THUNDERCLAP NEWMAN – "Something In The Air"

It might be my tin ear, but among the Beatlesy riffs (I keep hearing Dear Prudence very strongly), I hear a very 80s indie guitar sound (in the first section).

’tis a wonderful record… oh sorry, that piratism was entirely unintended!

That is indeed an Oasis song, and one we’ll come to in due course; be warned that it’s nine minutes long. The song that advertising spoilt for me was ‘I Get The Sweetest Feling’.
Anyway, didn’t Pete Townshend produce ‘Fire’ as well?

As for this song: well, strictly speaking the version in the TalkTalk advert isn’t this record, not that that makes a huge amount of difference. But I’d sort of class this one under “you had to be there”. I don’t not like it, and it’s pleasant enough to hear, but it’ll never be special to me.

I don’t have a problem with separating this lovely piece of music from it’s current useage as advertising fodder – probably because I can place the tune in its original context quite easily (being just about old enough to remember it first time round). I do however object to the marketing ploy of using familiar even favourite tunes to sell the latest whatever. Tom has already admitted this has tainted his view of this particular song and I imagine the same goes for almost everyone else where this or other songs/music are concerned. It is also indicative of the current sad state of the music industry that they allow such bastardization. I could go on for hours (and possibly will further down the line) about the marketing of pop for ads & ringtones – and music or pop as an art form as opposed to a can of beans but I shall resist that as it would be too torturous to sit through.

As regards TN – I think I remember Andy Newman being interviewed on TV not too long ago saying he was actually working as a postman just before their success – not sure whether he retained his post post-number one though.

For my part I am a lowly minstrel so I avoid ‘cultural technician’ types as often as I possibly can. Unfortunately in my experience they also seem to inhabit most record companies and countless other areas of the music & television industry. These individuals tend towards risk-free ‘safe’ bets as often as possible to safeguard their own existence. So employing a known piece is probably going to be preferable to an unknown. As regards cost I would hazard a guess that licensing a major artists work is probably reasonably prohibitve whereas lesser known artists work would be quite cost-effective. The cost of employing a ‘jingle artist’ would be relatively inexpensive depending on whether they were well known or not. However the risk factor is probably something most advertisers would rather avoid. There is probably a huge market in finding rare gems and paying next to nothing to use them. That would involve, though, a lot of ‘leg-work’ on the CTs behalf which I am willing to bet that a lot would shy away from.

I think we can be thankful that Johnny Cash’s family rejected the use of “Ring of Fire” in an ad for Preparation H pile ointment. (Cash himself having allowed it to be used for Levi’s).

Oh, and another use of a song that’s really bugged me lately – Magners butchering “Sunshine Superman” by splicing random lines into the ad. Annoys me so much I haven’t even got around to thinking about cider…

The Magners ‘schtick’ is that “unlike other ciders” it is good to drink at all times of year, so I guess they’ll be switching tunes quite regularly.

big gallery jjjs pizza sausage
big gallery jjjs pizza sausage

Jack Hargreaves-lookalike, Newman’s famed piano break (which sounds like his joanna is being pushed down a flight of stairs whilst the twat is playing it) seems so much out of kilter with the rest of the track; but then perhaps it only added to the pure wierdness of the record and the oddballs performing it. If Thunderclap Newman were positioning themselves as leaders of the cause, breakers out of the arms and ammo, blockers up of the streets and houses, indeed callers out of the instigator, I fear that the revolution (which is here) is already lost. It’s not unlike being called out onto the streets by Mary, Mungo and Midge. Just wrong. And you know that it’s right.

Blinding record, though!

Fabulous record that any songwriter or arranger would kill for (a 5 is just silly!). I’ve got a huge soft-spot for perfect pop one-offs from roughly this era – in some respects they define pop for me as a free-floating phenomenon that exists apart from on-going huge, important groups and figures and their weighty careers (all of which I love of course, but it’s great to have a break…). I’d rank Something in the Air behind things like All the young Dudes and Up up and away and Summer Breeze (Isleys version), but that’s its basic league I reckon… Anyhow, here Credence meets the Beatles and gives birth to the best ELO song that ELO never wrote. Pure pleasure:
8, or even a 9 on a sunny day.

p.s. Did the Blockheads ever cover this? I can easily imagine them doing a fantastically demented version.

