Tuesday 13 May 2014

My Rolf Harris Top Five

Just in case he's found guilty and you're not allowed to confess a liking for his music ever again (when was the last time you heard a Gary Glitter record?), here's my personal Top Five in no particular order:

5. Stairway To Heaven

2. Jarvis Cocker doing a completely straight faced cover version of Two Little Boys on Celebrity Stars In Your Eyes. I can't find a YouTube link to this, sadly.

1. Bohemian Rhapsody. I once stumbled across a Queen fan site where they slagged him off for playing the notes wrong. Well duh.

Finally, the one you've all been waiting for, at Number 4: Alice Cooper's completely dead pan, note-for-note perfect cover version of the slightly irritating and somehow condescending original Sun Arise. I saw an interview with Harris ten or fifteen years ago where he admitted that one of his proudest moments was being covered by Alice Cooper:


3. Fine Day, the only one on this list which isn't a cover version.

15 comments:

A K Haart said...

Shortly before all this came out, we saw a couple of Rolf Harris paintings in an auction. One was estimated at £30k the other £25k.

I think both sold, so I wonder what the buyers think now.

chefdave said...

What about Rolf Harris's version of "I touch myself".

http://markwadsworth.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/my-rolf-harris-top-five.html

chefdave said...

This was the link I meant:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0rlYSJQkyw

Mark Wadsworth said...

AKH, who cares what they sold for, were they any good? Some of his paintings are incredibly good AFAIAA.

CD, long time no hear.

Yes, that's great as well, slot it in at number 3 and re-arrange the others at random.

[If this trial goes wrong for him, it's going to be the second least playable track in history after "Do you wanna touch" by Gary Glitter]

Tim Almond said...

The Court of King Caractacus. If you can keep up, you're a better man than me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3s0joFeajk&feature=kp

chefdave said...

MW, I'm a lowly UKIP candidate in the upcoming local elections so I've been spending some time on that. I haven't bothered bringing up LVT with my UKIP friends though, there's no point. We have to pick our battles too I suppose.

Mark Wadsworth said...

TS, my sister got The Rolf Harris LP for her birthday back in 1970 or so, even at the age of five it all sounded like condescending dumbed down "this will impress the kids and make their parents think it's educational" quick-buck crap to me.

Jake the Fucking Peg, Court of King Who Gives A Shit, Two Little Twats etc.

It wasn't until the 1990s that Rolf Harris started making genuinely good records.

CD, best of luck with that :-) [Standing for YPP is more fun because you can say what you like.]

chefdave said...

Thanks. If/when we get that referendum I may consider switching parties. Or perhaps dual membership? ;)

Mark Wadsworth said...

CD, what referendum? Dave's recent cast iron promised one?

They'll fix it, just like the AV one.

chefdave said...

I can't find a lot to complain about in your manifesto to be honest. But you know you're in safe hands with someone who understands the workings of the land market.

I don't know when we'll get one but as long as UKIP continue to pile on the pressure the liblabcon will have to listen. If it wasn't for Farage I doubt it would even be on the table.

Mark Wadsworth said...

CD, yes, on that score, fair play to Nigel.

But UKIP still haven't worked up much of a plan of what to do if and when the LibLabCon hold a rigged referendum and the answer is "Oh, go on then, we'll stay in".

Tim Almond said...

Mark,

The AV vote wasn't rigged - the yes campaign was inept. And destroyed by a far better organised no campaign.

The biggest failure (and one for the referendum) is making sure that you've got the public fully on side before the referendum. Most people actually understand the damage of FPTP because we have tactical voting. But the campaign never made that connection, and needed to be making it long before the referendum or even before the LDs got a shot at a referendum. It needed to be an idea that was being talked about.

If anything, the best result at the next election from an EU referendum point of view would be a Cameron win. He'll either ignore the referendum (which will make people even more anti-EU) or he'll go to Brussels and come back with almost nothing, which will then make his campaign laughable.

Cam losing, being replaced and a Tory party that promises a referendum as soon as it's elected but wishes to stay in Europe is probably the worst outcome.

DBC Reed said...

The NO2EU campaign never gets a mention but makes more sense than the childish UKIP; the fact that it does n't get mentioned is an indication of how far right this country has drifted since all the Homeownerist groupies stopped working for wage increases and waited on mass bribery in the form of guaranteed capital gains in house prices from all the major parties.

Bayard said...

"how far right this country has drifted since all the Homeownerist groupies stopped working for wage increases and waited on mass bribery in the form of guaranteed capital gains in house prices from all the major parties"

Yup, the policy of homeownerism has been an unqualified success for the right. Perhaps someone could write a book "Homeownerism: how the landowners kept control of Britain in the twentieth century".

Mark Wadsworth said...

DBC, I gave them a mention in last week's Fun Online Poll andI shall be voting for them.

B, with the benefit of hindsight, the UK for most of the 20th century was relatively Georgist*, it is only over the last thirty years or so - in particular since 1997 - that Home-Owner-Ism really took off.

* Rent controls, mortgage restrictions and social housing are clearly not LVT, but they have vaguely similar aims, i.e. to prevent all the land rents being concentrated in as few hands as possible - instead to let as many people as possible get their bit of the rental value without having to pay too much for it.