Mop-up of the season

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Everyone does end-of-season awards, but only ours are called The Horseys. Rest assured that more time was spent writing the column than coming up with the name.

If there was one bit that didn’t get finished, it was the Every Dog Has Its Day Award. We didn’t want to call it that. We wanted to name it after a great song by a terrible band or artist, but we couldn’t really think of one that rang true. If you’ve any suggestions, leave a comment and we’ll vehemently disagree with you and also lose a little respect for you on the basis of your taste in music.

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54 comments

    1. Isn’t that song famous for being disappointing on its release because everyone thought the speeded up bit at the start which had featured in an advert was the proper song?

    2. Respect lost. Doubly lost, in fact. First for suggesting Babylon Zoo as a good song and secondly for being too young to remember it being released.

    3. The first album I ever bought was the original soundtrack to Joseph and his Technicolour Dreamcoat, starring Jason Donovan.

      I went to see the show in that there London, by which time Phillip Schofield had taken over. The disappointment has stayed with me ever since.

    4. The first single we ever bought was Wrote For Luck by Happy Mondays on 7″ vinyl. No-one ever believes us because it’s a bit too cool for a first single.

      However, what these people would discover if they asked the right questions is that several years before that our first album purchase was Best of the Monkees. On tape.

    5. The first single I ever bought was Happy Together by Jason Donovan (there may be a theme emerging).

      The first gig I went to was The Fugees. After I had taken their album back to the shop because all the swearing scared me. I swapped it for Jamiroquai.

      Different times.

    1. That’s actually a very good suggestion. Respect retained. Some of their other stuff was kind of cut from the same cloth, so it doesn’t quite give rise to the ‘where did that come from?’ sentiment we were aiming for, but that’s definitely an early frontrunner and might take some beating.

    1. Several people have said that. We don’t really know how to take it. We don’t normally look quite so tired and we also generally wear glasses. Not sure whether either of these facts addresses your concerns.

  1. Crazy Horses by the Osmonds.

    People might misunderstand what the ‘Crazy Horse award’ is about though.

  2. The first album I bought was Rubber Soul, some 19 years after it was released.

    The first single I bought was Close (to the Edit) by The Art of Noise

    The first gig I went to was cancelled, due to the lead singer having a throat infection. The first gig that went ahead that I went to was the restaging of the cancelled one, once the lead singer’s throat had got better – Marillion, Manchester Apollo, January 1985.

    All in all, not too bad. However, I did also buy Love and Pride by King at the same time as Close.

    Regarding the matter at hand, the thing here is not that it’s a one-hit wonder, more that it’s a band with many hits ALL OF WHICH WERE UTTER CRAP BAR ONE. That’s tricky. The Pet Shop Boys come close, but they had two very good songs (West End Girls and It’s a Sin). So in the end, I think it can only be Holding Back the Years by Simply Red.

    1. Bert, I was born in January 1985.

      I am now expecting my first child.

      I’ll just leave that information to hang in the air for a while.

    2. I am expecting my first child…

      …to lose half his possessions while away on scout camp this weekend.

      Anyway, you missed a great concert.

  3. Nice mop-up, KC.

    Might I commend to your Majesty Detective Marcus Burnett, the character played by Martin Lawrence in Bad Boys. Surely this is his solitary acceptable film role as an adult? I should add that I’ve discounted Do The Right Thing on account of Lawrence being 14 at the time and also the film itself looking really dated now.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Lawrence#Filmography

    1. He has some great moments in Boomerang.

      And by ‘great’ we of course mean ‘funny because they’re so excruciatingly bad’.

    2. If you’re talking movie rules, then surely it has to be Cuba Gooding, Jr., for Jerry Maguire?

  4. New Radicals – Get What You Give? Although they weren’t terrible, they just imploded.

  5. Did the Eagles ever do a decent song?

    How about Brimful of Asha by Cornershop, or the remix of Tequila by Terrorvision?

    I Believe in a Thing Called Love – The Darkness?

    1. Probably all veering towards one hit wonderdom rather than being mediocre acts who produced unheralded brilliance.

  6. Jimmy Peaks has answered the “great song by a terrible artist” question correctly with Crazy Horses by The Osmonds, given the context – The Shire Horse column and the awards being named the Horseys.

    But actually, in my opinion, the very greatest song by the most terrible artist must be Wired For Sound by Cliff Richard. I still can hardly believe it happened and at the time I came close to needing therapy for liking the song – I was not alone back then. Indeed, there should have been some sort of health and safety regulation preventing that recording or at the very least preventing its release, but those were the Thatcher years and greed prevailed.

    My first single was Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear by The Alan Price Set. I make no apologies for it:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8zI5xjwKYw

    1. We’re sure that someone like Cliff Richard did a really nasty sounding rock n roll track once and that we just can’t bring it to mind. It’s like a half-memory or a memory of a memory.

