This Is This

For all modern man’s newfangled booklearnin’, no one has been able to explain why music affects us the way it does.

How come I get I feel the same feeling I get when I play guitar, just about the only time I get that feeling, when I listen to bluegrass?

Why, when I listen to a fast Madonna song, does it feel like everyone is moving slower than me?
Why does it feel like Stevie Wonder is in the room when I hear him sing?

Why can I feel light (as in beams, not levity) when I hear Charlie Parker?

And how can something as darn soppy as Your Smiling Face by James Taylor make me feel like I love the things I love?

Why does it feel like it’s all about to happen when I listen to Public Enemy and why does it feel like it already has when I listen to Portishead?

And why should I hanker for burritos when I hear two trumpets played tight with close harmonies in the upper register?

When Claude Debussy’s La Mer was first performed, people had to leave the hall because of seasickness.

A friend of mine was in the BBC Symphony Orchestra and he said when they played Mahler, people used to die. For those that don’t know, Mahler is very heavy and dark. Not in a grand, dramatic way, like Pantera, but in a morose Leonard Cohen, Cowboy Junkies way. The BBCSO would not be shocked by the sight of people being carried from the audience during their performances, but for some reason, people were more enclined to shed their mortal coil to Mahler. Old folks, this is. They would simply let go.

The orchestra knew it, too. They would joke about it before they took their places and then they would keep a bodycount. After some long performances it was like the last act of Hamlet out in the audience. My friend played flute so he was in the front row, and he would watch them as they pass after they passed, praying for Ravel or Puccini or something more upbeat. A little Katrina and the Waves, maybe, anything.

Oh yeah, vote for Little Red Boat for Best British Blog in the 2006 Bloggies.

Here’s a thing.

Sudoku is sweeping the nation, right? You know, how you have to put combinations of numbers into boxes and they all have to add up to the same thing and you can’t use any number more than once?

So I start thinking. What if I could do the same with words? What if I wrote something and had to rearrange it over and over without using any word twice and not leaving one out but it still had to make sense?

Oooh - poetry sudoku. Podoku.

There’s a trunk in my room calling the shots,
sits there by the window with the flower pots.
Ever the faithful but beckoning slow,
teasing until it’s time to go.

There sits the trunk. By the window with the pot shots.
In a calling room, the slow but ever teasing.
There’s my beckoning flower.
Faithful until it’s time to go.

Funny but not sure why.

Might just be me.

Also found out from a search referral today that if you type “uptight british guy” into yahoo.com, you end up right back here. Top of the list, as well.

Other bloggers make me to these questionnaires. They practically put the Publish button in my hand and said: “Whatever you do, do not push that.”

Four jobs I’ve had

• Journalist (The Guardian)
• Music video production assistant (Prince and Pop Will Eat Itself)
• Booze-store counter monkey (Victoria Wine)
• Radio Producer (WWNO)

Four fillums I can watch over and over

• Apocalypse Now
• Hannah And Her Sisters
• Fandango
• Three Kings

(although also Rumblefish, Star Wars and Spinal Tap, not that you asked)

Four places I’ve lived

• New Orleans
• Philadelphia
• Valbonne
• London

Four TV shows I love

• West Wing
• My Name Is Earl
• Mash
• Third Rock From The Sun

Four places I’ve been to on holiday

• Seward
• Sanibel Island
• New Brunswick
• Reykjavik

Four of my favorite dishes

• Falafel
• Vegetable sushi
• Baclava
• Tarte tropezienne

Four sites I visit daily

• BBC News
• When Skies Are Grey
• Bloglines
• That’s all, apart from my own

Four places I would rather be right now

• Listening at the foot of Exit Glacier
• In my garden picking food off homegrown plants
• Goodison Park, watching Everton beat Liverpool
• Driving along the Basse Corniche from Nice into Italy

At any given moment, I am probably reading about seven books at a time. This isn’t a boast, either; some I intend to finish, some I am struggling through, some I am racing through, others I have stopped reading but think I am still reading but will not shelve because that would admit defeat.

