Alex Chilton

“Children by the million / sing for Alex Chilton
When he comes ’round
They sing “I’m in love. What’s that song?
I’m in love with that song.“
('Alex Chilton' by The Replacements)

Alex Chilton sang about teenage love in ways that no other man managed before or since. He sang about a teenage boy's love. Songs like 'Thirteen', 'September Gurls', ''I'm In Love With A Girl" (all 1 minute 48 seconds of it!)

About a year ago, I posted the lyrics to Thirteen,

Won't you let me
Walk you home from school?
Won't you let me
meet you at the pool?

a song that perfectly expresses that astonishing season when you suddenly discover that girls are interesting (what do you mean? well... just... interesting) in a way that they have never been before. A season when you know nothing about girls, but you suddenly decide that you would quite to be with one of them.

(Be with? What the hell are you going on about?
What kind of wanting is that, wanting to be with someone?)

Alex Chilton died in New Orleans on Wednesday night. He was fifty-nine. Old for a teenager; young for a man. He was a year older than my dad when he died. (Nowadays I know, that is young.) And that song, Thirteen... that's the song about the year I discovered girls, which was also the year I discovered my dad was dying

Important stuff. A great many questions,
and no-one to answer them.

The Alex Chilton aong everybody seems to be turning to right now is 'September Gurls' (love that spelling.) I'll go and find the words, and post them here later today.

Alone With My Monsters

(picture posed by models)

Slow down: Don't fuck with my high
I want be left alone here with my monsters
And say: now it's time
To ride to see lonely girls
And to not put the moves on them

All them tremendous brunettes around
All them tremendous brunettes
All them tremendous brunettes around

Praise now the baby genius
She skips in the shade
Of the lonely sour apple tree
While she snaps on her gum
Her gleaming teeth bared
And the shine that she shows to me

Tremendous brunettes around
All them tremendous brunttes around
Tremendous brunettes around
All them tremendous brunttes around

All of your ill-gotten games
That you have wipped up to a rich, foamy lather, girl
Nameless gnaw off my pains
Like three hundred trumpets and just one is out of tune

All them tremendous brunettes around
All them tremendous brunettes
All them tremendous brunettes around
MIKE DOUGHTY

Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most.

Once I was a sentimental thing,
Threw my heart away each spring;
Now a spring romance hasn't got a chance
Promised my first dance to winter;
All I've got to shows a splinter for my little fling!

Spring is here there's no mistaking
Robins building nests from coast to coast
My heart tries to sing
so they won't hear it breaking
Spring can really hang you up the most!

Mornings kiss wakes trees and flowers,
And to them I'd like to drink a toast;
I walk in the park just to kill lonely hours,
Spring can really hang you up the most.

Love came my way, I hope it would last;
We had our day, now that's all in the past!
Spring came along a season of song,
Full of sweet promise but something went wrong!

Doctors once prescribed a tonic,
Sulphur and molasses was the dose;
Didn't help a bit, my condition must be chronic,
Spring can really hang you up the most!

All alone, the party's over,
Old man winter was a gracious host;
But when you keep praying for snow to hide the clover
Spring can really hang you up the most!

Sung By: ELLA FITZGERALD

Too Much Caffeine

Video on YouTube

Hangin' round
Downtown by myself
And I had too much time
To sit and think about myself

And then there she was
Like double cherry pie
Yeah there she was
Like disco superfly

I smell sex and candy here
Who's that lounging in my chair
Who's that casting
Devious stares in my direction
Mama this surely is a dream
Yeah mama this surely is a dream

Hangin' round
Downtown by myself
And I had too much caffeine
And I was thinkin' 'bout myself

And then there she was
In platform double suede
Yeah there she was
Like disco lemonade

I smell sex and candy here
Who's that lounging in my chair
Who's that casting
Devious stares in my direction
Mama this surely is a dream
Yeah mama this surely is a dream
Yeah mama this must be my dream.

Words and Music: JOHN WOZNIAK
Performed by: MARCY PLAYGROUND

Video on YouTube

Seventeen

"They only want you
When you're seventeen:
When you're twenty-one,
You're no fun.
They take a polaroid and let you go
Say they'll let you know
So come on"

I apologise to any twenty-one year olds who read Hot Vimto, but Ladytron's "Seventeen" is one kick-ass tune. And it makes me feel happy, in a demented, teenage kind of way.

I know, I know... I'm living my life in the wrong order. But the Sex Pistols had a song called Seventeen, and it started like this:

"You're only twenty-nine
Got a lot to learn
But when your mummy dies
She will not return"

WTF that was meant to be about, I never knew. Sneering, probably. (Why wasn't it called "Twenty Nine"?) Still, the Pistols turned out to be the plastic fork, when what really mattered the chips and curry sauce.

When I was seventeen, my father had been dead six months, and I was starting to read philosophy. He'd been a long time dying, and now he was gone, I was ready to start looking for him. I discovered TS Eliot, and identified with Prufrock. I read Tarantula by Bob Dylan, and thought it was crap, and copied him anyway. I listened to a lot of Elvis Costello, the early albums, when he was dark and cynical and sexy and soulful. I listened to Astral Weeks, and Miles Davis. I lusted after older women. It was the right thing to do.

It is strange to think, that if I have children of my own, it'll be with someone who was born after punk. "No Future? Whatever happened to that?" I hear Steve Jones lives in California, and has his own radio show.

I've lived my life in the wrong order. It was the right thing to do. I've finished, so I'll start.

Eleven

I have a folder of music on my hard drive called "Play Once Then Kill" In it are all the MP3's I've downloaded and never listened to. How the hell did I miss this one? I downloaded it on the 25th August 2006 and it has been sitting there until this morning, confident and patiently waiting.

Black Box Recorder was the band that Luke Haines set up after he left The Auteurs, and The Auteurs pretty much defined my early-nineties sexual persona. But this song is like catching sight of your face in the bathroom mirror on a very cold winter's morning, and remembering what you were dreaming about.

If you don't like the song, fast forward the video and just watch the last ten seconds; it's a killer. It's a true story.

When boys are just eleven
They begin to grow in height
At a faster rate than they have done before
They develop curiosity
And start to fantasize
About the things they have
Never thought of doing before

These dreams are no more harmful than
The usual thoughts that boys have
Of becoming football stars or millionaires
As long as the distinction
Between fantasy and fiction remains
It's just a nature walk
It's just the facts of life
BLACK BOX RECORDER