Imagine Her, Imagine Them

Fox were great. This is a fact. Some facts aren't trumpeted enough. My incessant trumpeting of Fox's greatness resulted in a lovely email from an American TV Cream reader, thanking me for introducing him to the band, which whom he was now obsessed. I was, needless to say, chuffed to bits by this. So, in the hope of drumming up a few more converts, here are more reasons why Fox were, as the man said, great.

(Sorry there's nothing much to accompany them, but the band's YouTube presence is predictably meagre. there are a couple of songs but They won't let me embed them here, for some sinister reason.)

1) S-S-S-Single Bed. The motherlode of course, and packed to the gunwales with gorgeous oddness. That clumsy club-footed wah-wah intro, for instance, sets alarm bells ringing among the less imaginative punter from the off. Then in comes the 'Lilli von Schtupp at 78RPM' vocal and that clumsy 'ner-nernk!' riff, the rhythm guitar equivalent of an on-the-pull Mod trying to lean nonchalantly on the edge of a National Milk Bar counter and sliding off. It's All Wrong and All Right at the same time. And then there are your Talkbox shenanigans in the middle eight of course. Best bit (and which, admittedly, you won't be hearing on that YouTube clip) is the way the menacing bass synth hum swoops in suddenly at the end of the chorus like a Close Encounters spaceship. Brrr! Oh, and Kenny Young's goofy cod-Texan backing vocals. Brrr!

2) Only You Can. On the album version at least, this starts very oddly indeed, with a bit of pan-pipe fuelled wooziness that seems to have fallen off a Martini advert. Then, before you can get your bearings, in comes the completely different actual tune, in the middle of a line. Out-avant-garde that, Radiohead! Then you have to contend with Noosha's nutty suction noises and bonkers lyrics about making her heart 'twirl and gyrate just like a Giro delight'. (Presumably some kind of instant dessert for the unemployed.) And for the middle eight, sir, may I recommend ten seconds of extreme stereo flanging on all channels at once?

3) Imagine Me, Imagine You. The 'difficult' third single, and not quite in the same league as the above two, to be honest. The opening is pretty bland for them (ie bonkers in terms of everyone else). Some backwards tambourine, a few 'doodle-ang's and some Hungarian phrasebook lyrics. ('Or would you rather up my room/For wine and dining?') Still, there's always that humming bass synth, here sounding less like a menacing flying saucer and more like a welcoming fridge full of... well, Giro delight, probably.

4) He's Got Magic. Not going to win any awards for fine tunesmanship, this song, but it has that infectious boinginess that glam did so well. (Though ironically Kenny's The Bump, the song which celebrated early '70s pop's bounce, was one of the exceptions.) If I was angling for a Guardian job I'd suggest it's the aural equivalent of a space hopper. But no. Best instead to mention the inclusion of more upward key changes than Zager could shake an Evans at, and the weird panning-right-to-left reprise of the chorus at the end. Why not?

5) Red Letter Day. Essentially, Altered Images four years before the fact, though in every other respect (the squeaky-husky vocal gymnastics, lyrics about pink horizons and fancy magicians) this is early Kate Bush in embryo. How many classic pop acts did *you* pre-empt today? (Oh, and Lene Lovich, I suppose.) And best of all, the whole things anchored in that sort of squelchy synth oompah bassline familiar to fans of Orange Juice's Rip It Up. (And indeed the theme to Noah and Nelly.)

