Now playing: Kite by Kirsty MacColl

I miss Kirsty.


Bully is listening to Kite (Virgin, 1981), by Kirsty MacColl

Today in Comics History, July 24: Happy birthday, Lynda Carter!

theme from Wonder Woman (Warner Bros. Television, 1975), composed by Charles Fox and Norman Gimbel
Get out your ceremonial Amazoian attire and dance around with your kanga: it's the birthday of actor, singer, songwriter, model, activist and wonderful woman Lynda Carter!


from Fifty Who Made DC Great one-shot (DC, 1985)

365 Days of Defiance, Day 283: I don't have to put up with you giving me the third degree

Today, something a little different. It's the birthday of perhaps my favorite female vocalist of all time: (and yes, even Jane Wiedlin and Björk have to take a back seat to her) Kirsty MacColl. Kirsty would have been 58 today, and I mourn for her as well as celebrate her: she died in 2000 in a tragic, criminal boating accident, and I miss the many miraculous songs she would have recorded had she not died, and her spirit, humor, and joy in the world of music. She has always been very special to me.



One of my favorite Kirsty songs is from her 1991 LP Electric Landlady and is an early example of "Mambo MacColl": her songs inspired by her love of Cuban and Caribbean rhythm. I especially recommend her final 2000 album Tropical Brainstorm for many examples of Kirsty embracing the constructs of world music. "My Affair" is a protest song, a song of defiance, but not political: it's personal, as Kirsty always was, an intimate expression of individual spirit and inner fire. It may not be comics, and it may not be political, but for today, at least, please remember Kirsty and her music. Here's "My Affair."


"My Affair" by Kirsty MacColl (1991), composed by Kirsty MacColl/Mark E. Nevin
When I was just a child
My folks would drive me wild
They'd spy upon my every move
Until it drove me to despair
They told me what to wear
They told me not to cut my hair
But that's all over now
I had to tell them anyhow

It's my affair
Where I go and what I do
It's my affair oh yeah
It's my affair
It's up to me and not to you
It's my affair

That's the way I want to keep it
I kissed the boy in secret
Thrilled me to the very core
I couldn't stop I wanted more and
I didn't hear the door and
They caught me on the floor
With my affair

And when we first got wed
We used to stay in bed
All day and night all night and day
We bedded half our lives away
But that's all over now
We move in higher circles
Chomping through the upper crust
I couldn't see you for the dust
And then you met that girl
Who left you with your money spent
And now it's no concern of yours
If I sleep with the President

It's my affair
And if I don't come home tonight
It's my affair alright
It's my affair
Who I see is up to me
It's my affair

That's how I want to keep it
I kiss the boys in secret
Hiding in the parking lot
Is just as far as I have got but
If the phone should ring and
There's no one there
Then it's my affair

Eso es asunto de ella
Donde va why lo que hare

Well it's all over now
You've seen the last of me
And I don't have to put up with you
Giving me the third degree
So you go on your way
And don't come sneaking round the back door
Trying to get yourself

It's my affair
And if I don't come home tonight
It's my affair alright
It's my affair
Who I see is up to me
It's my affair



I miss you very much, Kirsty.

No empty bench in Soho Square

An empty bench in Soho Square
If you'd have come you'd have found me there



One day you'll be waiting there, no empty bench in Soho Square
And we'll dance around like we don't care



One day you'll be waiting there, no empty bench in Soho Square
No I don't know the reason why I'll love you till the day I die
But one day you'll be waiting there
Come summertime in Soho Square
And I'll be painting stars up in the sky
Before I get too old to cry before my birthday
I hope I see those pigeons fly before my birthday
In Soho Square on my birthday

Because it's a day that needs a little Kirsty

Kirsty MacColl singing "In These Shoes?"

Kirsty.

"Terry" (1983)


"A New England" (1984)


"He's on the Beach" (1985)


"Mambo de la Luna" (1999)


"Fairytale of New York" (with the Pogues, 1987)

Ten of a Kind: Kiss me quick 'cos it's my birthday

Today is my birthday! I am six years old today. Which is a very good age to be.





















(More Ten of a Kind here.)

PS: As a birthday present to me, won't you please listen to one of my favorite songs, the sad and lovely "Soho Square", by the very-much missed Kirsty MacColl?


