Top Ten Bored Songs

A couple of weeks back, the ennui set in with my Top Ten Boring Songs. As if that wasn't enough to bore you to death, here come another ten...

10. Chris Difford - On My Own I'm Never Bored

Chris Difford is a man after my own heart. The only time I ever get bored is at work... so I guess that won't be a problem in a couple of weeks...!

From 'The Last Temptation Of Chris'.

9. Paul Armfield - Why Should It Be That A Man Gets Bored

I don't know much about singer-songwriter Paul Armfield, but I find it hard to believe any man could get bored listening to this beautiful track.

8. Edwyn Collins - Bored

Edwyn Collins gives new meaning to the words "rock 'n' roll survivor".

From his amazing, Lazarus-like comeback album, 'Losing Sleep'.

7. Manic Street Preachers - Bored Out Of My Mind

I'm bored out of my mind and I'm too stoned lazy to see...

From 'Lipstick Traces (A Secret History of Manic Street Preachers)'.

6. The Adverts - Bored Teenagers

Some punky racket by a load of snotty-nosed upstarts from the 70s. In case you like that sort of thing.

From 'Anthology'.

5. Evan Dando - Baby I'm Bored

OK, strictly speaking this isn't the name of a song, it's the name of an album... but considering it neatly sums up Evan Dando's entire career - the consummate "can't be arsed" slacker king - I couldn't leave it out.

Like the Dude himself, it's good to know Evan Dando is out there, taking it easy for all the rest of us sinners.

'Baby I'm Bored'.

4. The Clash - I'm So Bored With The USA

Yankee detectives
Are always on the TV
'Cos killers in America
Work seven days a week

In the UK, of course, killers always take Thursday afternoons off. They're not all "work, work, work".

From 'The Clash (UK Version)'.

3. Grandaddy - Kim, You Bore Me To Death

Ah, Grandaddy. They sure knew how to write a song title.

We met at a party
I was drunk and smoking cloves
I really just needed a ride back to town
No, I don't smoke cloves anymore

Amusingly, whoever uploaded this to youtube decided the song must have been written about Kim Jong Il. Man, that must have been some party - who invited both Jason Lytle and Kim Jong Il? (At least Kim wouldn't have been so very rone-ry that night.)

From 'The Broken Down Comforter Collection'.

2. Morrissey - The World Is Full Of Crashing Bores

In which Morrissey bemoans a world of "policewomen, policemen, silly women taxmen, uniformed whores" and "lockjawed pop stars, thicker than pig shit" with "nothing to convey"... before concluding, with typical self-deprecation...

And I must be one, 'cos no one ever turns to me to say
Take me in your arms, Take me in your arms
And love me, And love me

From 'You Are The Quarry'.

1. Iggy Pop - I'm Bored

Iggy Pop isn't just bored - he's the Chairman of the Bored. I suppose that might explain why he ended up doing those car insurance ads.

From 'Best Of Iggy Pop'.



For my next top ten, I promise you something far more... exciting...

Friday Flash - Chartsengrafs - Rol Hirst

This week has been hectic. Finished off the proofreading on my novel, but had very little time to write anything new (except for a one page Powerman & Iron Fist script for Thoughtballoons).

The blog has suffered - I haven't managed a new post since Tuesday's Top Ten Songs About The 80s. Sorry if you missed me. But at least I haven't left you with a #fridayflash story... here's one from the golden days of Elephant Words. It was better than I remembered it.

(Thanks to Grandaddy for the title.)

Chartsengrafs

Trevor always said he didn’t believe in luck. Good things don’t happen because fate decrees them, they happen because you work hard to make them happen. Because you believe in yourself, and your own ability to succeed. He regularly quoted Theodore Herzl to anyone within earshot, and later, Jean-Luc Picard. After a while, the two intermingled. “If you will it… you can make it so.” Trevor wasn’t any more Jewish than he was a 24th century starship captain. He just had a thing for what he called “inspirationals”.

