21
May 12
SAINT ETIENNE – “Popular”
Huge weepy thanks to Bob, Pete and Sarah for immortalising us in song. And thanks to commenters past and present for making it worth immortalising.
Freaky Trigger
Est. 2000
Est. 2000
Tom Ewing's Popular
Reviewing every UK #1CHRISTINA AGUILERA – “Beautiful”
21
Comments
Related Posts
- Popular News 11 Apr 2012 Short version: Popular will be back on Friday and back to a regular schedule. Long version: Obviously Popular posts have been intermittent recently - to put it kindly. There are…
- Popular ’98 13 Aug 2014 I give every record on Popular a mark out of 10. This poll is your chance to tick any singles YOU would have given 6 or more to. In 1998…
- FT Advent Calendar Of Christmas TV Specials: December 5th 6 Dec 2011 Christmas specials aren't just the province of television. Every year all sorts of media throw Santa coated tat at us left, right and centre. All it takes is to go…
- Lost Property Office 11: Hardwork & Horseplay 23 May 2012 Welcome back to the Lost Property Office, where no mention at all is made of a certain track on a new Saint Etienne album, but we do honour the warming…
- The Great Cheddar Cheese Off 2015 : Part one 19 Dec 2015 Which country makes the best cheddar? This question has plagued us for millennia (possibly). But no longer, thanks to the brave and fearless scientists who gathered on a rainy afternoon to undertake…
- Incoming Content! 19 Aug 2018 Hello everyone! This is just to say that the Pop World Cup and Popular will be back in September*. Thanks for waiting and huge apologies for disappearing - family health…
- Ten Years In Ten Marks 15 Sep 2013 Ten years ago tomorrow, I started writing a review of Al Martino's "Here In My Heart". I'd never heard the first UK Number One, and thanks to P2P networks I…
- American Poll 27 Jan 2015 In what is not remotely an attempt to fill in space before Popular comes back at the weekend, we present an important POLL concerning the word "American" as used in…
About the Author
Tom invented Freaky Trigger on a bus journey in the mid-90s. A page about what he's up to can be found hereFeatured Posts
PET SHOP BOYS – “Always On My Mind”
4 May 2010 #601, 19th December 1987, video In the comics series Phonogram, there’s a scene in which the – kind of horrible – pop DJ Seth Bingo and his indie collaborator Silent Girl are struggling to work a recalcitrant dancefloor into life. Their solution? “Play the Blondie!” – a copy of “Atomic” which literally glows as it’s […]BAND AID – “Do They Know It’s Christmas”
4 Sep 2009 #543, 15th December 1984, video “Do They Know It’s Christmas” is significant in one way, and insignificant in another. First, it raised a lot of awareness and money and established the pop single as an excellent mechanism for doing those things. This was significant. Gargantuan “supergroups” like this fell out of favour but charity records […]THIS IS BIS WEEK
24 Jan 2010 Here at Freaky Trigger we have realised that January has been a bit slow with output. A new year can put new strains upon our writers and what with Tom’s Guardian column and me embarking on a year without cinema, pickings have been slim. What was needed was something that would galvanise all the writers, […]A Million Hearts
19 Jan 2002 Everlasting Pop and Dexys Midnight Runners There is pop, and there is popular, and then there’s popular. And there’s also “timeless”. Sometimes when people say that a record is “timeless” – let’s pick on, oh, a U2 album – they mean it will be listened to and loved say twenty years from now. What they […]How to do a cover version
10 Aug 2004 Distilled from several years of pop experience, here from the WORST to the BEST are ways to approach a cover version. The Acoustic Guitar: i.e. “Any good song will sound great on an acoustic guitar”, runs the prized nugget of MOJO wisdom which results in Travis mauling “…Baby One More Time”. Culprits throw up their […]I Want To Know What Love Is – Eighties Revisionism
2 Jan 2001 On Skykicking last week, Tim touched, popwise, on the continuing cultural battle over what the eighties were or are or mean or meant. The story of mainstream rock and politics in the 1990s was among other things the story of a similar battle, that time over the sixties. On the one hand you had the […]Are you local?
13 Feb 2000 England is DIFFERENT (or SPECIAL if you want to be polite) to everywhere else for many reasons, but one is because our music “industry” (it’s not an industry – making baked beans is an industry, and nobody does THAT in their spare time, writes fanzines about it or has them poured over themselves at weddings. […]Pop World Cup 2018 Group E Match 1
25 Jun 2018 No, you’ve not missed any matches. We’re putting this year’s games up as we get the entries in, and so it’s a big thankyou to the prompt Group E gaffers of Serbia, Brazil, Switzerland and Morocco. It’s a group of veteran pop managers in the dugout this match, but only two can progress beyond the […]FreakyTrigger on
Quite taken aback by this.
Now how to hack http://freakytrigger.co.uk/populist/ to ignore this post ;-)
Pretty cool I must say.
Every scene needs its nabob! But what is this “touch me touch me” song? Sam Fox didn’t make Number One, and my memory banks are failing to provide a replacement.
I’m seeing Saint Etienne in Sheffield tomorrow night, in the company of another occasional Popular commenter. This had better be in their set list! *hard stare*
Cool. I hear LCD Soundsystem’s Get Innocuous percolating throughout this track, but maybe it’s a common cause that I’m detecting (LCD have so many influences/sources, not all of which I’m sensitive to).
#3 Mike – there’s a bunnyable candidate in 2001.
