My Top Ten Tennis Songs

As it's the Wimbledon final this weekend, I thought I'd have a go at a Top Ten Songs About Tennis. I had a great Number One in mind, but was surprised by how difficult it proved to scrape together the rest of them. I had to go pretty obscure in places, but sometimes that's a nice change of pace from being overwhelmed by choice (as I often am when I think of a subject these days). Still, I can't believe there aren't more songs about tennis. Perhaps you know some that I couldn't think of...?


Special mentions to Tennis (the band), Ballboy, Hooton Tennis Club and (Chalk Dust) The Umpire Strikes Back by The Brat... which was hilarious for 10 minutes when I was 10 years old but seems frankly ridiculous (that such a thing could go Top 20 in the singles chart) 34 years later. Oh, and I'm In Love With Steffi Graf by Hugh Laurie, which does still make me chuckle.

(Album art above comes from the "great lost Who album": Who's For Tennis, reconstructed courtesy of the excellent Albums That Never Were blog.)


10. Lorde - Tennis Court

So. Lorde. OK, middle-aged music lovers, what do we make of Lorde?

I was very much enamoured with Lana Del Rey when she hit big with Video Games (although the law of diminishing returns applied with later releases). Lorde appears to follow Lana's template aurally, the differences being she's younger and hipper, a New Zealander, and secretly Stan's dad in South Park. Yeah, South Park pretty much put paid to me talking Lorde seriously.

Anyway, Tennis Court is a perfectly decent pop song. There's a little too much of what da kidz call "beatz" for my liking, but that's just because I've already preferred instruments to computers. I have it in my collection because google play had an offer on the album for 99p a year or so back and I like to try new things. Not really listened to it that much, but as I've said before, I'm not really the target audience for cool contemporary pop music any more, am I? So they're not doing their job right if old fogies like me dig it too much.

9. Cream - Anyone For Tennis?

The problems I have with Eric Clapton aside, there's no denying Cream made some excellent records. I'm not sure this is one of them... but it's worth watching the video to see the embarrassing things pop stars had to do to get their records seen  on TV in the 60s.

8. Phranc - M-A-R-T-I-N-A

I first discovered Phranc when I heard Steve Lamacq play her excellent single Folksinger as an oldie on 6Music. Turns out it was released all the way back in 1989, on Phranc's second album, I Enjoy Being A Girl. M-A-R-T-I-N-A is from the same album, which I soon secured a very cheap copy of. Strangely, Folksinger (which is a far better song) isn't on youtube, yet this is. Still fun, but perhaps not the best place to start if you've never heard Phranc before...

7. Sky Sailing - Tennis Elbow

A warm and lilting sunshiney American indie song from Adam Young, the guy also behind the band Owl City (y'know: Fireflies), taken from the 2010 album An Airplane Carried Me to Bed.

I served and scratched a rainbow
So curved, I felt the pain go
Through my joints
And now I don't wanna play
Swinging down, I sent the birdie
Downtown, At 7:30
And I'm convinced that I've got tennis elbow

6. Lilys -  Tennis System (And Its Stars)

You may remember Lilys as the band who had a Top 20 hit back in 1996 with the short, sharp spunkiness of A Nanny In Manhattan (after it was featured in a Levis' ad). This is from the same album (perhaps surprisingly, the band released a total of 8 between '92 and '06). Very 60s influenced, filtered through 90s indie (which perhaps explains why they were successful in the UK at the height of Britpop)... and the lyrics are proper mental.

Tossing young men from high windows
Care air lighter than Cosmo
Knows no bounds of charming
Building aisles of sound from my room
And sung so softly none understood

What now?

5. Chris Rea - Tennis

Title track from Rea's third album, released in 1980, which I'm guessing wasn't particularly successful as it falls into a hole between his brief 70's success with (Fool) If You Think It's Over and mid-late 80's superstardom.

Tennis is an interesting song, looking at how the media concentrates all its attention on sporting tournaments and ignores much bigger world events...

There are people in boats in the middle of the sea
Crying and dying like Jews
Do you like tennis?
Freedom is the man with the red grenade
She ran out of gas, got beat and raped
Do you like tennis?

Didn't really work for the Chilcott Report, did it, Tony?

