Song Lyric Sunday: School of Rock

Posted on November 28, 2021 by ellacraigwrites

The theme from Jim Adams is songs about School, College, Education, Class, Degree.
The song must contain a reference to the prompt in the title or the lyrics.
If the song does not meet these criteria, please explain why you chose it.

Here’s a bit of Bryan Adams today with the one song in his back catalogue that makes me forgive him for (Everything I Do) I Do It for You.

Released in 1985, Summer of ‘69 only made it to number 42 on the UK charts. But my brother, the old rocker, bought the single. A move he came to regret years later when his three-year-old son fell in love with this record in the summer of ‘99.

Young Sam enjoyed nothing more than posing with a plastic guitar and belting out the lyrics at the top of his voice. But he wasn’t a selfish little diva: he wanted us all to share the moment, which we did, with gusto! Even his dad joined in the fun. Shame the musical gene in our family tree is dormant.

But this song has happy memories of summer barbecues and torturing the neighbours with our dreadful singing. Now please excuse me: I’m off to play some air guitar in the garden.

I got my first real six-string
Bought it at the five-and-dime
Played it till my fingers bled
It was the summer of ’69

Me and some guys from school
Had a band and we tried real hard
Jimmy quit and Jody got married
I shoulda known we’d never get far
Oh when I look back now
That summer seemed to last forever
And if I had the choice
Ya – I’d always wanna be there
Those were the best days of my life

Ain’t no use in complainin’
When you got a job to do
Spent my evenin’s down at the drive-in
And that’s when I met you

Standin’ on your mama’s porch
You told me that you’d wait forever
Oh and when you held my hand
I knew that it was now or never
Those were the best days of my life
Back in the summer of ’69

Man we were killin’ time
We were young and restless
We needed to unwind
I guess nothin’ can last forever – forever, no

And now the times are changin’
Look at everything that’s come and gone
Sometimes when I play that old six-string
I think about ya wonder what went wrong

Standin’ on your mama’s porch
You told me it would last forever
Oh the way you held my hand
I knew that it was now or never
Those were the best days of my life

Back in the summer of ’69
It was the summer of ’69
Me and my baby in ’69
It was the summer
It was the summer
Yeah, summer of ’69

Songwriters: Bryan Adams / James Douglas Vallance
© Testatyme Music, Adams Communications Inc.

Song Lyric Sunday: Jungle Rock

Posted on November 21, 2021 by ellacraigwrites

The prompts from Jim Adams are Lion, Tiger, Bear, Eagle, Shark.
The song must contain a reference to the prompt in the title or the lyrics.
If the song does not meet these criteria, please explain why you chose it.

Today’s choice is a 1950s slice of rockabilly with Jungle Rock by Hank Mizell. And who is Hank Mizell, you may well ask? According to Wikipedia:

“Hank Mizell (November 9, 1923 – December 23, 1992) was an American singer, guitarist and songwriter. He is best remembered for his rockabilly single “Jungle Rock” (1958), which was obscure on its original release but reached number 3 in the UK Singles Chart in 1976. In the Netherlands, it made it to number 1.“

I remember this song so well – not from the first time around, but the 1976 re-release. My mother and I would do a lindy-hop shuffle around the kitchen to it whenever it came on the radio.

Luckily, my mind blanked out the cheesiness of the accompanying video. Apologies for inflicting Pan’s People on you all again, but at least they were having fun! In my defence, I last mentioned Pan’s People a year ago! Read the post HERE for further crimes against choreography.

But now is the time to dance yourself dizzy with this rumble in the jungle – go on, swing your pants!

