Cheers is probably my all time favourite sitcom, and the annoying, know-it-all postman Cliff Clavin, played by John Ratzenberger, is one of my favourite characters.
If you ever watched Cheers, you may remember that Cliff had a recurring on-again, off-again romance with a fellow postal worker, Margaret "Maggie" O'Keefe. Well, I just discovered that the actress who played Maggie was actually Annie Golden, lead singer of New York new wave band The Shirts.
(That's a great album cover.)
Here's Annie / Maggie a few years before she met Cliff...
I watched the final episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm last week. You may or may not be familiar with the show in which Seinfeld co-creator Larry David plays himself as a miserable old misanthrope constantly butting heads with societal niggles. Like most comedy shows, you’ll either connect with it immediately or wonder what all the fuss is about. Being a miserable old misanthrope myself, I have found Larry a wonderful companion for the show’s duration, and while I don’t always agree with his grievances, I do understand why he gets so worked up about them.
But this isn’t a post about Curb Your Enthusiasm. I wouldn’t argue with anyone who said the show was long past its best and wasn’t as funny or as incisive as it once was. After 12 seasons, Curb had definitely become comfortable, but there’s a lot to be said for comfort TV, and I did so enjoy being invited to share in the ups and downs of Larry’s life… especially when you never knew which celebrity guest star was going to pop up to be offended by him next. Bruce Springsteen appeared three times in the final series… that in itself made my day.
12 series though… I’ve watched this show for quite some time. And I knew that wasn’t a series a year, because Larry took regular breaks, especially during the pandemic. Still, I was shocked when I looked back and discovered the first series ran 24 years ago! Hang on a minute… I’ve been watching this show for 24 years?
And suddenly, I was taken back to the year 2000. Where I was. Who I was. A completely different person. There’s a popular misconception that all the cells in the human body renew themselves every 7 years, and while that’s not 100% true, there is something in it. I was 28 years old when I started watching Curb. I lived in a different house, worked in a different job, had an entirely different social circle. Liked slightly different records, felt different emotions, saw the future… and the past… in an entirely different way. Somewhat ironically, when the show launched in 2000, Larry David was 52. The same age I am now. I’m not sure why I related to him so much as a 28 year old. In the final episode, he proudly announced that he was 76 year olds… and had never learned a lesson in his life. It made me wonder how many I’ve learned… and how 76 year old me will feel in another 24 years. 2000 doesn’t seem that long ago, and time gets faster every year. 2048 is just around the corner…
I was largely unaware of the story of Alan Bates and his fight to clear the names and reputations of hundreds of Post Office employees. The recent TV dramatisation starring Toby Jones came as quite the eye-opener... and I'm still reeling. It's the sort of story that proves reality can be far scarier than fiction. If it wasn't true, I wouldn't believe it. Surely there must have been...? Why didn't...? What sort of people...? How could they...?
Words fail me.
Here are some songs that feature the Post Office. The warm and welcoming local high street institution that we all grew up with... not the evil, autonomous Mega-Corporation that took it over.
Robert Arthur "Tut" Taylor Sr. was a champion and preserver of old time bluegrass music who once sold a Hank Williams guitar to Neil Young. Here he reminds us of a Post Office to be proud of...
Buccaneer is from Jamaica, but his real name is Andrew Bradford. He was stuck in the Post Office back in 1994.
As soon as I started thinking about songs featuring the Post Office, two sprang immediately to mind. The first is just a mondegreen though. Still, if Michael really was singing...
Keep on to the Post Office
Don't stop till you get enough
...then there wouldn't be a better song to support Alan Bates's 20+ year fight.
It can't have escaped your notice that Doctor Who celebrated its 60th anniversary last week, blasting its way back onto screen with an old face and a Disney+ budget. Like most British kids, I grew up with The Doctor, and your first Doctor will always be your favourite. Which means you can't beat Tom Baker in my eyes.
Still, I have a great fondness for most of the other Doctors, including the modern incarnations (although Huddersfield lass Jodie Whittaker was let down during her tenure by terrible scripts). They say we spent large parts of our youth hiding behind the sofa to avoid the show's scarier bits... and I do have vivid memories of being behind that old red leather sofa in our living room on a Saturday night... but I'm pretty sure I was acting out the adventures I'd just seen on screen rather than escaping in terror.
Here then is a special edition of TV On The Radio dedicated to all the Doctors.
Search for songs that include the words "Doctor Who" in that order and you're on a hiding to nothing. Unless you want to hear a load of tunes that have nothing to do with Timelords such as this...
