Welcome back to my appreciation of song titles that leap off the record sleeve and demand to be listened to. The songs themselves might not always live up to the hype, but they're usually worthy of at least a little consideration.
Diana Ross is clearly one very tough cookie - and not someone I'd get in a boxing ring with, since she has a history of taking few prisoners. Whatever personality flaws she may or may not possess, there's no denying the power of her musical legacy. The Supremes, for me at least, were supreme... and her solo years are full of gems too, with a little sifting. Title-wise, this is probably my favourite song she's performed on. It makes you wonder why a certain Manchester Miserablist never thought to cover it...
Another seemingly indestructible woman from the world of pop is Skin from Skunk Anansie. She always looks like the type to knock you down as soon as look at you... though she also possesses a welcome self-awareness, as demonstrated below...
Especially when, if we're talking about song titles, you go down in history as having written one of the absolute greats...
Resilience and determination are also on display from our next lady. Barbara Brown hailed from Memphis in the early 60s, signing a deal with Stax that really was a family affair - sisters Roberta, Betty and Maurice (?) were on backing vocals, while brothers Walter and Richard contributed to the songwriting.
Still in the southern States, but a few decades later, we find a lady called Keri Leigh, presumably helping clean the floor so that Barbara can crawl on it. I couldn't find much about Keri on the web of lies, but this track came from a collection I've been dipping into lately called The Last Soul Company: Malaco - A 30 Year Restrospective.
Back up to date - almost, because this is from Dry Cleaning's debut EP of 2019, though it's recently been remastered and made all sparkly. I hope you enjoy the wonderful stream-of-consciousness wordplay and deadpan vocals of Florence Cleopatra Shaw as much as I do.
Imaginary hot romance with Daniel Day Lewis Welcome to the county of Hampshire Jam after school
Here's another southern diva, a lady who's mostly known around these parts for warning you not to mess with her toot toot. Scratch below the surface, and Ms. LaSalle (real name: Ora Denise Allen) had an enviable career as a smooth soul chanteuse, songwriter, producer and record company boss. Here's a great little number from her back catalogue, and a title that raises all kinds of questions...
And finally, we have the return of a band who haven't made music together in 35 years. Back in the late 80s, they released one classic album, then started working on a second... which never really happened. A jumbled collection of b-sides and out-takes appeared in its place, and that was all she wrote. Lead singer Eddi Reader went off to a solo career, while guitarist Mark Nevin co-wrote Morrissey's most underappreciated album, Kill Uncle, and a bunch of other stuff he kept to himself. They finally appear to have patched up their differences though, and the result sounds as though they've never been away. Great title too...
Hands up if you had your mum buy Weetabix just so you could get the free gifts?
I found a website that details all the free gifts given away inside a packet of Weetabix, from the 1930s to the present day. I remembered quite a few of them from the 70s and 80s.
They don't have free gifts inside Weetabix anymore. Further evidence, if evidence were truly required, that life was so much better when we were kids.
As discussed last week, I couldn't eat Weetabix with cold milk, so I had hot milk (which made them dissolve into a paste) and a large spoonful of Golden Syrup to make them palatable. Sam eats his with just cold milk, nothing else. He's a much healthier child than I was.
Here are some songs that mention Weetabix, starting, of course, with Mark E. Smith...
Real ale, curry as well - sophisticate! Spanish guitar doesn't get far In computer teaching job His dreamgirl sings adverts for the Weetabix A fancied wit that's imitation of Rumpole of Bailey
The Seahorses were John Squire's band after he fell out with Ian Brown. I see John's working with Liam Gallagher these days. He obviously has a penchant for collaborating with Neanderthals.
Please, may I leave the table? I don't think that I'll be able
To swallow your family values again today
Because a giant squid, he stole my wife and kid
Full story and pix, ten pence off your Weetabix, yeah, yeah
Before the Red Weed of McDonalds conquered the world, if we fancied a quick burger, we all headed out to our local Wimpy Bar. Back in the 80s, Wimpy was pretty much your only option for fast food in the UK, beyond more traditional fare such as fish and chips or pie and peas. In the 90s, many Wimpys were transformed into Burger Kings (same parent company), though Huddersfield still has an actual original Wimpy, in the same place it was when I was a kid. I have to confess I haven't been in there for 40-odd years, but if you held a gun to my head, I'd choose it over the golden arches or a flame-grilled Whopper, if only for nostalgia's sake.
The word "Wimpy" appears in thousands of songs, mostly as a pejorative that has nothing to do with the burger chain. I listened to them all, just in case. Here are a few songs that did have a more direct connection, starting with the lesser-known titular mentions...
And now, especially for George, some vintage Genesis prog-bollocks...
