2. Terrorvision - Alice, What's The Matter?
3. Saian Supa Crew - Angela
4. The Beach Boys - Barbara Ann
5. Spank Rock - Backyard Betty
6. Ram Jam - Black Betty
7. Too $hort - Blow Job Betty
8. Dr. John - My Opinionation (Theme From Blossom)
9. Shaggy - Oh Carolina
10. Kate Nash - Caroline is A Victim
11. Plan B - Charmaine
12. Chicks - Daria
13. Johnny Cash - Delia's Gone
14. Michael Jackson - Dirty Diana
15. The Velvet Underground - Sweet Jane
16. Franz Ferdinand - Jaqueline
17. Golden Smog - Jennifer Save Me
18. Dizzee Rascal - Jezebel
19. Dolly Parton - Jolene
20. The Ramones - Judy Is A Punk
21. The Libertines - What Katie Did
22. The Kinks - Lola
I never knew a girl named Aisha. At least none I can remember. The song by Death In Vegas with Iggy Pop delivering a spoken word piece about murder and escaped serial killers is terrific though with its heavy riff-age, thumping drums and weird, sinister synth details and an eerie organ part. On the other hand I have, however, encountered a few Alices in my time. My best pal's missus is a lovely actress and comedian called Alice and I shared a flat with a delightful French girl called Alice for about a year too.
Also two of the last three girls I pulled before meeting my partner were coincidentally called Alice. One of them worked in the same building as I did. I worked in a cafe/bar in the ground floor and the rest of the building with filled with various studios. Alice was a pretty, mixed race girl who worked in fashion. One night she got drunk with her friends while I was at work and came behind the bar to kiss me and demand that I take her out and then when I messaged her to set up the date a few days later she blew me off. Girls can be weird. The other girl I worked with for a while and had a really great, fun, flirty relationship with but who I avoided getting into anything more with due to the fact that I wasn't going to be kicking around in Edinburgh for much longer and a significant age difference (I'm about 10 years older). We had our moments though and then we both moved on and met the people we are now in happy long-term relationships now with within about two weeks of each other. I can't remember specifically asking any of these girls what the matter was though. I would be embarrassed about admitting that Terrorvision were one of my two favourite bands when I was 15 if I didn't still have a soft spot for their first two and a half albums.
Two Angelas spring to mind; one I went to school with, who had long, straight ginger hair and that is about all the details I can really summon about her, the other is the pretty actress friend of my sister, who I met a bunch of times and got on quite well with. So the song by French rap consortium Saian Supa Crew remains the most prominent associations I have with the name, albeit with a slightly different pronunciation. Same goes for the name Barbara Ann and the song by The Beach Boys, except I have never met anyone with such a silly name and doubt that such a person even really exists.
For such a common name I honestly can't recall having ever met a single Betty. Blowjob or otherwise. The Spank Rock song on here is an abrasive electro-rap banger featuring Spank delivering typically lewd bars as effectively as he ever did. The Ram Jam song is a classic rock stomp cover of a (possibly) Leadbelly standard. It is incredible. And Too $hort's song outdoes even Spank Rock in crudeness. But this is his zone, his bread and butter. Too $hort can spin yarns of filth at will, ad infinitum. This disc really doesn't need three songs about Bettys to be honest, I should have stuck with just the Ram Jam tune and made room for a couple of other girls.
Including My Opinionation in this mix was always a bit of a cheat as well. The girls name only appears in parenthesis as it was the theme song for the early 90's television comedy named after the lead character; Blossom. It is a fun enough ditty but again it should have been shorn to allow another lady in. Still to this day she is the only Blossom I have ever been aware of anyway.
Ice skating at Murrayfield Ice Rink with my dad and my sister every weekend for a few years when I was about 11 years-old will always come to mind whenever I hear Shaggy's 1993 hit Oh Carolina. It must have been on the staffs favourite tape, as it seemed like it was ALWAYS on. There is no question that it is a fantastic song obviously. FYI; I was pretty good at skating for a while there. These are not two things that necessarily relate to each other.
One of my good mates in high school had a little sister named Caroline. That is the only Caroline that I can remember having met. She was a drummer I think. Caroline Is A Victim in the song by Kate Nash but the real victim here is me for having listened to such utter, irredeemable shit.
When Plan B's debut album came out I was quite excited about it. Now not so much. Charmaine is an acoustic rap number detailing, in cringe-worthy terms, Plan B's affair with the titular girl but it takes a twist at the end into peadophillic/statutory rape territory. I amn't sure if this is meant to be funny or a cautionary tale, but it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. I must have gotten a juvenile kick out of it at the time but now I am in my thirties it doesn't seem so amusing. Zero encounters with a real Charmaine for me either.