I can not pick one book and stick with it. Oh no. I am a book whore and here is my current list of sluterature:

Give Me Ten Seconds by John Sergeant

I bought this in Oxfam in Henley - fine purveyors of posh tat and highbrow jumble. Review: Witty and urbane stuff from the BBC’s chief political correspondent during the Thather years. The Beeb stuff and the politics is fairly boring. Dent: 10 per cent complete. Likely finish rating: 1/10

Peace Is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hahn

Christmas present. Review: Wonderfully expressed ideas from a prolific Vietnamese author and monk. Simple and touching, without the scriptures. Dent: 90 per cent complete. LFR: 10/10

History of Britain by Simon Schama

Leaving present from a job I quat four years ago. Review: The first serious British history book I have read without needing to be hooked up to a will-to-live machine. It is written in plain English doesn’t call countries “she” (Germany invaded Poland because she wanted her winter ports, but oh no, she wasn’t having any of it), and it compares the politics to present day analogies. Dent: 15 per cent complete. LFR: 8/10

Dans Les Forets De La Nuit by Nadejda Garret

French book picked up on booze run. I read books aimed at teenagers because that’s my level of fluency, but hopefully it will improve. Review: Moliere it ain’t (Emile? No, la), but it’s a good story. A boy and his pet tiger run away from home (Life of Pi?) and walk through a forest, getting ideas. Dent: 45 per cent complete. LFR: 7/10

The Crisis Of Islam by Bernard Lewis

Lent by colleague. Review: A study of (and I need to be careful here) why some Muslims can be persuaded into justifying terrorist acts. It’s a fascinating history and I can see how Islam regards itself as a nation rather than countries with borders. Dent: 60 per cent complete. LFR: 2/10

John Peel - Margrave Of The Marshes by John Peel and Sheila Ravenscoft

Birthday present. Review: Life story of the DJ. Dent: 1 per cent complete. LFR: 10/10

Where most people have a bedside book table, I seem to have a booktableside bed.

I like going round to people’s houses and looking at their CD collections and book cases. It can tell you a lot about them.

These tell you I am not a great lover of fiction. I read maybe one story every two years, the last ones being Life of Pi and Vernon God Little. Both great books, but I like to learn and understand.

I once pointed this out to my friend Chris, saying I was more interested in finding stuff out.

Chris: “Finding out’s overrated. You have to feel.”

Me (well-rounded literary reply): “Feel this.”

What is most revealing about my choice of books is that they are all unfinished, because very often I will start something and then I’ll

If it’s any consolation, I like America. And I’m not saying that in a “Saving-Private-Ryan-German-guy-digging-the-hole” type way.

Accent-wise, I’ve been there and back. I moved to the States when I was a kid and within a year, I was getting:

Friend: “Dude how come your parent talk funny?”

Me: “They’re English.”

Friend: “Oh… -Dude how come your parents are English?”

Now I sound English, with a slightly American lilt*.

So it’s swings and roundabouts. Or jungle jims and carousels, depending on your point of view.

Can’t we all just get along?

*fanta

The English are obsessed with Americans. There, I said it.

If you’re English and reading this, seriously, we are. When’s the last time you said: “Oh my god, that’s so Belgian” or “you sounded totally black just then”.

The truth is you wouldn’t because because you’re not concerned with Belgian stuff* and the black comment would just be wrong.

But I lose count of the amount of times I hear the word “American” used in a negative context by Brits without a second thought.

Ease up on the yanks, OK. They gave us Velcro. And those heat-sensitive t-shirts. You know, the ones that change colour depending on how warm you are. Genius.

If you are American, please do not read on.

Are they gone?

Good.

Fact is, we’ll get our revenge. I work with a lot of Americans and we Brits are leading a small insurgency to revive our long-dormant era of world cultural domination. Have you noticed how, after long enough, an American living in the UK will drop the hard “a” of “grass” and “mask” to the softer vowels of southern England? It’s a great moment when it happens in our office.

