"And Guess What I Found..." Part 9: The Top Ten
And so, we reach the final curtain...
Nowhere near as much work or as many words as the TWP blog, of course, but just as enjoyable to do, certainly. It was also a great reminder of the strength in depth of the Cinerama back catalogue: leaving aside the Valentina misfire (and even that had a couple of decent tracks) there were hardly any songs that weren't at least pretty decent.
There was much less controversy from readers this time. I think this is partly because of the quality of the material, and also due to this blog inevitably attracting a smaller audience (about a quarter of Suddenly...).
10 Crusoe
The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe was a 1960s Franco-German TV show that was dubbed into English for broadcast in the UK, and is a programme I remember enjoying during my summer holidays in the 70s. The use of the distinctive theme tune (composed by Robert Mellin and Gian-Piero Reverberi) as the basis for this Cinerama track is one of Gedge's most inspired pieces of creativity.
It's a familiar topic (she has lots of secrets she's keeping from him; he suspects it might be over) and a fairly minimalistic lyric, but it does contain the simple but haunting couplet 'you haven’t really told me anything / the silence when you hold me is deafening'. The theme tune was highly regarded because of the way that it captured the sound of the waves rolling onto the beach of the desert island, and this ties in neatly to the song, the narrator fearing being cast adrift by his increasingly distant lover. Simply lovely and heart-rending.
9 I Wake Up Screaming
(US single, 2013)
A song first recorded in the sessions that led to the TWP Valentina, it eventually came out under the Cinerama name (it's not entirely clear why) as a limited-edition US only 7" single in 2013, before getting a UK release the following year on the Seven Wonders of the World compilation.
I Wake Up Screaming was a 1941 film noir (originally titled Hot Spot - the full-length movie is here) starring Betty Grable. I haven't actually watched the film, but it appears to be a story of murder, betrayal and jealousy, so it seems likely to have been Gedge's inspiration, given that it includes lines like 'at what point did she think she would get away with this? / her betrayal, her deceitfulness, her utter cowardice'. It also features one of David's occasional references to mobile phones, tablets, etc. (cf 'Bear', 'The Girl From The DDR' and 'Get Up And Go') - 'she takes her iPhone into the bathroom / and thinks I don’t know what’s going on / when she’s in there texting someone'.
It's a simple but really effective lyric, not just because it poignantly captures the narrator's bitter jealousy ('I know the kind of man she’s always chased / I know her taste / and in my dream I picture her all curled up with him / like she does with me, that’s what I see') but also because of the way it blurs dreams and reality.
This blurring is perfectly matched to the music, which has a similarly dream-like quality. Opening with a delicate arpeggio, it's full of subtle shifts in tempo and emphasis; the transition into the middle eight at 2:18 is especially moving; as is the driving yet understated riff that emerges a minute later and takes the song home on a wave of emotion. A gorgeous yet sadly underrated tune.
8 King’s Cross
(Single, 1999)
After releasing their debut album and first couple of singles on Cooking Vinyl, the next Cinerama release emerged on Spanish label Elefant Records - a double A-side 7" (on pink vinyl) featuring 'Pacific' and 'King's Cross'.
David (speaking to Leigh for his Gedgesongs site) explained the lyric as being about 'the narrator feeling guilty that they have been ‘leading someone on’ and partly wondering if they have made the right decision in not developing what appears to be an illicit affair into a more serious relationship'. Railway stations are a familiar setting for romantic encounters, especially of the doomed variety (this, of course, being the most famous example), and here provides a perfect backdrop for this melancholy and regretful tale ('I could ponder this forever but I can’t explain / what it was that made me ever get on that train').
Musically, it's a perfect blend of what made the best early Cinerama songs so effective - the fragile acoustic, the haunting foundation provided by the mellotron, the choppy, almost funky guitar, the grandiose swirl of the strings - topped with the evocatively aching refrain 'you / and me / were never meant to be'.
7 Manhattan
(Single, 2000)
After 'Pacific' / 'King's Cross', Cinerama's next release was the first to come out on the Scopitones label.
