Celebrity Jukebox #55: Robert Redford

Distophia - Robert Redford

"He's a regular Robert Redford..."

You've certainly made your mark on the world when your name becomes an idiom, synonymous with charm, charisma and roguish good looks. And when songwriters want a short-cut metaphor for all of the above... Robert Redford is an obvious name-drop.

You're just a Coca Cola cowboy

You got an Eastwood smile and a Robert Redford hair

But you walked across my heart like it was Texas

You taught me how to say I just don't care

Mel Tillis - Coca Cola Cowboy

I don't mean to criticize the girls at all

'Cause I'm no Robert Redford even overhauled

But we all picture in our minds a girl that looks just right

Now ain't it funny, ain't it strange the way a man's opinions change

When he starts to face that lonely night

Mickey Gilley - Don't The Girls All Get Prettier At Closing Time

I could get myself a nose job, I could diet for a year

But I'll never be Robert Redford 'cause I'm much to fond of beer

Please don't misunderstand me, it's not love I'm trying to buy

It's just I got all this here money and I'm a pretty ordinary guy

Dr. Hook - The Millionaire

Now Lord knows you ain't a saint, and Robert Redford you ain't

But you got a heart of gold through and through

And when it comes to lovin', that old, ooh, kissin' and a-huggin'

Ain't nobody else ever gonna do

Reba McEntyre - I Don't Need Nothin' You Ain't Got

That's all right but I wish they'd confuse me 

With somebody like Burt Reynolds or Robert Redford, 

All them guys that really look like me

Red Simpson - My Name Is Simpson

Jean-Paul Belmondo?

Alain Delon? No!

Clint Eastwood? J'ai dit no!

Paul Newman?

Robert Redford? J'ai dit no!

Sparks - Je M'Appelle Russell

Frank Sinatra and a Rolls Royce

A great set of wheels and a golden voice

Robert Redford is the shiniest star on the silver screen

And don't forget about Michelangelo and New York

The biggest apple and the greatest art

They're the very best I've ever seen

Charley Pride - The Best There Is

I get no pleasure when I'm going through the motions of my mediocre day-to-day

I'm just an actor, just like Robert fucking Redford

When I say those stupid words that they expect me to say

Everclear - Misery Whip

She likes me for me

Not because I look like Tyson Beckford

With the charm of Robert Redford

Oozing out my ears

But what she sees

Are my faults and indecisions

My insecure conditions

And the tears upon the pillow that I shed

Blessid Union of Souls - Hey Leonardo (She Likes Me for Me)

You think that love's

What's on that silver screen

Raquel and Redford are the tops

You've been misled

By all those movies you've seen

Al Jarreau - Love Is Real

I'm Redford, you're Newman on the take

You're a 7.6 earthquake

The Donkeys - Don't Know Who We Are

None of those really compare with the greatest ever lyrical reference to Bobby Redford, courtesy of... Lee Majors?!?

I might fall from a tall building

I might roll a brand-new car

'Cause I'm the unknown stuntman

That made Redford such a star

Strangely though, that wasn't the first song which popped into my mind when I heard about the passing of Robert Redford. Although some might argue this is more of a Paul Newman song... still, for me it marks a sunset for Sundance...

Conversations With Ben #30: Bobby Ewing In The Shower

Louise sent me the above image, which she'd found on the book of faces, in response to the news that David Cameron is rising from the dead, like a Marvel super-villain, ready to resume the reign of terror and destruction that led to his previous downfall. I mean, he's going to have to go some to beat completely destroying the country, but bad guys always like to think big, don't they?

Anyway, I was rather amused by the aged cultural reference, so I shared the image with my work colleagues on our Whatsapp group. Being teachers, they're a bunch of politically-minded so-and-sos who regularly carp on about the malevolent excesses of the Tory regime, so I figured they'd find it funny.

Only one person got the joke though. Everyone else just thought I was sharing a picture of a naked David Cameron. If they didn't think I was weird already...

Neil Young - Old Man

In despair, I decided to consult another young person about my faux pas. So I messaged Ben.

