Songs About Actors

Songs about actors, who could have imagined it would produce such a rich vein? And none of includes songs about ex-actor Ronald Reagan since they tend to address his post-actor career in the White House. Sadly no songs either by the wonderfully named band JFA, as in "Jodie Foster's Army". Still, no shortage of ditties devoted to thesps.


1) Julian Cope - "Robert Mitchum"
Only Julian Cope could pull off something so twee as this. Imagine it as the soundtrack to "Night Of The Hunter"? Nope, me neither.




2) Kim Carnes - "Betty Davis' Eyes"
Not to be confused with The Adverts' "Gary Gilmore's Eyes", or Half Man Hal;f Biscuit's spoof on this "Dickie Davis' Eyes". Which is a pity as I prefer both of those infinitely to this pop pap, even if in the video people beat out a rhythm on the floor with their hands. Too much of that and they'll have Betty Davis' hands.



3) Lee Perry & The Upsetters - "Clint Eastwood Rides Again"
But Marc I hear you cry, this is basically an instrumental, so what has it got to do with Clint? Other than the ridin' along on ma horse rhythm and the increasing insinuation of gun shots you mean? Reggae artists love cowboys and spaghetti Westerns, honouring them in many a song and even artists taken the names of cowboys, such as well Clint Eastwood and Dillinger (all right he was more 20s bankrobber than cowboy). My chart, my rules.



4) Angel Corpus Christi - "John Cassavetes"
Try tracking this obscure album down... Amazed it's on YouTube to be honest. John Cassavetes, actor and film director. His work was talked about in hushed tones with great reverance, I saw one called I think "Husbands". It was fairly turgid. I wonder if he's still so highly regarded now that he's been dead for so long? The movie world can be as unforgiving as the music biz if you don't put out new product. Anyone remember Alex Cox these days? Thought not.



5) Bauhaus - "Bela Lugosi's Dead"
True story this. After my university finals but before we graduated we had a lot of time to kill. So we decided to play a gig outside the halls of residence. Plugged into the basement and off we went. Only the bassist could actually play, I was hitting a beer barrel with a sledgehammer for percussion (I was heavily influenced by Test Department at the time). And the song the bassist could really play well was this. The singer knew the lyrics. He was very active in the Animal liberation movement, hardly what one associates with the Goth revival as typified by this song. Funny world.



6) Billy Bragg - "Ingrid Bergman"
In which Billy punctuates his stand up repartee with a song 6 minutes into this video. Sorry about that.



7) Beastie Boys - "Lee Majors Come Again"
Let's crank it up with some noise. Lee Majors played the 6 Million Dollar Man on TV. As an actor you might not have given him more than 6 dollars. I think the Beasties may have drawn similar conclusions as the connection to lee Majors is tangential at best.



8) Nirvana - "Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge On Seattle"
KK was obviously much taken with Ms Farmer since he named his only daughter after her. I was never a great Nirvana fan, actually preferring the work of his Mrs, Courtney Love's "Hole". You want to make sure you put the speech marks round that or it takes on a whole different meaning. This song is even more dirgey than the usual Nirvana output. The name "Nirvana" was ironic right?



9) The Clash - "The Right Profile"
The Clash were always dropping references to real people in their songs. This checks the name of Montgomery Clift, actor in the classic "From Here To Eternity". Another actor who suffered a serious car crash, although he managed to eke out a tad more of his career after that. Now we've covered that, I don't have to post The Eagles' song "James Dean". What? If this was a chart for songs about actors involved in car crashes, then maybe...



10) MDC - "John Wayne Was A Nazi"
I don't feel I have to add anything to the song itself.



11) Natalie Merchant - "Lulu"
Okay let's take it down a notch or two. Merchant's paean to silent actress Louise Brooks, she of the famous hair do. What I called in one of my novels, the 'Roman helmet' cut.



12) Banarama - "Robert De Niro's Waiting"
God I hated this song when it came out. Still do. See, this is how generous I am posting songs I can't stand.



13) Madness - "Michael Caine"
This song was rubbish too. I'm beginning to think actors make lousy subjects for pop songs.



14) Sonic Youth - "Madonna, Sean And Me"
Bit of a cheat this one because everyone knows the song as "Expressway To Yr Skull", but for some reason when the album was released, this was the name they gave the track. Still, this revives my faith in the concept of the actor themed song, cos it is epic! Was lucky enough to hear them play it live a couple of times, walk off the stage at the end of their set and the guitar feedback was still squealing through the amps for a good few minutes later.



