Tune Tag #95 with Greg Nix of Chortle: The Kinks, Ricky Skaggs, Scary Pockets, Camille Yarbrough, Roy Wood, The Wombles, Grace Cummings
It's Songs in the Key of Funny with the tuneful hijinks of Chortle's Greg Nix! A veteran comedy writer & performer, he's toiled for Netflix & Nickelodeon, which explains the giggling during frisking!
The Tag is relentless! Ya gotta be kitten!
Tune Tag welcomes of the entertaining Chortle!
✨Today, Tune Tag is delighted to celebrate, with Greg, the One-Year Anniversary of Chortle!🎉
Last week, we were pleased to host UK’s of :
Next week, we hope you’ll join us in welcoming back, good friend of FR&B, PeDupre of
, for his second twirl around the Tune Tag dance floor!
Greg’s song #1 sent to Brad: The Kinks, “Lola,” 1970
Greg’s rationale: I chose this song for purely selfish reasons: because I wrote a blog post about it!
It’s funny—has one of the catchiest choruses ever written, and is astoundingly progressive for its era. In other words, an all-time banger!
The 2020 Animated (Remastered) “Lola” Video
Brad’s response: This, from OriginalRock.net in November 2020: “‘Lola,’ originally recorded May 9, 1970 for The Kinks’ classic Lola Versus Powerman And The Moneygoround, Part One album sessions:
“This fresh, new 2020 remaster (below…that appeared on the 50th anniversary Lola Versus Powerman album released by BMG, December 2020) was done from the original HD master tapes by expert Kinks engineer, Andrew Sandoval, overseen by Kinks frontman, Ray Davies, who produced the original. ‘Lola’, which reached #9 in the U.S., and #2 in the UK and Germany, was The Kinks’ biggest single success since ‘Sunny Afternoon’ in 1966 and marked the start of big comeback, Stateside.
“The track, written by Ray Davies (who’ll turn 80 in late June), allegedly details a romantic encounter between a young man and a possible trans-gender person whom he meets in a club in Soho, London.”
As Greg cleverly asserted in his “The Subversive Genius of ‘Lola” article: “Here’s Ray Davies and the Kinks on TV over fifty years ago (the video at the top), singing about a cross-dresser without a lick of judgment — and with several of the funniest lyrics in rock and roll history! ‘Lola’ is based on a pastiche of real experiences from Davies’ years in rock and roll, as well as a lifelong appreciation for gender-bending that he attributes to British music hall culture.”
The 2020 Animated Remastered “Lola” Video:
Brad’s song #1 sent to Greg: Scary Pockets feat. Jacob Luttrell, “Layla,” 2019
Greg’s response: Funky! I assume this one was chosen because of the “Layla”/“Lola” title similarity, but it’d be funny if the connection was actually super obscure -- like the Kinks’ session drummer was also Stevie Wonder’s great uncle who once punched Eric Clapton.
I was a fan of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ 1990 version of Stevie’s “Higher Ground” growing up, so this also made me kind of want to hear RHCP covering Stevie Wonder covering Clapton, although presumably that combination would bend reality in unalterable ways. The final reason I think this version of the song is fun is because Stevie Wonder seems cool and Eric Clapton seems like kind of a dick.
The Peppers tell Howard Stern how Stevie reacted to their “Higher Ground” cover (if YouTube blacks out the video here, click here to view it on YouTube):
Brad’s rationale: Layla and Lola, bless their hearts, were both born in 1970, and each had somewhat startling origin stories!
But, not really, when you compare them to “A Girl Named Johnny Cash,” performed here on The Ed Sullivan Show in April 1970 by Jane Morgan, with a song written by the late, great Martin Mull:
Greg’s song #2: Grace Cummings, “Praise You,” 2022
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