Hot 100 #37

Back after exam-related delays, we turn to Number 37 on our countdown, illustrated by an album cover that will throw the fear of god into many of our resident musos, but I couldn't find any decent bands with 37 in their names, so sorry about that. Here's the title track from the above album, along with a choice selection of the lyrics... which may well have me agreeing with the musos for once.

Train - California 37

It's all good 'cos I'm happy as a flea

On a mountain of dogs, you see

Sting would be jealous.

Onto your suggestions for #37, and Martin set the ball rolling this week...

How about We Do What We're Told (Milgram's 37) from So by Peter Gabriel?

Or, very different, 37 by DEVO, lamenting someone's enviably low IQ?

Perhaps 37 Push-Ups by Smog? I can only find this ropey live cover version, but you get the idea...

Lyrically, Femme Fatale by The Velvet Underground has the line You're put down in her book, you're number 37, have a look.

And, er, Volvo Cowgirl by Sheryl Crow has a line along the lines of 37 million's what Larry Parker got me...

Nearly forgot 37 Hours by Kristin Hersh.

That's enough, isn't it? More than I thought.

Can't complain about any of those, Martin. Peter Gabriel & Smog were both in consideration here.

(Rigid Digit seconded a couple of those.)

Lynchie was up next...

Ricky Nelson - Ain't Nothin' But Love

When you kiss her goodnight 37 times
That ain't nothin' but love

It might also be a bit annoying, Ricky... especially if she just wants to get in the house and watch Celebrity Love Island. Have some consideration, sir.

Jim in Dubai was next to arrive, with two very strong contenders from my own record collection...

The Beautiful South - Straight in at 37

Well, Simon le Bon stayed round my house before
And he was sick on the plants and he was sick on the floor
And he wouldn't go home until he'd sung his song
With a backing harmony from Paul Young

Grandaddy - Aisle Seat 37 D

Finally, in what proved to be rather a tough week, Alyson offered...

Tim McGraw - Number 37405

...to which I may as well respond with...

Squeeze - 853-5937

A couple more that were thrown up by my own hard-drive...

Car Seat Headrest - 1937 State Park

Jonny Cola & The A-Grades - Hideaway 37

However, I think we're all in agreement over what this week's winning song should be... even if there's some debate over which version is best. Lynchie recommended the Dr. Hook original while Charity Chic and Alyson preferred the Marianne Faithful cover. Alyson was correct in spotting that the track in question has already featured on this blog as one of my old Mid-Life Crisis Songs.

Here's both versions so you can decide amongst yourselves...



Three dozen next week. Suggestions, please!

My Top Ten Toaster Songs

So last week, Martin set me a challenge (perhaps jokingly) to see if I could come up with 10 songs featuring toasters. Well, I always like a challenge... here's the best I could pop up. No burnt offerings. Etc. Etc.



10. Streetband - Toast

Let's start with the obvious one to make things harder. Before he started laying his hat in the lap of the common people, Paul Young was in a bunch of different bands (including Kat Kool & the Kool Cats and The Q-Tips). Some still consider this novelty b-side (flipped into a hit by Kenny Everett) to be his greatest moment.

See also Yeah, Toast!, which the internet claims is by Arcade Fire. I'm not sure I believe the internet though...

9.  The Ataris - Lately

Lately I've been thinking bout' stickin' my hand in a toaster...

...sings lead Atari Kris Rose on this track from the band's punky (if not Punky - that's #6) debut album from 1997. Woman problems, obviously. Sadly, the live version on t'internet doesn't do it justice.

8. Squeeze - Woman's World

Great female empowerment tune from the fourth Squeeze album, East Side Story, in which a housewife has enough of housework...

Press the button on the toaster, it's a woman's world
Tuck the sheets in on the bed, it's a woman's world
Take your apron from your holster, it's a woman's world
Shoot the crown off of your head, it's a woman's world

7. Tobin Sprout - Toaster

Sometime member of Robert Pollard's US indie band Guided By Voices, Tobin has also released a loaf of solo records over the years. This was his debut solo single from 1995.

Sadly the toaster in question is someone making a toast, rather than making toast. Still, it was the only song I could find that was actually called Toaster, so it deserved a place.

6. Simon & Garfunkel - Punky's Dilemma

Even when he was writing piffle, Paul Simon still made gold. This was submitted for The Graduate soundtrack but the producers rejected it - perhaps it was a bit too goofy for them, but it still sounds great to me. Somehow far less annoying than when Paul McCartney wrote the same kind of nonsense...