I should also point out that a few days earlier, I'd sent Ben a disgusted message regarding the Hollywood remake of 80's TV favourite The Fall Guy, starring Ryan 'as much charisma as a plank of 2x4' Gosling in the Lee Majors role and Aaron 'Oh my god, why does this guy keep getting work?' Taylor-Johnson as Howie Munson. To say I was horrified at this desecration of my childhood is a gross understatement.

Ben replied that he'd never heard of The Fall Guy. Worse still, he was less than complimentary when I sent him a video of the opening credits featuring the classic Lee Majors-sung theme tune. Frankly, he's lucky I was still talking to him.

Popular culture no longer applies to me.

Art Brut - Bad Weekend

Rol: As a 30-something who's never seen The Fall Guy, do you understand the cultural reference in this? 

Ben: David Cameron at uni with his pig-lover in the shower?

So you're not aware of Bobby Ewing in the shower and what that represents?

Dallas or Dynasty? Is that the who shot JR bit?

I'm aware of these things existing in a loose form.

Or is it the this is all a dream bit?

Dallas. They killed Bobby off. He was dead for a whole series. Ratings dived, so they brought him back to life. The explanation was, yes, the previous season had all been a dream. His resurrection happened with his wife waking up and finding him in the shower.

I kinda got there with some help.

Did the ratings return?

For a while, yes. But a lot of people were pissed off that they'd watched a whole season that was just a dream.

I'm sure I had my dinner watching something on TV
There's not, I think, a single episode of Dallas that I didn't see

Abba - The Day Before You Came

Thanks though. You answered my question about how well this would be understood by a young person.

Hate to break it to you, but as I'm in my mid 30s, I'm not sure I class as a "young person".

You'll always be a young person to me.

Someone asked me, "Why is youth
Wasted on the rude and uncouth?
Blinded on cheap vermouth
A would be poet in Duluth
Long on time, short in the tooth
Fantasies of John Wilkes Booth
Come back when you're younger

Steve Wynn - Younger

See you had that, but I grew up in the early days of the internet where shock tactics were the shared things that are now cultural flagstones. Ask anyone my age what "goatse", "lemon party" or "meat spinner" are and you'll get nostalgia for an internet before it became corporatised. None of those are pleasant things but it represents the wider culture of the internet as a mysterious entity prior to it becoming standardised. The rise of these standardised sites can be attributed to places like blogger, Tumblr and myspace who sought tohomogenise how the internet looked and was consumed before the rise of the true current social media spaces. You just got shit telly.

That last line is a complete reduction, but I felt it hit as a good punchline.

Blow up your TV
Throw away your paper
Go to the country
Build you a home
Plant a little garden
Eat a lot of peaches
Try an' find Jesus on your own

John Prine - Spanish Pipedream

Don't google those things by the way.

I won't. But I feel like I've just seen a Lynchian glimpse behind a curtain I don't want to look behind.

Was it like the dark web?

I think dark web is exaggerating quite a bit, yet excessive gore, violence and stuff of a sexual nature was pretty much everywhere. But it wasn't for consuming content the way we use the internet now, it was just for shock. If that makes sense?

So people weren't hunting it down for kicks, it was just randomly placed to cause upset?

Elvis Presley - How the Web Was Woven

I spent a lot of time online in the early days of the Web. Why didn't I stumble across this shit?

The websites were passed along like folklore. The internet wasn't monetised at that point so there was no impetus to drive traffic.

Was this widely shared by your whole generation though? I wonder if it's comparable to the collective consciousness from my generation regarding the TV shows of our youth, even the ones we didn't watch.

Because there was far less choice, there was much more shared cultural knowledge back then.

These things were the early version of memes. Links sent to others in msn messenger, written on each other's schoolbooks, typed into a friend's computer in the computer room at school (before siteblocking).

Along with the Salad Fingers and Burnt Face Man stuff. They were all shared the same way those early emails used to contain funny pictures. Or the earliest meme: "on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog".

Like sharing pages from the porn mags we found in the woods?

Exactly.

Bis - Dial-Up Internet Is the Purest Internet

Because you have to remember, my generation is the one that grew up in the world you mentioned whilst also growing up in the early days of widespread internet, meaning the habits from the former informed the way we used the internet.

