The Soundtrack to My Life: The Weekly Playlist - Colours

This was going to be a podcast, but truth be told I couldn't get it to work. So instead, it's a playlist, and a precis of each of the songs contained therein.

So, we were kicking around some ideas for what to do this summer with the podcast. The Club World Cup obviously sucks - next episode of that series coming soon, I’d like it done to coincide with the end of the tournament - but in all honesty both Sam and I have run out of steam with football on the podcast in recent weeks.

This, then, is our summer of ideas, so I made a playlist, because I sure do love doing playlists. Only ten songs. I don’t want to take up even more of your time. Obviously, the reason I chose the subect of colours is because I would probably put myself in the top 20th percentile of people who think about colours. I’m not an artist, obviously, but I am the possessor of two people who literally think about colours 90% of the time, meaning that I have to spend more time than is good for me thinking about them too.

So here are ten songs with a colour in the title. Well, nine songs with a colour in the title and one with all the colours in it. This is kind of based on a podcast that we recorded but that I couldn’t quite get to hang together in the edit. So I’ll try to distil the essence of what we were talking on the podcast, and as such need to give a very special co-writer’s credit goes to the magnificent Sam Whyte.

Meridian Brothers: Niebla Morada (Purple Haze)

I am a firm believer that you should always try to make an impression with the first track on a playlist, and ideally I’d prefer it to be instrumental, too. I’m also a firm believer that that you haven’t fully experienced life until you’ve heard this fabulously bonkers cover version of Jimi Hendrix’s obviously about drugs in some way or other 1967 hit.

I was in a band when I was 16, and we often usd to open with this song. But here’s the thing about covering a Jimi Hendrix song. Don’t try and make it sound like the original. Quite asides from anything else, you won’t be able to. If you’re going to cover a song like this, go large or go home.

And the Meridian Brothers go extremely large indeed. There’s a sparseness to the opening madness which fills out as the song progresses, meaning that it even bears repeat listening. I have a gauge for how popular something is: how many times has it been watched on YouTube? Because people don’t hate-watch music videos. And in 12 twelve years, this song’s audio has been seen on YouTube a paltry 85,000 times. It’s a disgrace.

Belle & Sebastian: The Blues Are Still Blue

I’ve talked about Belle & Sebastian on this site before, and I still have my 14-track playlist of theirs which I have not added to, and this is another track from that. I’ve noticed a certain theme between the songs on my B&S playlist, which is that they are largely songs that don’t much sound like Belle & Sebastian.

And in this one… are they swaggering? It seems to me that this is that only word that accruately describes what’s going on here. They’ve got a bit of swing going on, there’s a little bit of a strut behind it, all added to by the Beano-esque words about a “deputy head with the bark of bulldog, he’s not making much sense!” and the girls who’s taking “an elementary class in Kung fu”. It’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that they had to use up all their reserves of swagger to get through this.

The video to this song is decent, but it’s no where near as good as this now 15-year-old lip sync to it from a Brazilian school.

Billy Cotton: When The Red Red Robin Goes Bob Bob Bobbin’ Along

Readers of the sort of football things that I write about will be completely unsurprised to learn that I have long been mildly obsessed with the music that teams run out onto the pitch to at matches at five to three on a Saturday afternoon. Many tend towards the bombastic and overly serious, but there are still little hauntations from the past, if you know where to look.

I have got a lot of time for Charlton Athletic Football Club. Their fans did an incredible job in getting them back to The Valley, a campaign which involved picking up almost 15,000 votes at local council elections and scaring the absolute bejebus out of quite a lot of actual sitting councillors.

And there is something almost unbearably sweet about hearing Billy Cotton belting this over the PA at The Valley as the teams come out onto the pitch, even though, as I recall, they had the loudest rig I’ve ever heard there, like Motorhead’s amps buried into the perimeter around the pitch. I was supporting Leyton Orient in the League One play-off final, but it was a pleasure to hear this over the PA at Wembley when the Addicks won.

REM: Orange Crush

REM are the sort of band that I should really like, but for some reason have a blind spot over. I really like about four of their songs but never listen to them, of which this is one. I’ve never listened to a full album of theirs, but I just get this feeling that I’d find a whole album too samey and end up getting annoyed with them ovner something that isn’t their fault, and just stick to my four favourites.

Also, Michael Stipe is a bit of a hero, isn’t he? He’s on the side of the angels, and slips a sly wink to those among us who, for a variety of reasons that are ours and ours alone, may not feel completely comfortable in coming out. Such representation is really important, and his nod, a wink, and a slight sense of ambiguity (except there isn’t any at all) means more to more people than you realise. Something to ponder.

The George Baker Selection: Little Green Bag

I’m aware that I’m expected to talk about this song being the soundtrack to Michael Madsen hacking someone’s ear off in Reservoir Dogs (look, I’m not doing spoiler alerts for a film that is now older than any living dogs), but I’m not so interested in that as I am in its other-ness. Because the first time you hear Little Green Bag you’re almost wondering what sort of music it is you’re listening to. It’s not quite soul. It’s not quite pop. And then he turns into a crooner for the chorus.

What you’re listening to there is Nederpop, or Nederbeat, or Nederrock, or a host of others. Essentially, music from the Netherlands from between about 1965 and the mid-70s. It’s an interesting an eclectic bunch. You’ve got the extraordinary Golden Earring, who are responsible for two great songs in Radar Love and the excellent Twilight Zone. You’ve got whatever on earth Focus were meant to be. You’ve got the glam rock-tinged Bonnie St Claire and the excellent, excellent, excellent Shocking Blue.

