I'm taking a brief rest from our journey into musical space to celebrate ten songs about cashing in at the casino. Let the chips fall where they may...
Thea has gambling on her mind, and lyrics that can’t ever lose. Take a listen to this song from the Rules For Jokers album - it's guaranteed to hit the jackpot.
Everclear should know better than to play blackjack with “Scary John”. “Be careful what you ask for,” Art Alexakis sings on this track, but considering this is the man who also offers to “…Buy You A New Life” and dreams of living “Like A California King”, the stakes are obviously high. The first new Everclear album in six years is released next month… will it be another winner?
Legend has it Mick couldn't come up with any decent lyrics to this song. So he scribbled some random casino-related phrases on a few scraps of paper and the band took turns drawing them out of a bag, making the words up as they went along. Despite all that, Keith's boogie-woogie riffs brought it home.
It may be time to reassess Human Touch and Lucky Town. Releasing two albums on the same day is never a good bet for any artist, especially after a five year break. Expectations were impossibly high after Tunnel Of Love... the odds were stacked against Bruce. Still, he rolled the dice... and listening to this record 20 years later, it still sounds fresh. I call that a win.
Mr. G and Mr. Dogg lay out the consequences of street corner hip hop gambling after a game of Cee-Lo goes against them. Pity I couldn't find a Cee Lo Green track on this same subject, but at least I now know where the big guy got his name from.
There are loads of songs about gamblers (in fact, there's a whole other Top Ten in them... one day), but none give quite so much useful advice to the budding casino goer. You never count your money when you're sitting at the table...
1. Elvis Presley - Viva Las Vegas
The ultimate gambling song for the ultimate casino town where all you need is a strong heart and nerves of steel. Of course, The King wins the pot... but ZZ Top, Bruce and The Dead Kennedys play to win too.
Those were mine… but which casino song is a guaranteed winner for you?
If I were being retroactive, I'd pick something like OU or Razzmatazz from the Pulp: Intro album, but sadly I didn't discover Jarvis till the following year. I did discover Aimee Mann in '93 though and even chose her debut solo record, Whatever, as my album of the year. Mr. Harris is probably my favourite track from that disc now, but this is the one that made me love Aimee at the time.
Meanwhile, the singles chart had fallen off a cliff. Number One as I got the key to the door? Oh Carolina by Shaggy.
Jarvis almost made it home once again, I could have gone with just about anything from His 'n' Hers. But then there's Vauxhall & I. Could this be Morrissey's finest 39 minutes as a solo artist?
I told you the birthday number ones just get worse and worse. March 19th, 1994? Doop. By Doop. Sadly, not this one...
At last, proof that my favourite singles don't always come from my favourite albums. This was the year of Everything Must Go, Beautiful Freak and Murder Ballads... yet the song that most reminds me of my second stab at being a teenager is this exuberant blast of sunshiny retro-pop from Ocean Colour Scene. Hard to believe they were the first band I ever saw live.
Meanwhile, back in the charts... How Deep Is Your Love? Shallow, when it comes to the Take That version. Not so shallow they couldn't drown a few Gibb brothers in it.
Blur were a great singles band and this was their greatest moment. Two minutes of noisy power pop that never fail to make me go "Woo hoo!" While Radiohead, The Verve and Gene were darkening my long player collection, Damon and the lads kept me smiling. This year's runner-up was a hymn to optimism from James: Tomorrow.
And in an alternate reality to my own, The Spice Girls were having their 4th Number One as I reached my mid-20s. I can't even remember the title.
Another song that stands out by not belonging to one of the year's best albums. 1998 gave us my favourite record of the 90s, Pulp's public breakdown on This Is Hardcore. But the single of the year belongs to Gregg Alexander, a man who hated being a rock star so much he went off and wrote songs for Ronan Keating.
Sadly, I can't find my other favourite single of 1998 on youtube. Child Psychology by Black Box Recorder must be too dark for the video collective.
March 19th 1998, the Number One was It's Like That by Run DMC vs. Jason Nevins. Which is a damn sight better than we've managed throughout the rest of this decade so far.
I thought long and hard about this one. It would have been so much cooler to pick something by The Magnetic Fields (69, my favourite album of '99), The Flaming Lips or even Ooberman, but as much as Fran Healey has damaged his limited rep by writing MOR-pap for the last 10+ years, this is still a perfect gloomy-pop song that captures a snapshot of my life in 1999. I remember watching them play it live at a festival just before they went big, in the rain. Perfect.
