G-G-G-G-G-Granville! (#5): The Dark Side

I’ve previously explained why stammerers are the world’s dancers, poets and cool people, but, yes, there’s also a dark side to stammering, a bedlam inhabited by shades, ciphers, liars, amoralists, freaks, ne’er-do-wells and gits, a netherworld where the sun of pleasant conversation doth never rise. But, as without darkness there cannot be light, without stammering there cannot be fluency. You and I live in symbiosis… without me, you are nothing. As I explained the more celebratory aspects of stammering through song, I shall here also.

The Toy Dolls - Keith's a Theif: Surely there's nothing more stammer-worthy than being caught for benefit fraud - I mean, it's illegal but it's not even cool! Stammering on the all appropriate words: tax, dole, court, etc .

David Bowie - Changes: “Ch-ch-ch-changes”: Bowie, bless him, is the world's least likely stammerer; he’s therefore affecting this, as he’s affected much else in his career, but the fact that he gets away with it is sinister enough in itself.

James Brown - Please Please Please: Saying "please" to a woman once should be once too often for any self-respecting stammerer. In fact most of this song from Stammering Brother No. 1 is a cry for help. Pathetic.

Talking Heads - Psycho Killer: “f-f-fa-f-f-f-f-fa-fa…… You start a conversation but you can't even finish it... I'm tense and nervous, can't relax... I hate people when they're not polite”. Yes.

The Dickies - Paranoid: Most of what comes out of The Dickies vocalist's mouth sounds like speech impediment, especially here when trying to out-Ozzie Ozzie Osbourne. “Can you help me, help me with my brain? Oh no!" No.

Darts - Come Back My Love: All doowop sounds like stammering, but Big Den Hegarty's “B-b-b-b-baby” (2:14 minutes in) sticks in the mind, and he famously looks like Frankenstein's monster, amply qualifying this song.

So, 6 stammering songs here; nothing particularly significant about that number, though if you stammer it a bit you could be invoking the number of The Beast. I bid you good evening!

Yet Another Song in the Style of Another

I reckon that almost everything sounds better if done in a punk style. But then I was a 15-year-old in 1977. (I suppose if I'd been 15 in 1877 then I'd want everthing played as a Viennese Waltz, wouldn't I). Sunderland's The Toy Dolls are experts at this sort of thing. For adrenaline junkies here's their version of Khachaturian's Sabre Dance. And here's their Livin the Vida Loca: I just love to hear Geordie coming out of Ricky Martin's gob, and let's face it what vida could be more loca than living in Sunderland and looking like this: