Canvey Island Cds, Tapes and Vinyl: Darren Richman
United fan, football writer, and good friend of Bifurcated Darren Richman (@darrenrichman, Darren at Mirror.co.uk , Darren at Squawka.co.uk, Darren at ROM) was listening to British Sea Power’s Canvey Island, and considering asking if this here Canvey Island was named after that there Canvey Island. The short answer is no. The longer answer is also no, but with a few hundred extra words thrown in by way of an explanation. Do you want toOH! Here’s the Bifurcated Train!!!!
The conductor handed Darren a really shiny £1 coin. So shiny were it, that it did attract the attention of a magpie. Once they had gotten rid of the publiction wrapped in a pastry and avoided taking the easier route of making a joke about a Newcastle player who likes money, like Pappis Cisse for example, the conductor thrust his hand in the direction of the platform.
There was only one train waiting to depart, there was only one destination…
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Canvey Island!
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Darren was catapulted from the train, with a pair of giant underpants and some strawberry shoe laces found in lost property, towards the car park where he found the car-boot sale and the oh-so familiar stall run this time by someone who looked suspiciously like ex-Manchester United and Everton (Remember them?! Nah, me neither) player Norman Whiteside!
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As per usual the character has a message: “Stop looking at my top. Stop it. I saw yer! I got it off Clayton Blackmore; he’s running our clothes department today. Anyway, there’s a script here … Welcome to Canvey Island cds, tapes and vinyl. I’ve got to shift all these for a friend of a friend after a insert a funny thing of your choosing Norm, you know like how you did that other time?! Anyhow, won’t bore you with the detail, this nonsense scares people off as it is. We have every single ever pressed or recorded in stock, and at 5 for £1, you can enjoy picking your 5 favourites of all time?! Or these tops are only a oner, and I know you’ve had your eyes on it!”
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… and this is what Darren picked and why (in his own words) …
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“Is there any harder task than picking your five favourite songs? Even Desert Island Discs lets you have eight. If I was compiling this list yesterday or tomorrow, it’d probably be different. That said, here are a selection of tracks with some kind of personal meaning that I sincerely believe will say something to me until the day I die.”
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Yesterday by The Beatles
“I am genuinely of the opinion that The Beatles are slightly underrated. It is simply taken as a fact that they’re the greatest band ever ™ so people of my generation tend not to listen to their albums as obsessively as they might lesser heralded groups. The fact is that it is impossible to overstate their brilliance and, as long as there are still people listening to recorded sound, the music of The Beatles will be popular. In 500 years time, people will still be enjoying their songs because they are nothing less than the 20th century’s equivalent of Mozart. Try and remember that the next time you see Paul dragged out to perform at some rubbish event or other and you’re tempted to mock him.
Yesterday is probably McCartney’s finest moment. I once heard it said that the magic of great songwriting is the ability to take a complex feeling and sum it up in a concise way. Think of “I can’t get no satisfaction”, “I’m so tired of waiting for you” or “Everyday is like Sunday” and you get the idea. Yesterday perfectly captures a mood in a way a great novel might over hundreds of pages, not too shabby for a two minute pop song.
I love the story of its composition. The entire melody came to Paul in a dream and it seemed so perfectly formed that he went around asking everyone he knew whether the tune rang a bell on the assumption he must have subconsciously plagiarised it. He actually used substitute lyrics until he had decided what the song would be about. It might not have been such a hit if the words had remained: “Scrambled eggs – oh, my baby how I love your legs.”
In 2006 I co-wrote and performed in my first comedy play in Edinburgh. It was about a pair of warring flatmates with only two tickets to see Paul McCartney at a tiny London venue and one girlfriend eager to come. Yesterday was the song that played as the audience entered the auditorium and to this day I cannot hear it without feeling that blend of excitement and nerves as I stood waiting in the wings, young and hopeful.
In 2012, I actually did get to see the great man live, at the Royal Albert Hall. A couple of months later I was walking down St John’s Wood High Street on the way to watch a test match at Lord’s. I heard a steward suddenly shout, “excuse me Sir, can I shake your hand?” I turned around expecting to be confronted with Sir Ian Botham or the like but it was none other than Macca himself, walking down the street with his girlfriend, casual as you like. I shook his hand, just about managed to mumble something about how good the gig had been and he said “Thanks very much” in the exact way you imagine he would. I have never been so starstruck nor am I ever likely to be. This is one of the most famous people on earth, a bona fide living legend, a man whose work I enjoyed before I could walk.
I was shaking for the rest of the day and could barely focus on the cricket. I had shaken the hand that wrote Yesterday.”
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Keep Me in Your Heart by Jorge Calderón and Jennifer Warnes
“Warren Zevon was one of the great American songwriters, his dark and humorous lyrics led to some labelling him the world’s foremost proponent of “song noir”. If you’ve never heard any of his stuff, Excitable Boy gives you a rough idea of what he’s all about, with its jaunty tune belying a horrific tale of rape and murder.
Zevon was very close to David Letterman and he appeared on his chat show soon after being diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Letterman asked his friend if there was anything he now understood, facing his own mortality, that he didn’t before. Zevon replied, “Just how much you’re supposed to enjoy every sandwich.” I love that.
This song first appeared on Zevon’s last album, a record composed with its creator well aware it would be his final work. The version I have chosen appeared on a tribute album that was released in 2004, appropriately enough entitled Enjoy Every Sandwich. Jorge Calderón co-wrote the song with his friend and, in his recording with Jennifer Warnes, you can feel the pain of loss.