15) Serge Gainsbourg - "The Initials BB"
A song about his sometime collaborator on songs Bridget Bardo". Unless you speak french, you'll just have to take my word for it. I think Bardo has gone on to become the ultimate cat lady in her dotage.



16) Roxy Music - "2HB"
No, not a song devoted to the middle of the road in pencils, but extolling Humphrey Bogart. Bryan ferry sounds even more drawly than normal in this.



Just In From our NRA correspondent"
17) Stump - "Charlton Heston (Put His Vest On)"
God knows which bit of my deep-lying memory I dragged this one from, but a day after compiling the chart, this came to me.

Dreams - a Music chart

Well if it's good enough for Shakey (William, not Stevens) then it must be a subject rich for the arts. here's a music chart of Dream themed songs (but not David Essex's "Silver Dream Racer")


1) Sonic Youth - "I Dreamed I Dream"

An early SY song this, before their layered sound had really started to cohere. But it's still brooding with menace and the husband and wife swapped vocals is really effective. Kim Gordon's book "Girl in A Band" has just come out. She was anything but that in Sonic Youth.



2) London Underground - "Dreams Are Better"

Spacy, dubby soundscape does conjure up a dreamy sensibility.



3) Mamas And Papas - "California Dreaming"

Infinitely prefer this version than the Beach Boys, even prepared to overlook the fashion faux pas.



4) The Fall - "Lie Dream Of A Casino Soul"

If you're going to include a Fall song in any music themed chart, chances are Mark E Smith's sensibilities are going to cut against the grain of the theme and sure enough, here the Hip Priest warbles his disapproval of the Wigan Casino's soul capital reputation.



5) Gang of Four - "We Live As We Dream Alone"

A quote from Joseph Conrad and I always want to put a comma after the 'Dream' and before the 'Alone'. Talking of fashion faux pas... Still one of my favourite songs by one of my favourite bands.



6) Fire Engines - "Big Gold Dream"

Here's a band that somehow haven't featured in a chart of mine before even though I really like them. The perspective is very odd here, the band look like tall thin giants compared to the dancers in the front.



7) Magik Markers - "Bad Dream"

I only discovered this band relatively recently and their album "Boss" has gone into my all-time top 20. Usually wig-out noise merchants, this shows an alarming degree of disturbia through a much lighter touch. Fabulous.



8) Pauline Murray & the Invisible Girls - "Dream Sequence 1"

Pauline Murray sounding just like she did when fronting punk band Penetration, though with more poppy backing than the thrash 3 chords of punk.



9) New Order - "Dreams Never End'

Fascinating track that shows the partial emergence of the New Order sound from that of Joy Division, but still with its roots very much traceable. They all look so tentative here.



10) Suicide - "Dream Baby Dream"

If there was ever a soundtrack of nightmares, Alan Vega provided it.



11) Eurythmics - "Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This"

I wasn't really a fan of the 80s, most of my favourite bands expired in the early 80s. I always associate this song with the grim politics of the era. A kind of corporate sponsored vision of nightmarishness.



12) Supertramp - "Dreamer"

Before punk came along, I used to listen to stuff like this. Thank god for punk I say. These days this sounds like Leo Sayer  to me. Crime of the century? That this type of music held sway for so long.



13) Television - The Dream's Dream"

This was probably around a similar time to the Supertramp and represented a precursor of punk and new wave that swept away the old rock dinosaurs. But these guys could still play their instruments, apart from Richard Hell obviously!



14) Nas - "Sweet Dreams"

I like Nas, but he really needs to get himself a decent artistic director to make his videos. they're all the same and universally awful.



15) Chemical Brothers - "Dream On"

They're called the Chemical Brothers for a reason. Spacemen 3 would have killed for this song.



16) Electric Prunes - "I had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)"

Dressed like choirboys yet their sound was a distortion, fuzzed up glorious romp.



17) Tricky - "Bad Dreams"

And we're back with the paranoia latent in dreams. or not so latent in this case. Tricky regarded all life as a bad dream.




18) Lil Kim - "Dreams"

Oh do get on with it! Once she's 43 seconds in it really locks in to a remorselessly mean vibe.



19) The Bug - "Thief Of Dreams"

Dubstep is supposedly an edgy dreamy urban soundscape and The Bug is all that and more. But the vocalist in this spins a terrifying narrative that is anything but dream like.



20) Minutemen - 'Dream Told By Moto"

Or the 4 minute warning till the bomb drops... no dream this for us in the 80s, we really had these thoughts and anxieties.

National Flash Fiction Day

Saturday 21st June is the third annual National Flash Fiction Day. A day in which the shortest form of story is celebrated  and my third year of participation.