I’m young and thick, can someone explain this post. I only know of Saint Etienne…*hangs his head in shame* This new song of theirs sounds good though!
That is a cool album sleeve! Hours of head-scratching pop-nerdism!
#6 – Saint Etienne are a top pop beat combo. This new song “Popular” is about the blog you’re reading. (And namechecks a few of its commenters!).
That’s beautiful, I feel personally touched (not mentioned). That it’s them at their best is the loveliest thing.
I think I’m mentioned! (blushing),
but there are a few Marks. So, it’s all of us…
Funny, I was just reading about how Sarah lived in Old Windsor, I did as well, back in 1968 or so. Was wondering if she went to Clewer St Stephens school. I’d have been long gone by the time she did, mind..
Mario’s Internet Café, innit.
He’s On The Internet (Motiv8 Extended Mix)
can we all be in the video?
no
a ten, definitely. what do you mean its not got to no.1 yet?
I should clarify that by “no” I mean me; I’ve never been in a video and don’t intend to start now.
Crikey!
Also congratulations!
Also crikey!
… has St. Etienne done a List Song before?
“Girl VII” from Foxbase Alpha.
hurrah for popular and hurrah for saint etienne!
Another StEt list song: “fake 88”
The only thing that could make this more exciting would be the presence of a Tom Middleton mix of the same track on the bonus disc. HOLD ON! THAT’S HAPPENING TOO!
Popular is indeed part of the current set list, sources have confirmed. So tonight, when the lights are going down, I will surrender to the sound…
Do they play in masks with our faces on?
Perhaps in some circumstances.
Would Sarah do a homage to Mucky Sue, do you think?
@26 – I think you might explode if she did
Oh God yes, Pillers!
Apologies for the lack of an actual Popular update by the way – discovered today my draft wasn’t saved (or autosaved) so a bunch of entries and notes have been atomised. My own fault alas – or else the CURSE OF THE TRIGGER*.
I will redo them all of course but haven’t the heart to rewrite the TT/Lulu one right now.
*Most notably, the first time we ever got a press mention – in Entertainment Weekly – the entire domain was hijacked by a porn site next day.
Here’s a brief clip of tonight’s performance in Sheffield. I didn’t record the whole song, because a) I preferred to be In The Moment and b) ecch, who wants to be that guy? Sadly, this means that I missed Sarah totally cracking up in verse 2, when she got to “Pete Baran”. Heaven knows why! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeRnfS7eohk
Has anyone got the lyrics to ‘Popular’ yet? I can’t make out the listy bits at all, and it sounds like Sarah C. sings ‘f***ed my heart in two’ at the beginning (which would be a good line!), but I may just be imagining things.
“Broke”. But I think I’ll imagine it your way too.
#30b) as Abba sang, “Anybody could be That Guy”..
Alas, no lyrics with the CD. I can work out most of them, but there are still a few areas of vagueness.
Verse 2:
There’s Tim, ??? (sounds like “nascent tailor man”)
Here’s Kat, Mark and Pete Baran
And meet Tom, the nabob of the scene
There’s Cis, down from Oxford way
And here’s me, with such a lot to say
Baby, jump into my dream
If only we had somebody who posted on this site who might know… :)
I think this is a reference to my place of work, excitingly: http://www.masonandtaylor.co.uk/
– and the final venue of last December’s pub crawl too!
#34 I heard it as “Kat mocking Pete Baran”, which would also be good!
No it wouldn’t.
I’d forgotten you used to be at freakytrigger.com before it got nicked.
Good to see it’s now “Blog with rich informations you needed.” ;D
Not been commenting lately because at this point in the Popular timeline I was living in Florida* and well out of the chart loop, but this is indeed a great honour. Can’t wait for the new album. The map on the sleeve, by the way, can be bought as a rather fine poster here. I have one and it’s luverly. Not sure what came first, the poster or the record.
*Funnily enough, we’re close to the time that I bought my first copy of ‘So Tough’ on cassette at a shopping mall in Clearwater, FL.
There are also tea towels! I bought one last night.
I heard it as “mocking Pete Baran” too – funny the tricks one’s subconscious plays.
oh well. Never mind…
I would never mock Pete Baran.
some here mocked him in his mocks
On close listening I’d say it was definitely: “Kat, Mark and Pete Baran,” and sadly for Grouty they might be thinking of Mr p*nk s S*nk*r.
Then again I initially thought she was singing: “There’s Tom, who made the prophecy” so who can say?
Brilliant- you should be v v proud, Tom m’boy!
I’m sure it’s more likely to be himself, but it’ close enough for me..
Is ‘Nabob’ the ideal word in this context anyway? Without ever looking the word up specifically, I’d always gathered that a Nabob was a corrupt ruler of some kind, so that ‘Nabob”s more like ‘demagogue’ or ‘dictator’ than it is like, say, ‘Duke’ or ‘Sultan’ or ‘Governor’. I’ve mainly, in fact, heard the term used in the Spiro Agnew condemnatory phrase ‘Nattering Nabobs of Negativity’ from which it always seemed clear that nobody would describe him- or herself as a ‘Nabob’.
Looking up the term now, wiki says (idiotically, ungrammatically – so very sic.):
A Nabob is an Anglo-Indian term for an East India Company servant who had become wealthy through corrupt trade and other practices.