Irish pop punk trio Chicks released 2 EPs circa 1999/2000 before disbanding. Their songs were generally shouty gems about things they liked including Jackie Can and in this instance a girl named Daria. Presumably she is named after the lead of the MTV show of the same name that was popular particularly amongst teenage girls in that era. I remember Luke picked up their first EP Criminales, Coches, Pistolas Y Chicas and telling me about them cause he knew it'd be right up my street. Daria was on their second one; Little Monkeys With Lots Of Money. Eight songs are all we got from them unfortunately. Daria is probably my favourite. Darias in my life are scarce. I think my mum or sister used to work with one as I'm sure I heard of one being referred to in conversation but I can't remember if I ever met them.
Here's a good Tinder story for you, thankfully with less murder and drama than the Johnny Cash song Delia's Gone; I was on the dating app for a wee while when it came out. I was single and it seemed like fun. The pattern with most of the matches I got went like so; I would message them some vaguely amusing question, they would respond with little or no wit or vim, I would try another approach and either get nothing back or a similarly boring second response, the end. Almost every time. Not Delia though, her responses were full of personality and sass. She was funny and engaging and I got to know a fair bit about her background, her job and what she did for fun.
I knew I liked her when I gave her Superman/Batman/Spiderman in a fuck/marry/kill. To my mind there is only one correct answer to this one. It is a great litmus test. If you can put your (my) nerdy pedantic impulses aside and ignore the fact that one of these characters is from a different comicbook universe to the other two, then it really is the perfect version of the game. It covers three strong male archetypes; the muscular, seemingly invincible hero type with the geeky, insecure sensitive side, the dark and dangerous, fucked up but ultimately good guy and the geek with the good sense of humour and surprising strength. The way a person answers will tell you a lot about them because they have to have reasons. Her response was the one.
Still the chat fizzled out quite quickly, probably because I am rubbish at, well, knowing when it's on and when to make a move and more or less everything when it comes to girls. So that was that... Until a few months later; a girl comes into the cafe I was working in on Mare Street. I hadn't been at the counter when she'd arrived so I hadn't served her but I saw her sitting at the back of the room. I thought 'that's weird, that girl looks a lot like that Delia girl from Tinder.' Then our PR girl arrived and went and sat down with her. I became more and more suspicious that it might actually be her.
Bear in mind, London has a population of 8.6 million people and the search zone radius I had set on Tinder was to a large portion of the city. The likelihood of matching and then meeting by chance is slim at the best of times; and yet that is what happened. As she left our eyes met and I could see that she thought she recognised me but wasn't sure. It turned out that the company that she worked for was going to be having its first anniversary party at our cafe/bar. And so for the next few weeks she would show up at my work to have meetings and organise. We met in passing but skipped formal introductions, I never got her name and so I still wasn't 100% sure that she was the Tinder girl, just like 95%. After a couple of days she added me on Facebook confirming it. But it was too late for anything between us to be anything but cripplingly awkward.
In Johnny Cash's song he kills Delia, shoots her (twice) dead. Then in his jail cell she haunts him. The lyrics vary slightly if you're listening to the 1962 version or the 1994 version which is the one included here, but the basic arc of the murder ballad is the same. The outcome of Delia and I's story is more simple; we have remained digital friends on facebook but any potential relationship beyond that was scuppered by my lack of game and our mutual awkwardness. It wasn't meant to be.
The first musician I can remember being really into, obsessed with in fact, was Michael Jackson. I realise I am not alone in this, especially with people of my generation. My dress up and dance game was slightly above average however. 7 year-old me spent many hours watching his music videos, particularly Smooth Criminal, on repeat and learning every hat-tilt, leg flick and crotch grab. I was only 5 years-old when Dirty Diana, Jacksons tale about one particularly seductive groupie, came out. It wasn't until about a year or 2 later that it became my favourite MJ song. It's a weird one for a kid under 10 to really love, it is mid-tempo and sounds dark, all in the key of G minor, I couldn't have understood the subject matter and he had far more catchy and colourful numbers to choose from. But it is so dramatic, those hair metal guitars are so over the top. It stands to reason that my other favourite song at that time was Europe's The Final Countdown. No Diana's I actually met in person made quite the impact that this (possibly) fictional one did on me.
