Thank goodness for that. England are out. But there was a second game tonight and as a Newcastle resident and fan of the team I was pleased to see some players I know standing tall in the competition.
Gerry Goffin, one of he truly great pop lyricists has just died aged 75. Here are seven of his songs written with various collaborators (most notably of course Carole King). I'll try to choose some more unusual selections although many of the most universally known songs that he co-wrote were just wonderful records. Here's the first:
Very unusual this one. From Bob Rafaelson's 1968 Monkees film Head.
Just titled Cassavetes. But a surname like that doesn't always require a first. Just wondrous! Certainly enough to make me realise that I should listen to more Fugazi and watch some Cassavetes films. The video intercuts film of the band with clips from his film Faces. Whoever made it did a beautiful job.
One of the rarest Garage classics from mid-sixties LA group. Here's Bobby Gillespie:
'When I joined the Jesus and Mary Chain: I Never Loved Her, The Starfires (1965)
In 1983 this guy in Glasgow sent me a tape with four songs on one side: 'Inside Me', 'Never Understand', 'In a Hole' and 'Upside Down', all by the Jesus and Mary Chain. I was like, 'Where the fuck is this coming from? It's incredible.' There was a number on the tape, and it was for [bass player] Douglas Hart's mum's house. Douglas then sent me another tape with 'I Never Loved Her' on it. I love it. But my favourite band of that era is the Chocolate Watchband, who sound like the Rolling Stones added to a nuclear bomb. I love the energy of those garage bands.'
Like many others I have a soft spot for Bernard Cribbins. When the British media start claiming 'National Treasure' status for people you don't like as they do every couple of days you have to respond with, 'Well what about Bernard Cribbins?'Here's an old Guardian interview with him in their Old Music feature.
Old music: Bernard Cribbins – Right Said Fred
Bernard Cribbins' records have been loved by such unlikely champions as Danny Baker and Noël Coward. He explains how his best-known hit came to be
The children of 2012 probably know Bernard Cribbins best for his recent role as Doctor Who's sidekick Wilfred Mott. But readers of a certain age will recall that in the early 60s he had a string of hit comedy records produced by the pre-Beatles George Martin.
One was Right Said Fred. Cribbins, in an impeccable cockney accent, is one of two bungling workmen attempting to move an unwieldy yet unidentified item, eventually leaving it standing it on the landing after dismantling it (and drinking numerous cups of tea). I've known it all my life. I probably first heard it on Junior Choice, a children's request show hosted by Ed "Stewpot" Stewart on BBC Radio 1.
Speaking to me on the phone, Cribbins recalls his foray into the record industry: "The origins of my recording career go back to a revue show in 1961 or 62, something like that, called And Another Thing. We had a very nice cast of young up-and-comings, like Joyce and Lionel Blair, and some very good writers, including Barry Cryer – he wrote some of the sketches.
"I had two numbers in it, and one was called Folksong. And George Martin, who was then head of A&R at Parlophone, and had made records with Charlie Drake and Peter Sellers, came to see the show with a view to recording it."
After Martin's recording of Folksong got into the charts, its lyricist Myles Rudge and composer Ted Dicks came up with Hole in the Ground.
"They're both gone now – Ted died not long ago," Cribbins says. "Anyway, when Hole in the Ground went to No 1, EMI said: 'More, please! Then Right Said Fred happened."
The song was inspired by the difficulties Dicks experienced getting some workmen to move a piano. "Ted Dicks was living on the second or third floor somewhere, and he moved to a basement flat in Islington. He'd ordered a grand piano from Harrods. He said to the removal men: 'It's just down these stairs.' 'Oh, I don't think so.' 'OK, what'll we do?'
"And they took it all to pieces! That became the lyrics from Myles Rudge."
"I recorded it at Abbey Road, at number three studio. It was like a little concert hall. This was just before the Beatles got in there – we warmed it up for them!
"When I arrived there were about 12 or 13 musicians. I sang it live with them. We did a couple of takes, and that was it. Then George worked on it with his sound effects, like running up a ladder and so on. George used a lot of the techniques he went on to use on the Beatles' records. He used a lot of lovely little noises."