4. Bicycle Thief - Tennis Shoes

Cool "lost classic" from the sole 1999 album from this American guitar band... although the album was re-released in 2001 with quite a different track list. Tennis Shoes is on both versions, so it must be considered one of their better songs. I think it is, anyway.

Sun was comin' up on New Orleans
When I opened my eyes
It was another perfect morning
I didn't know where I was
Or where I was going
For most of my life
If there was a chance to fuck it up
Well, I did...
Yeah, I did

3. The Pernice Brothers - The Ballad of Bjorn Borg

A gorgeous track by Joe Pernice & co. from their excellent 2001 album The World Won't End.
Poetic lyrics and lush harmonies combine to evoke the long hot summers of our youth... back when Bjorn was in his prime. Sadly I can't find the audio anywhere online.

2. Half Man Half Biscuit - Outbreak of Vitas Gerulaitis

Knowing very little about tennis, I originally selected this track only because it contains the amusing pun, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wade?"

However, on further investigation, I learned that Vitas Gerulaitis was actually a Lithuanian tennis player who won the Australian Open in 1977 and the Men's Doubles at Wimbledon in 1975 (partnered with Sandy Mayer). Nigel Blackwell: king of obscure references. I particularly like the Scooby Doo bit...

Why, it’s Mr Kowalski
It was you all along!
That ski lodge would have been mine
If it wasn’t for you meddling kids

But what can you do
When your Mum’s in Rampton, bouncing off the walls
And singing “Who’s afraid, of Virginia Wade?”
Why do that today when you can always put it off until tomorrow?
Was our motto
Subsequently engraved on a plaque
As a reminder of the attack
Of Vitas Gerulaitis

1. Frank Turner - Love Forty Down

Good old Frank Turner, you can always rely on him to save the day. It seems incredible to me that more songwriters haven't used tennis as a metaphor for relationships (given the obvious pun on the word 'love'). Perhaps it's too obvious. Frank doesn't take the obvious path here though - he's much cleverer than that. Instead, this is a song about staring down "the barrel of (his) fourth decade" and being afraid that life's slipping away from him. As with many of Frank's songs, it's also about not giving up. Maybe that's why he remains one of my absolute favourite contemporary songwriters. I feel every word he writes...




Which one takes Game, Set and Match as your favourite tennis song?

My Top Ten Songs About 1972

So I had an idea for a series of sporadic posts about specific years. Not songs that were released in that year but songs that directly referred to it. Should keep me busy until at least... oh, say, 2525?

Anyway, I thought I'd start with the year that Eminem, Ben Affleck, Cameron Diaz, Karl Urban, The Rock, Biggie Smalls, Jennifer Garner, Brad Paisley, Idris Elba, Liam Gallagher, Gwyneth Paltrow and Billie Joe Armstrong were born. Oh, and yours truly. A lot of the time these days, I feel very old. But if I'm only as old as those guys... actually, I don't feel too bad about it.

1972 was the year of Watergate, terrorism at the Munich Olympics, and Atari's first video game: Pong. Just in case you're older than me and you remember such things first hand.

Oh, and it was also the year the UK signed The European Communities Act, which allowed us to join the EU the following year... whatever happened to that?



10. Bloodhound Gang - The Inevitable Return of the Great White Dope

Oh, and James Moyer Franks... or Jimmy Pop, if you prefer... was also born in 1972. Although he's made a career out of acting like he was always born exactly 14 years ago, no matter what it says on his birth certificate or the calendar. As evidence, I submit the fact that this is from an album called Hooray For Boobies. As always, I make no apologies for liking The Bloodhound Gang. They keep me in touch with my inner juvenile delinquent.

One thousand nine hundred and seventy-two:
That's the year I got here, when my dear mother's water blew.
Not really realizin' the prize that's been begot to her
The bona fide lo-fi high-octane philosopher.
Genius with a penis, the few, the proud, the me
I liked me so much I had to buy the company...

Conclusions you drew, proportions you blew:
Lost son of Iggy? False bigger nose than Ziggy? True!
Yes my name is Jimmy Pop; no, my pop's name is Dick.
Don't admit to kick it slick you thick, derelict critic
Put down for missed notes, put up with misquotes.
Don't want the whole story? Should have bought the Cliff Notes!

9. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - The Same Old You

But Jimmy Pop isn't the only one to associate 1972 with Ziggy...

