Title Fight #8: Greg! The Stop Sign!!!

More eye-catching song titles and ear-catching tunes today, starting with the gentleman above, who certainly knew a thing or two about writing an intriguing title. Any of these would do...

David Bowie - The Man Who Sold The World

David Bowie - Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed

David Bowie - Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family

David Bowie - Always Crashing in the Same Car

David Bowie - I'm Afraid of Americans

David Bowie - Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)

However, I'd argue that his best title is the one below... but maybe that's because I can't separate it in my head from the full album title.

Perhaps I've not got anything else that can compete with the Dame at full power... but I'm going to give it my best shot. Starting with this little beauty...

Firmament & The Elements - The Festival of Frothy Muggament

The driving force behind Firmament & The Elements was Bruce Woolley, one of the three men responsible for Video Killed The Radio Star (another great title). Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes released that song as The Buggles, while Bruce released his own version (with Thomas Dolby in keyboards). History is written by the victors.

Bruce Woolley & The Camera Club - Video Killed The Radio Star

The 1970s were a terribly sexist time, weren't they? I mean, this was the decade that brought us such enlightened thinking as...

The Monks - Nice Legs, Shame About the Face

Neil Young - A Man Needs a Maid

Joe Tex - Ain't Gonna Bump No More (With No Big Fat Woman)

Sailor - Girls, Girls, Girls

Thank heavens then for Andy Arthurs of bands like La Bouche, Tonight and The Rock Along Combo. He's clearly what they used to call a "new man". Although I'm not sure what he's doing in that raincoat...

A Raincoat - I Love You For Your Mind (Not Your Body) 

I used to work with a guy called Duncan Brown. He was an amateur weather man. As soon as he saw one snowflake in the sky, he'd start packing his bag and heading for the door. "I don't want to get stuck in that!" 

His namesake, with an added E, was a prominent figure in the English folk rock scene in the 70s. Sadly this Duncan died from cancer at only 46, but he left behind some great tunes, and one song title in particular that sticks in my mind...

Duncan Browne - Send Me The Bill For Your Friendship

I've had a few "friends" like that over the years...

This week's big discovery is from 1995, and the closest thing I can compare it to is Chumbawamba at their best. Although Chumbawamba take themselves seriously from time to time.

TISM (short for This Is Serious Mum) are a bunch of Australian alt-rock lunatics who wear balaclavas and a variety of outrageous costumes on stage and generally take the piss, with added nihilism. Band members include Humphrey B. Flaubert, Jock Cheese and Eugene de la Hot Croix Bun. TISM played their first gig in 1983 and broke up immediately afterwards. Every live performance since has been a reunion gig.  

All this will enrage those people of you believe there's no place for fun in popular music, but you're generally unhappy about everything anyway. Perhaps you'd be interested to learn that some pretentious goon in the Grauniad called Greg! The Stop Sign!! "a metaphor for our collective mortality". Or perhaps not...

Snapshots #260: A Top Ten Shame Songs

This is Michael Fassbender, who once appeared in the movie Shame, in which he was addicted to sex. How preposterous is that? Now if he was addicted to Saturday Snapshots, that I could understand...

10. Obsessive-compulsive detectives.

I used to love Monk, the TV show starring Tony Shalhoub as an OCD detective.

The Monks - Nice Legs, Shame About The Face

Probably won't hear that on the radio these days.

9. Billie Jean is not a bubbly Brideshead Revisitor.

Evelyn Waugh wrote Brideshead Revisited.

Bubbly is Champagne.

Billie Jean King.

Evelyn "Champagne" King - Shame

8. Not fit for the major leagues.

"The Mendoza Line is baseball jargon for a sub-.200 batting average, the supposed minimum threshold for competence at the Major League level." As I'm sure all you baseball fans will know.

The Mendoza Line - The Triple Bill Of Shame

7. Roland takes more tea.

Roland Rat takes another T.

Ratt - Shame, Shame, Shame

6. Spencer, Geller, tastes like chicken.

Lady Diana Spencer gets with Ross Geller (from Friends, duh) and some Chicken Supreme.

Diana Ross & The Supremes - I'm Livin' In Shame

That is so good, it sends a shiver down my spine.

5. Derbyshire cigarettes.

The Chesterfields - Shame About The Rain

4. Like O, in a forest.

Like The Big O, this is another Roy... Wood.

Roy Wood - Oh What A Shame

As I type out these answers on Thursday evening, I'm predicting John will get that one about 3 seconds after 8.30 on Saturday morning.

