Entertainment For Lively Minds
Things Only Ever Found In Songs
Posted by Five-Centres on 28 July 2011 - 9:48am.
In the fantasy world of the popular song, there seem to be things that only exist there. To wit:
1. Women called Jeannie. They appear in countless songs. But do you know one? Have you ever met one? Like Roxy or Sadie, it's a name for fictional characters, surely. No one real life is called this. Or are they?
2. Cherry wine. Again, the tipple of choice in tunes to numerous to mention. That and strawberry wine. Have you ever come across this? Have you ever asked to two pints of Guinness and a cherry wine? I've heard of - and seen - Stone's Ginger Wine everywhere, but never cherry wine. Does it exist?
Can you pinpoint any others?
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Drank cherry wine
two saturday's back. These people sell it : http://www.lymebaywinery.co.uk/
I found it rather too sweet. But I should have known that - "lips as sweet as cherry wine" being a common(ish) lyric.
I also know a Jeannie.
I'll raise you two Jeannies
I live with a Jeannie and I work with a Jeannie.
Me,
... I dream of Jeannie (sorry)
I work
with two.
I dream of neither.
There was a Bugs Bunny cartoon
where he was idly singing to himself...
"I dream of Jeannie, she's a light brown hare"
:-)
One of my favourite great aunties...
...was named Jeannie, and I have a lovely friend named Jean - AKA Jeannie.
She's half-Thai and has a very Scottish-sounding surname. Great combo.
Kisses
sweeter than wine. Or sweet wine in general. What's that then, sherry?
When the kisses turn sour, a lot of people seem to travel the Boulevard of Broken Dreams, too.
Calling your girfriend "baby"
It does work in lyrics, granted. But not in real life.
Ahem
my FPO calls me 'baby'
I call my GF baby all the time...
...she loves it.
Also, indecision vis-a-vis the whole "baby" thang
I'm not sure I've ever heard a baby being told "maybe" in real life, the reply always falls firmly in either the affirmative or the negative camp.
"Your Daddy"
Unless it's being used literally, do not attempt to co-opt this Springsteen-esque affectatation. I've tried it - "Ugh - I've never felt drier" was one response.
Life on
Mars.
Shiny
Happy People.
People enjoying Rain
Walking in the rain, dancing in the rain, romanticising the "summer rain"...
I know we need rain, but we don't like it do we!?
Well,
Summer rain is one of my favourite things
Here in Manchester...
...it happens all too often for us.
Stomping in puddles
One of my fondest memories in college was the night friends and I got caught in a heavy downpour and thought, screw it, and began stomping in puddles like maniacs. We were suddenly 6 again. It was a total blast.
Every adult should go stomping in rain puddles at least once in their lives.
Is it raining?
Sorry, I hadn't noticed.
Coat on.......
Several Species
Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave And Grooving With A Pict.
Funky......
....Dung
Doesn' t 'funky' mean 'smelly'?
I used to wonder about the line
"The funk of 40,000 years" in 'Thriller'
(James Brown will have something to say about that, I thought)
but I came to believe he was saying re-animated corpses are a bit whiffy
Don't take my funk away
A former BF carefully explained to me that Funky originally meant the smell of sex. Yum.
Champagne Wine
as referred to by Omar in his one great song, There's Nothing Like This. He actually calls it 'cold champagne wine'. Are we talking Cava, or Asti Spumante here? Omar, incidentally, lives in Hove these days, and I often see him in Tesco, so perhaps I'll ask him. I suspect shrift of the short variety will be given.
In a weird conbination
of message above, my Auntie Jeannie used to drink cherry brandy. Or ist it the same thing?
Wine in songs
Is ALWAYS sweet. Never dry, or crisp, or buttery, or reminiscent of newly mown hay.
This may be because...
Wine in songs is NEVER made from grapes.
Cherries, or elderberries, or 'lilac'. Anything but grapes.
Al Stewart
The exception to the rule is, of course, Mr Al Stewart, who goes ON and ON and ON about what a magnificent wine cellar he has. It's positively full to bursting with bottles of Chateau Petrus and Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, as he insists on telling us. At length. Just to ram the point home, he's pictured among the many fabulous vintages on the album's front cover...
"In the year of the Chat..."
"...eau Petrus 1984"
Or somesuch.
Sharing the love
I've got a gal who lives upon the hill
If she don't love me
I know her sister will.
So run the lyrics of a thousand blues songs.
Sounds perfectly reasonable in theory, but I bet you'd live to regret it.
