assorted

Two things from the weekend:

1) On the tube on Saturday, I ended up in sitting the same carriage as two sets of slightly smug parents and their shouty children. One of the Dads encouraged the kiddies to count up to thirteen, which they did, loudly He then got them to count up to thirteen in French. Which they also managed pretty well. He looked pleased with himself. The other Dad said, 'Right - now do it in Klingon.'

2) Piccadilly, Sunday evening: I was sitting in Cafe Nero sipping a coffee. A couple walked past the window with their tiny wee doggie. For reasons unknown, the tiny wee doggie was wearing an outfit. It was a tiny wee nurse's uniform. The owners were probably aiming for 'cute' but ended up with 'sinister' instead. I didn't think it was possible for a chihuahua to look embarrassed. But this one definitely did. The look on its tiny face seemed to say, 'Why am I dressed like this? I'm not qualified.'

In the Lop*

We went to see ‘In the Loop’ yesterday. It was very good, just as I suspected it was going to be. Some wonderfully creative swearing. (Malcolm Tucker ends an angry phone conversation with a bark of ‘fuckity bye!’) and a rare opportunity to see my workplace on film (the building can be seen briefly in a couple of scenes). We saw the film at the Odean in Camden and had to wander through crowds of dressed up,pissed up young Camden Crawl goers (quite few of them were dressed like Vince Noir) afterwards.

Moving seamlessly on, here's another story about misheard song lyrics (which has nothing to do with films, but my mentioning Camden in that last paragraph it least gives it some kind of indie pop based continuity):

In '95 The Stone Roses released their second album, the pompously titled The Second Coming. Within the space of a few short weeks it went from being the most eagerly anticipated second album of all time (according to the NME) to the mostly disappointing second album of all time (according to the NME). It was an ok-ish indie rock record. The fans didn’t really want that. They pretty melodies. They wanted to sing along with pretty tunes with nasty lyrics. Basically, they wanted the first Stone Roses album.

The first single from the album was ‘Love Spreads’, which wasn‘t too bad and became a bit of an indie floor-filler. It had some funkiness to it and a very loud Led Zep style guitar solo. I was a teenager with daisies tipp-exed on her Doc Martins. I liked to wear thick black tights and stomp around to the latest indie pop with my hands behind by my back (this was the default dance move, which could be broken up with some head banging to the rockier stuff and of course the curious ‘indie Charleston’ which was reserved entirely for ‘The Lovecats’ and no other song). Thankfully, my hometown had an indie disco which gave me the opportunity to do both on a regular basis.

Said indie night managed to get hold of a pre-release (in the sense that Lamacq had played it on the Evening Session on Radio One, but it was not, as yet, available in Our Price) copy of ‘Love Spreads’ . When they put in on, I’d dance. Having got into The Stone Roses a bit late, I was only just getting into the first album, but I liked the riff on Love Spreads and was prepared not only to dance to it but also to sing along at the same time. The chorus to 'Love Spreads' features the line ‘the messiah is my sister.’ But for some reason, I’d always heard it as something else. Something very silly. Something even sillier than ‘the messiah is my sister’. So, there I was, down at the disco singing ‘Love Spreads’ and every time it got to that bit in the chorus I’d bellow, ‘the lasagne is my sister.’ I realised the truth about the lyrics soon afterwards. And even though there’s no way anyone would have heard me singing the wrong words at the indie night, I was still a bit embarrassed. That special kind of teenage embarrassment. Which makes you wince every time you turn your head.

I’m going to a hen night tonight (bok bok). I may drink cider and sob about my youth. I suspect I won’t, though.

*My proposed title for an all rabbit-remake.

late autumn awakening

Spring Awakening was pretty good. Melodramatic and silly in places, sure, but at least it's an attempt to do something a bit different with musical theatre. It's especially good if you like seeing young people being angsty whilst dressed like they're in the nineteenth century. Some of the boys in the show have impressively strange hairdos. I hope their hair has to stay 'in character' between shows.

If I'd seen 'Spring Awakening' when I was 15 I'd have probably thought it was the best show EVER. And written a poem about it. Which I would have illustrated with a cobweb and some eyes. Actually, 'Spring Awakening' also made me feel quite glad that I never have to be 15 again. I could have illustrated this with a picture of one of the bright young people from the show, but instead I went with Mark E Smith. Who was probably born curmudgeonly. And has never been involved in musical theatre, as far as I'm aware. Though perhaps he should. I reckon this photo shows Mr Smith having his tea and being quite happy about it. He probably gets the rest of The Fall to feed him by hand, like a baby bird.

Bross

I'm off to theatre tonight to see the musical 'Spring Awakening'. I know very little about it, aside from the two reviews I've read. It seems to involve some teens being a bit emo. I'm assuming it'll either be very good or very bad. And bad musicals are a special kind of bad, so I'll be entertained however it turns out.

