LEFTOVERS: IT'S ELEMENTAL (continued........)

(Heh, heh, heh, esteemed buddy, KK, you can't throw a gauntlet of that size down and expect me to walk away........)

Now, where were we?

Uranium: Uranium Fever by Elton Britt.
Wow, what find! A sassy 50s rap eulogising the joys of this most famous of the radioactive particles, just the sort of song aching to have been revived in the 70s heyday of Commander Cody's gloriously louche Lost Planet Airmen. Hell, I can see 'em playing it right now in my head. Smoke smoke smoke THAT cigarette!! Britt was a fairly successful country singer of his day, famous more for his yodelling than his singing, I learn, oft-covering the King of the Yodel, Jimmie Rodgers.

Lanthanum: Lanthanum by Vain Velocity.
'Haunting tune' speaks a comment on the youtube, and for a moment I bought that too, before it nosedived through the ground into a throat singing implosion of grunge-plated metal. So this is greek heavy metal? I always confuse lanthanum with laudanum, wondering if they did too. Hell, it's the sort of haunting nightmare that might strike if laudanum had been taken.

Dubnium: Haze by Dubnium.
I rather like this. I only searched because of the name, never having heard of the substance, but hoping it may have been similarly noted. Reassuringly heavily dubby, this is the work of a Plymouth, U.K., DJ, Sean, um, Dubnium, possibly not his birth name, mentioned to distinguish from U.S. based Dubnium Soundsystem, whom I didn't investigate. I could easily come down from a Laudanum hit on this.

Iridium: Iridium by Dark Tranquillity.
Shucks, I should have known better, lulled in again by a tasteful intro ahead of stentorian grunting dragging me down out of my demographic. Could be the same fella as the greek above, but they are swedish death metal stalwarts of the Gothenburg scene, it says here. I'd love to sound less grudging of their art but when I say it is nauseous, it's only because I would be if tried to sing like that. But then, what do I know?

Lead: Weights Made of Lead by the Sensational Alex Harvey Band.
Well I never, mere weeks after this and I discover this little nugget somehow earlier having passed me by. Could it be the repetitive nature of the tune or the plodding rhythm, but it certainly seems apt for the subject. 'I've got weights made of lead' sings Harvey but we never learn why. Is it a paean to fishing?

Tin: Tin Soldier by the Small Faces.
At last, cries my reader, at last one I know. A 1967 single that was perhaps their best, blending a pop sensitivity with something instrumentally a bit more inventive. The stop at 1.30, with then repeated keyboard motif predates that later stylisation, common across house music, by decades. Terrible to think that, with the death earlier this year of keyboard player, Ian McLagan, that drummer, Kenney Jones, is last man standing. R.I.P. Mac, along with Ronnie 'Plonk' Lane and Steve Marriott.

Krypton: Kryptonite by 3 Doors Down.
Is kryptonite the same as krypton? Do we know or care? Always and irrespectively associated with Superman, this was a massive hit in 2000 for Escatawpa, Mississippee band, whose singer and, for the first 4 years, drummer, Brad Arnold, seems to be the only permanent. Struggling to say much more as it is so inoffensive.

Mercury: Mercury Poisoning by Graham Parker & the Rumour.
All at once I'm dragged back to the early 70s with this righteous blast. Jeez, I loved this band, GP a much more vitriolic character than the benign old dude revived in Judd Apatow's 'This is 40'. I saw them then and saw them again, last year, touring again on the back of the films exposure, marvelling at the still smoking embers of pre-punk. The song, a thinly disguised jibe at his record label, Mercury, was and is typical of his lyrical spikiness. Wonderful.

Bismuth: Bismuth by Michael Johnson
I know nothing of this new age instrumental beyond a link to this, from where which it comes. And all the tracks are inspired by different elements. Quite how the pastoral tone of this example fits with the active ingredient of 'Pepto-Bismol', a proprietary anti-diarrhoeal, I don't know, apart from perhaps the calm it's apparent efficacy might provoke. The whole album is a free download, if you forgive the use of that term apropos to a discussion around diarrhoea.