Five and Dime
"I got my first real six-string. Bought it at the five-and-dime ..." So said Bryan Adams. Never seen a five-and-dime in the UK, but I suppose "My Mum got me my first real six-string. Bought it from Argos ..." doesn't evoke the same imagery.
Woolworths
was the nearest thing in the UK and one of the first five and dime shops in the US.
Kathy Mattea wrote a song about the subject, covered here by Nanci Griffith.
Oh dear me no, Mr Clef, sir
Nanci Griffith wrote and first performed the song. It's on the "Last of the True Believers" album.
Just testing you,
Wilson.
I was going to post a Kathy Mattea video and accidentally transposed the artist's names when I changed the video back to Nancy Griffith.
Silly me.
Incidentally
the (rather poor) video came from an excellent series called Words and Music which featured various artists discussing the inpiration for their songs. At the time Nanci Griffith said that Woolworths shops were closing all over America. Little did we know a similar fate would befall our Woolworths too.
Another one for the Olivetti thread?
Not so much a thread....
more of a ribbon
(Sorry! - I really am, honest)
'Peek through the bathroom door'
sang CCS in Tap Turns On The Water. They continue: 'See your sister in the raw'
Really? A thrill at seeing your own sister naked? The thought actually repulses me.
Tying the knot
No one ever gets married in songs (or on TV news reports), they always tie the knot.
Nobody ever says that in real life, do they?
The Proclaimers excepted
"Let's Get Married" was a single, featuring the line:
I Love yer, and I wanna screw yer
Are you sure....
they sing that?? I've always thought it was " I love yer and I wanna stay with yer"
Hmmm...
...checking on the lyric sites, it seems you're right. I could have sworn I have heard that other version, though.
Is it possible they changed it in the same way that the Beautiful South did when they sang "Don't Marry Her, Have Me" for the telly?
Whine in songs
is frequently found amongst miserable singer-songwriters, whining about how rotten life is etc etc.
Wine is always...
'flowing freely' in songs. Most people I know would wince if you asked them to open another bottle of their Blue Nun '83.
Midnight trains
They stop running at 11.07 where I live.
Declaring "England is mine and it owes me a living"
doesn't go down well at the dole office.
Inadequate fuses...
...on juke boxes.
Surely you mean
'the record machine'
Most eateries
are called Joe's Cafe
Except for Ver Quo's
Ma Kelly's Greasy Spoon
"Six String"
Does anyone in conversation ever call a guitar "a six string".
(Other than Jon Bon Jovi.)
Only to differentiate it
from a twelve string. But even then if you own a 12-string there's a fair chance you own more than one 6-string, so you still wouldn't call any of your 6-strings "six string"s, rather you'd call them by their names, and call the (probably) only 12-string you own "the twelve string".
Exactly
Generally, a 12 string is a "12 string", a 6 string is a "guitar".
What's more
what kind of masochist has played guitar until their fingers bled?
On the subject of six-strings unless you're into the realms of fretwankery (or have very big hands) surely this is standard?
I prefer to think
that Bryan Adams has particularly soft hands and that he cut his finger plucking the very first note.
Proverbs
Never used in every day language but always crow-barred into songs.
'Can't see the wood for the trees' has popped up a fair few times.
My wife
often cries out in her sleep. But, so far, my failings remain unexposed.
And another thing
love has never torn me apart. That would smart.
maybe not love -
but Wild Horses?
Mine don't
An ex once sat bolt upright in her sleep and shouted at me "It's all your fault!", then lay down again. I think, on this point at least, I can honestly say I know how Ian Curtis felt.
Waving your hands in the air
like you just don't care (see Cameo, SClub7 etc). You'd either get locked up or punched. Or at least looked at strangely.
Us non songwriters
talk about the crack of dawn (Fnarr) but them songwriters sing about the break of dawn.
The idea...
... that if you "run" you must be looking for somewhere to "hide". Why?
A dog without a bone
AKA A dog
Cars that don't need refueling
They just drive. They're driving. They drive all night.
Well done to Stereophonics for attempting to address this issue by releasing a song entitled "I Stopped To Fill My Car Up".
And Tom Waits
In Looking for the Heart of Saturday Night he explains, 'You've gassed her up, and you're behind the wheel...' Which is good forward planning because it could really spoil his night if he ran out of fuel.
the Dan check things twice
Is there gas in the car?
yes there's gas in the car. (stoopidest lyric in music according to a NYC cab driver talking to Walter Becker).
Translated into English this a frequent conversation with the GLW, who appears to be trying to wean her car off diesel.
Double post
Lovelight
Apparently, there is often a lovelight in people's eyes. It's in Wonderful Tonight and I'm sure it's in a Beach Boys song. Bet there are more as well.
I've found that in real life
any sort of 'light in the eyes' tends to be associated with a higher blood-alcohol content. Come to that, it isn't usually love in a romantic manner - a somewhat different set of impulses.
Charms
like arms can be wrapped around someone.
George Michael's
heterosexuality.
Much like Morrissey's libido
In the 80s, at least.
Mu Mu
Land
Making love...
...all night long. Happens all the time in songs. Not in real life. Or is that just me?
Just
you
DavidC
You are definitely not Sting, and I do not claim my £5.
DavidC
Move to Iceland, then it's easy!
Just be careful that your Mum's not there.....
DavidC you are absolutely correct.
Only girls 'make love'. I SHAAAAG all night long*.
*If only
You are Austin Powers
and I claim my one hundred billion dollars...
Heartache
No it's not. It's probably angina or a stroke.
Ring NHS Direct. Don't write a song about it.
Tears
are always "bitter". Mine are salty but that never gets mentioned.
Also trains are always specified as being "sixteen coaches long"
You don't get people putting up tightropes
ten miles high outside of songs. Not since health and safety came in..
When my esteemed colleagues...
...at the Southend Academy of Particle Physics aren't firing gamma rays at Basildon in the hope of replicating Depeche Mode, they sometimes attempt to reproduce the famed experiment in which Noel Gallagher walked slowly down the hall faster than a cannon ball.
In this case the hall is a subterranean tunnel that runs the length of the High Street, from just outside WH Smiths, to the sea-front, where it comes to a halt under Slag's Wall. The cannon ball is just a cannon ball that we borrowed from the Southend museum.
So far we have been unsuccessful in recreating Gallagher's results under laboratory conditions One theory is that the colossal gravity exerted by the former Oasis kingpin's ego causes a localised lensing effect on space-time, resulting in pockets of distortion and sudden perceptual anomalies that would not be observed by a more modest and pretentious coterie of scientists such as ourselves.
As of today Gallagher's findings and his associated claims to be in possession of mass spectrometry readings, taken from the Hubble Space telescope, that confirm the existence of a supernova composed entirely of champagne lack the authenticity of a peer review or even a decent melody.
If I may...
I'd like to offer an alternative hyopthesis.
Rather than firing the cannonball from a cannon, with the gunpowder's explosive force determining the projectile will move with significant quickness 'down the hall', surveying Prof Gallagher's other work suggests that the ball's propulsion may be achieved through less combustible means.
I propose that Gallagher's ball has not been fired from a cannon but has, instead, had a modicum of kinetic energy transferred to it by means of a gently applied palm. The ball then trundles slowly down the hall, with Prof Gallagher ambling along, just a little ahead.
In short, you've got to roll with it.
Mine's the lab coat with the stains on the collar.
The Semolina Pilchard theory
Any lazy, slapdash, that'll-do lyric that is plainly shoved in there 'cos it rhymes...can be forgiven if the writer later claims to have been on a massive hallucinogenic bender. Noel gets his jab in early with the next line "where were you when we were getting high?". If you don't understand, you weren't *there*, maaan.
As we all no doubt remember, the world seemed to stop for five minutes one Tuesday lunchtime 20 years ago when Pebble Mill's Paul Coia finally pinned down OMD's Andy McClusky about the lyrics to "Sailing on the Seven Seas of Love".
In front of a possible audience of 60 million, Andy waved "ta-ra" to his rock creds forever by saying that the words were meaningless and that he wasn't drunk or on drugs when he wrote them. Oh dear. In just a few words, the scales fell from the eyes of his adoring public and he became ordinary again. Paul Coia, of course, went on from strength to strength.
We're gonna Rock and Roll all night!
Give it your best shot, by all means. But I find after about 30 mins the chafing starts to set in.
And the people next door tend to bang on the wall when it gets late, anyway.
A thief
in the night.
A Werewolf
with a Chinese menu in his hand.
His hair was perfect.
Isn't it frowned on
to walk down a highway? I thought they were car-only.
It makes me long for a blues song to start "I was driving down the pavement."
Playing a Guitar
'just like ringing a bell'
Ding-bloody-dong. Not in my house.
Rocking All Over The World - time travel/omnipresence /who knows?
The Angels Want To Wear My Red Shoes - so what's wrong with the blue ones?
Pretty Girls out walking with Gorillas
haven't seen any of those recently.
Also, has the Backward7 Institute of Physics studied the 'Light Of Love' to find out where and if it really shines or whether it is a side effect of polarisation, scattering or interference?
The Chevvy.
I simply do not believe that this car exists. If it did, we'd all be driving around in one and having dramatic life-changing experiences.