Thursday, June 09, 2016

Everybody Up! 8 - You Can Miss This One Out If You Want

11. COZY POWELL "Dance With The Devil"

I'll level with you, I am not looking forward to this little run.  There will be a LOT of Wikipedia'ing required here, and the result will look every bit as half-arsed as it actually is.  I'm happy for you to wait this one out and tune back in next week - seriously.  I'll wait for everyone to file out...


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Right, here goes nothing.

Featuring an intro that always annoys me, as if I'm only half listening I think it's "Rasputin" by Boney M, which is a song that is better than this song by an amount that the English language simply doesn't have a word for, this also contains huge chunks of Jimi Hendrix's majestic "Third Stone From The Sun".  Oh, and apparently Suzi Fruit-Flavoured Carbonated Drink is the bass player on this track, but that might be Wikipedia pulling my leg again.

The problem with this is that it's all utterly, utterly unnecessary - if I wanted to listen to something that had the riff from "Third Stone From The Sun" on it, I'd listen to "Third Stone From The Sun".  Actually, I do.  I do want that.  So that's exactly what I'm going to do.  See you in seven minutes.

12. DAVID ESSEX "Rock On"

Rock off.  I'm still listening to Hendrix.

13. WIZZARD "Angel Fingers (A Teen Ballad)"

Ah-ha!  The classic sound of Christmas.  Yule logs, turkey with all the trimmings, hanging up your stockings on the wall - hang on, that's the other one - Meccano under the tree, rationing, the three-day week, Apple Macs, the workhouse, "here's Hurst, he might make it three. He has! He has - so that's it.  That is IT!", Australia's stolen generations, Hungry Hungry Hippos, "Beneath The Valley Of The Ultravixens"... (NOTE: your childhood Christmases may vary)

What do you mean, it's not that one?  What do you mean, it's a classic example of how pop culture was already riffing on the fifties when it had only just finished?  What do you mean, it appears to contain several bars of the theme tune from "Red Dwarf", years before "Loving The Alien" did the same?  And it was replaced at number one by "Eye Level" - the theme from "Van Der Valk"?

Ah, nuts.  I can't catch a break today.

14. ELTON JOHN "Bennie And The Jets"

FINALLY!  A track I'm more than familiar with (cheers, mum), and more importantly, an artist I don't bloody have to research!  Right, the gloves are off - here we go with a classic piece of writing.

The artist known as Elton John was born Harry Rodger Webb in India on 14 October 1940. 
In 1948, the Webb family moved to Carshalton, where young Elton became interested in skiffle music.

He entered the Vienna Music Conservatory in 1977, but left after one semester to "become a real musician", joining a jazz-rock group in West Berlin, and playing in the Austrian bands Spinning Wheel and Hallucination Company.

In 2003 he was given a race seat at Jaguar, but after disappointing in the role he lost his seat to Justin Wilson and returned to Williams as a test driver.  Here he would find his greatest success, whilst filling in for injured drivers Ralf Schumacher and Nick Heidfeld over the course of the next two seasons, gaining a career total of eight points.

Since then he has found some success as a comedy actor, most natbly in two seasons of "Hyperdrive", and was most recently seen by cinema audiences in 2016's "The Huntsman: Winter's War".  And somewhere in the middle of all that he released "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road", "Crocodile Rock" and "I'm Still Standing", all of which are better than this over-long piece.

(And I mean both the song and this awful attempt at comedy.  A point to anyone who can identify all of the people I'm actually talking about.)


15. BARRY BLUE "Dancin' (On A Saturday Night)"

I'm sure Barry Blue was the name of a novelty elephant-themed dessert available at Masterchef on Renshaw Street, Liverpool.  Anyone else remember that incredibly specific reference? 

No? 

Well you can all fuck off, then. 

Seriously, can you not just pretend to take an interest in my life?  It's always you, you, you (and also some glam rock reviews).  I have feelings!  I am a man!  I am human and I need to be loved, just like everybody else does!

Actually, that gives me a great idea - I'll listen to "How Soon Is Now" instead of this garbage.

Our apologies for this frankly substandard instalment of "Everybody Up!".  By way of compensation, we present this picture of a weasel:



Please don't be discouraged from joining us next time when, after a heavy dose of happy pills, your esteemed writer will return to plunge a dagger into the heart of disk two.  This will feature a great track by one of music's greatest lieutenants, and... Some other stuff.  Peace out!

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