Wish I was an English muffin
‘Bout to make the most out of a toaster
I’d ease myself down
Comin’ up brown
I prefer boysenberry
More than any ordinary jam
I’m a “Citizens for Boysenberry Jam” fan

5. Don Henley - Sunset Grill

I wanted to include Henley's earlier song Long Way Home in which Don moans...

The heat don't work
The toaster don't work
The car don't work
And I guess I know why
This house don't work and this dream don't
Work no more
And lover, neither do you and I

...sadly, it's not available on youtube (not in this country, anyway), so I had to settle for using the grill... which, given the toaster isn't working, seemed like a viable option.

4. Bobby Bare - She's My Ever-Lovin' Machine

A delicious slice of whimsy written by cartoonist and children's author (not to mention the songwriter who gave Johnny Cash A Boy Named Sue and got Dr. Hook to call Sylvia's Mother) Shel Silverstein. When Bobby's girl leaves him for another man, he goes down to the cellar and cobbles together a mechanical replacement. You can guess the rest...

She always did what she was supposed to
Right up to this evening but then
She had an affair with a toaster
And they ran off and left me again.

See also Tim McGraw's What She Left Behind, in which Tim's lady buggers off and takes the toaster with her. Tim's not smart enough to build a replacement.

3. Crash Test Dummies - There Are Many Dangers

Some serious Health & Safety advice from the Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm dudes...

If your toast gets stuck in the toaster
Do not put a fork in the toaster while it is hooked up, or look out
I did and I got caught in the current
Pulled me in and shook me while it held me tight...

2. Carly Simon - Coming Around Again

A song about the frustrations of being a mother, particular if all Daddy does is breeze in every now and then and your toaster is constantly on the blink.

Pay the grocer
You fix the toaster
You kiss the host goodbye
Then you break a window
Burn the soufflé
Scream the lullaby

If you can get past the big hair and 80s power-drums, this is still a classic. If you can't, try this cool cover by Ash.

1. Grandaddy - Broken Household Appliance National Forest

Possibly Grandaddy's finest hour, an epic protest song about people dumping their old electrical appliances in areas of natural beauty. You might think that's not a fitting subject for a rock song, but if you ask me, it's a lot more relevant than anything Sting or U2 ever wrote.

Sit on the toaster like a rock
No need to worry about a shock
All of the microwaves are dead
Just like the salamander said
The refrigerators house the frogs
The conduit is the hollow log...

Which one is your pop tart?

My Top Ten Lincoln Songs

Happy Easter. For no reason at all, here's ten songs about various different Lincolns... the President, the car, the county, the town... and the mall.


10. Tim McGraw & Kid Rock - Lincoln Continentals And Cadillacs

Let's start with a bit of shamelessly contemporary country pop. We'll get to the more authentic stuff later...
 
9. Tony Rice - John Wilkes Booth

...like right about now. Written by Mary Chapin Carpenter, Tony Rice's song digs deep into the tragic tale of the actor who assassinated Abraham Lincoln in protest against the president's abolition of slavery, "in the name of God and Dixie".

8. Donald Fagen - Maxine

The Nightfly is one of my favourite albums of the 80s, yet Maxine is probably my least favourite track on there. That's not to say it's a bad song - it fits the late night jazzy feel of the concept very well and tells a typically Fagen-esque tale of love and longing. There's a great sax solo too. But it's no New Frontier, I.G.Y. or Nightfly, is it?

Oh, and in case you were wondering...

While the world is sleeping
We meet at Lincoln Mall
Talk about life
The meaning of it all
Try to make sense of the suburban sprawl
Try to hang on, Maxine

7. Josh Turner - Loretta Lynn's Lincoln

Add a splash of wit to your country and you've got a guaranteed fan on this blog. Great song; always makes me smile.

6. The Gaslight Anthem - Old White Lincoln

If you're going to base your whole career on sounding like a tribute act... you can do much worse than choosing Bruce as your role model.

And I always dreamed of classic cars and movie screens
And tryin' to find some way to be redeemed
Bring a dollar with you, baby
In the cold, cold ground

Paddy McAloon would have something to say about that...

5. Dave Davies - Lincoln County

After the success of Death of a Clown and Susannah's Still Alive, Dave Davies' solo career (extracurricular to the Kinks) looked like it was taking off. Lincoln County sadly put an end to that when it failed to chart (except in Holland, where it made #15). A shame, because this also meant his proposed album, with the excellent title of  A Hole in the Sock (of Dave Davies), was also shelved.

Some debate on t'internet about whether the song is told from the perspective of Jesse James or Billy The Kid. I have no idea.

4. Mercury Rev - Lincoln's Eyes

What explodes like a fractal, pops like a light bulb
Looks really awful at four in the morning
Moves with a dead stare, coils around your ankles
Fangs long as neckties and strikes without warning?

