Love and Liberty

So, Nick Clegg and Mick Jagger: everyone’s quoting the 1967 description of Mick’s views as “straight John Stuart Mill”, but has he done what the rest of us haven’t and convinced Nick of the merits of Lib Dem drugs policy, or further? I only ask (as I did of Nick the first time I interviewed him, to his well-concealed delight).

Anyway, this is only a quickie, but will include the two cooler Lib Dem-pop crossovers and a terrible joke (I can almost hear you sigh). But first, Jennie Rigg’s meme to rewrite Rolling Stones songs for the Lib Dems: fab. I’m especially knackered and in lots of pain this week, so my creative energies are low, but click here to see some of the entries so far.

Just meandering for a moment – were I writing the detailed music-related article I meant to instead of this quickie, it’d be about Tom Robinson. So imagine I have, and that I’ve recommended the newly-released Tom Robinson Band Anthology 1977-1979 (though I want the stuff from 1989-1990 when I was going to their gigs).

Tune into a Tom special on Neil McCormick’s Needle Time on Vintage TV at 7pm tonight, because I won’t have written anything proper by then and you’d’ve missed it.

Back to the story of the week, which is Nick Clegg and Mick Jagger and co having dinner together. Which is cool. And Jennie’s plan to get Mick to guest at Glee Club. Which is terrifying.

Enjoy Hyde Park, Mick, and though today’s may not be as iconic, I bet you all play better this time… Though a better performance than Glee Club isn’t hard.

Rolling Stones Feat. Lib Dems – My Favourite New Entries

Jennie:

“I see a red door and I want to paint it yellow”

Jennie’s concept / Magister’s lines:

Sympathy for the Paddy

“So if you meet me, have some courtesy,
“Have some sympathy and some taste
“Use all your well learnt politesse
“Or I’ll kill you with one hand.
“Because I can, you know. Would you like to hear my joke?”

Nick Barlow’s all-too-familiar title:

Here Comes Your Nineteenth By-Election


But most of all the lovely Andrew Hickey’s massive wins with:

“I know
“It’s only a rogue poll
“But I like it…”

Oh yeah – I meant to write about a possibly rogue poll that was way better for the Lib Dems than anything else recently, but possibly worthwhile as it was polling about something other than the usual. Remind me, reader.

And the outstanding…

“I’m canvassing apartments on the ninety-ninth floor of my block
“I knock on the door looking through the window and hoping the barking will stop
“Then out comes a guy who’s all dressed up like a Union Jack
“And says I’ve won his vote if I’ll just send those immigrants back

“I said, hey! UKIP! Get off of my round!
“Hey! UKIP! Get off of my round!
“Hey! UKIP! Get off of my round!
“Don’t hang around ’cause two’s a crowd”

Finally, Magister for Simon Hughes:

“Start me up!
“If you start me up
“I’ll never stop.”

That’s one for me, too, obviously. Simon and I once did a pair of set-piece speeches to finish a Lib Dem Youth and Student Conference. Everyone missed their trains. Including me (remember, this article is a “quickie”).


On a more critical note, the Jumpin’ Jack Flash (probably my favourite Stones song, along with Saint of Me) suggestions have missed the points – they’re clearly about the wrong ex-MP. Surely…

“But I’m all right now, in fact, it’s a gas
“But I’m all right, I’m jumping lights – flash!
“Step on the gas, gas, gas”

…should make you think of an even more recently ex-ed MP (and a certain Elephant denies all responsibility for that lyric).

Too shuhne?

That Cool Lib Dem-Pop Crossover Chart In Full

Nick and Mick’s new entry only at number 3, I’m afraid, below…

Number 2: Jeremy Thorpe and Jimi Hendrix – when they were both big

(Google for the cool pictures; I’d provide a link, but they all seem to be either scandals or rip-offs, so I’m disinclined to)

And a surprise Number 1: Norman Lamb and Tinchy Stryder

Because mortgaging your house to help launch an unknown rapper’s career and him making it big is significantly cooler than a photo-op or a meal, however cool the star.


