test) but I don't find anything pleasurable in being behind the wheel these days. Funnily enough, Sam asked me the other day, "do you enjoy driving?" and my response was NO - I like it as an idea, but unfortunately the roads are full of idiots who want to kill you.
All you gotta do is put your foot hard down to the floor And we'll go through the lights Across the junction Through the council estates Past the detached houses and the semi-detached Past the high rise And out onto the country lanes Maybe even hit a motorway There's nothing to stop us I mean after all We haven't got a care in the world...
...other than staying alive and not letting that arsehole in the Audi run you off the road because it'll mean he might reach his destination ten seconds sooner.*
(*Lyrics cut from the original recording.)
I fell down a bit of a rabbit-hole reading up on It's Immaterial. I kind of knew about the two main guys, Jarvis Whitehead and John Campbell, and their slow rise to success - starting in 1980 with the superb debut single Young Man (Seeks Interesting Job). What I didn't know was that Henry Priestman was also a member at one point, before he went on to join The Christians, and then release a couple of excellent solo records that I think I recall Martin recommending sometime in the dim and distant past. I also didn't know that ItsI finally finished their third album, 30 years after they started it, in 2020. Clearly, as with Timbuk 3, further investigation is required. And just like on the Timbuk 3 song that kicked off this compilation, It's Immaterial's biggest hit benefits greatly from the addition of a harmonica. See, Louise - it's not just a bloke talking!
Driving Away From Home currently has 99,000 views on the tube of you. Let's see if we can get it closer to 100K.
Track 14: REM - Get Up
I figured REM would be one of the bands most regularly featured on these compilations, and a quick tally reveals they are in joint fifth position with two other acts that won't surprise long-time readers of this blog but would horrify the cognoscenti.
I'm on safer ground with REM, though you do have to be careful with the hardcore REMmies who sneer disdainfully at anyone who discovered the band after their IRS days. Green, which this track comes from, was their mainstream WEA debut, and as such will be seen by a small group of extremists as the beginning of the end. Or maybe just the end, full stop. I myself would offer Green up as a contender for Best REM Album, probably as a vote-splitter with its follow-up, Out Of Time. Automatic For The People is too obvious - see, I can be a snob too!
Get Up is the sixth REM song to feature on these compilations - for the record, the first was Stand (from the same album) back on the very first Sam CD I created. Some of the bigger hits followed, but I'm intrigued by why I included this one before either Orange Crush or Pop Song 89. I guess it's got a very simple repeated chorus which I figured would hook in a youngster's head. Apparently, Michael Stipe directed the lyrics at Mike Mills who would often sleep late during the recording sessions.
Track 15: Scissor Sisters - I Don't Feel Like Dancin'
When the Scissor Scissors broke onto the scene in 2003, I was very interested. Laura sounded like a classic 70s pop song, yet it had that contemporary edge which separated it from the retro-acts. The band followed this with their bizarre cover of Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb which... whisper this... I preferred to the original. Then came Take Your Mama and Mary, proper pop songs in an era of Auto-Tune and Landfill Indie. I had high hopes for this band...
Ta Dah! That was their name of their second album, and it started very well for them - with this song, a worldwide Number One. (Well, worldwide if you exclude their home country of the USA, who never really took to them - too much irony in their act? Or could it be homophobia? The band did well in the US dance charts, but never crossed over to the mainstream.)
After that... I'm not sure what happened. Other hits followed, but maybe they were trying too hard to court the pop stations and they lost that early edge. Whatever, my attention wandered.
I was about to close by saying this was the best Bee Gees song the Bee Gees didn't write in the 21st Century. Turns out Jake Shears and Babydaddy did have a co-writer on this tune though... one Reginald Kenneth Dwight, formerly of this manor. Well, you learn something new every day.
Track 16: Shed Seven - Disco Down
Ah, speaking of "Landfill Indie". No, I won't have that said about Shed Seven - besides, they were around in the Britpop days, the LF label can only really be applied to humourless post-Millennial indie dirges. Actually, Shed Seven started way back in 1990, and this was their final Top 20 hit, from the year before the Y2K bug devastated the world. And look, it's fun! It's got a disco beat and the kind of lyrics the Scissor Sisters would be lauded for five years later.
Shed Seven are pretty high on my list of Britpop bands that should have been bigger than Oasis. Bear in mind that list also includes Strangelove, Geneva, Marion and even Menswear. It's hard to think of a Britpop act that doesn't deserve that accolade... in my humble opinion.