She sent me to the doctor who sent me straight to bed
I had far more luck searching for words that were unique to the Whoniverse. Such as TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimensions in Space, as I'm sure you will recall).
Here's someone who would look right at home in an episode of Doctor Who... Thom Yorke.
I'm stuck in the TARDIS Trapped in hyperspace One minute, snake charming The next in a motorcade
Step outside the TARDIS and you may encounter some of The Doctor's greatest enemies. For reasons explained above, I didn't bother looking for The Master, and only found the odd song that mentioned Cybermen... but the Daleks were all over the place.
Dave Balfe and Alan Gill from The Teardrop Explodes formed the most famous band to be named after the psychotic pepper pots, possibly my favourite science fiction bad guys (the Daleks, not Balfe and Gill).
Despite my difficulties in searching for "Doctor Who" songs, I still found quite a few that mentioned the Timelord by name (or, not actually by name, since Doctor Who isn't actually his name, is it?). Although many of them fall into the category that causes serious musos to gnash their teeth to the gums... comedy or novelty records.
Frazer Hines was a minor Yorkshire celebrity due to his role on Emmerdale Farm in the 70s and 80s (back when my dad used to watch it because they had actual farmyard scenes). Prior to that, Frazer was an early Doctor Who assistant when he recorded this...
Once All About Eve were done, lead singer Julianne Regan formed Mice. Here's a little timely advice for any of you who might be considering running off with a stranger in a blue police box...
He's my blue sonic boy I believed in his watery lies And his half-arsed scheme to rule the world But you know it isn't easy hanging out with the timelords When you're a Dalek and can't even climb up the stairs So when you wake tomorrow, stick a bell in your van
There were lots of artists I discovered during this search who looked like they'd only ever get a gig at Comicon, but these guys deserved a special mention, for enthusiasm, if nothing else...
But there was only one song I could choose to close this post, from the insane genius of Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, The KLF, The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu and The Timelords... with a little help from The Sweet and (whisper it now) Gary Glitter. A Number One smash that Melody Maker described as "pure, unadulterated agony" and "excruciating", while Sounds called it "rancid" and "a record so noxious that a top ten place can be its only destiny". What's not to love?
Saturday nights in the 70s, we'd all gather round the TV to watch inept relatives try their hands at icing a cake, working a potter's wheel or trying to master nuclear fusion, with varying degrees of success. The winners would go on to watch assorted jumble sale prizes roll past them on a wonky conveyor belt - "Cuddly toy! Cuddly toy!" - taking home all the ones they could remember. All under the rather snooty auspices of the "King of Saturday Night TV" himself, Bruce Forsythe. Until he moved over to the other side for a bigger paycheck to be replaced by camp cliché captain Larry "Shut That Door!" Grayson... and then, a bunch of other less memorable hosts (Jim Davidson!!!). Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? this was not. And yet... simpler times, we were easier to please back then.
Here's the great Laurie Shaw, with a little bit of Brucie...
And I'm so sorry, honey But I didn't have the foresight And yeah, I said foresight and not Bruce Forsyth But they're easily mixed up
Yesterday, Charity Chic felt the need to apologise on behalf of the entire Scottish nation for The Tartan Army. I replied that the English had done much worse. And here's Fat Les to prove it...
In case you've blanked them from your memory, I ought to remind you that Fat Les was a short-lived 90s band made up of Blur bassist Alex James, actor Keith Allen, and artist Damien Hirst. They all should have known better.
Here's Squeeze to take that nasty taste out of your mouth...
I got a job down at the warehouse I worked hard to pay the rent Rehearsing almost every evening Trying to make another dent Along the road that I had chosen The Generation Game of life Today I'm walking by the river Watching my children cycle by
Back when I worked in radio, and before the death and subsequent revelations about Sir James Wilson Vincent Savile OBE KCSG, a colleague of mine who'd worked alongside him told us a number of disturbing stories about the famous TV and radio presenter. The one that sticks in my head was that if you did anything to upset Jimmy, you'd come in to work the following day to discover that someone had defecated in your desk drawer. There were all the other, even more disturbing, rumours too... but at the time, I took them with a grain of salt. Because how could someone in such a public role get away with that stuff without being exposed? That's the question we're still asking today, and though documentaries like A British Horror Story and the new Steve Coogan dramatisation, The Reckoning, attempt to answer that question... I'm not sure it'll ever be answered to our satisfaction.
