We're back with more song titles that did their job - made me give the associated tune a little more attention. Which catches your eye... and does it also catch your ear?
1. I See Hawks In LA - My Parka Saved Me
One of the tricks writers use to engage our interest, I tell my rapt* students, is to create questions in the reader's mind. A really good title or opening line will do this. This song title caught my attention, and pleasingly the story that went along with it lived up to my expectations. Great opening line too!
I got stoned after breaking up with my boyfriend And he became a Born Again Christian
I See Hawks In LA are from Los Angeles, where clearly they keep their eyes to the skies, and their tongues firmly in their cheeks.
(*I like to imagine all my students are rapt, even if they're not.)
2. The Panic Brothers - I've Forgotten What It Is That I Was Drinking to Forget
Here's a recommendation from Martin, and funnily enough, it's a band he introduced me to many moons ago. I liked them so much, I bought the CD, as Victor Kiam might have said if he'd been a music blogger rather than a silver haired, razor blade hawking huckster.
3. Gene - The Police Will Never Find You
Not that I'm going out of my way to be mean to Martin, but he's going to have a tough decision this week when it comes to selecting his favourite tune. Will it be the one he put forward... or this, from one of his favourite bands?
I'm a huge Gene fan, but they never presented themselves as tough guys, so when they released their third album in 1999, it was quite a shock to see them getting seriously menacing, with both this and the final track, You'll Never Walk Again.
Perhaps the reason I liked these two song titles so much (particularly coming from a bunch of fey milksops like Gene) was that they reminded me of the time I got beaten up by some thugs in high school and made the mistake of shouting up at them, from the playground where I lay, "you'll never know my ultimate strength!" This is what reading too many Spider-Mam comics at an impressionable age will do to you. Oh, how we they laughed.
4. Frank Zappa - My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mama
I might as well get the father of Dweezil, Moon Unit, Ahmet and Diva Thin Muffin Pigeen out of the way, since when it comes to wacky song titles, he's up there with the best of them. So many to choose from, including What's The Ugliest Part Of Your Body?, Son Of Suzy Creamcheese, and, of course, Don't Eat The Yellow Snow. By comparison, My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mama seems quite tame, but it's the one I went for.
5. Sandra's Wedding - The Hopeful Boy Replacement Service
As usual, we close with a contemporary tune. This one's from a band that the ever-reliable John Medd turned me onto earlier this year. Sandra's Wedding come from Goole, because somebody has to, and they've amassed quite the back catalogue of wry, witty, observational tunes that bring to mind Paul Heaton at his best. This one, the title track from their latest album, was irresistible, taking me right back to my teens. It's the sort of song Stephen Duffy might have written back in those glorious days of yore. Shades of Stuart Murdoch too.
Future is uncertain The past is fading away Future is uncertain The past is fading away I remember laughin', I can't remember what I was laughin' about And I remember cryin', I can't forget what I was cryin' about That won't fade away
Are you one of those people who checks their route on Google Earth whenever you have to go somewhere new, following the little Google car down every street, looking for car parks and petrol stations and supermarkets where you might be able to stop for a wee?
If you have to buy something new for your home, do you research it for hours, reading Which? Best Buy reviews and google feedback? Are you obsessed with making certain you’ve found the best possible price out of all the retailers that stock it… and is it definitely in stock? What if you have to return it? Does that retailer have a good track record for customer service?
If you’re going on holiday, do you try to plan a timetable for the whole week? Where you’ll go each day, where you’ll eat, the routes you might take between destinations… and all the stuff I mentioned in the first paragraph?
In her book Don't Feed the Monkey Mind, Jennifer Shannon identifies three basic assumptions shared by all anxious people: Intolerance of Uncertainy, Perfectionism and Over-Responsibility. They relate to specific personality types – some people will have far more of one than the others, but all anxiety sufferers will sample the delights of each assumptive buffet at one time or another.
When people who are intolerant of uncertainty are exposed to a little bit of uncertainty, they also have a strong reaction: they worry, and do everything they can think of to get away from, avoid or eliminate the uncertainty.
If you’re invited to a party, does the very idea fill you with dread? Who will be there? What should you take? (What will other people be taking?) What time should you arrive? Is it better to be fashionably late… or might that be considered rude? Is it better off just to make your excuses and not go in the first place?
I'll have a shower Within the hour I'll smash another cup Please don't start saying that Or I'll start believing you If I start believing you I'll know that this Party Fears Two And then phone my brother up
Life is uncertainty. We don’t know what will happen tomorrow, next week or even in the next five minutes. But our monkey brain (remember the amygdala?) hates uncertainty. How can it keep us safe if it doesn’t know what the threats are or where they might be coming from? And it’s not just threats to our life and wellbeing it’s trying to protect us from, but the threat of exclusion from the tribe… hence the party fears mentioned above.
