MacArthur Park

MacArthur Park is a strange song.

The original was recorded in a teeny studio near Leicester Square, with Richard Harris bellowing his words over the top of lush strings. Listening to it, one is reminded of a manic drunk yelling near the duck pond. Someone left his cake out in the rain.

This remarkable cover by Donna Summer is almost as odd. MacArthur Park becomes a fine piece of disco, achieving a strange poinancy mixed with hot shoe shuffle. It succeeds because it pays no attention whatsoever to the original.

Cover Me

Musicians often do covers. The best are the ones that bring something new to the song, beyond the original. The worst are those that add nothing and subtract the greatness of the original. That poor schmuck covering "Alluelia" for example. That's one that rarely gets any better.

There are good covers, bad covers, and many mediocre ones.

We'll start with Aztec Camera and Van Halen's "Jump". I heard this on holiday recently, and thought it was Lou Reed. It probably should be, but as a friend remarked, it sounds more like an invitation to top yourself than the mad, lycra hugging, masturbatory original. You might as well jump, you know.

Christmas Time is Here Again

And that means you have to listen that one, infernal EMI Christmas album wherever you go. The EMI Christmas Album.

Everyone knows that Christmas songs are rubbish. You buy them because the festive season addles your brain with wine and good will. In January they are rightly discarded. Since Simon Cowell rogered the Number 1 spot with whatever pathetic excuse for a singer he's dragged through ITV, Christmas music has got even less interesting.

There is only one good Christmas song, which is Slade's "Merry Christmas Everybody" which was made for whooping it up in the pub drinking Advocaat. The rest of the EMI Christmas Album is detritus. If you can crawl through Chris Rea singing "Driving Home For Christmas", John and Yoko crabbing out that war is over, if you want it, complete with tuneless vocals, you might despair that there are any good musical times at Christmas.

Christmas is for singing yourself, and the carols that you learned at school. That's the joy of it. It's for everyone and you don't need popstars to do it for you, unlike the rest of the year when we've all got day jobs to worry about. Christmas music can have finesse such as the carols from Kings in Cambridge, but at large in England there is a tacit acceptance that Christmas will mean wassailing from tuneless six year old girls and recorder recitals.

But Christmas is a time of good will to all men (even Simon Cowell) and so there have been some interesting songs written about Christmas. For good or bad it can be one of the most powerfully emotional times of the year, and I toast and post to that.

Mike Hugg and Highly Likely - What Happened to You?

Or the theme from "Whatever happened to the Likely Lads?"

This one is pure 1970s pop, and a bit clever. Mike Hugg of Mannfred Mann wrote the song and Highly Likely were his session band. I've never heard the full thing, only those lines that ask you what you used to be. It's an incredibly downbeat song in total. Miserable. Odd then that it should be the theme to a comedy. But there's a pathos in this that mirrors the comedy perfectly.

When I watched as a child I didn't understand Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? My parents found it horribly funny. Now I get it completely. I've been cleaning up in order to move, and a slip of paper found in the pocket of an old coat can sometimes bring it all back. What became of the people we used to be?

Here they are, the once Likely Lads, with faces of bewilderment as responsibility beckons. I'm glad they never revisited it. There never could be much funnier than this.

Ron Grainer - Doctor Who

Okay, its been terrifying children for decades, but the music alone is haunting.

This remarkable music is made by tape looping, white noise, and wave form oscillators titervated by Delia Derbyshire in the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop. Not one note comes from a musical instrument. That someone saw fit to create for a children's programme in 1963 is brilliant. The current version is with a full orchestra but goes to show you can't really improve it.



Delia Derbyshire was later invited by Paul McCartney to collaborate with the Beatles. The BBC nixed it. Gah!

Laurie Johnson - The Avengers

Ah, the Avengers, British television at its campest, funniest and most stylish.

I confess to shamelessly ripping my flirting technique from Diana Rigg and even copying her haircut when I was 16. It worked, I got that higher class of boyfriend who takes you out for a drink before lunging for your bra straps.

The Avengers owes a lot to Johnson's theme, recorded with a full orchestra for ATV. Lush, opulent, strings are undermined utterly rink dink piano. Perfect, atmospheric, and sets you up for both the sublime and the ridiculous.

Bill Bailey - The BBC Apocalypse

A silly one, but shows that the BBC can still style out a great theme when they want to.

Bill gave it a great remix, and when I managed to see him perform it live at the Apollo on Shaftesbury Avenue, the whole crowd got down. Next time the 10 o'clock news comes on, get your glow sticks out.