Emergency Questions #9: New Laws

The Hives - The Hives Are Law, You Are Crime

Another conversation query from Richard Herring's book Emergency Questions...

If you could get a law named after you, what would it be?

Where do we begin? Perhaps by asking a couple of pop stars what laws they might institute...

There oughta be a law
Against you comin' around
You should be made
To wear earphones

Bob Dylan - Ballad Of A Thin Man

You know it doesn't make much sense
There ought to be a law against
Anyone who takes offense
At a day in your celebration

Stevie Wonder - Happy Birthday

As for myself...

Ian McNabb - There Oughta be a Law

The obvious one - a law banning Audi drivers. Or should I just ban Audis? No, no, guns don't kill people: people kill people. It's the people who want to own an Audi and drive it like a scumbag because they think they're better than everyone else... they're the real threat to society.

And there definitely ought to be a law against people who drive vehicles that break the sound barrier. You with your twin exhausts or your motorbike engines that sound like an angry road drill when you rev them up. At 11 o'clock at night. When decent folk are trying to sleep.

Wolves of Glendale - Loud Ass Car

How about a law forbidding you from having a nice long chat with your mates in the supermarket while blocking the aisle and preventing access to the frozen peas?

Or a law that forces bartenders to serve people in the actual order they got to the bar, not just the pushy / attractive ones first? (And I say this as someone who doesn't drink and therefore goes up to a bar about twice a year. This law is more for your benefit that mine.)

Kris Kristofferson - The Law Is For Protection Of The People

Better yet, a law that creates two separate queues in coffee shops. A slow queue for anyone ordering a mocha-choca-spocka-latte with whipped cream and sprinkles or any drink that involves crushed ice. And a fast track queue for people who just want coffee. Black coffee. We're not even pfaffing about with frothy steamed milk. We just want our drink. Fast.

Mickey & Sylvia - There Oughta Be A Law

And what about a law to outlaw anyone I can't stand? 

Bono. The Gallaghers. Michael McIntyre. 

When I am king, to quote Radiohead, you will be first against the wall...

Radiohead - Paranoid Android

Not to mention the ones for whom - I'm sorry - a firing squad is too good.

Donald Trump. Elon Musk. Nigel Farage. Andrew Tate.

I hope there's plenty of room in that Suffolk ditch...

If you could get a law named after you, what would it be?

Memory Mixtape #30: Who Killed Joey Salvo?

Dear Dad,

I'm writing this because it's the only way I can talk to you now, and I really wanted to tell you that I found out something that puzzled us for years! I know who killed Joey Salvo. 

Skybird - Who Killed Whom? 

Maybe you'll never read this - I don't know if I believe in any kind of afterlife that allows you to watch over those you've left behind... I mean, I want to, because it'd make you being gone (and one day, me being gone) so much easier to deal with... but it could just be one of the great white lies we tell ourselves to make the futility of existence not as futile as it might otherwise seem. And I mean, even if you are looking down on me, or just checking in occasionally to make sure I'm not messing up completely, the chances of you reading my blog - any blog! - are pretty much zilch. Did you ever even look at the internet? I think maybe you watched the occasional tractor video on youtube if someone found it and started it playing for you. As someone born in 1929, you didn't quite get the appeal of all this new fangled technology... and I'm not sure you were wrong.

Luke Haines - What Happens When We Die?

Likewise, I'm not sure you ever read anything I wrote... but then again, I never showed you anything. For years, I always thought, "when I get something published, then I'll show it to Mum and Dad," but that never happened, did it? I knew you'd have been proud... but you were proud of me anyway. You never told me what to do or what not to do, you let me find my own way, and I always appreciated that. When I got my A Levels and told you I wanted to pack in education and go work in a radio station for peanuts, you never told me I was wasting my life. Then when I found a way to keep doing that and go back to Uni, I know it pleased you, and I could tell how proud you were the day I graduated. The writing was the same - all those hours I spent up in my room at the old typewriter, word processor, computer... a lot of parents would have been up knocking on the door telling me to get out and get a life. But if I was happy doing what I was doing, that was enough for you. I knew you were always there for me when I needed you, and you'd have done anything for me - when I called you from Bradford at 2am to say my first car had broken down and I couldn't get home from work, you got out of bed, drove 45 minutes in the middle of the night and towed me home. No complaints. That was just what Dads were for. I know I thanked you, but I'm not sure I ever thanked you enough.

