h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Do you ever find yourself singing just the first line or two from a song? Here are some I like:

Load up on guns/ Bring a friend (Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana)

Tall and tanned and young and lovely (The Girl from Ipanema)

Sup up your beer and collect your fags/ There's a row going on down in Slough (Eaton Rifles - The Jam)

Ziggy played guitar, jamming good with Wierd and Gilly/
The Spiders from Mars (Ziggy Stardust - David Bowie)

Calling all chickens down on the farm/ Shut the door. Were you born in a barn? (Cornfed Dames - The Cramps)

Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten/ Dass ich so traurig bin (das Loreleid)

Elevate! (Trumpton Riots - Half Man Half Biscuit)

I was twenty-one years when I wrote this song/ I'm twenty-two now but I won't be for long/ People ask when will you grow up to be a man/ 'cause all the girls from school are already pushing prams (New England - Billy Bragg, quoting from Paul Simon)

Midnight to Six/ For the first time from Jamaica (White Man in the Hammersmith Palais - The Clash)

And as we walked/ Through the streets of Arklow (The Streets of Arkow - Van 'The' Morrison)

Think I'll pack it in and/ Buy a pickup/ Drive it down to LA (Out on the Weekend - Neil Young)

A-wop bob a-loola a-wop bop boom (Tutti Frutti - Little Richard...surely the finest lyric ever written?)


Anyone like to add more?

"I am just a poor boy, though my story's seldom told; i have squandered my resistance for a pocket full of mumbles, such are promises."

*The Boxer, Simon & Garfunkel

zdt

"Hello darkness my old friend..."
Simon & Garfunkel - The Sounds of Silence.

"A wop boppa loobop a lam bam boom"

"You load sixteen tons a what do you get,
Another day older and deeper in debt."
Johnny Cash - Sixteen Tons

"When the moon hits your eyes, like a big pizza pie, that's Amore."
Dean Martin - That's Amore.

"The road goes ever on, from the road where it began."
Bilbo Baggins - The road goes ever on, set to music by Donald Swann.

"The morning sun danced lightly on the eyes of Lucy Jordan."
Marianne Faithful (I think) - The Ballad of Lucy Jordan.

"Look for the bare necessities, the simple bare necessities."
Baloo - Jungle Book.

"I'm a mean, mean mother from outer space and I'm bad.
I'm a mean, mean mother from outer space and it looks like you been had."
The Little Shop of Horrors.

"Where have all the good men gone, and where are all the gods?
Where's the streetwise Hercules the fight the rising odds?"
Bonnie Tyler - Holding out for a hero.

"Would you bare your throat to the wolf with the red roses."
Meatloaf - Hot Summer's Night.

"Thank you for the music, the songs I'm singing."
Abba - Thank you for the music.

"Neun und neunzig rot balon."
Nina - Ninety-nine red ballons.

"I'm in the phone booth, it's the one a cross the hall.
If you don't answer I'm gonna ring it off the wall."
Blondie - Hanging on the telephone.

"I've been a wild rover for many a year, and spent all my money on whiskey and beer."
Irish Traditional - Wild Rover.

"Cigarettes and whiskey and wild, wild women..."

This happens to me all the time, especially when I'm cycling, but with different songs that often change into others with similar chords.

So, this morning, the snow reminded me of the beautiful but magdalen [as they say in Oxford]:

"Walk in silence,
Just walk away, in silence"

And yesterday's moody evening brought:

"The night is young,
the moon is mellow,
and there's music in the air,
Say, is Vic there?"

which melded into:

"You must be out of your brilliant mind"

which further mutated into 'On Any Other Day' by the Police:

"My wife just burnt the scrambled eggs
The dog just bit my leg
My teenage daughter ran away
My fine young son has turned out gay."

...and it would be OK on any other day!

Ooh! The drood's Blondie one is my favourite so far. For that I'll forgive him...almost everything.

Paul Simon:
My favourite of his opening lines starts with a joke that is lost on the US audience (but Simon, having spent a lot of time in England, obviously knew what he was doing)
Duncan:
'Oh, my daddy was a fisherman/ My mommy was a Fisherman's Friend/ I was born in the boredom and the chowder'

Or, as Billy Connolly sang:
'My dady was arrested in Fleetwood/ For sucking a Fisherman's Friend...'


(note to USAnians...Fisherman's Friends are a brand of licorice and chilli-based throat lozenge. Much nicer than the chloroform-based Victory Vs. And isn't chloroform carcinogenic anyway?))


'Suzanne takes me down to her place by the river' - Leonard Cohen

'Look, Mummy! There's an aeroplane up in the sky.'

>>...and it would be OK on any other day!

The other words are complete bullsh*it!

>>"You must be out of your brilliant mind"

This has been bugging me. Furniture?

That's the badger. One hit wonders I guess, but good ones.

The Police can never be forgiven for:

'He starts to shake and cough/ Just like the old man in/ That book by Nabokov'

(Sting once told my wife to shut up. She was in the audience for 'Rock Goes To College' and had just shouted "Stewart!" during a quiet, poignant, pretentious bit.)









'Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta'

Brilliant! That's exactly what the tongue *does* do when you say it.

Eeh!

Why isn't there a black-pudding-wielding smiley for Eeh!

Oh come now, the Police were at least semi-deliberately writing ropey lyrics. They virtually owned up to it on "De Doo Doo Doo, De Da Da Da".

As for Sting's preciousness, well yes, that takes the cake. After he divorced Stewart and Andy, his ego took on monstrous proportions. Unless he's writing from the heart (eg songs about his mum and dad when they died) he's generally avoidable.

This phenomenon almost never happens to me. Although, after I brought it up last night at dinner, I've been followed around the house and bombarded with the first stanza to nearly every crap pop song released between 1980 and 1995... "you know you always have *this* one on your mind". He does this simply to drive me nuts.

"Brilliant Mind" is going to be popping in and out of my head all day now. Cool song, I'm fairly sure I have it on vinyl, possibly on a John Hughes movie soundtrack.

Agh, now that's gonna bug me till I work out which film it was from. Pretty in Pink? Its B-side, Some Kind of Wonderful?

Tell me
Tell me that your sweet love hasn't died
Give me one more chance to keep you satisfied
You were always on my mind
You were always on my mind

[Petsies version, natch]

Hmm. I'm fairly sure I have it on 7" vinyl, up in the attic.

Around the same time...what was the name of band that did 'Tenderness', with the line 'Does the morning leave you unimpressed'? I've an inkling that it was formed from personnel from The Beat (to USAnians, 'The English Beat')

I could google, I suppose, but it's more fun this way.



I've just thought of a couple more:

I was looking for a rhyme for the New York Times/ When I sensed I was not alone/ She said "Do you know how to spell 'audaciously'" - Charlotte Street, Lloyd Cole and the Commotions (I once had dinner with their keyboard player. Long story, and a dull one)

Punctured bicycle, on a hillside, desolate - This Charming Man, The Smiths

>>Pretty in Pink

Caroline laughs and it's raining all day/ She loves to be one of the boys


which also reminds me:

Where did your long hair go? - Caroline, No - The Beach Boys (one of my all-time favourite songs)

>>Punctured bicycle, on a hillside desolate - This Charming Man, The Smiths

Me too for that one. Note the poetic adjectival position.

Walk in Silence has now altered to the languid live version of 'Satisfaction' by PJ Harvey and Björk alt-148:

A hey-hey-hey [crescendo to climax]
That's what I SAY!

Which occasionally progesses to:

You-oo! All I want is you-oo! [rousing strings]