I think the prompt Jim has given us for this week’s Song Lyric Sunday ranks as one of his longest: it is ‘to play a song related to Sigmund Freud’s id exhibiting instinctual drives that seek immediate pleasure or gratification without regard for reality.’ If that lost you somewhere along the way, his post The Psychic Apparatus explains in more detail. Basically, it boils down to “I wanna get laid.” Or something like that. There are some prime candidates for this – the Stones’ Satisfaction has to be high on the list – but I’m not going with it. Instead I’m playing two tunes today, one of them, I think, pretty obvious, the other is less well known.

Let’s start with the more unfamiliar one:

And for the lyrics, my now regular invitation to visit genius.com. I am a big fan of Richard Thompson, going right back to his beginnings in Fairport Convention, and have lost count of the number of times I’ve seen hm in concert – everything from early FC through his duo with former wife Linda, solo, with his own band, and for a special treat his unique presentation of 1,000 Years Of Popular Music, which somehow manages to include early religious music, Gilbert and Sullivan, traditional folk songs, Prince, The Beatles  and Britney Spears, among many others.

Like most of the songs he has recorded, Read About Love was written by Richard and was the opening track on his thirteenth album, Rumor And Sigh, which was released in May 1991 and peaked at #32 in the UK. It was released as a single, without success, though one of the other tracks on the album – I Feel So Good – made #15 on the US Alternative Airplay chart. The simplified spelling of the word “Rumor” is due to his taking the title from a posthumously published poem by the American poet (and Librarian of Congress) Archibald MacLeish: “Rumor and sigh of unimagined seas/ Dim radiance of stars that never flamed.” The album was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album in 1992, but lost to R.E.M.’s Out of Time. This track is, I think, pretty self-explanatory: the lusts and desires of teenage boys (we’ve all been there, guys) with a pressing need to find out what they are missing out on, from whatever source they can find – except, perhaps, the real thing, which feels unattainable until they grow up a bit. But the picture books were fun, weren’t they? And this fits the brief perfectly, with its lack of regard for reality!

My second tune for today is, I think, much more likely to duplicate someone else’s choice but I’m going with it anyway, as I always liked the song and the video is great fun:

And hot on the tyre tracks of the red car, here come the lyrics.

Gimme All Your Lovin’ was the opening track on ZZ Top’s eighth album, Eliminator, which was released in March 1983 and peaked at #9 in the US, though it fared better elsewhere: #2 in both Canada and Australia, and #3 in the UK. Nevertheless, it is their most successful album, going Diamond in both the US and Canada for 11m and 1m sales, respectively, and 4x Platinum in the UK for 1.2m. On the album, credits for songwriting were assigned to  the three band members, Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill and Frank Beard (a neat trivia point: only one of them didn’t have a beard, guess which one!)

Gimme All Your Lovin’ was the first of four singles taken from it, peaking at #37 in the US and #10 in the UK, going Gold here in the process for 400,000 sales. As you saw, the video followed a young male gas station attendant who is taken for a ride by a trio of women driving the vintage Eliminator hot rod (1933 Ford). The band appears and disappears, and they throw the attendant the keys to the car. The three main actresses were Jeana Tomasino from Wisconsin, Danièle Arnaud from Nice, France, and a third model Kymberly Herrin who dropped out of contact and was not paid. Tomasino had posed for Playboy in 1980, which may well be how she got this job. As a song about instant gratification without care of the consequences I think this is a good fit, though the guy’s only (partly) fulfilled lust was for the car, not the ladeez!

In 1993 the Finnish band Leningrad Cowboys, who I have featured previously for SLS, recorded a live cover version of this song on the Helsinki Senate Square, featuring the Red Army Choir with a bit of the National Anthem of the Soviet Union making its way into the arrangement, along with some of Händel’s Hallelujah Chorus as well. Having found that piece of trivia on Wikipedia I felt the need to seek it out: it is their usual piece of bonkers lunacy and is a real hoot, so have this bonus video on me:

That’s me done for the day, so as always I offer my thanks to Jim for running the show and giving us the opportunity to share music that we like. See you again for Tuesday Tunes? I hope so, and wish you well 😊