Hey, I remember you back in '72
With your David Bowie hair and your platform shoes
You had a part-time job, selling fast food
But out on the street you were nobody's fool!

8. Ben Folds Five - Michael Praytor, Five Years Later

From Ben Folds' 2012 reunion with the other two members of his Five, here we find him remembering an old school friend who he first met in '72 (Ben would have been 6). When he meets him again 24 years later, both their circumstances have changed drastically. It's a meditation on the strange way we connect to people, then lose touch, and sometimes reconnect with very different people years later... told with Folds' typically witty lyrical detail.

7. Belle & Sebastian - Me & The Major 

A timely illustration of the class and generational divide that should, perhaps, be required listening for anyone blaming the baby boomers for recent ridiculous political decisions in the UK. One of many stand out tracks from the album If You're Feeling Sinister, it begins with Stuart Murdoch reflecting on everything that stops him being close friends with this man of much higher standing... although he soon ends up feeling sorry for him.

Now he is swapping his tent for a sheltered home
He doesn't have a family, and he is living alone
He remembers all the punks and the hippies too
And he remembers Roxy Music in '72
He doesn't understand and he doesn't try
He knows there's something missing and he knows it's you and I
We're the younger generation, we grew up fast
All the others did drugs
They're taking it out on us

6. Jake Owen - 1972

This week's token contemporary country track (ah, I remember the days when all I wrote about was indie!), although Jake Owen wasn't born till '81 so it appears he's reminiscing about his father's childhood in this song. I do like a good lyrical pun though, and this one starts out with a doozy...

1972
Daddy drove in over, it was sky blue
He worked at a record store after school
Called it Sympathy for the Vinyl

And that's before we even get to the serious rhyming overdose that is...

We’ll be chillin' like a villain on some Dylan while we’re killin' some booze
We’re gonna kick it like the kids did in 1972

Call me a philistine, but I love that stuff.

5. Bruce Springsteen - Brothers Under The Bridge

Like Born In The USA, this is another Bruce song about coming home from Vietnam and finding not a lot waiting for you.

I come home in '72
You were just a beautiful light
In your mama's dark eyes of blue
I stood down on the tarmac, I was just a kid
Me and the brothers under the bridge

Come Veterans' Day I sat in the stands in my dress blues
I held your mother's hand
When they passed with the red, white and blue
One minute you're right there... and something slips...

Not to be confused with the '83 song Brothers Under The Bridges, a much more defiant and uptempo rocker... which doesn't appear to be set in 1972.

4. Okkervil River - John Allyn Smith Sails

American poet John Berryman (whose real name features in the above title) committed suicide in 1972. Okkervil River's Will Sheff is obviously a Berryman fan - even though he wasn't born until 4 years later. The song takes a confessional and confrontational first person approach similar to Berryman's poetry...

From a bridge on Washington Avenue
The year of 1972
Broke my bones and skull
And it was memorable
It was half a second and I was halfway down
Do you think I wanted to turn back around
And teach a class
Where you kiss the ass that I've exposed to you?

...before segueing seamlessly into Sloop John B. (a traditional folk song from the Bahamas long before Brian Wilson got his hands on it), adding a completely new meaning to "this is the worst trip I've ever been on..." (although, to be fair, Brian probably knows a thing or two about bad trips too).

3. Dexys Midnight Runners - Until I Believe In My Soul

The longest song on Too-Rye-Aye is the one that points the way forward for Kevin Rowland, away from the sheer pop bombast of Come On Eileen and Jackie Wilson Says to a much more introspective and experimental stream-of-consciousness lyricism. It's also one of the first songs in which he appears to be arguing with himself and reaching no real conclusion, both of which would become recurrent motifs in his work (and still are today).

And I'm on the train from New Street
To Euston. I'm going out to Harrow again
And I'm trying to get the feeling
That I had in 1972.
Oh but you're going too fast for me here,
I'm saying, wait a minute there, wait a minute there
Hold it, stop! Let me get this clear...
(That's all there ever is) oh yeah yeah yeah?
(That's all there ever was) yes, yes. Ha ha ha.
(The same for everyone) Oh yes. Yes. Yes.

