You are all the woman I need and baby you know it (take yer pick from the groups below)

Bend Me, Shape me is one of those songs that was covered by various sixties groups and it's hard to figure out its exact derivation, mainly because the versions sound very similar to each other.

It was written by a couple of Americans and originally appeared on an album by an obscure American group called The Outsiders in 1966. It's a great version too.

When it was the big hit in America it was done by The American Breed; the version doing the rotation in the googoomobile though is the British version by The Amen Corner.

Not confused yet, I hope. I've included a local version too to complete the bamboozlement.

Why do I give valuable time to people who don't care if I live or die? (The Smiths)

I've never got Leonard Cohen.

I've said before that hating a piece of music is stoopid but, by Jiminy, there are some groups/singers that get me jolly close to that point.
Obviously this is entering very subjective territory.

Category 1 - singer offends my ears:  Zager and Evans' In the Year 2525; Bjork (everything), Portishead (everything); Geddy Lee from Rush; Opera (everything); the bloke from Pavlov's Dog; Leonard Cohen.

Category 2 - the song's boring: Zager and Evans' In the Year 2525; George Bakers' Little Green Bag; all techno/trance club drone music with a mechanical durff durff beat; Leonard Cohen (yep - all of it).

Category 3 - the subject matter is offensive: a lot of Heavy/Hard Rock posturing can be quite cringe inducing and that goes for a lot of Rap as well; all of the Satan worshipping sub-genre of Metal turns me right off; any misogynist song (Jagger? Guilty as charged, and a lot of rap bilge); self aggrandisements (my name is Prince? Yawn).

Category 4 - sheer unrelentingly depressing music: Leonard Cohen.

I don't mind getting into a melancholy state of mind from time to time but I draw the line at infinite sadness. And that seems to sum up Leonard's oeuvre.

Various friends and colleagues have tried to get me to enter Cohenville over the years and I did watch a lot of the Live In London DVD from a few years back (Lenny in tie 'n' fedora down t'O2 Arena) but I got bored after a few songs and needed a dose of Rammstein to cleanse the palette.

He's a weird one really - a Canadian misery guts poet who fell into being a song and dance man.

Even his poetry fails to move me.

In Suzanne, frinstance, we have the enigmatic refrain - you've touched her perfect body with your mind. What the hell does that mean? And then Jesus appears in the song! Whaaaat?????

There's nothing in there for me to grab onto and so I drift off. Have a go...



Yeah I know - he's world famous, he's sold heaps of records, he gets the ladies, he's on the cover of Mojo... but (picture me shaking my head from side to side with a quizzical expression) I just don't get it.

A trail of ruby red and diamond white hits her like a sunrise (John Mayer)

I compiled some.CDs for pootling in the car recently and an automatic inclusion was my favourite John Mayer song - Neon.



I've mentioned my admiration for his talents before - stunning guitarist, unbelievably soulful voice and he writes some great tunes. Yes - his on stage patter can be embarrassing at times but I forgive him because his musical talent is undeniable.

Neon (written with Clay Cook) is, lyrically at least, a pretty simple song built around a central simile - that a girl he (maybe) knows is 'always buzzing just like neon'. He seems to want her to be more of a constant in his life but she's not like that - she comes and goes like flashing neon. As a result a distance grows in the relationship and he has to let her go.

Like Dylan in If You See Her Say Hello, Mayer addresses the subject in the third person 

[I (Dylan) always have respected her for doing what she did and getting free. Oh, whatever makes her happy I won't stand in the way]

and he (Mayer) also doesn't want to (or can't) restrain her

[I can't be her angel now, you know it's not my place to hold her down].

A bit ironic given Mayer's tabloid reputation with girls methinks but I like the sentiment and the distanced approach that he adopts here.

Marry all this to a great tune and some brilliant solo guitar and you have a standout track from the sublime John Mayer.

