Celebrity Jukebox #108: David McCallum

It's not so long since I covered The Man From U.N.C.L.E. here, and for most that would serve as a fitting tribute to the actor David McCallum, who died, aged 90, earlier this week. Particularly as I couldn't find any songs that mentioned him by name. Although any excuse to play this again...

The Cleaners From Venus - Ilya Kuryakin Looked at Me

And this...

David McAllum - The Edge

Growing up when I did, my first encounter with David McCallum came not through U.N.C.L.E., but through his starring role alongside Joanna Lumley in Sapphire & Steel, surely one of the weirdest TV shows of the late 70s and early 80s.

All irregularities will be handled by the forces controlling each dimension. Transuranic heavy elements may not be used where there is life. Medium atomic weights are available: Gold, Lead, Copper, Jet, Diamond, Radium, Sapphire, Silver and Steel. Sapphire and Steel have been assigned.

So went the intro to the show... and that was about as much explanation as writer PJ Hammond ever gave to his characters. Basically, Sapphire and Steel were some kind of time agents who turned up and solved weird, spooky sci-fi-related mysteries. Were they human? Were they aliens? Were they ghosts? Who could say? But I found it gripping as a kid... especially the episode set in an abandoned railway station, the plot of which remains with me to this day, despite the show having never been repeated. (It's available on Britbox / ITVX though, and I keep meaning to rewatch it.)

Sadly, I couldn't find any pop songs that mentioned this wonderful series, but then I remembered another David McCallum show I watched as a kid... one that predated even Sapphire & Steel. It only lasted one series... but there are quite a few songs named after it (or at least, the HG Wells novel it was based on). So I'm going with those today. It was that or I started looking for songs that mention NCIS, a show which gave him a resurgence in popularity in his later years, and one which my dad watched regularly. Rest in peace, David, you were anything but The Invisible Man...

Generation X - The Invisible Man

Joe Jackson - Invisible Man

   

Lush - The Invisible Man

Joe Byrd & The Field Hippies - Invisible Man 

The Handsome Family - Invisible Man

(That one from the new HF album, their first in 7 years. Pretty good it is, too.)

Zen Alligators - The Invisible Man

Joshua Kadison - Invisible Man

The Breeders - Invisible Man

Queen - The Invisible Man

(I love Queen, but that has got to be their worst video ever.)

The Dead Weather - Looking at the Invisible Man

That's ten for you right there. But my hands down favourite Invisible Man song is this one... Elvis at his best.

But if stars are only painted on the ceiling above

Then who can you turn to and who do you love?

I want to get out while I still can

I want to be like Harry Houdini

Now I'm the Invisible Man

Snapshots #302: A Top Ten Dollar Price Songs

I've been dying to feature The Six Million Dollar Man on TV On The Radio, but I haven't been able to find any decent tunes that mention him. (A lot of tunes do, just no decent ones. Unless you know different...?) 

Anyway, here's the man with the Bionic Eye, which the interweb tells me "has a 20:1 zoom lens and infrared capabilities", so there must be a camera in there too, right? And here are ten songs which also proclaim their value in dollars...

10. Stuck in your bottom, and in Iowa itself. 

Stuck in your bottom, and in Iowa itself. 

Tom Waits - $29.00

9. The Prodigy, in a patriarchy. 

Prodigies are young geniuses (google it - it's not genii). In a patriarchy though, they would only recognise the smart boys. Although the lads don't even know how to use capital letters, so what hope is there?

boygenius -$20

This one was specially for CC.

8. Discotheque that only plays A Horse With No Name.

That would be a Club that only plays Music by America.

American Music Club - $1,000,000 Song

7. Goes with Vera and Betty.

Aloe Vera and Black Betty...

Aloe Blacc - I Need A Dollar

6. Slain rain.

One of Jack White's many diversions...

The Dead Weather - Three Dollar Hat

5. Pig home, inventory, spasms.

Sty + list + tics...

Stylistics - $7000 & You

4. Where a Flashy actor goes to buy sable. 

I've not been a big fan of recent movies based on DC Comics, but I thought The Flash was OK... despite being a box office bomb. It was good to see Michael Keaton back in the Batsuit, and the Nicolas Cage cameo was worth the ticket price alone. Controversial star Ezra Miller was rather irksome though... I doubt they'll be back.

If Ezra wanted to buy some sable though, they'd probably go to the fur man.

Ezra Furman - Maraschino Red Dress $8.99 at Goodwill

3. Throw him on a bonfire with Joni.

Guys are made to be thrown on the bonfire. Never do that to Joni Mitchell.

