Bernard Cribbins - "Right Said Fred"

The English have a grand tradition of the music-hall comedy song. They always seemed to produce such clever work. From George Formby to the Goons and beyond, their humour reaches me in a profound way.

Today's track is a piece by Bernard Cribbins, recorded in early 1962 at Abbey Road Studio 3 by none other than (soon to be forever known as the Beatles producer) George Martin. This was the same studio that the Fab Four recorded pretty much everything they committed to vinyl for the next 8 years starting in September of that year. (Bernard famously quipped in an article for The Guardian "we warmed the studio up for them!")

This record features some clever editing and dropping in of sound effects onto the original tape (something very tricky to do with the primitive technology of the day!)

We know George Martin as the man who helmed the Beatles records. Bernard, on the other hand, was a veteran of the British film industry, starring in some Carry-on films and some early Dr Who specials. He is extremely well known to people now as Wilfred Mott, father of Donna in the recent series' of Doctor Who. He also narrated the children's show "The Wombles" in the 1970s.

This song is brilliant inasmuch as it's the tale of a bunch of workmen trying to move something heavy into a flat in an apartment building. The efforts of our boys are, well, pretty crap, really. So they end up drinking a few cups of tea. In fact, they drink a hell of a lot of tea. In fact, if this song doesn't hold the record for the most cups of tea drunk in a two-and-a-half minute pop record, well then it bloody well should. Between the three blokes mentioned in the song, they drink no less than 16 cups of tea!

Anyways, the song is made all the funnier by the dubbed in sound effects and the cheeky brogue of Mr Cribbins. At 51 years old, this song is still a charmer and never fails to raise a smile.

Check it out below, with a cute little period clip of an amination made for television to support the song.

Sunday Sessions: Notorious Cherry Bombs

We've all heard about the lists of crazy names of Country music songs. They always contain great song titles like "I Still Miss You Baby, But My Aim Is Getting Better". But, in most cases, those songs don't actually exist.

Believe me, I've tried looking.

In my view Country music has always benefited from a little bit of humour. I've often found it too one dimensional to be taken seriously anyway. The mainstream country brigade has done its best to enforce a strict code of conformity and it bores me shitless.

Enter the humourous country song...stage left.

The Notorious Cherry Bombs got their start as the backing band for Emmylou Harris in the early 1980s. The chronology of the band from that point forward is as confused as a redneck family tree, so I won't go into specifics. For trainspotters, the band consists mainly of Vince Gill and Rodney Crowell, who supply the songs and the lead vocals.

The song I'm going to feature today is a genuine song with a hilarious title, and it's the anomaly on their self titled album. It was also their biggest single, although it only charted at number 47 on the country chart because, as they mention in the lyrics:

"...it's alright if we say it,

'Cos the radio won't play it...

It's hard to kiss the lips at night that chew your ass out all day long..."

This track ironically pokes fun at the cliched country music breakup song, which no doubt Rodney and Vince have written a few of their own in their careers. This one nails it beautifully, with a very funny video to boot.

Take a listen to "It's Hard To Kiss The Lips At Night That Chew Your Ass Out All Day Long" by The Notorious Cherry Bombs.

Peter Sellers: "I'm So Ashamed"

In discussing the Miley Cyrus pop debacle, I was reminded of this classic from Peter Sellers, released in 1958 and produced by George Martin, the man who helmed the Beatles recordings.

He laments life as a pop star: once hugely famous, then he releases a series of flops. So he changes styles and nothing seems to work. He worries about becoming irrelevant and, as such, not having a career in music for much longer.

"Please buy this record", he whines at the end.

It makes me think of all the X Factor/Idol winners and contestants, who have to go through the kind of rigmarole of singing all styles despite the fact they don't suit them. They have massive success to begin with, then shortly after, die the death.

This record as released 55 years ago. Have things really changed much?

You be the judge.

Chickens...

"Come on over Baby, we've got chickens in the barn..." sang Jerry Lee Lewis many years ago.

Considering he was trying to get a girl (presumably) to come to a party at his house, or maybe just a party for two, this is an odd lyric in a song.

Whatever. We ended up getting three chickens this week. I would never, in a million years, have guessed we'd end up with more pets, let alone this bunch of motley looking hens. Fresh eggs will be a novelty...for a period.  If predictions are anything to go by, one egg a day per chook, that's 21 eggs a week. We don't eat that many was it is!

Considering how much we paid the chooks, the pen and the materials to build a free-range run for them, and the fact that not having to buy eggs for a while at (on average) $5 a dozen, we look set to break even and start saving money by not buying eggs around April 2015. Go figure.

Here's a tribute (of sorts) to chickens...from the Fools.

It's a great Talking Heads parody. It's a rip on "Psycho Killer". This track makes me smile. It's called "Psycho Chicken".

Raymond J. Bartholomew

Brian Nankervis, most of us know as the brains trust and score-keeper on the SBS-TV program Rockwiz. However, some years before he found success with his televised pub-trivia program, he tried to make it as a stand-up comedian and performance poet, of deliberately questionable talent.

He first appeared on the nationally broadcast TV show "Hey Hey It's Saturday" in 1986 under the nom de plume Raymond J. Bartholomew. He featured on the segment on the show known as "Red Faces" and, as the clip below says, he was so bad that he became a regular guest on the show.

It's still hilarious to hear him read his poem "Days by the Ocean".

"Maroooooooned! Marooooooooned! I'm on a lagoooooooon!" he drawls.

I have no idea what it is all about, but the outrageous delivery more than makes up for any lack of pretext or, indeed, any coherence!

In the spirit of the outsider music from my last post, here is Raymond J. Bartholomew with "Days By The Ocean"

Microsoft Songsmith...still lives

...and seemingly refuses to die.

The Microsoft Research Labs seemingly do create some fantastic and fascinatingly useful software. They create all kinds of useful stuff for software developers and those who need to do more advanced things on a Windows machine.

Microsoft Songsmith is not one of those great pieces of software.

Well OK, hang on a minute. It is a great idea, in the sense that Communism or the Hindenburg Blimp were great ideas...on paper at least. In practice however, it turns out to be a very different story...

The idea is great - you sing a line or two, select the mood and style of music for your song, and Songsmith will build the music bed for you. It builds the chords and seemingly structures the song for you, based on the limited input you give it.

The idea is great but falls flat when you consider that most people cannot sing in tune. No matter how great a piece of software is, if you can't hold a tune or even pitch to a note, what you'll end up with will sound like someone pushing a grand piano down a flight of stairs.

It's designed for education, to teach how music is put together. Again, a noble premise. But when the music is as vanilla as this? You can edit the chords, that's cool. But I fail to see how this will teach music to anybody with no clue about music to begin with, especially if you don't know what a chord is.

The idea has received a great deal of lampooning on the internet, and almost deservedly so. The results speak for themselves.

Here's what happens when you feed Lemmy from Motorhead's vocals into Songsmith:



Or the Ramones:



Metallica:



...or random pissed bogans with nothing better to do on a Friday night:



Get the free copy, have some fun and share with us the nutty tunes you invent!

ENJOY!