Summer in the City - One

Dear James,

It was 32 degrees today! In the middle of the autumn! Imagine! As much as I try, I just can't help but get carried away by the excitable presenters on the 24 hour news programs.This reminded me of when I told you during our live blog that by 1966 bands like The Beatles and these chaps here were writing songs so complicated, they couldn't play them live, and the Spoonful's drummer had to sing this one because John Sebastian couldn't play the hugely complicated piano part and sing at the same time. Unless they mimed, clearly. It's hardly Tomorrow Never Knows, now is it?

So I was playing that to myself on the piano yesterday as my silly old neighbour tried to shush me through the kitchen window (as if I can hear!) when I realised it's the same chords as One by Hary NIlsson. This is a song I downloaded a couple of months ago after reading from one of those wise people who take the time to comment on youtube videos that this and The Shangri Las' Walking in the Sand were what Amy Winehouse copied for Back to Black.



I've always found myself nonplussed by the work of Nilsson. Everybody's Talking is fine until he starts yodelling and this one he seems to be making up as he goes along. He was probably going to start dissing the number three before he remembered it is in fact the magic number. All of which suggests that he owes all his success to Lennon and McCartney telling the press that Nilsson was the best band in the world, some time in the sixties, and then hanging out with Lennon drinking Brandy Alexanders in 1975.And yet, he gets a section in my ¨Songwriters on Songwriting¨ book. Excuse me while I look for it on my bookshelf. Yes! I´ve put the bookshelves up!

As I suspected, the book continues to big up the NIlsson myth:

Nilsson died in Los Angeles on January 15, 1994, the weekend of the big earthquake. His heart stopped, and before long the entire city began to erupt.

That's nicely understated.



Anyway, in between all that, I did some of my homework for the scriptwriting course I started on Monday. I had to watch these two short films, and then have a think. Now I'm off to eavesdrop on someone's private conversation and write a scene based on that. Then I have to write about a memory from my childhood and read it to a small child. If I can find any small children, I'm sure they'll end up traumatised.





Dear Daniel,

How did you know the neighbour was shusshing you if you couldn't hear them? There's a wall between the piano and the kitchen...?

Anyway, in a bid to try and make you like Harry Nillson, here's a song featuring two of your favourite things: Alan Price-style music and swearing.



I hope you ignored the poster's unusual and unnecessary attempt to link this with "Degrassi the Next Generation".

Dear James,

Josefina informed of the shushing. She was in the kitchen. Embedding Degrassi The Next Generation has sadly been deactivated, so our reader(s) now have to spend even longer looking for that. I only like Alan Price when he appears in O Lucky Man, and swearing in songs is only any good when it's done right, such as here:

Philosophy

Dear James,

I could write a whole blog on Ben Folds and his Five. The song you posted below is from last September's album, Way To Normal. I downloaded it, listened to it once and never returned to it until you posted You Don't Know Me. It's a grower, it has its moments, but the thing is this:

When you've written a song like Philosophy, where do you go from there? Well, Steven's Last Night in Town and Narcolepsy, clearly, and even Ben's first two proper albums had half a dozen songs each of the standard we'd come to love. And it's saddening how one of my two hereos (Jerry Seinfeld being the other) has lowered his game to this radio-friendly- if it wasn't Ben Folds I wouldn't give it the time of day- mush, but I think we can accord him the same status as Queen and Billy Joel who smashed our musical illusions by making a load of great albums and then a load of guff. That's age for you.

I was going to post more videos then, but I've just discovered there was a Ben Folds Five reunion gig in Chapel Hill on 18 September last year. Josephine Funseeker's birthday! I'm going to watch that instead. Why don't you watch it too? This is huge.

Well it's now 4.15am and I just watched that and it brought forward all kinds of emotions, from the trumpet at 2:22 in Don't Change Your Plans and onwards and before that. What a band. Sometimes you get two friends together and they become a couple and they thank you, but it doesn't compare to my thanks to you and Áine for getting me into this band. Thank you and good night, good night, sweet baby. The world has more for you.

Dear Daniel,

Well crikey, you're welcome. I wasn't aware that Reinhold Messner had become something of a lost classic in the US or that Robert Sledge had become overweight or that Darren Jessie had a solo career. To be honest, I didn't realise ten years had passed. Bloody hell.

In record-straightening news: I was a fan of Billy Joel aged 7, with a nostalgic relapse aged 11 - 13. It don't makes him my Queen, he's my ironic nostaligic childhood joke-act reference, or "inchjar". No musical illusions were smashed by that man, he doesn't deserve that much attention. I think REM were to me what Queen were to you. But anyway, I see your point...

Dear James,

Darren Jessee now sings in Hotel Lights. At first listen, I'm tempted to say it sounds like non-descript, lily-livered Americana. You might like it, you like Elliott Smith.

You Don't Know Me

Dear Daniel,

Jonathan Ross has just played this song on his Radio 2 show. I'd never heard it before, although I imagine it's a probably not hot off the presses. I've really drifted away from his stuff ever since it became clear he was a really good songwriter. Does that sound odd? What I mean is: when it became obvious he could pen a good tune. That if you asked him to write something for you, he'd be able to do it in a minute and it would be... good.

Hmmm. Try this: Ben Folds Five felt like a really fine cottage industry, putting a bit of blood sweat and tears into their goods and it was sometimes shoddy but you knew somebody had put a heap of love into it. Nowadays, he's bought a big factory and the product's similar, but I can see the machine-cut edges. It's a taste thing. I buy free range eggs.

There's a second reason I was moved to write about Ben Folds. He turned up on Sky news this week. In amongst the reporters kicking in doors and over-egging their pieces to camera, there was this report on a contest to find the best a capella rendition of one of his songs.

I like this one.



mainly for the lead vocalist's arm-brace (unfortunate 11th-hour free-running mishap? Or attempt to create himself a thing, i.e. "It's that guy! You know - with the arm-brace!"). Also for the fact that the camera-operators clearly had no idea he was going to give it quite so much and for the truly really-well-done instrumental section.

And for the guy at the end who thought they were going to shout cut a lot earlier...