One of my best mates has a younger sister called Jane. She is a really nice girl and the song Sweet Jane from the fourth Velvet Underground album Loaded is also really nice. Jaqueline, the opening track from the fantastic 2004 debut, self-titled album from Glasgow indie-rock outfit Franz Ferdinand is an immense, angular, hook-laden anthem that unfortunately will be forever overshadowed for me by another Glasgow Jaqueline; Limmy's Jaquiline McCafferty. There are an abundance of Jennifers in my life, cousins, friends and acquaintances and like most of them super-group Golden Smog's song Jennifer Save Me has been a lovely one to know, admittedly not that well.
Misogyny in music in general has been a problem for a long time, even if some people, racists I like to call them, will say it is only really a problem in different forms of hip-hop. Some of my favourite artists have troublesome ways of discussing and depicting women and so it is particularly weird to really love songs that you disagree with so completely morally with regards to message and language. For me this happens a lot and Jezebel by grime legend-come pop clown Dizzee Rascal is one of those times. I cannot condone his slut-shaming but I also cannot deny that I love this song. At least Dizzee does a little unpacking and analyzing of what kind of life the girl in question leads but this kind of talk about women is archaic and unacceptable. Obviously the same point could be made in reference to a number of the tracks included on this mix. Needless to say if I ever meet a Jezebel I will not assume to judge her in the way that Dizzee does the one in his song.
Never knew a Jolene but boy do I love Jolene; the flawless, country classic by Dolly Parton. I also have a lot of love for The White Stripes' cover of it. As for Judy, the same deal as many of the other girls on this tape; I'm sure I've known some but none have been as memorable as The Ramones' punky juggernaut Judy Is A Punk. I fell in love with The Ramones when I was about 19 and this song was possibly the first one of theirs that got its hooks into me. A few years later director West Anderson used the song perfectly in his film The Royal Tennebaums, so now it will be forever tied to that sequence. Not necessarily a bad thing in this case.
For a while there, in my early twenties, I'm not sure what I would have done without Katie. When I first met her she was my new best friend's kid sister. They had a really close relationship. They fought more than me and my sister did but spent way more time with each other too. They went to the same parties, bars and clubs and shared friends. At some point, after high school, when Luke was working in clubs and as a result was in the pub less, I ended up spending more time hanging out with Katie than I did him.
In Johnny Cash's song he kills Delia, shoots her (twice) dead. Then in his jail cell she haunts him. The lyrics vary slightly if you're listening to the 1962 version or the 1994 version which is the one included here, but the basic arc of the murder ballad is the same. The outcome of Delia and I's story is more simple; we have remained digital friends on facebook but any potential relationship beyond that was scuppered by my lack of game and our mutual awkwardness. It wasn't meant to be.
The first musician I can remember being really into, obsessed with in fact, was Michael Jackson. I realise I am not alone in this, especially with people of my generation. My dress up and dance game was slightly above average however. 7 year-old me spent many hours watching his music videos, particularly Smooth Criminal, on repeat and learning every hat-tilt, leg flick and crotch grab. I was only 5 years-old when Dirty Diana, Jacksons tale about one particularly seductive groupie, came out. It wasn't until about a year or 2 later that it became my favourite MJ song. It's a weird one for a kid under 10 to really love, it is mid-tempo and sounds dark, all in the key of G minor, I couldn't have understood the subject matter and he had far more catchy and colourful numbers to choose from. But it is so dramatic, those hair metal guitars are so over the top. It stands to reason that my other favourite song at that time was Europe's The Final Countdown. No Diana's I actually met in person made quite the impact that this (possibly) fictional one did on me.
One of my best mates has a younger sister called Jane. She is a really nice girl and the song Sweet Jane from the fourth Velvet Underground album Loaded is also really nice. Jaqueline, the opening track from the fantastic 2004 debut, self-titled album from Glasgow indie-rock outfit Franz Ferdinand is an immense, angular, hook-laden anthem that unfortunately will be forever overshadowed for me by another Glasgow Jaqueline; Limmy's Jaquiline McCafferty. There are an abundance of Jennifers in my life, cousins, friends and acquaintances and like most of them super-group Golden Smog's song Jennifer Save Me has been a lovely one to know, admittedly not that well.