Besides, it could have been worse. I could have chosen my last birthday Number One of the 20th Century. Boyzone murdering Billy Ocean. When The Going Gets Tough... the tough put their hands over their ears and go lalalalalalalala.
Neither of my two favourite singles of 2000 meant much to the public at large. I've written about Black Box Recorder's The Facts Of Life before, but Wonderful by Everclear is a curio. An American band who have never bothered the British charts, this is their greatest moment. More upbeat power-pop packed with smiley hooks, handclaps and a 'na-na-na' chorus... masking a dark lyrical undertow.
Please don't tell me everything is wonderful now
Far less Wonderful, my first birthday chart-topper of the 21st Century: Bag It Up by Geri Halliwell. WTF? Is that Geri singing about her shopping? I'm not sure I've ever even heard that record. I am sure I never want to.
The song I want playing at my funeral. Kind of apt for my 30th birthday?
But as I actually turned 30, Will Young was at Number One, marking the funeral of the singles chart as we knew it. Simon Cowell slaughtered the damned thing before our very eyes.
Lee Mavers and co. recorded one album in 1990, promptly disowned it, then spent the following 21 years "on hiatus". Talk about "difficult second album syndrome".
All my life goes by in Doledrum I'll see ninety-five in Doledrum
Treasure this moment, it's probably the first, last and only time you'll ever see a Simply Red song in one of my mixtapes.
Here, Mick Hucknall has been laid off from work, his kids all need shoes, and the bank don't want to know. I might sympathise... if he wasn't Mick Hucknall.
Billy and co. update this traditional folk song, dedicating it to unemployed farmers across the country...
Time was, I could sell what I grew in the shop. Then Tesco's turned up all of that had to stop. Now I can't make a living out of my crop. Singing, oh, the hard times of old England, In old England very hard times.
And things were even harder for the unemployed before the days of the welfare state...
I mined in your mines and I gathered in your corn I been working, mister, since the day I was born Now I worry all the time like I never did before 'Cause I ain't got no home in this world anymore
Not the Morrissey classic about winning yourself a cheap tray... but an ode to unemployment from a bunch of slackers... who you'd probably expect to enjoy unemployment a little more than they do.
Everyday is Sunday When you're unemployed Sounds pretty good man I should be overjoyed
Every day is Sunday Every day is Sunday Every day is Sunday Friday never comes
Do you think I should write a novel? Maybe write some songs? I'll show you I'm the genius You thought I was all along
More farmers forced to sell their farms when the bank forecloses, from another artist who owes his entire career to Woody Guthrie. And, as so often in these stories, it all ends with rain on the scarecrow... and blood on the plough.
The irony being that by the time the second Kenickie album hit the shops, most of the band were on the dole. At least Lauren Laverne went on to find alternative employment.
I got hired but I got tired of draining the pool for you. I got tired but not so blue, To see the cracks in you. I got hired against my wish, With better prospects, after this.
I can think of worse resignation letters you could write... this should probably have made last week's list though.
If ever there was a rock star who epitomised what we might call "dole scum chic", it's Pete Doherty. This song was named after the Walter Greenwood novel, adapted into a film in 1941 starring Deborah Kerr as Waynetta Slob.
Adrian reminded me of this one after last week's Top Ten 'I Quit!' Songs. Do you want to make tea at the BBC? (Hint: it'll probably be more fulfilling than making the tea at ILR.)
Was there ever a more accurate description of what it feels like to be laid off...?
Watch out world, I’m a man at ease Free to do whatever when I want Lonely heathland here I come Deathless, useless bracken underfoot
There’s people who can’t spell ‘weird’ right Driving round with thousands in the bank But I get by, got a lot on my mind I get by, got allotments on my mind
Unlike a lot of the people on this list, Fred Jones is actually sad to be losing his job...
Fred sits alone at his desk in the dark There's an awkward young shadow that waits in the hall He's cleared all his things and he's put them in boxes Things that remind him: 'Life has been good' Twenty-five years He's worked at the paper A man's here to take him downstairs And I'm sorry, Mr. Jones It's time
The perils of living with an unemployed girlfriend or girlfriend, along with typically blunt advice on how to deal with them. At least the video gave temporary employment to an entire small town.