Difficulty tolerating doubt can lead to compulsive checking behaviours like making sure doors are locked and appliances are turned off. You’ll tend to overplan things; even weekends and vacations have a to-do list. And when the list doesn’t get finished or things don’t go as you planned them, you become upset and have difficulty enjoying the moment.
We’ve got a freezer in our garage. A few years back it was accidentally switched off and we had to throw all the food away. Now, whenever I’m closing the garage door, I complete a ritual in my head where I say, “lid down, green light on” to make sure the freezer is OK. Often, even though I’ve done this, I still have to lift the garage door back up and double check. I have to be certain. “Lid down, green light on” has now become a mantra and I've found myself saying it at other times two. This morning it was when I arrived at work and was checking I had everything I needed before I left the car park.
If you can’t stand uncertainty and do everything you can to get rid of it, you might have noticed a problem: it is IMPOSSIBLE to get rid of all uncertainty in your life.
What this means for you is that all the work that you are doing to get rid of uncertainty is useless, it just doesn’t work. If it did, you would probably not be struggling with anxiety and worry.
So what is the solution?
If you can’t get rid of uncertainty in your life, the only way to manage your intolerance of uncertainty is by learning to be more TOLERANT of uncertainty.
One thing I’m learning about dealing with mental health issues – particularly those relating to the pesky monkey in our amygdala – is that often the best way to fight them is to act as though you don’t have them. Intolerant of uncertainty? Act as though you’re not. Go to the party and deal with whatever might happen, including any smashed cups. Who cares if you got the cheapest price on that essential purchase? You just got an evening back that you would otherwise have wasted on price comparison sites. Remember life before Google Earth? When we found our own way to places, with the occasional help of a map?
Easier said than done in a lot of cases, and there are times (like my garage freezer) when it pays to check. But the more you force yourself to deal with uncertain situations, the more your storytelling brain will write stronger neural pathways that allow you to cope with the unexpected.
That’s the theory, anyway…
And it's the damage that we do and never know
It's the words that we don't say that scare me so
There's so many people to see
So many people you can check up on and add to your collection
But they keep you hanging on, until you're well hung
You don't have to be mad to read this blog... but it helps.
Our descent into (bands called) Madness starts here... with the obvious winners (?)
MADNESS #1
When I was at junior school, Madness were the first band I ever felt the weight of tribal peer pressure forcing me to like them or else. This would be in 1980, when I was 8 years old, and the band released perfectly suited to the 8 year old demographic: Baggy Trousers. And naturally, I hated it. I didn't want to be a schoolyard yob, pulling hair and eating dirt, and I proudly proclaimed my resistance to the cult of Madness. For which I was beaten soundly. (Not really, but there was probably the odd dead arm or Chinese burn dished out as a result.)
I'm not sure when I changed my opinion of Suggs and co., but I do remember liking their cover of Labi Siffre's It Must Be Love the following year, and that's probably when the ice began to melt... though I still resisted the charms of Baggy Trousers for many years, certainly until I was out of long pants.
Now though, I watch that video with unfettered nostalgia... how time changes us.
MADNESS #2
The Nutty Boys first got together in 1976. Three years later in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the smooth AOR sounds of another Madness began. They would soon change their name to Akasha, probably after Suggs popped round and threatened to flush their heads down the toilet. Lead singer Gary Darling would then go on to found The Verandas.
I'm not sure he needs it yet, he's still a few years off being a sweaty teenager, but apparently it's the thing. So his mum bought him some Lynx. Because the makers have moved away from the ridiculous notion that if you spray yourself with Lynx, thousands of teenage girls will come chasing after you (presumably with some bleach and a scrubbing brush) and now they're promoting themselves via the notion of sporting prowess - wearing Lynx will make you into a G.O.A.T.
It probably goes without saying that I have a problem with Lynx. Due to "odour-linked memories", I don't get The Lynx Effect... I get The Proust Effect.
This name came about because the author Marcel Proust wrote in his book, Swann’s Way, that the smell of a pastry he dipped in his tea brought on a rush of joy associated with his childhood.
However, due to our storytelling brain, the opposite is also true. I don't know if Marcel Proust ever smelt Lynx deodorant, but if he did, I hope it whisked him back to school changing rooms on a wet Wednesday afternoon, when all the footy lads were raring to go, and young Proust was feeling queasy, intimidated and ready for his weekly hour of humiliation. Because that's what happens to me. One whiff of Lynx and I end up right back here...
If any of you have access to the Disney+ streaming service, can I recommend the Australian TV show Mr. Inbetween? It's got nothing to do with this song, but it is very worth watching. Only 25 minute episodes too, so they're easy to get through before you fall asleep at the end of the day.
