Actually existing songs

Actually existing songs available as sheet music in the British Library:

Ball Tossing
Both Old Men or Young
Fair Cloris in a Pigsty Lay
Fixed in His Everlasting Seat
Galloping Dick
A Handy Little Thing to Have About You
I'll Place it in the Hands of My Solicitor
I'm a Very Potent Queen
I Smote Him on the Boko with My Whangee
A Lap Full of Nuts
A Large Cold Bottle and a Small Hot Bird
Miniwanka
Open Thy Lattice Darling
Say Mama, If He Pops Shall I Send Him to You?
They've All Got Sticky Backs
You Do Keep Popping In and Out

Possibly an ongoing theme: Is Alex Callinicos finished?

For no raisin

Except we haven't had a good list in a while. Here is a sample of German words borrowed/adapted into English. Like most lists they fall apart somewhere around Q or at the latest X.

Abseil
Alphorn
Ansatz
Biergarten
Bratwurst
Blitzkrieg
Crumhorn
Diktat
Dachshund
Delicatessen
Doppelganger
Eisbrecher
Eidelweiss
Frankfurter
Flak
Flugelhorn
Gesundheit
Gestalt
Glockenspiel
Hamburger
Handstand
Inselberg
Jugendstil
Kaffeeklatch
Kaput
Kitsch
Kindergarten
Katzenjammer
Lager
Lebensraum
Leitmotif
Muesli
Mitteleuropa
Noodle
Nein
Neanderthal
Nazi
Oktoberfest
Putsch
Pretzel
Poltergeist
Quartz
Rinderpest
Rucksack
Rottweiler
Sprechensang
Schadenfreude
Strudel
Stein
Spritzer
Takt
Urtext
Unheimlich
Uber
Volkswagen
Wiener
Wanderlust
Wunderkind
Zugzwang
Zweiback

Day 7 - the world's BIGGEST post

The Big Easy 

The Big Sleep 

The Big Lebowski 

The Big Three 

The Big Five

The other Big Five 

The Big Yin 

And we used him last time but he’s just soooo great, Biggie Smalls in House of Rock!

The world's BIGGEST blog - Day 5

Robertson in New South Wales

The world's BIGGEST blog - Day 4

Has you ever seens Bigfeet?

World's BIGGEST blog - Day 3

John Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China.

The World's BIGGEST Blog - day two

Biggedy-Biggedy BONG!

This week - for one week only

Through the Scary Door will, once again, be the world's BIGGEST BLOG. Day 1: The Big Bang.

More derivative Beatles stuff

Quinn the Eskimo

When I said almost this is the proof. There is nothing out there remotely related to The Beatles in any way beginning with the letter Q. This is it, a fragment of a song from rehearsals in January 1969 for the abandoned concert.

The song was written by Bob Dylan, originally recorded with The Band in what became The Basement Tapes. The Tapes… are an odd collection. The album was released eight years after the songs were recorded. They were laid down in the informal setting of The Big Pink, a country house in upstate New York. The recording was primitive too. Sometimes just a single microphone was hung out to catch the music going on, the music which seemed reflect a return to roots.

Though he seemed to be abandoning the scene just as the counterculture was taking a beating on the streets, Dylan was ahead of the game in some respects in retiring to Woodstock. The fall out from the ruling class assault on the counterculture led some into cultism, some into terrorism, and some into a back-to-the-land rural communism, though these elements were often jumbled up. To American musicians a rootsy, laid-back sound suggested an attempt to connect with tradition as well as heartland culture. In Britain perhaps it suggested a less hectic, more soulful alternative to urban pop and psychedelia1.

The Basement Tapes were passed around the rock elite as a bootleg. George Harrison in particular was a fan, though The Basement Tapes clearly helped form the idea that the band should get back to some kind of simplicity after recording long and complex albums.

Despite being fairly well wrung out The Beatles recording and touring career still yields a fair few bootleg records. Of course there were hours of music recorded during the Get Back/Let It Be. Most of it like the music above, stray fragments. There are plenty of live recordings and new studio outtakes still occasionally appear, like Revolution (take 20), the missing link between the original Revolution and Revolution 9 (more of which next).