Guy Mitchell - A Dime And A Dollar

2. Mrs. Paragons gets in a kerfuffle with Raoul Shimmery.

Two anagrams, un-kerfuffled...

Gram Parsons & Emmylou Harris - $1000 Wedding

A grand probably wouldn't even pay for the dress these days.

1. Tommy, in chains.

It never ceases to amaze me that we're now healthily into the 300s, and I'm still discovering big name artists who have never appeared in Snapshots before. Even more incredible is when it's artists I actually like. 

Above is a young Vincent Furnier, and his puppy, before he adopted his more distinctive stage persona...

Tommy Cooper + Alice In Chains =

Alice Cooper - Billion Dollar Babies

I bet you a dollar you come back for more next Saturday...

My Top 90 Mid-Life Crisis Songs #7: Pardon?

I'm not a big one for selfies, 

but this seemed like an occasion that needed to be marked.

There are certain points in your life that mark a transition. A moment which changes you as a person forever, which draws a line on your life's calendar that can be marked pre- and post-, B-something and A-something. Leaving school. Starting your first job. Moving out of your parents' house. Becoming a parent. As Brad Paisley sings in his song Last Time For Everything (already featured on this blog, otherwise I'd have posted it as tonight's main tune), these are the moments which define our transition into older.

On Friday, I passed one of those markers, one which many people my age won't pass for another 20 or 30 years... if they ever do. I became bionic.

My hearing's not been great for years. In crowded rooms, or at a distance, I'll generally miss a third of what you say. I've been bluffing about this for a long time now. Nodding or smiling at things I hope a nod or a smile's the right response to. Saying, "Sorry?" more than most. Not being able to answer the question about "What song is this?" in a busy restaurant: not because I don't know the answer, but because I didn't even know there was a song playing.

I've made a couple of weak attempts to get doctors to take my hearing seriously in recent years, but the furthest I'd got until a few weeks ago was a syringing and some nasal spray. Finally though, I got a GP to submit me to the Ear, Nose & Throat specialist for proper testing. He took one look at the results and recommended me for two state of the art hearing aids. He did wonder if I'd actually get them though: as with most things in the ever-squeezed NHS, I got the feeling they're being rationed these days. I think my job stood in my favour. The audiologist who tested me, having seen the results before the doctor, asked me one question: "you're a teacher, right?", ticking a box on her form when I answered in the affirmative. Perhaps if I'd just been working an office, they'd have sent me home with a flea in my ear instead of a hearing aid. Or at least off down to Boots where the same aids will cost you a grand a pop.

And so here I am, with an aid in each ear, actually able to hear what you're muttering about me for a change. Clear as a bell. The tests showed I have the fairly common high frequency hearing loss which means I can hear a conversation well in a quiet room, but as soon as there's background noise, higher frequencies (most voices) become harder to pick out. The aids are programmed to adjust to this, boosting higher frequencies while keeping the rumble to a minimum. So far, I can definitely notice a difference.

Higher frequency hearing loss has a number of causes, including ageing, genetics (both my parents and my older brother have hearing aids, although my dad's had one of his since a very young age after mumps affected one of his ear canals as a child) and exposure to loud noises... so, yeah, if I wanted to be really rock 'n' roll, I could tell you it was down to all those loud indie gigs I attended in my 20s and early 30s. To be fair, they probably didn't help (particularly the Silver Sun one), but I reckon the first two explanations are probably more likely.

The first thing Louise said when I came home with the aids in was, "with your hair over your ears, nobody will even notice you're wearing them". And while I understand the stigma that's attached to any kind of disability, I've never really been one who understood vanity. I couldn't give a monkey's if anyone judged me because I'm wearing hearing aids now. My initial reaction was entirely positive: this will help me at work (no more asking students to repeat themselves), at home (no more aggravating the other half*), in every aspect of my life.

It was only later, in the wee small hours of the morning, when it finally hit me about the line being drawn on my calendar. Last week I was a man without hearing aids. (OK, I've needed them for years, but that's not the point.) Now I am a man with hearing aids. I cannot go back to that person I was before. That's the worst realisation about getting old, the thing that makes it so hard. That's what causes the mid-life crisis. You can't ever go back once the line has been drawn...

#7. The Dead Weather - I Can't Hear You

A bit of Jack White and co, played very loud through the headphones, seems about right now. Maybe I'll do a whole hearing Top Ten a bit later in the week...




(*If only.)