HONOURABLE MENTIONS: Clued-up swingers will by now be screaming 'Wot, no I Like Electro People?' Of course, this theme to the Kenny Everett Television Show (mid-'80s BBC version, end credits only) was probably the first contact I had with Ver Fox, and it remains ace, even if you try not to get sidetracked into some mad conspiracy theory about how this came out a good six months before The Human League's Love Action, eh? Eh? All that aside, it's great to hear the always tech-savvy band move into full-on synth pop territory, although of course it wasn't officially credited as Fox for some trumped up legal reason or other. Really, it should be number three here. And Strange Ships should be at number five. Ah, forget it. Not sure what to make of this, which is supposedly the website of the lady herself, though it appears to have stalled about 18 months ago. Still, it does feature some new material, namely Judy Blue, a kind of 3 1/2 minute Bohemian Rhapsody/Tommy concept single with overtones of Andrew Gold's Lonely Boy and Kate Bush's There Goes a Tenner (and Nine to Five, in a strange way), while Fox herself adds Hazel O'Connor-style operatics and - gulp - baritone backing to her usual vocal toolbox. So she's clearly as nuts as ever, which is good.

Making toast interesting

Something I assumed everyone knew - the origins of Life On Mars's 'I'm 'avin' 'oops!' courtesy Victoria Wood, Hugh Lloyd and Duncan Preston. Turns out everyone doesn't know. But even if you do, I don't apologise for bunging this on:

Givin' it Plenty!

This post is primarily to plug the new Creamguide (Films) YouTube channel, a sort of visual accompaniment to the perenially late weekly e-mag of tiresomely esoteric film obsessions, to which all contributions are most welcome. One area of cinema we'll be covering is the cultural phenomenon scholars refer to as Great Credits, Bog-rotten Film. As a case in point, here's the opening to shabby Bond spoofer Lindsay Shonteff's 1977 classic No.1 of the Secret Service.

Needless to say, actually sitting down and watching this film is a severe test of any sane individual's patence, but this is great. Top disco-lite theme song with a lyric which is more Perfect Strangers than James Bond? Check! Everyone firing guns at random a la Police Squad? Check! Unreconstructed chauvinistic abuse of Sue Lloyd? Check! A very big, very red GPO telephone? Check! Dudley Sutton? Check! Whether the comedy's unintentional or not, this is opening sequence is every bit as great as a 'You Have Been Watching' montage at the end of Hi-De-Hi! A sort of 'you will be watching', in this case. Except of course, if you have any sense you won't be.

Hold Me Close Now, Tony Danza

Lord, what a time of year. It's only light for forty minutes a day, happiness is but a distant memory, and there are a thousand things to do but neither the will nor the way with which to get them done. The world seems to be 'on hold' for a few weeks at about this time, so a sort of wistful anticipation is the most positive mood it's possible for most to muster. What genre of music best soundtracks this weird purgatorial period? Thanks to TJ Worthington, I've discovered the answer - those sad/uplifting songs that used to introduce just about every US sitcom made between 1980 and 1986.

The models are many. The likes of Chicago and Boston laid down those winsome power chords for the networks to purloin. Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, though a bit 'out there' in places, serves as a nice emotional template. A closer model would be Christopher Cross's Arthur's Theme, which has the possibly erroneous effect of locating all these tunes, for me at least, in some mythical early '80s New York. Lyrically they inherit their upliftingly bittersweet, 'life can be hard but hey, if we have each other we'll pull through' sentiment from Carole King via seventies themes like Diff'rent Strokes, Happy Days and the various 'female star's first name in title' sitcoms we never really saw over here, but they were more lyrically cutesy and musically varied, and you could dance to them, whereas the below are all of a sedentary, plaintive piece. Here's a swift top ten of the most effective.

The Greatest American Hero

As detailed by TJ, this is a bit of a forgotten wonder, built along strict mid-west FM radio guidelines. What's the technical term for the thing those piano chords do at the beginning? 'Pom, pom, pom-pa-pom pom...' Simultaneously criminally bland and oddly evocative of a nighttime sojourn in uptown Manhattan you never actually experienced. 'Believe it or not, I'm walking on air!' It's all uplifting in the lyrical department though, with not much in the way of the 'momentary self-doubt expunged in an instantaneous surge of self-belief as strings and major chord kick in' feeling. Still, an honorary point for the way the opening scene resembles every video The Darkness ever made.