Sam's generation however will experience a curated internet.

Not quite the same then. I'm consistently surprised by the lack of a shared cultural knowledge by today's teenagers. Like how many of them don't know who Homer Simpson or Indiana Jones or Darth Vader are. I know they're all older generation examples, but I knew about John Wayne and Humphrey Bogart when I was a kid. Everything is fractured now, little pockets of knowledge but very few shared cultural touchstones.

Look, the internet now is curated along two distinct lines... 

1) a company wishing to monopolise visits to the internet (i.e the platform). 

2) content curated by the ways in which Sam will view the internet ( i.e. logarithms).

I feel like you're just sending me pages from your thesis now.

Soft Cell - Monoculture

My last point ties directly into yours though: the internet now is so curated towards likes and viewing habits (down to how long on average we stay on a single image or video, so as to then recommend more of the same to keep us engaged) that a level of shared culture isn't possible anymore.

Is this why nobody reads my blog?

The internet doesn't show you content about what you *think* you want to see anymore. It gives you stuff that you *do* engage with (positively or negatively). It needs you to stay engaged. And the data which it uses to provide you with this is based on hundreds of thousands of hours of billions of people's viewing habits. 

Shake - Culture Shock

So whilst it sounds utopian, it's not driven by enjoying, just engaging. You take a second to read how terrible that Daily Mail headline is on your Google news feed? You engaged with it. It'll show you more. But it needs time to work out why you engaged with it. So it shows you soft politically biased things in that area to see if you engage with those. If you do, you might get some alt-right stuff. It knows you're male based on how you view and men engage with alt right stuff more than women. Not engaging with that stuff enough, it'll move to testing your engagement with things until it finds where you are. 

This is how so many young men end up engaged with alt right stuff. Once they begin, it'll start flooding their feeds with it. Cars - sports cars - luxury cars - alpha mindset - Andrew Tate. Comic books - whining about certain aspects -  woke comics nowadays - anti woke - Andrew Tate. And it's not set up to force people into certain beliefs, but because of how we engage with the internet and the "need" to monetise it, it's the conclusion. 

Populist beliefs have become far stronger across the western world since the late 90s and increase year on year. That means it gets engagement so is viewed more. And on the internet, views = money, so notoriety and fame are the same thing. As a result, people who want to be successful express extreme opinions. Those get views. People want to make money, so they replicate those views.

They Might Be Giants - Youth Culture Killed My Dog

By no means am I saying Sam is destined to end up with those views. You're too decent a person and I know he'll learn from you. But he will be exposed to it. A lot of it. Without ever searching for it. His friends will. And some will identify with it. And people are trying to blame particular websites or certain heads of the hydra instead of dealing with having to have difficult conversations with their kids.

Is this why nobody reads my blog?

It's more that it's not monetisable, so the people who do read it or come across it will always be a small group, but they will have a level of interest in the subject matter that equals yours.

I was hoping for a better punchline than that.

Celebrity Jukebox #38: Raquel Welch

I think it's fair to say that Raquel Welch must be the oldest actress I've ever featured here. After all, she has been acting since One Million Years BC. 

When Stephen King wrote the novella that The Shawshank Redemption was based on, the poster on Andy DuFrense's cell wall was Rita Hayworth. In the movie, to better show the passage of time, he has three posters: Hayworth, Marilyn... and the iconic image above of Raquel Welch in One Million Years BC, surely one of the most famous posters ever printed... after that one of the tennis player scratching her arse. Iffypedia tells us "Welch helped transform America's feminine ideal into its current state", a statement which is as questionable as it is disputable. To her credit, Welch herself once said, "I was not brought up to be a sex symbol, nor is it in my nature to be one. The fact that I became one is probably the loveliest, most glamorous and fortunate misunderstanding". 

Whatever you think of Raquel Welch, it's fair to say that poster may well have decorated the bedroom walls of many of the songwriters below...

The Violent Femmes - Raquel

Not actually about Raquel Welch, just a girl with the same first name as her. However, Ms. Welch does get a mention... and extra points for rhyming her surname with "squelch".

