the White Stripes: known to be fond of a colour or three
It probably isn't surprising, but last week's prisons theme was remarkable for the sheer dearth of women among the recommendations. I suppose it was fairly belligerent of me to put three of them in the top 10, when the ratio within the posts was more like 1:20. Perhaps more female artists will make an appearance this week as the theme is colours.
It was also striking how many of the prison songs focused almost gleefully on the crime committed to get the protagonist into jail, rather than the experience of prison itself. The more songs I listened to, the more stringent my criteria for the A-list and column became. The B-list abides by no such strict rules, however. So here are the Zombies with their lovely letter Care of Cell 44, and Jimmie Rodgers's I'm in the Jailhouse Now, plus the Drive-By Truckers excellent The Deeper In, Two Gallants' Las Cruces Jail (a highlight when I saw them live), the Byrds' Life in Prison, Bud Powell's Glass Enclosure, Fairport Convention's Fotheringay, and two obvious ones: Sam Cooke's Chain Gang and Elvis's Jailhouse Rock. Finally, Busy Signal's Nah Go Jail: webcorewebcore was right when he said it was special. Johnny Cash, meanwhile, is far too brilliant to mess around with the hoipolloi on either list.
I hadn't heard of William E Whitmore before Mnemonic and tincanman mentioned him, he was definitely one of the discoveries of the week. Louis Jordan's 65 Bars (thanks, MrDNA!) and the Standells' Have You Ever Spent the Night in Jail? (thanks, ShivSidecar!) were also new to me and very delicious. My appreciation of the Grateful Dead grows apace, meanwhile: Chris7572's link to Sing Me Back Home didn't work for me, but I found it on (I think) imeem and thought it was beautiful.
So: colours. It might be nice if next week's A-list looked like a kaleidoscope: all titles with a colour in them, no colour mentioned more than once. But perhaps that's too limited an approach, so let's just see what comes up. I have no idea what it will tell us about colour or music - this is another of the themes from Dorian's list of possibilities - but I hope it will be fun anyway. I've been through the A-Z, and can tell you that all these songs have already appeared in previous lists: Kate Bush - the Red Shoes; Prince - Little Red Corvette; Dr Octagon - Blue Flowers; George Gershwin - Rhapsody in Blue; I Monster - Daydream in Blue; Booker T and the MGS - Green Onions; Lemon Pipers - Green Tambourine; Joni Mitchell - Big Yellow Taxi and Little Green; New Model Army - Green and Grey; Chills - Pink Frost; Psychedelic Furs - Pretty in Pink; Sun Ra Arkestra - Pink Elephants On Parade; Roots Manuva - Yellow Submarine; Cyril Tawney - The Grey Tunnel Line; Tori Amos - The Power of Orange Knickers. Then I ran out of colours to search for. Oh, I forgot periwinkle! Nope, not there. Puce? Not there either. Deadline, as usual, is midday Monday; the A-Z, RR Archive and Overspill blog are all in the corner, making like Tony Hart.