See Kirsty's empty bench in Soho Square.

PPS: By some coincidence, this is my seventh hundredth post on this blog!

Song of the Day: Whatever happened to that old song ("Rainy Night in Soho" by the Pogues)

A couple days ago The Fortress Keeper asked me in the comments

What's your favorite Pogues album, Bully? I like Rum, Sodomy and The Lash myself. (No rude jokes, please. That's the album's title!!)

How to answer that question? At least until the departure of Shane MacGowan, there wasn't to my ears a bad Pogues album. But The Keeper's spot on: Rum, Sodomy and the Lash is one of the great Pogues albums—loud, raucous, Irish punk from smack-dab in the middle of the eighties: back in the heyday of the new British invasion it was the Pogues who showed us Americans that there was more to music of the day from the British Isles than Spandau Balley and Culture Club. It contains the sublime "I'm a Man You Don't Meet Every Day" with Sinéad O'Connor (a song John has said he wants played at his funeral, which better not happen for a long, long time!), the heartbreaking but rollicking "The Sick Bed of Cuchulain," the single best cover of "Waltzing Matilda" by non-Australians (and better than most of those), and another brilliant cover, this time of one of the finest angry city songs of all time, "Dirty Old Town," originally written by folk singer Ewan MacColl (yes, Kirsty's dad) in the immediate post-War depression of industrial Britain's northern towns.

I met my love by the gas works wall
Dreamed a dream by the old canal
Kissed my girl by the factory wall
Dirty old town
Dirty old town
Clouds are drifting across the moon
Cats are prowling on their beat
Spring's a girl from the streets at night
Dirty old town
Dirty old town

What's this got to do with London, you might ask? Aside from being a totally brilliant song, it's a perfect Pogues song for them to cover, as no band in my humble little stuffed opinion has ever capture so fully and passionately—and most important, simultaneously—the romanticism for and the bleak portrayal of a city: in this case Salford in Lancashire, but so very often in the songs of the Pogues, London.

"Lullabye of London" from If I Should Fall from Grace with God; "Misty Morning, Albert Bridge," "White City," and "London You're a Lady," from Peace and Love; "London Girl" from Poguetry in Motion, "Dark Streets of London" and "Transmetropolitan" (the greatest song ever about hopping on the Underground to terrorize the inhabitants of each borough of London in turn) from Red Roses for Me...all beautiful, haunting songs that only Shane MacGowan's gravelly, beer-soaked voice could do true justice to, but none come as close for me to capturing the essence of London's beauty, romance, heartbreak, passion and mystery as "Rainy Night in Soho" from their 1986 EP Poguetry in Motion:

I've been loving you a long time
Down all the years, down all the days
And I've cried for all your troubles
Smiled at your funny little ways
We watched our friends grow up together
And we saw them as they fell
Some of them fell into Heaven
Some of them fell into Hell

I took shelter from a shower
And I stepped into your arms
On a rainy night in Soho
The wind was whistling all its charms
I sang you all my sorrows
You told me all your joys
Whatever happened to that old song
To all those little girls and boys

Sometimes I wake up in the morning
The ginger lady by my bed
Covered in a cloak of silence
I hear you talking in my head
I'm not singing for the future
I'm not dreaming of the past
I'm not talking of the fist time
I never think about the last

Now the song is nearly over
We may never find out what it means
Still there's a light I hold before me
You're the measure of my dreams
The measure of my dreams

Reading it doesn't do it justice, though. Watch and hear Shane sing it, and understand:



I didn't answer The Fortress Keeper's question, by the way. If I Should Fall from Grace with God is my favorite Pogues album. But "Rainy Night in Soho" is, by far, my favorite song of many by the Pogues.



Other songs in heavy rotation on my London playlists today (links will open in iTunes, unless you don't have iTunes, in which case they won't.):

"Dark Streets of London" by The Pogues, from the album Red Roses for Me
"London Girl" by The Pogues, from the album Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash
"Lullabye of London" by The Pogues, from the album If I Should Fall from Grace with God
"Misty Morning, Albert Bridge" by The Pogues, from the album Peace & Love
"Transmetropolitan" by The Pogues, from the album Red Roses for Me