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Packet Of Three: Vote for your favourite Squeeze singles


View Poll Results: Please select up to three choices
853 5937 0 0%
Annie Get Your Gun 2 6.06%
Another Nail in My Heart 6 18.18%
Bang Bang 0 0%
Black Coffee In Bed 1 3.03%
Christmas Day 1 3.03%
Cool For Cats 14 42.42%
Electric Trains 0 0%
Goodbye Girl 2 6.06%
Heaven Knows 0 0%
Hourglass 1 3.03%
If It's Love 1 3.03%
Is That Love 3 9.09%
It's Over 0 0%
Labelled With Love 9 27.27%
Last Time Forever 2 6.06%
No Place Like Home 0 0%
Packet Of Three EP 0 0%
Pulling Mussels (From The Shell) 7 21.21%
Slap And Tickle 5 15.15%
Some Fantastic Place 0 0%
Take Me I'm Yours 9 27.27%
Tempted 5 15.15%
Third Rail 0 0%
This Summer 2 6.06%
Trust Me To Open My Mouth 0 0%
Up The Junction 20 60.61%
Multiple Choice Poll. Voters: 33. You can't vote on this poll right now - are you signed in?

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Old 20-12-2016, 09:54
Kid B
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I loved that run of singles back in the day when coloured vinyl was all the rage. The Squeeze never reached the summit singles-wise but they gad a couple of near misses and I think, some great songs. I've never understood how Christmas Day never charted though and I'll be including it in the three votes allowed here alongside Pulling Mussels and Up The Junction. It'll be interesting to see exactly which single comes out on top from the singles list compiled from the Official Chart Company UK Top 100.
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Old 20-12-2016, 10:52
Servalan
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So many great tracks in there - but I'd wholeheartedly recommend their last album Cradle To The Grave, which is a real return to form.
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Old 20-12-2016, 11:16
Jedikiah
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It has to be ''Up The Junction'' for me, closely followed by ''Cool For Cats'' and ''Labelled With Love''.
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Old 20-12-2016, 11:31
UrsulaU
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Cool For Cats, Another Nail & Take Me I'm Yours! Hard to get down to just 3, but I think these 3 should certainly be at the top!
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Old 20-12-2016, 12:28
Kid B
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Early days but Up The Junction is leading the way.

Christmas Day

Fabulous, released on white vinyl, no idea as to how it never charted. So where would Christmas be without Mary and Joseph, Morecambe and Wise, Laurel and Hardy etc - perhaps one of the most underrated festive songs ever gets my vote here.

Pulling Mussels (From The Shell)

"They do it down at Camber Sands, they do it at Waikiki" - anyone who remembers childhood days at Camber Sands will love the resonance - the way this song begins too, bang, straight in there - and the gem - "Behind the chalet, my holiday's complete" - I expect many of us have been there - it's all rather clandestine and very British, great tune and deserves the nod.

Up The Junction

At the time, lyrical genius, working class song about the trials of young love, but there are always discussions about the lyrics, apparently "Up The Junction" is a British phrase meaning "you're screwed" whereas I just thought he was in a pub called The Junction, meanwhile here's a decent write up from The Guardian...

Up the Junction took as long to write as it takes to read it. My mum and dad used to watch The Wednesday Play on BBC1, and I got drawn into those half-hour, kitchen-sink dramas. One was called Up the Junction, an adaptation of Nell Dunn’s book by Ken Loach. I pinched the title, but the rest of the story is from my imagination, though there was a Railway Arms pub in Blackheath, where I was living. I never “got a job with Stanley, who said I’d come in handy”, but I loved those Ian Dury-type rhyming couplets. The line “I’d beg for some forgiveness, but begging’s not my business” still makes me chuckle. It sums up male stubbornness.

Our manager said he’d eat his hat if Up the Junction was a hit – and then it reached No 2 in 1979. It’s still one of my favourites. Many years later, the “girl from Clapham” turned up in another Squeeze song, A Moving Story. She’d moved to the sea front, remarried, and her daughter was getting married, too. I thought they deserved a happy ending.

Squeeze: how we made Up the Junction
Up The Junction gets the nod over Another Nail In My Heart (which would have been a fourth choice) and Cool For Cats. Their third best-seller, Labelled With Love, I did really like at the time but nowadays I find it a bit labouring, I reckon it'll pull a few votes though.
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Old 20-12-2016, 14:09
Jedikiah
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Up The Junction

At the time, lyrical genius, working class song about the trials of young love, but there are always discussions about the lyrics, apparently "Up The Junction" is a British phrase meaning "you're screwed" whereas I just thought he was in a pub called The Junction, meanwhile here's a decent write up from The Guardian...

