Song, by Toad

Mrs. Toad has been away in China for the last week or so and, frankly, I am jealous.  I am wedded to Edinburgh now, for fairly obvious reasons, but I have always been something of a gypsy, as have my parents, and as such China has held a pretty significant fascination for several years now.

I spent three years in Singapore between the ages of eleven and fourteen and I absolutely loved the place.  Not just Singapore, but all the travelling we did in South East Asia – I was absolutely captivated.

Honestly, if it were not for you musical muppets I would be pestering Mrs. Toad for us to move to China already.

Toadcast #106 – The Sinocast

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01. T’Pau – China in Your Hand (5.12)
02. I Am Oak – Ohayo (10.49)
03. Django Django – Love’s Dart (13.27)
04. Django Reinhart – China Boy (22.49)
05. Clem Snide – Wal-Mart Parking Lot (31.22)
06. Frightened Rabbit – Fun Stuff (33.51)
07. The Shop Assistants – Somewhere in China (41.07)
08. David Bowie – China Girl (46.26)
09. Lincoln – Great Wall of China (51.47)
10. Snapline – S2 (65.31)

This is just a brief list of some stuff I’m looking forward to in the Edinburgh music scene over the coming year.  I don’t intend to be parochial about this, or too narrow, but I am not as close to the precise ins and outs of what’s happening in the rest of the country so there’s a limit to what I can meaningfully say about what’s going on there.  It’s not meant to be exhaustive either, just some thoughts pottering about at the front of my mind.

New Labels

Last year saw the first steps made by a couple of new labels in Edinburgh, Kilter and Mini50.  With Song, by Toad Records virtually at capacity in terms of labour and money, and 17 Seconds and SL Records also really busy, these two new labels should have a pretty free hand in terms of first dibs on emerging bands this year.

Kilter have already showed the quality of their work with the beatiful eagleowl single in December, so in that sense they’re a slight step ahead.  Mini50 have been negotiating with some of the newer bands to emerge in the last year or so though, and album releases by the likes of Mammoeth should give a really solid foundation to their launch.  Basically, this is great news for the city’s young bands.

Jeffrey Lewis – Don’t Let the Record Label Take you out to Lunch

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The New Generation of Bands

Whilst I’m talking about the newer bands to emerge last year, there is a definite gap forming in the local musical ecosystem.  The fact that Broken Records and now Meursault and Withered Hand have graduated to an audience both nationwide and beyond leaves an opportunity for one of the new generation to make a mark locally.

With a single and an EP already to their name, Jesus H. Foxx are slightly further ahead in their development, but with the very promising emergence of bands like the Pineapple Chunks, Conquering Animal Sound and the Last Battle there is the opportunity for a band from the new generation to progress to the stage where they will obviously and easily be able to fill small venues like Sneaky Pete’s and whatever the Roxy management turn the old Bowery space into.

David Bowie – All the Young Dudes

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The New Roxy

And while we’re on the subject of the Roxy, Rupert Thomson, former Skinny editor, has been appointed to run the entire building in the new year.  I have a lot of time for Rupert, so I am really hopeful that he can carry on the development of what is pretty clearly the best gig space for small bands and promoters in the city.  In the absence of Ruth and Jane the place will inevitably have a very different atmosphere, but it is still easily the best space of its type around, so I really hope the new team can continue to foster the underground scene in the capital with the same kind of devotion and sympathy which Ruth brought to the place.  And very nice that they now have a one o’clock license, which is very fortuitous timing indeed for the new venture.

Tom Waits – New Coat of Paint (Live)

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Descent of the Digital Press Locusts

Last year saw the formation of so many new blogs in Scotland it made my head spin.  In fact it actually made me feel like an established veteran.  With respected indie publications like Bearded and Plan B swinging the axe on their print editions and also retreating to the web, we are getting closer to the American press model every day.

In the States there are basically no music magazines left, so labels and bands take blogs way, way more seriously, because we are pretty much the only people left who are addressing their audience.  In the UK there are still some excellent music magazines – Clash, Word, The Stool Pigeon and so on – but glossies like the NME, Q and Uncut are really becoming embarrassingly bad.  Personally I would be surprised if the year passed without a high profile music press casualty, which means that the playing field is unusually open for blogs and other digital publications.  And with the death of music television beyond the insultingly stupid X-Factor and its diseased ilk, pretty much the only music television which exists in the UK is now online.

This general trend could lead to a fairly considerable shift in how online publications are treated over the next year or so and, instead of being considered amateur or grassroots or DIY, we could end up being as close to mainstream as it actually gets in the indie world.

