Celebrity Jukebox #121: Pluto, Marlena & Mary

Another three names from my record collection heading for that great concert in the sky, starting with the wonderfully monikered Pluto Shervington, real name Leighton. Best known for his unappetising recipe for Ram Goat Liver and its follow-up, a Top Ten hit in 1976 called Ram in which a Rastafarian doing his weekly shop tries to buy cheap pork (forbidden by his religion) in order to have enough money left over to spend on weed. They don't write 'em like that anymore...

From the same era, we also say goodbye to soul / blues / jazz singer Marlena Shaw, a lady who expertly balanced a feminist stance (see her album Who Is This Bitch, Anyway?) with provocative covers like the one above. That aside, it's the music she'll be remembered for, including the theme tune to the controversial movie Looking For Mr. Goodbar, the wonderful Yu-Ma / Go Away Little Boy and a classy version of Ashford & Simpson's California Soul...

And finally, it's with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to the lead singer of the Shangri-Las, Mary Weiss. Although she mostly gave up music in the late 60s to become an interior designer, she made a triumphant return 40 years later with an acclaimed solo record...

Mary Weiss - Stop And Think It Over

However, her greatest contribution to popular culture came with the Shangri-Las, a band who took teenage melodrama to another level, providing a key influence to the next generation of stars and songwriters, including the Ramones, Blondie, the Jesus & Mary Chain and Jim Steinman.

When I say I'm in love, you best believe I'm in love, L-U-V

That's Mary with the opening line to a classic Shangri-Las song from 1965...

The Shangri-Las - Give Him A Great Big Kiss

It's also the opening line to this, from 1973...

The New York Dolls - Looking For A Kiss

And this, from 1990...

Soho - Nuthin' On My Mind

And this, from 1991...

The Nation Of Ulysses - Today I Met The Girl I'm Going To Marry

Here are a couple of nice lyrical tributes...

Voices from nowhere and voices from the larger town

Filled our head full of dreams and turned our world upside down

And there was Frankie Lymon, Bobby Fuller, Mitch Ryder

(They were rocking)

Jackie Wilson, Shangri-las, Young Rascals

(They were rocking)

John Mellencamp - ROCK In The USA

And there's only one thing I like more than a stereotypically subservient female automaton

And that's a stereotypically subservient female automaton that's unbelievably crap at its job

Cause when you're asked to play Girl Band

(I love Girl Band)

You play The Shangri-Las

(I also like The Shangri-Las)

The Cool Geenhouse - Alexa!

And here's Mary herself will a little teenage dating advice.

Back to the Shangri-Las though, and while Leader Of The Pack is their most famous song, for me they never bettered the overblown adolescent angst of this Shadow Morton masterpiece based on Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. A pop song so utterly unique that it will... never... happen... again.

Celebrity Jukebox #110: Katherine Anderson

As a member of the original line-up of The Marvelettes, Katherine Anderson Schaffner helped give Motown Records its first Number One single. She died last week, aged 79, the last of the original line-up (apart from Juanita Cowart, who was only with the band until 1963). 

The Marvelettes were Motown's first girl group, and although they would soon be overshadowed by The Supremes, they produced a string of US hits throughout the 60s (although they only charted once in the UK). None of the group's members would go on to achieve household name status like Diana Ross, so I couldn't find any songs that mentioned Katherine, or any of her bandmates. The Marvelettes, however, were a different matter.

Normally Elvis Costello would walk away with it if he threw his hat in the ring for this feature, but this is latter day Elvis, so not quite on a par with his wonder years...

From the booth in the corner

From a different perspective

Where a man plays the fool or a private detective

He wrote her name out in sugar on a Formica counter

"You could be the game that captures the hunter"

Then he went out for cigarettes

As the soundtrack played The Marvelettes

Elvis Costello & The Imposters - My Most Beautiful Mistake

Elvis is referring, of course, to a lesser-remembered Marvelettes hit...

The Marvelettes - The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game

At the beginning of the 21st Century, 80s hitmaker Terence Trent D'Arby "died", changing his name to Sananda Maitreya. "Terence Trent D'Arby was dead," he told the world, "he watched his suffering as he died a noble death. After intense pain I meditated for a new spirit, a new will, a new identity". This is what hew sounds like these days...

We are getting stronger

And we want the world to know

We are getting freer

And we've got let it show

When you were a sister

Of loneliness in Sivaville

No Goobers no Raisinettes

No Miracles no Marvelettes

When I was a solo boy

Sananda Maitreya - …And They Will Never Know

Next, a taste of what you'd find on a mixtape compiled by Helen Love. No surprises here...

