Time to put your feet up and enjoy another Friday morning coffee break, starting with one of the many, many bands called The Outsiders that popped up in Namesakes a few weeks back...
I do like my coffee hot. So hot, in fact, that I regularly burn the roof of my mouth. Which can't be good for me. The perfect cup of coffee should be just hot enough to not do that. But no cooler.
Benjamin Sherman Crothers began his musical career as a teenager in the 1930s. He took the name Scatman in reference to his improvisational singing style. Whenever I think of scat singing, I hear Louis Prima singing I Wanna Be Like You, from one of the first albums I ever owned (on cassette), the soundtrack of The Jungle Book. Scatman Crothers wasn't in The Jungle Book, but he did voice another famous cartoon character...
Do you know they only ever made one series of Hong Kong Phooey?
You don't say.
I find that impossible to believe, since it seemed to be on TV constantly when I was a kid.
You don't say.
I guess the karate craze didn't last long enough to support a second season.
You don't say.
(What did he say?
He didn't say.)
Scatman was also the voice of Scat Cat in the Aristocrats...
...and, later, Jazz The Autobot in The Transformers cartoon.
However, the role for which he'll forever be remembered is Dick Hallorann...
A lot of film fans rate Stanley Kubrick as the pre-eminent auteur director of the 20th Century. Some of those same cinephiles don't rate The Shining as highly as his other movies. Stephen King famously hated Kubrick's adaptation of his novel.
I can take or leave most Kubrick movies, especially 2001, which I just never got. Yet despite the fact that Stephen King is my favourite author, I love Kubrick's The Shining. It must have watched it more than just any movie apart from The Big Lebowski, Back To The Future and Die Hard. And following on from Shelley Duvall, Stanley Kubrick was an obvious contender for the Celebrity Jukebox.
Turns out he's an incredibly well-referenced fellow, particularly in the rap world where auteurs and visionaries are clearly admired. Frank Ocean drops his name more than once. Jay Z, Lupe Fiasco, A$AP Rocky... they all dig Stan. And who better to follow those cutting edge sophisticates than... Jimmy Buffet?
You've no idea how many songs I found that mentioned Stanley Kubrick. Some of them referencing 2001, others A Clockwork Orange or Full Metal Jacket, a surprising amount his final movie, Eyes Wide Shut. Some even seem to believe that old conspiracy theory that NASA hired Kubrick to fake the 1969 moon landing. Take Mansun, for example...
It was incredible how many of those references were from modern artists, proving how much of an influence his movies still have among the young people. It got to the point where I was just an old man wandering through a virtual record store and every shelf was filled with artists I'd never heard of and couldn't even begin to connect with. Although there were a few discoveries that matched my own oddball sensibilities. Here's a few titular mentions as brief evidence of how I spent my Christmas holiday...
In the end though, I had to admit defeat. There were literally thousands of musical references to Stanley Kubrick, and like a clockwork orange about to explode, the jukebox was on the verge of overload.
Then one song came to my rescue. It's by Scatman Crothers, an actor and singer who began his musical career in the 30s... and went on to be immortalised as The Overlook Hotel's head chef, Dick Hallorann. He's the man with "The Shining". And he knew Stanley Kubrick quite well. He even wrote a song about him, from first-hand experience...
There's a man living in London town, makes movies, he's world renown
Yes, he's really got the fame Stanley Kubrick is his name
Yes he does it all, I'm telling you all, Stanley does it all
He might work you days and days, you'll find out it really pays
He's a perfectionist you know, he's got to be right before you go
He does it all, he does it all, Stanley does it all
There's been plenty of moaning and misery on this blog over the last few years. In an effort to turn that around, here's a new occasional feature wherein I post three things that cheer me up, along with related tunes. If this blog were a radio show, I'd introduce this feature with a short burst of Ian Dury.
Might be extremely occasional, depending on how things go...
1. That first sip of coffee in a morning
I make myself a coffee before I leave the house and take it in the car with me in a travel mug. It takes it a while to cool to a temperature that's drinkable (bearing in mind that good coffee should always be on the verge of burning your mouth), and I usually take my first sip just as I hit the traffic jams on the outskirts of Leeds. That first sip is always amazing.
Here's someone else who likes his coffee hot. Useful when you're driving through the snow to the Overlook Hotel...
2. Sunrise
My commute is an hour on a good day. Half an hour to the motorway, half an hour on the motorway and into the city centre. After driving most of that in the darkness for the past few weeks, I'm starting to see daybreak along the way. Last week, the sun was fully out by the time I hit the motorway. Even before I took that first sip of coffee, I was feeling good.
No question which song I was going to choose here...
3. The new job.
'Nuff said, really. Everything I hear from The Bad Place confirm that things have got even worse since I left. (My replacement went off on long term sick after a few months. Two other English teachers left, and they can't replace them because nobody is applying for the money they're offering. Etc. Etc. Etc.)
It still feels weird to not spend most of my weekend dreading Monday morning, to actually look forward to going back into work...
The late Mark Sandman (that appears to be his real name, which is amazing) was the lead singer of Morphine. Treat Her Right was another band he played in. Their rule was: "Keep it simple at all costs. Resist the temptation to add. If you're going to do something to a song, subtract."