I was walking through the jungle just the other night
Well I heard a big a rumble and it thought it was a fight
We stopped there to listen and I began to move my feet
It was a jungle drummer doin’ a knocked out beat

It was a jungle, jungle, jungle, jungle rock
A jungle, jungle, jungle, jungle rock
A jungle, jungle, jungle, jungle rock
A jungle, jungle, jungle, jungle rock
It was a knocked out beat and I had to move my feet
It was a jungle, jungle, jungle, jungle rock

Well, I moved a little closer just to get a better view
I saw a chimp and a monkey a doin’ the Susie Q
Well a gator and a hippo was a-doin’ the bop
While a big python just a making me hop

Well a fox grabbed a rabbit and they did the bunny hug
And the old grizzly bear was a-cuttin’ the rug
Well a camel jitterbugging with a kangaroo
And elephant a moving with a ring-dang-doo

Songwriter(s): Hank Mizell & Ralph Simonton
© Warner Chappell Music, Inc, Carlin America Inc

Song Lyric Sunday: Up the Junction

Posted on November 14, 2021 by ellacraigwrites

The themes for Song Lyric Sunday from Jim Adams are Birth, Death or Life.
The song must contain a reference to the prompt in the title or the lyrics.
If the song does not meet these criteria, please explain why you chose it.

Up the Junction by the British band Squeeze, charts the life of a relationship from birth to death. The song was inspired by a 1965 TV play of the same name, which in turn was adapted from a collection of short stories by Nell Dunn.

The phrase up the junction is polite British slang for being up a certain creek without a paddle. Which is the conclusion of the song’s narrator when his drinking breaks up his family, and he’s too proud (stubborn!) to beg for forgiveness.

Fans of EastEnders will notice Michelle Collins wandering around in the video’s background and, yes, that is a young Jools Holland on keyboard.

Are you ready for a bit of musical kitchen-sink drama with some crazy half-rhymes…?

I never thought it would happen
With me and the girl from Clapham
Out on the windy common
That night I ain’t forgotten
When she dealt out the rations
With some or other passions
I said, “You are a lady”
“Perhaps,” she said, “I may be”

We moved into a basement
With thoughts of our engagement
We stayed in by the telly
Although the room was smelly
We spent our time just kissing
The Railway Arms we’re missing
But love had got us hooked up
And all our time it took up

I got a job with Stanley
He said I’d come in handy
And started me on Monday
So I had a bath on Sunday
I worked eleven hours
And bought the girl some flowers
She said she’d seen a doctor
And nothing now could stop her

I worked all through the winter
The weather brass and bitter
I put away a tenner
Each week to make her better
And when the time was ready
We had to sell the telly
Late evenings by the fire
With little kicks inside her

This morning at four-fifty
I took her rather nifty
Down to an incubator
Where thirty minutes later
She gave birth to a daughter
Within a year a walker
She looked just like her mother
If there could be another

And now she’s two years older
Her mother’s with a soldier
She left me when my drinking
Became a proper stinging
The devil came and took me
From bar to street to bookie
No more nights by the telly
No more nights nappies smelling

Alone here in the kitchen
I feel there’s something missing
I’d beg for some forgiveness
But begging’s not my business
And she won’t write a letter
Although I always tell her
And so it’s my assumption
I’m really up the junction

Songwriter(s): Chris Difford & Glenn Tilbrook
© 1979 A&M Records Ltd, Universal Music Publishing Group

Song Lyric Sunday: Ghost Town

Posted on October 31, 2021 by ellacraigwrites

The theme for Song Lyric Sunday from Jim Adams is
Songs that feature wind or brass instruments.
The song must contain a reference to the prompt in the title or the lyrics.
If the song does not meet these criteria, please explain why you chose it.

Today’s song contains a flugelhorn, flute, and a trombone. And is a haunting masterpiece dealing with urban decay, unemployment and violence in the inner cities. Ghost Town is by the British two-tone and ska revival band The Specials. Released in 1981, it spent three weeks at number one in the UK. And helped me get through the horror of school sports day that year.

The morning was devoted to field events and only the competitors, school prefects and games staff were allowed out. I guess they didn’t want the rest of us milling about with javelins being hurled in all directions.

The track event participants spent the morning hanging about in the gym, drinking Lucozade and posing in their house colours. The rest of us no-hopers trawled from class to class, with bugger all to do. Bored teachers would mumble things like “read the next chapter” before disappearing into their staffrooms.