Right Said Fred followed Folksong and Hole in the Ground into the upper reaches of what was then termed the "hit parade". "Because I'm a non-singer, to suddenly find myself in the charts was fabulous," Cribbins says.
Cribbins' successful recorded career extended into the late 60s, when he recorded an album with George Martin that even included a surprisingly faithful version of Lennon and McCartney's When I'm Sixty-Four.
"I've grown accustomed to my fame," he says. "Danny Baker chose I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face as the one record he'd keep on Desert Island Discs. And Noël Coward chose Hole in the Ground. He said he could translate it into French as he walked along the beach."
In the 90s, Right Said Fred took on an unexpected afterlife when it was adopted as a name by Richard Fairbrass and his group, who had a run of hits including I'm Too Sexy and Deeply Dippy. "I don't think Right Said Fred had permission to use the title," Cribbins says. "But they were quite a good group. Quite camp! I met them and did a song for Comic Relief with them, Stick It Out."
Cribbins is still a jack-of-all-trades – he's currently working on the narration for a nature series. But he's palpably delighted that 50 years later, Right Said Fred has stood the test of time.
"It's become a little classic. It's a real joy," he says. "Long-range applause, I call it." But after all – you never get nowhere if you're too 'asty.
Horace Silver: the perfect musician for the jazz averse
The pianist, who died on Wednesday aged 85, was one of the most accessible and exuberant of jazz's bebop artists, writes John Fordham, who picks his five favourite Silver tracks
He focused jazz on its fundamentals. Horace Silver, c1950. Photo by Tom Copi/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
From the mid-1950s on, the perfect antidote for jazz fans to the grumbles of the jazz-averse (that it was a wilfully obscure music, made by introverts who didn’t know the meaning of "entertainment") was to spin them a Horace Silver record. Silver, who died on Wednesday at the age of 85, was one of the most accessible and exuberant of all the jazz artists inspired by the revolutionary bebop movement of the 1940s. If some found bop byzantine and baffling, Silver’s compositions and piano-playing began offering arrow-straight routes through it in the following decade - characterised by R&B and gospel-inflected tunes, earthily funky grooves, and powerful soloing that rarely let the main theme slip far out of earshot. He was also powerfully influenced by the Afro-Portuguese music of the Cape Verde Islands, his father’s birthplace. Silver’s method came to be known as "hard-bop", and its whiplash backbeats, rootsy rhythms and anthemically chant-like songs made it one of the most widely popular of all jazz styles. He wasn’t its only architect, but he was one of its most widely influential - because he not only focused jazz on fundamentals, but defined the classic small-band lineup of the 50s and 60s (trumpet, sax, piano, bass and drums), talent-spotted rising stars (notably trumpeters Donald Byrd and Dave Douglas and saxist Joe Henderson), and in developing a largely original repertoire, gave the jazz world a raft of new standard-songs still widely played today. Moreover, Silver was the co-founder - with drummer Art Blakey - of the famous Jazz Messengers, the archetypal hard-bop band that under Blakey’s later leadership was to include Wayne Shorter and a teenage Wynton Marsalis in its three decades on the road. With his genial manner, bent-double playing posture and unorthodox clawlike fingering (the better to hit emphatic chords and make individual notes crack like gunshots), Silver was also a riveting presence on a stage. He undoubtedly turned on many jazz players and listeners who discovered the music over the past half century, and it’s hard to imagine the dancefloor-oriented "acid jazz" movement of the late 1980s happening without him. Opus de Funk was Silver’s first big compositional success in 1953, when few song titles would have mentioned that f-word. The influence of Bud Powell and the first bebop piano generation is also pretty unmistakeable, but so is Silver’s gleeful directness.Silver Doodlin': Two years later, and the first Jazz Messengers form, with Blakey on drums, trumpeter Kenny Dorham, saxophonist Hank Mobley, and bassist Doug Watkins. Here’s that band on Silver’s Doodlin’, with the man himself on piano. Sister Sadie: Blowin’ The Blues Away, in 1959, was one of Silver’s finest and most varied albums for the Blue Note label, mixing folk elements, subtle ballads, and soul-jazz. One of the composer’s most-played and still current examples of the latter (it’s still in composer Mike Gibbs’ band-book today) is Sister Sadie.Señor Blues: But if earthy and urbanised funk and blues were central to Silver’s music, there was a cooler sensuality running through it too, and some of the most attractive developments in the Latin-jazz of the 1950s and ‘60s were his. As a child, the pianist had also heard Cape Verdean folk music played by his father. Here are two eulogies to all that, Silver’s famous Senor Blues (1956)...... and the title track from Song For My Father (1964), with the magisterial presence of the late Joe Henderson on tenor sax.