Brit: “Hello Heather from America. Would you like to come to the pub?”

Heather from America: “Gee whizz, mofo, I’d love to but I caaahn’t.”

It sounds wierd, but it’s cool, you know. We should celebrate the moment of oncoming Britishness. We should have a fanfare of the Monty Python theme and two colleagues could creep up behind them with a bin full of milky weak tea and pour it over them NFL-style. And after the initial scalding, we could try to talk about how it feels to be turning English, but no one will really say anything because, “well, we don’t want to make a fuss, do we?”

They sometimes get it wrong, too, because all American “a” sounds are hard. In southern British English, the a in “pan” is different from the a in “class”. But next time you hear an American say “a man in the park threatened to staaahb me if I didn’t haaahnd over my paaahnts” you can be sure that the transformation is underway.

*Or maybe you are concerned with Belgian stuff because they all make such good chocolate. Maybe you think that all Belgians look alike, you racist.

Bad - Lionel Ritchie’s Fake Jamaican Accent In “All Night Long”

This is a great song. It builds slowly and hots up but never loses its smoothness. It’s got that great middle eight (”Heeeey! Jamba-jamba!”), it has crowd party noise (pre-gangsta, note), the horns are tight and the percussion is amazing. It’s a great song!

But what by the power of all the commodores combined is with the accent?!?!?! It is toe-curlingly awful:

“Once you get stahhted yoo cahhn’t sloh dowwwn.”

My earsssss! It burnssss usssss!!!! Nasty Lionelsssess!

“Everyone danseen dey trobulsway. Come join da pahhtee, seeeeeee how dey pleh!”

Bad Lionel.

Good - The Call And Answer Bit In REM’s “It’s The End Of The World As We Know It”

Michael Stipe: “Birthday party, cheesecake, jelly bean, boom! You symbiotic, patriotic, slam book neck - right?”

Mike Mills: “Right.”

We’ve had to wait five decades since Glen Miller and Pennsylvania 65000 for a decent speaky band interjection, but it’s been worth it.

Celebrity Big Brother is in full swing and it’s a cesspool of filth and sleaze.

Colleague: “The contestants are letting it all hang out with their various sexcapades. That’s a word I just invented.”

Me: “Is that like the Ice Capades?”

Colleague: “It’s very similar, except without the ice.”

Me: “Oh.”

Colleague: “Actually, no -ice was involved.”

Sniff.

No, I’m cool.

Cough.

I say really stupid things. Readers of this blog and anyone who’s met me even once will know this. If you didn’t, then hello. My name is Cliff and I say stupid things. I’m trying not too, but it’s one day at a time, you know. I last - god this is hard - I last said something stupid two days ago.

I don’t know why I do it. Sometimes it’s just for a laugh.

On Saturday I was ill in bed all day with a cold. Wife came upstairs on a break from doing everthing in the house and we watched Titanic. As anyone who has seen it will know, the story is told through the eyes of Rose, who is the narrator, an old lady who speaks of her love for a passenger named Jack Dawson.

At the very end end of the film when she has finished her story and the boat has sunk and the action returns back to the present day, it cuts to her sitting in her cabin and there is a sweeping shot of the room, covered with photographs of the young Rose. At that moment, I turn to wife and say:

“So the old lady is like this big Kate Winslet fan, yeah? And she’s made up this whole thing so she can get to meet her. That’s creepy. Wow. I did not see that coming.”

Strangley enough, I felt better.

International Luke Day.

Well, national.

Well, me.

Today is thirteen years since my closest friend died.

Gulp.

Italics just fit.

I need to fulfill a promise and throw a necklace into the harbour if I ever get to Hong Kong.

Life skills, I’m talking about. Things than directly help you in the day to day. I’m not talking about juggling (although I am great at juggling). I had to choose these carefully, so as not to point out things that make me selectively look too much like I rock (although I am great at rocking).