Gedge's characters often find themselves in tempting and compromising situations, and invariably give in to their impulses. The narrator of 'Manhattan', however, is made of sterner moral fibre. Despite the 'tantalizing trap' laid by this femme fatale and her 'lascivious mouth' who is 'seldom refused', he walks out, not wishing to destroy his marriage. The 'wife' / 'life' rhyme is rather more successful here than it is in 'The Trouble With Men', although I'm not convinced that chromosomes - weird or otherwise - actually play much of a role in moral decision-making.
There are plenty of familiar Cinerama touchstones - the choppy funk guitar, deft strings and falsetto vocal - but what makes the song extra special is the deliciously driving loop of the chorus ('Oh, please don’t look so confused'; 'but I can hardly believe...'), the melody being underpinned with rousing horns that make the refrain sound simultaneously rueful and triumphant, echoing the sentiment of the lyric perfectly.
The snippet of dialogue that discusses the sexy British accent of (presumably) the narrator was provided by Simone White and Terry de Castro.
6 Hard, Fast and Beautiful
(Va Va Voom, 1998)
The high point of Cinerama's debut was a swooning epic that Gedge himself has suggested is among the best 'traditional' songs he's ever written. He took the title from a 1951 film about a tennis prodigy (loosely based on the life of Helen Wills) directed by Ida Lupino.
The sparse introduction finds David reflecting ruefully about a failed relationship over simple piano chords designed to resemble 'the soundtrack of a French film from the 1960s or 70s'. Other elements enter gradually: layers of strings, a poignant harpsichord, a restrained acoustic shuffle. This all builds in intensity until the song erupts into the sort of majestically stirring chorus that would come to be a trademark of the Cinerama sound - and one that David would rarely better.
The impassioned delivery of 'now I know that it was you all the time / how could I ever think it wasn’t true?' expertly tugs on the heartstrings, but the slightly cynical and throwaway attitude that the narrator demonstrates towards his current partner ('she’s beautiful, considerate and, yes, I do love her / but I’m not going to pretend that she’s ever going to be the one') cuts through the sentimentality and gives the song perfect balance.
The 2002 CD Live in Los Angeles features a classic Gedge intro to the song which namechecks both Gladys Knight and the Bay City Rollers. The Complete Sessions compilation includes the version played at John Peel's 60th birthday party, and features some nicely distorted guitar work from Simon Cleave.
5 Cat Girl Tights
(Torino, 2002)
Torino is a fascinating album: not only is it full of strong material (9 of its 13 songs appear in the top half of this list, and 7 are in the top 25), but the way that it documents the Cinerama-TWP transition is consistently intriguing.
Although 'Cat Girl Tights' contains some Cinerama elements - the strings swoop a little in time-honoured fashion; there's a spot of ethereal backing vocals, tinkling glockenspiel and moody Hammond organ - it's a song where you can feel the balance tipping to TWP. This is particularly notable in the breath-taking moments where the guitars crash in with blistering force, especially at 2:27 when Simon Cleave's precise arpeggio launches the song into a moving swirl of distortion.
It's a fairly slim lyric - although there's no little pathos to 'I’m not one of the things that you’ve left behind... tell me it’s true' - but it matters little when you can bask in the glory of the multiple layers of tumultuous guitar.
4 Heels
(Disco Volante, 2000)
The first couple of years of Cinerama saw Gedge hit a particularly rich vein of epic choruses - presumably ideas that he'd been accumulating that weren't an ideal fit for TWP - and few were more epic and moving than that on 'Heels'.
Many DLG songs feature jealous/rejected lovers waiting for the object of their desire to tire of 'the other man' and turn to their worthy affections; the intriguing twist here is that the narrator is the 'other man' twice removed - he is commenting on her off-hand cruelty based on the letters sent by her current lover that she doesn't even bother reading. It's hard to say whether the narrator's undying patience ('I know he’ll be gone the moment that you get bored') is noble or pathetic, but it is certain that 'you need a paramour / someone to pluck your eyebrows for' is the very epitome of a Cinerama lyric.
There are several lovely musical details, for example the haunting French horn that occasionally floats behind the verse and the subtle feedback grind (reminiscent of 'Lovenest') that lurks in the quieter passages. The chorus is simply magnificent: a perfect marriage - especially in the final minute - of swirling strings and overloaded guitar.
