Friday 18 May 2007

I'm like that old wise owl, wise to you, mate.

I'm a generous man. I don't hold this week's Guest Editor in any way responsible for my broken finger. Oh no. The fact that I would not have been playing basketball in a million years if he hadn't asked me if I would, is neither here nor there....

No really.

I don't blame him at all.

I'm over that now.

Ladies and gentleworms, it is my great pleasure to present for your earworming pleasure, my good friend....

Earworms of the Week - Guest Editor #65 - The Ultimate Olympian



> Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip - Thou Shalt Always Kill

How could you not instantly fall in love with a song containing the line: "Thou shalt not judge a book by its cover, thou shalt not judge Lethal Weapon by Danny Glover."? Someone broke Metafilter's golden rule and posted this as a one-YouTube-link front page post, but fortunately they got away with it. It's been popping in and out of my head (and my iPod) ever since and this morning most likely arrived courtesy of the chav on the bus who reacted to everything being said to her with a grunted, incredulous "Is it?"

> Snow Patrol - Open Your Eyes

Open Your Eyes, from the album Eyes Open. I'm sure there's tautology in there somewhere, but I can't quite place it. Hadn't a clue where this one came from until I listened to it just now and realised it's the music the BBC use for Football Focus. I'm not sure whether it's worse that Snow Patrol have ripped off U2's chorus sound from Beautiful Day or that the BBC have ripped off ITV's use of that song as their football music. One way or another, there's a lot of ripping off going on and someone ought to at least wag a finger.

> Sidney Bechet - Lay Your Racket

Sidney Bechet would be 110 years old if he were still alive. He isn't, but his music lives on in my iPod and in my head. When I was a kid, my parents had an old 12" diameter piece of vinyl ("Dear Norris McWhirter, is this a record?") entitled "Live at Bechet's" that I would play endlessly on what old people like to refer to as a gramophone. This particular 12" diameter piece of vinyl featured recordings of Bob Wilbur playing Bechet songs in Bechet's Jazz Club in New York. You could hear the audience between (and sometimes during) songs and I would picture them sitting at white linen tableclothed tables waiting for barmen called Al to mix them a Tom Collins. Except really I was too young to know that barmen tend to be called Al or what a Tom Collins was so I was imagining all that without even knowing what I was imagining. I was a smart kid. I think I peaked at six.

> Nina Simone - Mood Indigo

All morning, from the moment I got up, this hurtled round my head. I couldn't figure out where it had come from until I pressed play on my iPod and realise it was the last thing it had shuffled to the day before. Obviously a slow-growing worm that needed a night to gestate.

> Muse - Starlight

I went back to Northern Ireland last weekend. This song was on the radio as I drove through the streets of Belfast on a beautiful sunny day for the first time in I have no idea how long. It has haunted me ever since. This morning, to get rid of Nina Simone, I turned on my laptop, opened iTunes, and for the princely sum of 79 new pence downloaded this song. It's pretty simple, it's very Muse, but it's clearly quite catchy too.

> Kaiser Chiefs - Ruby

Whilst in Ireland, I was playing golf with some old friends from the university golf team. Through the various machinations of Glaswegian rhyming slang (mixed with the kind of personal language that evolves between close friends and that can never be successfully translated) a certain type of terrible golf shot (a shank) has come to be known as "a ruby". This week, I've been putting together some of the movie clips and photographs from the trip and had to use the Kaiser Chiefs' incredibly annoying song as the soundtrack.

> The menu music from Pro Evo Soccer 4

I've been a bit under the weather this week. When I haven't been battling whatever gastric calamity it was that attacked my feeble frame, I've been lying on the sofa and playing far too much xBox. The result has been this music stuck in a loop in my head, largely to the exclusion of all else.

Heavy Metal Musack at its finest.

> Jean-Claude Petit – Jean de Florette (from the Jean de Florette OST)

I watched Jean de Florette the other day and had the music in my head for the rest of the night - not sure what it's called, but it's the same music as is used in the Stella Artois adverts.

*looks it up*

In fact, it seems to be called 'Jean de Florette'

---

Ah, Mr. Olympian, with these earworms you are really spoiling us. And do you know what, dear reader? For once, I can absolutely guarantee to you that these are genuinely the songs that floated across our Guest Editor's head during the course of the week. How do I know this? I know this because he emailed them to me one at a time as they occurred. I don't think they get any fresher than that...

The Kaiser Chiefs though? For real? We need to talk.....

Next time: C. ..... no, seriously.

[Previous Guest Editors: Flash, The Urban Fox, Lord Bargain, Retro-Boy, Statue John, Ben, OLS, Ka, Jenni, Aravis, Yoko, Bee, Charlie, Tom, Di, Spin, The Ultimate Olympian, Damo, Mike, RedOne, The NumNum, Leah, Le Moine Perdu, clm, Michael, Hyde, Adem, Alecya, bytheseashore, adamant, Earworms of the Year 2005, Delrico Bandito, Graham, Lithaborn, Phil, Mark II, Stef, Kaptain Kobold, bedshaped, I have ordinary addictions, TheCatGirlSpeaks, Lord B rides again, Tina, Charlie II, Cody Bones, Poll Star, Jenni II, Martin, Del II, The Eye in the Sky, RussL, Lizzy's Hoax, Ben II, Earworms of the Year 2006, Sarah, Flash II, Erika, Hen, Pynchon, Troubled Diva, Graham II, Cat II, Statue John II, Sweeping the Nation, Aravis II]

(Incidentally, I've also just discovered a flaw in bloggers new "save now" functionality.... I just accidentally deleted this whole post, only to discover that my draft copy had been instantaneously overwritten by a copy of the deleted version. Grrrrr! And as if that wasn't bad enough, I've just discovered that Simply Red are on Later.... FFS!)

1 comment:

  1. Oi. Nothing wrong with the Kaiser Chiefs. And if there was ever a song destined to be an earworm, Ruby is it.

    ReplyDelete