Up The Junction gets the nod over Another Nail In My Heart (which would have been a fourth choice) and Cool For Cats. Their third best-seller, Labelled With Love, I did really like at the time but nowadays I find it a bit labouring, I reckon it'll pull a few votes though.
''Up The Junction'' just flows so naturally, lyrically and musically, where there doesn't appear the song had ever had to be laboured upon (although i'm sure it must have been). It just weaves its way beautifully from start to finish, and every sound seems to effortlessly add to the greater whole. I love the working class rhyming lyric, too. I feel that is why i like it the best. Squeeze's singles are almost always very infectious, but some of them do have a more contrived feel to them, and occasionally they can wear a little thin over repeated listens. Not so ''Up The Junction''.

''Labelled With Love'' strikes me similarly, although in a very different way. It wasn't a change of direction i liked at the time, but it is a very classy country influenced song, on reflection.

Chris Difford is a master of the deadpan vocal on ''Cool For Cats'', and i just find his delivery and the song very infectious. I liked these working class New Wave/Pub Rock type songs at the time. Not sure whether Ian Dury may have been an influence somewhere.
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Old 20-12-2016, 14:14
mushymanrob
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'take me im yours' is the perfect pop song...

'slap n tickle' is pure class imho...

but tbh they didnt do a bad track, and i was lucky enough to see them live at rock city nottingham in 81 (or 2?) a fantastic set.
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Old 20-12-2016, 14:56
Kid B
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Chris Difford is a master of the deadpan vocal on ''Cool For Cats'', and i just find his delivery and the song very infectious. I liked these working class New Wave/Pub Rock type songs at the time. Not sure whether Ian Dury may have been an influence somewhere.
He was. Difford mentions this is the quoted piece from The Guardian article. And on Cool For Cats, how many of us can still recite it word for word? Many I would say.

Difford also mentions the continuation of the life of 'the girl from Clapham, in a song called A Moving Story which I've never heard. I'd like to but Youtube doesn't have it, here are the words anyway...

She moved from Clapham
And didn't look back
Her life was changed in an instant
The van was filled up
And tied to the rack
Her home that now seemed so distant
Kissing goodbye
To her friends on the stairs
She felt a loss deep within her
Sat in the front seat with stuff everywhere
The neighbours said they would ring her
They moved to the sea front
And loved their new view
Of tides coming in on the shingle
She and her daughter
Found new things to do
At last it was good to be single
And in the summer
The place came alive
Lights on the pier in the evening
The fresh sea air
And could cut with a knife
Such a wonderful feeling

She worked in a pub
Where bands would appear
On a tiny stage in the corner
She watched them load in
With tattered old gear
The place would get like a sauna
London had gone now
Her new life was strong
She found herself a new karma
She fell for a man
Who played with a band
And took her life from it's drama

She moved from Clapham
And didn't look back
The past was neatly extinguished
He was much younger
But she lived with that
He struggled hard with his english
She felt his loving
And proudly reclaimed
All of the warmth she'd been lacking
They lay in bed
Looking out at the rain
No more moving or packing

She moved from Clapham
And didn't look back
Her life had changed in an instant
Incidentally, where is the Youtube embedder and other trimmings DS said would happen after the upgrade? Not even any new smilies.
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Old 20-12-2016, 15:02
Pitman
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Early days but Up The Junction is leading the way.

Christmas Day

Fabulous, released on white vinyl, no idea as to how it never charted. So where would Christmas be without Mary and Joseph, Morecambe and Wise, Laurel and Hardy etc - perhaps one of the most underrated festive songs ever gets my vote here.

Pulling Mussels (From The Shell)

"They do it down at Camber Sands, they do it at Waikiki" - anyone who remembers childhood days at Camber Sands will love the resonance - the way this song begins too, bang, straight in there - and the gem - "Behind the chalet, my holiday's complete" - I expect many of us have been there - it's all rather clandestine and very British, great tune and deserves the nod.

Up The Junction

At the time, lyrical genius, working class song about the trials of young love, but there are always discussions about the lyrics, apparently "Up The Junction" is a British phrase meaning "you're screwed" whereas I just thought he was in a pub called The Junction, meanwhile here's a decent write up from The Guardian...



