Like Georgie Fame’s Peaceful this is another one of those understated 1960s tracks. It was only a minor hit in the UK (see link below.)

98.6 on its release was considered by some to be the archetypical song of its time.

It’s also said (and mentioned in Keith’s Wiki entry) that its title refers to the human body temperature in degrees Fahrenheit. To my mind that allusion in the lyric is more than a little strained.

I was watching Doctor Who so I didn’t catch the build up to tonight’s game. I switched over just in time to catch the kick-off.

And seven seconds later?

Mark it: seven seconds.

That’s all the time it took for the commentator (Clive Tyldesley?) to mention a certain event in 1966. I think that makes some sort of record.

Not as satisfying a record as the original 7 seconds, as by Youssou N’Dour and Neneh Cherry, which I append below for your pleasure.

7 seconds is, I believe, the only song to feature a lyric in Wolof to trouble the British charts.

I caught the preamble to Call Me Dave’s launch of the Conservatives’ manifesto today. Over the PA they were playing all sorts of songs with “change,” “changes” or “better” in their lyrics – except of course D:Ream.

Did the Tories have permission to do this?

One of the songs was Bowie’s Changes, which contains the line “Don’t want to be a richer man.”

I don’t suppose Dave does: he comes from money and took good care to marry even more.

The song also has, “You’ve left us up to our necks in it.” Was this a prediction, Dave?

Look out you rock ‘n’ rollers.

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s Ohio wasn’t the only song to mention the Kent State shootings. Student Demonstration Time, from the Beach Boys excellent Surf’s Up album, does so too.

A (restricted access) blog which I frequent aired complaints that this is a rip off of Riot In Cell Block Nine which, according to Wiki, the Beach Boys used to play in their concerts around that time. Some might, instead, call it a homage.

The lyric does contain what I think is rather a good pair of lines in:-
“The pen is mightier than the sword
But no match for a gun (when there’s a riot going on.)” The parentheses are mine.

The blurb on this You Tube item says it’s a different version from the one on Surf’s Up.

This is the more familiar (to me) track from the album.

“What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground?
How can you run when you know?”

Previously I featured only C S and N. This is the full monty CSNY with their Neil Young composed protest song about the Kent State University shootings, Ohio.

The cover shown on the clip is of Deja Vu, but Ohio didn’t appear on that; only coming out on a studio album with the compilation So Far (on which a notable absentee was CSN’s first hit in the UK, “Marrakesh Express” – a track which for which I can only find fairly dodgy live versions on You Tube.)

My correspondent Campbell Yule eulogised CSNY in a recent comment.

Well; this is only CSN but it is still an anthem for old hippies. One of the sounds of the Sixties.

Stephen Stills breaks into Spanish during the last section – apparently to be obscure just for the sake of it.

Suite: Judy Blue Eyes

The Band’s The Weight has famously indecipherable/obscure lyrics. Nevertheless I did buy the single way back when and also found a very good version of the Bob Dylan song I Shall Be Released on the B-side.

The first version of The Weight I remember hearing, though, and one that got a bit of airplay at the time, was by Jackie DeShannon. She wrote a good few of the familiar songs from the mid nineteen-sixties including a couple of The Searchers’ hits.

Here she is on You Tube.

For comparison purposes here also is The Band’s original version.

I’ve just had a horrible thought.

England have qualified for the World Cup. (That’s not the horrible thought even though I know I shouldn’t even whisper it. Anyway, this is not about them.)

The thing is, as a result we are no doubt due for actor Keith Allen’s usual attempt at a tie-in song. Remember World In Motion, Vindaloo and Jerusalem?

Since Allen’s daughter is now a pop star she could no doubt point him in a new direction he could rip off parody. (I gather she has a track record in what we can charitably call homage. Several records in fact.)

They might put out the thing as a double act.

I’ve even thought of an appropriate name for the pair – apart from Tossers, obviously.

Not Leith Allen – that might be a bit too Scottish sounding.

So what about Keily Allen?

It’s a few days late for the solstice but…

Oh. A very merry Christmas to everybody.

The good lady told me she caught Mike d’Abo (the former Manfred Mann frontman, successor to Paul Jones) on TV last week talking about one of the songs he wrote, Handbags And Gladrags. She got the impression it had been written for Rod Stewart but I said I was sure Chris Farlowe had recorded it first.

D’Abo apparently said he had to write a woodwind part for Stewart but since he doesn’t write music he had to have someone transcribe it.

Whatever, the song has since become more widely known as a result of The Stereophonics recording and the version which was used as the theme music for Ricky Gervais’s “The Office” TV series.

I dislike the Stewart and Stereophonics versions both. (I can’t remember “The Office” one clearly. I didn’t watch that show.)

In theirs the relevant lyric is rendered as:-
“the handbags and the gladrags that your grandad had to sweat to buy you,”
which is okay but implies a willing benevolence on the grandad’s part and is rather sweet.

However it means something completely different – and much less damning – compared to the original:-
“the handbags and the gladrags that your grandad had to sweat so you could buy,”
which is more redolent of the wastrel ways of an ungrateful grandchild.

This is Chris Farlowe’s version (from 1968):-

There is, by the way, a connection of sorts between Chris Farlowe and myself. But I don’t want to make too much of it as I have read he has become something of a right winger and BNP adherent. (If this is not the case I apologise to him.)

There are no prizes for getting the connection as it’s pretty obvious.