Girls, Girls, Girls

Dear James,

Ah, 1980s MOR and naked women. John Spencer, watch and learn. Mötley Crüe are very touchy about their videos, all the versions of Girls Girls Girls are unavailable in my country and they've disabled embedding for this one too, so I'm obliged to illustrate this piece with a photo of Crüe drummer, Tommy Lee. (Readers please note: I do not own the copyright to this photo and it is used here merely for educational purposes.)

Watching this when I was 14 was the height of excitement. My neighbour Matt Blundell had recorded it off Raw Power and we watched that, the nudey bits from Monty Python films, and some dodgy interview off The Word, and then we had something to remember for later. We made our own entertainment in those days.

Aren't Mötley Crüe hard? I'm very impressed with their big bikes, their leather gear, and the way they gang up on an unarmed man minding his own business in a strip club (0:38). Notice at (1:38) the camera cuts to Vince Neill in the crowd, and he looks like just another stripper. Also good to see what a consummate professional Mick Mars was (3:32). He somehow finds himself in the strippers' dressing room, surrounded by ladies in lace, and he just lights up a cig and carries on playing his solo. Musical masturbation, some would call it.

The follow up to Girls Girls Girls was Bikes Bikes Bikes, featuring the boys riding around on women while some tarted-up Harley Davidsons flaunted their assets around a dance pole. The video was less successful.

Bassist Nikki Sixx (all these names are made up, one suspects) officially died in December 1987 after a heroin overdose. He was brought back to life with an adrenaline shot to the heart. Like that lady in the film. Sadly, this has never led to any kind of "Nikki is Dead" conspiracy theories.

Afro

Dear Daniel,

There is a reason. I've been plugged in by Virgin. So I was searching for "Plug Me In" by Add n To (x). I thought you might like the fact that it featured a porn star. Unfortunately, it's just too damn smutty for YouTube to allow so the result is less than happy. It's here though. Anyway, I remember John Spencer did something with them at some point and that reminded me I haven't heard Afro for a long time.

His ability to build a reasonably successful career from shouting "Blues explosion!" repeatedly while flinging himself at a theremin is quite something. God knows, I've tried to do the same. My techniques were "shuddering" and "sweating" - both of which mirror the complexity of John Spencer's ideas but which failed to bring me the level of praise dumped on this man in the late 90s.

I am willing to admit that his moves, if not more cool than mine, were a bit more socially acceptable.

Dear James,
That's positively filthy. In fact I watched the plug-me-in video 2 hours ago and it's taken me that long to get back to here. It was a wet and wild voyage. So it would appear that any two women with a polaroid and a dildo can now be popstars? That's very empowering. It's like Tatu all over again. I've told Josefina, if she can find a friend I'll lend her the piano.

Oh, and John Spencer? Meh. Didn't you make me go and see him at the Leadmill? He was rubbish then as well. No MOR and no naked women, what kind of video is that?

Mad Dogs and Englishman

Dear James,
Let it not be said that this blog is a sad 70s throwback by two middle-aged men trying desperately to be ironic by pretending to like dodgy MOR tunes which they actually do like because they crossed the fine line of irony many years ago and are now clinging onto a vinyl copy of Tigermilk as their last shred of musical credibility. I've heard people say that about this blog.

No, this blog can also be a sad 50s throwback too, and who better for our first glimpse of the days when people wore dinner suits for light entertainment television and talked proper than that staunch heterosexualist, Noël Coward. I'm only pretending to like him because Freddie Mercury was compared to him so often. But look at how fast he sings! He's like Eminem in a tux.

