Anna and Marie. Marie and Anna. Best friends. For Life. They met when they were both nine. That's gotta be 25 years in anyone's language. They looked out for each other then, and they look out for each other now. I love them both.
They told me on Friday they're going to Ibiza. Fueled by gin, and both in charge of heels higher than your average skyscraper, it could get messy. I think they may need a chaperone - my rates are very competitive.
Football chants: they're a bit like radio jingles. Throwaway yet informative, simple yet to the point. And funny; aimed at players, mostly, but often directed at the fans sitting in the opposite end to you. A prime example of the former: remember when Peter Crouch (6'-7") played for Liverpool? He's big, he's red, his feet stick out the bed, it's Peter crouch, Peter Crouch. And the latter: when the away fans inform the home fans that they don't think much of their ground and sung to the tune of When the Saints - My garden shed is bigger than this, my garden shed is bigger than this.
And like any catchy song that eventually becomes an earworm, it's the alchemy combining a turn of phrase and a memorable tune. In fact, and I'm probably going out on a limb here, but you'll probably find that 90% of all the best chants rely on just a handful of tunes. Think of a chant you heard last Saturday afternoon and I'll lay money on it being hung around one of these songs:
Knees Up Mother Brown
Sloop John B
Winter Wonderland
Guantanamera*
The Hokey Cokey
Son Of My Father (God Bless Giorgio Moroder)
This Old Man
Amore
She'll Be Coming Round The Mountain
Glory Glory
Go West
Kiss Him Goodbye
There are, obviously, notable exceptions. When Rio Ferdinand famously failed a drugs test, Fulham fans came up with His name is Rio and he's watching from the stand to *that* tune by Duran Duran.
But my personal favourite has got to be one from the seventies (of course) and was a rather succinct tribute laid at the door of Billy Bremner (587 appearances/ 91 goals for Leeds Utd 1960-1976).
Na na na na, na na na, na na na na na BILLY! BREMNER! to the opening bars of this:
* When Rangers keeper Andy Goram was diagnosed with mild schizophrenia, the chant Two Andy Gorams, there's only two Andy Gorams could often be heard at grounds north of the border.
With apologies to anyone out there who really did live in Leeds in 1972; not least my two favourite wessies, Phil and his glamorous assistant Jane. Anyway here's my rough and ready homage to the city that brought you Ernie Wise, Keith Waterhouse and Marks and Spencer. And contrary to repeated taunts in the 1970s, I'm assured it's very clean.
The latest installment in Nick Lowe's back catalogue re-release campaign continues apace with the remastered Labour Of Lust (originally released in 1979). Recorded simultaneously with his Rockpile compadre Dave Edmunds' Repeat When Necessary (they shared the same studio and power combo) it's lost none of its vim in the thirty plus years since it was first committed to vinyl.
The peerless Cruel To Be Kind (which, interestingly, shares the same chord progressions and harmonies as The Love I Lost by Harold Melvin and The Blue Notes) opens proceedings and within the first few seconds you can see why they opened for Blondie in the States at a time when powerpop was dominating American FM radio.
Cracking Up follows (another song that was lifted as a single) and a perfect vehicle to highlight the harmonies of Lowe, Edmunds and the often overlooked Billy Bremner. It's nice to see the inclusion of American Squirm which didn't make the album first time around; originally a single he recorded with The Attractions it's quite at home here in it's new surroundings. You Make Me finds Lowe dropping down a couple of octaves and with just his acoustic guitar it's reminiscent of Lowe's later output (it predates his Impossible Bird/Dig My Mood/Convincer trilogy by nearly fifteen years). The Mickey Jupp penned Swithboard Susan still fizzes and Endless Grey Ribbon tugs at the heart strings and then it's one of Lowe's many signature tunes: Without Love, sounding like a Johnny Cash cover, was every inch a Lowe original but was later adopted by his one time father-in-law and took up permanent residency on Cash's set-list. Dose of You and Love So Fine combine punchy prose and jangly guitars before the mournful and touching Basing Street (another welcome bonus on this re-release) wraps up this delightful snapshot in time from one of Britain's greatest living songwriters.
The promo video for Cruel To Be Kind also, bizarrely, doubled up as Nick Lowe and Carlene Carter's wedding album:
Fans of Barney Bubbles will know the artwork for Labour Of Lust was the work of the late eccentric graphic artist. A recent exhibition in London was attended by many artists who'd experienced the Bubbles treatment.
And finally, the album's illuminating liner notes come courtesy of Will Birch.
I think I'm looking forward to next week, but I can't be sure. I'm leaving the company I set up with my business partner in 1994. It's time to move on. Steve and I have shared an office for nearly seventeen years and in that time we've barely had a cross word. Though that's probably because instead of getting stressed about whether the FTSE or the Dow Jones Index is going up or down, we've wrestled with far more important issues. Over the years these have included:
What was the tog rating on Don Revie's coat?
Can Paul McCartney really peel an orange in his back pocket?
Has there ever been a better single released since White Man In Hammersmith Palais?
What would Dad's Army have been like if Jon Pertwee had accepted the Captain Mainwaring gig?
If you put a humidifier and a dehumidifier in the same room, who would win?
What are the pros and cons of Time Travel?
But, time and again, the burning question we return to is: just how big was Thunderbird 2? As kids we can both remember seeing cutaway drawings and blueprints in comics and magazines, but, if they were accurate, it would have to be as big as a farmer's field. Maybe it was. Well, it had to carry a pod which housed The Mole: and we all know how big The Mole is. Don't we?
I know we could cheat and look it up online. But, like most search engines, Google has killed the heated debate with a single bullet. So no, we won't look. Hell, next thing you know we'd be on Google Earth trying to find Tracy Island.
Anna and Marie. Marie and Anna. Best friends. For Life. They met when they were both nine. That's gotta be 25 years in anyone's language.