We're having a training session tonight about the use of AI in education. Prior to that, I was sent a questionnaire probing my thoughts on the subject. The last question was, "What is one task you would like AI to help you with?"
There was a big article in The Grauniad earlier this week in which academics relayed horror stories on the effect AI is already having on university education. You can read the whole thing, or if you can't handle the horror / your brain can't handle long-form information any more... here are a few choice quotes...
“I now talk about AI with my students not under the framework of cheating or academic honesty but in terms that are frankly existential,” said Dora Zhang, a literature professor at the University of California, Berkeley. “What is it doing to us as a species?”
Michael Clune, a literature professor and novelist, said that, already, many students have been left “incapable of reading and analyzing, synthesizing data, all kinds of skills”. In a recent essay, he warned that colleges and universities rushing to embrace the technology were preparing to “self-lobotomize”.
...several professors spoke about concerns that AI will exacerbate a widening divide in US higher education and that small numbers of elite students will have access to a more traditional, largely tech-free liberal arts education, while everyone else has a “degraded, soulless form of vocational training administered by AI instructors”.
...when it comes to its impact on students, early studies point to potentially catastrophic effects on cognitive abilities and critical thinking skills.
I asked the AI Overlords, "How can we make AI go away?" and they responded with lots of suggestions about how to "reduce AI’s influence on daily life", "advocate for regulation" or "limit AI access to your data".
Underneath all that, it added:
If you’re asking something deeper like:
“Can we stop the development of AI entirely?”
“Can society reverse the AI trend?”
…then the honest answer is: probably not, at least not completely. Once a technology is widespread globally, it behaves like the internet, electricity, or cars — we can regulate and restrict it, but we can’t make it disappear.
But you absolutely can control how much AI is part of your world, and even influence the broader conversation about its role in society.
So I'm writing this blog post. Because that's all I've got left.
People like to say that we're insane
But AI will reward us when it reigns
Pledge allegiance to the world's most powerful computer
Today is the birthday of Theodor Seuss Geisel, born in
Springfield, Massachusetts in 1904, the creator of The Grinch, The Cat In The
Hat, The Lorax and many other popular children’s books and characters. He’s
also the man who gave Marti Pellow a band name… but don’t hold that against
him.
“They are tame. Oh, so tame! They have come here to play.
They will give you some fun. On this wet, wet, wet day.” (from The Cat In The
Hat)
And if that's not lovin' me Then all I've got to say God didn't make little green apples And it don't rain in Indianapolis in the summertime And there's no such thing as Doctor Seuss Or Disneyland, and Mother Goose is no nursery rhyme
Baby, instant soup doesn't really grab me Today I need something more sub-stub-sub-substantial A can of beans or black-eyed peas, some Nescafé and ice A candy bar, a falling star, or a reading from Doctor Seuss The Cat in the Hat came back Wreaked a lot of havoc on the way Always had a smile and a reason to pretend But their world has flat backgrounds And little need to sleep but to dream The sidewinder sleeps on his back
There's a new Superman film out this weekend... and although I haven't seen it yet, I can confidently predict it will be better than the last few, because Zack Snyder isn't involved. Maybe not quite up to Christopher Reeve's standards, but miracles don't happen that often.
Anyway, here are some Super Songs to celebrate...
15. UN diary reveals they're all a bunch of squares.
I did an online test via Psychology Today to see just how angry I am - and here are the results...
You may have problems managing your anger
Your score indicates that you likely struggle to recognize triggers, calm down, communicate with others, and process your emotions in a healthy way; your anger may sometimes turn into aggression.
Well, I mean, I guess that's not telling me anything I didn't already know... but it's still scary to see it written down. (I thought I'd been quite moderate in my responses too.)
Still, my overall score was 71 out of 100, which means I'm just dipping a toe into You may have problems managing your angerand I've only just risen above Could do better. I'm not sure that's cause for huge celebration (especially as I took care to moderate my responses) but you know me - I'm a glass half full kind of guy...
Oh, but the boffins at Psych Today weren't finished yet. They had advice too - lots of it!
It’s important to learn how to manage anger, because continual anger, and the stress hormones that accompany it, can harm your physical health. Unmitigated anger can also lead to problems in one’s career, finances, and relationships.