My father once told me that if, as a Jew, he was allowed to have a song played at his funeral, this would be it. It’s such a simple refrain but it brings tears to my every time I hear it and I know exactly why it’d be his choice. You cannot hear the song and not think of people you’ve lost over the years.
“If I leave you it doesn’t mean I love you any less
Keep me in your heart for awhile
Sometimes when you’re doing simple things around the house
Maybe you’ll think of me and smile”
Perfect.”
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Last Nite by The Strokes
“I’ve written about this quite extensively elsewhere, so I’ll try and keep it brief. 2001 was my 1977. I was 16 when The Strokes burst onto the scene and they were the first (and no doubt last) band I was into from the outset. This was a time before girls, when I subscribed to the NME but not a cogent political philosophy. This song was on their first EP and it reminds me of being young, being a fan and being with my friends. Most of all, it reminds me of an era when those three things mattered more than anything else in the world.”
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Superstition by Stevie Wonder
“Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is generally considered the crowning artistic achievement of Western Civilisation. The composer was completely deaf by the time of its premiere and rumour has it he had to be turned around to see the tumultuous applause of the audience. Hearing nothing, he wept. The idea that a human being could create something so beautiful without the ability to hear it himself is utterly inspiring and it is little wonder it has become an iconic piece, giving hope to those suffering in concentration camps and played at the demolition of the Berlin Wall.
Having said all that, it doesn’t make me smile like Stevie.
It is physically impossible to not love Stevie Wonder and from Talking Book in 1972 to Hotter than July in 1980, he did not put a foot wrong and managed one of the greatest runs in the history of recorded music.
Again in 2006, I was nervously waiting backstage to perform in my first stand-up comedy final. An anxious performer at the best of times, this was the most significant moment in my career up to that point. Suddenly and without warning, Superstition came on at full blast. A song I’d adored since I was a kid, it seemed oddly relevant as I went through an array of strange rituals and superstitions.
If you can hear this song and not grin from start to finish then they might as well drew a white line around you.”
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Bad Cover Version by Pulp
“Being an awkward, bookish and gangly adolescent, Jarvis Cocker was always something of a hero. My favourite thing about this song is the arrogance of the narrator. He has this to say about an ex: “I heard an old girlfriend has turned to the church – she’s trying to replace me, but it’ll never work.” We’ll call that 1-0 Cocker.
At some point in the early 2000s, my friends and I went to a terrible Jeffrey Lewis gig in London. As we were waiting to buy tickets, none other than Jarvis himself walked straight past. I was rendered speechless but my mate Matt managed to offer some insightful words. “You’re Jarvis Cocker.” Jarvis smiled as if to say, “Yes, yes I am.”
Once inside, I headed to the loo and emerged to find Matt and Jay giggling and holding a piece of paper. On it were written the words, “Dear Darren, you truly are a common person, best wishes, Jarvis Cocker.” It was perhaps the most blatant bit of forgery ever seen and the pair immediately admitted it was a ruse.
We positioned ourselves on the opposite side of the room to our hero while Jeffrey Lewis played obscure anti-folk numbers. We spent the duration of the gig trying to decide exactly how we would approach the Sheffield legend, nervously eyeing him up from the other side of the hall like awkward schoolboys at a disco.
The American singer exited the stage and we entered from stage left.
Matt was up first and decided to tear down the fourth wall and highlight the strangeness of the situation.
“Hello, is there anything I can say that won’t make me look like a total dick?”
“You can say anything you like mate.”
“Right, er, I think you’re really good.
I was up next and was well prepared having spent the previous hour rehearsing my line in my head.
“I just want to say that Bad Cover Version has the best lyrics of any song released in my lifetime.”
“No it doesn’t.”
“Oh, well I think it does.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Oh well.”
“Cheers anyway.”
Finally it was Jay’s turn and he salvaged the situation with ease.
“Hi Jarvis, I’m sure you probably get this all the time but I just wanted to say that you’re a fantastic parallel parker.”
He laughed. My friend had seen him out driving a few weeks before and this led to a brief discussion about difficult maneuverers.
But should I have been more insistent? Was I right or was the song’s composer? I’ll let you be the judge of that. My list can end on the same words as Bad Cover Version:
“Aah, sing your song about all the sad imitations that got it so wrong
It’s like a later “Tom & Jerry” when the two of them could talk
Like the Stones since the Eighties, like the last days of Southfork.
Like “Planet of the Apes” on TV, the second side of “’Til the Band Comes in”
Like an own-brand box of cornflakes: he’s going to let you down my friend.””
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Just before Darren headed back to the platform “Norman” pointed him in the direction of the old abandoned book stall and asked him to pick out a book, for free, for the journey home.
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… and Darren picked …
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A P.G. Wodehouse Compendium
“This was tough but I figured if I can only have one book then it’d better be big and it’d better be funny. Wodehouse wrote over 100 books and they’re properly hilarious (you know, like TV shows and films) so I’ll take the largest compendium of his work available. He’s the only writer absolutely guaranteed to put me in a good mood and, as Hugh Laurie once pointed out, he’d be considered the equal of Shakespeare if only there weren’t so many jokes. Not for nothing is he often referred to as simply “The Master”. It doesn’t get much better.”
… and then we dropped Darren back, and began explaining why we decided to call it CanvOH!! IS THAT THE TIME?! Shame. Maybe another time…
A reminder you can follow Darren on twitter here > @darrenrichman
And read some of his football writings here > Darren at Mirror.co.uk , Darren at Squawka.co.uk, Darren at ROM
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To submit your own five favourite singles and partake in our mildly embarrassing amateurish kidnapping scenario email us at:
hello[@]bifurcated.co.uk
