Just listening to Beth Rowley from one of the old Word discs singing "Nobody's fault but mine".
Three verses that mention "mother", "father" and "brother" which is fine, but there are lots of songs that do the whole set of father/mother/sister/brother (usually in that order for rhyming purposes.
My question is: who's gone that bit further?

Madness did pretty well with Embarrassment: you get aunt,uncle, dad and mum

Who, though, has shoehorned the *most* of their family into a song.

Far be it from me to suggest content for the Word, but I'd really appreciate an article that talks about the cuts the artists get when you buy their product via each of the many routes now available to us.
I'm about to buy the new Super Furry Animals LP and could:

- buy from iTunes
- buy a CD online from Amazon, Play, HMV etc
- buy a download from Amazon, 7digital etc.
- see if they have the CD in HMV (the only record shop in Harrogate)
- buy it from a supermarket (not that they'd stock it)
- steal it online

Now, I want to make sure the band get the maximum payout as a percentage, without ripping myself off. Luckily, this being SFA, I have the additional option of buying a CD or download via their own site, so I'll do that. But otherwise, what's the best option?

Here's a new game I'm calling Top Tracks. This is how it works:
I give you five artists from different eras and you have to guess what their top-listened track is according to last.fm.

Here's the five:
1) Chuck Berry
2) The Kinks
3) Blondie
4) Stone Roses
5) Fatboy Slim

Now, make a mental note of what you reckon their top song is and I'll tell you the answer in the next post of the thread.

I suppose there are lots of ways in which you might call Morrissey unique. Here's one that occurred to me today: How many singers can you name who have never ever played an instrument. Obviously, most singers strap on a guitar occasionally or have the odd thoughtful piano moment. Even the ones who clearly can't play will do the odd axe pose.

Other than Morrissey, I can only think of, erm, Tony Hadley out of Spandau Ballet. (I'm talking 'rock bands' here, we never expect to see Kylie with a gob-iron.)

I'm no Stones expert - does Jagger 'play'? (I'm not counting tambourines)

So I walk into the office and try a conversation starter: "Anyone see Spooks last night?"
I get six "Yes" and a "Not yet".
Etiquette dictates that we must all adopt an absolute poker face in order to give away no plot point.
Some may argue that the "Not Yetter" is obliged at this point to offer to leave the room for a period, allowing the rest of us to unburden ourselves.

What does the panel think?

[This thread may contain spoilers]

The contestants on Eggheads tonight were a team of jazz students.

That's Jazz Students. They said they play a lot of jazz in between lectures. That's lectures about jazz. I'm struggling to quantify the number of levels on which this is wrong.

I'm a broad-minded feller, but if any child of mine...

It's long been a bugbear of mine, the way American TV portrays gigs, especially the gigs attended by the Young People. The crowd are always that bit more enthusiastic than perhaps they should be. They whoop and holler at random in the middle of songs. They seem to have far too much room in which to dance, and they seem to do so on tables, bars and evrywhere, even if the music is some un-dancable soft metal. Even the smallest venues seem to have go-go dancers in cages. If the band is part of the plot then they are greeted rapturously on their first ever performance, before they've even played a note.
One of two things must be true:
a) The programme makers have never actually been to a gig in their lives, or
b) Gigs in America really are a completely different experience to everywhere else - a wonderful place where even small-time indie bands are loved and appreciated by everyone.

I've wrestled with this for quite some time but salvation came last week in the unlikely form of the Gilmore Girls. My wife loves the Gilmore Girls. She records it every week-day and we watch it at tea-time. The other day, it featured a character going to a student gig. It was recognisable - an quite beleivable quiet indie band laying to an audience who swayed slightly in time and cheered half-heartedly at the end. This is what we want. (I think I'm starting to love the Gilmore Girls too)

If we're in the business of reviving old telly these days, then I for one would like to see the return of The Rock and Roll Years. What a great, simple format: show some old news clips and overlay them with the songs of the time.