This year I have not one, not two, but three ways in which I'm participating.

Firstly I'm reading live in Bristol, my first time in that fine city. I'll be reading with a lot of other great UK flash writers and feel honoured to have been asked to participate.

Secondly my third collection of flash fiction "Long Stories Short" will be free to every reader who emails me for a kindle copy to be sent to them from June 20th to June 22nd at 23.00 hours BST. My email details are sewell (dot) d (at) googlemail (dot) com

And if that wasn't enough fine flash fiction for you, my fourth collection "28 Far Cries" will be published on National Flash Fiction Day, in both print and e-book formats. Twenty-eight tales about fading super heroes, alien invasions, living statues, fathering, suicide pills, bar brawls, the first human language, the Red Army, Vultures, Radioactive Love, Pole Dancers, Lycanthropy, Beheadings, Warlords, Incubuses...

Twitter hashtag for all the news on the day #NFFD

For now I'll hopefully whet your appetites with a couple of videos of my flash.

"Just Aphasia Going Through"

"Flash Fiction"

"7 Earworms"

It's The New Thing - 10 songs about newness for the New Year

So 2014. A brand spanking new year. And yet here's me sticking to a tried and trusted old theme, a music chart. But in with the new, the theme of this one is all things new. There are lots of bands with 'new' in their name, New Order, Brand New Heavies, New Puritans, New York Dolls, New Kids On The Block (um).

So here's to the optimism a new year and fresh start brings. Or sumpting...


1) U2 - New Year's Day
Ha ha ha, Bono's hair and dancing. never really liked U2 but I'm feeling charitable and all celebratory for the turn of the year.



2) Joy Division - New Dawn Fades
Didn't last all that long to be honest. "A loaded gun won't set you free". This song represents their musical epicness as it builds, an epicness built on a very stripped down, clean mix of just the 3 basic instruments of guitar, bass & drums.



3) James Brown - Papa's Got A Brand New Bag
Let's get the mood back up and who better to do that than the Godfather of Soul himself? The song that launched a thousand hip-hop samples. BTW there ought to be a show called "Shindig" on TV these days too.



4) Queen Latifah - New Jack City
I went to see this film in the cinema when it came out. It was my introduction to hip-hop. Taught me everything I know today. Okay, maybe that's a slight exaggeration. The film was considerably better than this theme tune



5) Clipse - Chinese New Year
Actually, if you want an introduction to hip=hop, you could do a lot worse than Clipse's debut album Lord Willin'. Unfortunately this isn't a track from that album.



6) The Fall - New Face In Hell
Probably wouldn't be one of my music charts without a track from the Fall. But then with about a hundred albums to their name, they have song titles to cover every single theme eventuality I could come up with. They had another song called "New Puritans" just to make my point and yes, that band took their name from the Fall song.



7) 23 Skidoo - The Gospel Comes To New Guinea
Great title, great song. They seem to be back around playing live after 25 years away. Think I may just try and come out of my own gig retirement and catch them if I can.



8) Tricky - Brand New You're Retro
Must be cold up on stage under all those lights, but Tricky has come prepared with a nice big coat. But he won't feel the benefit once he steps outdoors...



9) The Stylistics - You Make Me Feel Brand New
It is an abomination when you type the song title into YouTube, you are first offered Simply red's version. I had the same thing on the radio last night when "swing Low Sweet Chariot" was a version from UB40. Gaaaa! When you listen to some of the early reggae collections from Trojan & Studio One, you realise how UB40 built a career on the backs of other, better artists. "Red, red wine" anybody? Or "red, red whine" as UB40 made it. Rant over.




10) Dizzee Rascal - Brand New Day
Ah, Dizzee counsels da yout to do their homework. A case of 'don't do as I do, do as I say'.

Secret Agent Songs

In a historic week in which all three chief spies in the UK came out of the shadows and reported live on TV to Parliament, well I say live but there was a two-minute delay on the transmission which was a bit useless as people were live tweeting it - but anyway, I thought I'd do a chart of spy and secret-agent related songs.

Enjoy (in private, unless the NSA are listening in to your internet surfing).

1) Last Of The Secret Agents - Nancy Sinatra
Or James Bond goes jaunty country & western. Actually this is nothing of the sort, but a paean to her man who is a complete fantasist, but Nancy still stands by him



2) Secret Agent Man - Devo
Devo sounding more like Cabaret Voltaire here. Do you remember a time before music videos? Well Devo in the late 1970s were making quite disturbing ones and were way ahead of the trend. The keyboardist here looks like he's moonlighting from Doctor Who.