3. Yarn twisters, not Liverpudlian. 

Not The Spinners from Liverpool, but their namesakes...

The Detroit Spinners - It's A Shame

(I still have nightmares about the awful Monie Love version of that.)

2. Some like it hot above their shoulders.

Jack Lemmon was in Some Like It Hot, keeping his head held high.

The Lemonheads - It's A Shame About Ray

Always reminds me of good times, that one...

1. Otis fandom.

Anagram!

Fats Domino - Ain't That A Shame

It'll be a shame if you can't come back for more Snapshots next Saturday...

My Top Ten 'I Hate You' Songs

Seriously, guys, hate is such a negative emotion, m'kay. Can't we all, like, just learn to love one another...


(Special mention - tying into last week's post - to the song I Hate You recorded for the soundtrack of Star Trek IV by fictional band The Edge of Etiquette.)



10. The Monks - I Hate You

60s garage rock classic from a bunch of American GIs who were also a band. Immortalised because it's one of the songs playing in the bowling alley in The Big Lebowski. You mark that frame an 8, and you're entering a world of pain, Smokey...

9. Symposium - The Answer To Why I Hate You

Clumsily lumped in with the Britpop crowd, though they were much louder and more energetic. Maybe Damon got the idea for Song 2 from this lot? (Probably not.) Still, I never hated them.

8. Honeyblood - Super Rat

You are the smartest rat in the sewer...

As opening lines go, you know this love song isn't going to end well.

7. The Stranglers - I Hate You

The Stranglers go country: excellent!

6. Little Man Tate - Mann I Hate Your Band

Sadly remembered now as riding the coat tails of fellow Sheffield poets the Arctic Monkeys, I always felt LMT had the potential to step out of Alex Turner's shadow. But they obviously had some pretty negative experiences in the music industry... as this track illustrates.

See also the even angrier I Hate Your Band by Keith Top Of The Pops & His Minor UK Indie Celebrity All-Star Backing Band.

5. Green Day - Platypus (I Hate You)

Don't worry, platypus, I'm sure Green Day don't really hate you...

Dickhead, fuckface, cock-smoking, motherfucking asshole
Dirty twat, waste of semen, hope you die...

On second thoughts... maybe it's your duck's bill? Some people are so duck's bill-ist. It makes me sick.

4. Erasure - Love To Hate You

Because we should always try to find time for a little Erasure in our lives.

I love to read a murder mystery
I love to know the killer isn't me...

And check out that video - they really don't make 'em like that anymore.

3. The Beautiful South - In Other Words I Hate You

The b-side to TBS's only Number One, A Little Time, this is crammed with typically Heaton barbs.

Those winter nights just spent indoors
That criminal fizz in the drink he pours
We smooch all night to "The Theme From Jaws"
(In other words I hate you)

See also I Hate You (But You're Interesting), a haunting response to their own I Love You (But You're Boring).

I went to see a doctor and she said 'Yes, go ahead'
'Throw yourself into the sea'
I wrote a will for my friends
And this is how it read
'Me, me, me, me, me, me, me'
No friends, everything for me, me, me
No friends, just me, just me

I love the way that one switches from haunting acoustic guitar to jaunty seaside piano and back again

2. Kelis - Caught Out There

Yes, it's a female empowerment anthem, and infidelity is a horrible thing so Kelis's hatred is well justified... but you've got to spare a thought for the bloke. No, wait, hear me out... you've got to have some balls to go messing around behind a woman like Kelis's back. I mean, she will cut them off in a heartbeat, sunshine.

Oh, sorry, was he not all there? My bad.

(P.S. Kelis, honey - you need a bigger bath towel.)

1. Ugly Kid Joe - Everything About You

What I liked about this song - and felt UKJ could have developed further rather than resorting to bizarre Harry Chapin covers and a fast slide into obscurity - was its bouncy sense of fun. There wasn't a lot of that going around in rock music at the time. Fun had pretty much died out in the late 80s (apart from when we were laughing at Axl for being a dick) and grunge nailed the coffin shut. Imagine if Nirvana had had a sense of humour... only I guess they wouldn't have been Nirvana, wouldn't have surfed the zeitgeist as they did, wouldn't have sold half as many records... but Kurt might still be with us. Is it better to live fast, die young and leave a miserable-looking corpse... or still be around 30 years later (the Uglies apparently reformed in 2010) even though most people only remember you as a one hit wonder?




Which one do you hate the least?