daily planet

Spice Girls, ‘Wannabe’

Slam your body down and zig-a-zig-ahh. Euan, Paddy, OP and I did some impromptu street theatre on the Edinburgh Fringe the best part of 10 years ago, trying to show how the Spice Girls’ orders could be carried out. We decided that you couldn’t really slam your own body down, assuming that you had to land with said body horizontal to the floor for full slamming effect. You couldn’t get the full force behind you; it would be mere falling.

I didn’t ask Junior to replicate the slam but, like many little girls before her, she found the Spices’ song and message beguiling – although the fact that she was managing to do the zig-a-zig move as demonstrated in the video was more down to maternal manipulation than free will. 

So, whatever happened to the Spice Girls? One minute it was world domination with infectious tunes and sketchy empowerment poses, the next it was, well, we know what it was. Eye-wateringly bad solo careers, babies with silly names (Junior’s a very sensible name) and desperately misguided attempts to bed George Michael.

In our very first entry we mused on who would win a fight out of the Spice Girls and Girls Aloud. It’s time for you to decide. These are the bouts:

Mel B vs Sarah
Mel C vs Nicola
Baby vs Kimberley
Geri vs Nadine
Posh vs Cheryl

Prince & The Revolution, ‘Kiss’

There are riches to be had here. Dad dusts off the comedy falsetto, Mum provides kisses at the appropriate points in the song, and Junior refuses to sit on her mother’s lap because she just can’t, she just can’t, she just can’t control her feet. Prince gives us a record of impossible groove and eternal sunshine.

Junior smiles throughout the perfectly pint-sized track. It’s her introduction to Prince, untainted by exposure to the dross that he’s spent most of the last 15 years churning out to an underwhelmed world. Where did it all go wrong for the purple doyen of bad-assed Funkadelia? Batman, that’s where.

Many people out there love the Tom Jones version of ‘Kiss’. Stop it. I don’t care if it’s through the protective gloves of ironic detachment. Stop it. What could possibly be good about the wire-wool-headed Welsh plasterer smothering this gem with his soulless bellow? Now the orange car alarm has gone and got himself a knighthood. What on earth for? Oversized knicker-fielding? All those ’60s Number Ones he had were rubbish too, unless you’re a pissed-up student rugby player.

Right. Stay tuned for another entry later this afternoon. It’s interactive.

Prefab Sprout, ‘The King Of Rock ‘N’ Roll’

Junior first heard this in Cyprus, an unexpected treat on an otherwise bewildering Greek music channel. She was three months old and learning how to laugh. Dad singing along to the chorus, bouncing her up and down was particularly amusing. I don’t know whether her fits of giggles were directed at her father’s ability to hold a note, or whether she was ridiculing the lyrical pearls “hot dog, jumping frog, Albuquerque”. Either way, she shouldn’t be jumping to conclusions.

Dad has a cold, so the singing this morning was cracked and the high notes were just that little bit beyond his grasp. Junior found some faint hilarity in this, but lightning didn’t strike twice. Paddy McAloon’s gifts for gentle ribbing and pop catchiness were no match for a growing girl’s hunger pangs.

Perhaps it’s a shame that Prefab Sprout will linger in the memory of most for this track alone. Yes, there’s a quirkiness to many of their songs, but it’s most obvious here and it muddies the more thoughtful message beneath. Rock ‘n’ roll posturing, its bombast is being pricked, with no little affection.

Affection runs through McAloon’s work, but his words could be caustic. Nonetheless, as the albums have become less frequent and he has quietly slipped into his 40s, the tone has softened. It makes Prefab Sprout more suited to Radio 2 these days, although there are flickers of beauty that reach beyond pigeonholing. So, they were never kings of rock ‘n’ roll, but you may as well be remembered for something.

ZZ Top, ‘Gimme All Your Lovin’’

Strictly, we don’t own any ZZ Top records, but we appreciate them for the little things – the trend-defying boogie-woogie, the well-worn irony of Frank Beard’s name, the album titles that Bobby Gillespie would’ve dearly loved to have thought of first, that swinging pointy gesture they do and the Smash Hits interview in which Billy claimed that a dead vulture stank like Dusty’s boots.

