“Long Sleeves for the Summer” – Gene
Let’s be honest: I’m a bit nesh and wear long-sleeves at the best of times. It’s been pretty nice here this week, but I’ve been mostly rocking the long-sleeve (merino) t-shirt with a short-sleeved t-shirt over the top. Long-sleeves for the summer? Makes perfect sense to me. I managed two days sat in the sun at the cricket last weekend and almost entirely avoided sunburn (the old hat, shirt and sunscreen combo serving me well). I was, however, rocking my Birkenstock sandals and now have a couple of very attractive stripes on my feet. That’s neat, that’s neat, that’s neat, that’s neat, really love those tiger feet, etc.
“Euphoria” – Loreen
I’m fairly sure that entering a song that has already been number one in five countries across Europe is basically cheating, but even though this is a fairly bog-standard sounding dance-track, it was head and shoulders better than anything else I saw at Eurovision. I agree that that’s not saying much in a world in which the Russian grannies came 2nd, but I did find myself singing this a couple of days later, which has to count for something, right? I know we always get screwed in the voting because we have no friends in Europe, but we can at least all agree that Englebert’s song was shite, yes?
“Touch Too Much” – AC/DC
Included purely for my favourite lyric in all of music:
"She had the face of an angel
Smiling with sin
A body of Venus with arms"
Brilliant. That's surely the best reference to a classical sculpture EVAH.
“Make It Easy on Yourself” – The Walker Brothers
Surging, self-pitying classic. No, no. You go and be happy. I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me at all. Etc. Best male singing voice in the history of the world bar no one.
“Egg Man” – Beastie Boys
It’s a shame that it took the death of Adam Yauch to get this back onto my stereo, but “Paul’s Boutique” is an absolute gem of a record and I could have picked almost any song off this to put in this list. One of the things I love most about the Beasties is the way that occasionally one of their lyrics jumps out at you and makes you laugh. It’s not in this song (it’s in “Johnny Ryall”), but it’s hard to beat:
"Drinks a lot of liquor but he don't drink piss"
Right. That’s good, but is it really necessary to state that as a virtue? If that's something in his favour, I can't help but wonder what he does do that isn't mentioned....
“Shake Your Blood” – Probot feat. Lemmy
I’ve been listening to a lot of old school heavy metal and rock on my iPod running playlist for the last couple of weeks. For some reason, my Probot mp3s are a little bit louder than almost everything else I own. Somehow that feels right.
“Suspicious Minds” – Elvis Presley
I wouldn’t say I was a Presley fan, particularly, but sometimes you just can’t argue with the music.
“Iron Man” – Black Sabbath
Used to good effect in the film of the same name, of course, but sometimes you can’t go wrong by going back to rock basics. This is a riff that crushes rocks (much like everything else Black Sabbath have ever recorded, now I think about it). If you can get past that – and why would you want to? – then it’s actually a pretty sad story. Tragic. Poor guy. Such ingratitude.
“Stayin' Alive” / “Massachusetts” – Bee Gees
At about 01:30 on Sunday morning, after a long, long day at the cricket, I found myself watching a documentary about the Bee Gees. Man, those guys had some tunes. I think the story I loved the most was the way that Barry Gibb discovered that he had a great falsetto voice almost by accident when singing backing vocals on a b-side. Without that chance discovery, the history of music would have been very different indeed. Their earlier, folky 60s stuff was not as ground-breaking as their disco material, but I actually really like it. “Massachusetts” is a great song. Yeah, alright, it lacks the epic swagger of the “Saturday Night Fever” stuff, but frankly, so does every other song in the history of the world. Also, Barry Gibb looks like a lion, doesn’t he? He really, really does. Brilliant band., leonine singer.
That's it. It's a four day weekend here... which I fully intend to enjoy to the fullest. Well, go and see my family, anyway. Have a good weekend y'all.
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