But other on-line dictionary resources seem to plump for a more neutral, ‘Governor’-like meaning. At any rate, the term at least leaves room for ambiguity that’s unhelpful I would have thought (perhaps inviting the Alex Petridis’s of the world to miss or skew the song’s affectionate tone).
The first context in which I heard the word (and there haven’t been many since) was in the part-work magazine “The Story of Pop” circa 1974, which refers to Johnnie Ray having been dubbed “the Nabob of Sob”. I know from previous discussions on here that Marcello collected “The Story of Pop”, and since Bob is only a few months younger than him, it’s reasonable to suppose Bob might have read it himself. Makes sense for a pop obsessive to have got the word from there, or from subsequent knowledge of Johnnie Ray’s career.
Who, or why, or which, or what, Is the Akond of SWAT?
Is he tall or short, or dark or fair?
Does he sit on a stool or a sofa or a chair,
or SQUAT,
The Akond of Swat?
Is he wise or foolish, young or old?
Does he drink his soup and his coffe cold,
or HOT,
The Akond of Swat?
Does he sing or whistle, jabber or talk,
And when riding abroad does he gallop or walk
or TROT,
The Akond of Swat?
Does he wear a turban, a fez, or a hat?
Does he sleep on a mattress, a bed, or a mat,
or COT,
The Akond of Swat?
When he writes a copy in round-hand size,
Does he cross his T’s and finish his I’s
with a DOT,
The Akond of Swat?
Can he write a letter concisely clear
Without a speck or a smudge or smear
or BLOT,
The Akond of Swat?
Do his people like him extremely well?
Or do they, whenever they can, rebel,
or PLOT,
At the Akond of Swat?
If he catches them then, either old or young,
Does he have them chopped in pieces or hung,
or SHOT,
The Akond of Swat?
Do his people prig in the lanes or park?
Or even at times, when days are dark,
GAROTTE?
O the Akond of Swat!
Does he study the wants of his own dominion?
Or doesn’t he care for public opinion
a JOT,
The Akond of Swat?
To amuse his mind do his people show him
Pictures, or anyone’s last new poem,
or WHAT,
For the Akond of Swat?
At night if he suddenly screams and wakes,
Do they bring him only a few small cakes,
or a LOT,
For the Akond of Swat?
Does he live on turnips, tea, or tripe?
Does he like his shawl to be marked with a stripe,
or a DOT,
The Akond of Swat?
Does he like to lie on his back in a boat
Like the lady who lived in that isle remote,
SHALLOTT,
The Akond of Swat?
Is he quiet, or always making a fuss?
Is his steward a Swiss or a Swede or Russ,
or a SCOT,
The Akond of Swat?
Does like to sit by the calm blue wave?
Or to sleep and snore in a dark green cave,
or a GROTT,
The Akond of Swat?
Does he drink small beer from a silver jug?
Or a bowl? or a glass? or a cup? or a mug?
or a POT.
The Akond of Swat?
Does he beat his wife with a gold-topped pipe,
When she let the gooseberries grow too ripe,
or ROT,
The Akond of Swat?
Does he wear a white tie when he dines with friends,
And tie it neat in a bow with ends,
or a KNOT,
The Akond of Swat?
Does he like new cream, and hate mince-pies?
When he looks at the sun does he wink his eyes,
or NOT,
The Akond of Swat?
Does he teach his subjects to roast and bake?
Does he sail about on an inland lake
in a YACHT,
The Akond of Swat?
Someone, or nobody, knows, I wot,
Who or which or why or what
Is the Akond of Swat!
THE GREAT PANJANDRUM HIMSELF!
The first time I ever saw the term “Nabob” was in Frank Richards’ Greyfriars School books, as applied to Hurree Jamset Ram Singh, one of the many reasons why these books are difficult to find today (the Nabob of Bhanipur IIRC).
In which we all discuss nabobs and nawabs and billy bunter (till the gunpowder ran out of the heels of our boots)!
Mostly we seem to have discussed Julian Cope there.
It would be interesting to hear a Cope remix of “Over The Border.” “Roky Erickson. Roky Erickson from the 13th Floor Elevators.”
Yes when I hear “nabob” I think “the nabob of sob”!
Heh. Thanks to everyone for setting me right about ‘nabob’. It seems like its neutral reading predominates, so SE are right on. (I’d have voted for ‘Sultan’ though in any band meeting on the topic! If only I’d been at all fastidious about lyrics in my wretched-pop-song-writing youth.)
For anyone else who was going to the Palladium gig tonight, afraid it’s been postponed due to Sarah coming down with laryngitis. Get well soon Sarah.
In other Popular news, the second track on Regina Spektor’s new album is ‘Oh, Marcello’. (I keed, I keed.)
Nice song, but alas nowt to do with me.
” ‘Popular’ is apparently about a thirty-something getting over a relationship by visiting trendy wine bars – a relationship that, if the track’s character is anything to go by, must have been built solely upon a mutual enjoyment of Pilates to begin with.”
unpleasantly hostile review at Fact.
Well it is “Fact” magazine – they probably didn’t like the fact (ho ho) that there are tunes on the album.
Any thoughts on this morning’s Grauniad poll?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/interactive/2012/may/31/best-no-1-singles-interactive
That Fact reviewer needs to be to be told that Christgau is not an acceptable role model. Jesus.
As for the the Guardian’s poll: so far, no Sinead for 1990, no Kate Bush for 1978, no Britney for 1998, no Gaga for 2009, are the obvious boneheaded calls by my lights.