*My urge for terrible puns means I was tempted to title this Paint It Yellow Sub-Par Meme, but it’s not sub-par. It’s fab. It’s also the wrong ’60s band, and though it has the major Glee Club advantage that it’s a song everyone can sing, since the Coalition we can no longer sing along to:

“We all live in a yellow squeaky-clean…”

Labels: Liberal Democrat Conferences, Memes, Music, Nick Clegg, Paddy Ashdown, Rolling Stones, Tom Robinson, UKIP

Waking much too early on the First of December, I’ve spent the morning in seasonal mood for the first day of Advent with a selection of festive songs – and, impossibly, aiming to list a full ten that won’t make me gag! So I racked my brain (nearly a Ringo Starr song, though not a Christmassy one) for the likes of Paul Simon, George Harrison, Kate Bush, Tom Robinson, Gerry Rafferty, the Pet Shop Boys and Timbuk 3 for songs of magic, money worries and total thermonuclear destruction at Christmas. The usual suspects, then. And what else do you spot…?

Paul Simon – Getting Ready for Christmas Day

You might expect Simon and Garfunkel’s famously jolly 7 O’Clock News/Silent Night, but in the last couple of weeks I’ve mostly been listening to Paul’s most recent album, So Beautiful or So What, and while the title track is by far the best on it, I have to admit I enjoyed the stomping beat and sharp, bluesy guitar work of Paul’s song of Christmas worries in modern America that it quite put me in the mood for more Christmas songs. I’ve only found the video this morning, and that’s quite witty, too.

From early in November to the last week of December
I got money matters weighing me down
Well the music may be merry but it’s only temporary
I know Santa Claus is coming to town

George Harrison – Ding Dong, Ding Dong

Oh, I love George, and I can only assume this was a comeback at people who grumbled he only wrote deep and meaningful lyrics. Or that he wanted a minor seasonal hit. So why not get your new year in early and, ideally, watch the video, which is a lot of fun and has pirates, silly hats and George naked? What more could you want? Look, it’s better than Paul’s Wonderful Christmastime (though the redoubtable Mr Hickey, who spray-paints his beard white every December, has a brilliant defence of it), or that endlessly replayed dirge from John and Yoko. Has Ringo done one (checks. Oh, Jesus! Is that where Annie Lennox got the idea)?

Ring out the old, ring in the new
Ring out the old, ring in the new
(that’s half the lyrics already)

Kate Bush – December Will Be Magic Again

Oscar Wilde! Dropping down in my parachute! Coming to sparkle the dark up (I’m not doing a good job of covering the muck up)! Hurrah for twinkly Kate! Though the live version I’ve linked to’s OK, it’s worth looking for the proper ethereal studio one with her own backing vocals. All right, I’m strangely enjoying this Christmas lark, as long as it stays batshit-crazy.

December will be magic again
Take a husky to the ice
While Bing Crosby sings White Christmas… He makes you feel nice
December will be magic again
Old Saint Nicholas up the chimney
Just a-popping up in my memory

Tom Robinson – Merrily Up On High

Can I give a daytime TV link that Kate had a hit with Peter Gabriel and Tom wrote this (and a couple of minor hits) with Peter? It’s from Tom’s most depressed album, North by Northwest, with lots of early ’80s electronic instrumentation rather than his early punk sound. But don’t worry – this one’s lively and sounds like he’s having much more fun than the rest of it. That’s why I love it, because otherwise the lyrics wouldn’t be so funny. Discovering Tom in my teens, this festive epic of seasonal nuclear devastation was my favourite very ’80s Christmas song.

Let’s all party –
War has started
Let’s forget about days gone by
We won’t see another year like it
So drink your dinner tonight:
It's no use to face the future
Count to twenty –
Close your eyes
This year, next year
Thermonuclear
Merrily up on high!

Gerry Rafferty – Winter’s Come

Another mournfully seasonal song from the ’80s (tears, broken heart) and from my favourite Gerry Rafferty album, the utterly gorgeous North and South. Like most of the album, this is achingly beautiful, with its icy pipes as wintry a sound as you’re likely to hear. And though thinking of Christmas songs that don’t set my teeth on edge is starting to become a bit of a struggle, it’s cheering to see today that Gerry’s just been given a memorial street in his old home (shipyard) town.

Winter’s come – another year, another season begun
Every day brings a long cold lonely night

Pet Shop Boys – It Doesn’t Often Snow At Christmas

Slightly bad timing with this one – though not from the ’80s this time – released as a Christmas single just as the country was buried in blizzards. Oh well. The chorus is jolly and upbeat and the nearest to a Christmas love song I can put up with. And as well as making Bing Crosby! an exclamation, it still finds time to bitch about Christmas never being as good as it should be, so that’s all right. But, Neil… I thought you were a Doctor Who fan?