Ian McNabb - If My Daddy Could See Me Now

None of that is why I'm writing to you today though. No, I'm writing about NYPD Blue. Remember how that was always our favourite TV show? We didn't connect on a lot of popular culture - you never cared for Marvel or Star Wars and certainly not pop music, though you would always watch Die Hard when it showed at Christmas, and that made me happy. NYPD Blue though, that was the one thing we really agreed on. I don't think we ever watched it together, because in my early 20s when the show started, I was either out at work or I watched the little portable TV up in my room. (Plus there were quite a few racy bits in that show, and who wants to watch TV sex scenes with their parents?) 

Death Cab For Cutie - Portable Television

I can remember the odd occasion we'd be watching it live "together" (me upstairs, you down) and I could hear you laughing from the living room at some sarcastic remark Andy Sipowicz made to a skell, or the little sly glances between characters that spoke volumes and made us both crack up. We both loved Dennis Franz who played Andy, a wonderful example of a flawed hero. When the show started, Detective Sipowicz was a cranky, alcoholic bigot. Over the course of the next twelve years, he suffered more adversity than any fictional character deserved - including losing his son, his wife and his best friend - but he also went through a redemptive arc that I believe is unparalleled in popular fiction. 

Frank Turner - Redemption

It took us both a while to follow Andy's story through to the end as Channel 4 inexplicably stopped showing NYPD Blue sometime in the late 90s. The final seasons eventually cropped up on More4 when that channel launched in 2005 and I know you stayed up late to watch it every weeknight, while I had to catch up on video when I wasn't at work. We'd still chat about it when I saw you at the weekend - how about when Andy said such and such? The look he gave another character across the crowded squad room. It's weird the things that bond a father and son, but even now when I watch the show on Disney+, it makes me think of you. And when it makes me laugh, I want to share that with you like I did back then.  

Everclear - TV Show

All of which brings me to Joey Salvo. I'm sure you remember, Dad, at the end of Season 4, there was a pretty big cliffhanger. Andy's partner, Bobby Simone (played by the always excellent Jimmy Smits) had been caught up in a sting operation involving the FBI and Internal Affairs. A gangster called Joey Salvo, who Bobby knew from his past, had a mole in the police department, and the various agencies were using Bobby as a pawn to expose the leak. Bobby ended up suspended and his career was on the line, but still nobody could prove the identity of Salvo's informant. The season ended with Bobby meeting Salvo on a street corner in a last ditch effort to uncover the mole... and then, out of nowhere, shots were fired and Salvo was killed. A few seconds later, a car screeched up and it was Andy, Bobby's partner, asking if he was OK. Did Andy shoot Salvo to get Bobby out of an impossible situation? That was certainly the inference... but would Andy really do that? His character walked a thin line a lot of the time, he was immensely loyal to his partner and had no time for the FBI or the Rat Squad... but would he really resort to murder? It seemed unlikely to both of us, Dad, but we were going to have to wait till the next series to find out...

Floodlights - On The Television

Except, when Season 5 began the following year, something really odd happened. You saw it first and I remember you coming to me and saying how it'd all started up again without any mention of the cliffhanger. Bobby was back in his job, the FBI and Internal Affairs weren't present, nobody even mentioned Joey Salvo. It didn't make any sense. It was like we'd both missed an episode... and clearly that's exactly what happened, though I still find it hard to believe, because back then we both checked the TV Times religiously to see when our favourite show was back on air. Part of me wonders if Channel 4 ditched the opening episode because they didn't consider all the back-story would make for a good jumping on point for new viewers. I wouldn't put anything past them - they didn't treat NYPD Blue fans with a great deal of respect during the time they were airing the show. 

Smith & Burrows - Old TV Shows

Anyway, Dad, the point of all this is that I finally got to watch the episode we never saw. And I can tell you that Joey Salvo was shot by the head of Internal Affairs - he was the mole! He was caught after trying to shoot Andy and he eventually confessed to everything. Neither you nor I thought Andy was the shooter, but there was always an unresolved question mark... and I wish you were still here so I could tell you what happened or show you the episode we missed. I only hope that somehow via some kind of unknown magic of the universe that science doesn't yet understand, somehow you can read what I've written today and know that I love you and I miss you and that Andy Sipowicz is still our hero.     

   

Record Collection Recollections #9: The Great Vinyl Debate

I read a very interesting post by Ian McNabb on the Book of Faces last week. You might have seen it yourself. If not, here's what he had to say in reference to the image above...

Let's kill this myth.

As a practitioner I have been into the minutiae of this well-debated subject a hundred times. I have lived with a song from its inception to its release into the world.

The original mix, either on tape or digital, gets mastered before we the public get to hear it. This is CRUCIAL to the process. In the eighties when CDs first appeared they were often mastered from poor sources - usually ancient production masters, frequently second or third generation. They sounded quiet, muddy and flat.