They sent round a call for suggestions – I sent one per decade, and they almost all got commissioned (I went for Stand And Deliver for the 80s one, but they were never not going to pick Ghost Town).
This was a bit of a surprise, since when I suggested “Swagger Jagger” it was in the sure – and as it turns out incorrect – knowledge that someone would pick “Someone Like You” so I wouldn’t actually have to write about it.
#66 (Britney is 99 in the UK btw – which would magnify yr anger given what is there!)
“boneheaded calls”
what bit of the phrase “FAVOURITE number ones” do people not understand?
I note the Grauniad’s own heading says “best” – the curse of the (non) subs again *sigh*
The Guardian’s list was officially called ‘Best No 1 singles’ and there was a claim of expertise made for the people that were asked to submit preferences, so it seems to me to be more than fair to talk about possible errors of omission and commission in this case, albeit appropriately qualified (‘by my lights’). Moreover, methodological choices played a big role in the poll (insisting on an evenly distributed one per year is a killer in Pop’s killer years, and no deduction of points, as it were, for reissues was another killer), so again plenty of room for someone to legitimately moan, or so I would have thought.
plenty of room for someone to legitimately moan
Expressions like “possible errors of omission” and “appropriately qualified” have no place in pop writing. This is a list, not a GCSE Maths paper. “Methodological choices” and “Pop’s killer years” – well, I cannot argue with terms I do not understand. Don’t bother trying to explain them, you’ll only look silly.
(btw “to legitimately moan” is a split infinitive)
It’s a “Daddy or chips” argument, innit?
I didn’t know it was only going to be one song per year when I submitted my suggestions (hence they included Baby Jump, the only one that didn’t get commissioned). I wasn’t thinking of favourites, or bestest, just a bunch of no.1s I thought were interesting for one reason or another. I’d agree that it does seem one-off/novelty heavy – Toni Di Bart AND 3 of a Kind AND Lt Pidge etc. The little intro lines for each entry were written by subs (ie I DO understand why Here In My Heart was a no.1, just not why it hung around there for so long).
As for the Fact review, it amusingly suggested Only Love Can Break Your Heart was a Saint Etienne original (I wish). This was later amended (not by the PRS, boo).
@73, Punctum. How about you write how you wanna write, and I’ll write how I wanna write? I agree that ‘Pop’s Killer Years’ is a daft expression – I wish I hadn’t used it – but the idea that some years’ #1s are full of riches and some aren’t is uncontroversial surely.
“Avoid splitting infinitives.” That’s the one rule that is likely to survive when all the rest of grammar has withered away. … Most of the best grammarians have recognized the split-infinitive rule for the flimflam that it is. H. W. Fowler described people who followed the rule as “bogey-haunted creatures … Whose aversion springs not from instinctive good taste, but from tame acceptance of the opinion of others.”
—Geoffrey Nunberg, American linguist, The Way We Talk Now, 2001
#75: tbh I find people’s favourites, and the way they write about them, far more interesting than the usual dreary rote list some people seem to prefer where OF COURSE Sinead is the best #1 of 1990 (but WHY?) and OF COURSE Bo Rhap/Rising Sun/someone ring Ronan Keating to sing me out of my coma (had I
not been persona non grata at the Guardianbeen asked to contribute I probably would have gone for “Life Is A Rollercoaster” for 2000 but can’t argue with “Bound 4 Da Reload”).I like the idea of “Space Oddity” and “The Model” sounding equally, or more, futuristic at the time of their reissue. Also Tim Jonze’s comparison of “We Are Young” to Arcade Fire is spot on and hadn’t occurred to me before. Lots to think about, which is the point.
#76 – as my Moral Philosophy tutor told me, never say “surely”; it implies there is no alternative to your argument, furthermore suggests that argument is evidential fact rather than perspective. The “idea that some years’ #1s are full of riches and some aren’t” exists for political and demographic purposes; as demonstrated countless times here, the argument doesn’t stand up at all. The number one arena has always been a bazaar where tat jostles for space with art – and frequently one flows into the other – and doesn’t really have anything to do with year or age divisions.
About split infinitives, (a) not all of us, or indeed any of us, are Gene Roddenberry, and (b) as Tony Oxley once told me, you have to learn the rules first so that you know how to break them.
Commenting on the split infinitive will inevitably be tossing gasoline onto an electric heater, but my little bookshelf of professional styleguides basically confirms the line that wikipedia (currently) takes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split_infinitive#Current_views
viz.
i: that the habit is old
ii: that if there is not strictly a rule per se there is EXTREMELY widespread belief in a rule
iii: that the “rule” has little “logical” basis (insofar as this means anything) (essentially it means that english is not morphologically derived from latin, and it’s not logical to argue that it is)
iv: that the “rule” was strongly enforced in the 19th century (with the effect that a practice from the middle ages that had declined was revived, and converted into an absolute)
v: and that the best duty of the editor or sub-editor is to (a) avoid if possible; (b) deploy when unavoidable
vi: hence pragmatism and tact are your guides, along with ears for rhythm and the subtleties of meaning-via-word-order
Thus Fowler (writing in 1926); Partridge (writing in 1947); Gower (writing in 1948); the Cambridge Handbook to Copy-Editing (first pub.1975); and the Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar (1993).
Gower probably explores the question best in the revised version of Plain Words: that he had formerly taken the pragmatic position (“best avoid by rewriting, though there is no actual rule: be careful you don’t distort the meaning if you do re-order,” in rough paraphrase), and a friend had pointed out he was being a massive coward. If the rebel position is “dispense with the rule”, and you choose to consider yourself a rebel, then DISPENSE WITH THE RULE.
