On Monday, we took Sam to Alton Towers. This was a risk given the current climate, but they're taking the temperature of everyone entering the park, making people wear masks in enclosed areas, most of the indoor attractions are closed, and they've set up one way systems which most people appeared to be following. So, yes, a risk... but we've cancelled two holidays already this year and we don't want Sam to go the whole summer without doing anything out of the ordinary. We want him to have special memories of his childhood, even this year. You're only six once - and that's a lot different to saying you're only 48 once.
In the end, much as he loves rollercoasters and thrill rides (about as much as I hate them), he's at that weird age now where he's too big for the little kids' rides and too small most of the adult ones. So he went on the Runaway Mine Car a lot (with his mum and granddad, because you wouldn't get his dad on there) and rode the ghost train (Duel - you get to shoot the pop-out spooks with lasers... which is fun, but takes away some of the jumps) plenty of times with me. There were a few disappointments - some rides he could have gone on were closed, either for coronavirus or repair... and others he wanted to go on, but the queues were too long to test the patience of a 6 year old (or his mum). Those queues were made longer because the rides in question weren't allowing as many people on at a time, more people were queuing for less rides, and the staff had to stop every so often to give the attractions a good deep cleansing. (As I keep saying: these things need writing down, because we will forget them.)
All in all, I think the risk was worth it. He had a good day and hopefully made some good memories... he's talked of little else since, and already wants to go back. Oh, and he loved the little kids' driving school.
One song's been going through my head since Monday, since it shares its title with one of the big thrill rides at Alton Towers.
This is the ride... tell me, would you? Have you?
I didn't.
I wouldn't.
It was closed anyway.
You won't even get me on the waltzer these days.
Here's the song. Much more my cup of tea. And the lyrics, though 26 years old, are pretty timely...
Oh goodness, my gracious,
I hope its not contagious,
Although it seems its catching
It's best not to get careless.
Terrorvision, though largely forgotten now, had 13 Top 40 hits back in the 90s. Respect to the lads from Keighley...
Welcome, Planet Earth, I know you're Hungry Like The Wold for this week's answers... ahem, I honestly didn't set out to make this Duran Duran weekend on Saturday Snapshots, but when I found photos of both Simon Le Bon Bon and Nick Toady Rhodes with cameras, I thought I may as well get them both out of the way in the same weekend rather than inflicting them on you two weeks running.
Suppress your gag Reflex... here come the answers. It was neck and neck yesterday morning between Walter and Rigid Digit - I think RD just scooped the prize.
10. Wake up feeling tearful, with two spoonfuls of sugar.
This is just one of those things you put down to experience...
That's one I remember having to play quite a lot on The Love Zone!
7. Conductor of P.E.
Tough one if you didn't know it... which I guess a lot of people don't. Pretty straightforward clue if you do know the artist though... well done to Lynchie for the late save!
For Mash, get... ten songs that will make you want to do the mashed potato...
Although the Top 3 is inevitable, this may well be the most mashed-up Top Ten I've ever compiled, genre-wise. I'm not too proud to say I Love It.
This week's post is dedicated to jjdaddyo (sorry, jj, I don't have a
link anymore since blogger deleted my bloglist a while back: if you still have a blog, let me know where it is) who recommended our
opening tune for the second volume of My Top Ten Supermarket Songs a few weeks back. It would have fit in well there... but it fits even better here.
As
previously discussed, there are by now very few subjects Neil Young
hasn't written a song about, but this is out-there even by his
standards. 9 and a quarter minutes of Neil complaining that he's only
got mashed potato: no T-bone. From 1981's Re-Ac-Tor album, not one of his most critically-acclaimed records. I doubt he gives a shit what the critics think. I
hope he eventually got his T-bone.
There are a number of records on this Top Ten (as well as a bunch more I didn't have room for) which refer to the Mashed Potato dance craze of the early 60s. This is the one that does so most directly, originally recorded by Dee Dee Sharp, it was re-recorded by the Ronettes under Phil Spector, who then credited it to The Crystals once the Ronettes had split up. That Phil Spector, eh? What a genius / maniac / tool.
From
the superb 1994 album, How To Make Friends & Influence People,
Terrorvision cheekily steal the mashed potato lyrics from this week's
Number One and slip them effortlessly into this superfly guitar stomper
which confirms them as Bradford's finest rock band.