.
something to do with Clapham Junction wasn't it, and also he was screwed ?
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Old 20-12-2016, 15:25
Kid B
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something to do with Clapham Junction wasn't it, and also he was screwed ?
Could well be, up the station whereas I originally thought it was a pub. We know that the title itself comes from a movie and as for the 'screwed' bit - the Urban Dictionary supports that stating "to be in a right mess".


"Up The Junction" is a British phrase meaning you're screwed. In this song, a guy gets his girl pregnant, becomes a drunk, loses the girl and is stuck raising his daughter by himself.

http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=12760
Chris Difford's lyrics for Up the Junction tell a two-minute story, the title a nod to the 1963 novel of the same title by Nell Dunn, followed by a BBC play directed by Ken Loach in 1965, then a film in 1968. The tale begins on a "night I ain't forgotten" up on the common, when the girl falls pregnant. They decide to have the baby, he gets a job with Stanley ("He said I'd come in handy"), and starts the job on a Monday, "so I had a bath on Sunday". But then things go wrong; he starts drinking too much, and the girl moves in with a soldier. He has his freedom back – "no more nights by the telly/ No more nights nappies smelling". He wants her back, but "begging's not my business".

https://www.theguardian.com/music/mu...ze-up-junction
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Old 20-12-2016, 15:45
Elvisfan4eva
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It has to be ''Up The Junction'' for me, closely followed by ''Cool For Cats'' and ''Labelled With Love''.
Same three for me but Labelled With Love first.
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Old 22-12-2016, 06:32
Multimedia81
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Mine are Annie Get Your Gun, Is That Love? and Last Time Forever.

Picking up on some of your points earlier, and I have always believed Up the Junction to refer to Clapham Junction due to the opening lyric "I never thought it would happen with me and the girl from Clapham". By way of some trivia, it is apparently the only song to be have a title only mentioned at the end of the song.
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Old 22-12-2016, 06:45
Kid B
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By way of some trivia, it is apparently the only song to be have a title only mentioned at the end of the song.
That's nice but I seriously doubt that it's the only song ever that lyrically ends with the song title.
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Old 22-12-2016, 07:16
Multimedia81
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That's nice but I seriously doubt that it's the only song ever that lyrically ends with the song title.
I should have been clearer and said that it uniquely mentions the title at the end of the song but nowhere any earlier in the song.
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Old 22-12-2016, 07:28
Kid B
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I should have been clearer and said that it uniquely mentions the title at the end of the song but nowhere any earlier in the song.
No you're fine, Sir - more likely that I misread things so wanted to get it right. It ends with 'Up The Junction' which is the song title but does not mention it earlier as you say - I'm just thinking that there must be others, what about this by The Beatles...

"Here, There and Everywhere"
Album: Revolver
Date: 1966

To lead a better life I need my love to be here...
Here, making each day of the year
Changing my life with the wave of her hand
Nobody can deny that there's something there

There, running my hands through her hair
Both of us thinking how good it can be
Someone is speaking but she doesn't know he's there

I want her everywhere and if she's beside me
I know I need never care
But to love her is to need her everywhere
Knowing that love is to share

Each one believing that love never dies
Watching her eyes and hoping I'm always there

I want her everywhere and if she's beside me
I know I need never care
But to love her is to need her everywhere
Knowing that love is to share

Each one believing that love never dies
Watching her eyes and hoping I'm always there

I will be there and everywhere
Here, there and everywhere
Its title is Here There And Everywhere - it ends that way but doesn't say Here There And Everywhere any place before the end which would mean that Up The Junction is, I think, not unique.
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Old 22-12-2016, 08:10
SaddlerSteve
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That's nice but I seriously doubt that it's the only song ever that lyrically ends with the song title.
Virginia Plain by Roxy Music is another.
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Old 22-12-2016, 08:57
Kid B
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Virginia Plain by Roxy Music is another.
Fantastic! How on earth could I not think of that and more interestingly, while reading several articles on Up The Junction, it was said that the tune is somewhat based on Virginia Plain.
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Old 23-12-2016, 13:27
cathh70
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Difficult to choose, but plumped for Take me, Labelled and Up the junction. If I had another choice it would be close between Another Nail and Tempted.
I got to see them earlier this year performing most of the old favourites interspersed with the Cradle to the Grave songs. Will be going back again later next year to their next tour.
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Old 23-12-2016, 17:15
Kid B
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Apparently Goodbye Girl was re-released in April this year but I've no idea why.
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