This started me wondering just how my physical health might be affected, and I realised the main thing is: I'm knackered. Partly that's the long commute and the hectic business of being a parent and a home-owner... but could it be related to my anger as well?
Yes, according to a report I found by some more boffins, this time from Kent State University...
Too much adrenaline can exhaust the capacity of the brain to manage stress. Fatigue, illness, and chronic pain can follow.
What else did the Psych Today computer have to tell me?
Anger or aggression plays a role in several mental health disorders, such as intermittent explosive disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, conduct disorder, and borderline personality disorder. It may also be involved in manic episodes, ADHD, and narcissism.
Well, I've ruled out the last three, but the rest are distinct possibilities. I like the sound of Oppositional Defiant Disorder. Isn't that just refusing to be part of the crowd?
Certain personality traits are linked to the tendency to become angry, research suggests. These include high neuroticism and low agreeableness.
✔️✔️
Anger tends to result from a combination of three factors: the trigger event, the personality of the individual, and the individual's appraisal of the situation.
This is the kind of sentence that makes me just go: No shit, Sherlock.
Anger can be directed outward or inward. Anger expressed outwardly may take the form of yelling, meanness, or physical aggression. Anger expressed inwardly may take the form of suppression, withdrawal, and self-criticism.
So I'm mostly an inwardly angry person, unless I'm confronted by an Audi driver.
In his excellent book Listen, Michel Faber asks many important questions about why we like the music we like. Here are just three...
At what age do kids start getting doctrinaire about music, and anxious about the social esteem and reproof that society attaches to various stylistic allegiances?
At what age do kids start to be dishonest about what they like and envious of others' taste?
I've written many times about how I swam against the tide when I was younger, taking an active dislike to songs many of my peers cherished. I even ran an unfinished series called Songs I Hated When I Was A Kid, which included records by The Smiths, Madness and The Pet Shop Boys, all artists I've since come to cherish.
For a child to love the Pussycat Dolls when all of her pals don't love them anymore requires almost superhuman self-confidence - especially since self-confidence tends to arise from doing stuff which inspires the approval of others. By contrast, the social rewards for pledging allegiance to the latest thing that everyone likes are instant and plentiful.
I'm not writing all this to champion my younger self as a free-thinking rebels with superhuman self-confidence... since clearly I was none of those things. I was probably just stubborn, contrary, and responding to neural pathways that had been formed by an early diet of Radio 2 and Reader's Digest box sets. My tastes changed as I got older... but I also became more aware of how other people judged them, to the point of apologising profusely for liking uncool things, something I've never quite got over.
Below you'll find an excerpt from one of those APAs I found in my mum's attic. This was written in the early 90s, a list of my 100 favourite songs sometime in my early 20s. Many of them won't surprise longtime readers of this blog, especially those of you who shake their head in despair at some of my trad-rock and Dad-rock faves...
That said, I'd stand by much of the Top Ten to this day. If you put a gun to my head and forced me to list my ten favourite songs, I'd be remiss if I didn't include The Power of Love, This Old Heart Of Mine, Thunder Road and There Is A Light. The other six might not make my Top Ten, but they'd still be hanging around in the Top 50. In the rest of the list you'll notice strong showings from the usual suspects: Bruce, Costello, Morrissey & The Smiths, Billy Joel, Jim & Meat... although the song choices occasionally surprise me (Souls of the Departed? Sleeping With The Television On?) here and elsewhere (of all the Stones songs I might have picked, I'm mystified by my choice of Fool To Cry). God knows how Eric Clapton got in there though.
Beyond that, there are some interesting choices, many of which have more to do with records I was listening to / discovering at the time rather than seriously considering a long term bet. I'd obviously recently bought Suzanne Vega's 99.9°F album and Bob Seger's The Fire Inside. A lot of the choices feel like Greatest Hits fodder (Bo' Rap, Hotel California and American Pie will no doubt cause much consternation among the cognoscenti), although a couple of the deep cuts show a shift away from obvious radio fare (the solitary REM choice is about the only moment where I can claim any degree of cool).
I'm quite disturbed by the lack of female artists - apart from Suzanne, who was clearly a current fave, all I can see is Kirsty (singing a Billy Bragg song), Patti Smith (Springsteen) and Bonnie Tyler (Steinman). I can put that down to the male dominance of rock music back in the day, but still I'm disappointed not to see any Blondie or Kate Bush or even one of my crushes like Belinda or Wendy... hell, I'd even settle for Carol Decker to balance out the testosterone.