Citizens of Hope and Glory Time goes by, it's the time of your life Easy now, sit you down Chewing through your Wimpy dreams They eat without a sound Digesting England by the pound
Back in the 80s, Ralph Rabie was a South African singer songwriter who used the stage-name Johannes Kerkorrel to protest against Apartheid. His song Hillbrow became a big hit in Belgium and The Netherlands. Proving that Wimpy Bars had, at one point at least, taken over the world...
Actually, The Wimpy Bar started out in the good old US of A. However, the only American singer I can find who mentions them is the amazing Mr. Byrne, although he's referring to J Wellington Wimpy, Popeye's cartoon friend who inspired the name of the Wimpy Bar.
(Sadly, in the TV version that's on the tube of you, they appear to have made Tom change the lyrics to "Eat in the chippy", which doesn't make any sense, because you don't eat in the chippy, you buy your food and then go back out into the cold. Stupid BBC.)
My overall take home from today's investigations is that Wimpy's were a crap place to take someone on a date (even if it was cold, Tom). Although clearly nobody told Ian Anderson that...
I have to wonder if Ian's date was Julz Sale from Leeds post-punk band Delta 5. That might explain the little second person rant with which we close today's proceedings: another gem from Cherry Red's tremendous Where Were You? compilation.
"I can update my football wall-chart now because I checked the Premier League scores in computer class today."
"You want to be careful about that, Sam. You'll get in trouble for surfing the internet when you're supposed to be doing schoolwork."
"It's OK, I closed the tab afterwards."
So. That boat has launched then.
Lora Logic was the saxophone player in the original incarnation of X-Ray Spex. Twenty odd years later, she put out this. But that was back in 2001, when the internet seemed relatively innocent... compared to today, at least.
It's scary being the parent of an 8 year old, knowing there's very little I can do to protect him from this...
Imagine all the people who can't work out the answers to Saturday Snapshots! How Do You Sleep when there's one you just can't get?
A pretty even spread of marks this week, with lots of you working together to piece together the clues. Charity Chic won with 3 whole points, but well done to Walter, Chris, Alyson, Rigid Digit and C for sterling efforts - and a welcome return from George, who christened the Christians.
Of course, I did goof pretty badly on the photo for clue 2. More on that below. Hang my head in shame. Oh, Nobody Told Me there'd be days like these... we better get some answers!
10. Neneh's spirit adds to division.
Neneh Cherry.
Spirit = ghost.
Adding & division are basic things you do in Mathematics.
To explain how I ended up posting the wrong image for this clue... and bizarrely ended up posting a second picture of Wolf Alice, here's the google image search I used...
My lesson here is to never trust the NME. That bottom left pic - as C rightly identified - is another picture of Wolf Alice... even though the New Musical Morons have labelled it as a band from 20 earlier.
Despite all that, nobody got my clue (or at least, not as I type this). Hopefully it'll be self-explanatory now...
A visit to the cinema on one of the nearby retail parks earlier this week confirmed that Toys-Я-Us has finally gone the way of the dinosaurs. I felt a bit sad about this, not through any loyalty to a huge American company which was too lazy to spell its name properly (or get its letters the right way round), but because I often popped in there if I had ten minutes to spare before a movie, to see if they had any toys Sam might be interested in that weren't extortionately priced. This got me thinking about all the big high street names we've lost over the last few years, and once again I felt a twinge of nostalgic sadness for the stores of olde that we'll never see again. Many of them have been immortalised in popular song though. Here are ten great examples (of songs, not stores)...
A second appearance this week for TMBGs, with one of their earliest tracks, taken directly from their 1985 demo tape for inclusion on their self-titled debut album. Just 26 seconds of goodness...
Sadly, the Army & Navy Store was Erasured from existence some time ago, and you probably don't want to dig too deeply into why Andy Bell was a frequent customer...
I used to hate going in BHS when I was a kid. "It's too hot," I used to tell my mum. I'm not sure if it was too hot, because I never went in there as an adult. Then one day, it wasn't there anymore. Only Green remembers it now...
Poly Styrene pays tribute to the home of Pick n Mix. I had less problem with being dragged into Woolies as a kid. Bought some of my first records there too.
He said that when I wore my mac I wouldn't have to fight
1. The Freshies - I'm In Love With The Girl On The Manchester Virgin Megastore Check-out Desk
What Frank Sidebottom did before he became Frank Sidebottom... hung around the Virgin Megastore all Saturday...
It has to be said that if you were a young lady when I was growing up, then 10 points were immediately added to your sex appeal if you worked in a record shop. Whether you would actually want to appeal to the sort of losers who spent all their Saturday afternoons flicking through the racks... well, that's another matter entirely.
Nobody is allowed to mourn the Virgin Megastore for one simple reason: Richard Branson is a dick.
Any old stores in your record collection? Or have the all closed down?