Raquel.

I am not well.

Raquel.

What is this feeling that 

I'm not trying to squelch?

I don't know your last name,

I just know it's not Welch.

No question about this one though, from the man who wrote The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan...

Shel Silverstein - Raquel Welch

I been collectin' matches for 20 years or more

I got about a hundred thousand books of 'em,

Sittin' in my end table draw

So that if Raquel Welch comes knockin' at my door

And asks me for a match, for her cigarette...

I'll be ready

And there can be little doubt that Gruff Rhys had Ms. Welch in mind when he wrote this for his Super Furries side project...

Neon Neon - Raquel

Oh Raquel

You've really got the power over me

Oh Raquel

Your silhouette's an hourglass indeed

I saw you as a movie star

And now you're riding in my car

Oh Raquel

You fill me with inertia, yes you do

Oh Raquel

I know this when I touch you, on a balloon

Your daddy came from Bolivia

Your Irish mother gave you star

Shine on

(In case you're wondering, Gruff did his research. Raquel's parents are Bolivian daddy Armando Carlos Tejada Urquizo and Irish mummy Josephine Sarah Hall.)

OK, so those are the only songs I found with Raquel in the title. What about lyrical nods? 

Deep breath...

Yoko Ono - We're All Water

Yayayayayayayayaya!

Oh, sorry... I mean...

There may not be much difference

Between Chairman Mao and Richard Nixon

If we strip them naked

There may not be much difference

Between Marilyn Monroe and Lenny Bruce

If we check their coffins

There may not be much difference

Between Raquel Welch and Jerry Rubin

If we hear their heartbeat 

Deep.

Slightly less deep, yet somehow far less annoying, is the fact that Raquel Welch shares a birthday with Freddie Mercury, Werner Herzog and...

Loudon Wainwright III - Birthday Boy

I am the birthday boy

Today's my day, mine to enjoy

I am the birthday king

Today of me I sing

Fred Mercury is dead and gone

Raquel Welch continues on

Werner Herzog's doing fine

It's their birthdays and mine

Then comes the "I'll have what she's been smoking" category...

Tori Amos - Glory Of The 80s

I had the Story of O in my bucket seat

Of my wannabe Mustang

Auditioning for reptiles in their

Raquel Welch campaign

Glories of the 80s, you said

"I'm not afraid to die" I said,

"I don't find that remotely funny, even

On this space cake high"

Yeah, I'm not going to try to explain that.

Oh, look, here's a song with Two Parts! You have to scroll through to the beginning of Part 2, around the 4 minute mark, to hear a brief reference to Raquel... but I think it's just a playful nickname for Freddie's co-singer.

Freddie McKay - In Times Of Trouble

How about a word from Mr. Moonlighting himself?

Al Jarreau - Love Is Real

You think that love's

What's on that silver screen

Raquel and Redford are the tops

You've been misled

By all those movies you've seen

Or perhaps you'd prefer something from the first Finnish band to ever chart in the UK?

Hanoi Rocks - Futurama

My little lover's gonna be another copy of Raquel Welch, 

I'll build her a house and a maid named Jill

And spend the rest of my life down in Beverly Hills

Or a Christian Rock Supergroup? (Aren't they all?)

Lost Dogs - Carry Me

Remember Raquel Welch in that fur bikini

The dinosaur bird swooping down

Loana, the fair one, flailing and screaming

Soon as her feet left the ground

Sometimes there’s nowhere to hide

Just as well to surrender and go for the ride

Loana was the name of the character Raquel played in One Million Years BC. Clearly they're not Christian fundamentalists, otherwise they'd be rubbishing the film's depiction of dinosaurs which, clearly, never existed.

Oh, and here's our token Mark Kozelek track for this week...

Mark Kozelek and Sean Yeaton - The Reasons I Love You

The reason I love you number eight

Is because we rarely rarely fight and we get along great

And you're prettier than me, than Raquel Welsh or Sharon Tate

And that's the reason I love you number eight

All of which leads us to two very clear winners for today's Raquel-love-in. 

The first... is only... one of the greatest TV theme tunes ever written...

