Entertainment For Lively Minds
Singer-Wrongwriter
That mouldy madeleine of memory has spun across the room like a frisbee and whacked me in the forehead again, following the recent threads about our own musical endeavours.
Any dodgy or otherwise inappropriate lyrics in your back catalogue?
Aged 14, I decided to write a song glorifying and explaining the ineffable Oneness of all things, and lyrically address it to some famously worried soul, who'd represent the ignorance and naivity of humanity.
The song's chorus went:
# Everybody's God, Everybody's God, Everybody's God, Everybody's God, Everybody's God, Everybody's God... Charlie Brown #
(I hadn't yet heard Charles Manson's musical efforts, but I imagine I'd have found a fellow traveller if I had done.)
"That's nice, dear" said my mum. "Why don't you send it to a record company?"
I did so. I sent it to ten. About 3 slightly ripped jiffy bags came back.
Two years later, in 1986, the Evening Standard announced it was looking for a Song for London, something that best exploited the vibrancy and diversity of the capital.
I had just the song ready. It was called 'Chickens.' It was about predatory paedophiles in Soho.
The song's opening went:
# There's an elderly male in a top hat and tails / dining on chicken tonight / With a scrap of a lad, of a bold 15 years, and they're at it like a pair of intravenous parasites #
(Bob, of this parish, notes that this really works if you recite it in a Noel Coward voice.)
I can't recall the rest (something about exchanging sex for a new video recorder) but the chorus ran, # Didn't anybody tell you, the West End is just: Xmas tree lights in a garbage can #
"That's nice, dear" said my mum. "Why don't you enter it in the Evening Standard's Song for London competition?"
I did so. This time, the SAE jiffy bag didn't even come back.
But my favourite recent lyric-based memory is singing one of my songs called 'Everything is Temporary' at an open mic night, during which a girl in the audience who'd been loudly splitting up with her boyfriend throughout, suddenly announced, "Yes, everything IS fucking temporary, isn't it", punched him, and stormed out.
The room collapsed. The set was over.
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Long ago
When I started college I made fast friends with my halls of residence next-door-neighbour. He was a bass player who been in a no-hoper punk band a year or so earlier. They had a "song" called PP3, which was a tribute to one of these:
The "chorus" went as follows:
PP3 - Not a lot of battery
PP3 - Not a lot of battery
PP3 - Not a lot of battery
PP3 - NO F**KING BATTERY!
A quarter of a century later, I still can't get it out of my head.
Na Na Na,
Na na na na na,
Na na na, na na na na na
No....
I just can't get it out of my head either.
Girl behind the bar
Many years ago, I worked in a hotel bar. I got chatting to one of the newer barmaids, and she told me that her boyfriend was in a band. As I was doing an English degree at the time, he gave me his notepad of lyrics, asking for my opinion. He was a lovely fella, so I felt awful when he asked for my input to a new song he was writing, which was inspired by his barmaid girlfriend. I'll never forget the wonderful lines he'd written...
"Girl behind the bar,
She's my bird,
girl behind the bar
...I wanna give her one."
Did he want to give her a bar? I'm unsure.
Sadly I burned all my teenage poetry.
otherwise I'm sure I'd have some horrors to contribute...
I wish I could say the same
I've kept them, for sentimental reasons, and because I'm hoping I'll be famous one day!
One of my early songwriting efforts (I used to write them because I couldn't play real songs) was called 'You're Making Me Cry' and contained lyrics such as:
"I never realised you'd break my heart
You finished something that you did not start
Now I've not got anything to do
All I've got are memories of you."
And into the chorus:
"You're making me cry-y-y-y
And I don't know why
You're making me blue-ue-ue
And I don't know what to do"
That is a Stock Aitken and Waterman classic lyric
Stick a bit of synth drum behind that and you will have a hit!
No poetry in my past.
But I am extremely proud of a lyric I wrote as a challenge. When collectively drunk one night me and my friends decided to come up with "The Most Rock And Roll Song Ever!"
We applied logic. Sex is obviously rock and roll, as are motorbikes. So the Most Rock And Roll Thing Ever was obviously sex with a motorbike. I duly came up with a fairly horrific tune with that as a premise.
The only good thing about this masterpiece (entitled Ouw Ouw Jiggi Jigga Ouw Ouw) was the line "Yo pretty baby can I have a ride?/ Cos your engine's sleek and your seat is wide" which I maintain isn't that bad at all.
Oh. Man alive.. Where do I start?
There were two bands at my sixth form. Ours (The Unhugged Teddies, sometimes The Axewielding Satanic Warlords) and the other lot. Can't remember their name. They had two guitarists and a bass player. We had two guitarists and a (rather good) drummer. They took themselves rather seriously and even hired a recording studio. We were lucky if we could make it half way through a song without all collapsing in fits of giggles.
The glory of the full lyrics of the proto-thrash anthem do escape me but they started as follows:
Warlords of Satan riding from Hades
With screaming steel and flashing blad(i)es
We don't play no shit, we play it real loud
'Cos we are the axe-wielding Satanic Warlo(u)rds
Axemen, axemen, riding through the night
Axemen, axemen, riding from the light
Lock up your women and hide all your beer
The nightmare is coming and we'll soon be here
Actually, I'm not sure if any more lyrics existed. You can understand why both we and the audience in the Common Room used to struggle to keep straight faces.
It was just before Christmas 1976
It was the last week of school, so my bandmates and I put on our best weekend punk gear and performed a skit with these lyrics
I was walking down the road
with a coupla pals 'a mine
Looking for some aggro
cos life is such a bore
We come across this Hippy
and he tried to run away
So we thumped his stupid head in
just to pass the time of day
With our great big boots
real leather jackets
shirts made out of old fag packets
Oh we're the punk rockers
and we'll take you for a ride
There ain't much on the top of our 'eads
and even less inside
They put us on the telly
they said they didn't care
They didn't know the next day
they'd be tearing out their hair
We could say just what we liked
they even let us swear
But just when we were warming up
they took us off the air
So come and join the party
be a punk with us
We never walk alone
cos we're so gre-ga-ri-ous (yes, that's quite enough....)
Life Is A Bag Of Crisps (The Vomit Band)
When you take off your head
You remind me of Uncle Fred
And his party turns
He unscrewed his head as a special treat
And gave it to the birds so they could eat
Yeah life - life is a bag of crisps, crisps
Hopping on the escalator turns me on
Almost as much as
Looking at bookshelves
Yeah, when you screw
Into the ground
Your feet are made of plastic
And your legs are elastic
Yeah life - life is a bag of crisps, crisps