However, when this song was requested, I remembered that I had it on The Hits Tape which still nestles in the Various section of the cassette library I’ve stashed under Junior’s changing table. The flat’s just not big enough to store all my records successfully. Anyway, The Hits Tape, eh? The ill-fated Now competitor. They shared a common format, you may recall: a pop side, a dance/soul/hip-hop side, a rock side and, well, a crap side. ‘Gimme All Your Lovin’’ kicks off the rock side of this one in fine style, a momentum sustained by Van Halen’s ‘Jump’.

Junior is a hitherto unsuspected ZZ Top fan. She boogie-woogies on the Winnie the Pooh mat with all her strength, stamping on the Tigger squeaker in time to the riffs. The arm waves and smiles are de rigueur. The traditional first Christmas panda is picked up at one stage for a spin around the dancefloor, and so immersed is Junior in the rhythm, she doesn’t even try to eat it. Otherwise, a girl of eclectic tastes.

The Kinks, ‘Picture Book’

I woke up at 9.16 this morning for my first day back at work. Good effort. Junior was asleep, having got her mother up for a feed at six, so she couldn’t review any songs. This, therefore, is carried over from a little extravaganza we did on Sunday while practising with the new i-Dog. The i-Dog was enjoying it, even though its little lights mark it down as a hip hop fan at the moment. It appears to think that everything that doesn’t sound like the Sex Pistols is hip hop. Maybe that’s right. Maybe 2006 will bring forth a breaking-down of all barriers separating genres and styles. Yadda yadda.

You have to love ‘Picture Book’, and I bet it sold loads of photo printers. Junior gave it some whoops and handy dance steps. When she looks back at our picture books years from now, I don’t know how many pictures of her mama she’ll see. They nearly all seem to be of the little lady herself, and there’s a ludicrous number of them. She can’t help being so damned photogenic.

The Village Green Preservation Society was another Christmas present. I did pretty well.

The Fatback Band, ‘I Found Lovin’’

Welcome to Junior’s second year. At Christmas we learned that she’s a dab hand at ripping off wrapping paper, and then eating it. The presents inside were barely a distraction. She said goodbye to 2005 at about 7pm on New Year’s Eve, giving her parents the opportunity to tear into the alcohol that was still knocking around the house. We had Hoegaarden, buck’s fizz and of course champagne, and slagged off NYE telly. Jools Holland’s thing was ok, I suppose, if you like KT Tunstall, Goldfrapp and the Kaiser Chiefs. We can take or leave all that around here.

‘I Found Lovin’’ was an inspired present for me from Junior’s mum. A 1983 picture sleeve 7”, in fact. It’s an old favourite, and always the first record played in the pub after we’d come in from the football. Junior’s Uncle Paddy has been waiting for a re-release of it for some time, so he’s going to be all jealous.

Junior hums along to it, from the mat where she’s throwing around the toys, old and new. If I was starkly honest with myself, I’d say she was humming because the first signs of teeth are bothering her, but instead let’s say that she was getting lost in its rare groove and faint fragrance of Kronenbourg in plastic glasses.

The Go! Team, ‘Feelgood By Numbers’/The Arcade Fire, ‘Wake Up’

Who chooses the pop music that’s put behind TV trailers or features on Grandstand, or used as incidental music on Supernanny and House of Tiny Tearaways? And is it the only job they have? I reckon I could do it. Slap a load of Zero 7 or Lemon Jelly on the property programmes, a bit of Embrace behind ITV’s Sunday night drama, no effort required. 2005’s TV has been ruled by the Go! Team. They can do jaunty, upbeat, ecstatic and simple pottering about. They might not be quite so suited to the melancholy side, but “pottering about” is the clincher for most telly. ‘Feelgood By Numbers’ is a pottering song – our first instrumental – and would do well through the arched window. Junior used it as a soundtrack for wearing a flowery Reni-from-the-Stone-Roses hat and staring at the new Christmas tree.

