Jamie T – Sheila

As I approach the pearly gates with a head wound and the sight of all my dogs I’ve lost before me running down those cloud flanked stairs (I always hoped there’d be dogs) I’d expect to see some old friends. It’d be Giovanni who’s ask me the obvious question:

“Why didn’t you do Sheila by Jamie T?”

It’s a valid inquiry. Few songs on Planet Earth have had the same level of airplay within SteveForTheDeaf’s earshot as Sheila by Jamie T. It’s a fine song. A mighty fine song. No faint praise here. It’s not Sympathy For The Devil or American Pie famous. It’s not even Under Pressure or Body Movin’ famous. But it is widely regarded by those in the right bracket (age, geography, penchant for this sort of nonsense) as a classic.

As claimed in the last post, It’s also one of the few 20th Century songs SteveForTheDeaf could take a run at rapping all the way through. How does Giovanni know this? He was there. When it happened.

The headline act had finished their main set and the fireworks had gone off but it was a balmy summers night at a costal music festival in Wales in the mid-2010’s. I was captain of a crew of almost a dozen workers on site to promote and ‘build brand culture’ for the company we all worked for. What a jolly.

We’d closed up our pop up around sunset and joined the throng of festival goers as participants. We were well oiled. Hospitality passes and drink tokens meant hardly a penny of our own money was getting spent but we were scattered over the site having a half dozen different wild experiences around various stages. Amber A sent up the bat signal first. A group message about Amber B not being able to shake off a creepy crusty and them being down by the burlesque tent in need of rescue.

Giovanni, Lowry and myself were all giggling like crazy at the blag we’d pulled off to get into the press area so Lowry could use a genuine plumbed in toilet rather than a festival porta-potty. We’d had to try it three times that weekend already as he’s a germaphobe and festival toilets really freaked him out. So as the so called “St Petersburg Rolling Stone Byline Team” fled the scene of another blatant fib lighter on their feet to meet with The Ambers and the others spirits were high.

By midnight we were ensconced in a makeshift karaoke bar that overlooked the estuary drinking fruit ciders and one by one taking turns at murdering indie disco classics with a throng of a hundred or so other party people. I don’t drink Cider. I was also ‘Defacto Team Leader’ by dint of my seniority and my relative sobriety. I don’t sing and ‘Villains don’t Dance’ had somehow become a mantra between our group. But they weren’t having it. The team were pushing me to ‘Do a tune’, ‘come on’, ‘everyone else is,’ ‘It can’t be worse than Lowry’s Livin’ On A Prayer’. I have of course, previous in this arena.

The compere smelled blood in the water. She had her arm around me and was holding the mic out to while they chanted. The longer it went on the more I looked like a right party pooper if I didn’t say yes.

The MC shout/whispers to me “If you can’t sing, rap” I make a selection on a iPad and that one bass note played out loud. I frikkin’ went for it. Little did anyone there know the story of the CD-R that was stuck in my old Volkswagens’ CD changer and could not be removed. It’s hugely fortunate that every track on that disc is an absolute banger. I listened to them at least once a week for 9 years at this stage. Almost all of them have appeared on this site at one point or another. Sheila was track two.

“Sheila goes out with her mate Stella, it gets poured all over her fella, ‘cos she says man he ain’t no better than the next man kick up fuss, drunk she stumbles down by the river, screams callin’ London, none of us heard her coming, I guess the carpet weren’t rolled out”

I’m particularly fond of this song for several reasons other than its ubiquity. It samples Sir John Betjeman. His The Cockney Amorist to be precise. The recording of which is on his delightful album Betejman’s Banana Blush. My admiration for it was one of the earliest posts on this here website. And until now I figured I’d doffed my cap to Sheila already because of that post. But we should also mention Lily Allen’s input.

“LOOOONNNNDAAAANNN!”

Screamed out of a window in a “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore” stylee. But she gets a credit for it none the less. She also sang backing vocals on the singles’ rereleased B-Side Rawhide.

In the serotonin soaked aftermath of that rendition the legend became that The Boss got up and did a word perfect rendition with thrown shapes and call outs that brought the house down. It’s not entirely true. There were enough people in the room who did know the whole song back to back that a strategic ‘pass the mic’ covered me. But I do have to say, I nailed most of the first two verses. Especially the Betjeman bits. People lost their minds.

Amid all the stumbles and fumbles I did get the mic passed back to me for the line from My Fair Lady (which trivia fans is not a sample of Rex Harrison from the film but in fact, Jamie’s Dad in his sons’ bedroom studio)

“Blue blooded murder of the English tongue, blat!”

Which made it look like I was in control and critiquing the contributors who knew the bits I might not have done. It was a true high point in an already fantastic festival weekend. I still can’t get my mouth around…

“Behave, young scallywag, a fine young Galahad, glad ragged up, but only ever getting fag hags, hung on his shoulder, cheap price shop tag, Slag better understand he came for the glamour but this town’s original, superficial the issue, for one dear Jack had thirty-five doppelgängers”

And that snag of a fact brings us right up to date, my life now could not be more different than those heady days of music, promoting and baton passing to a group of young talented professionals. In fact it’s hard to believe it happened at all. But come the highlights reel, the silliness of the whole thing will get a frame or two.

“Rip it up kick it to spit up the views” indeed.