Tungsten: Insomnia (Dark Dubstep) by Tungsten
More instrumental gobbledegook cooked up in someone's bedroom, but I like it. As I get older I seem strangely drawn to this sort of stuff, certainly enjoying it way more than the hideous elemental metal cliches the elements seem to bring forth. OK, neither clever, nor art but hey, it made me smile. and who Tungsten? Not a clue.

So, another 10, and like radioactivity, it's nearly killed me.
Part 4? Only when they make polony out of polonium.
Can you buy 'em? Probably. Go search, as the usual might not have then all.

CARTOONS & COMICS: Sgt. Fury/S.A.H.B.

So who is the bigger cartoon? Is it the character in the song, Sergeant Nicholas Joseph Fury, or the singer, the 'Sensational' Alexander James Harvey? OK, easy question, really, but as a teenage Brit in the 70s it was sometimes hard to tell.

Marvel comics reached my consciousness mid 60s, I guess, not in their original multi-hued kaleidoscopes of smudgy ink, collectors items to this day, but as black and white facsimiles in UK comics 'Fantastic' and Terrific', almost entirely consisting of reprints of The Fantastic Four, the X Men and similar. Sgt Fury and his Howling Commandos seemed always unusual bedfellows amongst all these mutants and super-heroes, despite, in hindsight, being equally muscle bound and indestructible. In my somehow more sterile world, the wise-cracking and cigar-chomping irreverence shown towards WW2 appealed, and certainly far more so than the worthier by far UK war comics, populated by far cleaner cut and heroic fictions. Warfare seemed like so much fun........

Alex Harvey was so nearly of that generation, being born in 1935, and almost too old for the generation he became latterly most associated with, in, most famously, the Sensational Alex Harvey Band, their heyday between 1972 and 78. After various dead-end jobs he eventually staggered to his musical feet in 1954, embracing a number of styles in turn, dixieland and big band jazz, skiffle, soul/r'n'b, never quite breaking through, ending up in the pit of the London production of the musical 'Hair.' Rock music now inevitably in his blood, a chance meeting with Glasgow prog rockers 'Tear Gas' led to the end of an abortive solo period and the positively tongue-in-cheek entitled eponymous band. Perennials on the UK touring circuit, unless you are reading this in Cleveland, the chances are that the name will mean nothing to US readers. Bizarrely, they could fill venues in this city, bombing elsewhere. Gloriously and gratuitously Scottish, Harvey enunciating perfect Glaswegian, his band a side-show of grotesques, the songs a mix of Gothic Grand-Guignol with full on hard rock, they were foremost a live band. Harvey, unkempt and gurning, a swashbuckling figure in striped mate lot jerseys and buccaneers boots, with the extraordinary figure of guitarist, Zal Cleminson, in full clown make up and green jumpsuit, leering to his side. The songs, carefully chosen  cover versions of anything from 50s rock'n'roll to Jacques Brel, mingling with unpretentiously art school originals, evoking comic books, as at the top of and the title of this piece, or dystopian vignettes of disturbed delusion. 'Sgt Fury' comes from their 1974 album, 'The Impossible Dream', and is a blend of all the styles dallied with earlier, perhaps in keeping with the era of the songs subject.

Stage sets and album covers became increasingly caricatures of themselves, hence my uncertainties as to who was the more or less real. Possibly their most famous moment was in 1975, their top 10 single, a remodelling of Tom Jones' chestnut, 'Delilah', horrifying teatime audiences across the UK as the true murderous menace of the lyric became acted out upon 'Top of the Pops. Magnificent (and still my sole ever performed karaoke piece.) Here it is from late night serious rock show, 'Old Grey Whistle Test':

Sadly, bedecked by alcohol issues, Harvey then left the band, who continued as the 'Sensational Alex Harvey Band without Alex', his absence seemingly little detraction. He joined again briefly before, aged 47, sustaining a pair of massive heart attacks, he died, in 1982. Whilst the band had broken up by then, I can report that, having been voted 5th most influential band in Scotland in 2005, they reformed and remain intermittently on the road to this day.

This has all the songs featured here and might be a safe place to start......
Or you may wish to read more about the band.