Christmas is not all it’s cracked up to be
Families fighting around a plastic tree
Nothing on the TV that you’d want to see…

Timbuk 3 – All I Want For Christmas (Is World Peace)

And back to the ’80s one last time for Timbuk 3, who I liked a lot ever since hearing their rationale for putting a nice piece of ass on the cover of their first album, Greetings From Timbuk 3, to sell more copies (look it up). I can’t say this is really my favourite of theirs – tragically, I still like toys with guns (particularly gun-sticks), and Tom’s similar message was much funnier – but their hearts are in the right place and, if you sing in an American accent, in amidst The Message the first verse closes on a spectacularly terrible pun. And I love those.

Transformers, superheroes
Thundercats in cast iron clothes
Rocket fingers, laser eyes
Cannon mouths and missile toes

All right, I know I promised ten songs, but that’s seven that I actually like and yet I’m already losing the will to live. And it’s still the morning of December 1st. That bodes well, doesn’t it, boys and girls?

I have a terrible feeling I may prefer to listen to some of the more stately old hymns and carols. Richard will be appalled and my Mum delighted – that can’t be right! I shall have to compile a more blasphemous Advent countdown later to restore the balance…

Labels: Christmas, George Harrison, Gerry Rafferty, Kate Bush, Music, Pet Shop Boys, Tom Robinson, Top Tips

Gerry Rafferty, who died yesterday, had been one of my favourite singer-songwriters ever since I rather belatedly got into music in my mid-to-late teens. Of four artists I was particularly devoted to, I eventually managed to see two play live – so it was eerie this morning to be woken by the Today Programme's 6.30 headlines with one of them, Tom Robinson, quoted in a tribute to the other, Gerry Rafferty, as "an inspiration to a generation". You probably know him from Baker Street (the one with the saxophone solo) and Stuck in the Middle (the one without the ear).

It wasn't either of his best-known songs that first sparked my interest in Gerry, oddly enough; friends of mine at school had their own band, and their covers of Gerry's early band Stealers' Wheel got my attention. I think it was probably the slow build-up of different instruments coming in to set off the driving rock and roll of Blind Faith that first made me want to track down the original, and that fixed my taste for Gerry's multi-layered big sound, rock tempered by folk but with a uniquely rich harmony of many instruments and voices. It helped, too, that several of Gerry's album covers were by John "Patrick" Byrne, whose Tutti Frutti I'd loved, and that the utterly bizarre caricatures for the three Stealers Wheel LPs in particular looked so fabulous.

"The voice, redolent of both Lennon's and McCartney's, yet unmistakably his own; the music, a shimmering delta of sound; the songs, romantic yet pushily sardonic – all came to fruition thanks to Gerry's gift of perfect pitch and an obdurate determination to stick to his guns."

From Gerry Rafferty's obituary by his former personal manager Michael Gray, in today's Guardian.

North and South

Although Gerry Rafferty's commercial and critical success – such as it was – came in the 1970s, I may still love his three 1980s albums the most… Which is a bit of a drawback if you want to look them up, as they're obviously the ones it's most difficult to get hold of (except intermittently on download). 1988's North and South, if you can find it, is for me the best of all his work. Released just as I was getting into him, it was the first of his LPs I bought, and has perhaps the most distinctive sound: several songs have extended intros before his voice comes in, with most set in a swirl of many different instruments, including the pipes that, with world-weary lyrics of being caught between life down in Kent, working in the big city, and his longing to return to Scotland, make this his most Scottish album since his early folk days in the Humblebums with Billy Connolly (yes, that one). The title song might just be my favourite of all his tracks, when I'm feeling idiosyncratic and don't want to pick Baker Street; the single Shipyard Town (which sank without trace, with me probably being one of just two people in Stockport to buy it) has a hugely infectious thump driving happier memories than his usual tone of regret; the urgent, rolling guitar of A Dangerous Age used to be on my walkman every time I was on a motorway journey; Hearts Run Dry is appropriately heartbreaking; and Moonlight and Gold is simply gorgeous. So look out for that one, if it happens to be on iTunes, or if you spot a CD that isn't going for silly money on eBay.

I have to admit I've listened to Gerry a good deal less in the last decade than in the dozen years before that: in part because I tend to watch DVDs more than I listen to music; in part because I'm more likely to listen to music that Richard likes to, so my consumption of rock and roll or punk has fallen away; but largely, particularly in Gerry's case, because I had all his work on vinyl, but no longer have a record player, and had transferred it all to cassette for ease of listening, but it's several years since our last cassette player gave up the ghost. With so much of his output near-impossible to find on CD, that rather cut down the listening opportunities, though I remember being delighted when one of the first of Doctor Who Confidential's clips montages way back in 2005 was set to the gorgeous hypnotic swirl of Get It Right Next Time.