2. Morrissey - Late Night, Maudlin Street

If ever there was a word crying out to be shoehorned into a Morrissey song, Maudlin was it. Apparently influenced by Joni Mitchell on this one, Moz remembers his first year as a teenager in miserably hilarious fashion. 7 and a half minutes of maudlin glory from his debut solo album, Viva Hate, recorded 29 years ago.

Don't leave your torch behind
A powercut ahead; 1972, you know
And so we crept through the park
No, I cannot steal a pair of jeans off a clothesline
For you
But you ... without clothes
Oh, I could not keep a straight face
Me - without clothes ?
Well, a nation turns its back and gags...

1. Josh Rouse - 1972

Josh Rouse was born in 1972 too. Back in 2002, to celebrate his 30th birthday, he wrote this song in tribute to the year of his birth. The album it came from was filled with lush 70s AM radio style pop. Harry Nilsson - the man who was at Number One in the UK Singles Chart on the day I entered this world - would surely approve.

She was feeling 1972
Grooving to a Carole King tune
Is it too late, baby?
Is it too late?

Was 1972 a good one for you? Or do you just remember it through song...?

My Top Ten Songs For Idiots

This week, ten songs dedicated to idiots everywhere. Especially those in positions of power. Because, like a lot of people in the UK right now, I'm angry.

We need Woody Guthrie's guitar more than ever, it seems.

I think I'm going to let the songs do the talking this week...



10. NOFX - Idiots Are Taking Over

There's no point for democracy when ignorance is celebrated
Political scientists get the same one vote as some Arkansas inbred
Majority rule don't work in mental institutions
Sometimes the smallest softest voice carries the grand biggest solutions

9. Meat Puppets - Hour of the Idiot

This is the hour of the idiot
That was a time when the crime could take command
This is the mirth of human brilliance
A wonderful hour of the idiots at hand

8. John Wesley Harding - Idiot's Delight

Power's aphrodisiac, addicts die of thirst
The new El Presidente saw his bubble finally burst
And the king returned from exile, by request to break the curse
He fulfils election promises with temporary cures
And everything's worse than it once was without the same allure
And his stepson is on squad inspection making overtures
It's alright
It's alright
It's alright tonight
Because it's all performed for the idiot's delight
It's all performed for the idiot's delight
Because it's all performed for the idiot's delight

Power's aphrodisiac, addicts die of thirst
The new El Presidente saw his bubble finally burst
And the king returned from exile, by request to break the curse
He fulfils election promises with temporary cures
And everything's worse than it once was without the same allure
http://www.lyricsofsong.com/w/kjmlji
And his stepson is on squad inspection making overtures
It's alright
It's alright
It's alright tonight
Because it's all performed for the idiot's delight
It's all performed for the idiot's delight
Because it's all performed for the idiot's delïght

Power's aphrodisiac, addicts die of thirst
The new El Presidente saw his bubble finally burst
And the king returned from exile, by request to break the curse
He fulfils election promises with temporary cures
And everything's worse than it once was without the same allure
http://www.lyricsofsong.com/w/kjmlji
And his stepson is on squad inspection making overtures
It's alright
It's alright
It's alright tonight
Because it's all performed for the idiot's delight
It's all performed for the idiot's delight
Because it's all performed for the idiot's delïght

Power's aphrodisiac, addicts die of thirst
The new El Presidente saw his bubble finally burst
And the king returned from exile, by request to break the curse
He fulfils election promises with temporary cures
And everything's worse than it once was without the same allure
http://www.lyricsofsong.com/w/kjmlji
And his stepson is on squad inspection making overtures
It's alright
It's alright
It's alright tonight
Because it's all performed for the idiot's delight
It's all performed for the idiot's delight
Because it's all performed for the idiot's delïght

7. The Auteurs - Idiot Brother

They were keen philosophers
They were keen on hurt
They were like a pair of dumb dogs
Rolling in the dirt

You and your idiot brother
Waiting in the wing
Which one holds up the other?
Which one pulls the string?

6. Jane's Addiction - Idiots Rule

I got a lie
A fat fuckin' lie
About a law
Idiots obey
They made it easy
Now cheaters have their way
You hi-di-ho's
You're living on your knees

5. Green Day - American Idiot

Headline from The New Yorker on Friday: 

British Lose Right to Claim That Americans Are Dumber

Take it away, Green Day...

Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alienation.
Where everything isn't meant to be okay.
Television dreams of tomorrow.
We're not the ones who're meant to follow.
For that's enough to argue.

4. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Idiot Prayer

If you're in Heaven then you'll forgive me, dear
Because that's what they do up there
If you're in Hell, then what can I say?
You probably deserved it anyway
I guess I'm gonna find out any day
For we'll meet again
And there'll be Hell to pay

3. Bob Dylan - Idiot Wind

It was gravity which pulled us down and destiny which broke us apart
You tamed the lion in my cage but it just wasn’t enough to change my heart
Now everything’s a little upside down, as a matter of fact the wheels have stopped
What’s good is bad, what’s bad is good, you’ll find out when you reach the top
You’re on the bottom

2. Radiohead - Idioteque

Who's in bunker, who's in bunker?
Women and children first
Women and children first
Women and children...

We're not scaremongering
This is really happening, happening
We're not scaremongering
This is really happening, happening

1. The Supernaturals - Idiot

Don't agree with this post? I'll let the Supernaturals answer that one...

So don't think that you will get an apology 
'Cos that's the last thing you'll get out of me...

Of course you're entitled to your opinion. I'm just letting off steam through music. And like the Supernaturals say... I'm just an idiot, sweetheart.

But at least I know it...

My Top Ten Record Collection Songs

This week's post is dedicated to all regular readers of this blog, and to music bloggers everywhere. I thank you for your time and your patronage. And I want you to know: I share your pain.

I guess it looks as if you're reorganizing your records. What is this though? Chronological?

No...

Not alphabetical...

Nope...

What?

Autobiographical.

No fucking way!

10. Kevin Devine - Guys With Record Collections

Geeky acoustic whimsy from this Devine New York singer songwriter's 2006 album Circle Gets The Square; it sets the tone quite nicely for this week's list...

So I'm starting up a Boys' Club
For guys with record collections
And the girls they hurt to get them...

Shame there's only a lo fi live version on youtube, the studio recording is much better.

9.  Rod Stewart & The Temptations - The Motown Song

Here's one that will sort the Men from the Musos. Originally by Larry John McNally - his version is slightly more cred, but a lot less of a guilty pleasure - Rod pops it up with the Temptations on backing vocals and manages to create the best record of his post-70s heyday. Being pretty creaky myself, I always think of this as a pretty recent entry in the newly knighted Sir Rodney's discography, although it's now 25 years old. According to iffypedia, however, it did at the time mark his 30th year in the music biz since he first auditioned (for Joe Meek - who wasn't particularly impressed!) back in 1961. 

Bring over your old Motown records
Put the speakers in the window and we'll go
On the roof and listen to the Miracles
Echo through the alley down below...

If anyone ever asks you what the early 90s looked liked: show them this video.

8. The National - Looking For Astronauts

If you're an avid record collector, Matt Berninger has some advice that will chill you to the bone...

Throw from your window your record collection
They all run together and never make sense, but that's how we like it, and that's all we want
Something to cry for and something to hunt

7. Marah - Why Independent Record Stores Fail

An amusing story told from the perspective of a guy who works in a record store, doting over the pretty city girl who's running her bony fingers through his 45s...

I ain't too good at saying things
But I could tape you certain songs...

A shame young men don't woo this way anymore. Not that it was ever a great success for me, but I enjoyed giving it a shot.

Ironically, this was released as a vinyl-only b-side for Record Store Day.

6. Todd Snider - Vinyl Records

Todd Snider has a very big record collection - and he takes it everywhere with him. Even on a plane. (Can someone please buy him an mp3 player?)

I got all of Booker T's, Tom T. Hall's
Bobby Bare, Belafonte and the New York Dolls
Billy Joe, Jimmy Croce, Kiss, Crosby Stills and Nash
John, June and Roseanne Cash
I got Forbert, Fromholtz, Stevie Ray
T-Birds, Yardbirds, Sam and Dave
And as some of y'all mighta guessed already
I got piles and piles and piles of...

Tom Petty

5. Corinne Bailey Rae - Put Your Records On

Good to see Ms. Bailey Rae back (at last) with her third album, released just a few weeks ago... and on my list. This is the record that got her noticed in the first place, 10 years ago, and it still sounds fresh and beautiful today.

Plus, she's from Leeds. So extra marks for that.

See also I Put Your Records On by The Pierces, just to prove that it's not just blokes who are obsessed with record collections.