Taxi

If this had lyrics (aside from the 'Night Mr Walters!' 'Uuuuuhhhh!' exchange) this would romp away with the title. As it is, this Bob James flute and (I'm guessing here) vibraphone workout is mellow, just jazzy enough to be musically enjoyable without the troublesome suggestion of Benny-fuelled licentiousness, and the perfect accompaniment to a very boxy car going over a very long bridge. Other instrumentals in this genre include Gloria (only lyric, the repeated title and a load of 'na-nn-na-da-da-daaa's) St Elsewhere and, oddly, Hill Street Blues.

Silver Spoons

Quite a bit of rockist guitar freakery on this one, which marks it down considerably, but what the hell, there's Erin Gray! And the lyrics pay huge mawkish dividends with their paeans to 'Making a go/Making it grow,' 'taking the time each day,' 'those things you just can't buy,' etc. All went over my tiny head at the time, of course. I just wanted a go on that indoor train.

Punky Brewster

The unmistakably unnerving influence of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds may cause initial panic in the casual fan, but seasoned aficionados know this is just the 'hook', the little bit of musical business that makes the theme look just a little bit different from the pack. Our familiar territory of minor-major changes and 'dit-dit-dit-da-na-na-naaa's soon returns. 'Maybe the world is blind/Or just a little unkind.' Aw. God alone knows what this programme was actually like to watch all the way through, mind.

Charles in Charge

We're at the end of the musical era here, as the rude intrusion of that LINN drum machine and proto-Mavericks mariachi trumpet work make plain. Also the lyrics are a bit odd - 'I want Charles in charge of me!' No, you want Charles 'lending a hand', 'helping out' or just 'being there for you', you don't want Charles bossing you around like a Freddie Starr Hitler any more than Diana did. This masochistic tendency in American sitcom is what would eventually lead ot Out of This World.

Who's the Boss?

Here accompanied by the visuals to Family Ties, for some reason, but try and ignore that. A jaunty, Honky Tonk Women-style cowbell and chirpy synth sting threaten to funk this out of the generic ball park, but things soon fall back into mellow place with those lyrics, taking a philosophical view with loads of guff about paths not taken. 'There were times I lost a dream or two/Found a trail, and at the end was you.'

Kate and Allie

A snappy, sassy, modern sitcom, but with a heart. In the right place. This was all over Channel Four when I was of school age, which meant that I often saw it when the combined programming might of CBBC and CITV fell slack and a watchable alternative to both We Are the Champions and SPLASH was in order. The theme tune pulls no punches. 'Sometimes tears and sorrow are all the friends you've got/Just when you think you're all by yourself, you're not.' Ain't it the truth? A bonus point for use of the word 'sharing' in a non-Sesame Street context. There doesn't seem to be a decent version on YouTube, amazingly, but the one in your head should more than suffice.

The Golden Girls

Of course Andrew Gold! Now, he's a very 'clever' songwriter, what with all those time sig flourishes on Lonely Boy and palling about with Graham Gouldman, and such brainy shenanigans are frowned upon in the world of the earnest sit-ballad. But this is upfront and honest stuff, as you well know. This, though, is a cover by Cindy Fee. ('Cindy has been awarded Clios for leads on numerous five-plus year campaigns (Hoover, Wheaties, Pontiac) placing her in the rarefied air at the top of the industry.') Some say the fact it's not a bespoke theme tune disqualifies it from competition but who's bastardly enough to pull the plug? And there's that wonderfully muddy US telly sound mix too, which I can't get enough of (see also Diff'rent Strokes and, paradoxically, the BBC golf theme).

Cheers

I nearly didn't consider this one, for some reason. Maybe it's all those antiquated photos in the title sequence masking the essential '80s-ness of Gary Portnoy's hymn to drunken cameraderie. But this is firmly modelled after the style so, to quote the old geezer's newspaper, we win! Anyway, I won't waste time analysing such a familar beast, as it's been trumped, just, by...