Not Being Clumbsy
I am, without a doubt, the least clumsy person you could ever met. I never drop anything, I rarely spill and my recoverey rate is second to none (see the ninja footsave). Maybe I take too much care and attention over everything I do, but I hardly ever stumble, falter, cack-handle or hamfist. I am the anti-clutz.

Put Up Shelves
Oh I can put up some fucking shelves. I can tell if something’s not dead flat without using a spirit level. I’m quick, too, and I enjoy it, even the cleaning up. It’s probably the only ever time I dust. And when I’m done, I have to put something on the shelf. Anything will do, but when I do - there’s the feeling. I have a unhealthy fascination with drill bits. I have two power drills, I know my hammer setting from my rotary and I can put shelves up on everything, pefect, every time. Tiles on 50mil pasterboard? Stand aside, it’s going to be all right.

Sense Of Direction
I have an insane sense of direction. I can read the sun and the stars, but mostly I just know where I am. I could explain this further, but I’d be going round in circles. Not literally, because I never do that.

Laugh
Funnily enough (or not) I don’t find jokes funny. Mostly they are unfunny, so it’s more like relief when they are. I laugh at the day to day stuff. You know, I say something, then you say something else then I say that thing that sounds funny.

Sleep/Not Sleep
I can sleep anywhere and through anything if I want to. I can also sleep for short amounts of time and wake up myself up when I’m needed. I can get ten minutes of decent sleep between train stops and feel good afterwards. I can also not sleep, if I want to. I rarely need more than six hours and can get by on four if I need to.

To me, anyway.

This from the twisted genius that is Jill Twiss.

Commuter 1: You know those little iron bars you see in the pavement you see in London? I asked Jim what those were for the other day because I’ve always wondered. Do you know what they are?

Commuter 2 (shakes head): …

Commuter 1: Apparently they are there so that in the old days, the men could scrape the mud off their shoes before going in a building.

Commuter 2: What about the women?

Commuter 3: They didn’t have shoes. They were banned.

Me (not resisting): That’s right. King George the Second. The Lady Shoe Act. Travesty.

The lesson from this story is that 99 per cent of the time, I will take the bait.

Last week

Drunked Irish Girl: “Do you sell fridges?”

Drunken Friend: “What?”

Drunked Irish Girl: “Do you sell fridges?”

Drunken Friend: “No. I sell freezers though.”

Drunked Irish Girl: “Ah, I wanted a fridge.”

Drunken Friend: “I could do you a fridge-freezer combo. Fridge on top, freezer on the bottom?”

Drunked Irish Girl (thinks about this a second): “I wanted the freezer on top and the fridge on the bottom.”

Drunken Friend: “Well I could turn it upside down for you.”

Drunked Irish Girl looks positive and walks off in the direction of other Drunken Irish Girls.

—
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I spent some of last week in Ireland. I was on business, but the change did me good.

I know I talk about the persuit of a happy life and doing the right thing, but the truth is these are aims and a journey rather than a destination I’m already at, sipping mint julips on a porch somewhere (nice thought, though). Some of the time I’m just as uptight as everyone else and a lot of the time I’m less happy.

Things had been getting to me lately and I had been noticing it in small ways. A couple of days before I left, I ended a conversation with Wife with “Have a great day”. This is normally OK, except it was 6pm and I was on my way home to see her.

Not good.

I love Ireland. It’s the land of my fathers. Well, technically it’s the land of my father’s mother and her fathers, which makes me a quarter Irish. I like the way the people are funny without realising they are. Of maybe they do and it’s no big deal.

In the taxi from the airport the cabbie was pointing out some places.

Cabbie: “Dat dere is Jack’s. It’s a noit club and dey have a loive band. It’s a good craic all right. And over dere you’ve got T and Haitches. Dat’s the oldest pub in the town. It’s a great shop. Dis is where is all kicks off on dis street roit here.”