The glittering prize is a genuine version of Carnival of Light; an audio freak out The Beatles recorded and gave to an early hippie gathering, The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream April 1967 in Alexandra Palace. One copy exists with Paul McCartney, another was reckoned to be somewhere in the United States. There have been numerous fakes made, based on a written description by a writer who was allowed a listen to the master tape. They may well be superior (if you like audio collages) to the original.

Revolution (1, 9, 20 and unnumbered)

The worldwide youth counterculture, such as it existed, was already under attack in 1966. January of that year western governments began proscribing LSD. There were battles in numerous American cities, where the state tried to close young people’s clubs and drive them off the street. Britain experienced its own mini-counterculture clampdown in 1967, with a peppering of high-profile drug raids. The International Times, which had been set up as the paper of the UK underground was raided2 (The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream was a benefit to pay for IT’s legal costs). The Beatles were MBE inoculated. The raid on the Rolling Stones that saw Mick Jagger and Keith Richards jailed has to wait several hours for members of The Beatles to leave the premises.

This was going through John’s mind as he sat in Rishikesh writing songs. Despite the undoubted turn toward confrontation, John Lennon would have had to have been positively psychic to have written a commentary on 1968, the year of revolution, in January of that year.

To start with an obvious point, while it’s not the Internationale, Revolution is not an anti-revolutionary lyric. It is a dialogue with the left (as Lennon saw it) and it starts with a gesture of solidarity, “we all want to change the world”. The first two verses are understood to have been written in India, the final verse back in Britain.

The first verse is Lennon the hippy idealist. He wants peaceful change. The second verse is a mixture of Lennon the skeptic and Lennon the realist: “we all want to see the plan”. The last verse is the pay off. Lennon, the rich counterculture figure is being bugged by young Maoists pleading with him for support. Lennon acknowledges them but distrusts them at the same time.

The song may have been a “lamentable cry of petty-bourgeois fear” as the Black Dwarf described it, but we know being determines consciousness. John was temperamentally a socialist but an artistic intellectual. He was neither practically or politically capable, and therefore not cut out for political struggle. By 1968 he was a very rich man with almost incalculable mechanical royalties. As acute as he may have been Lennon could not have predicted how profound and potent the word “revolution” would become that year. He was proud of the song and wanted it to be an A-side. Having deferred to McCartney during Sgt Pepper Lennon had come awake in 68. By not backing down he painted himself in a corner. His commitment to peace and a series of clownish stunts to promote it began here.

None the less as the band was laying down the backing track on the night of May 30^th-31^stParis was still a cauldron3 and British students were beginning a wave of their own occupations. After one particular take The Beatles settled into a two chord groove and just kept playing, lashed on by orgasmic rasps from John. The track was now over ten minutes long.

Excited by the result John and his new partner Yoko Ono worked on the song, adding layers of effects and vocalisations, trying to create what he felt to be the sound of revolution. This version lay buried until Take 20 appeared on Youtube three years ago.

The luxury of second thoughts led John to excise the anarchic groove and rerecord the original portion of the song at a faster tempo, which became the single version.

The anarchic groove, as I’ve now called it, ended up as the basis of Revolution 9.

Revolution 9 is far from a chaotic mess or worthy but grim piece of art it is often taken for. It is not chaotic but built round a tonal axis of Bb/Eb. It has a number of repeated motifs, the most obvious being “number 9”. It even has published lyrics. The revolution it suggests is the Revolution in the Head, the countercultural/Freudian theory of emancipation, the potential lying dormant in each individual, a potent mixture of memory, sexuality and creativity, waiting to be unleashed. We can pass over whether this was a realistic model of revolution and, if so, whether Beatles records were an appropriate agency. The White Album has sold tens of millions of copies over the years. Even if they only listened to it once millions people were exposed to avant-guard symphonic music and the ideas associated with it they might otherwise never have come across.

Revolution 9 is perhaps the most significant cultural act ever carried out by The Beatles.

