Reparata & The Delrons - Captain Of Your Ship (1968/ No. 13/ 10 weeks/ Bell)

(Try to cast the early 1990s advertisement for rice puddings from your mind)

It starts with a few blaring atonal foghorns and chiming bells to set up the shipping theme. then a springy bassline with a few choppy things on top of it. And then a crisp and instructive voice calls out to the listener;

This is the cap-tain of your ship!
Your heeeaaart speaking

The tone of authority is impressive, and makes the following development less alarming than it might be;

We've run into a little storm!
The boooaaat's leaking

This works upon the listener as both a tannoy announcement and an internal monologue, as much the superego as the heart...

And if you have-n't guessed -
This is an S-O-S!
If you still love me -
answer yes

A particularly great thing about this record is how the arrangement manages to convey the sensation of being adrift in treacherous waters; the bass bobs and lurches from side to side, a morse code blips a jolly distress call, while some rinkydink keyboards gush and spill.

And then the Delrons echo the thoughts of Captain Reparata;

Yoooooouuuuuu're GO-ING to LOSE a GOOD THING!

There's real duality to the division of vocals here, I think. If Reparata is the sound of internal thought, then the Delrons act as pure feeling, calling out to the desired man like sirens;

You got to love!
You know that you need him!
You got to love!
You know that you love him NOW!

The second verse marries together the two streams of voice at the point of greatest crisis and conclusion:

REPARATA: You're run-ning off your course!
You've got your signals crossed!
And now the com-pass points to love
DELRONS: looooooooooooove!

There's a universal feeling being evoked here: I'm a terrible mess at the moment - help me out, lover-boy! It's rarely been created with such concision and elation, though.

Dean Martin - Gentle On My Mind (1969/ No. 2/ 24 weeks/ Reprise)

Insouciant, that's the word... In some ways, I think that this is a fascinating mismatch between singer and song. The song itself appears to be a tremendously earnest and allusive thing, like 'Elusive Butterfly' or 'Both Sides Now', whilst Dean Martin - as always - does not sound like a troubled man in this recording.

But then again, the narrator is supposed to be a visionary tramp, a Doestoevskian holy fool, whose insights and pantheism are inspired by the thought of the woman who lies gentle on his mind. Martin certainly sounds like a cheery lush, but years of drink appear to have marinated the sentiment into something both truly felt and a drunk's seductive rhetoric.

So here I imagine the singer turning up at the woman's door, a charming freeloading drunk, staying to drink the house dry, eat the larder empty and warm her bed yet again. This is an entirely good thing for him, but perhaps less so for her.

Scritti Politti - The Word Girl (1985/ No. 6/ 14 weeks/ Virgin)

"Don't feel sorry for lover-boy/ though he wants the world to love him/ then he goes and spoils it all/ for love" (Scritti Politti, 1988)

 The title alone has several meanings.

 "The first time baby, that I came to you...": As a 12 year-old listener I thought that the Word Girl was supposed to be an actual woman, a rather bookish object of desire;

To do what I should do to long for you to hear
I open up my heart ... and watch her name appear

 "The second time baby, that I came to you...": A little later I realised that the Word Girl was as much a creation on the part of the singer as a specific Girl, the actual loved other becoming rationalised, explained and formulated into a construct of language;

A word for you to use a girl without a cause
A name for what you lose when it was never yours

 "The third time baby, that I came to you...": Decades on, I noticed that the title is sometimes written as 'The Word "Girl"': the song not even necessarily being about any actual Girl at all, but the effect of the idea of a Girl - as described and written through language - upon the singer.

Name the girl outgrew the girl was never real
She stands for your abuse the girl is no ideal

It's a word for what you do in a world of broken rules
She found a place for you along her chain of fools (...)

Oh how your flesh and blood be-came the word!

 A fiendishly conceptual song, then. Something that is superficially a love song which then turns out to be a conceptual song about the construction of meaning does sound, when you describe it, like the sort of thing that would be wearisomely arch to actually hear. The reality is anything but the case. There are two very simple reasons for this; the music and the singing.

 The music is dubalicious perfect pristine pop, ostensibly reggae but always something other, that transcends simple genre description. It serves two functions; sounding aquatic, shimmering and endlessly echoing, leaving you with the feeling as it progresses that you're listening to something far more expansive than the few minutes that it lasts for; but this echoing effect also sounds gleaming and reflective, the endless echoes also the endless reflections of life in a hall of mirrors, the singer's lovelorn thoughts of the girl forever reflecting in on themselves in a tantalising but intangible text. Both of these effects accurately evoke the sensation of knowing that you are in love and at the same time not knowing the loved other...

 Although the action of turning a woman into a construction of language has a wicked fairytale-like quality as a metaphor, I don't think that many listeners hearing this would feel that the singer was at all a bad person, but a daydreaming romantic idealist. A lot of this weight is carried by the gorgeousness of Green Gartside's light tenor voice, an instrument once described as carrying a "debonair ruination", ideal for conveying wistfulness and fascination. This is especially apparent in the song's endless coda, two minutes of the singer's honeyed voice repeating

Oh how...
your flesh...
and blood...

