Snapshots #376: The Snapshots Sale Is Now On!

Now that the Snapshots Sale has officially been started by Robin Zander, lead singer of Cheap Trick, you can all bag yourself a bargain - while stocks last! 

20. Tony Pollard is very confused.

Hard as it may be to believe, "Tony Pollard" is an anagram for a very young...

Dolly Parton - The Bargain Store

19. Don't tell your other half about these guys.

Keep that affair secret, whatever you do...

Secret Affair - I'm Not Free (But I'm Cheap)

18. Foibles.

The Kinks - Massive Reductions

17. Mr. Loverman (not Shabba).

He's the man from Love...

Arthur Lee - You Can Save Up To 50% But You're Still A Long Ways From Home

Short but sweet, that one.

16. Wayward Prince, initially Jesus, every one famous.

Prince Harry is rather wayward, the first letter of Jesus is J, but they're all stars...

Harry J. All Stars - Liquidator

15. Octopus Alfred wearing a hockey mask.

Alfred Molina played Dr. Octopus... Jason wore a hockey mask.

Jason Molina - It Costs You Nothing

14. Eastenders without a cause.

Cockney Rebel - Big Big Deal

13. The riddle of who's steering the ship.

Jimmy Riddle at the Helm...

Jimmy Helms - Gonna Make You An Offer You Can't Refuse

12. Four sub-par Stewarts fly high with mock King. 

They're a quartet of B-Rods in the Sky... with an Elvis who's not the King.

Elvis Costello & The Brodsky Quartet - This Offer Is Unrepeatable

11. Use your powers of deduction to describe Cilla's laughs.

You needed a lorra lorra logic to figure this one out...

Lora Logic - Wonderful Offer

10. Overweight and covered in spots.

Fats Domino - What A Price

9. Tired / Hippocampus.

Hippocampus is the Latin name for seahorses. If you're tired, you need a Sleeper.

Sleeper - Sale of the Century

Seahorses - Sale of the Century

8. Useful for chipping away at the igloo.

Cold Chisel - Cheap Wine

7. Better than Steve Mason and Gordon Anderson.

Steve Mason and Gordon Anderson were the Beta Band.

T-Bone Burnett, Steven Soles, and David Mansfield were...

The Alpha Band - Cheap Perfume

6. Senegal Intelligence Agency.

That would be the SIA...

Sia - Cheap Thrills

5. Crazy boys.

The Mad Lads - Don't Have To Shop Around

4. An insult to the Irish, and a Young man who talks to walls.

Faron Young sang Hello Walls, Mick is a derogatory term for the Irish...

Mick Farren - Half Price Drinks

3. Desperate / not depressive.

Desperate (Steely) Dan and the Manics (not depressives).

Manic Street Preachers - Everything Must Go

Steely Dan - Everything Must Go

2. What a Doctor and a Baker do at the bus stop.

Tom (Baker) Waits...

Step right up
Everyone's a winner!
Bargains galore!
That's right you too can be the proud owner of...
The quality goes in before the name goes on!

Tom Waits - Step Right Up

1. Get her out of the other way and you'll hear a crazy organ playing in your new build home. 

Remove "her" from "other way" and you get Otway. A crazy organ might be a wild willy... in a Barrett home.

John Otway & Wild Willy Barrett - Really Free

The Snapshots Sale Must End New Year's Day! Join us then for our final crazy reductions!

Snapshots #328: A Top Ten Songs About Different Types Of Fish

Something very fishy was going on yesterday morning. 

What did you catch?

10. In the end, he's pretty selfish.

He's pretty selFISH.

Fish - Goldfish & Clowns

Don't say I don't give you extra clues. We had Richard Herring yesterday too!

9. She'll do little to strip the raincoat from Cold War paranoia.

Eliza Dolittle...

Joseph McCarthy was in charge of Cold War paranoia. Take away his mac and he's just Carthy.

Eliza Carthy - Herring Song

8. The best possible, according to Kenny.

Kenny Everett always did things in the best possible taste.

Taste - Catfish

7. Named after their "black" German guitarist.

Brinsley Schwarz - Do The Cod

6. From Iceland, where they mix an oilier Martini.

"Oilier Martini" was an anagram for this Icelandic singer...

Emiliana Torrini - Tuna Fish

5. Sure to be run over.

Middle Of The Road - Soley Soley

OK, so the fish is a sole. But I still couldn't resist this one.