Theodore Herzl died of a heart attack aged 44.

Twenty-seven years I’ve worked in this office. Twenty-five of them in the desk right next to Trevor. He was nineteen when he first arrived at Selly-Sales; me, I’d just turned twenty-five. I still remember his first day. Getting that flaming Life Chart thing out of his briefcase, blu-tacking it on the wall above his word-processor, snapping his fingers, “Let’s go!”

I have to admit, I laughed at him. I mean, that bloody list… it had his whole life planned out! By 21: BMW 3 series. By 23: wearing Armani’s and Versace’s to work. By 25: three bed semi. By 30: Porsche. Married by 29, first kid by 32, second by 35. Before his 40th, a chalet in Provence. Of course, he updated and upgraded as time went by. The semi became a waterside loft apartment; the Porsche: a 911; the second kid: twins (that update, after the fact). But not once did he scale down his expectations, and not once did he fail to achieve his goals.

At 50, Gianni Versace was shot dead on the steps of his Florida mansion.

Three weeks after his wedding to the former Miss Blackpool, Trevor became Sales Manager and they set him up in that big office overlooking the river. He hardly ever went in there. Kept his old desk on the sales floor, right next to mine. Wanted to stay in the thick of it, he said, where the action was. You ask me, he wanted to keep us all looking at that blasted Life Chart. All his ticked off successes, all his unstoppable aspirations. By now he’d taken to attaching little pictures of the things he wanted, after reading that book on visualisation and harnessing the power of positive thinking… whatever.

There was the vintage Fender Strat, torn from the pages of Total Guitar. If he was going to learn, better to do it on a classic.

There was that photo of him dressed in the Steve Irwin shorts, standing with his kids in front of the lion’s enclosure at Chessington World of Adventure. Not long after, he booked a safari in the Kruger National Park, and ordered another five pairs of those shorts from Millets.

Steve Irwin lost his life to a stingray, a few months shy of 45.

Then one day, there was the pier.

“It’s a little jetty off the Isle of Skye… I found the image online while I was researching something for Culbertson McQuarrie,” (our biggest client), “just fell in love with it instantly. So peaceful, so beautiful, so serene… Trudi and I are booked into a hotel up there in the autumn, we’re gonna find that pier, get up nice and early and watch the sun rise. Breathe in the stillness, get back to…” I’d already stopped listening. Over the years, I’d learnt to tune Trevor out. For my sanity. His jokes, his catchphrases, his bloody “inspirationals”…

“We’ll have a Moet et Chandon, please, waiter… do you keep it in a pretty cabinet?”

“Suck in that gut, soldier – there’s targets to hit!”

“If you will it… you can make it so.”

That photo though, I just couldn’t tune that out. Whenever Trevor was out meeting clients (always parking his car round the corner from their premises so they wouldn’t know just how much he was taking them for), I’d sit and fixate on that pier, and wonder just where I’d gone wrong. My own Audi (A4) is five years old; I can’t afford to upgrade. I’m over-extended on the mortgage. This year, Brenda and I managed two weeks in Portugal; we argued the whole time, and the kids had dodgy tummies. I badly needed some serenity in my life, and that photo… the wind stirring the waters, the cloud quilted mountains, the wasting afternoon sunlight… that photo became my escape pod. I could jack it all in tomorrow, or maybe not tomorrow, but as soon as the kids left home; I could jack it in and buy myself a B&B somewhere tranquil and remote like there… no, not somewhere like there. There. Right there. Get up nice and early and watch the sun rise. Breathe in the stillness, get back to…

Late October, when Trevor returned from his holiday, two things had happened. One, he’d cut his hair like Steve McQueen. (Don’t get me wrong, he doesn’t look anything like Steve McQueen. But he looks more like Steve McQueen than you or I do.) Two, he’d put in an offer on an old fisherman’s cottage situated right on that harbour in Skye. Now he could fly up there any time he felt like it. Only 90 minutes to Inverness on a Friday afternoon. He’d let me rent it if I wanted, £350 all in.