I think that programme was pretty much where I got my knowledge of 60's and 70's history from - I already knew the songs from Jimmy Saville (open brackets and his old record club close brackets).

Each programme was so cleverly put together. Every major news story seems to have a (more-or-less) contemporary song that fits it - sometimes in an eerie way, sometimes comically.

It would be good if they were shown again. I think they only went up to about 1980, so there also getting on for thirty more editions yet to be made.

Here's a thing: when they make the the Rock and Roll Years for 2008, what will they show?
- How about the inevitable footage of shop-fronts for Bank of Scotland being taken down. Music: That's Not My Name by the Ting Tings.
- Any more??

The ol' randomiser came up with Double Dare by Bauhaus today. Much beloved in my youth, I now realise it contains possibly the weakest challenge ever put to a music fan.

Delivered in Pete Murphy's most sinister voice:
"I dare you
to despise
bureaucracy
and all it's lies"

(note to self: form a band called Darers Go First)

I'm not sure there's a thread yet to commemorate those broken songs mentioned in this month's Word. Here goes anyway...

No Milk Today by Herman's Hermits
- in a world where no-one gets their milk delivered, what possible sense could that make anymore.

On Tape by The Pooh Sticks
- "Got it on tape? What's a tape, Mum"

You Can't Say Crap On The Radio - Stiff Little Fingers
- these days it's pretty much compulsary

Watched the last episode of Mad Men this weekend. What a surprising programme it's been. They seem to have quietly ignored all the current rules of TV drama.

There's no murder or death or even 'peril'. There are no cliffhangers at all. They never felt the need to finish an episode with a character being caught in-flagrante (despite the countless opportunities).

Anyone who's been watching it, but hasn't yet seen the last episode, needn't worry that I might include spoilers in this posting. This wasn't a 'season finale' - no bloodbath, no big twist. The one major sub-plot of the series was resolved in the penultimate episode.

In our house, though, it's been totally gripping all the way through. The thing is we're both compulsive plot-spotters and in Mad Men there's no telling what's going to happen next.
A man in his 50's struggles wheezing up 14 flights of stairs. What happens next? Yes, that's right, he throws up his dinner over the shoes of his number 1 client.

The kitsch is fun but not overpowering. The open sexism and even racism portrayed by the characters goes mostly unchallenged by any Sam Tyler figure. They expect you to be comfortable with your own morality. It just seems about ten years more grown-up than anything made in the UK.

We'll be counting the days until it explodes back onto our screens.

As another adjunct to the 'first record' thread, what the last new vinyl album you ever bought?

I'm sure there are people who bought In Rainbows last week or something, but for me the vinyl age ended with Nevermind by Nirvana (according to the boxes I sorted through at the weekend).

I've bought the od vinyl-only single since then, and obviously search out old bargains wherever the turn up. But an album on release? it stops with the greedy swimming baby.

I wrote lots of songs as a teenager. As i think of them now they inevitably make me cringe. At the time I thought they were all wonderfully clever, mostly because pretty much every one of them had a 'twist' in the last verse. You know the sort of thing - "girlfriend's actually dead" "I hate you but - ah - I love you as well". That sort of thing.

My question is this: songs with a twist - are they always terrible?

The prosecution may cite the Brotherhood Of Man ("..even though you're only three")
The defence must surely bring in The Green Green Grass Of Home (actually, I think I may have defeated my own argument at a stroke)

[as a point of order, Lola doesn't have a twist. We all know what's going on there right from the off.]

The excitement lies in wondering whether it will have an automatic pick-up at the end.

Having just heard Foundations by Kate Nash for about the millionth time, it suddenly occurs to me: How is she holding on to the "the cracks in our foundations"?. Surely the foundations are going to be underground.
I know they're the metaphorical foundations of her relationship, but surely this implies a metaphorical excavation (or indeed undermining) of said foundations.

I think what we're dealing with here is an unreliable narrator.