Good evening, and welcome to your splendid selection of songs about hats and headgear.
If you have an Earworm you’d like to share, please send an .mp3, .m4a or a link to adempster73@gmail.com, together with a few words about why you’ve chosen it. I will have a two week break to make way for shoey’s wonderful Festive ‘Spill, and Christmas, and will resume normal service on 2 January 2024.
The theme for the new year is is ‘something you wish for‘ – it could be world peace and understanding, or pickled eggs, a Ferrari, cheese and onion crisps, revenge, snow, sunshine, fairy wings, a functioning laptop, a pineapple… the possibilities are many.
Worms should reach me by close of play on Sunday 1 January 2024. Merry Christmas and a Happy New year to you all! 🎄🎄✨✨🎈🎁
June Tabor and Oysterband – That Was My Veil – Suzi: Cover of a song by P J Harvey and John Parish.
Get Well Soon – If This Hat Is Missing I Have Gone Hunting – shoegazer: Get Well Soon AKA Konstantin Gropper from Germany.
Faithless – Baseball Cap – glassarfemptee: From Faithless’ first album, about inner city violence. ‘Scuffling in the street is no way to die’, but sadly it’s the fate for all too many.
Lyle Lovett – Don’t Touch My Hat – Fintan 28: There are places where trespass takes on odd connotations. As native son Lyle knows, Texas is one such place. Hell, there are just limitations to what a man has to put up with, right?
Randy Newman – Big Hat, No Cattle – severin: One of the many self-deprecating songs from his Bad Love album. Also the second song I got listed for Readers Recommend back in the Lynskey era.
Staff Sgt Barry Sadler – Ballad of the Green Berets – tincanman: Raised in a brothel, teenage troublemaker, nearly lost his life several times, murdered another songwriter, went bankrupt, wrote 20+ airport thrillers, kidnapped from a hospital… his story is better than his famous song!
Kate Rusby – The White Cockade – Suzi: A cockade was a bunch or rosette of ribbons worn on a soldier’s hat to identify him to his comrades. There are various versions, a Blue Cockade and even a Green Cockade, but this is probably the original. The song begins with the soldier’s story of how he was persuaded to enlist, then his heartbroken sweetheart takes up the narrative.
Eric Bibb – Panama Hat – glassarfemptee: A lovely laid back paean to a Panama hat from Eric Bibb’s 2000 ‘Roadworks’. They are made in Peru, not Panama, but you knew that.
Procol Harum – Homburg – severin: The follow up to Whiter Shade of Pale. John Peel always insisted that he preferred this of the two.
Judith Durham – Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters – severin: Judith D sings an Elton John/Bernie Taupin song and makes a pretty good fist of it too. I actually heard this before the original and think of it as the definitive version.
Jimmy Buffett – They Don’t Dance Like Carmen No More – Fintan 28: An homage to Carmen Miranda & her glorious headdress ” with bananas & mangoes all piled to the sky”. Definitely another time.
Main playlist, blurbs above:
YouTube playlist, blurbs below – and here’s the link if you want to add to it: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqxz-zGCy09oH9KDCgGq1j1jEKVj94Rx4&si=mfmL-hHRUbyRXjRq
Grateful Dead – Stagger Lee – Chris7572: Hunter’s version of the old story concentrates, uniquely it seems, on an imagined(?) revenge mission by Billy DeLyon’s widow. But the whole story springs from a lethal hat episode…
The Steam Pig – Hats and Flags – wyngatecarpenter: Obscure Irish punk from the ’90s with a fast, furious and quite upbeat song about public executions.
Etta James – You Can Leave Your Hat On – DebbyM: The funk version!
Mona Haydar – Hijabi (Wrap My Hijab) – DebbyM: This was apparently a ‘viral phenomenon’ a couple of years ago.
America – Hat Trick – AliM: From the eponymous album (1973). I was on a nostalgia-fest the other day and started to listen to America, a band I grew up with. Unfairly cast as a poor man’s Crosby, Stills and Nash, they had some excellent songs and beautiful harmonies.
Led Zeppelin – Hats off to (Roy) Harper – AliM: Had to nominate this, as LTS didn’t.
Nick Cope – I’ve Lost My Bobble Hat – DebbyM: Little’un’s contribution. You can’t be expected to wear just any old hat. It has to be The One.
The 'Spill 