Me (I say “right” a lot): “Right. What street’s this?”

Cabbie: “I don’t know meself. I mean, I know all the places and dat, but I don’t any of the fookin’ names, loik.”

(written in the air)

The flight is good, actually. There are about 20 people on it and I’m sitting next to the propellor. The way the plane is built, I’m sitting under the wing and about 5 feet off the ground. Or where the ground would be if we weren’t thousands of feet over icy water.

And instead of feeling vulnerable, it feels really good. The acceration off the runway was something you could really feel, with all the eager rumbles of a small plane instead of the lumbering whines of those big jet liners being coaxed into taking off.

Even when I was piloting a 4 seater Cessna, I felt safer than I did bobbing around in pockets of warm air inside a tin bird nursing a little bottle of Jack Daniels while watching a movie, instead of sitting with the flyingness of flying.

By the way, next time you have a miniature booze bottle, you can pretend you are a giant on a bender. Or, get four of those giant Kit Kat finger things together and you can pretend you are a little pixie having an enormous snack.

Are we there yet?

Bears make room for Lego.
Bricks get shelved for ships.
They’ll set sail for bedrooms new
when out the door he slips.

I tidied son, 6,’s bedroom last weekend. His room has now gone through many changes, starting out as a spare room where friends used to crash in that brief period of our lives when we had the space and nothing to fill it with apart from drunken mates.

From there it became a baby room, then an infant room, then a toddler room and now it’s a boy’s room. Everying is within reach, things light up when you press buttons and there is stuff that fits together with other stuff in ways I am not a party to, because I no longer need to be.

All fine, of course. I often have to point out that I am OK with these changes, but I am. The Japanese have a word for it - “aware” (pronounced ah-WAR-eh), which expresses the sensitivity brought on by the loss of things. It isn’t sadness so much as a resigned expression at the impermanence of things.

Like in those plays where they painted their faces white and got all dramatic. Someone would shout out: “Aware!” and everyone excepted it and probably did their Robert De Niro downturned “fuck it, why not?” grin and half-nod looks. You know the one.

It’s not mourning, it’s not nostalgia. Manyoshu poets used it evoke a sense of transient sadness at passing beauty. It’s more like something that means: “you know, we’re going to miss that”.

It’s subtle and beautiful and I’ve seen it twice that I can think of in films. One is Apocalypse Now when the officer played by Rober Duval (whose whole face looks like this feeling) says: “Someday this war’s going to end.”

The other time is in Fandango, which is a great film about it and the bittersweet priviledge of youth, when Kevin Costner’s character says to the uptight character played by Judd Nelson: “You know one day Philip, when you’re old…”

Son 6. Same kid as Son, 4, when I started this blog and yet totally different. I hope your kids and parents are well if you have them and I hope your happiness lasts a long time.

And while it does, think what became of your childhood bedroom.

It really doesn’t matter, does it, apart from at the moment of change. I guess that’s where the feeling grows and flourishes, takes root like a fern in a joint of a wall, there to remain as you go on. Aware.

I’m out of the country on business. As I write this I’m actually on a plane. A very small one. Not Buddy Holly small, but it’s got propellors, so the association is there in my mind.

I wonder if Ritchie Valence ever got any stick for sharing a name with the frilly skirty bit that goes around the side of a bed. That’s probably why he hung around with a bloke who called himself “The Big Bopper”. Took some of the heat off.

They have computers where I’m going and everything. I’ll try and post this when I land. If you can read this thank a pilot.

So after thinking about Cartman singing Prince, it stayed in my head for the whole day. I’m 34! I’m walking around the office with cartoon character singing karaoke in my head! On the day of my annual review! At the very least I can console myself in assuming that your day was similar.

I’m ok now though, except for Elmer Fudd singing Joy Division:

Wuv… Wuv wiwll teahw us apahrt. Again.

He was born in the same town as me, you know. Ian Curtis, that is, not Elmer Fudd.