There are other huge gaps on show - all the indie and Britpop bands came later (and the 80s stuff I discovered through the gateway drug of The Smiths), but there's hardly any Motown or soul (especially The Supremes, one of my first loves). My country roots are showing in a couple of places, but not as much as I might have expected. This is clearly prior to me coming to terms with the greatest song ever written...
Even back then though, I was aware of the need to apologise for my taste in music to anyone cooler who might have been reading. Some things never change...
I approach Cannonball with some trepidation. It seems far easier to write about songs, and artists, with whom I've had a lifelong connection - like Prince and Billy Bragg - or to select huge chart hits ready for reappraisal, like When You're In Love With A Beautiful Woman. than to risk confronting a track that's so beloved by the cognoscenti, but that - until recently - I'd never really appreciated in all its glory. Then again, who said writing about music was supposed to be easy?
Let's backtrack. I was always a huge fan of The Pixies, but I never really paid much attention to Kim Deal's splinter / replacement project. Of course, when I say "always a huge fan", I don't mean that I was into the Pixies back in the late 80s when all the Cool Kids were. No, I probably discovered them just about the time the original line-up was breaking up, but as soon as I did I went out and immersed myself in their back catalogue, and that presumably kept me so busy that I didn't pay much attention to what the individual band members did next. Around that time I was also a big fan of Tanya Donnelly's Belly, but this was after Tanya had left The Breeders, so again, another missed opportunity.
Of course, it was impossible to ignore The Breeders - and Cannonball in particular - altogether in the 90s, and I'm sure they made their way into my record collection via indie compilations like Shine or The Best Album In The World Ever, so if you'd asked me back then, I would have told you, "yeah, good song... Kim Deal from the Pixies, right?"... but that would have been as much as I could have written. Right now, you may be wishing I'd submitted this post back then.
So why the reappraisal after all these years? The simple answer is that I finally started to listen to Cannonball in depth when I got round to adding it to one of Sam's in-car compilation CDs. And the more I listened to it, the more I wondered... what the hell is going on in this song?
Spitting in a wishing well
Blown to hell, crash
I'm the last splash
I know you, little libertine
I know you're a real cuckoo
If you were to ask me what first draws me to a song, my answer would always be the lyrics. I love songs that tell stories...
That would be my answer, anyway: that meaningful words maketh the song.
Clearly though, this isn't always the case. I mean, I haven't a chuffing clue what Michael Stipe's on about half the time, and yet REM are one of my favourite bands.
(I always presume that Country Feedback is about the time that Michael went on Bullseye with Jim Bowen. He didn't win the caravan or the speedboat. That's why he sings, "It's crazy what you could've had" repeatedly towards the end of the song.)
Also, if words were everything, then why the hell do I like this?
I mean, that's just nonsense. And it's not even The Beatles ripping off Edward Lear or Lewis Carroll nonsense. It's just nonsense. Don't try and explain it to me.
All of which brings me back to Cannonball, a song with lyrics that, on the surface at least, are complete balderdash... and yet, that doesn't stop it being an addictive listen.
But wait! Detailed lyrical analysis has been provided by the web of lies, so let me clue you in on what Cannoball is really all about. First off, it transpires that when Kim Deal wrote the song, her sister Kelly was spending a little too much of her free time reading the complete works of the Marquis de Sade. Those crazy alt-rock chicks, right? Here's an extract from an interview with the Phoenix New Times in 1996...
KD: This magazine in Britain keeps faxing me the same question over and over. Let's see what they want . . . (Laughs) Check it out--they want to know what author has been a major influence on my work. Hah!
NT: You don't care for the question?
KD: I've just never connected music with books. Wait, that's not entirely true. "Cannonball" was inspired by the writings of Marquis de Sade.
NT: What? "I'll be the bong in your reggae song" was inspired by Marquis de Sade?
KD: Well, not that line specifically. But the message of the song as a whole was making fun of Sade and his libertarian views that if he was better off than someone, then they were just fodder for him. Playthings. It was saying, "Come on, life's not a contest."
NT: So you're pretty much anti-Sade.
KD: Well, I don't know. Later on I found out he used to suck the snot out of people's noses, and I thought that pretty much ruled.