Given this exemplary line-up of big-name grammarians — and given the absence of of a genuine grammatical reason for its not being split — I’m tempted to suggest that the anti-splittists have always actually been the rebels, and that this prescription exists vox populi vox dei.
In other words, I too am sat on the fence — and practically speaking I tend to rewrite, unless I really can’t see a way round it, or (much more unusually) the context is somehow enriched by the feel that comes with a split. (The poetic value of a rule being the effect of breaking it…)
my editorial rule was to go along with whatever causes the least friction, i.e. detract the least – where detraction would include “letters to the editor”. however applying such a nebulous rule on an internets would lead to a never-posting paralysis
#77 A thought: does the distinction between “favourite” and “best” even make any sense? How often do you find yourself saying: “This is not my favourite record, but it is the best”? If you do say that, what standard are you using to decide what is “best”? From that point of view, I can completely sympathise with the Guardian subs who used the two words interchangeably. And either way it’s a good list, as you say.
#78 I always think wistfully about Raymond Chandler, who supposedly changed back an editor’s correction with the comment: “When I split an infinitive, goddamn it, I split it so it stays split.” Not many of us have the chops, or the nerve.
The distinction between “favourite” and “best” comes out in the reactions, I think. It’s fascinating how people read stuff about the process into the words – one tweet, for instance, was incredulous because “The Guardian has voted Cher Lloyd the best number one of 2011” – it’s hard to imagine the idea of a vote creeping in if “favourite” had been used, and actually it would be quite unusual to imagine a collective entity having a favourite.
So there’s no distinction between F and B on an individual level maybe, but at a publication level differences start to emerge – a collective best need not be everyone’s favourite (or even ANYONE’S, though I think most publications would cheat to avoid that outcome)
I dunno, an individual can objectively choose a ‘best’ and yet subjectively choose a ‘favourite’.
#81 Good point: put enough subjective opinions together, and they become objective.
From languagelog:
“Every decent guide to grammar and usage on the market agrees that the split infinitive is grammatical and often preferably to all other alternatives. Look it up! Don’t take my word for it. Go to a library and take in your hand what appears to you to be a comprehensive, high-quality reference work on English usage. See what it says. There just aren’t any that insist the split infinitive is always ungrammatical and should never appear in writing.”
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002054.html
#82 So how do you step outside yourself to choose a best “objectively”? When people say that, don’t they usually mean “this is what other people like” or “this is what I think I ought to like”?
I suppose one way to draw a distinction would be when a song has particular personal associations – happy memories, whatever – that make you feel differently about it from how you would if you were approaching it for the first time. I guess you might want to distinguish between favourite and best because your reactions are bound up with your specific emotions and history, which inevitably most other people are not going to share.
IIRC, though, not many writers on that Guardian list reach for those kinds of personal justifications for their choices.
Well, it’s like saying you like “SwagJag” more than “Nevermind I’ll find” while ‘recognising’ that the latter is the better ‘piece of work’.
“A while back I was very low
When this guy said I had to go
Up town to Constitution Hill
“There I found some people having fun
Cheering the UK’s number one
Oh boy, I felt such a thrill
“All I want to talk about is Brenda, Brenda
All I want to hear about is Bless Her, Bless Her
One crown, one time, and she’s come back again
And again
And again
And again
“All I want to talk about is Lizzie, Lizzie
All I want to hear about is Queenie, Queenie
One crown, one time, and she’s come back again
And again
And again
And again
“There’s Chaz
Camilla Parker-Bowles
Here’s Kate
And William in their Rolls
Harry, the question of the team
“The old Greek
Perhaps he is a Dane
Has gone and pissed
Himself again
Leaving once more
The Mighty Queen
“All I want to talk about is Brenda, Brenda
All I want to hear about is Bless Her, Bless Her
One crown, one time, and she’s come back again
And again
And again
And again
“All I want to talk about is Lizzie, Lizzie
All I want to hear about is Queenie, Queenie
One crown, one time, and she’s come back again
And again
And again
And again…”
Jimmy the Swede’s comment easily the most interesting and entertaining one of this bunch. Otherwise, apropos Raymond Chandler, not everyone had the education he had (Dulwich College) as well as the guts, and part of my long-term mission is to set the question: “does the presence of ‘favourite’ require the existence of ‘best'”?
Well, we need a poll, someplace (can’t think where..)
“Which one of these is best?”
Raindrops on roses
whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles
warm woolen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
Cream colored ponies
crisp apple strudels
Doorbells
sleigh bells
schnitzel with noodles
Wild geese that fly with a moon on their wings
Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes
Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes
Silver white winters that melt into springs
(and, for the wilfully perverse:)
Dog bites
Bee stings
Feeling sad
#86 I don’t think SLY is better though! I can see why people do but that’s not going to make me use the b-word about it.
No, but then again you might think one of the other number-ones were ‘objectively better’.. Anyways, next oop:
#89 – The Swede vote, not surprisingly, would go to… Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes!!
At the very bottom would be the ridiculous schnitzel with noodles, simply because you don’t eat schnitzel with noodles, for heaven’s sake (well, certainly Austrians don’t). It’s another of your split infinitives..
