Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 09:16:10 AM

Login with username, password and session length

Harry Nilsson's 'Coconut' #CANCELLED

Started by Ballad of Ballard Berkley, May 10, 2019, 07:01:22 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

phantom_power

To be fair I don't think there is any misconstruing that


Quote from: phantom_power on May 11, 2019, 01:34:19 PM
To be fair I don't think there is any misconstruing that

I think they realised how offensive the title was, so they renamed it on this release


alan nagsworth

Quote from: rue the polywhirl on May 10, 2019, 09:30:41 PM
I reckon that Harry Nilsson video is totally safe. The patios it is sung in is more idiosyncratic and less 'aping' than other examples such as Kinks and 10cc which makes it more natural and less cloying.

I find a lot of your opinions questionable to say the least, but the fact that you think it matters whose garden it was recorded in is utterly bizarre to me.

jobotic

What if it was a racist's garden? A known racist.

alan nagsworth

It's a little-known fact that racist's gardens are like the hotel in The Shining. Harry was actually going to perform the song in his regular voice in a nice polo shirt and slacks but as soon as he stepped out into the garden of his racist friend, who'd offered the space for the video as he'd got this big tarpaulin with pictures of palm trees on it "just gathering dust", he immediately found himself compelled to wear a gorilla costume and pretend to be Jamaican.


Brundle-Fly

Madness - New Dehli was a rare Madness miss step . Mind you, if you've ever heard their unreleased early demos your eyebrows would hit the ceiling.  Thank god, Clive Langer stepped in.

"Put,put,put, I am telling you, sahib"


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dEY783O7A8

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Quote from: Ignatius_S on May 10, 2019, 10:37:49 PM
There could be various things at play, for instance, it's been claimed that Harry was making an incredibly subtle dig at The Monkees, but the video often said to be a homage to Ernie Kovacs' The Nairobi Trio skits. I was unaware of this when I first saw this video, but instantly thought that it had been been lifted from Kovacs.

The trio were three figures in gorilla masks moving as if they were automated as music was played, the effect sometimes compared to a music box. Celebrity friends, Frank Sinatra and Jack Lemmon (the latter and Kovacs also co-starred in Bell, Book & Candle - Oliver Platt essentially lifted from Kovacs in that film for his scene-stealing turn in Lake Placid) were among the ones who donned the masks.

Here's one of the versions - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=416o9b_pjQk - and Wikipedia has a decent entry about the trio.

Kovacs used music in his work a lot including a performance of Swan Lake: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PqR2twY6fak

He also used Mack the Knife as the audio backdrop for series of blackout sketches, such as https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hfB3jj8vKlo - I'm particularly fond of the bath one; I understand that the car in another, was a write-off and accounted for the bulk of the production budget for the episode.

Interesting stuff, as always! Yeah, Nilsson being influenced by Kovacs makes sense. Nilsson making a subtle dig at The Monkees, not so much. Why would he do that? Their recording of Cuddly Toy must've earned him a fortune, and he was friends with Micky Dolenz.

Anyway, thanks for sharing all that Kovacs info. I really should delve deeper into his work.

phantom_power

Quote from: Ballad of Ballard Berkley on May 13, 2019, 01:31:39 PM
Nilsson making a subtle dig at The Monkees, not so much. Why would he do that?

Because he was a bit of a japester

gilbertharding

Re Dreadlock Holiday (and ApeMan by The Kinks...):

I suppose you could say in its defence that white Jamaicans speak with that accent too.


Bennett Brauer

And Tim Westwood.

Alan Price puts on a cod-Jamaican accent in Don't Stop the Carnival https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTJKpV0JJwY

Then there's Donovan's Welsh Indian accent in Barabajagal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvl9fE_4qxA

Perfectly acceptable though because I like them.

alan nagsworth

Tim Westwood speaks more like a LONDON YUTE than in any sort of patois, right? Doesn't make it any less hideously embarrassing but it is less racist.

gib

Quote from: Brundle-Fly on May 12, 2019, 07:48:53 PMMind you, if you've ever heard their unreleased early demos your eyebrows would hit the ceiling.

I'd like to hear them.

Bennett Brauer

Quote from: alan nagsworth on May 14, 2019, 06:02:30 PM
Tim Westwood speaks more like a LONDON YUTE than in any sort of patois, right? Doesn't make it any less hideously embarrassing but it is less racist.

I was just being silly because I thought SteveDave was, Ari Up not being a white Jamaican.

jobotic

Plenty of Bonzos to choose from but this was my favourite as a youth (along with Trouser Press).