I wondered how Jimmy had been represented in popular song prior to the scandal? Did anyone suspect? Well, these comedians had clearly heard the rumours. You might say it's no joking matter, but I'm betting each of them actually wanted his crimes to be exposed and were pushing it as far as they dared on television at the time. And of course, John Lydon was banned from speaking out...
Songwriters probably had to be more careful. Though you can read between the lines on this song by The Toy Dolls...
There's not much evidence in the songs recorded before his death, to be honest. Afterwards though, the floodgates were opened...
Avalanche Party create "feral garage-punk from the wild North Yorkshire Moors, hopped up on adrenalin and amphetamines". And I'm pretty sure the song below is about Jimmy, not just because it mentions his old TV show...
Another interesting discovery today: The Cool Greenhouse. who describe themselves as "music to lose scratch-cards to". Clearly Sir Jim haunts their dreams...
And sometimes when you close your eyes
There’s grinning Jimmy Saviles painted on your inner eyelids
Both of the above acts channel the ghost of Jimmy into dark musical nightmares. The same can't be said for Mick Trouble, who crafts a lovely jangly pop song named after Jimmy's old TV show. Not quite sure why, this only came out last year, so surely he's heard?
The most damning reaction to the whole Savilegate affair came from The Indelicates though, in my album of the year from 2017, Juniverbrecher. I reviewed it as the time thus:
The death of Little England through Brexit, parochialism and Saville. This staggering musical banishing spell urges hope.
Remember when there were only four TV channels to choose from and you had to watch whatever was on at the time (unless you had a video recorder in your bedroom, and really, who lived in a house with more than one video recorder?).
I was a teenager in the late 80s, and a bit of a night owl. I would often stay up late on a Saturday, watching old Universal horror movies or whichever Psycho sequel ITV were showing that week, but there came a point when most of the other channels closed down for the night and I was still awake... so the only option left was The Hitman & Her.
I know a lot of my contemporaries would watch this show after returning home from a night clubbing, and in that regard it was the perfect thing to broadcast at 2 o'clock in the morning. But for anyone who hated clubbing, despised Pete Waterman (in my head, he belongs in the same category as Peter Stringfellow and half the Radio One DJs who were investigated by Yewtree) and found dance music said nothing to them about their lives... well, it really was time to go to bed. In fact, the only redeeming factor to the show was Michaela Strachan... although every week, I did find myself asking what the hell she was doing there? I hope she was well paid.
(You'll be glad to know - well, I was, anyway - that I couldn't find any songs that mentioned Pete Waterman by name.)
"Why the hell are you writing about a TV show you despised?", you may well ask. Blame my good blogging friend SWC / Barry Stubbs (other pseudonyms have probably been used) over at No Badger Required, who reminded me back in June that the track at the end of this post features, "possibly the best song to ever mention naff 90s late night telly series ‘The Hitman and Her’." (You've no idea how glad I was that he considered it naff too.)
To be honest, I thought / hoped that the track in question would surely be the only one to mention this dreadful two hours of TV (which ran for a mind-flaying 4 and a bit years). Then I discovered this song about coming home late from the pub and still thinking you need more alcohol...
My fridge is full, it's tinnies heaven Grab a four pack and a few tins more On with the telly, slump on the floor The Hitman & Her, I thankfully missed Who gives a sod? I'm totally pissed
Overall, it seems no one has a good word to say for The Hitman & Her. (Unless you know different...)
I don't know what you think of this country But I think that it's going to be bad Happy shopper ecstasy, Bingo with Jesus The Hitman & Her - Christ! I feel as though I'm going mad!
I should point out that there are 78 complete episodes of The Hitman & Her available to watch on youtube. Your. Life. Is. Too. Short.
In case you've just arrived from another planet, iffypedia tells us that, "Jelly Babies are a type of soft sugar jelly sweets in the shape of plump babies, sold in a variety of colours." Something about the use of the phrase "plump babies" in that sentence makes me consider Jelly Babies in a far more sinister light than I ever have. If you have just arrived from another planet, please note that we do not eat human babies, no matter how plump and tasty they might look.
To make matters worse, Jelly Babies were originally called "Unclaimed Babies". I'd like to reiterate... we do not eat human babies, claimed or unclaimed.
Jelly Babies were a big favourite of Tom Baker's Doctor Who...
When Beatles fans found out that George Harrison liked the odd Jelly Baby, they started chucking them at the band. But they didn't have Jelly Babies in the USA, so when the band went over there, people chucked Jelly Beans at them instead. Which were a lot harder.