@punctum. Clearly you and I disagree about a lot. I’m well aware that, say, Bad Moon Rising officially professes a fearful attitude toward forthcoming destruction whereas SITA savors the prospect. In both cases, however, what really comes through, I believe, is just the self-contained energy of both songs. Destruction whether feared or gloated over should *feel* awful, but in both these cases that’s not the feeling that the music evokes (SITA’s piano break has always reminded me of the piano part in Split Enz’s Dirty Creature – I know that’s not especially well-known ‘up over’, but bear with me – but in Dirty Creature the music itself becomes deranged and nightmarish whereas both in SITA and BMR the music itself is ultimately very controlled and up-beat). And, look, the IRA may have claimed SITA as an anthem but, well, except in IRA fantasy, The Troubles are a kind of civil war not a revolution against a regime, so their claiming of the song is self-serving and unfortunate, and we should resist their appropriation (this is easier to do on the far side of the world I fully concede). And I dare say that Dylan and others who’ve covered SITA have not carried any brief for the IRA but have rather been in favor of various revolutionary causes and ideas (often with strictly metaphorical ammo).

Anyhow, setting aside specific lyrical topics, the CCR connection for me is made just by the vocal timbre and how that’s bedded in with the guitar. I’m surprised you don’t hear it – it’s surely part of what makes SITA so coverable by Petty, Dylan et al.. Musically adventurous crews like Split Enz and The Blockheads would probably quite naturally inject more madness/threat/chaos into the music if they covered SITA – thereby perhaps pushing the song closer to what you seem to want to hear SITA as being even in Thunderclap’s original. Yet you seem to think that anything like that would be a bad idea, but I can’t see why unless you allow the blimin’ IRA to capture the song for you.

Two final points: (i) I’m well aware of Townshend’s involvement with SITA and Thunderclap. Still, I think SITA still reads as something separate and special just the way All the young Dudes does from Bowie despite that being fully his track on a deep level. (ii) I’d need to think a bit about which ELO songs SITA is really reminding me of, but ELO made *plenty* of Beatles-inflected music that had A Day in the Live-type structures and flourishes, so there’s surely plenty of room for comparison with SITA on that front… But SITA also has some specific Strange Magic-like guitar figures I think. Plus it has that bedded-in-with-the-guitar and compressed sounding vocals that Jeff Lynne also uses (and later did again with Petty). I wonder whether the Wilburys ever covered SITA? SITA sounds a bit like them too to my ears!

#38: One man’s civil war is another society’s revolution; one man’s idea of reactionary is another’s concept of revolutionary. So you need to be careful when you talk about the IRA or other causes which don’t necessarily agree with you since close historical study – utilising histories compiled by both sides as well as by neutrals – suggests a pretty solid backbone. “We should resist their appropriation”; who are “we” here? Also, by setting up the us/them notion you inadvertently point to why the Troubles happened.

Injecting more “madness/threat/chaos” into this song would be pointless and indeed counterproductive, since its implications and perceived acceptance of these work satisfactorily in their own context. You don’t always have to screech and honk when you’re in favour of change.

@#40. The ‘we’ I intended was just we, the broadly musically inclined. Narrowly focussed groups/audiences of various sorts often opportunistically claim very good songs and pieces of music as their own (much the way advertizing and film soundtracks do). Wider loyalty to music suggests, however, that it’s important to resist such appropriations and to try to keep a good/great song in the lists for everyone else.

*Many* sectarian (rooted in ethic or historical or cultural or religious cleavages) civil conflicts, which all too often end up in the ethnic cleansing or genocidal elimination of one or more of the sects, *aren’t*, I believe, properly thought of as revolutions (you can, of course, brute force that result by simply defining any attempted status quo change as a revolutionary struggle, but it’s perfectly legitimate to decline such a definition). I’m well aware of the IRA’s exasperating tendency to see themselves as revolting against ‘the crown’ rather than as engaged in bitter sectarian conflict with the Protestants in front of them. The Troubles could never come close to ending until that basic reality was faced. Intractable conflicts the world over often have this phantasmal character: at least one side (in the worst cases it’s both sides) sees itself as engaged in some much more glorious and defensible struggle than in the dire thing that’s evidently the here and now, which is the place where any deal will have to be done (assuming that the ethnic cleansing option doesn’t work out).

@Wichita. Trying to clarify my own feelings about SITA, I tracked down Labelle’s early ’70s cover of SITA (which is interleaved with a cover of Gil Scott-Heron’s ‘the revolution will not be televised’). It’s blimin’ great, and surely is a full-on attempt to claim at least parts of SITA for the civil rights struggle left in the US. (In fact, as a result I’ve spent the whole weekend listening to stuff from Labelle’s three pre-Lady Marmalade albums. I’m finding them so overpowering and ‘Holy crap!’ great, I almost can’t believe I’ve never heard them before.)

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Robots love Thunderclap Numan.