Um, yeah.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9HeEFxgktVg

I'll never stop laughing at the line "I bought a deluxe Merseybeat wig, but it was a size too big" no matter how wrong the whole spectacle is.

non capisco

Blimey. Credit to Neil Innes there for eschewing the shoe polish, I suppose.

"Iggy...look...Hawwwwww! I am Chinese if you pleeeeeease! Oh come on, Iggy, lighten up!"
https://youtu.be/_YC3sTbAPcU?t=72


Chriddof

Quote from: jobotic on May 14, 2019, 07:30:43 PM
Um, yeah.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9HeEFxgktVg

I'll never stop laughing at the line "I bought a deluxe Merseybeat wig, but it was a size too big" no matter how wrong the whole spectacle is.

There's a radio session version of that where Viv just sings it in his normal voice, and it sounds fine as a result... although there's still the line about "lovely Japanese girls who've been trained in the art of pleasing men" to contend with. Know what you mean about the Merseybeat wig bit though, that's a fantastic line despite everything.

I did notice Innes in that clip as well - he looks a bit embarrassed and awkward, as if he's aware of how all this will look in 50 years time.

SteveDave



Bennett Brauer

Quote from: SteveDave on May 14, 2019, 11:51:25 PM
Irie!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlzBhPmxITk

I thought she might have just come from the dentist there, but then I saw this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqtXS8hTtpc. The accent gets thicker when she speaks to black people.

SteveDave

Quote from: Bennett Brauer on May 15, 2019, 12:33:52 AM
I thought she might have just come from the dentist there, but then I saw this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqtXS8hTtpc. The accent gets thicker when she speaks to black people.

Ari Up #cancelled

NoSleep

Quote from: Howj Begg on May 11, 2019, 10:11:30 AM
Yah but The Threepenny Opera is explicitly set in the underworld including a brothel and pimps. One song translates to "Pimp's Ballad". I don't think it's in much danger of cancelling.

Oddly/sadly, Brecht's version now seems to have been bypassed: https://brightonfestival.org/event/17419/dead_dog_in_a_suitcase_and_other_love_songs/

lazyhour

Quote from: Chriddof on May 14, 2019, 07:49:32 PM
"lovely Japanese girls who've been trained in the art of pleasing men" to contend with.

To be fair to Viv, that does pretty accurately describe the concept of the Geisha.

Kalabi

"Money For Nothing" still seems to get air play, mainly on tin pot local and commercial stations but still. Big old f-bomb in that. Same as "Fairy Tale of New York".

Can't remember where I saw it but I like the replacement line "You scum bag, you maggot, you forgot to tape Taggart".

buzby

#56
Quote from: gilbertharding on May 14, 2019, 03:47:16 PM
Re Dreadlock Holiday (and ApeMan by The Kinks...):

I suppose you could say in its defence that white Jamaicans speak with that accent too.
White Jamaicans don't tend to have dreadlocks though, or specifically have 'dark voices'...

Quote from: Kalabi on May 15, 2019, 10:51:16 AM
"Money For Nothing" still seems to get air play, mainly on tin pot local and commercial stations but still. Big old f-bomb in that.
The lyrics are written from the viewpoint of a working class bigot. The furore that followed on it's release led Knopfler to stop writing 'in character' songs. It then came back 25 years later when the uncensored version was briefly banned in Canada in 2011 after a complaint about the use of the word.

jobotic

Quote from: lazyhour on May 15, 2019, 10:05:47 AM
To be fair to Viv, that does pretty accurately describe the concept of the Geisha.

Plus the rather sad character has read it in an advert. It's just the accent (and the rest of that clip!) that's a problem, not the lyrics.

Kalabi

Quote from: buzby on May 15, 2019, 11:26:25 AM
The lyrics are written from the viewpoint of a working class bigot. The furore that followed on it's release led Knopfler to stop writing 'in character' songs. It then came back 25 years later when the uncensored version was briefly banned in Canada in 2011 after a complaint about the use of the word.



Axl Rose claimed something similiar for Guns'n'Roses "One In A Million" didn't he? Something along the lines of it was something that the character in the song would say and not him.

kngen

Thin Lizzy's Killer on the Loose was never not problematic, given that it was released during the height of the Yorkshire Ripper's grip on the national psyche. But I never knew just how on-the-nose the lyrics were (the engineer having the good sense to bury this last line under the build up to the chorus) until I found them online a couple of years ago.


QuoteNow you might think I'm messing
Or he don't exist
But honey I'm confessing
I'm a mad sexual rapist

I saw this on Top of the Pops for fuck's sake!