1. It was also just about this time rock stars started buying up country mansions, mobile studios and whatnot.
2. An interesting story (at least I find it interesting) there was a retaliation raid by the New Left paper, the Black Dwarf. Wikipedia describes how: “The paper… published a detailed floor-by-floor guide to Scotland Yard, complete with diagrams, descriptions of locks on particular doors and snippets of overheard conversation in the offices of Special Branch. The anonymous author, or "blue dwarf," as he styled himself, described how he perused police files, and even claimed to have sampled named brands of whisky in the Commissioner's office. A day or two later the Daily Telegraph announced that the "raid" had forced the police to withdraw and re-issue all security passes”. How cool is that? Anyone who genuinely knows more about this please get in touch.
3. Though the French right, which had been in hiding for two weeks during the general strike, had literally just got back on the streets. The revolution in France, such as it was, was on the wane, even if no one realised it at the time.

More derivative, unnecessary guff

Ob La Di Ob La Da



Paul's approximation of Blue Beat, Ob La Di Ob La Da was one of the first things to sour the White Album sessions. With Brian Epstein dead and George Martin withdrawing from his former role Paul stepped up as an all-purpose leader. The band were moving apart in terms of taste, lifestyle and personal priorities (and just plain growing up). Paul  was not the authority figure who could dragoon through the usual routine, he was just too close to the rest of the Beatles. No wonder the sessions rambled over seven months.

It's also an example of Paul's very different sexism to John. Of course to criticise The Beatles for being sexist is to criticise society for being sexist. Nonetheless John's muse was a woman and his attitude toward women was conflicted and often nasty, which made his art frequently compelling if sometimes queasy. When Paul wrote about women in general1 he was positively foursquare. This is the original song that says "if you like it then you should put a ring on it".

This of course changed with time.The Beatles went through the sixties and encountered the women's liberation movement. A shift perhaps in Paul's writing, Lady Madonna, a song that celebrates, perhaps even sentimentalises, but nonetheless acknowledges the relentless drudgery of working class motherhood, the genius of the mother who somehow makes ends meet.

Penny Lane



What would The Beatles projected album about Liverpool have sounded like or said? It's a fascinating prospect. Penny Lane is of course obliquely about James Penny, slave trader, anti-abolitionist and city father who had an area of the city named after him. Would a Beatles album about Liverpool touched on the source of the city's wealth?

But instead we have a prime piece of psychedelia. Penny Lane is every bit as far out as it's companion Strawberry Fields. As Revolution in the Head so clearly points out, in the lyric it's simultaneously summer and winter, rainy and shiny. The music is built on massed crotchet pianos, whose tone shifts relentlessly: listen next time.

1. His songs about Jane Asher were quite different and quite Lennonish, We Can Work It Out being a prime example.

Lists from history

Historical Haemorrhoid Sufferers
Alexander the Great
T.S. Eliot
Viv Richards
Marylin Monroe
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Socrates
Nero
Napoleon
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Martin Luther

Historical Druggies (and their drugs)
Admiral Nelson - opium
Lord Liverpool - ether
Tsar Nicholas the 2nd - hallucinogens, cocaine and opium
Winston Churchill - barbiturates
Anthony Eden - amphetamines
Richard Nixon - amphetamines
Leonid Brezhnev - sleeping pills

Historical Phobics (and their phobias)
Nicolae Ceausescu - bacillophobia, fear of germs
Sigmund Freud - siderodromophobia, fear of trains
Samuel Johnson - lyssophobia, fear of insanity
Maximillian Robespierre - haemophobia, fear of blood
Robert Schumann - metallophobia, fear of metal

Actually existing lyrics

Some of which may have been sung by Wrong Lyrics Christina.

