Tag: Lloyd Cole and The Commotions

Lloyd Cole and the Commotions – Lost Weekend

I like this bouncy story song by Lloyd Cole. His hiccupping style of singing is appealing. I first posted a song by Cole and his Commotions back in June and I’ve been listening to them ever since.

This song was on their album Easy Pieces released in 1985. This band was a success in the UK but didn’t do much in America.

Easy Pieces would enter the UK album charts at number five, and sold over one-hundred thousand copies within a month. Two successful singles were taken from the album. Brand New Friend reached number nineteen and Lost Weekend reached number seventeen.

They released three studio albums total and all were successful. Rattlesnakes in 1984, Easy Pieces in 1985, and Mainstream in 1987. All were in the top twenty in the UK. In 1989, the band decided to break up and released a best of compilation, 1984-1989.

Lost Weekend

It took a lost weekend in a hotel in Amsterdam
And double pneumonia in a single room
And the sickest joke was the price of the medicine
Are you laughing at me now?
May I please laugh along with you?

This morning I woke up from a deep, unquiet sleep
With ashtray clothes and this lonely heart’s pen
With which I wrote for you a love song in tattoo upon my palm
‘Twas stolen from me when Jesus took my hand

You see I, I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it
Drop me and I’ll fall to pieces
So easily

I was a king bee with a head full of attitude
Wore my heart on my sleeve like a stain
And my aim was taboo, you
Could we meet in the marketplace?
Did I ever hey please, did you wound my knees?

You see I, I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it
Drop me, and I’ll fall to pieces
Yeah too easily

There’s nobody else to blame
I hang my head in a crying shame
There is nobody else to blame
Nobody else except my sweet self

It took a lost weekend in a hotel in Amsterdam
Twenty four gone years to conclude in tears
And the sickest joke was the price of the medicine
Are you laughing at me now?
May I please laugh along?

I was a king bee with a head full of attitude
An ashtray heart on my sleeve, wounded knees
And my one love song was a tattoo upon my palm
You wrote upon me when you took my hand

You see I, I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it
Drop me and I’ll fall to pieces too easily
Too easily
Too easily

Advertisement

Lloyd Cole & The Commotions – Perfect Skin… 80’s Underground Mondays

Love the sound of this song. It sounds like it could have come out of any decade. The guitar fills are wonderful. It’s a shame they didn’t have success in America but they were played on college radio stations.

Lloyd Cole wrote the lyrics and music to this song. He would write all the lyrics on the album and on a few songs would get some help with the music.

Perfect Skin was off of the album Rattlesnakes which peaked at #13 in the UK and New Zealand in 1984. The song peaked at #26 in the UK. NME included the album in its Top 100 Albums of All Time list, and the title track was later covered by the American singer Tori Amos.

The Welsh band Manic Street Preachers included the album amongst their top ten list.

They were active from 1984 through 1989 and released three albums and all of them made the top twenty in the UK. They had formed in Glasgow, Scotland in 1982…they broke up in 1989. Cole embarked on a solo career but the band reformed briefly in 2004 to perform a 20th anniversary mini-tour of the UK.

Lloyd Cole: Perfect Skin’s Louise wasn’t real, though. I’d read about Bob Dylan seducing women by writing songs for them, so I was showing off with words: “She’s got cheekbones like geometry and eyes like sin and she’s sexually enlightened by Cosmopolitan.” When I sing that live now, I go: “Who isn’t?”

Between 1983 and 84, we went from being a wimpy band who sounded like the Style Council to more of a rock band. When I wrote Are You Ready to Be Heartbroken? it made us realise what we could do. I took a Portastudio to my room in Glasgow Golf Club, where my parents worked and lived, and wrote Perfect Skin and Forest Fire. Not one song on Rattlesnakes was more than a year old when it was recorded.

Perfect Skin

I choose my friends only far too well
I’m up on the pavement
They’re all down in the cellar
With their government grants and my IQ
They brought me down to size
Academia blues

Louise is a girl
I know her well
She’s up on the pavement
Yes, she’s a weather girl
And I’m staying up here so I may be undone
She’s inappropriate but then she’s much more fun and

When she smiles my way
My eyes go out in vain
She’s got perfect skin

Shame on you, got no sense of grace
Shame on me
Just in case I might
Come to a conclusion other than that which is absolutely necessary
And that’s perfect skin

Louise is the girl with the perfect skin
She says, “Turn on the light otherwise it can’t be seen”
She’s got cheekbones like geometry and eyes like sin
And she’s sexually enlightened by Cosmopolitan and

When she smiles my way
My eyes go out in vain
For her perfect skin
Yeah, that’s perfect skin

She takes me down to the basement
To look at her slides
Of her family life
Pretty weird at times
At the age of ten she looked like Greta Garbo and I loved her then
But how was she to know that

When she smiles my way
My eyes go out in vain
She’s got perfect skin

Up eight flights of stairs to her basement flat
Pretty confused, huh?
Being shipped around like that
Seems to climb so high
Now we’re down so low
Strikes me the moral of the song
Must be: there never has been one

…