3) Espionage - Green Day
I never got the whole Green Day thing, but well here they are. It;s funny how most songs about spies/secret agents have the chugging rhythms that reference TV shows like "Dragnet"and of course the James Bond movie themes.



4) I-Spy - Beat Happening
... or they go a bit Oriental to suggest the exotic climes in which the spies work. I love Beat Happening and yet couldn't recall this song at all.



5) Double Agent - Rush
Rush appear far too many times in my charts, not because I particularly like them (punk rock saw an end to my flirtation with heavy rock), but because their song titles seem to chime with whatever zeitgeisty theme I happen to choose, to make a chart for, so props to them for that. This song is pretty dreck though!



6) The Spy (In The House Of Love) - The Doors
Named after an Anais Nin novel, Morrison again resorts to literature for his lyrical delivery. This one is sort of whiskey bar boogie. Musically the band were so damn good.



7) Spy Vs Spy - The Spinto Band
I remember casting around for some music to listen to and The Spinto Band came highly recommended. Too floppy and feeble for me, I didn't really get on with them though. I only dredged this from my recall because Spy Vs Spy echoed a Billy Bragg album title and I was ,uch more into him.



8) CIA Man - The Fugs
See what happens when you give some poets a bunch of musical instruments? All good fun really, I do wonder if one of my favourite bands were influenced by them both politically and musically in songs like "Big Stick".



9) Spy - They Might Be Giants
Here's a band I haven't featured in my charts before, so glad to welcome TMBG. Again that chugging rhythm albeit with a jazz vive over the top of it. I don't know, maybe the rhythm is to suggest a pursuit or something...



10) Surveillance - Clint Mansell
Now this one definitely breaks the mould compared to the others. No chugging rhythms, just a genuinely creepy sense behind the music. I've not seen the movie, but am tempted to track it down.

Back To Work Music - 7 songs about Mondays

Sunday morning, it's freezing outside. I'm stretched out in the warmth of my bedroom, central heating blasting away. Don't have to even step foot outside today. And in 24 hours time, I'll be ensconced in an office where the temperature is either too hot or too cold, there will be 100 emails accumulated over the weekend to sift through, someone's purloined the coffee maker again... Ugh!

So here's a week's worth of seven songs all about Mondays, our favourite day of the week right? Take it away Sir Bob...

1) Boomtown Rats - "I Don't Like Mondays"
The song that suggested the Rats had come a long way since such punky titles as "Mary Of The 4th Form" and "I Never Loved Eva Braun". Similar vibe to "Mad World" which I have to admit I prefer.


2) New Order - "Blue Monday"
Another song that launched the band on to a new level. They had gone over to the USA and experienced the burgeoning Club scene there and worked with legendary producer Arthur Baker. They came back to the UK, helped set up the Hacienda club in Manchester and released this wondrous track that purged all the associations with Northern gloom that hung over them from their Joy Division days and Ina Curtis' suicide. They became a good time band and very badly behaved too! I saw them play at the New Hall College (Cambridge) Summer Ball and the rumours were that 2 of the band's leading members spent the day going around that all-women's college offering £50 for a sh*g to anyone they came across... From mere mortals, divine music


3) Stereophonics - "Bank Holiday Monday"
If only. Only 22 shopping days until Xmas bank holiday...


4) The Carpenters - "Rainy Days And Mondays"
The only records (& 8-Track cartridges, there that gives you an idea to my age) that were in my childhood house were my Mother's Classical, Opera and a few middle of the road artists like the Carpenters. Hence I associated all the above with years of ear pain in that oh so tolerant way of boys. But now that I've matured a tad, I've come to appreciate how great the Carpenters really were and Karen's astounding voice. This song perhaps doesn't show that voice off to its zenith like other songs, but it's still gorgeous and sumptuous, rather than easy, listening.


If you've never seen the amazing short Todd Haynes' film "Starlet - The Karen Carpenter Story" made with Barbie Dolls rather than actors, then here's a sample

5) The Bangles - "Just Another Manic Monday"
I was never a huge Bangles fan, although I did like "Walk Like An Egyptian". Still "Manic Monday" pitches the right sentiment. They look way better today without all the "big hair" I have to say!


6) Death Cab For Cutie - "Monday Morning"
The band with the best name in music, with a suitably elegiac song for the first working day of the week.


7) Billie Holliday - "Gloomy Sunday"
Yes I know it's not titularly a song about 'Monday', but in effect it is. According to TV Quiz Show, more people have been driven to suicide by this song than any other. And I think you can see why. I haven't listened to Bjork's version. Somehow that too I feel would be sacrilege.

