JJ BARRIE – “No Charge”
I was aware of this song long before I heard it – as a young boy it was quoted at me by my Dad should I ever object to tidying my room. Since my room was rarely tidy, I became very familiar with the central notion of “No Charge”. Like my Dad, I can find immense amusement and pleasure in this style of song – talking country with a sentimental edge – but this is far from a great example.
You might think, at first, that the style stands or falls on the strength of its concepts: not so. “No Charge” has a fine concept – mawkishness and moralising are assets here! – but where JJ Barrie falls down is on development and details. Once our young entrepreneur has presented his list, and been slapped down by Mom, the track has nowhere to go, and explores that nowhere thoroughly for two minutes. Contrast it with something like “Teddy Bear” by Red Sovine, where tears are ruthlessly jerked right up to the final words. Barrie, on the other hand, adds no new details and just repeats himself. This is partly because “No Charge” is a cover version, and you can hear what I assume is the original melody being hollered in the background: it sounds rather as if it’s trying to escape.
2
Tom in FT /Popular • featured content/Pop • 6,271 views
First “pop” CD is Ry Cooder’s 1979 Bop Till You Drop: which sorta kinda conjures Uncut-style dadmusic into being a decade in advance… so is it a lovingly crafted pastiche reissue or music expressly refashioned to suit its gleaming new mode of reproduction?
I dunno why people keep calling it dadmusic. FT is surely one of the most daddest places on the internet and everyone loves Girls Aloud. (As does my dad.)
I am a Dad, and I listen to a lot of Dadmusic, so I view the term Dadmusic as inherently value neutral, while knowing precisely what sukrat means.
(My personal insult of choice is “Joolsbait” though)
Haha fair enough, flahr, bad old habits die hard. Exceot I don’t know what to handwavingly call it if I don’t use its (misleading) name.
I’m not even actually being insulting, really: BtyD isn’t my favourite Ry Cooder LP (and I hardly ever read Uncut and never watch Jools), but I think RC’s a good thing, on the whole.
Ha, my Dad’s favourite artiste was always Ry Cooder when I was young, though I think it’s probably been Steve Earle these last ten years. I don’t think he’d be interested in Uncut, Girls Aloud or watching Jools though.
Is this thread slowly morphing into a repository for everything that is supposedly “bad”, like we’re all a bunch of, dare I say it…Grumpy Old Men???
i’m only grumpy when people diss cnut!
It was like when all those jazz dudes couldn’t play to their people as they were ‘colbarred’ from entering theatres, so they would make those short films of their performances for showing in the cinemas in the black parts of town.
Which is why we have all those great films of Cab Calloway, Louis jordan, etc, and not of all those ‘white-only’ acts that always played to their people in the nice theatres….
Too bad Mark S missed the recent episode of Jools where Mr Boogie Woogie Piano Magic was utterly pwned by McCoy Tyner, who would not stop his piece; he was reduced to grimacing camera pseudo-grins and having to yell “MCCOY! TYNER! JAZZ! LEGEND! GETOFF!” so that Elbow could close the show with their community singalong. Nothing against Elbow, whose current album I greatly prefer to their extremely overrated previous one, but it was terrific television.
“Grumpy Old Men” bang on about how great things used to be, whereas I’m more concerned about how things are going to be. Hence vinyl fetishists etc. have more in common with GOM than I do.
A friend of mine was once shocked to see me ranting away on an episode of GOM before he realised it was Ken Stott.
You were chuckling about that when I saw you last, Marcello — I wish I had seen it, the New Thing’s belated Bill Grundy moment!
Quoth marcello @ 360:
“Grumpy Old Men” bang on about how great things used to be, whereas I’m more concerned about how things are going to be. Hence vinyl fetishists etc. have more in common with GOM than I do”.
Erm, Mr Child-Prodigy-Who-Went-To-Oxford, did they not teach you Logic amongst those dreaming spires?
I done moral philosophy innit.
I gave up quothing in 2003 on doctor’s orders.
So you will quoth nevermore?
@363
Bravo, my little caramel wafer! I was a bit of an Ethics Girl myself at one time.
Can I be a bit controversial and say I actually quite like this song? Maybe it’s bad for 1976 standards, but given some of the crap that’s been at number 1 in the 35 years since, I don’t think it’s as bad as people claim. Maybe because JJ Barrie seems like a genuinely nice person (having never heard of him before the recent TOTP repeats), a friendly uncle type, yeah it’s overly sentimental but it’s written at least with some heart. There are records much, much worse than this to have graced the top spot, I’ll listen to this over some dire manufactured boyband ballad/X Factor winner any day. It wasn’t even the worst record on tonight’s TOTP, that honour went to Our Kid.
Wikipedia page reveals that Mr Barrie is still alive and well, and approaching his 78th birthday in a few weeks. He’s also an ex-comedian, so I wonder if he’d have appreciated the Billy Connolly parody.
1. Tonight’s TOTP??
2. Better than Our Kid??? I haven’t heard their sole hit in years but in my mind it sounds like a Spector-lite pre-pubescent smash.
3. No Charge better than most Westlife no.1s???? Err, yes, of course you’re right.
1. Yup, watch on the iplayer!
Bye bye JJ… never to be seen again after this week’s TOTP.
Our Kid… memory playing tricks. Wafer thin production.
Mojo this month has an article advertised on the front cover about “Why Punk Had To Happen” written by Jon Savage. Not read it yet – bought it for a flight later on this month (it came complete with Suze Rotolo’s book on Bob Dylan, which I imagine will help kill the time too). I wonder whether he’s bothered reading this epic thread to get some ideas.
Ha! I’d like to think so. But sadly it’s mojo selling the mag with their usual exclamation mark-ridden front page. The piece has little to do with “why”. No mention of JJ Barrie. Or Third World War for that matter.
The Guardian’s ‘Euro 2012 Of Pop’ omits JJ’s duet with Cloughie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_y-4pBBSWM
…which I’d never heard til just now. The song’s lousy but Cloughie’s spoken part is really quite touching.
“Why Punk Had To Happen” – so that ageing hacks could earn a crust writing articles about it 36 years later.
Why punk had to happen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=eywisIot1wU
Thanks to LondonLee for the link
what was on the ‘B’ side of no charge?
looking for a song called love is all around from the mid to late 70s, so not the wet wet wet version.
# 375 the B side is called ‘Till I’m Loving You Again’ and you can hear it on Youtube. Someone is selling this record on eBay at the moment, asking £6.49, seems a trifle optimistic, but you never know I suppose …
# 376 that song was originally recorded by the Troggs in the 60s and it’s been covered many times, so no doubt a few artists did it in the 70s. Or do you mean a different song?