 He's reflecting on what was lost and what could never be; realising the actual beating heart of the woman behind his construction of her; and yet still lost in the rapture of putting this woman into language.

Its not just a conceptual exercise, but its a single with a genuine heart, and therein lies the source of its tremendous effect.

Ian Hunter - Once Bitten Twice Shy (1975/ No. 14/ 10 weeks/ CBS)

It starts with the voice -

'ULLOW!

It sounds London, wracked, hoarse - like a debauched Michael Caine. (This sloppiness implies a certain emotional honesty as well as seediness, and because Mott the Hoople were a good few years before punk, the prole styling sounds a good deal fresher and more original to a present-day listener)

And then there are some lolloping drums and a Keef Richards riff. It sounds quite simple and uncluttered, almost minimal - all the more space to fill in with the story, then!

'Once Bitten Twice Shy' must be the most scuzzy and sordid single that I'll discuss in this column, an epic tale of lust gone wrong. The story of a "little girl" and a rock singer "A hummin' and a strummin' all over God's world", with the tenor of the relationship between the two parties is established from their first meeting;

"Yew didn't know what rock 'n' roll WUZ!
until yew met a drummer on a Grey-haind BUS!
I got there in the nick - of - time
before he got his hands across yawr state li-hi-hi-ne!"

(from out of nowhere a ragtimey piano tinkles)

You realise that the singer arrived in the nick of time not to save her honour but to get in there first. Despite the ostensible innocence of the girl, her propensity to get into trouble runs in her family;

"Yew didn't know how rock n' roll LOOKED!
until yew cawt your sista with a guy from the GROOP!
half-way home in the parking lot
by the look in her eyes she was givin' what she got..."

As you might expect, the affair is a bloody mess, the singer's haplessness and the girl's deceit a terrible combination;

"Woman yaw a MESS gonna die in yaw SLEEP!
all the blood on my AMP and my Les Paul's BEAT!
I can't leave yew home cos you're runnin' ahrahnd -
My bes' frend told me yaw the best TRICK in town"

Now that things have reached this nadir, the seedy singer takes to moralising;

"Yew didn't know that rock n' roll BURNED!
so yew bought a candle and yew loved and yew learned -
Yew got the rhythm, yew got the speed
mamma's little baby likes it short and sweet!"

This - you get the impression - rather ill-earned streak of male moralising is then lethally undercut by the final verse's reversal;

"I didn't know ya got a rock n' roll RECID!
until I saw yaw picture on anuva guy's JACKIT!
Yew told ME I was the only one -
and look at yew now - well, it's dark as it's dumb..."

Not only has she taken him for a fool and gone, she's now more of a success than he's ever been. I've only now realised that when I listen to this song, I imagine the jailbait siren femme fatale as being the same composite woman as Zola's Nana! You don't like her, but you know what the singer sees in her.

The music of this tale is fantastically structured - essentially, it gets louder and louder over five minutes, and Hunter's cry of "Once bitten twice SHY, babe!" gets more and more fed up and self pitying after each verse. It's the drums and riff that hold the thing together. Right at the back of the mix there's a ticking metronomic woodblock thing that you barely notice, but which gives the recording its sense of space and poise, and cues in explosions of guitar solos, backing vocals etc. This technique is particularly pronounced in the middle-eight, which sounds like 'Connection' by Elastica, only 19 years too early)

The four types of Arts undergraduate

Having taught over a hundred separate University Media Arts seminars (even having an INSTIL teaching qualification to prove it) means that I have a few reflections about the group dynamics of classes. In classic Billy style, I've formulated a theory. But is it just a silly fancy of mine?

There are 4 types of undergraduates:

1. THOSE WHO WILL CONTRIBUTE SOMETHING USEFUL. Innately bright, imaginative, informed, confident students - as often European students as British ones. A minority, though there were four or five of them in one of my classes one year. You have to be on top of your game when teaching them. I'm very aware with some that they are actually more intelligent than me, and that I only seem like an authority because I've got 16 years more experience than them.

2. THOSE WHO WILL LEARN SOMETHING. Less confident than 1, but always prepared to work, listen and try. Can be cowed by 1s, so teaching is an important exercise in balancing the two groups. Over the course of a year (to a lesser extent a term) they can transform into 1s. As a teacher, I always try to show appreciation and encouragement for their contributions. They are my favourite students to teach, and getting them to understand concepts that are new to them and watching them bloom are the best thing about teaching. My preference may also be because I am operating from a higher level of intellectual confidence than they are starting from, unlike 1s. Unless it's a bad year, at least half of undergraduates fall into this group.