Nina ain't got no home, no shoes, no money, no skirts and no sweater. She does have her tongue, her chin, her neck and her boobies though. I'm not entirely sure what alternate career path she's advising here...
Yes, the most misunderstood song in the history of rock is actually the story of a disgruntled GI returning from Vietnam to find nobody will give him a job.
Come back home to the refinery Hiring man says, "son, if it were up to me..." Went down to see my VA man, He says, "son, don't you understand?"
Probably not the song you expected to top this chart (if you've ever even heard of it), but this is one of my favourites from Everclear. It never fails to make me smile.
Ever been chatted up down the Job Centre?
Blimey - 25 songs about unemployment. But which omissions made me fail the interview?
Following on from last week's Top Ten Bitch Songs by changing just one letter in my search engine (yes, I'm that lazy) - and also in celebration of the unholy mockery that was Season Of The Witch - here are ten songs filled with hubble, bubble, toil and trouble...
Everyone knows the story. Jeff Buckley made one classic album, Grace, then floated away down the Mississippi River before he ever got chance to complete its follow up, My Sweetheart The Drunk. His record company, doing what record companies do best at times like this, released the unfinished sessions as a double album of incomplete "sketches". They're nowhere near as compelling as anything on Grace, but who knows - maybe they would have been.
Whoever uploaded this to youtube decided to link it to scenes from the movie Unfaithful, so you get to watch Diane Lane get it on with Olivier Martinez while you listen to Jeff's song. This may prove too much of a distraction...
A song written by Don Henley in a delirious fever dream, the witch in question apparently being F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife Zelda, "the first American flapper". (Yes, I said 'flapper'. You just read it as 'slapper'.)
...is one of those lyrics that always brings an unnecessary smile to my face. The question is, if we threw Hefner in a lake with bricks tied round their ankles, would they float or would they drown?
(No indie-folk weirdoes were hurt during the preparation of this Top Ten.)
The witchhunt here is the media-fuelled hysteria created after 9/11 and the subsequent terrorist attacks on the London Underground. Those wacky, fun-lovin' Bloc Party lads.
Originally recorded by Redbone in the 70s, there's just something about the Edwyn Collins version that tips it over the edge. Great strings, and Collins' voice has never been richer. Curiously, he also does an inspired cover of our next track too... though sadly I can't find either of them on youtube.
Written and released in 1957. It's easy to think of Sinatra as being a big musical force in only the 40s and early 50s, disappearing off the scene once his nemesis, rock 'n' roll, arrived on the scene. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is a classic, whatever the era.
The film may have been a crock, but Donovan's 60s hit steals the broomstick from all other contenders. It's also the only truly spooky song on the list.
So... who did I forget? Or, as Scooby Doo would have it... which witch is WITCH?
Stuart Murdoch's stalker anthem (one of many!) based around Dylan's famous promo film for Subterranean Homesick Blues. I'm not sure how the two connect, but when the end product sounds this good - who cares?
Murder By Death are great with the titles. This comes from the album Like The Exorcist, But More Breakdancing which also features tracks called: I'm Afraid Of Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf, Intergalactic Menopause and Flamenco's Fuckin' Easy. All inspired titles which the songs in question rarely live up to... how could they?
Here it is The not-so-happy-ending We've done our picket fence defending We did Bogart and Bacall and now the spotlight's gone, and anyway All those movie kisses just last too long
I know you think you're in the movies. You're in the movies and you don't wanna know me. Well I know all about fear and desire, and I know all about lust, etc.
Edie Sedgwick, Anna Karina, Arlene Dahl. Edie Sedgwick, Anna Karina, Arlene Dahl. I just want to be a sweetheart.
I always thought Kate was singing about Tolstoy's tragic heroine Anna Karenina along with cult actresses Edie Sedgwick and Arlene Dahl. I never quite understood why.
Turns out it's actually Danish actress Anna Karina. Well, I never.
One of those things you dream about doing when you're young and single... then when the opportunity does finally arrive: "Get off me, woman - I want to watch the film!"
1. Okkervil River - Our Life Is Not A Movie Or Maybe
Their best song, it's a lyrical blizzard and no mistaking, with some of the more interesting rhymes you'll hear this week.
Do you have a favourite movie song? Do tell.
Anyone who suggests My Heart Will Go On, Everything I Do (I Do It For You) or Take My Breath Away... don't let the door hit your arse on your way out.
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