Cut my life into pizza/This is my plastic fork

It's not fair to deny me/The crosseyed bear that you gave to me

I love rock and roll/So smoke another dime with 2Pac's baby

This ain't a sea/It's a god damn arse face 

Let's pee in the corner/Let's pee in the spotlight

The shoes on my feet/Alf Garnett

Hold me closer/Tony Danza

The ants are my friends/They're blowing in the wind

You're gonna have to face it/You're a dick in a glove

We gotta hold on to what we got/It doesn't make a difference if we're naked or not

Scuse me while I kiss this guy

She's got a chicken to ride

Out on the windy/windy moor/sweet Roland rolled in brie

Must be talking to a ninja

Scare a moose/Scare a moose/Will you do the fandango

Beelezbub has a devil for a sideboard

This is the dawning of the age of aquariums

Holding back the ears

Bunny's too tight to mention

I left my brains down in Africa

Midnight after your wasted/Take a camel to bed

Israeli men/Hallelujah

Here we are now/In containers

For no raisin

As we know TV is an accurate measure of the downward spiral of civilisation, and we are still braced for Monkey Tennis small screen debut (note: It didn't strike me when I first thought about it but Gordon Ramsay has actually brought Cooking In Prison to TV). In that spirit, brace yourself for:

Drunk Horseracing 

It's an Atos Knockout (1st prize - 8 weeks unpaid labour in Poundland) 

Don't Tell The Relatives (stupid men handpicked by BBC3 are given a funeral parlour to run)

Don't Tell The Owners (ditto, but for a dog walking service) 

Don't Tell The Regulatory Authorities (the same, but for banks) 

Whatever Happened to Dad's Army? 

Tightly Scripted American Comedy Import About Twenty-Somethings With Snappy Comebacks (on E4 because there's just not enough) 

Celebrity CAT Scan 

Celebrity Dogging 

Celebrity Exhumations 

Pimp My Wheelie Bin 

Muslamic Eye for the Racist Guy 

Ku Klux Makeover 

EDL Cribs 

Brass Eye - the musical 

Respect MPs Say the Funniest Things 

Republicans vs Science

Somebody's probably already thought of this, but...

A proposal, something to test Marshall McLuhan’s incorporation through numbness:

In the late 1950s the painter Brion Gysin commented to William Burroughs that writing was fifty years behind painting. He meant this in terms of technique. It was partly this observation that led to the cut-up experiments, made famous by Burroughs Nova Mob novels, and later thoroughly incorporated into late capitalist culture.

Like most generalisations this is true and not true. Novels and poetry are antique art forms. While they are valid media, veneration of such art forms is generally part of a reactionary agenda. However, writing, as opposed to novels, is not backward in being forward. A newspaper is a novel of a day. It is as synchronic as language is going to get. Though the stories and features are fragmented in form the overall effect of a newspaper is broad and impressionistic. Newspapers are a form of montage. The narrative is the overall perspective of the newspaper, the ideology, the distinct set of ideas it promotes, corresponding to a point of view within society.

Surely it would be possible to produce a book, somewhere between an anthology and a picaresque novel along the same lines: with a staff of writers and editors, a series of themes, perhaps a stock set of characters (it’s fairly clear the day before who will be the characters featured in your average newspaper). There would be word targets and deadlines. New and interesting books could be turned out in days, as opposed to years. If needs be these books could be presented in a similar visual style to newspapers.  

For anybody who cares

The blog-subtitle poll was going very well. The votes were coming in thick and fast (really?) when, all of a sudden TtSD was overruled by the EU, World Bank and IMF. They insisted the subtitle be "Angela Merkel". But we said no, we will stand by democracy, we will have the people's subtitle, and that subtitle is:

You read it, you can't unread it...

Which is true, when you think about it.

For a few raisins more

Yes, the lists are back. This week is a music and light entertainment list (slightly abridged due to people's rather wide intepretation of light entertainment). Thanks to Keith, Julie and Ruairdh.

