Monday Morning's Toonage

The Sleaford Mods and their plea for global harmony, 'Jolly Fucker'.

Must be played LOUD  . . .  but not in front of the kids:

Monday Toonage #11

Nine days before Christmas means I have to go with something seasonal for this week's Monday Toonage, and it's a toss up between the usual suspects (sorry but the download links are long dead). It could be either of them. They are both majestic. However, this day . . . this week . . . this year, it's Graham Parker's 'Christmas is for Mugs':

Monday Toonage #10

As soon as I heard this song on Urban 75 the other day - via this viralling video - I always knew this was going to be this week's Monday Toonage, but a few silly spats on Facebook about nothing - politics, since you're wondering - and Fusspot and Drama taking turns at being sick and taking time off school, means that I need this joyous song more than ever. Monday Toonage turning into everyday of the week Toonage. (Neither Kara, nor the kids, approve.)

Maybe it was because of the above linked video, but I did initially think it was some lost Northern Soul classic from back in the day but a google search put me right, and I once again realised how out of touch I am with music released in the last five years. Usually me wallowing in back catalogues doesn't distress me too much, but the thought that I'm missing out on wonderful music like this because I'm not going out of my way to listen to newish music makes me rather miserable. Relying on occasionally stumbling across  good new music via a 30 second snippet of a good song on a quality tv drama is really not going to help me if I spend 2014 catching up on Downton Abbey, Call the Midwife and the 217 tv adaptations of Jane Austen novels in the last 15 years. I need a plan of action and, yet, why I think out of that I immediately think of the mod revivalists Secret Affair from thirty-five years ago. I need a hip nephew and niece somewhere, anywhere, to make me mixtapes but first I'll have to explain to them what a mixtape is.

Back to the toonage . . . the spurious point of this post. The song selected - which you'll already know if you clicked on the link above - is Pharrell Williams' Happy. Joyous and wonderful, and I still feel that despite the fact that apparently it's from a kids film. The gimmick is that he made a 24 hour video of the song, which involves hourly segments on YouTube kicking off with Pharrell performing the song for four and a bit minutes and then it being given over to various people shaking their stuff to the song on loop. From what I've seen, it works, but that's because it's one of those songs that when you first hear it, you want to play it over and over again. Get back to me six months from now to see if I'm still waxing lyrically about it.

The video embedded below is the official cut version of the video, which is a selection of various Pharrell performances, and sundry others lip-synching away like good ones, strutting their stuff and Jimmy Kimmel doing a brilliant impersonation of the stiffest white guy on this planet and a thousand other undiscovered planets peppered across the universe:

As it is a 24 hour video, another wee link for your consideration. Of course, I haven't watched all 24 hours but this particular performance/interpretation caught my eye of those that I have seen. Some great moves in the clip . . . and wee boy's good as well.

And the aforementioned "silly spats on Facebook about nothing", well, as long as I remind myself of this cartoon everyday that I choose to venture on the internet, then I'll be ok. Fine and beano, in fact:

Monday Toonage #9

This Monday's toonage is this great version of 'Please Stay' by Love Affair.

I write 'this version' 'cos until I stumbled across the Love Affair's version on Spotify I had no idea that it was originally recorded by The Drifters, and that it was co-written by Burt Bacharach. I'm muttering to myself, 'why wasn't this a single? It's magic'. More fool me for missing out on another sixties classic, and isn't Steve Ellis's voice absolutely fantastic?

 

Now, I'll have to hunt down the other versions by the likes of Lulu, Bay City Rollers and Marc Almond. I bet they don't even come close. I know this version's better than The Drifters original.

EDITED TO ADD:
Okay, I've just had a quick sweep of the other versions. I couldn't find Lulu's version but the Bay City Rollers, Dave Clark Five, Duffy, Mister Costello, Marc Almond - what were you thinking?, Aaron Neville. None of you even come close to the Love Affair version. It's all down to Mr Ellis's rendition. Stunning.

A mention in dispatches to Seven Letters for their reggae version of 'Please Stay'. A nice version but still not close enough.

Monday Toonage #8

Still sounds great after all these years. I think I first heard this through Big Sis having it on single. If only Big Sis hadn't taken that wrong turning and started buying those Luther Vandross albums:

Monday Toonage update

Well, that's the bugger of YouTube, I guess.

That rather sweet video of Roddy Frame performing an acoustic version of 'Spanish Horses' on - I think - Japanese TV has been deleted. I've tried to find it on other video sharing sites but no luck so far.

However, I was able to update Monday Toonage #1 with a link to the official video for 'Spanish Horses' which, now that I come to think about it, wasn't on YouTube when I originally posted a link to Roddy performing 'Spanish Horses' acoustically. 

I hope the disappearance of the acoustic version and the sudden appearance of the official video are not connected. That would be an arsey thing to do.

Monday Toonage #7

With regards to my on/off relationship with Maximo Park, I'm currently ON because of this rather nifty track from their 2007 album, Our Earthly Pleasures:

No idea what the rest of the album is like. I can't get past this track.

Cheers.

Monday Toonage #6

If you put me on the spot about what my favourite Bowie album is, I'd probably plump for his 1990  compilation album Changesbowie.

I'm not trying to be a cheeky swine. For me, Bowie, more than anything else, was a great singles artist. And the reason I pidgeon-holed in such a limiting fashion? The honest answer is that I never properly checked out his albums . . . for reasons which currently escape me. That's my loss (and possible future gain) because it means that it's only now that I discover great album tracks like 'Blackout' from his '77 Heroes album:

That's where Billy and Alan got their soundscape from. Now I understand.

Monday Toonage #5

The wonders of discovering a cracking song via an acclaimed American television drama about two meth manufacturers in New Mexico. From episode six of the first season of Breaking Bad, The Silver Seas 'Catch Yer Own Train':

Downton Abbey doesn't deliver the goods like this.

The video? Looks like a student project. Talented swines.

Monday Toonage #4

I'm currently plowing through a doorstep of an e-book that purports to be the definitive oral history of punk so, in light of that wee morsel of literary information, for Monday's Toonage I have to plump for  'Nobody's Scared', the Subway Sect's debut single from 1978:

One of the great lost punk bands from that era. And Mr Godard and assorted friends are still doing the business 35 years on. First class!

Monday Toonage #3

This week's choice was inspired by 'The Forgotten Eighties' thread over at Urban 75. The Mersey Mouth's finest three and a half minutes:

Monday Toonage #2

This song kicked in on my iPod whilst I was doing the laundry last tonight. I just had to put it on repeat for four extra listens:

According to its wiki page, 'Livin' Thing' "was named by the UK's Q as the number 1 'Guilty Pleasure' single of all time – a list designed to celebrate 'uncool' but excellent records . . ." 

'Uncool' my arse. It's a stone cold classic. If you consider 'Livin' Thing' a guilty pleasure only to be listened to when no one else is around, then you need to remove your hipster head from your arse pronto.

Actually, when you look at Q's top ten of uncool records, there's at least 6 and a half classics listed. Q's got a bare arse cheek throwing out the uncool label at anyone. When I do occasionally read Q magazine on the subway, I furtively hide it in an old issue of Workers' Hammer, so no one will point and laugh at me for paying ten dollars for a magazine that has Eric Clapton on the front cover . . . again.

Monday Toonage #1

Back in the day when I used to still buy cassingles:

Only got to number 52 in 1992, despite the fact that it's one of Aztec Camera's best ever songs and it was produced by Ryuichi Sakamoto.