Life goes on. For no particular reason I’ve gone for a crime theme in this week’s musical extravaganza.
First up, here’s Gee Officer Krupke from West Side Story. I confess I’m not big on musicals (except the cool ones, like the Rocky Horror Picture Show and, um, Mary Poppins) but this must be one of the funniest songs ever written. An American blogger I know used to insist that ‘all humor [sic] is conservative’. And it’s true that left-wing or liberal comedy is usually angry, sometimes clever, but almost never funny. This send-up of liberal mores, however, is brilliant…
Junior Murvin’s gorgeous 1976 reggae record Police and Thieves was produced by Jamaican music legend Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry. The Clash included a version on their debut album…Murvin’s opinion of the punk band’s cover? “They have destroyed Jah work!”
Crime doesn’t pay. Here is Johnny Cash explaining that to the inmates of St Quentin State Prison in 1969. Of course, they might disagree – after all, they got to see a free Johnny Cash concert.
Spiritualized’s 1997 album Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space is without doubt the most ridiculously-packaged CD I have ever bought. It came in the form of an NHS medical prescription, with the sleeve notes laid out like dosage instructions and the disc itself sealed in plastic, with a foil backing that you had to break into, like a giant paracetamol tablet. Cop Shoot Cop is the epic closing track, so long and trippy that it comes Youtubed in two parts. If you listen to all 16 odd minutes of this you’ll be doing well, and I should warn you that the middle section mostly consists of howling guitar feedback. It’s groovy and atmospheric either side of that, though.
Great selection Brit. Falsetto reggae and space rock don’t push too many buttons on my console but Cash was one of the great survivors and, though he always sold the idea of a boy from the wrong side of town, he actually never served time – and what riches the last few years of his life brought. And Krupke brought back some wonderful memories of the high water mark in US musical theatre – Bernstein, Sondheim, Robbins – whats not to like?
Love West Side Story and have done from an early age. I remember one Sunday at friends of my parents insisting I be allowed to watch it despite the girls of the house wanting to watch Black Beauty (this was the days before video recorders when you had to watch things when they were on – and who knew when WSS would be repeated again?). The house seemed full of the tears of little girls but I cared not a jot. Jets wouldn’t.
Right in there with you, Brit and Gaw, West Side Story, up there with some of the opera classics of the Victorian era and, er, um, Natalie Wood, one of history’s hottest numbers, an absolute eye watering, heart melting right little darling.
Cash was a bit of a misery guts although his missus made up for that.
What I enjoy about these lazy Sunday afternoon posts is that they’re always something of a musical education – so thanks for this rather obscure selection, Brit! I would have picked something boringly obvious like the theme from Shaft or the soundtrack to Starsky and Hutch…
Yep, you can’t go wrong with West Side Story. And I’d forgotten how compelling Johnny Cash was.
I wonder if ‘The Young Ones’ qualifies as ‘left-wing or liberal comedy. Hmm, I’m not sure; perhaps even more of a piss-take than it seemed at the time, looking back.
My own contribution might have been The Toy Dolls’ hymn of praise to the Northumbria Constabulary P. C. Stoker.
Gadjo, that song by the Toy Dolls is brilliant!
‘I shot a man in Reno,
Just to watch him die’
Makes me shiver every time
…and let’s not forget 10cc’s Rubber Bullets or even the majesty that is Snow’s Informer
Once more unto the breaches dear Dabblers, the slow inexorable glide into musics times past, a la recherche du bleedin’ temps perdu, naughty, lets have a bit of Gory relief
All together now……..
One summer’s day Daisy was having a vanilla dream,
A young man with a glossy moustache approached her ingratiating and clean.
In the park he put his finger in the fastening of her glove,
He took her to an apartment and to her made love.
The next day before going out he presented her with a bottle of gin.
After that in the mornings she read ladies’ magazines
In the afternoon she entertained gentlemen on the bed,
The moustached man gave way to an older man with a heavy beard.
The next day before going out he presented her with a ruffled pegnoir of gin,
After that in the mornings she read ladies’ magazines.
In the afternoon she entertained gentlemen on the bed,
The moustached man gave way to an older man with a heavy beard.
Under the influence of a lecture from a passing senator she decided to reform,
She was moved to a back bedroom with bars like a a prison dorm.
She gave birth to a defective infant placed in an orphanage overful
And as she lost her freshness on the streets the punters she pulled.
She was continually harassed by masculine women in black bonnets trying to set her free,
Just before her twentieth birthday she died a loathsome disease.
Apologies to Ed Gorey.
It’s that gin again, Mr Buxton.