Beyond those guys, who else likes their Jelly Babies in the world of pop...?
Let's start with a classy B-side from Hot Chip...
You're choosing something sweet, you chew on something sweet A fleshy rubber made of me A packet does contain a beautiful refrain Least when the two of you stand free
I always thought Babs was such a sweet young thing. Like butter wouldn't melt. Then I saw the cover of the album that came from...
...which has surely got to be one of the worst album covers ever. You call your album ButterFly, and that's the image you decide to go with, Babs?
I subsequently learned that the album was solely produced by her then-boyfriend, Jon Peters... so I'm guessing clear heads might not have been involved in the cover selection process.
Guava Jelly was originally recorded by Bob Marley. And somehow, his version seems a lot less sordid...
But I've gone off on a tangent as I'm pretty sure neither Bob nor Babs were thinking about Jelly Babies when they sang that song (although the white powder the sweets are often covered in might have been of interest to Jon Peters).
Here's a whole shop full of sweets, including Jelly Babies, Rhubarb & Custard and a quarter of Sherbet Lemons...
But today's best tune comes from Ipswich punks The Adicts (originally known as Afterbirth, until wiser minds prevailed), from their 1985 album, Smart Alex. If only because it includes the lyrical couplet below...
Why do you have to be such a party-pooper? You wouldn't even dance to Alice Cooper!
Homes Under The Hammer is one of many daytime TV shows (like Cash In The Attic, A Place In The Sun and The Antiques Road Trip) that I've never watched an episode of because I have a job. I think it's about auctioning houses. I'm not sure who the target audience is - my dad was a former auctioneer, and he never showed the slightest interest in it. Still, it's been going for 20 years, so someone must be watching it. And as a number of people who read this blog are now reaching retirement age, I imagine you rarely miss an episode. (I wonder if they show it in Portugal?)
You wouldn't imagine there would be many pop stars who spent their time watching Homes Under The Hammer either... except, it's well known that musicians are generally a bunch of work-shy bastards who will do anything to avoid the arduous manual labour of writing a new song. I bet most of them have never missed an episode of Countdown and are over the moon that Neighbours is coming back. Take this guy for example...
Here's a band with the wonderfully old-fashioned name of Courting, and a song I initially thought was about the Talking Heads man's arse, until I put my glasses on...
Homes Under the Hammer, well, it blares from the bar
Until Daddy picks him up in his European sports car
"A '19 plate?" Well, he muses who made it
"Built in England," he wonders, "a Britishman's labour"
Next up, another lovely little discovery: Colonel Dax. No, not the Kirk Douglas character from Paths Of Glory, but a guy called Tom Hughes from North Wales who likes listening to The Cure.
I'm walking on the pavement across from her old house.
Whoever lives there now is watching Homes Under the Hammer on the couch.
They look like they're a pair who've found what I could never find,
But maybe that's 'cos I'm the type to peek through people's blinds.
It's funny, they're sat in the exact spot I was sitting when she kicked me out.
I had a quick look at who the presenters were on Homes Under The Hammer, and I didn't recognise any of them... except for Tommy Walsh. And the only reason I knew his name was because of Nigel Blackwell...
Finally, here's the song that inspired this post, from one of my albums of the year, The Last Rotation of Earth. From listening to this record, it's clear that Brian Camplight rarely leaves his Manchester home, and the most excitement he has in his day is chatting with the Tesco delivery driver. But he's still managed to produce a cracking record. He claims it will be his last, which would be a crying shame, but I guess those daytime TV shows won't watch themselves...
I think I figured it out, it's right in front of me
Inflation or something to do with the Tories
She asks what we're building, I said, "What do you think this is -
If you haven't watched The Bear, you're missing the best show on TV at the moment. I don't care if you haven't got Disney+ - get the trial offer and binge-watch the first two series. Do it now. Well, after you've finished reading this post anyway.
The Bear is about a chef who inherits the management of a busy Chicago sandwich shop after his brother commits suicide. He decides to turn it into an up-market restaurant, using the same staff who worked in the sandwich shop. It's a very tense show - it really gives you a feel for what it's like to work in a fast-paced food service environment (lots of shouting) - but it's also very funny. Lots of big name actors want to appear in it - Jamie Lee Curtis, Olivia Coleman, Will Poulter and Bob Odenkirk all pop up in Season 2 - clearly recognising the strength of the scripts. But something occurred to me while I was watching the most recent episodes... one of the show's main themes is mental health.