I've never spent much time in school

But I taught ladies plenty

It's true, I hire my body out for pay, hey hey

I've gotten burnt over Sheryl Tiegs, blown up for Raquel Welch

But when I end up in the hay, it's only hay, hey hey

And the second... is Loretta. 'Nuff said.

I'm glad that Raquel Welch just signed a million dollar pact

And Debbie's out in Vegas workin' up a brand new act

While the TV's showin' newlyweds, a real fun game to play

But here in Topeka, the screen door's a bangin'

The coffee's boilin' over and the wash needs a hangin'

One wants a cookie and one wants a changin'

And one's on the way

Bruce... Lee

One of my favourite songs on that new Bruce Springsteen album is this...



But it occurred to me yesterday... it's really just Bruce's version of this old favourite...



There are no new ideas...

My Top Ten TV Theme Tunes (Vocals)

Compiling my Top Ten Instrumental TV Themes was a pretty easy job. Most of you agreed with at least some of them. Much harder has been the long hours of consideration I've given my Top Ten Sung TV Themes. It'll probably prove a far more divisive list too. But as with everything else on this blog, it's just one man's opinion, reflecting my age and youthful viewing habits, and I don't claim it to be worth any more than the cyberspace it's written on.

To make the job easier, I had to draw up a few rules...

1) Only original compositions were allowed, i.e. songs that were written and recorded specifically for the show. So I haven't allowed the theme to The Sopranos (Alabama 3) or The Wire (Tom Waits) or The Wonder Years (Joe Cocker) or True Detective (The Handsome Family) much as I might like the songs in question.

2) No kids' TV shows - I might save those for a separate list. The hardest thing of all was banning the Spider-Man theme tune from this list.

(Maybe I'll do a Top Ten for each of the above one day.)

I rejected the following memorable theme tunes because...

The Protectors : Avenues & Alleyways is a great Tony Christie romp, but it's absolutely the only thing I remember about this show... and then I discovered it was produced by Gerry Anderson, which I'm afraid was a mark against it. At least it didn't feature puppets.

Red Dwarf : Always makes me think of Landslide Of Love by Transvision Vamp.

M*A*S*H* Though I remember it as the sung version of Suicide is Painless, they only ever used the instrumental on TV.

Ditto Twin Peaks, which Julee Cruise only sang in the show, never on the opening credits.

All of which leaves me with this rather odd collection. A few of these I would count as great TV shows. The rest were nowhere near as good as their theme songs...


10. The Dukes of Hazzard (Waylon Jennings)

While many of my schoolmates were big fans of The Dukes of Hazzard, I never really got the appeal. You can't argue with a Waylon Jennings theme tune though, composed specially for the show.

9. Happy Days (Pratt & McClain)

Goodbye grey skies, hello blue... if ever there was a show that convinced us 50s America was as good as it got, Happy Days was it. Eyyyyyy!

The theme song had a rather convoluted history. Written by film & TV composers Gimble & Fox, it was originally recorded by session musician Jim Haas, although for the show's first two seasons the song was only used on the closing credits: Bill Haley's Rock Around The Clock was the opener. By the time I started watching the show regularly, Happy Days the song was all-encompassing. It was re-recorded and became a hit record for Pratt & McClain. Then Fonzie jumped over a shark on water skis and it was all over.

8. The Greatest American Hero (Joey Scarbury)



I vaguely remember watching this cheesy superhero action comedy on a Saturday morning when I was a kid, but even though I only saw a few episodes, the theme tune really stuck in my head. Up until compiling this post, I was under the mistaken belief that the song was composed and performed by John Sebastian of The Lovin' Spoonful, but it turns out it was actually written by A Team composer Mike Post (with lyrics by Stephen Geyer) and sung by Joey Scarbury.

(John Sebastian sang the theme to Welcome Back, Kotter... a great song, but I don't remember that show ever airing in the UK.)

7. Moonlighting (Al Jarreau)

I've written before about my deep love of Moonlighting, and how it led me to buy my first ever single. Al Jarreau's theme tune sounds very 80s soul now, but it's impossible for me to hear it without remembering my obsession.