And then you’ve got this little curiosity from 1970, which failed to chart when released as a single when released in this country, because we are turnip-chomping hicks. I mean, fair fucks, George Baker’s got a set of pipes on him, and for all the criticism that I could hurl at Quentin Tarantino, I can’t fault his abilities at producing a soundtrack film, though I am struck by the fact that there is such a famous man and his name is “Quentin Tarantino” and no-one talks about that.

The Flaming Lips: Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, Part One

I’ve probably seen The Flaming Lips more than I have any other band. I can count four or five times off the top of my head, and it may be more than that. I do recommend it, by the way. There are few other bands who throw quite as much of themselves into a live show. I don’t need to tell anyone about how great this song is, do I?

But Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots reminds me of a cat, a red-point Selkirk Rex who ended up named after this song. She was a pedigree, but she was the pedigree that no-one wanted; partly because she had an overbite, and partly because she had a foul temper and was forever starting fights with the other cats. The breeder gave her to us for the cost of the jabs she’d had.

She is, to the best of my knowledge, still alive. She’d be about 16 now, which is quite an achievement, considering that we were told that her breed had an average life expectancy of 12. And don’t be fooled by the cute face above. That was all part of the plan. She was perpetually furious. Selkirk Rexes have this woolly fur which places them somewhere between a cat and a sheep, only with the docility of the former and the intelligence of the latter, something which we’d have preferred to be the other way around.

Nina Simone: Lilac Wine

We’re all allowed musical blind spots, aren’t we? I had no idea that this song was something approaching a standard. I knew of Jeff Buckley’s version of it - the music of Jeff and Tim is something I’ve never been able to address on account of the tragedies of their lives, which I do understand makes me some sort of musical coward - and of course my upbringing had a certain amount of Nina Simone playing in the background.

Taken from the 1950 film Dance Me a Song, Nina’s version is a cover, the same as just about every other version of it you’ve ever heard. And it’s a difficult listen, with hints of Billie Holliday’s Strange Fruit in its delivery, although the strange fruit in this song is wine made from a lilac tree rather than the lifeless bodies of lynched black Americans.

Gary Miller and the Barry Grey Orchestra: Aqua Marina

I grew up on repeats of Thunderbirds, Joe 90 and Captain Scarlet, so the work of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson is close to my heart. It is a curiosity of the way in which culture moves at different speeds that Thunderbirds was made seven years before I was born and feels like it comes from a different universe to me, yet it’s now the same age older than me as the episodes of Bluey from the first series that my kids still watch before they go to bed every night.

And I guess that one of the things that I love most about their work is that they gave such a damn about it. Working out of trading estate in Slough, they created tiny miracles of special effects, enough to even suspend the disbelief of this naturally cynical child. And this extends into the presentation of the shows. There was no need for Stingray to have a separate closing theme, sung by Gary Miller and backed by the entire Barry Grey Orchestra. They could have just closed it with the same music as they opened it. That’s what most television shows do.

But instead, the Andersons went for it. They gave the same deference to their young audience as any other television producers might have given to an adult one. Never mind about the love triangle between Troy Tempest, Marina and Atlanta, or that Marina and Atlanta were both - and I have no desire to sound ableist here, but still - mute. And that matters to me. I like art into which I can feel the artist has truly invested itself, no matter what it is.

Rainbow: Since You Been Gone

Cheating? Possibly, but I have quite a lot to say about this particular song. But first of all, a challenge, for those of you who know this song but aren’t over-familiar with it. I want you to think about what the video to this song, and specifically about what you think the singer looks like. I think you'll be be able to imagine him. It might help to listen to it.

Done that? Good. Now click on the official video and then let me know what you think. Because he does NOT look like what you'd expect him to, halfway between Jarvis Cocker and some character from a Chris Morris show from the 1990s. In his own way, he’s rocking it, and my God has he got a set of pipes on him.

His name is Graham Bonnett, and he was brought in to replace the guy that people who know a bit about this sort of thing tend to assume as the singer out of Rainbow, Ronnie James Dio. Now, that is a Man of Rock, with a Man of Rock’s name and mane of hair. As can be seen in this video, the rest of Rainbow - celebrity drummer Cozy Powell, the famously prickly Richie Blackmore out of Deep Purple and former Deep Purple basis Roger Glover - look like Men of Rock. Mr Bonnet, on the other hand, is not who you’d expect him to be.

This song takes me back a little over twenty years, to a point in my life at which if you’d shaken me I’d have rattled, and all seemed relatively right with the world, living in a converted church in Camden, working in a dead-end office job and living for the weekend. This song became briefly the funniest thing I’d ever ever heard, with its bombastic delivery - in particular the “HURGH!” that he exclaims towards the end - but, as is won’t to happen, it eventually became one for which I had a great deal of love on its own terms.

And in the process of preparing all this, I came across the fact that it;s a cover of a Russ Ballard song, and that his version of it kinda sucks. Still, there’s no way he won’t have made some decent coin from having written it, through radio play, various covers and the like, so I doubt if he’s too bothered by my assessment of it all. And for reasons that are a little too complicated to go into here, Rainbow will forever occupy a tiny corner of my musical heart, even though they’re patently ridiculous.

Accompanying mage by Andreas Lischka from Pixabay