All the characters in The Bear are damaged in one way or another. Jeremy Allen White, who plays lead chef Carmen Berzatto, is an expert at showing inner turmoil with little more than a twitch of his brow. But the real star of the show for me is Ebon Moss-Bachrach who plays Carmy's cousin Ritchie, a character who quickly begins to feel out of his depth as his workplace transforms around him. Ritchie is full of bluster, but it masks a deep, deep insecurity. I have a lot of time for Ritchie, out of all the great characters in The Bear, he's the one I relate to the most.
The episode that really brought this home came midway through the second series. Sensing Ritchie's disquiet, Carmy sends him to work for a week in one of the top restaurants in the country. He starts by cleaning forks, a job he thinks beneath him, but by the end of the week, he's virtually running the restaurant floor. It's never explicitly stated in the script, but what happens over the course of that episode is that Ritchie learns to respect himself, and in doing so earns the respect of his colleagues. A grumpy, middle-aged man singing along to a Taylor Swift song has never sounded so sweet...
It's not a complete transformation: he's still Ritchie at heart. He just likes himself a little more, and finds a purpose and value in what he's doing. He commits to a change and he feels better because of it. A number of things in my life triggered this blog series, but I honestly think that this episode of The Bear was an epiphany. It made me realise I can't just sit around waiting for the world to change to make me happier. Instead, I have to change the way I see the world. If that sounds like bollocks, then yeah... I'd have thought the same thing a few months back. And maybe I still do, deep down. But I'm trying not to. And that's a start.
I've always been content to take the pieces
That I've been given
Make a mess with the results
Justify it all
Everybody's using all their breath telling everyone else
Some of the many causes of low self-esteem may include: Unhappy childhood where parents (or other significant people such as teachers) were extremely critical. Poor academic performance in school resulting in a lack of confidence. Ongoing stressful life event such as relationship breakdown or financial trouble.
But I look at those potential explanations and I can't see any that fit me. My childhood, in particular, I remember as a mostly very happy time. I grew up in a loving home and while I didn't have loads of friends, I was OK with the ones I had. There was a recurring bullying situation in my early teens which left some emotional scars, but no worse than a lot of people. So why do I have such a downer on myself? Maybe the why doesn't matter, just that I'm finally trying to do something about it.
Mind offers all kinds of tips for improving self-esteem, though they are keen to stress that "different things work for different people at different times. Only try what you feel comfortable with."
I think I'll skip past this one...
Say positive things to yourself. Some people like to do this in front of a mirror. It can feel strange at first, but you may feel more comfortable the more you do it.
But you listen to those lyrics and you realise that the reason they find The Greatest Love Of All "easy to achieve" is because they already respect themselves. What about the rest of us?
If you don't love yourself, you won't be happy with yourself. If you can't love yourself, you can't love anyone else. You can't make anyone love you without loving yourself first.
But where I come from, Kemi, there's nothing worse than someone who loves themselves. We call that arrogance, egomania... or being just like Kevin.
Girls try to attract his attention But what a shame, it's in vain, total rejection He will never be left on the shelf 'Cause Kevin, he's in love with himself
In my head, loving yourself goes hand in hand with not giving a shit about anyone else. And I've spent my whole life fighting against people like that. Or at least getting exceedingly pissed off by them.
How then to find the right balance? Well, much as I would like someone to send me to work in a top restaurant for a week so that I can learn how to like myself, it's probably not going to happen. Mind says, "Try to avoid comparing yourself to others." So I'll put Cousin Ritchie out of my mind.
I started this post with the original version of Respect Yourself by The Staple Singers. It's a fine song. A classic. But you know what? The 1987 cover version by Bruce Willis means much more to me. As I've mentioned before, it was the first 7" single I ever bought. Many people are ashamed by their first record purchase and make excuses for it, saying things like, "I was really young and I hadn't developed my musical taste..." I could say the same... but honestly, I listen to this now and it still makes me smile the way it did when I was 15. And I guess I respect myself at least enough to admit that to you.
As soon as I heard today's closing tune on an old car compilation, I knew I had to feature Deputy Dawg. However, the character I pictured in my head was not the one I discovered when I put his name into google. Turns out, I was confusing D-Dawg with Huckleberry Hound... making me wonder if I've ever even seen a Deputy Dawg cartoon. Having watched a couple on the tube of you, I'm not sure I've missed anything. Feel free to tell me otherwise if you've got the DVD box set at home and posters on your bedroom wall.