At least they didn't use the Leo Sayer song...

6. It's Garry Shandling's Show (Bill Lynch)



Around the time of the late Garry Shandling's pre-Larry Sanders sitcom, I was really into postmodernism. I was a teenager. It was a phase. Anyway, I found much to appreciate about a sitcom character who knew he was in a TV show - knowledge he didn't share with his supporting cast. The theme tune reflected this perfectly...

"This is the theme to Garry's show, the opening theme to Garry's show, this is the music that you hear as you watch the credits..."

5. The Monkees (The Monkees)

The one that blurs the rules a little bit. Was it a pop song? Was it a hit record? Were they actually a group? Does it matter? The Monkees were brilliant.

4. Minder (Dennis Waterman)



"Write the theme tune, sing the theme tune..." What a true Renaissance Man was Dennis Waterman. Really though, if you want a theme tune to get you revved up for a big night out, it's hard to beat a good strong blast of "I could be so good for you!"

Of course, as previously discussed here, Dennis didn't actually write the theme tune. Never mind. He'll still love you like you want him to...

3. Monk (Randy Newman)



When I first heard this theme, I scoured the net for Randy Newman's original, convinced there must be a full length version out there to enjoy. Apparently not, 90 seconds is all you get.

People think I'm crazy, 'cause I worry all the time
If you paid attention, you'd be worried too
You better pay attention
Or this world we love so much might just kill you
I could be wrong now, but I don't think so
It's a jungle out there

Once upon a time, I almost convinced myself I was a cross between Adrian Monk and Gregory House (whose dull Massive Attack theme failed to make either list). Yes, I was 'Mouse'. But certainly not 'Hunk'.

Monk wasn't a big hit in the UK, but it lasted 8 series in the States and I watched them all, wherever the BBC buried it in the schedules. It was easygoing, feelgood TV at its best. Monk was a genius detective who nobody took seriously because he was seriously OCD - this was a high concept pitch (Sherlock Holmes meets Rain Man with a splash of Columbo) that hit gold through Tony Shalhoub's sensitive, layered performance. I still miss it. 

2. Cheers (Gary Portnoy & Judy Hart Angelo)



Cheers remains my all time favourite sitcom - because it was the bar where everybody knew your name. There's a theory that great British sitcoms involve situations no one would ever want to be in, and all the characters want to escape from - whereas great American sitcoms are exactly the opposite. Who wouldn't want a bar like Cheers at the end of their street? Anytime you liked, you could pop in for a cold one, share a friendly greeting with Woody, talk shit with Norm and Cliff, watch Sam hitting on some babe or squabbling with Diane or Rebecca, hear Frasier spouting his pompous opinions... and just feel welcome. "You wanna go where you can see troubles are all the same..." Don't you?

If you've never heard it before, here's the full-length version.

1. The Fall Guy (Lee Majors!)



I probably have more affection for The Fall Guy than is healthy. Is that down to Lee Majors and his sardonic eyebrow? Douglas 'Howie Munson' Barr and his unique brand of tree trunk acting? Heather Thomas, who stirred many a pre-adolescent boy in strange and unprecedented ways?

Or could it all come down to this song...?

Well I'm not the kind to kiss and tell

but I've been seen with Farrah.

I've never been with anything less than a nine, so fine.

I've been on fire with Sally Field

gone fast with a girl named Bo.

But somehow they just don't end up as mine.

It's a death defying life I lead I take my chances.

I'd die for a living in the movies and TV.

But the hardest thing I ever do is watch my leading ladies

kiss some other guy while I'm bandaging my knee.

I might fall from a tall building 

I might role a brand new car.

'Cause I'm the unknown stuntman

who made Redford such a star.

I never spent much time in school but I taught ladies plenty.

It's true I hire my body out for pay. Hey Hey!

I've gotten burned over Cheryl Tiegs

blown up for Raquel Welch.

But when I wind up hittin' the hay, it's only hay. Hey Hey! 

I might fall from a tall building

or Tarzan from a vine.

'Cause I'm the unknown stuntman

who made Eastwood look so fine.

Over to you guys. What did I miss?