Personal Picks Episode Eighteen - Just One More Thing

Columbo with his dog. Art by Bill Sienkiewicz.

 

Another playlist so soon?! I know. I thought I'd fit one between the Chrimbo one and a new New Year's one I'm working on now. As in all honesty, I've had some of these playlists created ages ago and have just been too lazy to work up a post. Also, as I said in my previous post, I wanted there to be more to the posts.

The Theme: Questions

Some of you might have noticed that the playlist name references an oft used phrase of Lieutenant Columbo . I chose that because the playlist are songs that all have a question for a title (inspired, as I often am, by an episode of Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour) and who asks a lot of questions? 

So I thought I'd give you my top 5 TV detectives as my discussion for this playlist. 

The definitive Miss Marple (Joan Hickson) meets the definitive Poirot (David Suchet)

1) Hercule Poirot (David Suchet)

There's a lot to like about Agatha Christie's Poirot (1989 - 2013) but it all centres around David Suchet's wonderful performance as the Belgian detective. The series ended up adapting all the major literary works, ending with an adaptation of Curtain, the final Poirot novel.

2) Lieutenant Frank Columbo (Peter Falk)

The unique storytelling structure (seeing the crime and the perpetrator at the beginning) is a unique selling point but Peter Falk's Columbo often irritating the offender and playing the buffoon before hitting them with a "Just One More Thing" is what entertains me. It actually reminds more of Crime and Punishment, a novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky. The offenders aren't racked with guilt so much as worried they'll get caught. He's outsmarted famous folk from Leonard Nimoy to Billy Connolly. 

3) Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury)

Probably the one I've watched the most. Angela Lansbury is a wonderful actress from Academy Award nominated roles in The Manchurian Candidate (she was robbed) to Disney movies like Beauty and the Beast. She will probably be most remembered for Murder, She Wrote. The crime writer turned detective comes across as an amiable older relative but is razor sharp and is a tough cookie to boot. Another one where you'll spot some stars including likes of the future Captain Janeway, Kate Mulgrew, and Leslie Nielson. Not just as the villains though.

4) Jane Marple (Joan Hickson)

From 1984 to 1992, the BBC adapted all the original Agatha Christie novels with Joan Hickson in the title role. She is seen by many, myself included, as the definitive Marple. Indeed, Agatha Christie, having seen her perform in one of her plays in 1940, wrote her a note saying "I hope one day you will play my dear Miss Marple"

5) Detective Inspector Henry Crabbe (Richard Griffiths)

I watched a lot of these detective shows with my mum. Another thing we used to watch was cooking shows. Pie In The Sky mixes these two together a bit. All DI Henry Crabbe wants to do is retire to cook in his restaurant but his superior wants to keep him around to make him look good. Richard Griffiths plays another likeable detective who tries to fit some cooking in and the food looks wonderful. 

The Songs

I used the Google machine to find question songs to help the "little grey cells" remember some favourites. The playlist features some personal favourite artists. Pet Shop Boys are joined by Dusty Springfield on a song that helped revive her career. Former Beautiful South members Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbott reunite and remind you of the old days. R.E.M.'s song with a title inspired by someone beating up journalist Dan Rather. ABBA 's song appeared in the Mamma Mia movie sequel so I may have picked that up from there. An 80s classic from Culture Club is included. The remainder are ones that are mostly tunes that I discovered through my life that I enjoy. One is from a gas advert featuring a dog, a cat and a mouse. See if you recall that after listening. Speaking of mice, there's a little bit of cheese included. 

The playlist  (You can check out this playlist on Spotify).

1. What Have I Done To Deserve This? - Pet Shop Boys, Dusty Springfield 

2. What Have We Become - Paul Heaton, Jacqui Abbott

3. What's The Frequency, Kenneth? - R.E.M.

4. What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted - Jimmy Ruffin

5. Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow - The Shirelles

6. Where Did Our Love Go - The Supremes

7. Where Do You Go To (My Lovely) - Peter Sarstedt

8. Do You Really Want To Hurt Me - Culture Club

9. What's Up? - 4 Non Blondes

10. Why Did It Have To Be Me? - ABBA

Recommendations:

Maybe a nice detective show or House. I count House as a detective show of sorts.

Personal Picks Episode Seventeen - We Need A Little Christmas

 

It's been quite a while since I posted one of these playlists. The reason being was I wanted to put more into them by adding a theme to discuss and going into the song choices a bit more. I'm hoping to get back into the rhythm as I really enjoyed putting this together. 

The Theme: Christmas

As for the theme, it is around the 14th December when I post this and this is my family's official date for starting the festive season (it's my sister's birthday). I was just going to post the link to last year's playlist but then felt like challenging myself to find new songs and not ones that are played on the radio often (if at all).  

The Songs

The list starts off mellow and then moves into the cheesey area so the song order is deliberate. I picked Sarah McLachlan and Kacey Musgraves because I like their voices and the songs are good. Musgraves I discovered through her collaboration with Troye Sivan so gave the song a listen when I saw her name. As I mentioned, one overall idea was picking covers / different versions of songs so as to be different from the usual radio picks. I like the songs Mistletoe and Wine and Stay Another Day (Stay Another Day only qualifies as it is a Christmas Number One but there isn't anything Christmasy about it). Anyway, I just looked to see if other artists had covered them. Delighted that Kylie had covered Stay Another Day (as part of a special edition of her Kylie Christmas album). I really like the songs Hard Candy Christmas and We Need A Little Christmas. I discovered both from creating last year's playlist so similarly looked to see if they were covered by other people. Happily, they were covered by two artists I enjoy, Cyndi Lauper and Sufjan Stevens. Both artists are back from last year. Stevens' song is from a different Christmas album than I picked from last year (Silver & Gold). Yes he's done more than one. Do You Hear What I Hear? appears as it was in the first Gremlins movie, which is unquestionably a Christmas movie. Moving to the cheese portion. Buck Owens' tune from my All Across America playlist was a lot of fun so I looked to see if he had any Christmas ones. He also has an entire album (Christmas With Buck Owens). I picked the one that was the most fun. Last year, I discovered Hanson, of MMMBop fame, also had a Christmas album, Snowed In, but I couldn't fit them in so I picked my favourite tune off of it for this year. Finally, Must Be Santa. Kinda funny family thing. My mum likes Bryan Adams and my dad likes Bob Dylan so here is Bryan doing a song that Bob did. (Bryan has a Christmas EP called Christmas EP and Dylan has an album called Christmas In The Heart). How may people have Christmas albums now? There must be money in it.

The playlist  (You can check out this playlist on Spotify).

1. Wintersong - Sarah McLachlan 

2. Christmas Makes Me Cry - Kacey Musgraves

3. Mistletoe and Wine - Michael Ball, Alfie Boe

4. Do You Hear What I Hear? - Johnny Mathis

5. Stay Another Day - Kylie Minogue

6. Hard Candy Christmas - Cyndi Lauper, Alison Krauss

7. We Need A Little Christmas - Sufjan Stevens 

8. Santa Looked A Lot Like Daddy (Daddy Looked A Lot Like Him) - Buck Owens

9. Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree - Hanson

10. Must Be Santa - Bryan Adams

Recommendations:

Gremlins.