As I am sat at home waiting for a delivery of blue vinyl floor tiles, with
plentynothing better to do, I looked this up! Turns out that Germans and Austrians DO sometimes eat schnitzels with spätzle or spaetzle — which is indeed a kind of southern teutonic noodle (either as gnocchi or vermiform). There is much debate whether this practice predates the song however.What, they heard Julie Andrews and thought “that sounds like an idea worth trying” ? Naah…
Re 92: I’ll second that, though if the choice had included chicken escalope with spaghetti (and bolognese sauce)* it might have won out. Schnitzel and noodles being an Austrian variation, I imagine.
*Alpino on Chapel Market is the best/my favourite cafe for this winter warmer.
#93 – I am grateful to my Rt Hon friend. I certainly remember Oscar Hammerstein being mocked for this line by some haughty teutonic, who made the point I made, only in a much ruder tone. It is thus possible that Julie Andrews was responsible for the adoption of the black art of noshing noodles with schnitzel and that the Austrians and Bavarians have never forgiven her. Or perhaps the arrogant Oscar-baiter was simply talking shite.
Spatzle is crunchy deep fried noodles isn’t it? As such I have concluded that everything in Austria is deep fried apart from “buttery rolls” (as per all chalet school books).
#95 the chicken escalope toasted sandwiches you can get at Cafe Uno on TCR are pretty darned great too, although apologies obv for sandwiches being OT.
They don’t look very deep-fried in the google images I’ve found of jaeger schnitzel and spaetzle. In fact they look soggy.
The internet tells me that spatzle means “little sparrows” so stick THEM in your deep fryer and er tweet it.
I bloody love this site!
To return to one of the many slightly less O/T discussions:
A very well established British film monthly recently invited its critics and reviewers — as well as a large number of bigwigs across the industry — to participate in its newest ten-yearly poll of the “Ten Greatest Films of All Time”, a very long-running project. They are careful not to be dogmatic about the definition of “greatest” — as the guidelines put it:
“As for what we mean by ‘Greatest’, we leave that open to your interpretation. You might choose the ten films you feel are most important to film history, or the ten that represent the aesthetic pinnacles of achievement, or indeed the ten films that have had the biggest impact on your own view of cinema.”
That encourages contributors to cut across and perhaps distinguish three different qualities, I think: is this important? is this good? does this mean a lot to me? The first looks at something’s place in a broader history — the second at the way something handles the tasks it has set itself — and the third begins to approach (but is not quite the same as) a purely personal response. As a rubric, this — to me — hints at the idea that they would love people to be perverse, without saying so out loud. Because if the poll ends up crowning the same set of films as it did last time, that’s a bit boring (and hence counter-productive for the magazine).
On the whole, I tend to think “historically important” delivers the least interesting polls, because voters will end up second-guessing a result very largely outside their input, with much-too-potent reversion to mean, and worrying about “standing the test of time” (zzzz) and “influence” (grrrr) and other dreary factors. But a poll that strongly emphasises “unexpected private pleasures” risks having a vast pool of hundreds entries with a single vote, and runaway winners with just four votes, or whatever. So I think the unclarity of definition — the fact that some vote to this convention, others to that, and so on — does actually make for more thought-provoking polls, precisely because the wrinkles sometimes create more unplanned run-off than monolithic affirmation.
From a magazine editor PoV, the purpose is in the end to deliver interesting writing and reading in coming months, rather than to sum up all culture and switch off the lights. An element of trolling is essential: too much from too many people cancels itself out.
Well, it’s certainly no coincidence that “Citizen Kane” and “Bambi” were produced only a year apart. I keep forgetting which one Rosebud was in. It’s uncanny.
Is that the one where Walt Disney shot Orson Welles’s mother?
It is the most important moment in cinema history.
until Hannibal Lecter ate Dougal’s daughter’s face
Bambi’s mother turns up at Xanadu at the end: “Don’t be too hard on the boy. He was most upset at my funeral.”
Surely the most important moment in cinema history is when Orson is hunting a terrified and trapped Bambi through the sewers of post-war Vienna. I wonder if the Austrians eat noodles with venison?
#106 – Cobb, Arrival.
@101. Roger Ebert wrote about his 5th time participating in the Sight and Sound poll you describe here, if you’re interested. He felt a lot of wholly internal pressure to have changed at one film in his top-10 list since the last poll. Perhaps private existential terrors aren’t so different from those felt by the Magazine Editor.
2001 a “stand-along monument”? Standing alongside what?
2002
The Guardian has a vid. of a live session with Sarah Cracknell and co (but not Bob or Pete) doing a very nice, new song (temp-named) Jan Leeming. Highly recommended.
Some suitably sublime digressions here on the thread that celebrates the song that celebrates the website that celebrates … etc.
Anyway, just in case anybody involved might ever read this, hearty congratulations on a hugely enjoyable evening with St Etts at the Palladium last night. Sarah clearly loved every moment of it, even (especially?) when fluffing the lyrics. Never been to a gig that seemed so much like a party – marvellous to be there. And “Popular”, complete with TOTP chart rundowns from ’75 and ’76 on the backdrop, was obviously the highspot.
And yes, Mike TD, I got the teatowel too.
So annoyed I couldn’t make it for the supremely rock’n’roll reason of a School Governors meeting.
(left hand) The chance to hear YOUR NAME in a song performed on the stage of the London Palladium; (right hand) what to do next time Ofsted come calling. Couldn’t you have phoned in sick?