It's one of his earliest songs and appears on his first album (Room For Squares) in a full band version. He obviously recognises it as a great song because it has appeared a number of times on his live albums and he still performs it regularly.

I really want to play this song - he uses his thumb and index finger to play/pluck the chords which sounds simple but, having watched a youtube instruction video it is pretty complicated. Extremely so for a novice like me.

I need to learn more chords and continue to practice, but my goal is to one day play this song and make it sound close to the original!

In the meantime I'll have this on high rotate in the googoomobile.

You can't stop me from loving you, no, you can't change that (Raydio)

On a recent solo road trip to Dubai I brought along a bespoke driving songs compilation for the Woz-mobile. You know the sort of stuff - songs that can be sung LOUDLY (and really badly) as you're pootling along.

When Raydio's You Can't Change That came on I kept hitting replay. It played about five times on the approach to Dubai Mall.

Raydio housed the awesome talents of Ray Parker Jnr, before he did that Ghostbusters theme and went mega, and the other blokes were terrific as well (they must be cheesed off that these hits are attributed to either Ray Parker Jnr AND Raydio or worse just to Ray).

Here's three of the funky best from Raydio: their first hit Jack and Jill, the awesome You Can't Change That and their biggest hit of all A Woman Needs Love.







And, as a bonus for my eldest son who LOVED dancing around to this on my green 12inch vinyl in the early 80s:

You're so, so like a woman to me (The Hollies)

I’ve just finished reading The Girl In The Song. It’s a nifty little collection about 50 female muses who inspired songs. Something by The Fabs, written by George, is obviously inspired by the wonderful (tonight) Pattie Boyd – everybody knows that but some of the other entries are less well known and fascinating to read.

It seems a bit obvious when I now think about it now but I’d never realized The Hollies Carrie Anne song was about Marianne Faithful. Because Graham Nash was too shy he went with Carrie Anne.

How many songs has Marianne Faithfull inspired?

The Rolling Stones ones are fairly easy to spot: Sister Morphine was partly written by her, Wild Horses, You Can’t Always Get What You Want, I Got The Blues and then there's Lennon’s And Your Bird Can Sing, a wry addition. But there must be loads more.

Anyway - here's The Hollies (without the shy Graham Nash) doing a ripper little version of Carrie Anne.

Fate seems to give my heart a twist (Frank and George and many others)

I seem to be on a 1930s kick at the moment. Maybe it's the Jeeves and Bertie Wooster novel I'm reading and I mentioned Macca's new album in a previous post. He's trotting out his versions of songs by great American songwriters.

I recently picked up a bargain - a double CD collection in the Simply Great... budget series. This one has a collection of songs like Cheek to Cheek, Puttin' On The Ritz, Jeepers Creepers etc.

The one that I immediately knew well was Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea, mainly because of the George Harrison version.

Check these out - starting with a blowing Duke Ellington version (in colour!).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKb5k3g71YU

That's it, I quit, I'm moving on (Adele)

The theme for this week was going to be resignation songs. There are many songs like the Adele one in the title, about love, but not that many about resigning from a job. I guess it's not the most stimulating subject matter.


And even the most famous example I can think of is actually about someone WISHING he could say, Take This Job And Shove It (by the wonderfully named Johnny Paycheck).

So, instead I'll write about a George Harrison DVD I bought recently. No - not the Marty Scorsese documentary. That is exceptionally good but the latest I've seen is called The Dark Horse Years 1976-1992.

It's great too! Some of the songs and videos from that era are fantastic. Very unsophisticated vids by today's standards but I like their quirky feel.


The DVD contains a fun video of This Song. A song about the plagiarism trial for My Sweet Lord ('this song - there's nothing bright about it' references Bright Songs who own One Fine Day - the song George was charged with stealing). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsUkACDSIZY


And Crackerbox Palace is also great fun, set at George's Friar Park home; it's one of my favourite Hari Georgeson songs from the under-rated 33 1/3 album. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOvnG-WTDXw