My chemistry class that day should have held twenty-nine kids. There were ten of us. We whiled away the time shrinking empty crisp (potato chip) packets over the Bunsen burners. Messy, but fun! Until Gary Atkins whipped out a cassette player the size of a breeze block, and insisted we listen to a song he’d taped off the radio the night before.

Right from the Hammer Horror opening, I was hooked. Especially sitting in a nearly deserted classroom excluded from the dubious joys of sports day: I was too short for the high jump and too uncoordinated to let fly with a discus. (Think that’s funny, you should have seen my attempts at hurdling!).

But Ghost Town is an odd and eerie song that perfectly fitted the unusual quietness of school that day. And the general mood in society that year. England was deep in recession, with riots breaking out across its urban areas as the unemployed, and the disaffected fought running battles with the police.

Happy Halloween!

This town (town) is coming like a ghost town
All the clubs have been closed down
This place (town) is coming like a ghost town
Bands won’t play no more
Too much fighting on the dance floor

Do you remember the good old days before the ghost town?
We danced and sang, and the music played in a de boomtown

This town (town) is coming like a ghost town
Why must the youth fight against themselves?
Government leaving the youth on the shelf
This place (town) is coming like a ghost town
No job to be found in this country
Can’t go on no more
The people getting angry

This town is coming like a ghost town
This town is coming like a ghost town
This town is coming like a ghost town
This town is coming like a ghost town

Song Lyric Sunday: Whole Wide World

Posted on October 24, 2021 by ellacraigwrites

The theme for Song Lyric Sunday from Jim Adams is
Atoll, Island, Key, Lagoon, Peninsula, Reef, Tropical.
The song must contain a reference to the prompt in the title or the lyrics.
If the song does not meet these criteria, please explain why you chose it.

Make way for Wreckless Eric’s two-chord punk paean with a whole lot of heart.

Written in 1974 and recorded in 1977, Whole Wide World is about finding your one true love, wherever and whoever they may be.

The song only reached No. 46 on the UK charts, but has attained the status of cult classic and been covered by the likes of The Lightning Seeds, Mental As Anything, The Monkees (reunion tour!), The Proclaimers and Elvis Costello.

It also made it into the 2006 film Stranger than Fiction, where Will Ferrell serenades Maggie Gyllenhaal, earning him a severe snogging.

And who wouldn’t kiss the love of their life after they’d searched the entire planet for you?

When I was a young boy
My mama said to me
There’s only one girl in the world for you
And she probably lives in Tahiti.

I’d go the whole wide world
I’d go the whole wide world just to find her

Or maybe she’s in the Bahamas
Where the Caribbean Sea is blue
Weeping in the tropical moonlit night
Because nobody’s told her about you

I’d go the whole wide world
I’d go the whole wide world just to find her
I’d go the whole wide world
I’d go the whole wide world
To find out where they hide her
I’d go the whole wide world
I’d go the whole wide world just to find her

Why am I hanging around in the rain right here
Trying to pick up a girl
Why are my eyes
Filling up with these lonely tears
When there’s girls all over the world

Is she lying on a tropical beach somewhere
Underneath a tropical sun
Pining a way in a heat wave there
Hoping that I won’t be long
I should be lying on that sun swept beach with her
Caressing her warm, brown skin
And then in a year or maybe not quite
We’ll be sharing the same next of kin

I’d go the whole wide world
I’d go the whole wide world just to find her.
I’d go the whole wide world
I’d go the whole wide world
To find out where they hide her

I’d go the whole wide world
I’d go the whole wide world just to find her
I’d go the whole wide world
I’d go the whole wide world
To find out where they hide her

Yeah!
Whole world

Ella Craig

Write here, write now.

Category Archives: song-lyric-sunday

Song Lyric Sunday: School of Rock

Song Lyric Sunday: Jungle Rock

Song Lyric Sunday: Up the Junction

Song Lyric Sunday: Ghost Town

Song Lyric Sunday: Whole Wide World

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