Thanks go to Chris for pointing me in the direction of the new Jeffrey Lewis album, released late last year. It's been a while since Lewis has popped up on my radar, but there's a fine set of songs here that appeal to a grumpy old man who's rarely impressed by anything these days.
The song that caught Chris's ear was LPs, and I'm sure it's one which will strike a chord with many of you as Lewis relates his youthful addiction to vinyl (because it was cheap and nobody wanted it in the late 80s, early 90s)... but there's a sting in the tale. He doesn't buy LPs anymore. I wonder if you can guess what he buys instead...
But there's much more to be enjoyed on this album as Lewis embraces true Grumpy Old Man status and sinks his teeth into his very own Mid-Life Crisis (I'm reassured to see he's only three years younger than I am).
My second story about Stranger Danger comes from when I was a few years older, attending high school, but still vulnerable to the evils of the encroaching adult world. High school was a different world to the idyllic country village junior school I mentioned in the last post, though arguably I'd been prepared for it by multiple series of Grange Hill.
The school itself, which I'm sure I'll write about again, was a former Grammar School turned Comprehensive, five miles from home. This meant a daily commute on board the dreaded school bus, which made its final stop over the other side of the hill from our farm, a good 20 minute walk away. Mostly my parents would drop me off and pick me up, but occasionally I'd have to walk over that hill on my own, and on more than one occasion, a stranger stopped to offer me a lift.
I was always ready with a polite "no, thank you": Charlie had taught me well. Except for that one time. The time it was raining and my parents were nowhere to be seen. Not just raining - tipping it down. Cats and dogs and all manner of domestic fowl. I'd only been walking five minutes when a kindly old gent in a little red car stopped to offer me a lift. And even though I could hear Charlie's warning ringing in my ears, I have to admit: I was tempted.
"Come on, lad, you're getting soaked out there. Hop in and we'll get you home."
He certainly didn't look like a paedophile. What would it hurt? I wasn't familiar with Blanche DuBois at the time, but her mantra seemed apt: "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers". I almost got in that car...
Until...
Until I happened to glance in the back seat.
Do you know what I saw there?
A skull.
Not a drawing or a seat decoration, but an actual human skull (or, at least, it looked real enough), sitting there on the back seat of his crimson Volvo.
In retrospect, it seems unlikely that a serial killer would drive around advertising his profession so blatantly. Probably the man was a scientist or a teacher and the skull was cheap plastic. Occam's razor: the simplest solution is most likely the right one. But I didn't accept a ride and I arrived home dripping.
Would you have climbed in?
This isn't the most appropriate tune, but I couldn't go with The Ides of March twice in a row. Still, it always makes me think of that old guy with the skull on his back seat...
Blackpool's Section 25 give us our image this week, a post-punk band who have been in the go since the late 70s and are still going... having recently been sampled by Kanye West, of all people. Here's Looking From A Hilltop.
Before we begin with your suggestions for Number 25, a quick reminder of Ezekiel 25:17, for anyone who doesn't know their Bible verse (as rewritten by Quentin Tarantino).
Oh, and let's get the Christmas songs out of the way too, shall we?
That's always allowed, George. How could I disqualify those sideburns and the ultimate drinking & driving pop song? Although google informs me that the lyrics go like this...
Always got time for the DBTs, Lynchie. Channelling the Stones on that one, I think.
Now here's C to bring all us old farts into the 21st Century...
I must put in a good word for young Liverpool lad Louis Berry and his cracking song 25 Reasons. It's only a couple of years old but has that 60's R'n'B thing going on, with a pinch of Dr Feelgood too. Go for it!
Imagine that. A time when the Bobster wasn't even 25! That has featured here before. So I'm sure I must have done the "If he's sitting on a barbed wire fence, that'll explain why his voice sounds like it does" gag. If not, you can have it for free.
One more from The Swede... even though I'm starting to feel like Jez must have done in the most ridiculous excesses of The Chain (coming back soon, apparently).
Dang! I blame the time zone difference here in Canada, but when I awoke at 6:00 a.m. to get an early bid in for Dukes of Stratosphear's 25 O'Clock and Zager and Evans' In The Year 2525, I found I was a few hours behind Martin. No problem, I think to myself, I'll give it some more thought, and get the rest of my bids in during my lunch hour. Would't you know it, when I go to check at lunch there are fifteen comments now, and Rigid Digit has taken another of my sure-fire guesses in Mandela Day.
So I'll start instead with a couple clever covers. How about They Might Be Giants' cover of The Dukes of Stratosphear's 25 O'Clock? I know TMBGs get a lot of love around here, so let's go with that, for the steal...
That Ian Brown cover is my favourite. But back to Douglas...
Strangely (?), I could find no one who took on a cover of Simple Mind's Mandela Day, let alone offering any kind of hope for "improvement" on the original.
You can't improve on perfection, Douglas. Apparently.
So that leaves me with one original, and not for the first time, I find myself offering from among the oeuvre of one Paul Heaton that deal with his take on aging. How about "Prettiest Eyes" by the Beautiful South, which contain the following seasonally appropriate reference to Christmas:
Let's take a look at these crows feet, just look
Sitting on the prettiest eyes
Sixty 25th of Decembers
Fifty-nine 4th of Julys
Not through the age or the failure, children
Not through the hate or despise
Take a good look at these crows feet
Sitting on the prettiest eyes
Luckily, I have a few more years before I have to worry about any of that myself.
In the end, while it could have been Zager & Evans... or Chicago... Johnny, Mott or The Beautiful South... this week's winner's trophy actually goes to George.
Yes, George.
Who's have thought it?
But his final suggestion trumped all other contenders...
Tramp by Otis Redding and Carla Thomas. Just before the things with the Cadillacs there's a 25 cent lyric...
That's right, you haven't even got a fat bankroll in your pocket...
You probably haven't even got twenty-five cents
Greatest duet ever recorded? Could be.
I can buy you minks, rats, frogs, squirrels, rabbits, anything you want, woman!
Thank you all for your help. But if you think 25 was a big post... wait till we get to next week! Try not to get too carried away. I might just go with the really obvious one. (Or the really obvious one to me.)
Oh, one final thing. Unless they're amazing suggestions, I'm going to stop allowing lyrical 24s (and so on) as we get nearer number one. Let's face it, there are way too many. So you'll have to be really persuasive if you want to sell me on a lyrical reference from now on. Sorry.
There was a time I might have claimed to be into The Wu Tang Clan in order to pretend to be down wi' da kidz. Considering that this band came together in the early 90s though... and that's getting on for 30 years ago, in case you need that mortality check... well, I doubt da kidz have a clue who they are anymore.
Today's cover isn't by (or originally by) The Wu Tang Clan though. It's a song called The Wu Tang Clan, originally recorded by The French. I have to admit that I'd never heard of The French before, despite being a fan of Hefner. Apparently The French was a side project back in the early noughties for Hefner's Darren Hayman and John Morrison.
I probably wouldn't even known that this song was a cover... had it not come from something called The Covers EP. The covering band are Allo Darlin', and London-based indie group with an Australian singer who released three pretty cool albums a few years back, and then, I'm guessing, called it a day.
