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366 Songs 291: The Girl Can’t Help It

Cliff Richard was never cool. He was too square, always, too clean, too unsexy; even when he tried to get funky and sexy in the 1970s, it didn’t work because he was trying too hard. It was like a musical version of Steve Carrell describing breasts as like sandbags in The 40-Year-Old Virgin. How, then, to explain away this song…?

Well, the fact that it’s a cover probably helps. This song was originally, as far as I can see, a Little Richard “joint” –

– but that doesn’t explain the sensational arrangement here that reinvents the original’s caffeinated jitter into something with more swagger and confidence. Listen to that casual drum beat, the crouching bassline, at the start. The horns that keep everything grounded, but also provide the aural fireworks as the song continues (along with the wonderful backing vocals); it sounds like someone was listening to some awesome psych-rock and soul at the end of the sixties before coming into the recording booth, and thought no-one would really pay any attention if they played around with some of those textures on this album track. The result? Cliff’s finest hour, and then some.

Then again, this is what it has to compete with; it’s not really any contest, is it?

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I Can Hear The Soft Breathing of The Girl That I Love

A genuinely weird day, with things breaking up what would normally be my working rhythm, such as it is – A vet’s visit, phone calls with the accountant and the resultant rush and stress that provided, lunch with a friend – to the point where I never felt like I settled into the day at all. Everything was continually just rushing to meet deadlines, the entire day having that I’m late I’m late feeling and discomfort the entire time, meaning that it’s 6pm and I still haven’t directed you to my Time piece for the week, about the way in which the new Beauty and The Beast show manages to miss the point of the entire B&TB fairy tale. My research for this one? Watching lots of versions of Beauty and The Beast, which made for an odd weekend, I can tell you.

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By the Power of Grayskull

It’s funny, as an adult, to realize how stupid a name “He-Man” is. When I was a kid, I didn’t think anything of it; it was the character’s name, after all, and I didn’t see anything beyond that. I was given a He-Man figure before I’d heard anything about the character or any of the rest of the Masters of the Universe (Such a 1980s product line, in terms of names!), along with a bunch of other figures from the line – Man-at-Arms, maybe? Stratos, the guy with wings on his arms? – by my gran, and I loved them a lot. In part, I think, because I loved her; they felt especially rare and special because of her, if that makes sense.  The cartoon that accompanied the toys was a favorite, for some time, too. The golden age of my childhood, in terms of toys.

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366 Songs 290: Joining A Fan Club

You can tell, from the Queen-esque guitar opening, that “Joining A Fan Club” has set the dial for “epic.” This is such a wonderfully overblown song, completely over-the-top at almost all times and very much in the spirit of Freddie Mercury’s old band in their prime – The harmonies at 1:14 leading into the guitar, for example – without sounding like a slavish recreation. Put this is actually a reconstruction of all manner of pop history; the bassline is McCartney from Revolver-era Beatles, the harmonies are as Beach Boys as Queen, and stealing the strings from “When You Wish Upon A Star” at 1:55 is… well, just kind of inspired, really. By the time you get to the freakout at the bridge. There’s some element of glam rock in there, too (The saxophone I read as oddly David Bowie-esque for reasons that don’t actually make sense to me, I admit), and overall the entire thing just feels like four minutes of rock opera that sum up almost everything I could possibly want in a pop song. Why this isn’t something that everyone knows and adores is constantly a bafflement to me.

Still: At least some people have covered it, where you’d least expect it.

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All Over The World, Tonight, All Over The World

I’ll admit it straight off; there were times today where being in Venice seemed like a bizarre abstract notion, like it wasn’t really real, and all the stress and the phone calls (and all the “Can you speak English?”s) and all of that were just trials I had to go through to test my patience or something, and there wasn’t really an outcome to it. Even wandering through London this afternoon, killing time between flights, it didn’t feel like anything that unusual. And the plane here I just felt lost and thed different with a sense of history about it (compared to Aberdeen… I mean, come on), drifting through places with exotic names. Without realizing it, I’d disappeared from real life and started living in a film after all. Gondoliers went past, singing, and it’s not often you can say that. Add to that the fact that sheer luck led me to ask a complete stranger (who turned out to be French) the way to my hotel, and she took me to the very door, and you know I’ve been pretty blessed.