We should be hot as a couple of hot tomatoes But you're as cold as yesterday's mashed potatoes...
Written by Jerome Kern and lyricist Dorothy Fields for the Fred Astaire / Ginger Rogers movie Swing Time, this will be more familiar to anyone of a certain age as the theme tune to an 80s ITV sitcom starring Judi Dench and Michael Williams. That version was sung by Dame Judi herself, but the problem with it was, as the rhyme above shows, this is a song that should only ever be sung by Americans... because no matter what Fred & Ginger sang in Let's Call The Whole Thing Off... nobody, British or American, ever says "po-taa-toes".
So we'll stick with Ella and Louis, because you can't beat them. Or mash them.
One of the best tracks from Eminem's 2013 comeback album, Marshall Mathers 2, this is built around the chorus to Joe Walsh's Life's Been Good and features the usual First World whinging about how hard it is to be a white, rich rap star. Luckily, Eminem understands the irony of this and... damn it, say what you like Eminem, but dude can rhyme...
Can't pump my gas without causin' an accident
Pump my gas, cut my grass, I can't take out the fuckin' trash
Without someone passin' through my sub harassin'
I'd count my blessings but I suck at math
I'd rather wallow than bask, suffering succotash, but the ant-
Acid it gives my stomach gas
When I mix my corn with my fuckin' mashed
Potatoes, so what hoe kiss my country bumpkin ass
Missouri southern roots, what the fuck is upper class?
There are some mashed potatoes in there if you look for them.
Oh boy, I'd forgotten how much I loved this. It's so easy to remember Kurt Cobain for the tragedy, the reluctant artist stuff, the end... so easy to forget this guy had one hell of a sense of humour too. Occasionally. Here, his mum and dad leave him at grandma's house while they go to a show and he has to eat her mashed potato and can't chew his meat too good.
I was amused to discover though that the song's original 1962 recording, by New Orleans r 'n' b man Chris Kenner, didn't feature any nanas at all though. They were added three years later in a version by Cannibal & The Headhunters. But it was Wilson who took all those nas to another level.
That said, it's interesting to hear what Jimi Hendrix and Patti Smith do with this song too.
Of course, the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital had very little to do with mashed spuds... but then, as already discussed, very few songs on this list are actually about potatoes.
Interesting story behind this one. Robert Altman, director of the original M.A.S.H. movie wanted a song called 'Suicide Is Painless' to feature in a key scene of the movie... and specifically wanted its lyrics to be duff: "the stupidest song ever written". He tried to write those lyrics himself but couldn't get them stupid enough... so he gave the task to his 14 year-old son Michael, who wrote them in 5 minutes... and became a millionaire in the process. Not too stupid then, eh, Robert?
The thing is, there's a thin line between stupid and profound, and in the context of the film... and certainly the TV show that followed, using this song as its theme tune... this nonsense suddenly began to feel very profound indeed. I loved M.A.S.H. when I was a teen, not so much the Altman version, but certainly the Alan Alda show. I was one of the hundred million plus viewers who tuned in to the final episode and sobbed when this song played out for its final time. Stupid, yeah.
I found it impossible to choose between the original and the Manics' 1992 cover version, released as a charity single, double A-sided with the Fatima Mansions' cover of Bryan Adams' Everything I Do, I Do It For You. (Punctuation note: it's not often you see a sentence that contains three apostrophes after the s like that. Sorry, English teacher geeking out here.) James Dean Bradfield's guitar and vocal suit this song perfectly. Sadly, it would become a little too prophetic for another member of the band though...
1. The Contours - Do You Love Me?
You broke my heart 'Cos I couldn't dance You didn't even want me around But now I'm back To let you know I can Really Shake 'em down
Another one featuring that ridiculous mashed potato dance step. Originally written for The Temptations, who'd done a runner that day, so Berry Gordy gave it to The Contours instead when he bumped into them in the Motown corridor. It was their only real hit: but what a hit.
Of course, being of a certain age, my first exposure to this song was in Dirty Dancing. I was 16 when that film his video in the UK. It was regular Friday night viewing, at least when Ferris Bueller's Day Off (or Friday the 13th... I was a complex child) was unavailable for rental at the local video shop.
