"Walk Away Renee" - The Left Banke

This is one of my favorite pop songs of all time. It might seem a little too sentimental upon a first listen, and it is more than a little sappy for sure (check out those strings!), but that doesn’t mean that Steve Martin Caro’s vocal track isn’t one of the most gutting and disarmingly earnest performances ever pressed to vinyl. Michael Brown (keyboards) composed the music and basically masterminded the group through a tragically short career that only lasted four years, from 1965-69. In that period the group had just two major hits, including “Walk Away Renee,” which reached number five on the charts, and “Pretty Ballerina,” which is also a tremendous single that once again blended Brown’s dark melodic turns with the teenage mournfulness of Caro’s voice.

I visited Regent’s Park in west London today, and the lighting and weather being both extremely poetic, I naturally put this song on. Embarrassing, yeah? I know, but it’s really just a great song. The articulation and the circumstance of the first verse is one of the saddest things, I think, I’ve ever heard in my life.

And when I see the sign that points one way
The lot we used to pass by every day

Just walk away Renee
You won’t see me follow you back home
The empty sidewalks on my block are not the same
You’re not to blame

From deep inside the tears I’m forced to cry
From deep inside the pain I chose to hide

Just walk away Renee
You won’t see me follow you back home
Now as the rain beats down upon my weary eyes
For me it cries

Your name and mine inside a heart upon a wall
Still find a way to haunt me, though they’re so small

Just walk away Renee
You won’t see me follow you back home
The empty sidewalks on my block are not the same
You’re not to blame

Left Banke CDs are pretty much unavailable right now unless you have the bones for extortionately priced import copies (used, mind you) of compilations issued in the 80s and 90s. It’s really sad, but what can you do? People aren’t buying CDs, and lesser-known artists get shelved, never to be reissued. C’est la vie.

The Left Banke – “Walk Away Renee”

"When I Go Out" - British Sea Power

A b-side from the “Please Stand Up” single, this song is just another perfect lonesome sing-along from the chaps in BSP.

Submitted for your viewing pleasure:




When I go outside these days
Almost everything seems strange
And there are things I'd like to say

But they get swallowed on the way

The National Portrait Gallery

I spent the early part of the day slinking around the West End, making my way first to Charing Cross Road and Leicester Square, and then coming to the National Portrait Gallery. Proving that there must be a merciful soul sat somewhere in the bowels of London City Hall, the museums (or most of them, anyway) here are completely free. I had a look through the Victorian Era portraits, and found them to be pretty interesting. There was Thomas Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, and A.C. Swinburne, among others, but it was a portrait of Charles Dickens, painted when he had just finished the novel Nicholas Nickelby, which caught my attention the most. You can have a look for yourself…

Sensitive Euro Man

There is a fine song of the gentlemen of the now defunct popular group Pavement. “Sensitive Euro Man,” it begins, “we’re so envious of your etiquette demands.” Truer words have been seldom spoken, dear friends. Inside of every Bud-swillin’ American loudmouth is the heart of a Lager-swillin’ Chav, or a Cider-swillin’ football hooligan and vice versa and again vice versa.

London is a fine place, and the English a delightful people. Every day I walk through the charter’d streets near where the charter’d Thames does flow, “And mark in every face I meet, marks of weakness, marks of woe.”

The English rain has relented, touch wood (as they say here), and I hope to dive into Bleak House tomorrow. I’ve met some charming ladies here in this weird space station of a student residence building who’ve suggested that I might take in the lovely lush greens of St. James Park and/or Regent’s Park, so I will give it a try. A sporting gentleman always does, you know.

Some lines of T.S. Eliot:

The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o’clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney-pots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.

From Preludes

He might’ve been a fascist though, so watch out…

Amazonian: Hey-o!

PAVEMENT: “Sensitive Euro Man”

Pavement in the Amazon: byawh!

St. Paul's Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Buckingham Palace

St. Paul's Cathedral

I went on a bus tour of London today and took some more photos. We passed by Tower Bridge again, so I got a couple of shots of it in the daylight, which was nice. St. Paul’s Cathedral was also a major highlight. Buckingham Palace is a bit of a bore. I saw a good poster outside a small war museum that read something like, “Better to be pot-luck today with Churchill, than humble-pie with Hitler tomorrow.” Both Churchill and Hitler were drawn as the respective food items.

More photos on my Flickr page.



Tower Bridge by Day