The Clash – Career Opportunities

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That Extra Step

Glasvegas were probably the last really big band to come out of Scotland, in terms of sheer audience size.  Frightened Rabbit, depending on their next album, could follow in their footsteps over the next twelve months.  Do any of the Edinburgh bands, I find myself wondering, have it in them to follow in their footsteps?  Are we likely to ever see the likes of Withered Hand, Meursault or Broken Records get anywhere near a late evening slot on the main stage at a major festival anytime soon?  It would be nice to think so, wouldn’t it.

Aileen Loy & Blue Valentines – Big in Japan

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The Spacecast is yet another podcast dreamed up in the pub, this time between myself and Dylan, the official Song, by Toad photographer.  And again it’s one of those podcast which could have gone on for over two hours quite easily, but we don’t do that anymore, not around here, we’re disciplined these days goddammit.

So I’ve missed off about a million other suggestions and come up with a combination of songs genuinely about space, and few that use space as some sort of metaphor and then a few which just stick a few spacey words in the title.  And of course, it starts with something rather splendid… but you’ll have to listen to find out what it is.  Alright, it’s not that special.  Just mildly amusing.

Toadcast #54 – The Spacecast

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01. Me First & the Gimme Gimmes – Rocket Man (03.52)
02. David Bowie – Space Oddity (07.06)
03. Bob Geldof – Thinking Voyager 2 Type Things (15.09)
04. Inspiral Carpets – Saturn V (24.49)
05. The Only Ones – Another Girl Another Planet (28.30)
06. Shirley Bassey – In Other Words (Fly Me to the Moon) ( 32.36)
07. Yann Tiersen (Black Session w. Neil Hannon) – Life on Mars (36.04)
08. Riff-Raff – I Wanna be a Cosmonaut (41.34)
09. The Holy Modal Rounders – Mr. Spaceman (42.59)
10. Tom McRae – 2nd Law (48.29)
11. Blur – Far Out (51.46)
12. Queen – Flash Gordon Theme (57.30)

Right, given Dadrock seems to be the enduring theme of the moment, let’s poke a little further shall we? Actually, Dadrock in our house was pretty fucking cool. My Dad introduced me to the Waterboys, the Pogues, the Men They Couldn’t Hang, as well as the stuff he grew up with: Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Bruce Springsteen, The Band and various other classics. Mum wasn’t bad either: Depeche Mode, Bowie, the Stones and The Pet Shop Boys, as well as some splendidly camp pop such as ABC, Erasure, Kate Bush, Elton John (just the early stuff, calm down) and things like that.

There were some moments of genuine shame in there too, to be fair. Who knows, we may look back on the Decemberists with derision for their pretension and intricacy, so you can never entirely tell which music will and won’t age with dignity.

I still make my parents a lot of compilation CDs, even though I don’t make them for myself anymore. In fact, ever since I left home in 1993 I’ve been regularly returning with a little pile of pre-filtered new music for them. I try and steer clear of the Libertines and the Von Bondies, but maybe that’s silly because you know who introduced me to the Dead Kennedys? Yup, my folks.

Having heaped them with praise, it must be confessed that after many years of cool, my Mum did rather embarrassingly lapse into a penchant for the Lighthouse Family. Or, in the recent traditions of this site, the Fucking Lighthouse Fucking Family. Or that Italian clown Eros Ramazotti. Dad has remained pretty steady, to credit the old bastard, but he is still the man who introduced me to Billy Joel, so some responsibility does need to be taken there, irrespective of the quality of Captain Jack and Piano Man.

So if you’re lurking, lurk no more. Now is the time to come out of the woodwork and alternately shame and praise your family. Come on, they can’t be all bad.

1. Your Mum’s most shameful crime against music.
2. The coolest thing your Mum listens to.
3. Your Dad’s worst moment of musical shame.
4. Dad’s moment of musical triumph.
5. The most shameful musical thing that you and your folks have in common.

David Bowie – Let’s Dance
The Men They Couldn’t Hang – Scarlet Ribbons
Depeche Mode – People Are People
Bob Dylan – Drifter’s Escape
Pet Shop Boys – What Have I Done to Deserve This

Hannah from Modernaire rather kindly sent through this George Orwell essay which I rather like, especially the bit about the Toad (I assure you there is no such thing as a ‘common’ Toad, whatever George may think).

Maybe we should all step away from these pernicious computer machines, and go and lark about, carefree in the springtime lushness.