As we became a CD consuming global market things improved. CDs were mastered with greater care and consumers began demanding higher quality for their money, often starting at £14.99 (!).

Then the LOUDNESS WARS began in the mid-nineties. Mastering engineers began brick-walling mixes (making the CDs louder at the expense of definition and dynamic range). This meant compression and lots of it, making prolonged listening a slog and rather tiring after ten minutes.

Since then mastering has gotten pretty good. 

I've forensically analysed my own finished CDs and vinyl. To the point of madness. Vinyl is a great experience, largely due to size of the artwork and the ritual freeing the vinyl from its sleeve and placing it on a turntable. From that point on its a disappointment.

 Unless you've spent a lot of money on your hardware the vinyl is never going to sound as good as the CD - even on an entry-level system.

Vinyl is a LOSS format.

As for MP3s/streaming, well that's the way most people are going to hear the music. All streaming services have their own algorithms and the music sounds perfectly serviceable even to my professional ears.

I fell in love with music listening to vinyl and cassettes in the 70s - usually played through cheap systems and Walkman headphones. MP3s sound a lot better.

So there!

Should you be interested, my music is available in high-quality at ianmcnabb.bandcamp.com

You can chose your format.

IX

I don't own a turntable anymore, and sometimes that makes me sad. I love the warmth of vinyl, the crackles, dropping the stylus into the groove and waiting for the music to start. It reminds me of being a boy, of my first adventures in record collecting, of my early days in radio, cueing up 7" singles on pre-fade (and trying to remember to make sure I have the fader down... there's nothing more embarrassing that cueing up a song over the top of the one that's playing out live on air). 

Todd Snider - Vinyl Records

But I don't own a turntable any more, and I don't have any vinyl. I had to make a choice about ten, twelve years ago, and if I was still going to have a record collection (rather than just going all-digital, as many people have), CD was the only option that made sense. They take up less room, they're a lot cheaper than vinyl (both new and second hand), and the romantic notion of having the time (or the space) to sit down and listen to an LP in the old-fashioned way... well, it wasn't happening any more and the chances of it happening again in the foreseeable future were negligible. 

The Legendary Stardust Cowboy - I Hate CDs

Most of my listening is done in the car on my way to and from work (that's at least two hours a day right there) or late at night as I'm drifting off to sleep. That music comes from memory stick, burned CD compilations and streaming. If I'm at home alone, I will occasionally still pull a CD off the shelf and give it a spin in the way god intended, but the majority of CDs on my shelves have not seen the inside of a CD player in ten, twenty, thirty years... you might ask why I bother to collect them then, and I'm not sure I really have an answer for that. You either get it or you don't.

Jeffrey Lewis & The Voltage - LPs

Those of you who still have big vinyl collections... well, I am jealous, but I've made peace with my decision. Still, I found Ian McNabb's post heartening, that in his eyes at least, I'm not some musically-challenged second class citizen. Maybe in my retirement years, I'll but myself a cheap second hand turntable and dabble in the delights of vinyl again. I must be prepared to dream...

Self-Help For Cynics #26: To A Louse

Chumbawamba - Tubthumping

Oh, would some Power the gift give us
To see ourselves as others see us!
It would from many a blunder free us,
And foolish notion:
What airs in dress and gait would leave us,
And even devotion!

So ends one of Robert Burns' most famous poems (well, the English translation of it anyway, which I'm sure will horrify some of you), in which Burns writes about seeing a louse crawling on a woman’s bonnet in church. At first he’s disgusted by the sight, though by the end of the poem he turns more philosophical. If we could see ourselves through other people’s eyes, he argues, we would lose all our pretensions and realise that no one person is better than anybody else…

Bettie Serveert - Hell = Other People

Nice idea, Rabbie, but many of us spend far too much time worrying about how other people see us. Welcome to FOPO – Fear of Other People’s Opinions. Here’s a for instance…

Someone I know – we’ll call him Tiberius – finds it hard to make small talk with colleagues or discuss his life outside work. He can handle more formal discussions about work-related matters in a relaxed fashion, making jokes when appropriate, and generally feels like his opinion and experience is valued in those circumstances. But when everyone starts chatting about what they did last night, what they’re doing at the weekend, what they’re watching on TV or what music they like… he clams up. If someone raises a topic he has an opinion on – say they mention a TV show he’s actually watched or a band he has some knowledge of – he’s not afraid to chip in. What he won’t do is set the agenda. He won’t mention a show nobody else has been talking about, and he certainly won’t tell them he’s been out to see Craig Finn or Lucinda Williams over the weekend. (In case you’re wondering, Tiberius goes to a lot of the same gigs I do. We don’t go together because, to be honest, I find him rather tedious company.)

