Chris James's Blog, page 21

100 Great Songs to Publish a Book to, #21: Rod Stewart, The Killing of Georgie (Parts 1 & 2)

Based on a true story, this is one of the first instances in popular music where a gay protagonist is not only portrayed sympathetically but is actually held up as someone to emulate.  Forty-one years later, and the tolerance promoted in this song is needed now more than ever as our prehistoric capitalist paradise continues to regress.  First-rate storytelling from Stewart set to a tune which is laughably easy to whistle along to.

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100 Great Songs to Publish a Book to, #22: Tony Banks, A Curious Feeling

This is the title track from Banks’ 1978 debut solo album.  The narrator has now gained so much knowledge from his deal with the devil that he’s really enjoying himself in this terrifically foot-tapping, dated-lyric track.  Shortly, he will break his bargain with the devil and fall in love, and, for the rest of the album, it will all be downhill for the unfortunate fellow.

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Documenting the New Motorway, #1: The Bridge

[image error]It’s not every day a major civil engineering project kicks off a five-minute drive from where one lives, so I’ve jumped on the chance to record its progress photographically.  The S2 Expressway is an extension of the main A2 highway that is planned to link Berlin, Warsaw and Moscow.  A couple of years ago, a section south of Warsaw was opened and now, after many years since it was planned (we first heard about it in 2004), the required funds appear to have been found to bring the S2/A2 over the Vistula and through part of our local forest.  This section is slated to be opened in August 2020, and I plan to keep taking and posting pictures as it progresses.

In this first post, I went down to the Vistula to see how the new bridge is coming along.  All of these shots were taken on the east bank of the river.  Here’s the easternmost support for the bridge, with a sandbank to allow the plant to reach it from the bank and work there:

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There are three supports spanning the river.  Here’s the central one, with cormorants and other birdlife singularly unmoved by the changes taking place around them:

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The plant on the eastern bank is like a full-size version of the toys I used to play with as a child:

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This is my favourite machine.  Doubtless it has a proper name, but I’ll just call it the Boring Beastie!

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And here, for probably the first and last time, is a picture of the steel forms which will be buried in, and strengthen, the concrete supports:

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Finally, here’s a shot of all three bridge supports.  In less than three years, there should be a four-lane highway right here:

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100 Great Songs to Publish a Book to, #23: The Moody Blues, Ride My Seesaw

Arguably John Lodge’s best composition for The Moodies, this track, from 1968’s In Search of the Lost Chord, begins with an unsettling monologue which dissolves into maniacal laughter as the song starts.  While it’s debatable whether the “trip” which the narrator is asking us to take refers either to a drug trip or to an actual journey, the element of disappointment and regret running through the rest of the lyrics is irrefutable.  As he sings: “School taught one and one is two/But right now, that answer just ain’t true.”  Indeed, was it ever?

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100 Great Songs to Publish a Book to, #24: Lindisfarne, Run for Home

Every Genesis fan needs to give a nod of thanks to Lindisfarne, as their extensive commercial success in the early 1970s allowed Tony Stratton-Smith at Charisma Records to keep bankrolling Genesis while Gabriel, Rutherford, Banks, Hackett and Collins found their musical feet.  Named after an island off the coast of Northumbria, Lindisfarne broke up after the initial success of their albums Nicely out of Tune, Fog on the Tyne and Dingly Dell, but reformed in 1978 and delivered this outstanding track, ostensibly about the rigours of touring.

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100 Great Songs to Publish a Book to, #25: Renaissance, The Captive Heart

After a sublime piano intro, Annie Haslam sings: “I made my dreams then lost them/They left and I went away.”  So begins a song which to me is the musical expression of the season of autumn, a sense of the passing of time with the acknowledgment of the future still to come.  This is one of Michael Dunford’s and Betty Thatcher’s most accomplished compositions (the images in this video are from my back garden and local forest in, er, autumn).

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100 Great Songs to Publish a Book to, #26: Genesis, Turn It on Again

It’s Monday morning.  Fearing a bad day?  Feeling a little angsty and that the world is simply not on your side?  Well, the narrator in this track certainly shares your pain.  Taken from the best album Genesis did, 1980’s Duke, this portended the progression of the Genesis sound to a more commercial footing, which would gain new fans in inverse proportion to the rate at which they lost fans of the older material.  But it’s still the best single they put out.  You want to write the next book?  You really do need to keep turning it on again and again and again, no bullshit.  (Subs pls check: Don’t let James swear; replace ‘bullshit’ with ‘hogwash’ or similar.  This song isn’t that good, anyway.  Ed.)

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100 Great Songs to Publish a Book to, #27: The Kinks, Waterloo Sunset

Ray Davis has a claim to be one of the foremost chroniclers of London life in the 1960s, of children who grew up in post-war Britain and who found the world change around them as their adult lives progressed.  He penned numerous songs which acted as social commentaries, a prime example of which is this one, blending a distinctive narrative in the lyrics with a sufficiently commercial, guitar-based sound.  A popular urban myth is that the Terry and Julie, whom the narrator describes, referred to two actors of the day, Terrance Stamp and Julie Christie.  However, Davis himself debunked this in his 2008 autobiography.

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100 Great Songs to Publish a Book to, #28: Chris de Burgh, Say Goodbye to It All

Seldom has such a promising rock-music career been so spectacularly self-immolated.  The year was 1986, and the album was called Into the Light.  Over the preceding decade, de Burgh had been getting better with each album and was finally beginning to enjoy some popularity as a purveyor of pretty decent rock songs.  Then, the fourth track on side one of Into the Light changed everything.

I shan’t despoil my list by mentioning its name, but you know the song I’m talking about: one of the lamest, most syrupy, cloying, stomach-churning “love” songs ever written.  And, in a twist of the richest irony, it became a huge global hit and made de Burgh the star he actually deserved to be.  Thereafter, however, the pretty decent rock songs were ditched in favour of more of the same mushy tripe, and those of us who care about these things were left to wonder what great songs de Burgh might have written but for that one, awful track.

Nevertheless, before the disaster of the song-which-shall-not-be-named, de Burgh delivered some highly respectable work.  Ironically enough, Say Goodbye to It All actually followed the song-which-shall-not-be-named to round out side one of Into the Light, although little did we know that we were indeed saying goodbye to de Burgh’s best work.

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100 Great Songs to Publish a Book to, #29: Rush, Limelight

Another terrific Saturday-night track and one of the best rock guitar riffs ever recorded.  The lyrics are a reflection of fame and Rush’s own [mixed] feelings about living in “the gilded cage”.  But it’s the music that grabs you here.  Taken from their most commercially successful album, 1981’s Moving Pictures, this song balances uniqueness and originality with accessibility and irresistible foot-tapability (yes, I know that’s not a word; no, I don’t care).

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