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- Readers recommend: songs about royalty
Last time was all about fessing up to messing up. This week we're after songs in tune with imperial dynasties
Hello to you all. Another topic, another heated debate. If I was going to write a series of head-spinningly wonderful pop records (and whose to say I won't some day?), I would definitely concentrate on life's misfires, failings and disappointments. I would do this for two reasons: one, as far as I can make out it's an inexhaustible supply and, two; each great mistake song has some remarkable grit polishing it into a pearl. A lot of this stuff really hurts.
In tribute to that, the two lists are full of heartache, anger, worry, fear and, most importantly, insight. There's also one about nicking porno, but that's OK too. None of us are perfect, eh?
Anyway, the A-list was (if I've got this right): I Overlooked An Orchid (While Searching for a Rose) – Carl Smith; Lush Life – John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman; Laughing – David Crosby; Brick – Ben Folds Five; We Took The Wrong Step Years Ago – Hawkwind; Razzle in My Pocket – Ian Dury; My Mistakes – Wiley; Mistake – Fela Kuti; I Must Have Been Blind – Tim Buckley; What Can I Say After I Say I'm Sorry? – Dinah Washington
As far as the B-list, well, that looks like this ...
Wrong Number (I'm Sorry, Goodbye) – Aaron Neville
An absolute beauty from 1963. Aaron's "phone went ring", his "crippled heart cried, let it be you on the line …" The mistake being that when, later on, his phone did ring again it was a wrong number. Poor Aaron. How does a chap get over that sort of thing?
Flight of Icarus – Iron Maiden
Flying that close to the sun is more than a mistake, it's deliberately silly. And while we're at it, I don't remember Ver Maiden looking like this?
Gentlemen – The Afghan Whigs
Love gone wrong. Again. The mistake was sticking around to let it go so wrong. "I stayed in too long, but she was the perfect fit," sings Greg Dulli, "and we dragged it out so long this time, started to make each other sick …" Ouch.
The Kneeling Drunkard's Plea – The Louvin Brothers
No one nails pleas for forgiveness and absolution like Ira and Charlie Loudermilk (amazing name). But then no one drank like Ira, so he had plenty of experience to draw from.
The Boyfriends – Richmond Fontaine
This from LarryPartridge: "A man picks up single mum in a bar. Later on that night at her place her kid catches them together. Man gets reminded of his childhood and all the boyfriends of his mum that he met. Man is anguished. Mistakes have been made. By whom is up for debate." Crisply delivered reasoning, that's what we like.
All the Way from Memphis – Mott the Hoople
A true tale of many, many mistakes from lost guitars and disappearing road crew to grim ticket sales and hotel room robberies. But it all ends well, so, hurrah!
It's My Fault Darling – Professor Longhair
Wonderfully skewed take on walking in at just the wrong moment. Mr Longhair tootles through the door and finds his wife in a compromising position. However, his natural good grace sets him right. "It's my own fault for coming home from work early last night, " he sings. "If I knowed that you had company darling, well I was in no condition to fight …"
An absolute beauty of a song from Cope's 1991 album Peggy Suicide where he tackles what sounds like a right little madam. "Pristeen. Pristeen. How much can you take? Pristeen. Pristeen. How much can you take? 'Cos your lying to me was you first mistake, your trusting in me was your major mistake …"
Adam Lay Ibounden – Mediaeval Babes
This from Chinhealer: "This tells the story of how Adam (as in consort of Eve) buggered things up forever for us all by eating of the apple of the Tree of Knowledge. But the song then rejoices in the fact that Adam got greedy because, had he not done so, Mary would never have had the opportunity to become Queen of Heaven and we would never have had the opportunity to sing praises to God." Amazing, really.
Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word – Elton John
One of Bernie Taupin's most direct and pointed lyrics. Someone has made a catastrophic series of errors and is trying to make it all right again. Only trouble is, nothing is working. Gotta love yer man Elts, eh?