Morrissey - People Are The Same Everywhere

Why won’t Tiberius tell his colleagues about the great time he had watching Craig or Lucinda? Why would he rather pretend he’s done nothing at the weekend? Why won’t he ask them if anybody’s watching the final series of Curb or if they saw Fargo Season 5 – the best one yet? Well, only Tiberius would be able to answer those questions for sure. But here are a couple of suggestions…

The Wonder Stuff - Let's Be Other People

1. Tiberius doesn’t feel that his own life would be of interest to anybody else. (There’s a huge irony here in that Tiberius spends a great deal of his time chronicling said life on a blog that very few people read – I’m not linking to it, to spare you the agony. But he does that, he claims, purely for his own mental health, and it’s a bonus if other people read it, though he really can’t understand why they would.)

Clifford T. Ward - Are You Really Interested?

2. Tiberius does not wish to be judged by his own interests or opinions. If he tells people he watches Curb, they might think he’s a sociopathic misanthropist like Larry David. And mentioning any kind of musical interest outside the mainstream is a certain way of finding yourself stereotyped or pigeon-holed, labelled and tagged. You like country music, Tiberius? Yee-haw! You like ROCK? Do… I… need… to… talk… more… slowly… so… you… understand? You like Taylor Swift too? Sad old man desperately trying to cling onto his youth by appearing hip? Bruce Springsteen? I never liked Born In The USA… too jingoistic for me. No, expressing any kind of musical preference just opens one up to stereotyping, prejudice and general all-purpose ignorance… and the last thing Tiberius wants is to get into an argument defending his tastes… because that would just make him look touchy.

Bob Marley & The Wailers - Judge Not

Why does Tiberius care what other people think? To answer that question, I turned to our old friend Mr. Google, who directed me towards psychologist Michael Gervais at The Harvard Business Review. Gervais has written a couple of articles that jumped out at me, one called How to Stop Worrying About What Other People Think of You and one called Stop Basing Your Self-Worth on Other People’s Opinions. The first of those is a bit too Inspirational for me – it concludes by suggesting we tackle self-esteem issues by cultivating our own “personal philosophy” or mission statement… but then, this is The Harvard Business Review, and Gervais’s clients do include “world record holders, Olympians, internationally acclaimed artists and musicians, MVPs from every major sport, and Fortune 100 CEOs”… so what do you expect? (Clearly he's overcome any of his own self-esteem issues a long time ago.) 

Ian McNabb - Other People

Still, best not to consult Dr. Gervais if you're a mediocre loser like Tiberius. His article did however reiterate something we’ve discussed here before – how the monkey brain fears being ostracized by the “tribe”.

Unfortunately, FOPO is part of the human condition since we’re operating with an ancient brain. A craving for social approval made our ancestors cautious and savvy; thousands of years ago, if the responsibility for the failed hunt fell on your shoulders, your place in the tribe could be threatened. The desire to fit in and the paralyzing fear of being disliked undermine our ability to pursue the lives we want to create.

Memphis Nomads - Don't Pass Your Judgement

The second article was more enlightening, particularly when it discussed the core principles of self-worth, and how everybody judges themselves by a different yardstick. For some, academic prowess trumps everything else. For others, it’s physical appearance. It could be financial stability or sporting ability or just being a nice, caring person… we all have an internal barometer of success, and they’re all attuned to a slightly different wavelength. Which, when you think about it, makes seeing ourselves through other people’s eyes a bit of a non-starter. Someone with an athletically-attuned mindset might look at Tiberius and think, you’re getting a bit flabby, mate, isn’t it time you hit the gym? But if that doesn’t match Tiberius’s own metric… he'd rather people thought he was a good writer and a genuine human being... so what’s the point in even trying to make a comparison? 

Other people's lives
Seem more interesting
'cause they ain't mine

Modest Mouse - Other People's Lives

Gervais gets to the crux of the matter when he discusses “externalising your self-worth”, in other words, trying to conform to other people’s metrics.

Externalizing our self-worth, when it works, can yield short-term benefits. We get emotionally and chemically rewarded when we succeed. Our hypothalamus produces dopamine, often referred to as the feel-good neurotransmitter. Our self-esteem gets lifted, leaving us feeling safe, secure, and superior.

But dependency on external validation and social approval has a dark alter ego that reveals itself over time because outsourcing our self-worth undermines the basic human needs of competence, autonomy, and relatedness.