Stealers' Wheel

I'd actually been listening to Gerry rather more often in the last couple of years, aided by at last finding CD reissues of the three Stealers' Wheel albums, the early '70s band with Joe Egan (who turns up intermittently on later Rafferty solo releases) which recorded the massive Stuck in the Middle but never quite took off, with an exciting mix of commercial failure, pretty much every member of the band leaving, coming back or being added by the record company, and eventual legal warfare that I'm sure you can read about on the internet if you're interested in that sort of thing.

Although the eponymous first album Stealers' Wheel is their best-known and includes Stuck in the Middle and the altogether lovely You Put Something Better Inside of Me, its rather sparse production means I much prefer the other two (one of the tracks, Johnny's Song, doesn't do a lot for me here, but becomes fantastic when reworked on Gerry's 1980 solo album). No, the Paisley-titled 'difficult second album' Ferguslie Park is much better, with the caressing regret of Waltz (You Know It Makes Sense) and the thumpingly good rock and roll of Blind Faith and (Everyone's Agreed That) Everything Will Turn Out Fine, while I'm probably the only person in the world whose favourite of the three is the less difficult than near-impossible third album, which wasn't so much released as escaped after several years in lawyers' custody and long after the band had expired, Right Or Wrong. They may all have hated it, but it's the closest to the lush solo sound that came a few years later. I love the title track; the catchy Catholic cynicism of Benediction was right in line with my religious upbringing; even funky chicken Wishbone grabbed me.

Baker Street and the Rest

If you have a Gerry Rafferty album, it's probably 1978's City to City, which was deservedly a massive success along with its lead single, Baker Street, which mixes melancholic reflections on a singer's street life in London with an uncharacteristic but appealing closing paean of hope and sunrise, an arching guitar solo and, of course, one of the most blissful saxophone solos ever recorded (by Raphael Ravenscroft or, if you prefer your urban legends, Bob Holness. Look, he wasn't a saxophonist – he was James Bond). If you have a copy of the B-side, incidentally, Big Change in the Weather, I don't think that's ever been released on CD, so it's a very long time since I've heard it… Almost the whole album's superb, though – rock Home and Dry and romantic Right Down the Line are both fabulous and reasonably well-known; soaring, reflective Whatever's Written in Your Heart is rather lovely, and Waiting for the Day has another effortless rock bounce to it.

Although his music continued to be great, nothing Gerry Rafferty did after City to City had the same success – perhaps because soft rock was out of fashion, perhaps because of his famous distaste for fame and the music business (a theme that recurs through his work much more even than most singer-songwriters), perhaps because, in a business more about sex appeal than art, he was never much of a looker. His next four albums plotted a sharp downwards sales line – the follow-up, Night Owl, was the least interesting ('like City to City, only less so') but the only one that was a fair-sized hit. I've never really gone much for the title track – a hit single, yet hardly ever played since, and which might as well have been called, 'God, I Hate Touring' – though the swirling Get It Right Next Time is sublime near-perfect pop, Days Gone Down makes longing almost heroic, then Take the Money and Run and The Tourist… Are catchy tunes that hate the music business.

I'd much rather listen to Snakes and Ladders, not that I can at the moment because I'm not paying £60 for the CD on eBay, which was the point where his sales fell off a cliff and, predictably, a particular favourite of mine. All right, so it's not quite as good as the rock sublimity of City to City, but the feel's a great mix of laid-back and sardonic, with a sure musical sensibility. I've already mentioned his compelling bluesy retake on Johnny's Song, while the lush sound and cynically political lyrics of The Garden Of England (complete with sampled Willie Whitelaw, I seem to remember) is one of the most Raffertyish of all his songs. The infectious folk-rock of The Royal Mile (Sweet Darlin') was one I once had on many cassette compilations (and always cheering to walk with Café Le Cabotin, which I'd play next to a Paul McCartney song about a café which, obviously, I can't quite remember and also don't have on CD, though I probably could if I got round to it).