And so to this week's topic and it's one that aims for an impressively regal nature. I'm looking for songs that celebrate, denigrate, eviscerate or, I don't know, marinate those who are our betters. Or, at least, once thought they were our betters but are now, largely, just a jumped up bunch of hoorays attempting to carry on lording it up when no one really cares any more. Let's have your nominations for songs about kings and queens and princes. Let's have real and imagined stories; let's have real monarchs and entirely made-up ones, working-class royalty, showbiz royalty, let's really open this one up. As ever, many extra points will be awarded to well-argued examples. Until next week then …
The toolbox: Archive, the Marconium, the Spill and the Collabo.
The rulebook:
DO post your nominations before midday on Monday if you wish them to be considered.
DO post justifications of your choices wherever possible.
DO NOT post more than one third of the lyrics of any song.
DO NOT dump lists of nominations – if you must post more than two or three at once, please attempt to justify your choices.
Remember, let's be majesterial out there, a'ight?
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - What this man's learned from holding the UK's longest-running pub music quiz
Did you know that Pinky and Perky can incite riots? Or how difficult it is to buy every chart single in existence? Jon Kutner does and he's got the knowledge to show for it ...
Get your thinking caps on: Tomorrow afternoon Jon will be setting guardian.co.uk/music readers a quiz!This Sunday sees the 1,000th outing for the longest-running pub music quiz in the UK. Taking place in Bedford since 1991, Jon Kutner's nights have a cult following among pop obsessives, featuring the B-side Baffler and the always poorly earned booby prize of a bag of Shit Singles. Not to mention Pinky and Perky tunes, mobile phone cheats, and having Su Pollard ruin everything. Time to find out what he's learned in more than 20 years as a pop geek ...
1) Everyone, everywhere likes a quiz (even Bruno Brookes)
Jon: "It all started when I was DJing in nightclubs in the 80s. The managers would give you cheap bottles of plonk to give away to people celebrating birthdays. But one night there were no birthdays, and I had these six bottles. So I just started asking questions – a track would come on and I'd ask things like what year it charted, or who the singer was married to. The first person with the right answer got a bottle. People were rushing over putting their hands up like they were in school.
So this carried on in the clubs for three or four years, and after covering a quiz in Hackney for a spell, I got set up at a pub of my own. I moved around a bit, but then in April 1991 a mate set me up at the George & Dragon in Bedford. And now, six pubs and 1,000 quizzes down the line, we're still in the same town. Bruno Brookes dropped by the other week – I used to know him from work I did for Radio 1 roadshows and in the clubs, but I hadn't seen him in years. He took the mic, said some lovely things about us hitting the milestone, and presented me with a bottle of champagne. One of the teams didn't know who he was though – they thought it was Andy Gray off Sky Sports."
2) Pinky and Perky can incite riots
Jon: "I must have one of the biggest Pinky and Perky collections in the country – 29 singles and nine albums. I bloody love them – you put the intro of one of their covers into the quiz, and it sounds incredibly close to the original, whether something from the 60s covering the Beatles, or the 90s doing Technotronic's Pump Up the Jam. They're well recorded – they had some of the top producers, bandleaders and musicians working on them back in the day. When I catch people out with one of theirs, I get all sorts of abuse. People chuck paper, ice cubes, beer mats – anything they can get their hands on."
3) Mobile phones are the enemy
Jon: "I've caught a few people cheating over the years – it's almost always when money's on the line. I caught a team in the car park once going through the Guinness Book of Hit Singles. Mobiles are a nightmare though – someone fiddling with their phone mid-quiz always raises alarm bells. It might be innocent, but the way I look at it, you get on a plane, you can't smoke or use your phone for however long that flight is. And if you come to the quiz, you should be able to do without your phone for a couple of hours."
We used to have a few problems with pagers. One week I did a round where I asked people to name the 10 biggest charting hits by Jim Reeves. And a team of youngsters were there looking utterly blank – they'd never heard of him. But one of them trots off, goes to a payphone, and 10 minutes later they've got a pager on the table going bananas as a list of Jim Reeves songs comes through."
4) You should always go easy on the trivia
Jon: "Nowadays my quizzes are all music clip-based. I put in the occasional written round, but with trivia people either know it or they don't. And if they don't have particularly wide knowledge, they'll do pretty badly, get bored, and probably won't come back next week. But if you play music clips, say song intros, or old classics by Elvis or the Beatles, people can write at least something down."