Woah. There’s quite a lot to unpack there. I fear we may have to return to Tiberius next week…

Snapshots #317: A Top Ten Liverpool Songs

In Penny Lane, there is a barber showing photographs... and they're probably easier to identify than some of the ones below.

Let's take a ferry 'cross the Mersey to hear ten songs about Liverpool and Liverpudlians...

10. They're meek & honest, but very confused.

Muddle up the letters of Meek & Honest and you get...

The Monkees - Alternative Title (Randy Scouse Git) 

9. German with a regular beat.

Gerry & The Pacemakers - Ferry Cross The Mersey

8. Bandit chasers.

Smokey was always chasing The Bandit.

Smokie - Liverpool Docks

7. The headroom is small when you're locked up inside your opium den.

Max Headroom goes Low, with Jackie (where the opium den lyric came from).

Jackie Lomax - Going Back To Liverpool

6. Used for lifting a nun's headdress.

A nun's headdress is a wimple. You might lift it with a winch.

The Wimple Winch - Rumble On Mersey Square South

5. I saw a mouse!

Where?

A mouse lived in a windmill in old Amsterdam...

Amsterdam - Does This Train Stop On Merseyside?

4. She'll feed you tea and oranges under a bright star.

Suzanne will feed you tea and oranges. Vega is a very bright star.

Suzanne Vega - In Liverpool

3. Used to work in a very cold factory.

He was the gaffer in The Icicle Works.

Ian McNabb - Liverpool Girl 

Or...

Ian McNabb - Merseybeast

2. On sale at the jewellers.

The Bangles - Going Down To Liverpool

1. Big guitar pedal.

The Wah Wah pedal was the one in question...

The Mighty Wah! - Heart as Big as Liverpool

Mersey on back here next Saturday for more Snapshots...

Snapshots #238: A Top Ten Songs About Germany

You really didn't need the extra clue of Marlene Dietrich yesterday, did you? So you definitely won't need Claudia Schiffer, above. Still, they are both famous Germans. And here are ten (some famous, some not so) songs about Germany. Das ist gut!

10. Car-phones.

The Mobiles - Drowning In Berlin

9. Man in hospital, sometimes mistaken for doctor.

The Male Nurse - A German Sleeps In My Bed

8. Merry Hit CD.

Anagram!

Mitch Ryder - Berlin

7. Lecherous and Butch.

Randy & Paul Newman (Butch Cassidy).

Randy Newman - In Germany Before The War

6. Binman cab.

Anagram!

Ian McNabb - German Soldier's Helmet Circa 1943 

5. Siblings of the silo.

The Cornshed Sisters - Dresden

4. Brokers.

The Go-Betweens - German Farmhouse

3. Fruit favoured by Christ.

The Passion(Fruit) of the Christ?

The Passions - I'm In Love With A German Film Star

2. Used to get lots of letters from readers.

Editors - Munich

1. In December, Linda scores two points.

Berlin the band with a song that mentions Berlin the city. Zwei punkte.

More Snapshots next week? Jawohl!

Hot 100 #43

Farenheit 43 are an Australian rock band who cite their influences as The Eagles, John Mayer and the Goo Goo Dolls.

Quite.

(Except, you know, I like the Eagles. And John Mayer made a couple of good tunes once upon a time. And Iris... Iris was a half-decent song. Still, the cool ones among you are, I'm sure, recoiling in horror despite all that.)

Anyway, Number 43 in our countdown caused a little bit of head-scratching from the gallery... but you still managed to come up with the following...

Lynchie started us off this week with...

The Pretenders - I Hurt You

I been crying like a woman 

Because I'm mad, mad, mad like a man 

If you'd been in the S.S. in '43 

You'd have been kicked out for cruelty

Wow. That Chrissie Hynde. Doesn't pull her punches, does she?

Rigid Digit was up next, offering these...

Jethro Tull - Hymn 43

David Crosby & Graham Nash - Page 43

Both acceptable to my ears.

Then came C, with a track that featured on Saturday Snapshots a few weeks back...

Wolf Alice - Bros

Oh

Jump that 43

Are you wild like me?

Raised by wolves and other beasts

The Swede, meanwhile, only managed one suggestion this week...

Shrimp Boat (Sam Prekop's pre-Sea and Cake band) - Drought of '43

No link, I'm afraid. Couldn't find that one anywhere. Maybe The Swede made it up... No, I'm sure he wouldn't do that.

Finally, Douglas McClaren offering one of my favourite songs by this particular band, "a timely reminder of a very fine fine group that will sadly record no more." Indeed.