4. Get Marilyn to pay for it.

Bill Monroe!

Bill Monroe - Pike County Breakdown

3. Sounds like she's saying no to a tree, a bomb or a Red record label.

Neneh Cherry (featuring Michael Stipe) - Trout

2. Could be one of the Simpsons.

Not Homer's clan, a different Simpson...

Orange Juice - Salmon Fishing In New York

1. They often get broken.

Sadly, hearts gets broken all the time.

Heart - Barracuda

A tough haul this week... though I did have a few more caught in the net...

Half Man Half Biscuit - Grafting Haddock In The George

Tom Waits - Swordfishtrombone

Baby Lemonade - Secret Goldfish

The Heart Throbs - Tuna

Radiohead - Packt Like Sardines In a Crushd Tin Box

Mansun - Drastic Sturgeon

Something far less fishy next Saturday.

  

Product Placement #21: Maxwell House

At the end of the first proper date I ever went on, driving my dad's car and feeling all so grown up, I dropped the lucky young lady back at her house... and she asked me in for coffee. I didn't drink coffee, but I took her up on the offer, because I'd seen enough films to know that coffee could be code for something else. Turns out she just meant coffee, and it was horrible instant yuck. I seriously suspect it was Maxwell House. I drank it, then she told me her brother would be home soon, and I left. The next time I saw her, she'd got back together with her former boyfriend. 

Nowadays, I drink a lot of coffee, but I've never been a fan of instant. When I was a kid, I drank tea, because that's what my mum drank. By the time I started work, I was drinking buckets of tea every day. Then I started working nights and tea wasn't enough. There was a crappy Klix Coffee Machine in the kitchen at work, and I started drinking it purely to help me stay awake. I didn't like the taste, but there's a theory that you have to taste something 15 times before you can properly decide if you like it or not. Machine coffee was still preferable to the jar of Maxwell House behind the kettle. I've no idea what Victoria Wood saw in it.

Here are some other people who enjoy Maxwell House far more than I ever did...

Manfred Mann & Mike Hugg - The Maxwell House Shake

Presumably they needed the money.

I had too much coffee today

My mind's going blank, can't keep track of what's happening

Subb - Me & My Maxwell House

And I thought I was a caffeine addict!

Marshall Tucker takes his Maxwell House can fishing... but there's no coffee in it.

Well, I'm goin' down to the river

I got a cane pole in my hand

Got my red worms in a Maxwell House coffee can

I'm gonna sit under a shade tree on a riverbank where it's cool

I'm gonna close my eyes and dream and let the cork bob away my blues

The Marshall Tucker Band - Bob Away My Blues

While this guy uses it as a way of convincing his fans he's a man of the people...

And we like cold keg beer and fixin' up trucks

Old bird dogs and the woman we love

Maxwell House steamin' out of a coffee cup

We say our prayers, send 'em to the sky

Bust our backs, barely getting by

Carolina to California up to Illinois

Yeah, there's guys like us

Blue collar boys

Luke Combs - Blue Collar Boys

Maxwell House coffee was named after its first big customer - The Maxwell House Hotel in Nashville. President Theodore Roosevelt reportedly said that the coffee there was "good to the last drop", and that became the company's advertising slogan. 

This is the 'Coffee Blues'. I likes a certain brand:

Maxwell's House, it's good till the last drop

Just like it says on the can, I used to have a girl

Cookin' a good Maxwell House, she moved away

Some said to Memphis and some said to Leland

But I found her, I wanted her to cook me

Some good Maxwell's House. I understand

If I can get me just a spoonful of Maxwell's House

Do me much good as two or three cups this other coffee

Mississippi John Hurt - Coffee Blues

The Maxwell House Hotel had a chequered history, housing soldiers during the civil war, being reputedly haunted following a violent murder, and hosting the first national meeting of the Ku Kluc Klan. It was destroyed by fire on Christmas night 1961, and later demolished.

Here's some "coffee-drenched death metal" from Stockholm...

Perkulatory - The Haunted Maxwell House Hotel

After that, your ears probably need a rest. So settle down and listen to some late night Tom Waits... what a writer!