3. THOSE WHO ARE JUST PASSING THROUGH. University is three years of social life and it's actually really quite hard to fail a humanities degree if you put in a fairly minimal level of effort. These students have quickly sussed this out. They annoyed me a lot more as a university librarian, and particularly as a halls of residence warden, than they do as a teacher. There are important subdivisions within this group;

i) THOSE WHO ARE FRIENDS WITH 1s & 2s. Because their friends are getting something out of the class and they have some degree of empathy with the job that you're putting in as teacher, they don't want to rock the boat and will put in a minimal level of effort without ever stretching themselves. I don't mind teaching these students, because I can see myself in them and they usually strike me as quite nice people. On a particularly productive day, when you're teaching in an engaging way, they can rise to the level of 2s.

ii) THOSE WHO WILL DO NOTHING, BUT WHO WON'T ROCK THE BOAT. They won't refuse to do anything that you ask them, but they will put no thought or effort in to it at all. A class can probably carry 2 or 3 of these.

iii) THOSE WHO ARE BORED INTO MISCHIEF. These can really drag down any seminar, especially if they find other people to amuse and divert. Whether you can teach around them depends upon how much censure you can detect from others in the group.

I'd estimate that about a third of students are in category 3.

4. DANGEROUS IDIOTS. You only get a couple of these a year. They generally don't turn up, or quickly drop out.

There's also another category of most CHINESE STUDENTS, with the specific handicap of only being able to speak very limited English and coming from an educational background of no humanities teaching as we understand it, but that's a rather different problem.

With all groups, the watchwords for a productive and harmonious session are humility and enthusiasm. This applies just as much to me as a teacher as it does to them as students. On some days I have more of these qualities than others.

Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass - Spanish Flea (1965/ No. 3/ 20 weeks/ A & M)

The most addictive record ever made. Whenever I hear it, I always have to play it again, usually several times. If I were a musicologist I could tell you why, but I think the way that it seems exceptionally brief might be part of the reason, too short for it's cheery appeal to even start to pall. Also, even I can tell that the way that, in lieu of a bridge, we get a rinky tinky harpsichord thing coming in for only 15 seconds, an instrument that hasn't been used at all for the rest of the tune, is a stroke of genius.

I can't imagine hearing this thing ever not making me a little bit happier, even if only by an iota.

(I've never properly heard the vocal version, although Homer does sing the chorus in an episode of The Simpsons. I don't really want to either - The pleasing tactile arrangement of this isn't going to be enhanced by novelty lyrics about a flea tourist, is it?)

The Source & Candi Staton - You Got The Love (1991/ No. 3/ 38 weeks/ Truelove)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5a22_75rWE

"Sometimes I feel like
Throwing my hands up in the air
I know
I can count on you"

I'm not sure that I've written about a single with so much of an afterlife as this one before. It got to number 4 in 1991, and then remixed to 3 in 1997, and remixed again to 7 in 2006. And that's not to mention the recent regrettable cover version.


"Sometimes I feel like saying
Lord I just don't care
But you've got the love I need
To see me through"

I've rarely written about a single from such a modest provenance, either. The recording of Candi Staton used here was made for a keep-fit video in 1986, rather a minor job of work for such a great singer. But Staton's biography is a particularly troubled one, and she would have either been in - or recovering from - one of several terrible marriages, and either addicted to - or trying to recover from - something at the time. She certainly never seems to be very happy about this song in interviews, forgetting that she even sang it for years, feeling that her performance was below par, a guide vocal rather than a proper session.

"Sometimes it seeems that
The going is just too rough
And things go wrong
No matter what I do"

Which goes to show that proper singers never lose an innate and consummate sense of professionalism - mere mortals dream of singing like she does here! Its a song about redemption, but the redemptive force is inside Staton's voice in the first place, vulnerable and simultaneously full of the prospect of ecstasy. Its a compelling, dangerous, thing to hear, just like in 'Young Hearts Run Free', where the worldly-wise lived experience of awful marriage is offset by the joyous yearning for freedom.

"Now and theen I feel
That life is just too much
But you've got the love
I need to see me through"

Despite the inauspicious circumstances of recording, 'You Got the Love' got released, and a tiny bit of attention, in 1986 - enough for it to stay in a few people's minds and for them to realise its tremendous potential as a club track a few years later. The sparse house music setting certainly gives Candi a framework to call out to the listener, and makes every moment unremittingly tense;

blipablipblipablipblipablipblaipablip -
DONNGDANNG! DONNGDADONNGDANNG!

(There's even a sampled cackle incongruously buried in the mix!)

She's not singing about a boyfriend, of course, she's putting all her faith she has left in God. I wonder what uses listeners of this song have put it to... At a club, you'd play it late into the evening. The sense of desperation and ecstasy in the song mean that it would work best some hours into a night out, when you've had a few emotional knocks and promises by that stage, and were starting to be aware of fatigue.

"When food is gone
You are my daaiily meal
Mm-hm!
When friends are gone I know
My saviour's love iis reeaal
Your loove is real!"

And then this comes on, this voice in the wilderness that suddenly makes everything in life seem much more serious and necessary. Uh, this drug is starting to work now, perhaps that boy or girl might be the one... And Candi's voice, all that suffering and mess and yearning for redemption makes absolute sense. God!

"O-ccasionally -
My thoughts are brave and friends are few
O-ccasionally -
I cry out Lord what must I do?
O-ccasionally -
I call up Master make me new
You've got the love
I need to see me through"

Its the possibility of both sin and salvation. The source of pop's deepest power. Soul music.