Frightened Rabbit - Old, Old Fashioned

So give me the soft, soft static

Of the open fire and the shuffle of our feet

We can both get old fashioned

Do it like they did in '43

Oh, let's get old fashioned

Back to how things used to be

If I get old, old fashioned

Would you get old, old fashioned with me?

Before we get to this week's clear winner though, here's a couple more my own library threw up...

Country Joe & The Fish - Section 43 

Rufus Wainwright (and Bill Shakespeare) - Sonnet 43 

Ian McNabb - German Soldier's Helmet Circa 1943

Skint & Demoralised - 43 Degrees

(That last one is this week's runner-up - well worth a click.)

However, as I stated at the end of last week's post, there really was only one obvious winner for me this week, and Jim in Dubai was the one to correctly identify it... definitely my favourite song by this band.



Lovely stuff.

Next week... the answer to life, the universe and everything. What might that be?

The United Kingdom of Song #20: Liverpool

I went to Liverpool yesterday for the first time in my life.

As it's unlikely I'll be going back anytime soon, I thought I'd feature it here today. There are, of course, far too many popular musicians who hail from the city to mention them all here. Suffice it to say that I was slightly disappointed that I didn't see any of them during my brief visit. I'd at least have expected to bump into Sir Thumbs Aloft, gurning at me from the top of the Liver building. Next time, I guess I'll have to go to the Mull of Kintyre.

There are also far too many songs that reference Liverpool in their lyrics to ever name them all here. At least I managed to get in and out of the city without once hearing Ferry Across The Mersey. I decided to restrict myself today to just songs in my collection that feature Liverpool in the title.

Curiously, two of the best ones are by American recording artists who probably only know the city because it's where dem Beatles come from. Dey doo dough, don't dey dough?

Suzanne Vega - In Liverpool

The Bangles - Going Down To Liverpool

The next two Liverpool I found were via Wales and Ireland... both near enough, I guess, but no proper Scousers...

Manic Street Preachers - Liverpool Revisited

The Pogues - The Leaving of Liverpool

All of which leaves me with just two Liverpool songs by actual Liverpool artists... and fortunately, neither of them is by a Beatle. So let's have them both today...





Sad to say that I don't have that Little Jimmy Osmond song in my collection. I know, shame.

Saturday Snapshots #24 - The Answers

Sorry, I wasn't around on Saturday night this week to do the scoring. Answers only, then...

I'll try to give credit where credit is deserved in the comments later...


10. When Harry met Karen, he was still a virgin. A good snog sorted that out.

Harry Chapin + Karen Carpenter + The Virgin Mary...

Mary Chapin-Carpenter - Passionate Kisses

9. Crossing the snow while getting down: that would be my desire.

Skee-lo - I Wish

8. A Scottish thief  gets your sleeping quarters ready.

Ian McNabb - You Must Be Prepared To Dream

7. They failed Humpty Dumpty: the FBI were brought in to investigate their strong-arm tactics.

All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again.

Strong arm = Armstrong (Louis)

The Kingsmen were investigated by the FBI who suspected the lyrics to Louie Louie were either subversive or pornographic. They were actually just gibberish, as Todd Snider explains here.

The Kingsmen - Louie Louie

6. An open invitation to boogie from Texas.

Whitney Houston - I Wanna Dance With Somebody

5. Calling myself a testicle. ID required.

Apparently, Kloot is Dutch slang for testicle.

I Am Kloot - Proof

4. Woken up early by repeated bangs.

Dawn (featuring Tony Orlando, of course) - Knock Three Times

3. Hit in the gob with burnt feet.

Smashmouth - Walking On The Sun

2. Listening to The Knack, Toto and Hall & Oates on the wireless while cutting a Roman into four.

The Knack, Toto and Hall & Oates all recorded songs called Africa.

Latin Quarter - Radio Africa

1. Girls want them... but not every evening.

Thanks for playing. More next week.

My Top Ten Inspirational Songs (Volume 1)

In my continued effort to begin 2017 with a little positivity, here's ten of the most inspirational songs I could think of off the top of my head. The usual in-depth planning, research and deep thought (ha!) didn't go into this one. I just closed my eyes and used the Force...

It is, however, one of those lists where every track could have been a Number One. At times like these, ranking becomes arbitrarily impossible.


10. Billy Idol - Rebel Yell

A shot of pure 80s adrenaline to get us going. Billy may have been considered a cartoon punk by the purists... but I always loved cartoons.

9. Barry Manilow - I Made It Through The Rain

And if I didn't drive the musos screaming from town with Billy, I can only try a pitchfork of Barry.