Steve McQueen died of liver cancer in Mexico, the same age as Versace.

Trevor’s going up there again this weekend. So am I. His Life Chart’s all clear right now. Everything’s ticked off. I’m sure he’ll be adding something else soon. If he gets the chance.

Volcano Songs

A few weeks back, when the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull started spewing ash clouds over Europe and disrupting everybody's flights in the process, Reluctant Blogger suggested I put together a Top Ten Volcano songs in tribute. I toyed with the idea, but feared I'd missed the boat. Good old Eyjafjallajökull though, I knew it wouldn't let me down. Topical blogging ahoy! (Well, as topical as Sunset Over Slawit ever gets.)

Apparently there's a Damien Rice song called Volcano, but as I've never heard it and can probably die happy without ever doing so, it doesn't feature in the list below. Just in case you were wondering.



10. Beck - Volcano

And I heard
Of that Japanese girl
Who jumped
Into The Volcano
Was she trying
To make it back
Back into the womb
Of the world?

Who says you don't learn anything from listening to Beck records? Right here I learned about Japanese student Kiyoko Matsumoto who committed suicide in 1933 by throwing herself into the Mount Mihari volcano, starting a trend which resulted in 944 people doing exactly the same thing over the next year. Those crazy Japanese, eh?

9. Embrace - Ashes

Embrace hail from Brighouse, which is halfway between where I live (t'other side of Huddersfield) and where I work (Bradford). There aren't a lot of volcanoes in Brighouse, but there is a huge crater in Bradford where six years ago they knocked a huge chunk of the city down in preparation for building a new shopping centre... and then left it to rot.

Embrace are currently recording their sixth album... hurry up, lads, it's been ages!

8. Grandaddy - Lava Kiss

Volcanologists say
That we're unlike the rest
That we're the best
Fearlessness
Deadliness
Lava Kiss
Togetherness

I keep biting my lip at the moment. It's very annoying and painful. But not as painful as a lava kiss, I'd imagine.

7. Islands - Volcanoes

Canadian band Islands find that when you anger the gods, "a hard rain falls, made of magma" and "melts Alaska".

6. Van Halen - Eruption

1 minute and 42 seconds of epic guitar wanking from Eddie. Because he can.

5. Teardrop Explodes - Kilimanjaro

Kilimanjaro is considered by many the best album the Teardrop Explodes ever recorded. It's also one of those albums where the original running order didn't include the title track. That popped up on an EP released later, and on subsequent re-issues. Julian Cope originally planned to call this album Everybody Wants To Shag The Teardrop Explodes, which would have been a must better title, but wouldn't have got a mention in this list. (EWTShagTTE was eventually used as the name of a compilation, long after the band had split.)

Not to be confused with Pete Doherty's Babyshambles who famously killed a man for his giro.

4. Bennet - Mum Has Gone To Iceland

Not actually a volcano song, nor a song about the country of Iceland, this is actually about the chain of frozen food shops. I don't care - it's bloody marvellous!

3. Ash - Burn Baby Burn

One of their best. Featuring both Ash and burning... and cheerleaders, in the video, if you're interested in that sort of thing.

2. David Bowie - Ashes To Ashes

Every now and then, I think, "actually, David Bowie's not all that mad really"... then I see a video like this one and I remember... no, he's barking.

The shrieking of nothing is killing me.
Just pictures of Jap girls in synthesis
And I ain't got no money and I ain't got no hair

1. Silver Sun - Lava

Perfect power pop with peerless Beach Boys harmonies and an opening line to die for.

"I fucking give up!"

(Though sung so high and harmonised, nobody could actually tell those were the lyrics... certainly we didn't know that, when we used to play this on the late 90s indie radio show I helped produce.)



So. Those were mine. If you've got a favourite volcano song... you know what to do with it. Equally, if you'd like to suggest another Top Ten subject, be my guest. I can only ignore you if I don't like it.