Tomorrow’s our day at Wimbledon. We’ve got tickets for Court One and the weather forecast is not good. Whilst Cliff will be breaking into song from the Royal Box on Centre as they roll the roof on, do you suppose St Etts might be persuaded into entertaining the folk over the border until the rain stops, since we ain’t got a roof?
I was subbing for the chair who has cancer. His sicknote trumped mine.
Sorry to hear that Pete – best wishes to him.
The Swede had a great day at the tennis last Thursday. Whilst waiting for madam outside the loo under the big screen (Henman Hill), an oldish fellow in a club blazer approached. I leapt up immediately and offered my hand, which he took. I mumbled something about him being one of the great ones and he graciously thanked me before going on his way.
It was John Newcombe.
@101 An excellent answer to the “what is the greatest?” problem: http://blogs.indiewire.com/pressplay/video-sight-sound-film-poll-ignatiy-vishnevetsky-on-how-to-make-a-random-top-ten-list#.T_Z0QnkXiSo
I’ve been meaning to say, this lot were fvcking great at Primavera in Porto last month. It had been a miserable saturday up to that point due to huge downpours (I go to european festivals to get away from these wretched conditions ffs!), and they really turned it around & made everyone forget the weather & start having fun again.
The new songs sounded great, too. Cheers guys!
Since this entry gives us a sneaky backdoor to talk about current music, and since the song in question isn’t bunny-bait quite yet… I thought I would note that last night, for the first time, I found myself buying a track on iTunes just to see what Tom writes about it here in a decade’s time.
re Ed in June @81 (tardy, moi?) – ‘put enough subjective opinions together they become objective’…..
‘The good does not exist, like that, in an atemporal sky. The good is defined by us, it is practised, it is invented. And this is a collective work.’ – Foucault (pretentious, moi?)
Apart from anything else its a lovely bit of phrasing and rhythm, even in translation (OK, only in translation, I don’t know what it is in French)
@122 Great quote! Much subtler and deeper than what I was saying.
#119: the S&S video “essay” won’t play on my PC; just skips back to the main menu whenever you click on it. Write it down, Mr IV.
I’m sure Bob wishes he’d done this… Saint Etienne buy up the old square goalposts from Hampden Park. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/24501627
Anyone read this yet… http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/nov/06/story-modern-pop-bob-stanley-review ?
I am fond of Sukhdev, in print and in person, and this is an enthusiastic summary — but Bob’s decision to discuss a fixed and well defined slice of history (and not attempt to bring it right up to LAST NIGHT’S CHARTS) was extremely clearly explained. It’s odd (and telling?) how resolute reviewers seem to be in reading it as a comment on the quality (or lack of it) of music since that period ended.
Also the idea that “exuberant and cross-generational linkages” have become the norm in writing about music is simply (and weirdly) false.
Also, the bits where Aretha Franklin and Bob Dylan get ignored in favour of Donovan and whoever.. Well, to be fair, I have not read up to the Donovan section, having only just got through the DYLAN CHAPTER! but Aretha f. gets plenty praise..
the last 2 paras are ‘HOW DO I END THIS THING? ER WILL THIS DO’, which is fine.
Yes, but there SS is just acknowledging that orthodox rock history allows THIS AMOUNT OF SPACE for certain people, and bob on the whole gives them a lot less, into order to discuss at considerable length people generally omitted. A History of Modern Pop that actually omitted the Beatles would be a very bold project indeed.
Orthodox rock history being a bit of a strawman there in terms of well-researched doorstep-shaped books meaning to cover EVERYTHING. Charlie Gillett’s The Sound of the City, which I actually really like, only gets up to the late 70s (because that’s when it was written) and its later stages inevitably now feel quite dated. Donald Clarke’s The Rise and Fall of Popular Music starts well but overreaches far into decades DC has no sympathy for or grasp of. The Rolling Stone book is as variable as the contributors, and anyway not really a history per se. What else is there?
Re 130/131: Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but my feeling has been that the orthodox rock position has always been stronger in ordinary punters than people who write about music. They have a greater stake in the notion that The Clash really, really matter and The Saturdays don’t. Apart from anything else, most sane people immersed in any subject will find themselves tinkering with unorthodox positions just to stop getting bored, even if they can’t bring themselves ideologically to swap sides (hence ‘guilty pleasures’).
Whereas if you are either a) 15 and this all new and crucial to you or b) only get to listen to your old vinyl when the wife and kids are out of the bloody house, it’s easier to maintain a hard line.
Old people in ‘think things were better in their day’ shocka
Respect to Bob for joining in in the comments.
I think poor old Rimbaud got a bad rap, though.
This is amazing, and I would never have known about it but for Patti Smith:
Vowels
A black, E white, I red, U green, O blue: vowels
Someday I’ll talk about your secret birth-cries,
A, black velvet jacket of brilliant flies
That buzz around the stenches of the cruel,
Gulfs of shadow: E, candour of mists, of tents,
Lances of proud glaciers, white kings, shivers of parsley:
I, purples, bloody salivas, smiles of the lonely
With lips of anger or drunk with penitence:
U, waves, divine shudders of viridian seas,
Peace of pastures, cattle-filled, peace of furrows
Formed on broad studious brows by alchemy:
O, supreme Clarion, full of strange stridencies,
Silences crossed by worlds and by Angels:
O, the Omega, violet ray of her Eyes!
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but my feeling has been that the orthodox rock position has always been stronger in ordinary punters than people who write about music. They have a greater stake in the notion that The Clash really, really matter and The Saturdays don’t.