The next album, after which he stopped recording until his masterpiece (yeah, I know, only for me) North and South, was his shortest and his most uncharacteristic. Sleepwalking is starkly synthesiser-based (aside from the more complex shuffle of the title track) and has a fairly anonymous photographic landscape cover, giving the whole a feel of alienation, in severe contrast to the intimacy of most of his albums; while I love synth-pop, it's not something he seems entirely comfortable with, and yet some of the melodies are among his most lovely – The Right Moment, in particular… Wise As A Serpent, another standout track, is hypnotic but cold. And, yes, this is another one it's very difficult to find – but with a haunting desire to hear the guitar and bass opus of Standing at the Gates again, I have to admit I've just shelled out £30 on eBay for it. It had better play…

Like City to City, if considerably less celebrated, you can find On a Wing and a Prayer fairly easily and cheaply; it's rather good, with a big sound this time offered by very distinctive backing vocals – it was at this time that I saw him being terrific on stage in Hackney, and boy, there were a lot of singers, with the biggest voice offered by a very big chap indeed – and some of his most lingering melodies of loss. I'm sure someone once called this 'the divorce album', and it certainly runs through every emotional reaction, from wanting to hang on (the hauntingly regretful single I Could Be Wrong), to remembering the good times (Love and Affection), to the album's most electric and lively if not its most pleasant track, a cover of Allen Toussaint's Get Out Of My Life Woman. The track that most stays in my head, though, is the opening song Time's Caught Up on You, with a breathtaking a cappella introduction (and rather than divorce, this one's about… Oh, see if you can guess).

There weren't that many Gerry Rafferty releases after that one in 1992, save a legion of each-one-very-slightly-different-from-the-last compilations, and what new material there was didn't really live up to his previous work, despite occasional sparks. Over My Head in 1995 was OK, but the first of his albums where – aside from the atypically brisk single The Girl's Got No Confidence, and several songs re-recorded from his early '70s oeuvre – I was hard-pressed to get any of the tunes to sink in, while the last decade's Another World… Wasn't nearly as good as that. I found it a bit of a religious dirge, and aside from Land of the Chosen Few, such memorable tunes as there were tended to be borrowed from his earlier work or, again, simple re-recordings. His final album, Life Goes On from 2009, was a partial return to form, though very little of it was strictly new, with covers, re-recordings, different takes and only the odd new song. The material, though, appropriately stretches from reworkings of his early '70s songs through to his favourites from On a Wing and a Prayer, so it's not a bad elegy for him, and I'm particularly glad it's got a re-recording (if not quite as piquant as the original) of Shipyard Town B-side Heart's Desire, an otherwise difficult-to-find song that's as Rafferty as they came – a lovely melody, and very wry lyrics.

"And now you've got everything you ever wanted,
But money can't buy you a satisfied mind.
What can you do when a dream comes true
And you can't go any higher?
That's the price you pay for your heart's desire."

His having returned to them so much in his later years, I'll finish by rounding full circle to some of Gerry Rafferty's earliest recordings. Only having them on LP, it's been a long time since I've listened to Gerry and Billy's folky Humblebums albums, which were all right, or his first solo album, Can I Have My Money Back, which is better if not outstanding and shows a lot of his talent being honed (despite rather primitive production, with much more life than the late-period CDs that recapture some of the same songs) and even in the title track of this very early work displays his hatred of the music business – it's worth a listen, though, particularly for the melodic longing of Mary Skeffington (apparently inspired by his mother), Long Way Round (clearly a prototype of his later big numbers, as is the Humblebums' I Can't Stop Now), and Sign on the Dotted Line, the effusive catchiness of which is at odds with, unsurprisingly, its critique of the music industry (and it's also one of the tracks he did with Joe Egan, soon to be the other half of Stealers' Wheel. Which is where I more or less began, above).

Gerry Rafferty never seemed to enjoy fame very much, but I loved his songs, and very few singer-songwriters have ever matched the sustained quality of his work from the early '70s through to the early '90s, in fair sales and foul. And amid that, there are a handful of songs so outstanding and so lucky as to have caught the public ear (and Quentin Tarantino's) that he'll be widely remembered. And I'll miss him.

The lovely Stephen Glenn has also written about Gerry this morning.

The Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy

More happily, it was thirty years ago today that the first episode of the TV series The Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy was broadcast on BBC2 – for me, the definitive version of the much-written, often-made story. Douglas Adams had honed his scripts to perfection; it's one of the most visually imaginative TV series ever made; and Paddy Kingsland's music is so utterly gorgeous that hearing it to the sunrise can still make me tear up (OK, so it was only pop and rock that I took a while to get into; I always loved TV scores).

I think I'll go out and get myself a new towel. Though Marks and Spencer's in Salisbury is probably a bit of a trek.

Labels: Douglas Adams, Gerry Rafferty, Music, Obituary, Personal, Reviews, Tom Robinson