I never got Joy Division. If you want sad music, I say go for the heartstrings: Ray Charles, Edith Piath, John Martyn, Portishead, kd lang, Ben Webster, Billy Holliday, Aimee Mann, Jeff Buckley or fado or cajun music.

I guess I prefer heartache to misery. Tragedy comes in many flavours.

I’ve got me a Cwysleh, it seats about twenny, so huwwy up and bwing yoh juke box money.

Misery and jealousy are more reactions than they are emotions, but they feel just as real. If you’re sad, people are much more touched by yearning than depression. Unless you mean to alienate people, in which case don’t sing about it.

Told you I didn’t understand Joy Divison. Same with New Order, which was neither new nor what I ordered.

The wuv shack is a wittle ole pwace where we can get together. Wuv shack baby.

Mondays, you know?

I had a great weekend in which I had some news which meant some piece of dreaded and life-changing bad news was not going to come to pass. That’s all I can share, but yes, great weekend. Aaaaaaanyway, that naturally means which means Euuuch Monday.

In honour of this, here are some jobs from songs I’d gladly swap for my real one this morning.

Lineman for the county

*and you were my lady, obviously

OK, the last two aren’t necessarily jobs, and the one before that is just bollocks, but it would be cool to be an island. Or I’d settle for a peninsula. Something with a coastline, anyway.

This post is a little funny, but not as funny as me singing “My Name Is Prince” in my Cartman voice:

Mah name ith Printh!!! (uh) And ah am funk-eh! (yeah)
When ah go home! (uh) I thpank mah monk-eh!

See?

To Tennethee…

Cheers all

I’m gonna talk tho thecktheh…

So how come people from broken homes make worse partners than those who aren’t? Why aren’t people who have known sadness better at avoiding it? You would think that those of us who know the warning signs could better avoid the pitfalls of depression or unhappy relationships.

I rode a motorcycle around London for a few years and I would often narrowly miss objects which lay in the middle of the road. Even in city traffic, if a large object was in my lane and I had noticed it a long way off, in good time to react, I would head towards it and veer away to avoid it at the last moment.

I told a biker friend of mine about this and he smiled and nodded: “That’s because you’re looking at it.”

Me: “Go on.”

Biker friend: “You are looking at the object you want to avoid. Motorcycles are much more intuitive than cars and they will react to what you think. If you look at an object while you ride towards it and think ‘there’s a pipe in the road, look at that pipe, where should I go to not hit that pipe?’ then you’re going to ride straight for it. Focus on what you’re not going to do.”

And he was right. I’ve been pipe-free since 1997.

If I say: “don’t think of a blue monkey”, what’s the first thing that pops into your head?

Studying the consequences of past wrongs doesn’t help you one bit in avoiding suffering or avoiding the creation of suffering. It may even draw you closer towards it. You won’t steer clear of obstacles when you watch them loom.

You have to look where you’re going, not where you’re trying not to go. Figure out how you’re going to live and try to live that way.

All the rest is just pipes.

My Name Is Earl - 10pm, Friday night on Channel 4. I meant to post about this sooner, because I’ve been looking forward to this for months.

Check it out - it’s a comedy about karma, it’s got Jason Lee, it’s on Channel 4 and it cost $1 million dollars an episode. What’s not to like?

I haven’t seen it yet, but all the yakrider stuff I read says it rocks. But then Buddhists think that crap and mundane stuff rocks too, so don’t listen to me, right, because it might turn out to be shit, which is cool too.

I got a call the other day by someone asking for my blood. No, it wasn’t Bonnie Tyler’s backing singers (keep up), it turns out that stocks of my blood type were very low and they needed me to donate.

They’ve never gone so far as to call me before, so I thought it must be important.

So that’s what I did yesterday and now my arms are kind of sore. Yes, arms - plural. One because they put the needle right on the crease of my inside elbow (obvious lack of medical knowledge) and the other because I walked into a wall after hopping off the stretcher (and common sense).