Kim Deal or No Deal
Sly and the Family Fortunes
Fine Young Casualty
Who Wants to Be a Million Dead
Echobellyaddicts
Noel's Bloc Party
Noel's Bauhaus Party
Noel's House of Pain
Bob's Full House of Pain
All Creatures Great and Small Faces
New Kids on the Blockbusters
Through the Butthole Surfers
Massive Art Attack
Have I Got Muse for You?
Big Brotherhood of Man
Lovejoy Division
Mr Mr Bean
Mr Mr and Mrs
Father Ted Nugent
Are You Smarter than Ten Pole Tudor?
Are You Smarter than 10,000 Maniacs
Cash in Alysha's Attic
Bargain Blunt
Aerosmith and Jones
System of a Countdown
System of a Downton Abbey
How I Metallica Your Mother
Coldplay Your Cards Right
Boney-M-erdale
R.E.M.erdale
Eminemerdale
Pets Win Primus
Gay Dad's Army
East Enya
Westlife Swap
Hill Street Blues Traveller
Simple Minder
Jimmy Eat Gardener's World
Jimmy Eat Whicker's World
Good Morning with Anne and Nickelback

Next week, actually existing footballers with amusing names. You have been warned.

The greatest post in the world... EVER!

With help from Keith Watermelon, The Doc of Rock, Big Pete, Ted Splitter, Julie and Ruairidh. A band and-or musician/children's show and-or character pun mash-up. Enjoy:

Lemmy the Pooh
Postman Patti Smith
Curious George Michael
Simply Red Riding Hood
Bagpussycat Dolls
Andy Pandy Warhols
Hanson and Gretel
Terrahawkwind
Coldplayschool
Thundercat Stevens
The Cat Stevens in the Hat
Dumbo Diddley
Phil Oakey-o
Fred Flintstone Roses
Penfolds Five
Bill and Ben Folds Five
Mr Benn Folds Five
Mr Mr Benn
Dangermodestmouse
Peter Pans People
Duran Durango
Huey Lewis and the Newsround
Bruce Hornsby and the Might Morphing Power Rangers
Count Dukula-Shaker
Fall Out Boyz 2 Men
Tracey DC Beaker
Biggles Audio Dynamite
Henrys Cat Stevens
Bananamanarama
Bananamanfred Mann
He-Manfed Mann
8:15 from Manfred Mann
Right Said Fred Flintstone
Toad of Toad Hall & Oates
Pingugu Dolls
Bod Manners
Barney the Dinosaur Jr
The Family MadNess
The TellytubBees
The BuzzlightyearCocks
Mickey Modest Mouse
The King Rollos of Leon
AsteRick Astley
SuperGran Master Flash
Manic Pigeon Street Preachers
Cities of Gold-ie Looking Chain
Gaye Byker Grove on acid
Fireman Sam Cooke
Lieutenant Pigeon Street
Woody Guthrie Woodpecker
Optimus Primal Scream
Beauty & the Beastie Boys
Guns 'n Rosie & Jim
Jamie Cullum and the Magic Torch
The Secret Soundgarden
Scooby Doo-ran Duran
Terrorvisionhawks
Muttley Crue
Museround
Portland Billy Joel
Superted Nugent
Mummra & Sons
Echobellytubbies
Hong Kong Fooey Fighters
Echo & the Bugs Bunnymen
Michael Jetsons'
Windy Milli Vanilli
Camberwick Greenday
SpongeBoB Marley
Herman's Kermits
Portland Bill Withers
Pete Wylie Coyote
Pob Will Eat Itself
Justified Ancients of Noo-Noo
Super Furry Animals of Farthing Wood
Captain Planet Beefheart
Kevin Rowland Rat
Tiswas Not Was
Dexy's Magic Roundabout
Trevor & Simon & Garfunkel
Deputy Dawgstar
Justified Ancients of Boo Boo
The Sugarhill Press Gang
Smurf Wind and Fire
Chumbawombles
Zebedee-liite
The Temper Trapdoor
The Fresh Artist Formerly Known as Prince
Press Gang of Four
Gamesmaster flash
Winnie the Pooh Tang Clan
Blue Peter Andre
Blue Peter Gabriel
Johnny Ball Hates Jazz
Hector's House of Pain
Pat Sharpe's Funhouse of Pain
Little House of Pain on the Prairie
Mr Benn at Work
Mister Men at Work
Maid Marian and Her Merry Men at Work
They Might Be Jossy's Giants
The Cure-ious George
The Wonder Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Lionel Ritchie and the Wardrobe
Curiosity killed the Top Cat
Dr Snuggles and the Medics
Bagpssy Riot
Barry White and the Seven Dwarves
Simon & Garfield
Muppet Babyshambles
Saved by the Belle and Sebastian
Rosie and Jimiroquai
Green Day Claws
Mr Bungle, Zippy and George
Prodigimon
Itchy & Scratch Perverts
Let's Pretenders,
Roobarb & Busted
Fantômas-ters of the Universe
Gordon the Go Team
Gordon the Gomez
Mr B-Enya
Bill & Benya
My Little New Young Pony Club
Notorious B.I.G.G.L.E.S.
Puff Daddy and the Family Ness
The Lighthouse Family Ness
Sharky & George Harrison
Fingerbobs Geldof
The Mamas & the Papa Smurf
Frank Zappapa Smurf
The Littlest Hobo Diddley
Jimbo Diddley
Tiny Tempah Tots
Dappy Duck
Keith Button Moon
Texas Pete Seeger
Three Colours Red Riding Hood
Hangin' with Alice Cooper
How 2Pac
Mighty Eek-A-Mouse
Benji, Zax and the Alien Artist Formerly known as Prince
Faith No Morph

