Tracie Young — swoon

I do believe that’s The Questions playing with her, but who’s the chap on the far left of the stage with the guitar? Looks awfully familiar.

Have you ever had a mate you secretly thought was a bit of a twat who always seemed to do incredibly well with the opposite sex? In fact, the better he did the more you hated him because it just showed up how pathetic your own sex life was. He’d turn up at parties or the pub with some gorgeous bird in tow and you’d couldn’t understand why she couldn’t see how annoying he was. She seemed like a nice, intelligent girl but you’d start to think there must be something wrong with her if she liked him. Your female friends would assure you it wasn’t true that girls preferred going out with arseholes and liked nice guys really but the evidence you saw with your own eyes was that you were single while blokes you knew to be dickheads seemed to be beating them off with a stick.

Download: What I Like Most About You Is Your Girlfriend – The Special AKA (mp3)

This is such a terrific single it’s a real shame it wasn’t a hit. From The Specials great final album “In The Studio” which they released under their original name and sadly flopped too, I’m not sure it’s even available on CD these days.

Yes, I know Terence Stamp (pictured above in case you didn’t know) is a good-looking chap and probably a nice bloke to boot, but next to the un-Godly beauty of Jean Shrimpton anyone would look like a bit of a shifty meathead. The fact that he dated her makes me not sure whether I should admire the bastard or hate him.

As I’ve noted before, I grew up in a Sinatra-loving household, both my parents worshipped the ground he walked on and to this day I can’t see a Capitol Records label or one of those Reprise Records labels with Sinatra’s photo on it without picturing it on the turntable of our old mono Bush record player.

My mother’s favourite Frank Sinatra record has always been the slinky “Witchcraft” while I’m of the rather cliched and uninteresting opinion that “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” is his the best thing he ever did. But just because it’s the conventional view doesn’t mean it’s wrong, I think it’s one of the greatest recordings of 20th century popular music.

So you’d think I wouldn’t be inclined to like The Four Seasons smooth, easy listening version of the song from 1966 but it’s a record that my mother played to death when I was a kid which gives me a certain rose-tinted view of it and how do you separate pop records from your memories of them? Impossible I think (there’s a post idea right there). It lacks the passion and hunger of Sinatra’s version and takes a rather more dreamy approach but I still think it’s very pretty with a sweet arrangement full of strings and bells, and I love the big drum break after the pause at the end.

Download: I’ve Got You Under My Skin – The Four Seasons (mp3)

“I think they were absolute fucking scum — especially Thatcher, who I think should be shot as a traitor to the people. I still think that, and nothing will ever change my opinion. We’re still feeling the effects of what they did to the country now, and probably always will: the whole breakdown of communities, trade unions, the working class — the dismantling of lots of things.”
Paul Weller, 2008

Until George W. Bush came along I never thought I could hate a politician as much as I did Maggie Thatcher. All the things I complain about on this blog that depress me about modern England can be traced back to her doorstep in one way or another and we’d be here all day if I went through the litany of her crimes but Mr. Weller’s quote above pretty much sums up my feelings in his usual blunt style. Maggie was the stern Nanny/Headmistress who told us we’d all been bad children in the 60s and 70s and we had to take our medicine no matter how bad it tasted or she’d send us all to bed without any supper — or throw us out of work. Your average English Public Schoolboy gets turned on by that sort of cold-shower discipline which explains why so many chinless wonders loved her, it’s just a pity the rest of us had to take the medicine too. Maggie wanted to re-make Britain and she did, but to do that she had to tear it apart.

As a 20-something student you’d expect I’d be politically involved but it could be a depressing experience in the 80s. I voted for Ken Livingston, Michael Foot, Neil Kinnock and she won every time — though with Ken it wasn’t at the ballot box, she just abolished the GLC instead. I went on marches to save the GLC, in support of the Miners Union and CND, I joined the Labour Party and even took part in demonstrations and a sit-in to save my own college from being merged with another one in the next town, all to no avail. She always won — apart from the Poll Tax of course, I missed that little riot though.

But her biggest victory is everywhere you look in Britain today. It was a bit of cliche on the Left in the 1980s that she wanted to turn the country into the 51st State of America (though that was mostly a joke about her sucking up to Ronald Reagan) but that’s basically what happened, she turned the country over to the free market and big corporations who now dominate the landscape both metaphorically and literally. The rich got a lot richer and everyone else had their jobs, traditions and communities traded away for the price of 24/7 shopping in bland town centres dominated by a few big chains and an entire industry devoted to the worship of wealthy celebrities. The country has become just as soulless, vulgar and status-obssessed as America at its worst. Even sadder, the process has continued and been even worse under a bloody Labour government. Well, she did say there was no alternative.

Though I would like to thank her for all the wonderful music she inspired, without her we wouldn’t have these records (and many, many, many more). Maybe she wasn’t that bad after all. Actually, she was.

Download: Blue – Fine Young Cannibals (mp3)
Download: Homebreakers – The Style Council (mp3)
Download: Shipbuilding – Robert Wyatt (mp3)
Download: Talkin’ Blues (Story of The Blues Pt. 2) – The Mighty Wah! (mp3)
Download: Strike – The Enemy Within (mp3)

How many folk singers does it take to change a light bulb?
Two. One to change the bulb and the other to write a song about how good the old one was.

As you might have gathered from reading this blog, being an ageing expat living on the other side of the Atlantic from home makes one rather sentimental and wistful about olde Blighty and it’s culture, even for things I once found faintly ridiculous. As an urban London sophisticate I used to think quaint rural traditions like Morris Dancing and Folk music were a bit of a joke (see above), the domain of men with beards wearing chunky Fair Isle jumpers who smoked pipes and drank Real Ale, or hippy Renaissance Faire types who’d read “Lord of The Rings” too many times — it was all a bit too Hey Nonny Nonny for me.

But last summer I saw some Morris Dancers on Boston Common (no idea what they were doing there) and I found myself coming over all pastoral, getting warm and fuzzy thinking about village greens, maypoles, willow trees and dandelions. Seeing them prancing around among the grass and flowers with their bells and sticks, lit by a golden halo of bright afternoon sun, it was like a vision of a vanishing England had appeared before me and I was quite touched by it. It was the England of eccentric, ancient customs which by rights have no real place in the modern world but suddenly seem worth cherishing as we’re losing all the other peculiar, dusty old things that made us English.

Folk music drinks from the same old, rusty well of England and when I hear the exquisite voice of Sandy Denny singing with Fairport Convention it’s like a sound from another country and era, clear and pure as a church bell ringing out over a country fair with the scent of lavender, foamy beer and mint sauce.

Download: Who Knows Where The Time Goes – Fairport Convention (mp3)
Download: She Moves Through The Fair – Fairport Convention (mp3)

Denny is generally considered to be the greatest English female folk singer (sadly she died in 1978) but I’ve always had a fondness for the voice of Steeleye Span‘s Maddy Prior, even when I thought Folk was beyond the pale. Their big 1975 hit “All Around My Hat” isn’t exactly trad Folk with it’s big pop production but it is very Hey Nonny Nonny with its merry, skipping around the maypole vibe that makes you want to sink a pint of cider, grab the nearest rosy-cheeked wench, dance a jig with her and have a roll in the hay afterwards.

Download: All Around My Hat – Steeleye Span (mp3)

I may not have cared much about the English countryside and it’s way of life before, but at least I knew it was always there, but sadly I’m not so sure anymore and now I’m the one writing about how good the old one was. Not that I’m about to grow a beard and take up pipe smoking or anything.