Further ramblings of a self-made pauper

God help me, but I can’t get "Something Tells Me (Something’s Gonna Happen Tonight)" by Cilla Black out of my head.

It’s Wogan’s fault, he played it on the radio this morning and it’s bored its way into my skull and stuck until something equally catchy pops up to dislodge it. That will be some hours at best as I do not have my walkman with me today. I probably shouldn’t mention that I even looked (out of idle curiosity, thank you) on Play.com to see if they had any “Best of” albums.

And they do. For £12.99 I could own a collection that runs from 1963 to 1978 and features 80-odd singles. I’ve even heard of many of them. I feel old.

To break me of this, I see that today’s Times has listed their movie critic’s top ten scariest horror movies:

The Exorcist (1973);
The Blair Witch Project (1999);
Psycho (1960);
Alien (1979);
Ringu (1998) – Nakata’s original, not the remake;
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974);
Hallowe’en (1978);
Dawn of the Dead (1978);
Don’t Look Now (1973);
The Sixth Sense (1999).

I have to confess that I have not seen either Ringu or Don’t Look Now. When I was 18, a heavily cut copy of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre put me off ham sandwiches for over a year. I was a tender flower in those days.

A lot of these films have lost their shock value these days, though I think Psycho and Alien would still grab the first-time viewer by the entrails at the appropriate moments.

What should have been on that list and is missing, what is on that list that shouldn’t be?

Entertain me with lively debate: I am bored and I still have Cilla Black rattling around my head. Now there’s a horror movie.

Edited to add: Two films that I particularly like and one, certainly, is very creey are: The Haunting (1963, dir. Robert Wise) and Night of the Demon (1957, dir. Jacques Tourneur) - despite the latter's cheesy demon effect toward the end of the movie.

I have made a list and so far it contains:

jfs
fencingsculptor
romney and
rumfuddle

That is all.

Sometime last week, littleonions tagged me for a music meme. I don’t do memes as a rule, though I did have a go at the LJ Dungeon game. Anyway, largely because I am a contrary swine, I am not going to do the meme Ms Onions tagged me for, but I am going to ramble about something similar.

Over the weekend, I dug out and listened to a couple of albums that I rather enjoy but which for one reason or another, I haven’t listened to for ages. This started me thinking about songs, which I always enjoy listening to, but which never pop into my head when I am compiling one of my occasional "favourites of the day" lists, or which haven’t popped up on random play on my network Walkman for as long as I can remember. In no particular order, then:

"Maybe I’m Amazed" – Paul McCartney. From his first solo album, "McCartney" released in 1970. This is the Beatles song that never was, and though recorded solo (Macca played every instrument on the track), it was clearly run past Lennon at some point in its gestation as it shows every sign of the quality control that has often been lacking from McCartney’s solo work.

"And You Need Me" – Sandy Denny and the Strawbs. From the album, "All Our Own Work" (1973) by Sandy Denny and the Strawbs, and itself an edited re-release of an earlier, eponymous LP. In some ways a superior demo version of a track which was to be re-recorded a number of times, notably by Fairport Convention, there is a rawness and clarity about this version sung by a 19 year old Denny that I like, and which never quite comes across in later recordings.

"Year of the Cat" – Al Stewart. From the album of the same name. One of those albums and one of those tracks I have owned on vinyl, cassette tape and CD. A prog pop masterpiece.

"Mr Bojangles" – Sammy Davis Jr. From any number of live compilations. This had passed me by until a couple or three years ago, being a sort of lounge-country-folk-jazz melange. rumfuddle has a copy on a CD he put together for listening to on the road, and we have given this full lung and vocal chord a number of times whilst we got lost driving in Norfolk at the end of a November.

"Stranger on the Shore" – Acker Bilk. The first British recording to reach the number one spot on the US Billboard Hot 100 in 1961. Smooth clarinet piece written for his daughter, I am lead to understand. Always reminds me of Sunday lunchtimes when I was a little kid.

"Wheels On Fire" – Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger and the Trinity. You probably know it best as the theme to Absolutely Fabulous, which is an odd fate for a classic soft jazz treatment of a Bob Dylan song. Not really much to say about the track itself other than I love it, and recommend this version from 1968, not any of those mangled for the TV show at Jennifer Saunders’ instigation.

I seem to have run out of steam on this.

Time to do something else.