Snapshots #456 - Songs About Seas & Oceans

This is Frank Ocean. His Uncle Billy appears below.

Here are some songs about Oceans and Seas...

15. Takes the lead in the Bossa Nova.

The Boss, obviously.

Bruce Springsteen - Atlantic City

14. Some are trumpeters, others are mute... all are crazy.

The Wild Swans - Sea of Tranquility

Yeah, I know that one's on the moon. It's still a sea. Of a sort.

13. Ain't no stopping Eno now.

McFadden & Whitehead sang Ain't No Stopping Us Now. Brian was an Eno.

Brian McFadden - Irish Son

12. Seabird that is utterly wet.

Shearwater - Red Sea, Black Sea

11. Pretty bottom.

The Beautiful South - The Mediterranean (Morcheeba Mix)

10. Home for Top Dogs.

Where the Alpha Males hang out.

Alphaville - Big In Japan

9. Unique korma ingredient. 

Just in curry.

Justin Currie - The Dead Sea

8. I Wonder if Lowe and Heyward know her?

Stevie Wonder and two Nicks.

Stevie Nicks - Wide Sargasso Sea

7. Any game involving #5 would be this.

Coldplay - Yellow

6. There's a great distance between Henley and McLean.

Don Fardon - Indian Reservation 

Or even...

Don Fardon - Hudson Bay

5. All Right Now, it's Easy.

Free and EZ.

Freeez - Southern Freeez

4. Can you pick these guys up on your way home from work?

Dry Cleaning - Anna Calls From The Arctic

3. Where the drum machines make their home.

808 State - Pacific State

2. Show off your Aussie cookware.

Brag about your billycan.

Billy Bragg - North Sea Bubble

1. Cybil alone has the answer.

"Cybil alone" was an anagram.

Billy Ocean - Caribbean Queen (No More Love On The Run)

That had to be Number One today, didn't it?

Swim back for more next Saturday.

Listening Post #38: England... oh, England

Over at The Vinyl Villain, Dirk was singing the praises of the 1982 debut single by The Wild Swans yesterday.

Lately, I've spent a lot of time listening to the band's 2011 "comeback" album, The Coldest Winter For A Hundred Years. ("Comeback might not be the most appropriate word, since with the exception of lead singer / songwriter Paul Simpson, this was a completely new line-up, including Les Pattinson from Echo and the Bunnymen and Ricky Maymi from the Brian JOnestown Massacre).

Lyrically, it's one of the most interesting records I've heard in ages, a tour of provincial England steeped in nostalgic longing, but not the kind of flag-waving nonsense that's currently in vogue. "William Blake in Cash Converters" sums it up perfectly.

In the madness of my 3 a.m.s, I'm lost without a guide

English electric lightning protected
Green unpleasant land infected
Vulcan bombers, cornish habors
Elizabethan costume dramas
Sun reporters, New World Order
Johnny Rotten, Geoffrey Chaucer
Bargain Booze and Robert Wyatt
Happy-slappers, Toxteth riots

All the kingdom's quiet now and I can't stem the tide alone

Snapshots #391: Bad, Wicked & Evil Songs...

For some reason, these words kept coming into my head this week: Evil, Bad, Wicked, Sinful, Wrong, Corrupt, Fiendish, Dark, Despicable, Terrible, Horrible, Awful, No, Good, Repulsive. I've no idea why. But I figured I'd find some appropriate tunes to go along with them...

15. Jagged rocks.

Reef: "a ridge of jagged rock, coral, or sand just above or below the surface of the sea."

Reef - Repulsive

14. CMKT4.

Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV, aka...

Frank Black - Horrible Day

13. When a pidgin grows up, it'll make a lovely bunch...

Languages that starts as pidgin develop into creole. Add a lovely bunch of coconuts...

Kid Creole & The Coconuts - I'm Corrupt

12. They're so out of control, they could break both your arms.

Wild Swans - Dark Times

11. A dedicated trumpet player meets the builder of Brookside close.

Roy Castle knew a thing or two about playing his trumpet with dedication. The creator of Brookside was Phil Redmond.

Roy Redmond - Ain't That Terrible

10. Often encountered during a cholera epidemic.

Often encountered during a cHOLEra epidemic.

Hole - Awful

9. Call the orthodhauntist.

Spooky Tooth - Evil Woman

Yes, I know that the Orange Dictator isn't a woman. But I wanted to get Spooky Tooth in here somehow!

8. I let Weepy scramble my brain.

"I let Weepy" was an anagram...

Pete Wylie - Sinful

7. Your closest advisers. 

Inner Circle - Bad Boys

6. You could have chosen conkers, chestnuts or pine cones... what made you choose acorns? 

Why oak?

Wye Oak - Despicable Animal

5. Turner's furniture shop.

They took their name from the slogan on the store above, in Hull.

Everything But The Girl - Wrong

4. Money talks... on this safari.

Money talks, but it don't sing and dance and it don't walk, according to Neil in Forever In Blue Jeans. Add a bit of a Swinging Safari...

Swinging Blue Jeans - You're No Good

3. Curse Flanders!

Damn Ned!

The Damned - Grimly Fiendish

2. Never meant to make your daughter cry...

That's a lyric from Ms. Jackson by Outkast.

Janet Jackson - Nasty

1. Martin, you Yellow git! You're fired!

I sack Chris (Martin)... or to put it another way... Chris: I sack!

Chris Isaak - Wicked Game

Some less evil Snapshots next weekend...