Some interesting facts about Coward I cribbed off Wikipedia:
-He was a spy and in the Nazis' Black Book. That's their book of people to kill, not to be confused with their Red Book of hot flings from their decadent Weimar days.
-His chum George VI tried to knight him but Churchill blocked it because he thought Coward was a bit of a whoopsy. Has Graham Norton been knighted yet? No. And it's all that homophobe Blair's fault.
-Peter Collinson, Italian Job director, was an orphan at The Actors' Orphanage, of which Noël Coward was president.
-Noël Coward's neighbour in Jamaica was Ian Fleming.
-The Doctor Who novel "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" features a version of Coward who has allied himself with alien poodles and gained time travel technology. I wish I'd made that up, but apparently it's true.

Dear Daniel,

You'll have to shoulder that confidence-crisis yourself. I take no responsibility for the massive splurge of 70s nonsense for which Genesis was the, er, genesis. And bearing in mind I'm pretty sure something's going to get me by the time I'm fifty, I was middle aged at 25. I'm currently sliding pleasantly towards dotage.

I know virtually nothing about Noel Coward, beyond him being wonderful in the Italian Job. And the chorus to this. I didn't realise it was quite such a performance piece. It really only just manages to stay clear of rampant xenophobia, tricking you into thinking it's a harmless, self-effacing jibe at the niavity of Imperial toffs and at the same time slipping in a few stereotypes and ubba-jubba laffs at African dialects like a street magician with a charming smile who's secretly going for your wallet.

Eminem in a tux indeed.

Border Song

Dear James,

Holy Moses! Elton John's coming to Buenos Aires on 22 January and I'm in the same quandary as when Queen+bloke came in November. Do I go and stand in a football stadium watching an act I've loved for years doing a poor impression of an act I've loved for years, or do I sit at home grumbling? My main worry with going to see Elton is that most of the set will be the post-1974 dross, with the worthy exception of This Train Don't Stop Here Anymore, which is really Goodbye Yellow Brick Road in disguise. Why is it we can put a man on the moon, but we can't create some kind of concert experience where a hologram video is projected in a small club-type arena of the acts we wished we'd seen in the 70s? Everyone could go in skin-tight flares and yellow wollen sweaters, a fine time would be had by all and the artiste in question need never know. My quandary is compounded by Elton´s support act, the inimitable James Blunt. Going to the gig would imply impeccable timing in order to miss Blunt but catch Elton. What would Moses do?

I like this bluesy version of the song. There are other versions on youtube with playback of the dull choir. This version grooves all over the place like Travolta on Ice, and is all the better for it. I was going to say that Elton looks quite conservatively dressed in this video. Then I noticed that big glittery bow tie jutting into his chin.

A boring musicians' note: notice the similarities between Elton John's and Freddie Mercury's chord sequences on the piano. Lots of use of rails (do we call them rails?) from F upwards, via the indispensable F#dim. I love F#dim. You can go anywhere after F#dim.

Jump

Dear James,
Tight trousers, big hair and a man playing a guitar which he thinks is a keyboard. No wonder we all loved Van Halen back in the day. And we weren't the only ones. VH1 decided this was the 82nd best rock song of the century. There's no arguing with that. Although I've got Pablo sitting next to me with half a sandwich in his mouth arguing that Charisma by Kiss is the best rock song of the 20th century. The people I have to work with...

Eddie Van Halen is a mystery unto himself. For the whole half of this video he does the worst keyboard miming act ever. That's a guitar, Eddie! Then for the solo he tries to play every single instrument on stage, failing only because he can't work out what those funny hollow drums are for.

David Lee Roth, meanwhile, does his Pamela Anderson impersonation. Even Pamela can't do the jumping splits that well. Have you ever heard DLR's cover of Californian Girls? You have now, and you wish you hadn't.

Pablo's just told me that it wasn't really Eddie Van Halen, but the bass player who was the musical genius in the band, playing all the instruments and managing everything behind the scenes like a puppet master. I believed him, I'm gullible like that.

Anyway, I was watching that video at work, my excuse being that I was stealing lines from the song to put in my characters' mouths. Until I realised I was giving them lines from an entirely different song called "Jump". Can you see why I would've got confused?