'The part in Ryan's Daughter when you lose your wife. I've never seen a more dignified man in my life.'
Julian's second entry in this series. This time on his own. He's right about Mitchum's impeccable cool. Julian also has his first novel out round about now. I imagine it should be read.
Now this is magnificent. I always though The Moles were a New Zealand Flying Nun eighties label band. It seems they're actually Australian and released a few, unsuccessful records in the early 90s. Sounds like The Clean, The Chills, Joy Division, The Velvet Underground of The Ocean and the Live '69 record. And themselves. What I heard of their other songs having discovered this yesterday sounded pretty impressive too! Here's a link to an alternative mix which I couldn't access on here but I slightly prefer.
Not found by me but by one of the regulars. This led me to buy the album it comes from when I spotted it at a Record Fair in Newcastle on Saturday. It's a quite remarkable document. Good Times is by far the most conventional thing on it. The rest is incredible, sealed with in its time and space hippie philosophising. Burdon's ego is clearly completely out of control but for those who like this kind of hippie kitsch it has its fascination. Most of the time he seems to want to come over as a Rock and Roll Richard Burton and not even bother to sing. Sill I like quite a bit of his stuff from this period; this, San Franciscan Nights and White Houses particularly.
One of the more Rock and Roll Disney songs (though of course it also lends itself to good jazz), about one of their best characters. The Replacements did a cover version on the Wide Awake version to prove the point.
Clearly just a laid back day for crooners in smoking jackets. Grey is surely just a muddy silver, still here is one of many great tracks off Roxy's surely greatest album.
Watching 'dark horse' 'much fancied' Belgium in a commentary cliché-fest with ITV's Clive Tyldesley and the shockingly bad Andy Townshend. In a game where the Algerian team came to 'park the bus' and Belgium needed to 'go up a gear' and do 'a little bit more'. Fortunately they had a Plan B.
The much maligned, (and deservedly so) , Andy Townsend.
Perhaps amongst the original and definitive Garage Bands. Many American groups took their lead from them and covered their songs and aped their delivery. The band themselves were labelled Stones copyists at the time but they're far better than that and they're not just Van Morrison's backing group. An excellent band.
1. I Can Only Give You Everything
Little Stevie Zandt named it the definitive garage song. Covered by The Troggs, The MC5 and Richard Hell & the Voidoids amongst countless others.
2. Gloria
If I Can Only Give You Everything is not the definitive Garage Band song then Gloria probably was. Incredibly sexual and would have scared people with good reason. Covered by everyone then rewritten by Patti Smith
3. Turn On Your Lovelight
4. I'm Going To Dress In Black
5. Friday's Child
One of their final recordings. Perhaps outgrowing Garage here. There are lots of others I could have chosen. The hits Baby Please Don't Go and Here Comes the Night, though perhaps they're a bit overfamiliar. Their version of Dylan's It's All Over Now Baby Blue of course is genius but probably too sophisticated for the Garage label. I recommend the double album compilation The Story of Them highly.
'For those who go on about hating football. Fair enough. But have a look at what's going on. It's just as valid in terms of understanding what's happening in the world as music, culture and literature if not more so. Certainly more so than the given take on politics and economics. Watch the Nigeria V Iran snore-draw on the box if you want to know what happens to two oppressive cultures once they drain their societies of imagination, joy and creative energy. Better than reading a long, long novel. Think I'll listen to some Fela Kuti to wash it out of my mind.'
There are Nil - Nil draw and there are Nil - Nil draws!