Perfect Strangers

You knew it was coming. That harmonica might sound a bit rootsy in theory, but it fits in seamlessly. OK, this is altogether rockier, more up-tempo, and more Friends-ish than your Christopher Cross clones, but the effect is still the same, times ten. Standing tall on the wings of his dream, the singer (presumably on behalf of Balki) promises us he's bound for better days whatever hazards life and the world may throw at him, even that gravest of modern concerns, 'haze'. It's all very Reaganite, very self-empowering, with no mention of sharing, love or counting on the little Netto Bill Murray bloke he's lodging with, but compassion be damned, this gets you right there in a running-up-the-Philly-steps kind of way. In fact, put this on your iPod and go and run up some stairs. And if you can have a bit of slapstick fun with the revolving dooors at the top, so much the better. You'll feel ready to take on all comers afterwards, guaranteed. Here comes 2008! We're gonna make it after all!

Christmas DVD Preview 2008 Part Two

That Bit on Hi-De-Hi! Where Peggy and Spike are Dressed as a Pantomime Horse Riding on the Back of a Real Horse (For Some Reason) and Boozy Old Mr Partridge is There Drinking Booze and Eating a Banana and he Looks at the Booze and Looks at the Banana and he Throws the Banana Away

RRP: $45.60

From Britain’s best-loved comedy comes Britain’s best-loved scene from Britain’s best-loved comedy! Everyone – WITHOUT FAIL – remembers where they were when they first saw this textbook piece of al fresco slapstick. Now it’s available in a special extended collector’s edition for you to own. (Well, for you to buy, let’s be honest, but if we talk about you ‘owning’ the thing that sounds more cosy and less rampantly profit-orientated. To tell the truth, we don’t care if you stick the thing up your arse, as long as you paid for it).

Includes:

The famous scene in question, shorn of the rest of the programme it appeared in and shown entirely out of context (and probably cut to ribbons to boot, I’ll be bound).

Commentaries from everyone - and we mean everyone – involved. Jeffrey Holland and Su Pollard contribute fulsome praise for each other’s acting talents and other trad reminiscences along ‘the BBC tea kept us going’ lines.

The late Leslie Dwyer’s private diaries are ransacked and read out by a computer with his voice in a similar manner to that Tom Baker messaging service.

The late Simon Cadell does the same with a comic ‘review’ of the scene written by ‘Joe Maplin!’

Paul Shane applies his ‘rules of comedy’ to the scene. In song!

Barry Howard grins painfully, and Felix Bowness spends five minutes silently jumping up and down and ranting about something or other (audio only).

Someone in the production office suddenly gets the faint, sickening inkling in the back of his mind that this gag might be a rip-off of something WC Fields did in about 1932, but no-one bothers to go out and check.

Bonus Features:

Su Pollard’s ‘Oo Makes a Luvverly Cupp-aaah!’ donkey advert for Ty-Phoo!

Plus five more hours of solid Pollard!

Coming Soon:

That Bit Where Barry Whispers to Yvonne what Joe Maplin Means by the Term ‘Merchant Bankers’, and Yvonne Winces.

‘Pies, Pies, Who Wants a Custard Pie?’

The Complete Gladys-Sylvia Stand-offs (Commentary by Barry Davies)

Knit Yourself Funny!: Jeffrey Holland’s Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Woollen Versions of Every One of Spike’s Comedy Costumes

‘I Just Sort of Stood Next to the Webb Twins and Waved’: A Personal Journey by Chris Andrews.

Christmas DVD Preview 2008 Part One

Let's Make An Aimless Noise Right Here!: Twenty five years of arts-funded dustbin banging.

