Well, I know what you are thinking - no Pancake Day / Shrove Tuesday / Mardi Gras is complete without a (loosely at times) pancake themed playlist!
Worry not - for we have exactly that for your delectation.... ten pancake adjacent tunes for you to blast out whilst flipping your cakes....
1. Jack Johnson: Banana Pancakes
Jack Johnson has an interesting backstory from his image as a laid back pop musician. Born on Oahu's North Shore, the legendary Hawaiian surf spot, he was riding the waves from the age of five. He was a professional at the age of seventeen, getting an invitation to the prestigious Pipeline Masters. His career was short-lived though (less than a week later), when he suffered a nasty accident at the Pipeline, necessitating 100 stitches in his forehead! Banana Pancakes comes from his third album, In Between Dreams.
Jack Johnson: Banana Pancakes (Live on World Café, 2017)
2. Bob Marley & The Wailers: Jamming
How do you like your pancakes? With jam in! Sorry for the awful joke, but it was a necessity in order to get this song into the mix (and yes we know it should be Jam In for this to really work).... It features on his legendary 1977 album Exodus, with the word jamming in Jamaican patois meaning a gathering or celebration - which makes our connection slightly less tenuous. Ziggy Marley & The Melody Makers, made up of Bob's children, would play this song in their live sets for many years.
Bob Marley & The Wailers: Jammin' (Live at the Rainbow, 1977)
3. Prince: Starfish & Coffee
This comes from his classic 1987 double album Sign O' The Times, and was written about a girl called Cynthia Rose, who had gone to the same school as Prince collaborator's Susannah and Wendy Melvoin. Cynthia was someone largely ignored by her classmates, but Susannah took an interest in her, and when she asked Cynthia what she had had for breakfast, she would always reply, "coffee and pee pee". That was the starting point for the song, although Prince switched out pee pee for coffee. It is in this list because the lyrics include the line, "This is what she'd say / starfish and coffee / maple syrup and jam / butterscotch clouds and a tangerine." So, two pancake favourites mentioned in there - maple syrup and jam.
Prince: Starfish and Coffee (Audio only)
Starfish and Coffee (Special treat for you - on the Muppets Tonight)
4 Professor Longhair: Mardi Gras In New Orleans
Henry Byrd, or Professor Longhair as he would become known, was a singer and pianist born in Bogalusa, Louisiana, in 1918. He played in two of the distinct New Orleans eras, of rhythm and blues and the later trad jazz, and while not especially well known in the wider world, was a key influence on the likes of Allen Toussaint and Dr John. He wrote Mardi Gras In New Orleans (also known as Go To The Mardi Gras) with Theresa Terry in 1949, a lively little exhortation to go to, well, the mardi gras in New Orleans. It was subsequently covered by Fats Domino in 1953. The first appearance of the song was on a 10" single in 1949, and credited to Professor Longhair And His Shuffling Hungarians. He re-recorded it ten years later, as Go To The Mardi Gras, which included guitar by a young Mac Rebennack (before he became Dr John).
Professor Longhair: Mardi Gras In New Orleans (Audio only)
5. Hindu Love Gods: Travelling Riverside Blues
This track was written by the legendary bluesman Robert Johnson, recorded during his last session in 1937, but never released until 1961. Since then it has been covered many times, perhaps most notably by Led Zeppelin - but I have spurned both of those versions for the one by the Hindu Love Gods. This started out as a project with the three instrumentalists from R.E.M. backing Warren Zevon for his album Sentimental Hygiene, and ended with them recording an album of blues covers, including this one. The song is perhaps most memorable - and indeed the reason it is in this list - for the line, "Squeeze my lemon till the juice runs down my leg." That line, it seems, was taken from another 1937 tune, She Squeezed My Lemon, by Roosevelt Sykes. However, it is my guess, that this wasn't written about pancakes....
Hindu Love Gods: Travelling Riverside Blues (Audio only)
6. Led Zeppelin: The Lemon Song
We do get to Led Zeppelin though, with the The Lemon Song, a track adapted from a song called the Killing Floor. It is considered to be one of the defining songs of the Chicago blues scene and was written and recorded in 1964 by Howlin' Wolf - released as a single by Chess Records. It started as a lively 12-bar blues song, that was also played live by Jimi Hendrix in his early days. Zeppelin initially played it as Killing Floor, but slowly adapted it into the version that ended up on Led Zeppelin II. It also includes (double pancake link alert) the "Juice runs down my leg" lyric, and references another blues classic, Cross-cut Saw by Albert King.
Led Zeppelin: The Lemon Song (Audio only)
7. Sonic Youth: Sugar Kane
Finally, the classic pancake addition!
Our sugar comes in the form of Sugar Kane by Sonic Youth, the third single from their 1992 album Dirty. Some have suggested that it is a veiled reference to cocaine, and some have said it is a reference to the 1972 Jeff Beck song, Sugar Cane. However, it is a reference to Sugar Kane Kowalczyk, Marilyn Monroe's character in Some Like It Hot - and also a love song, and "is inspired by the notion of emotional contact we feel for celebrities on the edge and our desire to 'save' them." Incidentally, the video, directed by Nick Egan, includes the first film appearance by the actress Chloë Sevigny.
Sonic Youth: Sugar Kane (Official music video)
8. The Beastie Boys: Say It
Say It was included on Hot Sauce Committee Part Two, a record recorded in and around Adam MCA Yauch's cancer diagnosis, and released in May 2011, a year before Yauch's untimely death. Dave Simpson, writing in The Guardian, said of the album, "the Beasties' eighth studio album revisits their old-skool roots. However, their wit and invention transforms such tired cliches into their freshest offering in years." Why is it featured here? For the line - "We be flipping styles like pancake batter," - that's why.
Beastie Boys: Say It (Audio only)
9. Half Man Half Biscuit: If I Had Possession Over Pancake Day
Okay, here's a secret, it's not really about pancake day - but an excuse for HMHB songwriter Nigel Blackwell to pun on Robert Johnson's If I Had Possession Over Judgement Day. It comes from 2002's Cammell Laird Social Club, and as the Half Man Half Biscuit Lyrics Project notes, it "makes a couple of Robert Johnson-related references and then links them together via the medium of lemon juice. Very clever indeed." It ends, somewhat off topic for this playlist, with a philosophical masterclass - "Give a philosophy student a glass of limeade, and he will say, 'Is this a glass of limeade?' And 'If so, why is it a glass of limeade?' And after a while, he'll die of thirst."
HMHB: If I Had Possession Over Pancake Day (Audio only)
10 The Jam: Beat Surrender
We switch to the band name for our tenuous final link - but let's face it, they had to be in it!
I guess there is an additional argument (even more tenuous) that you 'beat' the pancake batter, but perhaps we won't go there... It was the last single by The Jam before Paul Weller split them up in late 1982, becoming their fourth UK number one too. We can also include this as one more tribute to the late Rick Buckler.
The Jam: Beat Surrender (Live in 1982)
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