Music

41 Squeeze

41 Up The Junction Squeeze [download]
Kitchen sink drama from Deptford
‘Chris Difford came up with the lyrics while sitting on the tourbus, homesick, on our first tour of America about 15 miles outside New Orleans. He has a great eye for detail and an ear for language which just rings true. When he first gave me the lyrics, I knew I had the supporting role. It was such a great lyric, you didn’t want the tune distracting you from it’. Glenn Tilbrook
Available on ‘Cool For Cats’ album (1979)

42 Lambeth Walk Noel Gay/Douglas Furber [download]
Now you too can do the dance…
‘Take eight steps forward. On the eighth step, the man faces lady. Man and lady link left arms and strut around in a circle again taking eight walks. On the eighth step, the man unlinks arms and offers his right arm to the lady, who links her left arm in his right. Finish both facing line of dance. Man commences with left foot and lady right foot and continue. Take three walks forward counting, “One, two, three”. Transfer weight back to rear foot, count “and”. Transfer weight forward to front foot, count “four”. Repeat, the man commencing with right foot and lady left foot. Unlink arms and continue: Man walks two steps towards centre. Lady walks two steps to the wall, counting, “One, two”. Man and lady turn to face each other and close feet together, count “three”. Slap hands on the legs, just above the knees and bend forward. Count “four”. Both man and lady walk two steps towards each other, count “one, two”. Close feet together, facing partner and, three feet apart, count “three”. Raise the hands (right) level with the head and give the cockney salute, shouting “Oi”.’
From ‘Ballroom Dancing’ by Alex Moore Feature continues

Dizzee Rascal – ‘Imagine’
Dizzee ponders the damage done to his ‘roads’ by turf wars and wonders what anyone really gains from risking their life in defence of ‘a couple of square metres of pavement’. Among the saddest and most beautiful London songs of recent years.
Available on ‘Showtime’ album (2004)

45 Cockney Translation Smiley Culture
David ‘Smiley Culture’ Emmanuel’s satirical Jamaican English-London English dictionary from 1984, set to a skeletal dancehall beat. Includes lines like…
Say cockney have ‘mates’ while we have ‘spa’
Cockney live in a drum, while we live in a yard
Cockney say ‘scarper’ we say ‘scatter’
Cockney say ‘rabbit’, we chatter
We say ‘bleach’, cockney ‘knackered’
Cockney say ‘t’riffic’, we say ‘waaaacked’!
Cockney say ‘blokes’, we say ‘guys’
Cockney say ‘alright’, we say ‘ites’
We say ‘pants’, cockney say ‘strides’
Sweet as a nut… just level vibes, seen?
Available on ‘The Complete Smiley Culture’ (1986)

46 London Pride Noël Coward [download]
Musical hall favourite
Although more famous for his mal mots than stirring rhetoric, few upper lips could have remained as starchy during the Blitz as that of Noël Coward. Despite his dandyish reputation and perceived reluctance to get his hands dirty, Coward caught the zeitgeist with his 1941 hymn to the indomitable London spirit. Treating bombs as no more bothersome than a signal failure on the Metropolitan Line, this stoic ditty became one of his most popular songs, even once the war was over.
Available on ‘London Pride’ (1996) compilation

47 Baker Street Gerry Rafferty [download]
Unprepossessing local thoroughfare immortalised by Scots singer-songwriter
Quite why Scots pop troubadour Rafferty picked an unremarkable, traffic-clogged road to pay homage to in his 1978 hit is anyone’s guess, but 20 years later, the song was deemed worthy of covering by pop-metal superstars Foo Fighters, who recorded it as a B-side. The street is mentioned just once, in the opening line and it seems a mate of Rafferty’s – the one who’s ‘got this dream about buyin’ some land, he’s gonna give up the booze and the one-night stands’ – lived there. The Foos (wisely) chose to replicate the sax solo on guitar, but Lisa Simpson stuck with the original instrument when she played it at the close of the ‘Lisa’s Sax’ episode of ‘The Simpsons’.
Available on ‘City To City’ album (1978)

48 London London Caetano Veloso [download]
Swinging London ballad from Brazil
‘The Brazilian military had forced me and Gilberto Gil to leave Brazil and we ended up in London in 1969. I sing about looking for flying saucers in the sky. I loved London and was obsessed by English rock music, but was very, homesick, very depressed, and initially I hated the music I recorded in London. Now I love that song. It sums up the emotions felt by an outsider in this big, beautiful, grey city.’ Caetano Veloso
Available on ‘Caetano Veloso’ album (1969)

49 Punky Reggae Party Bob Marley [download]
Bob issues a party call to arms
The song which cemented the kinship between punk and reggae. Reggae was an obsession shared by many of punk’s prime movers while Marley was exiled in London during the mid-’70s and willing to acknowledge the outsider status shared by punks and rastas alike. His response was to envisage a party closed to ‘boring old farts’ but attended by luminaries of both scenes including The Clash, The Damned, The Maytals and, slightly less explicably, Canvey Island pub rock stalwarts Dr Feelgood. Still, the more the merrier.
Available on ‘Exodus’ album (1977)

50 Herculean The Good, The Bad and The Queen
First release from Damon Albarn and Paul Simonon's new collaborative project
Read interview here