Trees must die

For no particular raisin we return to the wanderings of George Monbiot. Every time he makes you think "wow, he's our very own Upton Sinclair", or something like that, he goes and produces something utterly wacky, like How Ayn Rand became the New Right's Version of Marx.

Now, we're all politically literate folk here, I assume. I think we can say it's fairly understood that (1) The New Right are nutty fanatics (2) the New Right is often inspired by Ayn Rand (3) New Right philosophy, like Randian (sorry, Objectivist) philosophy is vicious, violent and at frequently at odds with reality.

This isn't the point of Monbiot's piece.

There are two rituals for professional, non-aligned left wingers to observe. First you must find something wrong with Marx/Marxism. Finding something wrong about Marx/Marxism is the first thing any leftie author wanting to peddle a theoretical innovation has to do: trees must die because Marx was wrong. Marx is inescapable. Attacking Marx in this way is a backhanded compliment.

The second ritual, less well observed, is Orwellian even-handedness. Rightists are team players, but there's a type of professional leftie who considers it the height of sophistication to attack their own side, which is all Orwell did, really.

This is the point of the article. The majority of people in the comment box (not the most representative sample of society, or even Grauniad readers, but hey) are talking about Marx, not Rand. Asked how Monbiot could compare one of the most erudite, educated and humane thinkers of the 19th century to a chicken headed fascist, he said:

I agree with you on Marx's erudition and insight, but to me the Manifesto contains in theoretical form many of the horrors later visited upon the people of the Soviet Union and some other communist nations. Dialectical materialism reduces humanity's complex social and political relations to a simple conflict between the “bourgeoisie” and the “proletariat”; ie the owners of property and the workers, by which Marx and Engels meant, basically, factory workers. Any class which didn't tick one of these boxes was either, like the peasants, shopkeepers, artisans and aristocrats, destined to “decay and finally disappear in the face of modern industry”, or, like the unemployed, was “social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society”, with no legitimate existence in a post-revolutionary world. But the world didn't work like that, and the people who didn't fit had to be shoved under the wheel of history.

Anyone who has not read The Manifesto of the Communist Party may be impressed by this. The section Monbiot quotes from (and very approximately too) is the first section, Bourgeois and Proletarians: a basic history of capitalism, interwoven with simple prognostication about its future. The manifesto is very obviously not about post-revolutionary society. The grinding of certain classes under the wheel of history (Monbiot's phrase) is attributed, in the manifesto at least, to capitalism.

None of this is impressive, coming from a generally fine investigative journalist, but such is the nature, often, of ideological struggle.

JK Rowling is writing for adults... ooh-err!

On behalf of all adults (can you really say that, Roobin?) I'd just like to say, please don't. Honestly, we've got enough books already. They're really good ones too; Ulysses, Moby Dick, Nova Express, Heart of Darkness, Homage to Catalonia... all good (someone else might want to name some more). Just... you know... are you sure about this...?