Does anyone really feel this other than a few sad old men who look like Vince Vaughn and hang around used record shops? I think you’ll find that the majority of “ordinary punters,” e.g. my mum, are far more familiar with the Saturdays (always on TV, always turning up) than the Clash (whom the general public don’t know apart from that lot who did that Levi’s advert).
Also it’s not “tinkering with unorthodox positions,” it’s “providing a different opinion or point of view.” Why does every piece of music writing have to retread the same old story, toe the party line? Is it down to the resentment of a select group of people who have suddenly been told that their world is only a small corner of a far larger and more complex world?
even if they can’t bring themselves ideologically to swap sides
I think you’re confusing music appreciation with Dungeons and Dragons.
Re 135: I’m not saying the bulk of ordinary punters, I’m just saying those are attitudes often ascribed to (non-specified) critics (and academics) that I’ve more often encountered among, say, the readers of Mojo or Uncut rather than the staff of those magazines. It was a stance certainly held by a lot of teenage Sounds readers back in the day.
‘I think you’re confusing music appreciation with Dungeons and Dragons.’
There’s a difference?
I think Mark M’s point is not so much about the current relative public profiles of The Clash and The Sundays, it’s more about where one is most likely to find the orthodox rock position.
I feel like I’m much more likely to hear “don’t even play their instruments” / “don’t even write their own songs” etc from people randomly chatting about music in the office than I am to encounter them in rowckwrite these days. That might reflect more on my chosen rockread, of course.
I think that if we have reached the stage where there are things like “the orthodox rock position” then rock music has been for nothing.
This was always Dave Q’s point – rockism is the populist music fan position, it’s not something imposed from above. The arguments deplored by pop writers – authenticity, test-of-time, who’s faking it – are the ones most easily reached for in any office and pub.
Now, the good news for “pop” is that easily reached for arguments tend to have very little to do with actual behaviour, and the rockist arguments are so flexible they can be applied to almost ANYTHING – pretty much any record over 10 years old on YouTube gets ‘why don’t they make them like this anymore? modern music is plastic crap’ commentary no matter how woeful it seemed at the time.
As somebody (p*nk s?f Andy Gill? Biba Kopf?) once said in the NME, music is never as good as it was while you’re living through it.
And as somebody said in some book or other, the best year of Pop was the one where you first discovered pop. e.g. I always rated 1983, but that was more a re-discovery. I refuse to back my pick by going back and looking..
How about the current relative public profiles of the Saturdays, the Sundays and the Mondays?
Sundays are a ‘day’ of rest.
With my TPL hat on, I’m currently in the process of rediscovering the pop of 1983. It’s not a pretty picture, I can tell you.
Scandal – The Warrior. Now I wish that hit Popular. Maybe not for the right reasons, however..
And indeed, here is the first of TPL’s twenty-one entries to deal with 1983: http://nobilliards.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/various-artists-raiders-of-pop-charts.html
Sounds excellent, Marcello.. shared the link on Facebook to one of the creators of “200 Worst Songs”.. a very good blog full of classic British cynicism (though it lays on SU bar politics a bit too thickly), but no point linking it here as it would be bunny armageddon.
The History Boys is set in 1983 and, at least in its movie version, makes it seem like a Smiths/Echo/New Order/Cure wonderland.
I’ve always though that if there’s a lazy critical consensus, it’s towards what Tom called The Big Cultural Stiffy For Other People’s Misery owtte, for self conscious ‘intelligence’ and for unglamorous white, male, middle-class people who look like the majority of the writers (cf Dave Lee Roth’s comment about Elvis Costello), rather than Rock per se.
@146: one of your best pieces; I always look forward to reading them.
In general: but isn’t it part of the fun of discussing popular music to get riled up when you hear or read somebody heaping unstinting praise on something which is quite obviously garbage, or the reverse?
No, because either way you’re still dealing with subjectivity. I find persuading people a better method these days, coupled with trying to find the good points in what looks like unpromising material (i.e. most of 1983’s number one albums). Rather than just say “hyuk hyuk what were people thinking” I endeavour to find out why people were thinking what they thought, and what the findings say about me and/or those times and/or the present day.
re148: Apart from the music on the soundtrack there’s curiously little in the film* to suggest what year it’s meant to be. If there is any significance to the date it might be because Irwin’s rather cynical but effective teaching methods are clearly about to usurp Hector’s learning-for-the-love-of-learning approach.
One of the most shocking moments in ‘The History Boys’ is when the Headmaster ferociously turns on Hector and his methods (‘Screw the renaissance, and literature and Plato and Michaelangelo and Oscar Wilde and all the other shrunken violets you people line up’) thus making his bias perfectly clear.
* The play quotes ‘It’s A Sin’ by the Pet Shop Boys so is presumably set a few years later.
Tom, by all means remove this comment if he wants to play it down, but did I spot something on Twitter yesterday to the effect that Wichita has become a dad? Warmest congratulations to Mr and Mrs Lino and rockin’ Len.
A contestant on today’s Pop-Master, Paul from Stockton-On-Tees, told the convivial Ken Bruce that he had recently seen St Etts and not only loved it but had been invited backstage “by their keyboard player” and thought what pleasant people they all were. Ken agreed and told Paul and the nation that he, Ken, appeared on St Etts new album. He too mentioned what nice folk they were. Neither went the obvious extra mile by singling out the divine Sarah for extra praise. Paul won but didn’t get the three in ten.