Greetings, fellow Rock Town Hall loiterers! I come before you today with a simple thought experiment — something to get you scratching your chin for a moment or two, to distract you from the cares of the day. So wedge your monocle firmly into your eye socket, pour yourself a dry martini, lean back, and let’s begin.

Here’s what I have in mind: there are songs that common wisdom might lead one to believe are essentially flawless. When was the last time, for example, that you heard anybody trash-talking “She Said, She Said” or “Superstition” or “All Down the Line”? I submit, however, that perfection does not exist, and that whatever track we submit to the RTH hive mind, at least one of us can find something wrong with it. And that’s what I want us to do. Think of this exercise as our beloved “If You Can’t Say Anything Nice About…” series, but backwards.

We’re going to do this like a game of tag. I’ll start by saying:

Well, I may be nitpicking, but I just can’t stand the way Hendrix sings “two riders were approaching… and the wind begin to howl” in his version of “All Along the Watchtower.” Would it be too much to ask Jimi to sing “begins,” or “began”? It drives me crazy! Now, “Waterloo Sunset” — now that’s a perfect song!

… and whoever jumps in next shares at least one reason why “Waterloo Sunset” is not at all perfect, starting with the words “Well, I may be nitpicking, but…”, and finishing off their comment with a nod toward the song they believe is without flaw.

Make sense? Then why not join in the fun by nitpicking “Waterloo Sunset”?  Come on — show us just how petty you can be!

I look forward to your responses.

HVB

Last night, after the rest of the family went to bed, my strangest thought for a long time popped by to say hello. 

I tried sending it away, but it would not go. It just sat there, like Winnie the Pooh stuck in his tree, or the cravings described by Mrs H and female friends and relations when heavy with child. I knew I’d be unable to sleep until my craving was addressed and sated.

It’s been a long old week. That’s my excuse, anyway.

We’ve had local and other elections over here. My day job means I get noticed by those whose role it is to staff them. Because I’m an obliging bloke, and never have spare money, I always agree to help.

So, roughly once a year, but less during a pandemic, I get up at an hour night owls consider bedtime, leave the house (which now, of course, I’m unused to), set up my polling station, work fifteen hours with no breaks – we’re not allowed to go outside other than checking the signage hasn’t blown away – meeting, greeting, and being pleasant to the same public I didn’t want to be nice to again when escaping live retail more than 20 years ago. 

After dark, we close the doors and pack the station down again. I get the added thrill of driving the paperwork across town and sitting in a queue of over a hundred cars doing the same all at once, knowing there is just one desk to process everything at the drop-off. So that takes another 2 hours. Getting home, I try not to notice the hour I got up at yesterday morning approaching the brow of the hill.

This year, I helped at the count as well, driving halfway across the county and back on both Friday and Saturday. I know they’re not like your counties, which are about the size of our continents, but our roads don’t work like yours, with holes like canyons on large and small thoroughfares alike.

To celebrate covid, they gave us clear screens between the counting staff and the candidates, lending the arena a zoo-like atmosphere. I half-expected candidates to start pushing bananas through the gaps between them. It might have improved our performance if they had, or got past their self-absorption.

It takes a certain type of individual to think this bunch of sleep-deprived administrators, all eager to finish and go home, were hand selected by evil genii for their sinister determination to falsify and subvert the vote in ways only the likes of your former leader can imagine in less lucid moments. But exist they do and these individuals are called candidates. Since the elections were postponed last year, two years on this was their moment to shine, and boy did they make the most of it, looking important in their big rosettes and suits even I could tell didn’t come from places I shop

So, Stan, I hear you say, this is all very well, but what’s it got to do with music, let alone the ROCK we come here to talk about? We want to put aside our cares of work and not think about people whose fragile egos demand the validation of an English parish council electorate, representing fewer people than those who turned out to see our bands playing gigs after school.

Until somebody far cleverer than me takes the time to post something meaningful and thought-provoking, I intend to continue clogging the RTH pipes with meaningless drivel and pointless fun and games — like this post, in which I’ve taken the liberty of running some easily identifiable lyrical snippets through online translators thusly:

English > Afrikaans > Albanian > Amharic > Basque > English

Your job is simple:  deduce what the original lyric actually says.  Here we go:

1. Motorhead: If you want to bet, I’ll tell you I’m your husband – they win, they lose, it’s the same for me
2. Beatles: Keep your head up, relax and swim
3. Girl, you found me. You found me so I don’t know what to do
4. There is a back seat now, my lover is always covered and I will talk until my dad speaks
5. Elvis Costello: Oh girl, it’s fun to watch after so much, and I realize you weren’t surprised by how you look
6. He’s like me, he’s like me and we’re all together
7. ZZ Top: Get up, go down, take the word, my way, I don’t ask for much
8. Prince: If you want to kiss me and your photo, browse
9. Dylan: How many steps does it take for someone to call?
10. I get up and nothing falls on me. If you have any difficulties, I have seen the most difficult ones in the area

I look forward to your responses.

HVB

Earlier today, I fell down an internet rabbit hole while looking at posters for obscure music festivals from the late 60s/early 70s. My question for you is simple: which, if any, of these festivals would justify a trip in RTH’s notoriously vomit-inducing time machine? Note that you would have to live as the locals do upon arrival — camp in the mud, eat bad concert food, politely refuse a nibble of the ‘shrooms being passed around, etc.

I look forward to your responses.

HVB