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Best tunes of 2003: #9 Belle & Sebastian “Dear catastrophe waitress”

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“Dear. Catastrophe. Waitress.”

Back when I first moved to Ottawa, I was employed at a call center taking calls for a utility company that I will not name here. It was unionized and pretty good pay and I was often able to pick up extra shifts to pay down my student debt. And if they hadn’t closed up shop in 2006, I might even still be working there today.

My coworkers were good people and management understood that taking calls was a tough job so they were often looking for ways to improve office morale. They held plenty of social events, encouraged fun, theme days in the office, and offered prizes for keeping call times low, call quality high, and for perfect attendance. While I was rarely in the top for call times and my quality was middling at best, I never missed work days, which meant collecting a hundred dollar gift card at the store of my choice for perfect attendance once a year. Of course, my store of choice back then tended to be HMV Canada, which allowed me to score a handful of CDs. The second year I got my gift card, my trove of purchases included the newly released sixth album by Belle and Sebastian, “Dear Catastrophe Waitress”.

I had been a fan of the Glaswegian twee pop collective for a few years by then, having been introduced to them by a friend in my final year of university. I had taken quickly to their first three albums, all of which had been released in just as quick a succession in the last few years of the 90s. And it was really on the backs of those that I bought the compact disc. I hadn’t taken as hastily to their fourth record, “Fold your hands child, you walk like a peasant”, though I’ve since grown to appreciate it, and the same went for 2002’s “Storytelling”, which was sort of the soundtrack to the 2001 Todd Solondz film of the same name*. Happily, I found “Dear Catastrophe Waitress” a complete shift in gears and a revitalization of Belle and Sebastian’s sound. There was tons to like and pick through and I spent a lot of time doing so**.

“I’m sorry that you seem to have the weight of the world over you
I cherish your smile
There’s a word of peace on your lips
Say it, and with tenderness I’ll cherish”

“Dear Catastrophe Waitress” is now one of my favourite albums by Belle and Sebastian and the title track is easily my favourite on the album. Track two is just over two minutes in length but it’s a frenetic two minutes. Like an ill run, short-staffed restaurant at lunch time, slammed by ornery and ignorant tourists. After two repetitions of the title, frontman Stuart Murdoch launches hard into an ode to the under-appreciated waitress. Meanwhile, the drums are non-stop and the symphony of horns and strings are all ramped up in keeping up, a cacophony of cartoon sounds, the coyote and roadrunner conspiring together.

By the end, we are all left breathless and sad. But ready to start it all over again.

*Which I also didn’t really like and unlike the previous album, I still don’t really like this one.

**I even picked up a novel from the library by Brendan Halpin, an author I had never heard of, a few years after the album’s release, simply because it borrowed the album’s title for its own. (It was an enjoyable read.)

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2003 list, click here.

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Eighties’ best 100 redux: #82 The Proclaimers “I’m gonna be (500 miles)” (1988)

<< #83    |    #81 >>

Remember this song?

Song #82 on my Eighties’ top 100 list was all over the North American charts and on every radio’s playlist in the summer of 1993, despite it being released five years earlier. The relative lateness of its success was due mostly to the song’s (un)timely inclusion on the soundtrack for the quirky Rom-com film, “Benny & Joon”, starring Mary Stuart Masterson and Johnny Depp. The story as I’ve heard it (correct me if I’m wrong) is that Masterson convinced the film’s producers and director to include the song after she spent most of the filming listening to The Proclaimers’ 1988 album “Sunshine on Leith” on her Walkman.

The Proclaimers are a Scottish folk rock band composed of twin brothers Charlie and Craig Reid. They have released twelve full-length albums since 1987 but none quite so successful as “Sunshine on Leith”. This album and song were so ubiquitous at the time that my university campus pub chose to bring The Proclaimers in for a concert over bringing in The Jesus And Mary Chain. I sometimes wonder if that decision was ever regretted.

My fondest memory of this song goes back to the summer of 1993. I had spent three days hanging out with my high school friends, Tim and Zed, without sleep, and living on a diet of potato chips, McDonalds, and beer. On the third night, we had somehow managed to get dragged to a party in cottage country, an hour away from our hometown. By the time we arrived, the party was winding down and we decided to head back home after only staying a half hour. We caught a ride back into town with our friend Rudy in his pickup truck and we were flying along the unlit backroads in the wee hours of the morning when “500 miles” came on the radio. I’m pretty sure my friend Andrew was in the backseat of the truck and mentioned that he liked the song. Rudy responded by blasting the radio, effectively drowning out the impromptu singalong that ensued.

I’ll never know how I survived that summer but because of it, this song will forever have a place in my memories.

Original Eighties best 100 position: #86

Favourite lyric: “And if I haver, yeah, I know I’m gonna be / I’m gonna be the man who’s havering to you” I’ve never figured out what out “havering” means but I’m sure it’s romantic.

Where are they now?: The Proclaimers have been a going concern since their inception. Their most recent release was 2022’s  “Dentures out”, which, much like the lion’s share of their latter output, I have yet to hear.

For the rest of the Eighties’ best 100 redux list, click here.

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100 best covers: #38 Teenage Fanclub “Mr. Tambourine man”

<< #39    |    #37 >>

Scottish alt rock legends, Teenage Fanclub have appeared many times over on these pages since this blog’s inception. In fact, they’ve already graced this particular list once with their cover of a great track by another iconic Scottish alt-rock band and – spoiler alert – you’ll likely see them again on this list before it reaches its end.

I first heard this particular cover of “Mr. Tambourine Man” when a friend of mine put it on a mixed tape for me. I later learned of its provenance when I found a used copy of the 3-CD compilation “Ruby trax” at Penguin Music in the late 90s, a compilation that has also received due mention in relation to this list of great covers. I remember thinking it quite apt that the Fannies chose to cover this particular track given that I had found that the jangling guitar and harmonizing vocals on their 1993 album “Thirteen” harkened back to the folk rock sound practically invented by The Byrds. Of course, this was before I learned that Teenage Fanclub was just as enamoured of Big Star and that The Byrds’ “Mr. Tambourine Man” was itself a cover of a Bob Dylan track*.

The Teenage Fanclub cover has way more in common with The Byrds version than with Bob Dylan’s original. Indeed, it’s almost an exact replica of The Byrds’ rendition, only a slightly bit shorter and perhaps a bit more raw in the vocals. The Byrds released their cover in spring 1965, less than a month after Dylan released his original. Both of these versions were very successful for those artists, topping charts and inspiring generations of musicians. The Byrds cut a few verses from Dylan’s composition, changed the time signature, and the recording is half the length. It’s 12 string jangle rock versus pure balladeering folk.

You can definitely tell that Teenage Fanclub owed more a debt to The Byrds than to Bob Dylan with their faithful ode. Some might knock them for it, but not me. And though the two covers are quite different from the original I love them all and refuse to go with one over the others.

Cover:

Original:

*Having only had limited exposure to both Dylan and The Byrds via my parents’ oldies radio station listening, I would later go on to learn that The Byrds covered many Bob Dylan tunes while exploring both of their catalogues much, much later.

For the rest of the 100 best covers list, click here.