A b-side in the UK to Dogs in 1968. An a-side in the US where it reached # 40. Patti Smith and Tom Verlaine danced to it as it played on the jukebox at CBGB a few years later.
My second near brush with Yellow Submarine today. First weekday of my holiday and thought I'd pop in to Beatdown Records, the shop on the corner on my way to the post office to pick up a parcel. Of course I left with vinyl. As I went to the backroom where they store the records I heard they were playing the first side of Revolver. It raised my mood. You don't often hear The Beatles playing in hipster record stores. They're much maligned, particularly by hipster record shop assistants. But the run I listened to while browsing I'm Only Sleeping, Love You To and Here, There & Everywhere, sounded pretty good to me as I browsed. Then there was that awkward moment when I realised Yellow Submarine was next and didn't relish the prospect one little bit. Without anything being said the record shop guy obviously thought the same, advanced to the turntable and skipped to She Said She Said. Record shop guys know.
Records bought: Associates - Fourth Draw Down and The B52s Mesopotamia -about four quid each.
Parcel Received - Jefferson Airplane - Surrealistic Pillow
'I’ve had a couple of offers for acting in films. When a good one comes along, I want to take it, because I really think I could act, because in my position, being English and not really into the American way of life, I’ve had to act the blues anyway. I’ve had to get inside it and think about it and feel it, before I even got here, because the blues comes out of police with nightsticks and Cadillac cars and the heat, and we don’t have that in England.
-Eric Burdon, interviewed by Paul Williams for Crawdaddy! #5 (September 1966)
I found this on an excellent site charting US Number Ones one by one. Here's a great review of House of the Rising Sun. Great suggestion that Dylan pulled off the road on hearing it for the first time realising what he needed to do next.
'In the museum. What have we here? The baddest painter since God's Jon Vermeer.'
That's Vincent Van Go. Great Rock and Roll is about individualism. No one understood this better or followed an individual vision with greater determination and integrity than Jonathan Richman. The same could be said about the subject of the song.
Yellow offers a pretty poor range of song choices. No Yellow Submarine or Coldplay here. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is amongst Elton John's best songs. But Joni pips it. For the laughter at the end of the song if nothing else.
Argentina slightly understated. Despite the great Messi goal. Ibesevic gets a late consolation for Bosnia-Herzegovina. Hence the song and the poor wordplay pun! Not an inch of fat on the man I'd have to point out for the sake of fairness.
'In 1976 I hitched to London for Patti Smith's first UK gigs. To kill time I poked around a few places I'd heard and heard this in McLaren and Westwood's Sex shop. I loved it straight away - how simple it was and the singer getting all het up about nowt. It cost me a tenner, over half my week's wage but I didn't care. I had no idea it was Roky Erickson's group before The 13th Floor Elevators.' Robert Lloyd (The Nightingales)
' I saw 4AD as a coffee table label, with a mild bourgeois aesthetic worldview, which appealed to other tender-minded people. Ivo seemed attracted to suburban places to live in or an office slightly out of the centre of town, with these semi-detached English houses, but then you'd notice some of those very houses had an Arts and Crafts sensibility, with stained glass windows, which opened my eyes to the possibilities of being an aesthete, and importing those sensibilities into people's lives. Indie labels were not so well known or established at that time, yet labels like 4AD and Factory were already so refined, in a new hyper-glossy manner, with top-flight art direction. It was at the peak of post-modernism and it felt distinct from what had come before. In my mind, Ivo and Vaughan were very much going to define the decade.'
'He was a very romantic man Johnny Thunders. He was like something out of a Shanrgri Las song. He was that embodied. He loved girls. He loved female music. Because also before The Heartbreakers came over no guys in our scene or any guys I knew took all those Girl Groups seriously.' Viv Albertine
Sung most famously by Nat King Cole but I chose this as it might as well have been written for Screamin' Jay. There's also a shockingly bad version by Burt Ward who played Robin in the sixties Batman serieswhich I won't bother you with here.
Slightly disappointed, tough not surprised. I still imagine they can get through given the state of Uruguay in their first game though there's always the Suarez factor. Here's a non-parochial song about living on an island from a group of Australians. No real connection but it takes me back to childhood. Never a bad thing.