4. Adam & The Ants - Stand & Deliver

What's the Dandy Highwayman doing here? Simple...

The devil take your stereo
And your record collection!
The way you look,
You'll qualify
For next year's old aged pension.

That's you told. Fan-diddly-qua-qua!

3. Eric Church - Record Year

In the holy trinity of contemporary country stars (wherein Blake Shelton is the sparkly eyed pretty boy beloved of the tabloids, Brad Paisley is the honourable family man and class clown, and Eric Church is the dangerous bad boy tamed by a good woman), Church is winning out for me at the moment. I'm sure that'll change as sure as one of the other two brings out a new record, but I'm so enamoured with Mr. Church's last one, Mr. Misunderstood, they're both gonna have to work extra hard to make me put that aside. It's only ten tracks long, but so many great albums know that less is more.

I guess I really oughta call and thank you
I rediscovered Red Headed Stranger
Got down with old James Brown
And found New Grass Revival
If you find your way back, I owe you a beer
For my record year

Record Year has to put up a fight - on most other albums it would be the standout track. Simply put, it's about a guy who gets dumped by a girl... and retreats to his record collection for comfort. What is it John Cusack said at the start of Hi Fidelity...?

What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?

2. Billy Bragg & The Blokes - Tears Of My Tracks

True blues from Billy (the only blue this Righteous Red ever gets) when he's forced to sell his vinyl...

I'm down but I'm not out
Lord, I'm hurting
Somebody owns all my albums now
They probably don't even wonder how
My name got written on the sleeves...

Imagine buying a load of second hand records only to find them all signed by Billy Bragg!

Although the story's a little bit different, this song always reminds me of this classic deleted scene from the aforementioned Hi Fidelity.

1. The Mystery Jets - Greatest Hits

In my Top Ten Divorce Songs a couple of weeks back, Number One with a bullet was Lloyd Cole's Half of Everything, about a couple dividing up their belongings after a break-up. This is the record collection version of that story... see how many great old albums you can identify in The Mystery Jets' finest hour...

You can take The Lexicon of Love away
But I'm keeping Remain in Light
You can take away It's A Shame About Ray
But I'm holding on to Country Life
Well you can keep No Need To Argue and I'll keep The Aeroplane Over The Sea
But hold on to The Boy With The Arab Strap
'Cause I'm holding on to Village Green

Which one makes you go fan-diddly-qua-qua?

My Top Ten Taxi Songs

Taxi!

This week, ten songs that'll get you home in a hurry.

Special mentions to the band Death Cab For Cutie (named after a Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band song) and Rick Springfield & Randy Crawford's Taxi Dancing, which was another contender for my Bickering Couples Top Ten.

Sorry, Joe le Taxi fans, I was 15 in 1987... and even then, I was too old for 14 year old Vanessa Paradis.



10. Bob James - Angela

The theme from Taxi: simple as that. Jazzy but cool. If you're of a certain age... even if you didn't watch the sitcom that gave us Danny DeVito, Andy Kaufman and Christopher Lloyd (not to mention Judd Hirsch, Marilu Henner and Tony 'Who's The Boss?' Danza)... this will likely bring back warm and fuzzy memories. I was ever-so slightly too young for it myself - Cheers was more my era - but it still makes me feel good.

See also Bernard Herrmann's Theme From Taxi Driver: same era, equally jazzy... not quite as warm and fuzzy. You talkin' to me?

9. Jens Lekman - Black Cab

Sweden's answer to the Magnetic Fields (via Jonathan Richman) isn't too fussy who he picks up in his cab...

They might be psycho-killers, 
But tonight, I really don't care...

Still in Scandinavia, check out Jens' Norwegian equivalent Sondre Lerche, with his Airport Taxi Reception. Taxi songs are big in Europe. You're still not getting Vanessa Paradis.

8. Tim Buckley - Nighthawkin'

Like a lot of struggling songwriters, Tim Buckley moonlighted as a taxi driver, which was probably the inspiration for this song about picking up a crazy Viet Nam vet on a scary night in L.A.

7. Warren Zevon - My Ride's Here

The final track on Zevon's penultimate album, many saw it as him preparing to shake hands with the reaper following his diagnosis with terminal cancer. By all accounts, the song was written well before that though... which makes the whole taxi-death metaphor eerily prescient.