This is a song which has followed me around all my life and often sprung, uninvited, into my head when times got tough. I don't know who programmes the radio station in my mind, but good on them.

When friends are hard to find
And life seems so unkind
Sometimes you feel so afraid
Just aim beyond the clouds
And rise above the crowds
And start your own parade
'Cause when I chased my fears away
That's when I knew that I could finally say
I made it through the rain...

If you don't feel the teeniest bit better after that: I can't help you.

8. Eminem - Lose Yourself

Interestingly, after compiling this list, I put "Inspirational Songs" into google and the first link was to another Top Ten which had this at Number One. The rest of the list was pretty dire though. R. Kelly was in there.

I don't automatically think of Eminem as an inspirational figure. He can take the piss pretty well and throw tantrums like a petulant 3 year old, but inspire? Yet this is the theme song to his oddly inspirational and amazingly un-egotistical fictionalised biopic, 8 Mile. It's kind of like Gonna Fly Now (the Rocky theme, but you knew that) for the hip hop generation.

7. Gene - We Could Be Kings

I'll save "We could be heroes" for another volume. It was too obvious. (Plus, I thought of this one first.) Come on, Martin, it's time for that second solo album, surely?

Believe me
It's time to tell my friends I love them
They deserve more
Than hasty delivered words of kindness
I'm sure you know that

We could be kings
This planet is ours
With luck on our side
The keys to my car
We'll storm through the city
Let's drive
Did I hear you cry?

6. Billy Bragg- Waiting For The Great Leap Forwards

My favourite T-shirt is a Billy Bragg T-shirt. I've had it years but I still wear it a lot because it's so comforting: physically and mentally. On the front, it reads simply:

The revolution is just a T-shirt away

You have to know this song well to understand that.

5. The Beautiful South - Good As Gold

On the surface, this starts out as quite a cynical, downbeat song about fighting against the tide and never getting anywhere. But its "don't give up" message soon sweeps in, making it a genuine underdog anthem. I'm not sure if Paul Heaton meant it that way; I'm never really sure how serious he is about such things. Live, this was always the highlight of a Beautiful South set which brought the band and the audience together in a big euphoric hug.

And who wouldn't want a sun-drenched, wind-swept Ingrid Bergman kiss?

4. Elbow - One Day Like This

Guy Garvey's lyrics nail it every time for me, finding beauty in the everyday and shunning cliché in favour of everyday expressions and finely tuned imagery. Random examples just from this song...

When my face is chamois-creased

Laugh politely at repeats

Cause holy cow, I love your eyes

One Day Like This is about waking up with a hangover and realising maybe you said too much to that certain person the night before... with a better result than you could ever have expected.

One day like this would see me right...

3. The Smiths - Ask

Whenever I see The Smiths dismissed as miserablists, I have to Ask the following...

What about all those generations of teenagers and 20-somethings who have been inspired and - let's face it - saved by their songs?

Can't you see that what they were really saying was: there's a hell of a lot of darkness in the world... sometimes, we have to embrace that to reach happiness?

What about the profound romanticism and HOPE conveyed by many of their most famous tunes?

Have you ever even heard Ask?

Shyness is nice
And shyness can stop you
From doing all the things in life you'd like to

I think the above three lines sum up many of my greatest regrets. (You could substitute "lack of confidence" for shyness or coyness, but it wouldn't scan as well.)

Remember: if it's not love, then it's the bomb that will bring us together.

2. James - Tomorrow

There were a number of James songs in contention for this post. There'll definitely be another one in Volume 2. James had some pretty big hits in their day. I can never understand why this wasn't their biggest. It certainly helped me through a few rough nights...

Now your grip's too strong
You can't catch love with a net or a gun
Gotta keep faith that your path will change
Gotta keep faith that your luck will change

Tomorrow...

1. Ian McNabb - You Must Be Prepared To Dream

Like I said, these songs were impossible to rank, but I put this one at Number One because it's by far the least well known... and yet it was the first I thought of. It's also the one with the most traditionally inspirational lyrics. In fact, many of the lines sound like they come from those naff posters they put up in offices and educational institutions which are supposed to drive you towards greatness (or greater productivity) but often just lead to derision and demotivation. In the hands of Ian McNabb (and Crazy Horse, on loan from Mr. Young), these trite platitudes become transcendent.

We must all be prepared to dream...



What's the most inspirational song you know? Suggestions for Volume 2 will be greatly appreciated...

My Top Ten Miracle Songs

With college enrolment upon us, it's a miracle I've had time to put together a top ten this week. Here are ten miraculous tunes - special mentions to Miracle Mile and - of course - Smokey!