5) Taking the piss can earn you serious money
Jon: "I started the B-side Baffler in 1995. I'd grab a 7in, play the B-side, and the first person to come up and correctly identify the A-side won a free pint. But then I started making it a snowballing cash prize, where you win it if you're the only team to correctly name the track on the other side. It means everyone has a chance – we've had teams before that've been about 100 points behind everyone else in the main quiz, but they've still walked out with a £300 prize for having a complete stab in the dark.
One week I put in an instrumental B-side, quite a 70s-style disco-funk track. And sure enough everyone's guessing things like the Rah Band and Van McCoy. But one team needed nudging to write anything at all – they didn't have a clue. Just to get me off their back, they jokingly put down The Birdie Song. And they were right – the B-side is this funk workout, and actually a really good tune. They were absolutely staggered – £300 for taking the piss."
6) You can never have too many records
Jon: "Every week I buy everything in the chart, and log it in a database. All completely out of obsession, and just a complete love and thirst for music. Even some of the rubbish that comes out, it doesn't seem interesting at the time, but years on you look back and it takes on a new complexion.
When you're putting a quiz together, there are reference books, biographies and old magazines, but the best resource is the music itself. I've got 55,000 7in singles, 10,000 12in singles, 4,000 LPs and 4,000 CD albums. It's my ambition to own every single that ever charted and I'm only missing 449 now, generally stuff that reached positions beyond 40 back in 1960 when the chart was extended to a top 50. Things like Dick Jordan's Hallelujah I Love Her So, Reg Owen's Manhattan Spiritual and The Way I Walk by Jack Scott – they're like rocking-horse shit to find."
7) The kids don't care about chart music any more
Jon: "The younger generation don't tend to have the interest and knowledge that people had in the 60s, 70s, 80s and up to maybe the mid-90s. They don't really care what's in the chart or which position it's reached – if they like something, they download it and that's that. In my day I'd be listening intently to the chart and writing down positions, wondering how my favourites were getting on.
There's always something from the noughties in the quiz, but increasingly a track enters the chart at No 3, then next week it's No 30, then the week after that it's left the chart completely. People just don't remember these tunes. Even No 1s – I put in Diana Vickers's Once the other week, and hardly anyone got it right. And yet if I put in Jailhouse Rock, from 1958, everyone knows it."
8) There is such a thing as karma
Jon: "There've been occasions where somebody has taken over a pub, and either they've not liked the idea of the quiz, or we've just not got on. Either way I've moved on. At one venue, a guy took over that I'd done work for several years before in one of the clubs. He'd owed me some money and refused to pay, so we'd had a falling out. And I didn't want to work for him. So one night at the quiz I did a "connections" round. I had songs in there like Backstabbers and We Gotta Get Out of This Place, and word had got around about the history between us, so everyone was on to it – I'd made the guy the subject of the round. He was standing right in front of me as I was doing the answers, and that moment when I announced "the connection is you, sir" was beautiful. He was mortified.
So I moved on, but the guy started a quiz up directly against me, chucking extra prize money in to try and get people along. First night he had a £700 jackpot, which no one won. Next week it had rolled over to £750, which one of my regular teams won. Third week they only had two teams in, and the following week they closed. Karma, I think."
9) Someone, somewhere will have heard an obscure Su Pollard B-side
Jon: "Ahead of the 1000th quiz I thought I'd make a concerted effort to get the jackpot right up so we could do something a bit special, so I dug out a succession of stinking B-sides. I put a real bugger in – Starting Together by Su Pollard. The flipside sounds absolutely nothing like her, I was certain no one would get it. But they did. They'd bought the single back in 1986, and recognised it instantly.
It just goes to show – you can never, ever underestimate people. No matter how well I've got to know some of the regulars over the years, there's no telling exactly what they know. There's so much random information in people's heads … it's easier to just reach into my record racks at home and grab whatever comes instead of taking time to try and catch people out."