I was staying at the Marriott
With Jesus and John Wayne
I was waiting for a chariot
They were waiting for a train
The sky was full of carrion
"I'll take the mazuma"
Said Jesus to Marion
"That's the 3:10 to Yuma
My ride's here..."

6. Prince - Lady Cab Driver

8 minutes of funky jam from the 1999 album; here, Prince gets taken for a ride by the eponymous lady and then she joins him in the back seat. You can guess the rest... but who the hell's driving the cab?

5. Bruce Springsteen - City Of Night

Another one you won't find on youtube, this is an outtake from the Darkness On The Edge Of Town sessions, finally released a few years back on The Promise collection. It begins with Bruce hailing a cab but then heads downtown into a deeper meditation on how we survive the darkness...

4. Harry Chapin - Taxi

Another epic story song from the Raymond Carver of popular music. Here Harry is a taxi driver who picks up an old flame on a rainy night. After she initially pretends not to recognise him, they eventually get to talking about old times and the space in between.

You see, she was gonna be an actress,
And I was gonna learn to fly.
She took off to find the footlights,
And I took off to find the sky.

When the ride's over, the guilty woman overtips her former lover and he pockets the change without further comment. But as with many Harry Chapin songs, this one has a sting in its tail. It seems both of them achieved their ambitions in life... metaphorically, at least.

3. Paul Simon - Gumboots

It starts and ends as a conversation in a taxi cab, and sandwiched in between is some of Paul Simon's finest witty wordplay. Although it's ultimately a song about very little (the Seinfeld of pop songs), Gumboots has always been one of my favourite tracks from Graceland.

I was walking down the street
When I thought I heard this voice say
"Say, ain't we walking down the same street
Together on the very same day?"
I said, "hey senorita
That's astute," I said
"Why don't we get together and call ourselves an institute now?"

Of course, the words are pure Paul Simon, but the tune is based largely around a melody by South African musicians Lulu Masilela and Jonhjon Mkhalali. It appeared on an unlabelled cassette compilation called Accordion Jive Vol. III which somebody gave Simon in the early 80s. It took him a while to hunt down the music's origins, but when he did, Graceland was born. Of course, there's controversy over how much credit (or money) those original artists received, but popular music as a medium has been ripping off its own roots for decades: Paul Simon didn't invent that practice. Elvis, Lennon & McCartney, the Stones, Led Zep... it's been going on for years. (And still is, as Ed Sheeran and Sam Smith can attest.)

Graceland is 30 years old this year. Just to make you feel ancient again.

2. Arctic Monkeys - Red Lights Indicate Doors Are Secured

I've liked a lot of what the Arctic Monkeys did next, but that debut album is close to perfection. It was written by a bunch of chancers who had no idea how big they'd become... and as soon as they became that big, they'd never write anything like it again.

Red Light... is Alex Turner's stream-of-consciousness ramble about trying to get a taxi home with his mates on a Saturday night in Sheffield. It's full of the kind of everyday lyrical minutiae only people who aren't pop stars can write, while also managing to reference both the Stones and Springsteen during a drunken altercation at the taxi stand. Brilliant.

1. Joni Mitchell - Big Yellow Taxi

"They paved paradise and put up a parking lot..." has to be one of the greatest opening lines ever (I must try to remember it when I do Volume 2 of My Top Ten Opening Lines). Alliteration doesn't always work in lyrics, but here it provides Joni's pop opus with the prerequisite punch.

This ecological protest song was written after Joni visited Hawaii and opened her hotel curtains to see acres of parking lots, but what's most interesting is that the eponymous taxi may not even be a taxi at all... it might be slang for the big yellow police cars in her native Toronto. Which gives us a slightly different way of interpreting what might be happening when said taxi takes away her old man...

The song's been covered by a number of people, including Bob Dylan, Amy Grant and the Counting Crows... who annoyingly destroy the big yellow taxi line by changing the lyrics to say "took my girl away" which neither rhymes nor scans like the original and annoys me every time I hear it. Janet Jackson also used the hook for her hit 'Got 'Til It's Gone'.

Big Yellow Taxi is also the second best song in the history of pop to feature a slamming screen door. But I'll hold onto that for my Top Ten Screen Door Songs...





Which one gets your meter running?