Another misheard song lyric. This one comes from 'When Will I Be Famous?' by late 80s pop sessions Bros. The Wikipedia entry for Bros contains two interesting pieces of information. Firstly, it mentions that Bros is short for 'Brothers', which must have annoyed Craig Logan - the one who wasn't a Goss twin a fair bit. He would probably have had to answer a lot of questions about his parentage and would have had to deal with insinuations about Mother Goss and her relationship to her milkman. The Wiki also says that Bros should be pronounced 'Bross' and not, presumably Bro-s (to rhyme with 'hoes'). Bros are supposed to be doing some kind of reunion tour before too long, in the way that a lot of 80s bands are at the moment, thus suggesting that the timeline of pop music is collapsing in on itself like that of a David Lynch movie.

Anyway, when it came out, (it was 1987, I was 9, it was a confusing time) I was convinced that the second line to the chorus of ‘When will I be Famous?’ was ‘I get airsick.’ I must have thought of the song as a dialogue between the Goss twins, who I'd imagined to have very distinct, possibly antagonistic, personalities - one confident, one a tiny bit more cautious and possibly sickly.

I thought the song consisted of Extrovert Bros asking when would the band would achieve the fame that he thought they were entitled to, whilst Cautious Bros was more cautious, suggesting that his travel sickness might hinder their progress. This made sense. After all, famous people have to go on planes a lot and if one of the Bros men was prone to nausea on flights it might make things a bit difficult.

It would be certainly have been hard for a boyband to wave at their fans at airports if one of them was trying to conceal a full sickbag under one arm. Cautious Bros seemed to be aware that during the early days of their fame they would have to fly economy. Which would mean insubstantial, wafer-thin, sick bags. In time, of course they would work their way up from first class (offering a reinforced cardboard sickbag made of a similar substance to Patrick Bateman’s business cards) to private jets. And generally speaking, people who are rich enough to afford private jets are rich enough to afford private jets with special rooms for being sick in, like the ancient Romans were supposed to have, only an aircraft. Perhaps someone that famous might even hire a willing person who was prepared to be spewed on.

And so, I reasoned, When Will I Be Famous? was about the Bros men weighing up their desire for fame against a very serious obstacle. Clearly, this was such an important dilemma for Bros (who were well on their way to actually being properly famous) that it could not possibly be resolved in the course of a three minute pop song. All terribly clever and post-modern. I noticed that the Confident Bros never once addressed the concerns of Cautious Bros in the lyrics to the song, implying that he was either very selfish or actively trying to avoid reality.

After I’d heard the song a few times, ( on the radio, in Boots and possibly at Brownies when someone slipped a ’Now That’s What I call Music’ cassette into the tape deck - yes I went to Brownies - I was that cool) I was a bit disappointed to discover that the line in question was actually ‘I Can’t Answer.’ I was disappointed. The real lyric was a bit more banal than ‘I Get Airsick’, though it was probably more appropriate for the pop charts in 1987. You didn't get any number one singles about people with their sexes on fire in those days. They were more innocent times.

An introductory squeak

Hello.

I have a habit of mishearing song lyrics. Quite often, these mishearings put an unusual spin on my understanding of the what the song means.

For example, during the interval at a comedy show on Saturday, a dull as dull pie radio friendly rock song came plodding out of the speakers. It was the kind of song which isn't bad, but is distinctly unmemorable. Apart from one curious thing. Every time the chorus came around, I became convinced that the growly man singer (these kind of songs always have a growly man singer) was croaking, 'hard boiled, I like hard boiled'. I don't think that actually was what he was saying, but I quickly became convinced of it. As far as I was concerned, Growly Man Singer was telling us of about his favourite kind of egg. Which is bizarre, but is probably a bit more interesting that what he was singing about - girls, love, his credit card bill or whatever else GMSs like to kvetch about in a musical fashion.

Anyway, let us go back to my very first misheard song lyric. The song was 'Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da' by the Beatles. It was the early 80s. I was very young and going through a puritanical phase in the way that small children sometimes do. This meant that I took mortal offence at anything which sounded remotely like swearing.

I think I must have heard the song on the radio. Wherever it was, I was shocked at by it. I thought Paul McCartney was quite clearly singing 'oh bloody'. And doing so repeatedly. On the radio. I was outraged. And the more I thought about it, the more offended I was. Especially because I quite liked the song. ‘Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da’ is quite a catchy tune for a small child to sing and I was getting a bit fed up with having to ‘censor’ myself and sing the alleged ‘bloody’ really quietly, like a dodgy radio edit. I think this would have been about the time that my attitude to bad language began to change from 'ummmm' to 'tee-hee'.

Before too long, I discovered that Paul McCartney wasn't actually swearing and so it was sing the song to myself without fear of any kind of reprisal. Saying that, I'm pretty sure Macca says 'bra' at one point. Filth.