Almax* recently featured this song on his blog – which for legal reasons (he’s a lawyer) is sadly restricted to only a few readers.

I was moved to comment that Tin Soldier surely has the single best musical intro to a pop song ever.

It deserves wider hearing. This version has the added benefit of P P Arnold on backing vocals, as did the recording.

As a result of his posting another of Alastair’s readers recommended this, Song Of A Baker, for which embedding is disabled. But you can follow the link.

*Almax’s The Defibrillator blog – on my sidebar – is open to all but he tends not to post new stuff there.

I heard this on the radio the other day and it took me back.

So. To all of you who, like me, never gave up anything or anyone for rock and roll but instead have spent their lives working for the man, here’s Albert Hammond.

I happened to hear this song by the Kinks on the radio the other day. I thought (again) how strange it is. It seems to have as many galloping hiccoughs as “Bohemian Rhapsody” and sounds as if it has at least three different melodies. As a result I began to wonder if there were different time signatures involved and if perhaps it could be claimed as a progenitor of prog rock. After all, the Kinks songwriter and éminence grise Ray Davies has been credited with inventing heavy metal with the riff driven “You Really Got Me” and “All Day And All Of The Night” so why not prog too? Note here that his song writing skills undoubtedly rank as high as anyone in the rock/pop pantheon – and I mean anyone.

So listened to it again more carefully and, yes, there are key changes, but, to my ears anyway, it follows a resolute 2/2 throughout. (Either that or it’s a quick 4/4.)

Despite the apparent complexity, it’s actually very simple rhythmically.

The man was/is a genius. Hear for yourself.

I got married.

On a bank holiday (in nineteen hundred and long time ago.) My English-born and raised cousin, who was no stranger to Scotland, came up for the do and when my father mentioned getting the signatures to the registrar afterwards, said, “I thought you said it was a Bank Holiday.”

We said, “It is. A bank holiday. The banks are shut, everything else is open.”

I was sad to hear of the death of Bobby Robson.

He was one of the last of the links with a time when football was the people’s game rather than the plaything of media moguls and moneyed oligarchs.

I don’t remember him as a player but his career as a manager surely marks him as one of the best.

What he did with Ipswich Town – though failing to match the League Championship that Alf Ramsey managed there, he surpassed Ramsey’s achievements with an FA Cup win and the Uefa Cup and sustained Ipswich in the top division for a goodly length of time – was a measure of how great a manager he was, given that, even then, a provincial club was at a huge financial disadvantage compared to those from big cities.

He also had success in foreign parts (winning championships in Holland and Portugal and cups in Portugal and Spain) not a common claim for British managers.

In nigh on thirty years as a manager his teams finished lower than sixth only eight times.

Through it all, he seemed to be a thoroughly decent man, a quality somewhat lacking in the game these days.

Bobby Robson, 18/2/33 -31/7/09. So it goes.

I mentioned Procol Harum a few posts ago. When I wrote about America by The Nice I said, under the influence of a programme I’d seen on the history of the form on BBC 3 or 4, that it seemed that was where Prog Rock began. However it is arguable that Procol Harum’s A Whiter Shade Of Pale, with its debt to Air On A G String, is a truer progenitor.

Among other reasons, A Whiter Shade Of Pale is famous for the opacity of its lyric. I confess to a soft spot for the follow up single, Homburg, (based more on Sheep May Safely Graze) where the lyric is not quite so opaque. The verses are a shade apocalyptic but not the refrain.

Verse 2 runs like this:
The Town Clock in the market square stands waiting for the hour,
When its hands they both turn backwards and on meeting will devour
Both themselves and also any fool who dares to tell the time,
And the sun and moon will shatter and the signposts cease to sign.

SF/fantasy imagery or what?

But then we get a refrain dealing with (a lack of) sartorial elegance.
Your trouser cuffs are dirty and your shoes are laced up wrong,
You’d better take off your homburg cause your overcoat is too long.

Utterly bizarre.

I couldn’t find a version where the first few notes are not omitted.

I featured the real Nirvana’s Pentecost Hotel recently. After the posting I began to think about songs featuring named hotels in their titles. There aren’t all that many that came to mind. Hotel California, obviously, and Heartbreak Hotel. A quick scan of You Tube – up to page 16! – only revealed Procol Harum’s Grand Hotel as one I hadn’t heard. (I’ve listened to it now and it’s a bit overblown.)
The only other named hotel song I can remember is this from Mike Batt. From the sublime (Nirvana) to the bathetic.

Perhaps that bathetic should have been pathetic after all. Or is that too harsh?

This is the real Nirvana’s track, Rainbow Chaser, their third single, which is said to be the first to utilise throughout what became almost a trademark of musical psychedelia, phasing.

I must confess that, to me, the verses seem to be without phasing.

This alternative version (not the one I remember) does seem more phased but otherwise its arrangement is more conventional.

It’s been hard to escape Michael Jackson over the past couple of days. The coverage has been almost wall to wall. The press and media just love something like this – but they take it too far.

I must confess I wasn’t much of a fan of Jackson’s music though I’ve heard lots of it of course.

I don’t know what he saw when he looked at his reflection (I suppose very few of us do like what we see in the mirror) but he was clearly a troubled soul.

Life in the showbiz spotlight can’t be fun; plus he had no childhood to speak of. With all that fame and money it must be difficult to find true friends. It’s no wonder he began to act out his hype.

It would be interesting to find out if Jarvis Cocker had mellowed towards him any. I suspect not.

Michael Jackson 1958-2009. So it goes.

Apart from calling his band Nirvana I once thought that Cobain’s use of the song title Smells Like Teen Spirit was pretty cool, a nice metaphorical touch. Then I found out Teen Spirit is actually some sort of American deodorant.

Not so cool at all, then. (Except under the arms of course.)

Here is the real Nirvana’s track, Pentecost Hotel, their second single.