Personally, I prefer roasties, jackets or chips. But if you've got to have your potatoes mashed, I don't think you can deny the tastiness of this Top 10. Any favourites I missed out?
Last week's post about vacuum cleaners had less hits than anything I've ever written here. Which I guess shows that nobody is particularly enamoured by pop songs about household appliances. (So I'll be revisiting that again soon, dead horses need flogging.) I'll surely be on safer territory this week... everyone loves dolphins, right? (Although...that one above...is it just me...or does it look a bit like the Alien?)
Leave it to Prince to write a sado-masochistic reincarnation fantasy about dolphins... weirdo. Of course, considering this was written during the Slave / Symbol / TAFKAP days, its lyrics are pointing straight at his record company...
U can cut off all my fins
But 2 your ways I will not bend
I'll die before I let U tell me how 2 swim
And I'll come back again as a dolphin
From the York yobboes' debut album, this was their first single to crash into the Top 30 at the dawn of Britpop in 1994. They'd go on to much greater things, but Dolphin stands the test of time pretty well.
The video features Rick and the band performing in a waterless swimming pool. Can't help but think it'd have been more interesting if they'd filled it up as the song went on... but I guess there might have been health & safety issues with that.
From York to Bradford, and more brilliantly raucous Britpop hooligans... they were right about the whales and dolphins. (Terrorvision went on to name their greatest hits album after this very lyric, so it obviously meant something.)
This Dolphin was the London pub where the first aerial bombing of WWI took place. Here, Graham Nash asks if the world was ever the same after that fateful night...?
Written and originally recorded by Fred Neil (who also wrote the gorgeous Everybody's Talkin'), this is surely the most covered Dolphins song in history. Tim Buckley's is probably the most famous; Billy Bragg did a heartbreaking cover on Don't Try This At Home; but there's something about the dreamy combo of Beth O. and folk-jazz pioneer Terry Callier that just does it for me like no other...
I've been searchin' For the dolphins in the sea And sometimes I wonder Do you ever think of me?
1. David Bowie - Heroes
Arguably Bowie's greatest moment, with a little help from Brian Eno, Tony Visconti, and Robert Fripp on feedback. Strangely, it wasn't that big a hit when it was first released in 1977, but time has been very decent to it. Shows what the recording buying public know!
I I wish you could swim Like the dolphins Like dolphins can swim...
MGMT imagine being rock stars in a song inspired by their recently deceased preying mantis. You can't make it up, can you? Hilarious lyrics and the video is like some kind of Dali-esque nightmare.
We'll choke on our own vomit and the will be the end We were fated to pretend
Famously the song that caused lead singer Donita Sparks to take her pants off while performing live on The Word back in 1992. Very exciting when I was 20. And it was a feminist statement, so it was OK for me to rewind the video...
1. R.E.M. - World Leader Pretend
Weird how the Top 3 bands are all abbreviations. (Let's pretend that's an interesting observation.)
From Orange, the album where R.E.M. were on the verge of world domination themselves. Seems so long ago now, doesn't it?
I was planning a Top Ten Alice In Wonderland Songs, but there were so many good tracks, I had to split them into two lists. Today then, Songs With Alice In The Title (not all of them the Wonderland girl, but most of them touched by her in one way or another). Next post... Wonderland (and its inhabitants).
Alice in the playground She ain’t got a boyfriend Oh oh that’s a pity She’s not even pretty Alice hears them whisper They smile when they see her Oh, oh she’ll discover Girls don’t hurt each other
Of course, Alice Cooper has made far better records, both as a band and as a solo artist. But this is the only one I could find with Alice in the title, so check it out. It's the mellow side of Coops... surprisingly sweet.
After many years as a solo artist, Ben has reformed the Ben Folds Five (all three of them) for a tour later this year. Not sure I can afford tickets, but it'd be great to see the band back together playing songs like this again.
Keighley's finest. Not that there's a whole lot of competition for that title.
1. Tom Waits - Alice
Written with Kathleen Brennan, Waits' dreamy song is dedicated to Alice Liddell, the girl who inspired Lewis Carroll to write Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Back soon with my 'In Wonderland' Top Ten... meanwhile, which song with Alice in the title sends you to Wonderland?