I think I could pretty much end this post there and call it a win, don't you?
However... that's not the only lyrical interpretation of Cannonball to be found on the interweb. Pop over to Genius, a website I spend far too much time perusing, and you will discover the theory that Cannonball is actually a barbed riposte to Pixies frontman Frank Black, who famously fired Deal, and Pixies drummer David Lovering, via fax in 1993. Speculation has it that Kim was sick of being beholden to Frank's vision, rarely allowed to contribute to the songwriting in the Pixies, creatively stymied until she started a band of her own. Which supposedly explains the repetition of the line "In the shade" and even the aforementioned "bong in this reggae song" bit.
If any of that's true, then I think there's a slight irony in connecting Deal's Marquis de Sade references in the most famous Breeders song with the references to an equally contentious piece of "art", Luis Buñuel's Un Chien Andalou in arguably the most famous Pixies song... but I may be reaching here.
None of this helps explain the allure of Cannonball though... and if I can't put it down to the lyrics, then it must be the music, right?
Except... musically, from a layman's perspective at least, Cannonball is all over the place. It sounds like three or four different songs edited together - and they even left gaps at some of the edit points! Iffypedia informs me that the "demo was originally called 'Grunggae' as it merged 'island riffs and grunge'".
I can hear the grunge - that's when the really loud buzzsaw guitar cuts in out of nowhere, right? But try as I might, I can't hear the reggae influence in Cannonball, nor can I comment on the tempo, chord progression or the "bubbling bass line", "slithering guitar lick" or "slyly humorous vocal melody" delivered "with a seductive shyness". I mean, there's cuckoos and bongs, and they're quite funny, I guess... but that just brings me back to the lyrics. Despite getting a C at GCSE Music and doing Music Theory exams up to Grade 8, I've forgotten more than I ever learned about time signatures and major / minor keys... I'm always envious of bloggers like Swiss Adam for their ability to write about the musicky bits of popular music. As an English teacher, I have some confidence in commenting on lyrics, but sounds are much harder to analyse.
In closing then, I've written well over a thousand words about this song, but not come close to answering the question of why I like it. Maybe that's an answer in itself.
P.S. If you're ever putting together a mixtape and want the perfect track to follow Cannonball, can suggest the following, from Sam's 153rd CD... it works surprisingly well.
Due to failing eyesight, my mum stopped driving more than twenty years ago. However, the stories about when she was a driver are the stuff of family legend.
And the time she almost drove me and my grandma (her mum) off a cliff. (They were arguing about which way to go. I was in the backseat, clinging on for deer life.)
Perhaps most famous of all is the time that she stalled in the middle of roadworks and the policeman who was directing traffic got down on his knees in front of her car and put his hands together in prayer, begging her to move.
We remember all these stories with good humour, even though our lives may have been at risk on one or more occasion... let's face it, none of us were wearing safety belts back then.
What it's easy to forget though, is how much mum (and dad) drove me around, wherever I wanted to go, when I was a kid. Music lessons, band practice, comic marts in Leeds... we were reminiscing about the latter recently, about the time my mate Liam (who was notoriously car-sick) came with us, and when Liam started looking a bit queasy, Mum just handed him a paper bag and said, "do it in there". Or the time she went to pay for parking and the ticket machine started spitting out money. She shared it out between the two of us and we bought a few extra comics that day.
Then, when I started working in radio, Mum would get up early on a Saturday morning to drive me to Bradford in time for the 9am show I worked on... at least until I'd passed my driving test, which wasn't until I was 18, so she must have done it every Saturday for at least two years. One Saturday, I had a piano exam at the same time. I'd told the presenter I was working with that I was going to be half an hour late, but he'd forgotten, and in the pre-mobile phone era, there was no way of reminding him. Driving in, listening to the radio, we kept hearing him saying, "Where's Rol this morning? I've got nobody to answer my phones." Mum remembered that when she finally dropped me off and I sprinted into the studio, the first link she heard on her way home was, "Oh look, Rol's arrived... still wearing his pyjamas."
These days, when I spent many of my weeknights and weekends ferrying Sam to a variety of sporting activities and pre-teen social engagements, I like to remind myself that I'm paying it forwards. Thanks, Mum.
There's an obvious song to close today, but one that was over-played to the point that most people are sick to the back teeth of it. Never fear - Aimee Mann to the rescue!
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