    2. Sometimes a bit of amnesia is your friend, KC.

      I can’t get that Wired For Sound out of my head now and I haven’t even dared play it…

      …and the lyrics must sound so archaic and incomprehensible to young folk. I suspect that there are media studies students learning about that song, using the same sort of “study guides with kinda translation notes” that we used to use for Shakespeare.

    3. Ah you beat me to it, I was just about to come back with the Cliff Richard one! The other one I had was:

      Brittney Spears – Toxic

      If that’s your kind of thing (which it is).

    1. Wheatus kid’s voice might just be the worst in history. That answer is unacceptable.

    2. Well in that case, may I submit Here I Stand by Madina Lake to the court.

      Or if it’s something from the almost terminal nu-metal scene you’re after, Wake Me Up by Evanescence, or (and this is my personal favourite) Alive by P.O.D.

  7. How You Remind Me – Nickelback
    (not a serious suggestion)
    Buddy Holly – Weezer?
    Are You Gonna Be My Girl – Jet?

  8. Just a Girl – No Doubt
    Pretty Fly For a White Guy – Offspring
    Lump – Presidents of the USA
    Baby I Don’t Care – Transvision Vamp (not fair on I Want Your Love, I guess)
    Road Rage – Catatonia
    I Predict A Riot – Kaiser Chiefs
    Ready to Go – Republica

    1. You’re just goading us now, right?

      Although it did remind us of Hella Good by No Doubt, which upon listening to again isn’t quite as good as we remembered it, but is at least the right sort of out-of-character music we were trying to come up with.

  9. Sorry to be off topic. Sorry to be off sport.

    Superleague playoff semi final, Wigan vs Warrington. Pure sport, pure heart. Absolutely magnificent.

    1. I would have enjoyed it and extolled its virtues just the same.

      Naturally.

      Of course.

      Without doubt.

    2. Worth saying as well, that while you can never guarantee excitement in sport, next Saturday’s Grand Final between Wigan and some other team is likely to be a properly good match. These are the two outstanding teams of the season, and picking a winner (Wigan) isn’t easy (Wigan).

      For everyone in the south, London especially, watching rugby league confers an air of extra-metropolitan cool that isn’t otherwise easy to get. Find a bar, demand that they turn off the football pre weekend anal-ysis, sit back and enjoy (Wigan winning).

    3. They’re the best club in the world. Never min anybody else. Shove it up your arse. We all can’t spake.

      Never gets old.

  10. This is all very well, but where is the Badger discussion post this week? I was hoping that would become a regular feature.

    Be that as it may, this piece of information has stumped me:

    “Javed Miandad, Inzamam-ul-Haq and Mohammad Yousuf went while crying. When Inzamam was leaving, I was the one who went and clapped for him. Is this my mistake that I am a Pakistani?” Younus Khan

    What does this mean? Did Jav, Inz, and Mo pee when they cried? And Khan made fun of them when they did? And is this something all Pakistanis do? So. Many. Questions.

    We need to assemble the brilliant minds here to deconstruct this text and extract the possible subliminal message.

    1. That whole Younus speech was gold. We had to cut out bits that would have made the newsletter any other week. He’s quite upset.

    2. Khan’s was a high class rant. The Pakistan players have a flexibility with English when they are interviewed that is wonderful to behold. Some of Ajmal’s stuff is very funny.

      I wish Katich had been half as poetic when he was dropped from the Aus team.

  11. Shiny Happy People – REM
    Anyone Can Play Guitar – Radiohead
    Yellow Submarine – The Beatles
    Earth Song – Michael Jackson

  12. I don’t have much to comment on this topic, so I took to reading some of the “Similar deliveries” at the bottom, including “AB de Villiers in un-ace shocker”. It amused me to see what appeared to be three alternate accounts from the same person at the bottom of the comments, defending AB’s guitar playing.

    I like to think that it was AB.

  13. I reckoned there were four, if you count the one in a different style to the rest…

    http://www.kingcricket.co.uk/ab-de-villiers-in-un-ace-shocker/2009/02/03/?replytocom=16585#respond

    Be nice to think that Abraham Benjamin de Villiers uses the female moniker Olivia Bethany Roma Marike de Villiers.

    The thing that impressed me most was the persistence of the (assumed to be) man. The first comment supportive of the song was written two weeks after anyone else had commented, the next a week after that, the next three months later, and the last came seven months after that. Actually who knows, another may be due at some point in the near future. With the attention to detail, patience and endurance that the poster has demonstrated, they seem well equipped to score double hundreds in Test cricket and average 51.02. But the repetitive nature of their interventions suggests a lack of imagination that could fatally undermine any attempt to establish themselves as an international performing artiste

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