Read 'em their Writes - or how the new literature media only saves time by depriving us of the richness of our senses

I've got a techie mate who swears by podcasts. Assimilating his techie product journals while in his car makes perfect time management sense, seeing as he has an autistic child and twin daughters making inordinate demands on his attention back home. But he tells me he also exclusively consumes his beloved SciFi literature in this manner as well. It may well suit to pick out and memorise the key techie items in order to research them further online once out of his car, but the potential narrative fracturing of his SciFi by events outside his windscreen worries me. (Any meta time travel storyline not withstanding).

(His potential thoughts in bold) "The polyp-like craft exuded colours that shredded the known spectrum as it regally lowered itself towards the ground-" Oh blast, there's a sign saying 'parking bay suspended'.

"Okay guys, jet-packs on, we've a civilisation to save from extinction at the hands of-'Would you believe it, that speed camera just flashed me?'

"For all her seaweed-like recrudescences, he could still see the inner beauty radiating out. He was drawn to her like a Geiger counter to polonium 210-" Did that guy just give me the finger? Cut you up? I'll bloody show you cutting somebody up pal! (okay my mate probably wouldn't say this in real life as he is mild mannered and, well a techie).

Now shift our enclosed vista to a train or bus. You are reading a book, a pleasant and maybe stimulating way to pass the bromide of a commute in to work. Your attention wavers periodically. Maybe an aesthetically pleasing person sits down in the seat opposite you, or they have a musk that hooks your nostrils and forces you to look up from the printed page. Maybe on spotting somebody else engaged in reading, you idly crane your neck to see the title of their book to compare and contrast. Perhaps you are fully ensconced in your book, when a snatch of conversation from the passenger next to you spookily echoes the very words your eyes were scanning on the page... All minor events that distract you from the text, but you have the ability to revisit the words and give them your full concentration.

Of course you can equally press rewind on a podcast or scroll back in an e-book. But if you've clotted your ears with headphones, you are less likely to overhear the synchronicity from next to you. You may spot the other reader on the train, but how are you going to laser your comparative 'I've got Stephen Fry voicing Jeeves on my i-Pod', or 'I've got Sartre's "Being And Nothingness" downloaded to my phone' to your erstwhile compatriot in reading? Your nose may well still get hooked, but earphones in place, or poring over your IPhone, are unlikely to secure you eye contact from the Looker in the seat opposite since that's what every other punter on the train is likely to be doing.

These technologies, designed for convenience, for immediacy, actually end up serving the same function as the free newspapers given out to commuters. They wall us off from our fellow travellers. They lock us into our own senses, involve us with our own minds, but without the possibility of someone from outside breaking through to make contact with us, however cursory. It was actually David Blunkett who predicted a version of this back in the mid-1980s, when he highlighted how all these home entertainment centres (remember those?) of video, hi-fi stacks and computer (and now games console and Internet) were likely to reduce us more and more into barricading ourselves into our Englishmen's castles and entertain ourselves, rather than interact in social milieus. A modern day Tiresias, shame he failed to demonstrate such analytical perspicacity when casting sightless eyes over our culture on ascending to power. Commuters will not be satisfied until they have a data stream blocking up every one of their sense outlets (including smells, so bye bye musks and bouquets hooking you). Then they will truly be inviolable.

These devices are sold as time-saving. What they also skimp on is the quality of processing our brains do with the function formerly known as reading. The rush to put visual content into literature, vooks and the like, means people are now being asked to use whole different interpretive languages in order to 'read' literature. Picture the scene, sat at your laptop imbibing a book online. Because you lack the weft and weight of a tome in your hand, well then the devil can make work for those unemployed fingers. I bet you're reading, or should I say skimming, while you've got your e-mail/Twitter alerts pinging and dragging you to heed their siren calls. You've probably got some i-Tunes burbling away in the background. Someone's just tipped you off to an exclusive pop video on YouTube or some hilarious stunt gone wrong that you just gotta check out. Computers faciliate us multi-tasking. The antithesis of the demands made by reading a book. Can you lose yourself in a good file share?

My next post will attempt to go even further into these issues. I want to consider the evolutionary implications of our rush for more rapid assimilation of data and input. I just need to film a video and upload it, hopefully this week. It will present visual treatment of two extended (literary) metaphors and since I will also post the script for the video, you'll have the opportunity to decide which medium, video or written word, delivers the material with greatest impact and clarity.

Till then, lean over and ask the Looker what their scent is. Lean over and tell the other reader on the carriage that you loved that book, have they read ... Lean over and show the person next to you that their selfsame words have magically coalesced within not only your mind, but that of the writer who set them down in their book in the first instance...