I’ve found something called Kind of Hush, which was a travel diary I wrote back in 1999 from a trip I took to Venice. Re-reading it, I realized that it was my first paid journalism; I wrote it to fulfill a grant I’d been given by the Scottish Arts Council to visit that year’s Venice Biennale. Because I’ve been thinking, endlessly, about Kindle Singles and digital ebooks a lot lately, I’m re-working this (Trying to find the missing text from the file I found this weekend) with an eye of putting it out there for 99 cents just because. I doubt anyone would buy it, but I just like the idea of it being out there.

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366 Songs 289: She Said She Said

The guitars actually chime. There’s something about this song that still surprises, years after I first heard it and almost four decades after it was first recorded; the sound of the guitars, the texture they create and structure they build. This is guitar music as crystalline palace, as something to feel all around you and get lost inside. Close your eyes as you listen and follow the music as it towers up all over you, and you’ll see what I mean.

(And those vocals: “I said,” stretching the word, taking it outside of language and into pure sound. Such a great song.)

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366 Songs 288: Wah-Wah

Shall we talk about the value of having more than a riff to play with, for once? Now, don’t get me wrong, I love a good riff, and George Harrison’s “Wah-Wah” has a great one, but still. Here’s Harrison’s demo for the song, with the riff firmly in place (Unlike the lyrics) –

– and here’s the finished song:

Holy crap, just listen to what the finished arrangement brings to the proceedings. The drums! The bassline! Giving the “Wah-Wah!” to the harmonies! It becomes instantly more exciting to listen to, and a complete song (The keyboard in the background! The guitar solo that almost sounds like horns for a second!) instead of a pleasant enough ditty. Clearly, there’s something to be said for leaving things to percolate in your head (and recording studio) for some time, if this is anything to go by…

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No Sleep ‘Til

Ah, insomnia.

As I type this, it’s 6:30am, and I’ve been awake since 4. I didn’t wake up of my own accord; Ernie is sick and requires eye drops every 4 hours, so at 4am, it was time… but then I couldn’t get back to sleep. You know that feeling, when you’re lying in bed and your brain just tells you that you’re definitely awake no matter how tired you feel? That was me. When I was younger, falling asleep was no problem; I could be up until 4am at a club or working on something or in some deep, awkward romantic tryst and as soon as I’d get to bed, I’d be asleep. Now, though, I lie there all too often, all too awake.

I remember, when I was a kid, the tricks I’d try to play on myself to induce sleep. I’d try to remember the opening scroll from Star Wars – I used to be able to do that in its entirety, worryingly – or count from 100 backwards, imagining each number was a lower rung on a ladder towards sleeping. Neither work anymore, sadly; the noise in my brain overpowers it all. And so, I lie here hours before the sunrise, cuddling a sick dog and reading Marvel Comics: The Untold Story on my Kindle, wishing that I could close my eyes and open them hours later.

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366 Songs 287: Anger Management

The above is the instrumental version of the complete track – There’s a rap by Princess Superstar on there that’s kind of awesome in her “I am the female Eminem” way, and includes the great/terrible/hilarious “I’m gonna spit my saliva/You’re definitely the worst of all time-a/You know what definitely doesn’t feel ya?/My vagina” – but it’s not on YouTube for whatever reason. Luckily, what I really love about the song is the music, so let’s go with that. Because, listen to the way this just goes; from the drum intro to the bass-led crawl of the song, jangly guitars and handclaps, this is a marvelously funky reappropriation of all manner of small pieces of soul and r’n’b music, jumbled together into something that sounds like it could’ve come from any time from the 1960s on up before the rap is laid on top. Shawn Lee – for he is the one responsible for this – you are a great man. So great, in fact, that I’ll even forgive you for this: