Top Ten Seabird Songs

The only reason is just because.

I really wanted to find room for Half Man Half Biscuit's 'National Shite Day' which features a guest appearance from a dead wading bird, parcelled up and posted to the "rubber-faced irritant Phil Cool / With a note inside which read(s): 'Is this your Sanderling?'". I have no idea what the story is behind that gag, but it always makes me smile.

Anyway...

10. Bad Company - Seagull

Here is a man asking the question
Is this really the end of the world?
Seagull, you must have known for a long time
The shape of things to come.

Chris Packham tells me there's no such thing as "seagulls". There's just different types of gulls, many of which live by the sea. So there.

9. A Flock Of Seagulls - Wishing (If I Had A Photograph Of You)

Unfairly remembered more for their ridiculous haircuts than their music, this band actually took their name from a lyric in the song Toiler On The Sea by The Stranglers.

8. Engelburt Humperdinck - Lesbian Seagull

If you've never heard this before, you probably think I'm making it up. Written by Tom Wilson Weinberg "in response to a government study of long term monogamous lesbian behaviour in seagulls" (thank you, wikipedia, please don't close down for good). The Engelburt version was recorded for the end credits of the movie Beavis & Butthead Do America. It's all true, I swear!

7. British Sea Power - The Great Skua

Seabirds often seem to inspire instrumentals, and this is a wonderfully atmospheric one from BSP about a bird that's also known as The Bonxie.

6. Ooberman - Goodbye, Gadfly

Another evocative and romantic song from the mighty Ooberman, a band no longer with us, but whose entire back catalogue (including this track) can be downloaded free from their website at the link above. Well worth your download allowance.

5. The Shins - New Slang

No, Slang isn't a seabird. Neither are Shins. However, the chorus goes like this...

And if you took to me like
A gull takes to the wind.
Well, I'd 'a jumped from my tree
And I'd a danced like the kind of the eyesores
And the rest of our lives would 'a fared well

4. Guillemots - Redwings

No, Redwings aren't seabirds either. Guillemots are though - and Guillemots are cool. Not quite as cool as Penguins or Puffins, but I couldn't find a song about either of those. Sadly.

3. Rialto - Summer's Over

Kamikaze seagull planes
Fighting over chip-shop take-away remains
And when you’re walking on the cliff
You can’t help thinking of how far down the sea is
And what if they should give...

My favourite seaside song that isn't Everyday Is Like Sunday, and this one has a kamikaze seagull too!

2. Fleetwood Mac - Albatross

Undoubtedly the most famous seabird instrumental, spoiled slightly by its ubiquitous use in TV holiday show soundtracks, it's still one of the most relaxing records ever recorded.

1. The Maccabees - Pelican

A new entry at the top of the chart, this earworm from the Maccabees has been circling my harbour incessantly for the last few weeks. I have no idea why it's called Pelican... and I'm not sure I want to know.

The Flaming Lips at Jodrell Bank: Transmissions

I'm not one for filling my gig reviews with photos. Normally I look down on people who spend the entire show with their mobile phone pointed at the stage. But last night's gig at Jodrell Bank was definitely camera worthy... luckily I had my new Blackberry (yes, yes, get over it) on hand to capture the wonder.

For those unfamiliar with the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire, it's home to the Lovell Telescope, the third largest radio telescope in the world. This incredible device is manned 24/7/365, recording and monitoring the sounds of outer space - quasars, pulsars... and maybe, one day, extraterrestrial boogie woogie.

But the noises being monitored in mission control last night were of slightly more earthbound origin... I say "slightly" because when your headline act is Wayne Coyne and the Flaming Lips, the jury's still out on whether we all weren't experiencing a close encounter in the shadow of that 76 metre dish. The band were performing at the climax of Transmissions, the observatory's first mini-festival, following an evening of entertainment from Alice Gold (promising), the Wave Machines (ramshackle), OK Go (worthy of further investigation) and British Sea Power (always entertaining). All the acts had a certain spacey or scientific bent to their songs, and the Flaming Lips push the outer limits better than just anyone else in rock... if Bowie's off floating in a tin can somewhere, unavailable.

Two scientists were racing
For the good of all mankind
Both of them side by side
So determined
Locked in heated battle
For the cure that is their prize
But it's so dangerous
But they're determined

Theirs is to win
If it kills them
They're just humans
With wives and children

If you've ever seen a Flaming Lips show, you'll know the music comes second to the spectacle. Dancing cheerleaders, giant animal costumes, lasers straight out of Lucasfilm, even the lead singer walking out onto the shoulders of his audience in a giant Prisoner-esque bubble. But for last night's performance, the Lips had found a way to top even these theatrics... by getting the Lovell telescope itself in on the act. As the band finally took to the stage, just before 10pm, the enormous disc rotated to face the audience for the first time and became a projection screen for deep space imagery, followed by a huge film show tracing the history of Jodrell Bank and its founding father, Bernard Lovell. The Lips rightly saved their two best songs for the encore, but it was too late to stop them being overshadowed by one of the most impressive feats of scientific engineering in the world.

Do You Realize - that you have the most beautiful face?
Do You Realize - we're floating in space?
Do You Realize - that happiness makes you cry?
Do You Realize - that everyone you know someday will die?

Trippy indie music + deep space investigations... it's a geek's dream festival. Thank god I had my camera!

Top Ten Satan Songs

All right, all right, enough with the Top Twenty Devil Songs... let's have something a bit more FESTIVE, shall we?

How about a Top Ten Santa songs..?

D'oh! Me and my damned dyslexia!


10. The Louvin Brothers - Satan Is Real

An old style deep south country hit that breaks into gospel style preaching about the evils and temptations of modern music and society.

Quite possibly the most bizarre thing you'll hear this week... if you click the link.

No wonder Johnny Cash dubbed himself The Man In Black if this is what the country white hats were singing.

9. Luke Haines - Satan Wants Me

The devil has the best tunes... sounds like he's already got you, Luke.

8. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Satan Said Dance

This song sounds like a Charles Manson recruitment drive to me.

7. Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody

Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me

(Or, as the mondgreen has it, "Beelzebub has the devil for a sideboard".)

When I was 16, Queen's biggest hit was among my Top Three Favourite Songs EVER. And that was long before Wayne's World.

6. British Sea Power - No, Lucifer

Why are satanic puppets so disturbing? A nightmarish video for one of BSP's most poppy songs.

5. Cake - Satan Is My Motor

Satan is the only one who seems to understand...

4. Orbital - Satan

I'm not a huge fan of dance music, but this Orbital track stuck in my mind from about 15 years ago because of it's amusingly sampled intro, and I had to recruit the twitter hivemind to help me remember it.

Daddy, what does regret mean?
Well son, the funny thing about regret is,
It's better to regret something you have done,
Than to regret something you haven't done.
And by the way, if you see your mom this weekend,
Be sure and tell her, SATAN, SATAN, SATAN!!!

Apparently, the sample originates from a Butthole Surfers track called Sweat Loaf. Which is nice.

3. Art Brut - Demons Out

In which Eddie Argos kicks Satan's arse.

How can you sleep at night when nobody likes the music we like?
How am I supposed to sleep at night when no one likes the music we write?
Record buying public, we hate them
This is Art Brut vs. Satan
Don't worry, we can take 'em!

2. Ben Folds - Satan Is My Master

About 45 seconds into this short track, Ben Folds is possessed by the devil. It's like Billy Joel meets The Exorcist.

1. Morrissey - Satan Rejected My Soul

Poor old Moz (#4765). Even Satan doesn't want him.




So, my little devils... which Satanic Song do you worship?


For more festive Satanic Santa fun, can I direct you towards this week's Thoughtballoons story? Ryan chose Santa Claus as this week's character... and I did a very bad thing.