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:

(Remember) Walking in the Sand

Dear James,

Peach of a song for you here from the Shangri-Las, following the theme of the previous post and showing the world where Amy Winehouse got Back to Black for. But it's not just Amy who copied it: Sir Paul McCartney ripped off the verse, put it in the middle eighth of Free As A Bird and claimed John Lennon had written it. And can you guess which American hard-rock band covered it? It almost sounds like they wrote it.

I just checked my Revolution in the Head and Iain MacDonald pointed out that Shangri-La thing many moons ago. And I thought I was great. However, MacDonald makes no mention of Brian Epstein faking his own death, killing Paul McCartney and inhabiting his body and feeding on the blood of Michael Jackson, so I've still got some original ideas.

Mary Weiss was 15 when she sang lead on this song. I like how they had nothing to do with Phil Spector, even though they sound like they should, and how they're a lot darker than other girl groups of the 60s, as seen in Past, Present and Future, which is just this side of unsettling. This is a cover, I couldn't find the original.

Billy Joel played piano on the original demo to (Remember), which was seven minutes long. That's so Billy. It probably featured a Dixieland jazz section and lengthy saxophone solos. I don't know whether that drummer you like featured.

Dear Daniel,

Crikey. I was reading your text and watching the video and thinking to myself how attractive the singer of the Shangri-las was. Just then, you revealed me to be a dirty old peadophile. Thanks a bunch. Nice tune, though.