So if you do give blood, don’t jump down right away and rush back to the office. Hang out, have a cup of tea. Eat a biscuit. You like stickers?

I took a paper and read an article while I was under the needle, because I don’t like looking at what’s going on. Despite this, the nurse got all the needles, bags, tape and tubes and started preparing them right next to my head, instead of on a little trolley out of sight.

Not helpful. Even though I looked away, it was all going on in my peripheral vision. I’m squeamish as hell and can’t deal very well with things like that. Despite having been at the birth of my two kids and at often being at the mercy of two puking cats and slimey fish poo, I am squeamish.

So I read the hell out of that article. It was about how people from broken homes have a greater likelihood of causing their own relationships to fail. Despite the warning signs, that’s where people head.

I’ll write more about this when I have a few more red cells. I need iron. Nuts and leafy greens and red wine, I think.

Also, can we stop with the rocket now? We get it. Rocket and parmasan shavings - very good.

First of all, you’ve got to have the right kind of voice for the backing vocals to work. REM’s Mike Mills breathy tenor goes so perfectly with Michael Stipe’s nasally soul that it’s unreal. Listen to Near Wild Heaven or It’s The End Of The World As We Know It and you’ll see.

But I gress (a word I invented, just then, meaning to make too fine a point of it and lose the bigger post):

Gladys Knight and the Pips - Midnight Train To Georgia
This kind of does the call and answer thing, but it works. The people in the Pips pipe in with a performance that compliments the singer and actually makes you hear the words better. Listen to it and it sounds like you’re listening to a conversation. In fact, if you just took the Pips part it would sound like someone at the station having a conversation on their mobile.

“Too much for a man, he couldn’t take it.
…
He said he’s going -going back to find.
…
Leaving on a midnight train.
…
Whenever he takes that ride, guess who’s gonna be right by his side?
…
I know you will…
…
-his and hers alone.
…
Dreaming. A superstar, but he didn’t get far.
…
Dreams don’t always come true, uh huh, no, uh huh Ooh, ooh, ooh ooh Woo, woo, woo.
…
I know you will!
…
Leaving on a midnight train to Georgia!
…
Live in his world.
…
It’s his and hers alone!
…
I’ve got to go.
…
I’ve got to go!”

The Bee Gees - How Deep Is Your Love?
Nothing Pips the pips, but close harmonies alone (The Beach Boys) don’t a v good b vox track make. In How Deep Is Your Love, Barry (or is it Robin?) sings the title line and Maurice (or is it Barry?) and the other one (hang on, which is the one who died) just sing it over again and again, using italics.

Robin: “Hang on, this isn’t working…”

Barry: “What now…”

Robin: “Well I’m going ‘How deep is your love? How deep is your love…’ and Maurice here is going ‘How deep is your love? HOW deep is your love?’ It sounds stupid.”

Maurice: “Aw, wrack off Robo. Your way sounds rubbish. If it were up to you we’d be The Bee Gees.”

Robin: “Look mate, it’s better than The Bee Gees.”

Barry: “Look, I’ve got a duet with Barbara Striesand to do in 15 minutes and I’m not going to have this argument again. Sing it the way Robin did. Honestly, I should have stuck with barbershop.”

Maurice: “Ah, speaking of barbershop, mate…”

Barry: “Right! That’s it. Fuck right off!!! I’m the sexy one, you guys are pinhead drongos and the world knows it.”

The Pixies - Debaser
Frank Black: “Right. Now in the chorus I’m going to do a lot of screaming.You know, ‘I am une chien Andalusia’ that kind of thing.”

Pixies: “Meaning?”

Frank Black: “It’s French. It means ‘I am a dog Andalusia.’ Good, eh?”

Pixies: “What’s Andalusia?”

Frank Black: “It’s an area in northern Spain. Ever been?”

Pixies stare back at Frank Black blankly and shake their heads.

Frank Black: “Oh you must. It’s very Moorish.” (snort)

This goes over their heads, as things often do with Pixies.