It’s Time

This will be my first post written (partly) remotely. By the powers of my amazing iPod and the WordPress app, I am writing this while sat on a train from home (North Dorset) to my home-away-from-home, London. I won’t be able to post a picture on here (that I can work out at the moment), so I will have to finish this at home. Whether I’ll manage to still squeeze it in on a Sunday I’m not sure, but we’ll see…

Anyway, on to the important stuff. This post is about songs beginning with the word ‘Time’. Time and time again (sorry) we get songs about the so-called 4th dimension. It’s obviously a major part of our lives – it’s intrinsically linked to ageing, something many a man/woman has agonised over, and it can be fleeting, plodding and a slippery little bugger to keep hold of when we want to. Our perspective of time is definitely linked to emotions – it flies by when we’re having fun and drags when we’re not. Ultimately it’s a constant in everyone’s lives and so undoubtedly a concept people are going to sing about. It actually scares and confuses me if I think about what time is for too long… so that’s why I’ll shut up and just list my songs:

Time – The Rumble Strips

Time and Time Again – Counting Crows

Time in a Bottle – Jim Croce (from the Alternative Sixties album that belongs to my mum and I have a selection of on here. This is a short but wonderful song with some great lyrics)

Time of the Season – The Zombies (verses are better than the chorus on this, I reckon. The ‘bom-bom-bom chaaa’ is what makes it)

Time to Pretend – MGMT (good song, shame it got played to death. And shame Oracular Spectacular was a bit of a let down in my book, too)

The Times They Are A-Changing – Bob Dylan (a lot of Dylan I’m not fussed over, but I can’t argue with how great this one is)

So that is all the ‘Time’ I have. What other ‘Time’ songs are there though? Time to Say Goodbye? Time After Time, that’s a good one. I’m not sure of any more…

So, I think I can get one more post out of ‘T’ and then it’ll be onto ‘W’ I think – the homeward stretch, eek. What am I going to bore the Internet with then?!

Byes x

(Fingers crossed this is all going to work – I am home with Internet now but still on the iPod, not sure if pic and vid going to work well, but here goes… The haunting Jim Croce: )

Oh Old Oliver

Oh Mandy by The Spinto Band

No repeat of before – I’m posting again sharpish.

This post will mostly be focusing on the letter ‘Oh’, ‘Old’ and ‘Oliver’. Well it will be completely focusing on that, but y’know, turn of phrase, Fast Show etc.

So, ‘Oh’. Like ‘No’ I don’t really know what this word would be categorised as – just an ‘exclamation’? Let’s see what the dictionary says, hold on… *goes and looks at Dictionary.com* OK, apparently it’s an interjection or noun. All right then. Anyway, I suppose in song titles it’s mostly a way of expressing either loveliness, sadness or exasperation – I think that covers all bases right?

I then have ‘Old’ songs. There isn’t much to say here really is there? It’s just an adjective relating to the age of something, and it appears in around the same quantity as ‘New’ too, so obviously artists like to write about both fresh, spanking new ideas as well as the aged, wise or experienced.

Finally, I have ‘Oliver’. This is a bit of a cheat because I only have two songs and one is a song from another Disney favourite of mine, Oliver and Company, that is listed under ‘Oliver’ rather than the song title. But I felt I had to include it because I really like the name. It’s probably just because I have known some nice Olivers in the past and it has pleasing sounds – L, V, I O – the best letters, obviously… Plus it also gives me the chance to list a Fleet Foxes song.

So, here we are:

Oh Creole – The Rumble Strips

Oh Mandy – The Spinto Band (from the album Nice and Nicely Done I bought back in high school, but then randomly used on a coffee advert at one point later I think. I also used it as my ringtone on my old phone and then my sister Jess still used it once she had my  the phone, so the beginning of it just makes me think of a phone ringing. Riveting story, I know)

Old England – The Waterboys

Old Man on the Mountain – PG Six (from the Sun It Rises album curated by Robin Pecknold and given away with Uncut magazine)

Old Time Rock & Roll – Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band (used famously in Risky Business. Awesome)

Oliver and Company – Street Smarts – Billy Joel (I’ve just looked this up and it seems to usually be called Why Should I Worry? actually, don’t know why the copy I have is called Street Smarts but there you go. Anyway, this is a brilliant, brilliant song. I love 80s/90s Disney. They got songs so right and this is one of them. There are so many great songs in this film too – Once Upon a Time in New York City, Streets of Gold and Good Company (I cry if I hear this, no joke). Fan-frickin’-tastic.)

Oliver James – Fleet Foxes (a great Fleet Foxes song, but there is no bad Fleet Foxes song in my eyes)

I think I will have ‘One’ more post for ‘O’ *heavy wink*, so see you ol’ pals next time.

Love,

L x

It was a tough call for this one – do I go FF, Street Smarts or Old Time Rock & Roll? Play on to find out.

Ho, No, No!

No Woman, No Cry by Bob Marley

Yikes. Over two weeks since my last post, oh dear. But to be fair, I had a busy week after my last post, then went home to Dorset for the weekend, then came back and was ill, plus there has been Christmas shenanigans/planning etc, and… now it’s now…

Yeah, anyway, onto the word of today: ‘No’. I don’t actually know what part of speech ‘no’ and ‘yes’ are… adverbs? Nouns? Je ne sais pas. Actually I suppose in song titles ‘no’ is most likely going to be an adjective, I think (don’t quote me on that), so in ‘No Matter What’ it’s acting as an adjective, right? Because you could replace it with ‘little? So maybe it’s just a quantifier meaning ‘There is no…’? Well it’s all academic anyway… but it’s quite interesting that you can’t use ‘yes’ in the same way, actually. So that would be why there are less songs beginning with ‘yes’ than ‘no’.

Right, here are my ‘No’ songs:

No Money – Kings of Leon

No More Crying – The Slackers

No Other Way – Jack Johnson (would be more fun if it was There’s No Other Way by Blur, but sadly I don’t own that and it wouldn’t come under ‘N’)

No Rest (Live)  – Dry the River (they seem to be coming up a lot lately. As I said on Twitter, I hope being on the BBC Sound of 2012 list doesn’t make them less special to me. I know I shouldn’t care about how popular a band get, but I do)

No Soul – The Rumble Strips (these guy’s songs are fun but samey, and if you don’t like trumpets steer clear)

No Woman, No Cry (Live) – Bob Marley (I used to think this was Marley saying ‘If there’s no women, there’s no crying’. I didn’t really get the Jamaican-English phrasing. And so this is an instance of ‘No’ not being used as an adjective, but more a command, still don’t know what part of speech it would be called…)

I think that will be that for ‘N’, so see you at ‘O’.

I’m hoping to post again before Christmas, but if not:

A Merry Christmas to all, and to all a goodnight (I had to make this Christmassy somehow to explain the title!)

L x