Answers on a postcard.

All Is Dream was the album in which Mercury Rev came closest to disappearing up their own rabbit hole into wispy, dungeons and dragons fantasia. Lincoln's Eyes would be the prime suspect if it weren't so haunting and beautiful. Yet, despite being almost as impenetrable as Nick Kershaw's Riddle, it succeeds through a sly sense of humour in the last verse which makes it genuinely affecting.

What explodes like a fractal, pops like a light bulb
Strolls in like Joel Grey* at four in the morning
Armed with a big nose, fragile as a sea horse
Lives in your soul and loves you like I do?

                                                                                 *

3. Marvin Gaye - Abraham, Martin & John

I have no idea why Marvin's timeless tribute to Lincoln, King and the two Kennedies isn't on youtube, but I hardly need to link to it: you either know it like an old friend already or you need down purchase a copy immediately.

The original version, recorded by Dion, is pretty cool too. As is Smokey Robinson's cover.

2. Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen - Hot Rod Lincoln

Written and originally recorded by Charlie Ryan back in 1955 - who actually was a hot rod racer (google it) at the time - but I have a definite preference for the 1971 cover by Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen. Maybe it's the name, surely one of the greatest band names ever (not counting Kathleen Turner Overdrive). Question: can a cool name make you pre-disposed to like the band? I would have wanted to hear more of this band from their name alone... although my first exposure to them was through a late night radio play of this very song.

George Frayne IV, aka Commander Cody, did not always take lead vocals on his band's recordings. Indeed, on the album this track hails from (Lost In The Ozone), Billy C. Farlow is the lead vocalist on every track... except Hot Rod Lincoln. 

Thus ends my limited knowledge of Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen. 

1. Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska

I'm very much looking forward to seeing Bruce again this summer, revisiting The River with the E-Street Band (although it won't be the same without Clarence). But the dream would be to see him play Nebraska live the way it was recorded: just Bruce, his guitar, his harmonica and his cassette deck.

The title track starts out in Lincoln, Nebraska... before going full Badlands on us. One of the most powerful songs he ever recorded.

You want to know why 
I did what I did?
Sir, I guess there's just a meanness in this world... 


Which Lincoln gets your vote?

My Top Ten Carry On Songs

I was never a fan of the Carry On films, "Great" British comedy institution though they may be. But there are some blinding Carry On songs...



10. Babyshambles - Carry on Up the Morning

One of the better post-Libertines Pete Doherty songs. There aren't that many.

9. Tim McGraw - Carry On

All those people who think modern country music comes with a big wedge of cheese are mostly wrong. In Tim McGraw's case, however... 

8. Half Man Half Biscuit - Carry on Cremating

The song closest to the true spirit of the Carry On movies... at least in Nigel Blackwell's indefatigable Britishness... and his "tribute" to one of the big Carry On stars of olde...

Oh, they’re still cremating Hattie Jacques, I am not surprised
Come on now, let’s face it, she was fat
It usually takes for ever trying to burn the grossly oversized
Who would ever want to look like that?
She had a face that could launch a thousand dredgers
I could never get her on my portable TV

7. Van Morrison - Carry on Regardless

 There's a tiny part of me thinks all post-70s Van Morrison records sound like someone doing a very good impersonation. Of course, I'd never tell Van The Man that... with his reputation!?

(Plus, I think he nicked some guitars from Lady Madonna here. Shh. Let's pretend we didn't notice.)

6. Portishead - We Carry On

 Creepy and disturbing in the way all the best Portishead records are.

5. Spacehog - Carry On

Leeds band Spacehog had more success in the States than back home. Iffypedia tells me they met in a cafe where one of the band members was working as an exterminator.

4. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Carry On

 Timeless. (This is where Fleet Foxes got their mojo.)

3. Kansas - Carry On, Wayward Son

Pompous prog lyrics saved by a glorious chorus and majestic guitars. Glorious, in its way.

2. Fun. - Carry On

Is it me, or does Nate Ruess look like a young (Marky) Mark Wahlberg? He writes far better songs though. And has more conviction.

Why do I like Fun. so much? They do exactly what it says on the tin. 

1. Beautiful South - Good As Gold (Stupid As Mud)

Yes, my Number One Carry On song doesn't feature the words Carry On in its title. Bite me. They're all over the chorus. One of the Beautiful South's most life-affirming songs, with a video to match in which Heato and the gang go for a bike ride in the countryside... with added elephant.

I want my sun-drenched, wind-swept Ingrid Bergman kiss
Not in the next life
I want it in this

Carry on commenting...