A cab combs the snake, tryin' to rake in that last night's fare

And a solitary sailor who spends the facts of his life like small change on strangers

Paws his inside pea coat pocket for a welcome twenty-five cents

And the last bent butt from a package of Kent's

As he dreams of a waitress with Maxwell House eyes

And marmalade thighs with scrambled yellow hair

Her rhinestone-studded moniker says "Irene"

As she wipes the wisps of dishwater blonde from her eyes

Snapshots #306: A Top Ten Romeo Songs (Without Juliet)

This is Romeo Beckham.

I know. I also despair.

Here are ten far more interesting Romeos... all yet to find (or having already lost) their Juliet.

10. Going underground with Johnson & White.

Jack Johnson & Jack White are in the basement.

Basement Jaxx - Romeo

9. Eric's pal goes Greene.

Eric's pal was Ernie. Graham was Greene.

Ernie Graham - Romeo & The Lonely Girl

8. Not Billy Joel's kind of girl.

She preferred downtown.

Petula Clark - Romeo

7. Help you see in the rain. 

The Wipers - Romeo

That's great.

6. IT Jobs, dedicated to Mr. Reynolds.

Steve Jobs was in IT. The dedication was "for Burt".

Steve Forbert - Romeo's Tune

5. I was Mott.

Anagram!

Tom Waits - Romeo Is Bleeding

4. Crime boss.

Mr. Big - Romeo

3. Russian ballet dancers.

The Bolshoi - Romeo In Clover

2. Do Not Disturb.

Sleeper - Romeo Me

1. TV Channel... and the Chipmunks.

Dave was the channel. Alvin goes with the Chipmunks.

Dave Alvin - Romeo's Escape

But soft - what lie through yonder window breaks? It is next Saturday, and the Snapshots will be back...

Snapshots #302: A Top Ten Dollar Price Songs

I've been dying to feature The Six Million Dollar Man on TV On The Radio, but I haven't been able to find any decent tunes that mention him. (A lot of tunes do, just no decent ones. Unless you know different...?) 

Anyway, here's the man with the Bionic Eye, which the interweb tells me "has a 20:1 zoom lens and infrared capabilities", so there must be a camera in there too, right? And here are ten songs which also proclaim their value in dollars...

10. Stuck in your bottom, and in Iowa itself. 

Stuck in your bottom, and in Iowa itself. 

Tom Waits - $29.00

9. The Prodigy, in a patriarchy. 

Prodigies are young geniuses (google it - it's not genii). In a patriarchy though, they would only recognise the smart boys. Although the lads don't even know how to use capital letters, so what hope is there?

boygenius -$20

This one was specially for CC.

8. Discotheque that only plays A Horse With No Name.

That would be a Club that only plays Music by America.

American Music Club - $1,000,000 Song

7. Goes with Vera and Betty.

Aloe Vera and Black Betty...

Aloe Blacc - I Need A Dollar

6. Slain rain.

One of Jack White's many diversions...

The Dead Weather - Three Dollar Hat

5. Pig home, inventory, spasms.

Sty + list + tics...

Stylistics - $7000 & You

4. Where a Flashy actor goes to buy sable. 

I've not been a big fan of recent movies based on DC Comics, but I thought The Flash was OK... despite being a box office bomb. It was good to see Michael Keaton back in the Batsuit, and the Nicolas Cage cameo was worth the ticket price alone. Controversial star Ezra Miller was rather irksome though... I doubt they'll be back.

If Ezra wanted to buy some sable though, they'd probably go to the fur man.

Ezra Furman - Maraschino Red Dress $8.99 at Goodwill

3. Throw him on a bonfire with Joni.

Guys are made to be thrown on the bonfire. Never do that to Joni Mitchell.

Guy Mitchell - A Dime And A Dollar

2. Mrs. Paragons gets in a kerfuffle with Raoul Shimmery.

Two anagrams, un-kerfuffled...

Gram Parsons & Emmylou Harris - $1000 Wedding

A grand probably wouldn't even pay for the dress these days.

1. Tommy, in chains.

It never ceases to amaze me that we're now healthily into the 300s, and I'm still discovering big name artists who have never appeared in Snapshots before. Even more incredible is when it's artists I actually like. 

Above is a young Vincent Furnier, and his puppy, before he adopted his more distinctive stage persona...

Tommy Cooper + Alice In Chains =

Alice Cooper - Billion Dollar Babies

I bet you a dollar you come back for more next Saturday...