10) Being a pop geek is very, very addictive
Jon: "I've been driving to Bedford from home every week for nearly 20 years. It's a 100-mile round trip, but every time I get in the car and I'm dying to play people what I've put together, hoping they like some of the ideas and themes I've put in. It's great to see teams that have been coming for years suddenly win for the first time, or someone nab their first ever jackpot. They love it, and I love seeing it. Mainly though, I just love catching people out. Putting in a song that has a bunch of people with their heads in their hands. Anything like that where people are yelling abuse at me – I love that and I thrive on it. One week Buster Bloodvessel came along, so I did a round of Bad Manners tunes especially. He only got 9 out of 10. Mainly because I only played two seconds of one of the tracks, but I was made up to catch him out.
While I keep enjoying it, and people keep turning up, I'll keep on doing it. I've had people asking me recently if we'll make it to 2,000 quizzes. It's a big ask, it'd be another 20 years and I'd be in my 60s. I wouldn't rule it out though."
Jon's 1,000th Bedford pop quiz is at The King's Arms, Bedford, Sunday 12 Dec. He also runs pub quizzes in St Albans (Tues), Hertford Heath (Weds) and Harpenden (Thurs) – click here for venue details. Join his online quiz league here.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Audio advent calendar: Villagers playlist
9 December: Our musical Christmas countdown continues as Conor from Villagers talks us through his Spotify playlist
Domino artist Villagers has pulled out all the stops for his advent calendar entry with a detailed run through every song on his playlist ...
Villagers advent playlist
Ben E King – Stand By Me
I have a vivid childhood memory of hiding under the table with my eyes closed listening to this song. It is pure and simple, and sounds like it has been carved in stone.David Axelrod – Holy Thursday
This track is a good time. It sounds like a completely blissful journey. It promises movement but maintains an overbearing stillness. It also demonstrates clearly the way that drums should sound in a studio recording.Elliott Smith – Between the Bars
I love how this is played with such delicacy and grace, while the words seem to be alluding to something far more sinister. It is a very beautiful song and I feel dirty talking about it, because he was singing it to me. Not you.Elvis Costello – Battered Old Bird
This is such a visual song. To me it's a sort of patchwork quilt of different characters and aspects of human nature. The key change in the middle is so strange; it exemplifies the strength of the link between the words and music, both of which are the work of a master.Jeffrey Lewis – The Chelsea Hotel Oral Sex Song
Funny, meditative, descriptive and moving. I've had some really good moments with this song. We're old friends now.The Kinks – Death of a Clown
I love the mixture and contrast of the ghostly backing vocals with the almost comedic piano lines. I remember learning a lot about arrangements through this song; about how to create space.Leonard Cohen – Famous Blue Raincoat
One of the most potent and evocative songs I've ever heard. The female backing vocal breaks my heart. The lyrics make more sense to me now than when I first heard them as a teenager. I cannot wait to listen to it when I'm 60.Lou Reed – Walk On the Wild Side
This song is so simple. The lyrics are great, as is the production. It's a perfect bittersweet pop song.Neil Young – Don't Let It Bring You Down
What a wonderful piece of advice.Nina Simone – Desperate Ones
A chilling and sensitive ode to the ones who've been cracked by life. The sound of a singer letting a great weight leave her shoulders. I've rarely been so touched by a song on first listen as I was with this.Pavement – Shady Lane
"Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh your God, oh his God, oh her God, it's everybody's God, it's everybody's God, it's everybody's God it'everybody's God – the worlds collide, but all that I want is a shady lane." Need I say more?Randy Newman – God's Song (That's Why I Love Mankind)
I'm finding it hard to explain why I like this song so much. It's so obviously a work of genius that anything I say will just cheapen my true feelings.Robert Wyatt – Sea Song
This song is breathtakingly good. The lyrics are so open while still having a directness throughout. It is consistently inspired and colourful. "Your madness fits in neatly with my own/ Your lunacy fits neatly with my own/ We're not alone" (cue beautiful chord change) – enough said.Roy Orbison – Crying
Voice, chords, melody, arrangement, production, yes. Thank you, sir.Scott Walker – On Your Own Again
This song feels like four months and six days inside one minute and forty-eight
seconds. Totally blissful.Wilco – Radio Cure
When your head feels like it has been sliced into little pieces, listen to Radio Cure by Wilco. Mankind is discovering new levels of communication.guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать
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