I got 'Stephanie Says' and 'I'll Be There', 

Bikini Kill and the Marvelettes

Undertones, Rolling Stones, 

Sandra Bernhardt and Joey Ramone

Helen Love - Rollercoastin'

Finally today, here's David Johansen from The New York Dolls with a solo track that starts out in unexpectedly melodic fashion... but then morphs into a rocking tune that's just as good as anything he produced in his day job...

Remember how we were marveling darling, 

We were marvelous

Yeah we were marveling at The Marvelettes

Snapshots #243: A Top Ten Vietnam Songs

Many, many songs were written about the Vietnam war. Here are ten of the best...

10. Tough clue, starring Nathan Fillion.

Nathan Fillion was the star of the TV show Castle. Which you might have found a little hard.

Paul Hardcastle - 19 

9. Looks like tiny blokes.

Minutemen refers to the unit of time, but it could also mean they were really small.

Minutemen - Viet Nam

8. A riddle, found in Dover.

A Jimmy Riddle, found among the white cliffs.

Jimmy Cliff - Vietnam

7. Always had wet hair.

Because raindrops keep falling on his head.

BJ Thomas - Vietnam

6. Barbie & Ken do Manhattan.

The New York Dolls - Vietnamese Baby

5. An Innocent Baby.

Grows up to become An Innocent Man.

Billy Joel - Goodnight Saigon

4. Goes well with a sledge hammer or an ice pick. 

Cold Chisel - Khe Sahn

That's a great tune.

3. Elton & Bruce prepare for fishing.

Elton John & Bruce Lee get their hooks ready.

John Lee Hooker - I Don't Wanna Go To Vietnam

2. How do you know when a duck is getting old?

It's bill withers, of course.

Bill Withers - I Can't Write Left-Handed

1. He's representing cubs.

"Representing cubs" is another beaut from God's Gift To Anagrams...

Bruce Springsteen - Born In The USA

This Is The End, beautiful friends. But there will be more next Saturday...

My Top Ten Albums of 2014 - #9

9. Luke Haines - New York In the '70s

Another year, another crazy concept album from the erstwhile Auteur Luke Haines. Following his ode to the Saturday afternoon Wrestling of my childhood, his alternate history of the British Isles in which DJ Chris Evans is burned as a witch, and his twisted children's storybook of rock 'n' roll animals narrated by Julia Davis... comes this, an affectionate tribute to the 1970s New York punk scene led by Lou Reed, Suicide and the New York Dolls. It's another surprising turn from an artist more recently obsessed with (southern) Anglophilia, and yet it makes perfect sense when viewing Haines's career as a whole.

The great adventure begins with Alan Vega Says, in which Haines cheekily pokes fun at the Suicide songwriter's lyrical laziness...

Alan Vega says, as he gets up off the bed
"I'm gonna freeform some lyrics, man
 Straight outta my head
Marilyn and Elvis, 
And a Chevy '69
I've heard it all before
But I don't mind"

And Alan Vega says
"It's gonna be a great big hit"
Well, if Alan Vega says so,
Then it probably is
"And I'm too lazy
To write my own melodies
Here's a tune I borrowed
From the TVPs..."

One of the central conceits of the album thus becomes: Why write a chorus when you can just sing the title of the song four times in a row? (See Drone City, Trick n Kicks n Drugs, NY In The 70s, NY Stars.) Haines breaks with this tradition only twice - on Lou Reed, Lou Reed in which the title is repeated ad infinitum save one short verse, and on Cerne Abbas Man... which really should have been titled Mythic Muthafuckin' Rock & Roll to follow the rules.

Yet, despite this constant repetition, NY is a fascinating album, redolent of the era it evokes and pays homage to. And because of this constant repetition, it's also an extremely catchy earworm of a record that drills its way into your mind and refuses to crawl back out.

Then, just when you think you know what's going on... it all turns a little bit mental. On UK Punk and the aforementioned Cerne Abbas Man, Haines zigs when you expect him to zag and goes all Julian Cope on us, envisioning the famous chalk giant from a Dorset hillside stomping through the States, impressive phallus in hand...

Cerne Abbas Man steps out of the sand
Swings his giant gland into Manhattan
Three letters for priapic Dan
With his cock in his hand
R N R - rock n roll
For the original Rude Boy Man 

That's the great thing about Luke Haines: you truly never know what he's going to do next.





Next up, at #8... nothing compares to a Miley-baiting warrior woman turning raunchy sex symbol at 47.