I don't know anything about the footage used for the video below or the gentleman who posted it, but I'd say he gets where the song is coming from.
3 Your Charms
(Disco Volante, 2000)
'Attractive woman is blissfully unaware of the attention she's attracting' and variations thereof is a Cinerama trope that crops up in, for example, '146 Degrees' and 'Because I'm Beautiful' - but this is the song that does it best.
After an endearingly shambolic opening, the song builds into a lightly crisp 60s-ish pop tune that's just so effervescently charming (pardon the pun) that it never fails to raise a smile. I've occasionally criticised DLG for his apparent obsession with making everything rhyme, but there are several winning couplets here that are woven into the narrative with joyful enthusiasm ('better / et cetera'; 'the ploys of womankind / could not be further from your mind'; 'tossing back your hair / and you’re completely unaware').
Although the joy of 'Your Charms' is mainly in its simplicity, once again there are plenty of musical details to enjoy, for example the harpsichord trills and chuckling female voice in the interludes and the circular piano figure that underlays the fuzzy guitar in the chorus.
It's a good job that I'm getting towards the end of this list, as I'm starting to run out of ways of saying 'uplifting/rousing chorus', but this is an absolute beauty: the sort of thing that was designed for a long car journey where you can crank up the volume and bellow along without restraint.
2 Health and Efficiency
(Torino, 2002)
As I mentioned in my Wedding Present blog, after TWP's gig at Cardiff TramShed in 2016 I asked David if instrumental tracks like 'Wales' had been influenced by listening to post-rock. He answered with a deadpan 'no', but it's hard not to draw parallels between 'Health and Efficiency's use of dialogue in its opening and closing sections to tracks like Godspeed You! Black Emperor's 'Blaise Bailey Finnegan III' or 'East Hastings'.
The verse is framed around a G/Em pattern that's beautiful in its simplicity and is played at a sedate tempo that allows the song to breathe and envelope you with wistful nostalgia. The nostalgia comes from a recollection of an intimate lakeside encounter; a tale of teenage romance and sexual awkwardness.
Now, I've been accused by a few people (including David himself) of being puritanical about the more sexual aspects of some Cinerama lyrics, but I'm not entirely sure where this comes from. I did say that there was a slight sense of 'too much information' about 'Close Up' but in general I've simply described the sultry details rather than criticising them; last week I celebrated 'Quick Before It Melts' as 'a powerful piece of noisy erotic drama'.
That said, there are occasions in a few TWP/Cinerama songs where, for me, the explicitness feels a little awkward and forced. 'Health And Efficiency' treads a bit of a fine line with this aspect, especially 'the juice was running down your face', which just feels a little... icky. 'I remember you began to shake / and I was far too scared to ask if you were coming' is pitched perfectly though, capturing the clumsy embarrassment of youthful intimacy with a line that is in itself awkward and uncomfortable to the listener in order to make the point.
The song is more about youthful innocence and nostalgia than anything sexual anyway. The fact that the couple are looking at copies of H&E (a magazine first published in 1902 that, according to its current website, was based on the theory 'that continued exposure to the sun and air, in combination with a good diet and regular exercise, was beneficial to health and made the body work more efficiently') is important not because of the (negligible) sexual content but because it represents a fascination with something considered 'adult' that in retrospect seems quaintly harmless ('it’s strange just how innocent it all looks today'). The core of the song is the bittersweet yet undeniable truth that 'you don’t appreciate the joy until you lose it'. The song's explicit recognition that this is a cliché serves only to reinforce its veracity: there's a reason why clichés become clichés.
And of course this ebb and flow of sexual tension, lost innocence and aching nostalgia is punctuated by swathes of glorious guitar. The entire back catalogue of TWP and Cinerama is to a large extent built around pretty quiet bits being intermittently shredded by waves of six-string distortion (and long may it continue) but this is an exceptionally fine example. The first assault (2:46) is suitably extravagant, as is the second at 4:20, but the song reaches for true glory at 5:06, when an electrifying secondary wave washes over you before pulling back for the delicate coda that mirrors the intro.
1 Wow
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