10. Mike & The Mechanics - All I Need Is A Miracle

Let's start as we mean to go on this week... by wallowing in 80s nostalgia. Sometimes these Top Tens are hip and indie. Sometimes they range from the 40s to the present day. Sometimes they embrace the cutting edge (though only occasionally, to be honest). Sometimes they're guilty pleasures. Sometimes they start with Mike & The Mechanics and (depending on your cred-threshold) it's all down hill from there. As Huey said: it's hip to be square.

Mike Rutherford was never going to be the coolest man in rock - hell, he wasn't even the coolest man in Genesis (although he was, at least, cooler than Collins) but he did write a decent pop song on occasion. This benefits from Paul Young (not that one) on vocals and Roy Kinnear in the video. Go on, give me a break...

9. Ian McNabb - Livin' Proof (Miracles Can Happen)

Stepping out of The Icicle Works warmed Ian McNabb up considerably. He's recorded some amazing anthemic rock songs since, and rarely gets due credit for them. This is from his self-titled 2001 album, known as the Batman album because Ian (at least, I presume it's him) wore a pretty bad Batman costume on the cover. But not as bad as the one George Clooney wore. There were no nipples on Ian's.

8. Queen - The Miracle

The Miracle isn't one of Queen's best songs, but it was released at the height of my obsession with the band in 1989 (I was 17). It struggles under the weight of a saccharine and simplistic message - there are loads of miraculous things in the world (including The Taj Mahal, Jimi Hendrix and a cup of tea on Sunday mornings) but we're all still waiting for the miracle of world peace - but no more so than Lennon was lauded for with Imagine, Give Peace A Chance et al. In retrospect, however, we now know this was written soon after Freddie's HIV diagnosis so he was obviously seeing the world through sentimental shades. The video's conceit - 'let's get a bunch of kids to dress up as us and perform the song for us' - has been done to death in subsequent years... and it's always very, very annoying, whoever does it.

7. Bruce Springsteen - Countin' On A Miracle

Written in the wake of 9/11, the album this came from (The Rising) gave Bruce's songwriting a shot in the arm after a few years of wedded bliss had dulled his muse.

6. Eurythmics - The Miracle of Love

I was never a huge Eurythmics fan when I was a lad, with the exception of any songs they recorded with the word 'Angel' in the title. My appreciation has grown over the years, and this now sounds glorious when listened to through the headphones of nostalgia.

5. Limmie & The Family Cooking - A Walkin' Miracle

Limmie Snell doesn't get to do a whole lot on this 70s soul classic: in the video, he just wops and bops some backing vocals with his shirt unbuttoned while his sister Jimmie does all the heavy lifting. The band were from Ohio but had more hits in the UK than their home country. A Walkin' Miracle was originally recorded in 1963 by The Essex (also from the USA, not TOWIE) featuring Anita Hume.

My Top Ten - scrabbling around for obscure musical trivia on iffypedia so you don't have to.

4. Elvis Costello - Miracle Man

From Declan's debut, My Aim Is True, released in 1977 yet still sounding fresh today.

Baby's gotta have the things she wants.
You know she's gotta have the things she loves.
She's got a ten-inch bamboo cigarette holder
and her black patent leather gloves.
And I'm doing everything just tryin' to please her,
even crawling around on all fours.
Oh, I thought by now that it was gonna be easy,
but she still seems to want for more.

Been there, got the T-shirt, Elv.

3. Prefab Sprout - Life's A Miracle

Let Paddy tell you why life's a miracle...

Tell someone you love them, there's always a way
And if the dead could speak I know what they would say

To you and me... don't waste another day

2. Colin Blunstone - I Don't Believe In Miracles

The voice of the Zombies also has the voice of an angel. After the Zombies broke up towards the end of the 60s, Blunstone apparently went off to work in the insurance industry, handling burglary claims. Fortunately, he realised proper jobs are rubbish and returned to the pop charts in the year of my birth, 1972. A beautiful song: I can't imagine anyone singing it better.

1. Leonard Cohen - Waiting For The Miracle

One of Lennie's finest (helped on by his sometime songwriting parter Sharon Robinson), Waiting For The Miracle is a mystery wrapped in an enigma waiting for a bus in the desert. Its menacing tone made it perfect for the soundtrack of Natural Born Killers, but the lyric holds all kinds of fascinating ideas and observations. Is it a love song, a song about love never realised, or a song about love finally achieved? Is its protagonist an old man looking back on a life of missed opportunities or a dead man talking to us from the other side? What is the miracle, who's waiting for it, does it actually happen... or will it never, ever happen?

One more listen and you might guess the answer...





Do you believe in miracles?