RRP: $13.99

Stomp, the internationally famous troupe of tiresomely eager-looking DIY percussionists, have been making a vaguely rhythmic noise on amusingly prosaic bits of waste metal for a quarter of a century, under various aliases so as to avoid detection. To celebrate this year's announcement that Stomp's act will not only be opening the 2012 Olympics Game, but will in fact be replacing them, and everything else, on British television for the entire fortnight, this DVD brings together for the first time every televisual appearance of the noisome crew's various incarnations.

Includes:

Pookiesnackenburger's dustbin-tapping Heineken ad!

Every awards ceremony appearance Stomp have made to the end of 2006, which at last count was 263, though it feels like about 739. Bonus disc includes footage of ceremony audience looking nonplussed, bored, restless, in pain etc.

Yvette Fielding gamely joining in with a couple of kids banging plastic pipes with wooden spoons as Urban Strawberry Lunch take over the Blue Peter studio! For five minutes!

Every Yes-No People appearance on Andrea Arnold's slightly odd lunchtime eco-warrior magazine A Beetle Called Derek!

Ben Elton making that gag about someone nicking all the Yes-No People's instruments on Saturday Live!

The titles to late, lamented proto-Word Magazine Channel Four music show Wired, featuring the percussive stylings of the Yes-No People. And to enable you to enjoy the music better, we've handily blanked out all those distracting computer graphics with a big picture of a bloke in overalls grinning like a loon!

They were probably on that thing with Craig Charles and all, but I can't bear to look.

Extras:

The Genesis of Stomp: leading players talk about the collective's formative years, including the moment one of them saw the start of the video for Down Under by Men at Work and thought: 'I'll have that!'

A downloadable PDF of Stomp's secret plan to infiltrate and destroy the Tap Dogs, The Blue Man Group, Cirque De Soileil and any other quirky-yet-Royal-Command-friendly novelty act on the planet by 2009!

Over To You! The Stomp ethos is all about joining in (after you've purchased the official product), so here's a step-by-step guide on how to go about setting up your own tappity-tap refuse collective. Includes tips on dustbin lid-sexing, and how to choreograph those routines where one of you walks about pretending to look bored, then starts flicking at a tin can or something, and the rest of the team leap up one by one to add to the spontaneous fun. Plus how to clear Covent Garden market of all shoppers in under ten minutes!

'There's a ten shilling note! Remember them?'

Well, by popular demand, here's Kate workshopping a mime accompaniment to her selective-appeal-era 'Ealing comedy in four minutes' There Goes a Tenner on Stansfieldian gantrified roustabout Razzamatazz.



No need to go through a step-by-step deconstruction of this, as it's pretty much all of a piece, but do watch out for:

00:00 : Razzamatazz's helpful overhead display for non-Cockney viewers: 'KATE BUSH THERE GOES A TENNER £10')

00:00 - 00:20 : Kate's tribute to Michael Palin's tentative, Ministry-rejected silly walk.

00:35 - 00:40 : Leather trousers, T-shirt, prancing about - why, it's Sally James in Four Bucketeers mode! (According to one comment here, La James presented this very episode. The news that evening contained a grim bulletin on a nationwide spate of teenage spontaneous combustion.)

00:55 : 'Audience joined in with the 'waiting' mime rather nicely, I thought.' 'I think they were just confused, Alistair.'

01:20 : Pull-focus on MG horn, Mr Director!

01:52 : Missed opportunity - A. Pirrie or similar fails to hove into shot dressed as Edward G Robinson.

02:30 : 'Have you ever wondered what would happen if they made a Rita Tushingham Muppet? I think it might look something... like this!'

02:50 : A ukulele mime - lovely.

03:05 : Admit it, you've secretly been spending this entire song thinking, 'I wonder if they're going to..?' Well, they do! They do!

And for comparison, here's the official video version, which isn't that amazing, apart from the Great Big Pendulum:



See, surely the video for this song should have Kate herself playing the three (or is it four?) gang mambers she does accents for in the song, with loads of wobbly split screen. Or have I misunderstood things?