Rosa Rosa

Dear James,

Having mentioned Elvis, I feel duty-bound to my fellow countrymen to post some videos of the Argentinian Elvis, Sandro, which granted is a bit of a girl's name for such a manly hunk. Here he is above, showing off his wildman moves. Here he is again singing Trigal, or Wheat Field. What a pair of trousers!

Wheat field, where my hands are dilated,
Where they are compressed and snatch away,
The colour of your wheat field,
Wheat field oh! Wheat field.

Eh? Like Elvis, Sandro also did the odd fillum, but with a notably lower budget than his North American counterpart. Here he is in the film "Muchacho", filmed during a day out at Tigre.

I just spent half an hour looking through all last year's mails for a video of Sandro that I sent you but I can't find it. I've missed nearly all Everton vs. Aston Villa. Everton scored and I barely noticed. Here's another amusing rendition of Rosa Rosa instead.

Mr. Brownstone

Dear James,

Speaking of Elvis, which I was just now, I remembered yesterday's idea for a post about this song. It may have been my state of mind while listening to this seminal rendition from The Ritz in 1988, but I got the impression that it could have been an Elvis Presley cover. It isn't, but try singing along to this with A Little Less Conversation, give it a skiffle beat and I'm sure I'm onto something.

Mr Brownstone was written on the back of a grocery bag by Axl and Izzy after one of those days on the heroin, or Mr. Brownstone as they liked to call it. That's why the grocery bag is vastly superior to the plastic bag. You can write a song on the back of a Tesco bag, but only if you do so before shooting up.

Suzanne/Amsterdam

Dear James,

I actually wanted to post this song by Jacques Brel but enabling has been disabled, so I asked youtube to give me a video I could post in its stead and for reasons known only to youtube it suggested this Leonard Cohen number. Take your coat off, Lenny. Stay a while. Except youtube originally suggested the live at Isle of Wight version, then told me it wasn't available, thus rendering my raincoat comment incomprehensible.

Wikipedia really does throw you some odd lines at times. I'm sure this one's made up:

One morning at six o'clock he read the words of Amsterdam to Fernand, a restauranteur who was about to set off fishing for scorpion fish and conger eels for the bouillabaisse. Overcome, Fernand broke out in sobs and cut open some sea urchins to help control his emotion.

The English lyrics to Brel's songs and much used by Scott Walker were written by Mort Shuman, who also wrote Viva Las Vegas.