Still, it's the music that matters, and DD's name crops up in a surprising amount of pop songs, besides the one I knew. Let's kick off with the Woolly Bully people...
When I saw the band name below and the album title "Kill Us All", I imagined a very different sound to the one I actually heard. Give it a try, you might be pleasantly surprised...
I'm not sure if anyone will have guessed today's winner, but it was obvious to me. How could I not love a song that goes thus...?
No one in the world ever gets what they want
And that is beautiful
Everybody dies frustrated and sad
And that is beautiful
TMBG songwriter John Linnell insists this isn't a depressing song, saying he made the words up just to fit the tune. Which probably explains this...
When you are alone
You are the cat, you are the phone
You are an animal
The words I'm singing now
Mean nothing more than "meow" to an animal
Wake up and smell the cat food
In your bank account
But don't try to stop the tail
That wags the hound
Meanwhile, the video is anything but depressing, as the band run around with rolls of carpet sticking out the tops of their heads... you won't see Ed Sheeran doing that, will you? Oh, and Deputy Dawg is in there too. Just stick with it...
I was in the local shop the other day, and the proprietor was bemoaning the state of the economy. A tin of beans which cost 29p when he first opened now costs £1.55. And he ordered a new crate of HP Sauce yesterday and the price had gone up by £12!
What can we do?
Well, all I can do is look for songs that mention "the original brown sauce", which is ironically named after the House of Parliament, those same bastards who got us into this mess.
HP Sauce is sold throughout Europe... which makes me wonder if sales suffered after we deserted the EU. Here's the late Arno Hintjens, lead singer of Belgian rock band TC Matic...
I'm like meat and potatoes Eggs and bacon, fish and chips Rock'n'roll, H.P. Sauce I feel like Pinocchio with broken strings Heaven is higher than the tree I saw myself on MTV
Somewhat further into Europe, we find Austrian punk Hans Platzgumer, who shares his initials with the famous brown sauce, and so named his 1989 EP A Portion Of Geniune HP Sauce...
Back in Blighty, The Ravengers were a 90s punk band that released a couple of records on West Sussex-based Detour Records. That's as much as I could find out about them, but their solo album did contain a self-composed jingle promoting HP sauce with the line "He likes a bit on the side..."
Finally, here's Gilbert O'Sullivan, with a b-side that displays some rather old-fashioned notions (Gilbert's quite shocked by the idea of two men getting married), but then... it was 1977.
And I've seen some how can I put this Funny things in my life Like the time a woman said sorry to a man She stabbed with a knife And in view of all of this nonsense I think it's only fair To point out that despite its faults England still has HP sauce
I don't want to live forever I just want to live as long as I can
Not the best crop today, I'll admit. I'd almost given up on finding a worthy final tune. And then I heard this...
...which leads us neatly to a 70's classic, albeit another one that hasn't stood the test of time lyrically. Remember, kids, drinking and driving is wrong.
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 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.
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.
We watched Dynasty back in the 80s, but nobody in the family really enjoyed it that much. It was always a poor man's Dallas, without a JR or a Bobby or even a Cliff Barnes to engage your empathy. Joan Collins was Joan Collins and the rest of them kind of faded into the wallpaper. Apart from Heather Locklear, but she was much sweeter in The Fall Guy.
The word "Dynasty" gets mentioned in thousands of songs, so I limited myself to references that were definitely about the show. Most of them pronounce it "die-nasty", as the Americans do, rather than our softer British "din-asty".
As a starter, I offer you Estelle...
I grew up in the 1980s
In a four bedroom house
My family, my grandma, three or four aunties
Uncles and brothers in and out of prison daily
Certain times when there was no heat you stay under covers
John Kay was the lead singer of Steppenwolf, a band you probably didn't know were still going in the 90s... by which time, John had got his name on the posters.
Here's a song I really didn't like in the 80s, mainly because Karel Fialka got his young step-son in to do some of the vocals, and as a teenager, "I hated little kids".
I see Dallas, Dynasty, Terrahawks,
He-Man, Tom and Jerry, Dukes of Hazzard,
Airwolf, Blue Thunder, Rambo, Road Runner,
Daffy Duck, The A-Team, The A-Team, I see the A-Team.
Looking for a perfect 80's pop song? I'm sure you'll agree this is hard to beat. Prince's record company didn't quite agree though. They didn't want to release it as a single. Which makes me want to start a new feature called, "Record Companies Are Idiots". That one could run and run.
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