Dexys Midnight Runners were so much than Come On Eileen . . . (please bear in mind that I originally posted this song choice on an American person's timeline on Facebook.)
Dexys Midnight Runners - Let's Make This Precious (Live Shaftesbury Theatre 1982)
What the fuck is this hippy shit? These sort of 'challenges' always piss me off big time. I do not have a scooby what to pick. Maybe I'll pick 'Frenzy' by The Ex, because I've never found the lyrics online and I'm still not 100% sure what the lyrics actually are. I can't just about make out 'Sit Down Strikes', and after that I'm just making shit up every time I listen to. It's still a stonking tune, though.
This so easily could have been my choice of song for Day 11. Easily in my top five of songs of all time, but it has to be the demo version because that was the version that I first heard on the Snap compilation.
Nice try, FBI. What next: a song with my social security numbers in the lyrics? Fuck it, you already know that I'm old, so I'll just 'fess up.
Love this song but not the radio version. If it doesn't have the 30-second solo guitar intro, I'll switch it off and find the album version and play it instead. More is more:
PS - Kara's friend? The person who I nicked this Song Challenge from? She named her eldest daughter after this song.
Did you see my previous post in this music challenge about dancing? You think for a minute that I won't dance in public but I'm ready to belt out a tune in public? Fuck that. There's not enough alcohol in the world to get me so drunk that I'd agree to sing in public.
Okay, that's my shortcomings out of the way. Time to now pick a tune. I could have picked 'Stop, Look, Listen (To Your Heart)' from the same album but tonight, Matthew . . . just fucking stop . . . it has to be 'You Are Everything'. Both songs were written by Thom Bell and Linda Creed, and originally recorded by The Stylistics. Christ, to have the talent to write one of those songs, and you wrote both?
Two Abba songs in such a short space of a music challenge? Either one of them just died (they haven't) or this lockdown has unlocked from my inner depths my 9 year old, 16 year old, 27 year old, 36 year old . . . old man 'lustcrush' (not a word; just made it up).
Anyway, it's a stone cold classic. Elvis Costello and Steve Nieve thought so, and they know their pop onions:
Leon Rosselson is an amazing songwriter but he can't sing for shit. Thankfully, Dick Gaughan can sing and his version of Rosselson's 'Stand Up For Judas' is brilliant:
So many great songs from that decade but I'll highlight this one, 'cos I'm guessing that it never reached the States at the time. Must be played fucking LOUD:
Eddie & The Hot Rods - Do anything you wanna do (1977)
Yep, I know Morrissey turned into a dick but I'll never get tired of this song. 37 years and counting from when I first saw them performing this on Top of the Pops. I had a impeccable musical taste for a few years around about this time, and then I fell off the rails a bit in my late teens. I still think it's because pop music because really, really universally shit for a sustained period of time (I'm now too old to comment on present pop music), when even potentially great songs got smothered in very dated and cheesy production. That's my story and I'm sticking to it:
The Smiths - This Charming Man (Live on Top of The Pops November 24th, 1983)
A song that makes you sad.
I'm struggling here. I was too quick in choosing Elbow's 'Scattered Black and Whites' earlier. If I'd planned it out better, that would have been the song for today. I'll pick this song . . . 'cos it is a beautiful song . . . sad or not.
A bit random with this one. I didn't really think too much about this choice. Another time I could have picked 20 other songs, but this song hit the spot on the day when I picked it. I can't remember if I bought it as a single, but I do remember that I would listen to it again and again in the Charing Cross Road branch of Borders back in the day. I'm sure I convinced myself at the time that there was a Marxian tinge to the lyrics - for the obvious reasons. I was deluding myself:
Propellerheads feat: Miss Shirley Bassey - 'History Repeating'
I loved The La's back in the day. Had the T shirt, had the album but I never really bought into the prevailing myth that Mavers' was a lost pop genius. I'll still play the album to this day, but there were better albums, better songwriters. It was probably just the case that, breaking up when they did, it just helped fuel that myth of what might have been. What actually was was that Cast were one of the worst fucking bands of the 1990s. I still shudder thinking about them.
It is cool, however, to see them perform 'There She Goes' on Letterman. It just seems to incongruous. It'd be like Lady Gaga turning up in an episode of Josie's Giants.
Also, this interview and performance by them on a Canadian music programme from around about the same period is pretty cool, though they did insist on turning up 'The Scouseness' up to 11:
I don't drive, but if I did, I'd have the windows down and be blasting this one out. In fact, on long road trips, I like to piss the driver off as soon as possible by falling asleep 400 yards out of the drive, and then loudly snoring and farting for the next four hours:
Mott the Hoople's 'All the Way From Memphis' was yet another song discovered via a music magazine compilation. I think my music kudos are quickly flushing down the shitter at this point. The knowledge that half of my music choices in this 30 Day Song Challenge were provided to me by music compilations put together by Mark Ellen and David Hepworth is not the most satisfying of thoughts.
Possibly the last time I ever danced in public was at a school disco in 1983, and it may have been to 'Boxerbeat' by the Joboxers. Stomping your feet was very popular amongst schoolchildren in the Home Counties back in the eighties. It was only a few decades later that I discovered that the musicians behind Dig Wayne in Joboxers had formerly been members of punk alumni, Subway Sect. Hand me a feather and that pop factoid will still knock me over today;
I'm still convinced that the late Adrian Borland looks a bit like the late Christopher Hitchens. I remember mentioning the passing resemblance one time - probably on this blog - and the you'd have thought that I just let rip the biggest fart in history in front of The Queen and Betty White. Those fanboys of Hitchens really were fucking protective of their boy . . . at all times and in all circumstances. It's amazing the shield that is constructed all around you if you have a few witty epigrams hiding up your sleeve.
I still love this performance of 'Sense of Purpose' by The Sound on TheOld Grey Whistle Test. Of course they should have bigger, but it's the business of the cheekbones and pop music again. You can't be all moody and introspective as a pop star if you're an ordinary looking bloke. It doesn't properly scan. You can only be truly tortured if you're really good looking. This also applies to female musicians, as well, by the way. Yes, Fiona Apple, I am looking at you.
PS - There's not enough punching the side of your head in pop performances, and if I've ever lose a few pounds, I'm wearing a version of that suit of his in my next life:
A song that reminds you of someone you'd rather forget.
No soul searching or delving into my murky past. I'll save that for my printed-on-demand memoirs which are pencilled in for 2023. A cheap choice, I know, but I'm playing catch up with this one. Could have picked any number of songs about Mrs Thatcher, but Costello's 'Pills and Soap' has cropped up a lot recently on Spotify and, more often than not, I've not skipped it. Still a great track after all these years:
If it's one particular summertime, it has to be New Order's 'World in Motion'. Not the greatest summertime song - hi Jazzy Jeff and the other one, that's on you - but if you were a young bloke into football and music in England in the summer of 1990, this was THE song for the obvious reasons. And if you were Scottish in England in the summer of 1990, it was a real love/hate song:
