Week 49 – Think Bensonium

Day 343: Rubber Bullets, 10CC

Roderick Benson — Fri, 26 Feb 2021 00:00:26 +0000

I think to finish off week 49 we should have another song by the UK band 10CC. This song certainly fits the upbeat feel of the songs I have cited this week. Another song which will get people on a dance floor at about 12:00 am when everyone has imbibed a certain amount of social lubricant and simply feel like strutting their stuff and singing along to a song that they probably first heard in their childhood.

Day 342: My Sharona, The Knack

Roderick Benson — Thu, 25 Feb 2021 00:00:51 +0000

Another late 70s classic, This song certainly dominated the radio airwaves and is one of those classic dance tunes which is wheeled out by every DJ at a wedding reception at about 11:30 pm when everyone is in a dancing mood

Day 341: Roxanne, The Police

Roderick Benson — Wed, 24 Feb 2021 00:00:14 +0000

Wow how could I have left this song for so long. What an absolute rock classic. Love the upstroke guitar strum throughout the song. Probably one of the best Police songs ever.

Day 340: Jenny, Tommy Tutone

Roderick Benson — Tue, 23 Feb 2021 00:00:56 +0000

So yesterday I cited the song “Rikki Don’t lose that number” by Steely Dan and that song reminded me of this famous one hit wonder by the band Tommy Tutone. I think the chorus of this song is quite clever with the girl’s telephone number plastered all over it: 8675309. I always wondered whether there was some poor person in the world who was the owner of that phone number and consequently around the time this song was a hit (1981) got tons of prank phone calls from young rockers who liked to listen to the top 100 charts on their little tranny radios.

Day 339: Rikki Don’t lose that number, Steely Dan

Roderick Benson — Mon, 22 Feb 2021 00:00:44 +0000

This is the first song by Steely Dan to appear in Covid Island Discs and perhaps his best known song. This song very much reminds me of another song that has the telephone number theme to its lyrics. I will cite that song in tomorrow’s Covid Island Disc.

Day 338: When God made me, Neil Young

Roderick Benson — Sun, 21 Feb 2021 00:00:01 +0000

Although I keep up to date with my Covid Island Disc blog, I am way behind on my summary videos for each week. When recording the summary video for week 20, the artist I focussed on was Neil Young. In 2005 Neil Young had a near brush with death after a successful operation for a brain aneurysm two days later caused a bleed from his femoral artery.

This experience led him to write this very beautiful song where Young asks several questions about God’s intentions for making him. I particularly like the searching verse which I think, as one get’s older, is echoed by many of us whether we are Christians, other faiths or no faith at all:

Was he planning only for believers?
Or for those who just had faith?
Did he envision all wars that were fought in his name?
Did he say there was only one way to be close to him?
When God made me
When God made me

God bless him!

Day 337: Sylvia’s Mother, Dr Hook

Roderick Benson — Sat, 20 Feb 2021 00:00:43 +0000

So last week I shared a classic hit from the 70s from the US band Dr Hook. This is another one of their not so well known song that tells an interesting story about a guy who has lost the love of his life, Sylvia. As he argues over the phone with her mother (Mrs Avery) about whether he can speak to her so he can “tell her goodbye”, each verse slowly unfolds the story of Sylvia moving on in her life marrying a guy from down Galveston way.

Meanwhile as he continues to plead with her non-budging mother, the operator keeps coming on the line saying: “and the operator says 40c more for the next three minutes please”. As you can guess if you have read some of this blog, this song really appeals to me because of the rich lyrical content.