‘Wake Up’ was the theme for the BBC’s autumn schedule trailer. Actually, it might just have been an advert for those slightly sketchy Shakespeare Retold things. I was a bit disappointed with them. I was disappointed initially that I managed to record Much Ado About Nothing and Macbeth and then record over them without watching them, but The Taming Of The Shrew and Midsummer Night’s Dream both failed to keep me interested, or even unirritated. Anyway, ‘Wake Up’ worked as the trailer. It has a bit of magic and wonder, and drama too, and it added to the anticipation. The Christmas tree won again, mind.

Stevie Wonder, ‘I Wish’

Even Junior’s mum can only think of Stevie as a fat bloke in a bedsheet making sappy records, so goodness knows what the little one will think when she’s older. Or maybe those critics fanfaring a “return to form” will eventually hit the mark with their scattergun and Steveland will once more bestride the world like a blind, bead-sporting behemoth. 

There’s nothing new about praising his 70s output, but today we found a certain sort of context. This wasn’t the only one we played. Once Junior had bounced along to the rhythm and her mum had discovered where Will Smith’s “Wikki Wikki Wah Wah Wild Wild West Switch Hitch Turn Around Now” came from, we moved onto ‘Pastime Paradise’ and ‘As’ to marvel at how many of the album’s songs had been lazily regurgitated to form far bigger hits with a bit of mumbling over the top. So much hip hop is fresh and bright and shaking with invention, but the last 10 years have seen Puff Daddyfication sucking the life out of it. Why don’t the clever ones plunder Stevie?

Junior enjoyed ‘I Wish’ for a while until she was distracted by Roobarb on the television. As the tales of childhood high jinks came out of the stereo’s speakers, I remembered watching Roobarb and Custard as a boy and Junior looked forward to the day when she could write something nasty on the wall.

David Bowie, ‘Young Americans’

I was 19 when I decided that ‘Young Americans’ was my second favourite single of all time. I’d say it’s settled somewhere between five and nine now, and it still makes me feel like I’m the coolest catwalk model in south west London when I listen to it. Junior has no concept of cool, despite her natty pink Biggles hat and snow white woolly hoodie, but she understood the record the moment it started. The drums kicked, the piano and saxophone rolled by and she was right on the button joining the late, great Luther Vandross on backing vocals. She seemed to get a touch scared towards the end, possibly wondering what could make someone “break down and cry” apart from an unscheduled delay to the next feed. Maybe that haunted Dave as well.

I think she liked the barrel load of words streaming out. I think that’s what grabbed me back then when I was seeing that great pop didn’t have to be verse-chorus-verse-chorus-middle eight-chorus. The song fits that loosely, I suppose, but Bowie saw how much more fun there could be in the “ad lib to fade”. When I was 11, my friend Neil and I used to laugh at Tom Robinson’s ‘War Baby’, scoffing at him trying to shoehorn as many words as possible into each line. We thought his scansion was rubbish, or that he was holding the wrong lyric sheet.

Sorry Tom.

Coldplay, ‘Talk’/Julie Andrews and children, ‘Do-Re-Mi’

So here we have an actual new single, Coldplay’s tilt at the Christmas No.12. More serious commentators than me have seriously pointed out that it’s a limp song hanging from Kraftwerk’s ‘Computer Love’ riff, and there’s a great big anvil of truth in that. In homage, Junior spends its five minutes 10 seconds trying to roll over and ends up looking like Ralf Hutter hunched over his handlebars, negotiating a Tour de France Alpine hairpin bend with cold German precision (there is no other form of precision, really). There’s barely a nod to Chris Martin’s influence, unless you count the puzzling fact that I had “Mojo” written in biro on the back of my hand.

Now, ‘Do-Re-Mi’ has always made her smile, perhaps incredulous at my note-perfect rendition. We tried the crackly old LP today, part of a job lot I nabbed off my mum when she and my dad embraced the CD age. Lorraine Kelly of television fame tells us that The Sound of Music is enjoying a mini revival, and I’m not one to snub a bandwagon.

Junior looked impressed that Julie Andrews didn’t get the “ti” and “so” lines mixed up like some people, but found the children annoying. Especially that Friedrich.

To recap then, a number twelve hit for ‘Talk’ and a timely festive repackage for The Sound of Music.