Misogyny in music in general has been a problem for a long time, even if some people, racists I like to call them, will say it is only really a problem in different forms of hip-hop. Some of my favourite artists have troublesome ways of discussing and depicting women and so it is particularly weird to really love songs that you disagree with so completely morally with regards to message and language. For me this happens a lot and Jezebel by grime legend-come pop clown Dizzee Rascal is one of those times. I cannot condone his slut-shaming but I also cannot deny that I love this song. At least Dizzee does a little unpacking and analyzing of what kind of life the girl in question leads but this kind of talk about women is archaic and unacceptable. Obviously the same point could be made in reference to a number of the tracks included on this mix. Needless to say if I ever meet a Jezebel I will not assume to judge her in the way that Dizzee does the one in his song.
Never knew a Jolene but boy do I love Jolene; the flawless, country classic by Dolly Parton. I also have a lot of love for The White Stripes' cover of it. As for Judy, the same deal as many of the other girls on this tape; I'm sure I've known some but none have been as memorable as The Ramones' punky juggernaut Judy Is A Punk. I fell in love with The Ramones when I was about 19 and this song was possibly the first one of theirs that got its hooks into me. A few years later director West Anderson used the song perfectly in his film The Royal Tennebaums, so now it will be forever tied to that sequence. Not necessarily a bad thing in this case.
For a while there, in my early twenties, I'm not sure what I would have done without Katie. When I first met her she was my new best friend's kid sister. They had a really close relationship. They fought more than me and my sister did but spent way more time with each other too. They went to the same parties, bars and clubs and shared friends. At some point, after high school, when Luke was working in clubs and as a result was in the pub less, I ended up spending more time hanging out with Katie than I did him.
Luke, George and I then moved into the now infamous party flat on Gilmore Place and Katie was basically the unofficial fourth flatmate when we weren't propping up the bar in Rush. She'd come round and we would stay up all night playing video games, usually Pro Evolution Soccer, playing Shithead and sometimes Scrabble, watching episodes of The OC or music videos on MTV, a bit of fusbol, a fair amount of drinking and getting up to other general mischief. There was a rotating cast of characters that joined us but the two of us were a fixture.
Bouts of depression, a few panic attacks, the loss of a dear friend and being too messed up to function were some of the lows from a period that felt very much like a rollercoaster. And Katie was there for it all. We comforted each other and laughed with each other and got crazy, shit-faced drunk together. And then she moved to Dundee for uni and I was gutted. We'd been in each others company so much and had been asked if we were in a relationship so often that I think even we weren't sure what to make of it. We pushed it a few times but never became 'more than friends', which is a weird phrase. It implies that being friends isn't as valuable. Katie has been invaluable to me and What Katie Did was to be a great friend when I needed one. And still is. Shoop, shoop, de-lang, de-lang.
Lola by The Kinks is great isn't it? I always loved that song. I'm sure at some point I met a girl who was named after the song. It was either too long ago to remember or I was too intoxicated to retain the information fully.
Listening back to this mix I'd like to suggest a few edits to my younger self; with 2 of the three Bettys cut and no Blossom there would be space for Julia by Silver Sun and Laura by Scissor Sisters and possibly Amy by Ryan Adams and/or Debra by Beck. I have no stories about any Julias or Debras and of the Lauras I've encountered only the loveley mousey one from my year at High School has made any real impact. She was pretty and sweet and had no idea how attractive she was, and all the dudes liked her but nobody ever hit on her for some reason. She seemed too innocent to mess with, almost intimidatingly so. Amys? There have been a number but the Ryan Adams song might be the prettiest I've known.
The absence of Billie Jean is indefensible.
And that is the end of the first half of What's Her Name? having covered the girls with names starting with A through L. See you after the break for M through Z.
Lola by The Kinks is great isn't it? I always loved that song. I'm sure at some point I met a girl who was named after the song. It was either too long ago to remember or I was too intoxicated to retain the information fully.
Listening back to this mix I'd like to suggest a few edits to my younger self; with 2 of the three Bettys cut and no Blossom there would be space for Julia by Silver Sun and Laura by Scissor Sisters and possibly Amy by Ryan Adams and/or Debra by Beck. I have no stories about any Julias or Debras and of the Lauras I've encountered only the loveley mousey one from my year at High School has made any real impact. She was pretty and sweet and had no idea how attractive she was, and all the dudes liked her but nobody ever hit on her for some reason. She seemed too innocent to mess with, almost intimidatingly so. Amys? There have been a number but the Ryan Adams song might be the prettiest I've known.
The absence of Billie Jean is indefensible.
And that is the end of the first half of What's Her Name? having covered the girls with names starting with A through L. See you after the break for M through Z.
I'm glad I don't know any songs about a girl named... well, that's a more complicated story than I care to get into.
(Intermission)
(Intermission)