The excerpt was from ‘SomeThoughts on the Common Toad’ and whilst I object to his scurrilous accusations of lower class toadery which, as a species, we vigorously refute, it makes a nice read. Orwell may have been a stodgy novellist, by which I mean that his intellectual achievements as a writer outsrip the actual enjoyment of reading his fiction, but he was a truly excellent essayist. Anyone who is yet to read “The Decline of the English Murder” should do so immediately. But this is not really a literary site, so let’s leave it to George, shall we:

“Is it wicked to take a pleasure in Spring and other seasonal changes? To put it more precisely, is it politically reprehensible, while we are all groaning, or at any rate ought to be groaning, under the shackles of the capitalist system, to point out that life is frequently more worth living because of a blackbird’s song, a yellow elm tree in October, or some other natural phenom¬enon which does not cost money and does not have what the editors of Left-wing newspapers call a class angle? There is no doubt that many people think so… People, so the thought runs, ought to be discontented, and it is our job to multiply our wants and not simply to increase our enjoyment of the things we have already. The other idea is that this is the age of machines and that to dislike the machine, or even to want to limit its domination, is backward-looking, reactionary and slightly ridiculous.

I have always suspected that if our economic and political problems are ever really solved, life will become simpler instead of more complex, and that the sort of pleasure one gets from finding the first primrose will loom larger than the sort of pleasure one gets from eating an ice to the tune of a Wurlitzer. I think that by retaining one’s childhood love of such things as trees, fishes, butterflies and – to return to my first instance – toads, one makes a peaceful and decent future a little more probable, and that by preaching the doctrine that nothing is to be admired except steel and concrete, one merely makes it a little surer that human beings will have no outlet for their surplus energy except in hatred and leader-worship.”

There’s not a lot of music related to Orwell that I can think of, although I assume there must be loads out there. Animal Farm and 1984 have entered into the popular imagination such that people use metaphors from these books all the time, even if they have no idea where they came from.

For Animal Farm (tenuous, these two):
Cocorosie – Animals
The Beatles – Piggies
For 1984:
Alanalda – There is Always Someone Watching
Tina Turner – 1984
David Bowie – 1984 (Live)
For Down and Out in Paris and London:
The Divine Comedy – In and Out in Paris and London
There must be some more though, surely? Help me out here people.

I assume you all know Jacques Brel, one of very, very few songwriters to write in a language other than English to actually be able to penetrate Western cultural awareness. In fact, I read here that Mojo magazine conducted a poll of British and American songwriters in 2000 and apparently Brel’s Ne Me Quitte Pas was the only non-English song to make the resulting list of the Greatest Songs of All Time.

Jacques Brel – Ne Me Quitte Pas

Given the fact that his songs have made such an impact on their own merit, and given that apart from writing some songs in Flemish, he never strayed from French, it seems a little odd to me that absolutely everyone who covers Jacques Brel seems to do so in English. Only such luminaries as Nina Simone and, erm, Sting have actually sung his songs in French, which seems amazing.

Nina Simone – Ne Me Quitte Pas

Artists are snobbish bastards so I am a little surprised that so few people have managed to eschew the grand pretension of covering someone so enormously credible in his native tongue – and not just any native tongue, the eminent cultural bastion that is French, no less. Is that too cynical? I really doubt it.

Secondly, respect for the integrity of art is quite important to people, in particular other artists, so I am a little surprised that people have been so quick to accept such a cavalier attitude. Mind you, most Brel translations are actually contemporary with his own work, and people seemed to be a little less precious about that sort of thing back then (in the music industry at least – don’t say that to a modern film-maker). Perhaps their age gives them a peculiar sheen of credibility, something I imagine they’d lack if done today.

The most popular translations are the Blau-Shuman ones, but Scott Walker seems to use those of Rod McKuen in his own many Brel covers – brought together brilliantly in Scott Walker Sings Jacques Brel. A superficial glance at the actual work makes them look a little flimsy though.

Scott Walker – Mathilde

Wikipedia cites this McKuen example, which is pretty awful:

“Moi, je t’offrirai / Des perles de pluie / Venues de pays / Où il ne pleut pas” [As for me, I'll offer you pearls of rain that come from a country where rain never falls].
Translates as:
“But if you stay / I’ll make you a day / Like no day has been / or will be again.”

Woeful.

Brel is famous for his lyrics, too. Evocative and sharp, bitter and cynical at times, and an absolutely integral part of his work. I keep thinking of the Asterix books and how the translation managed to remain so inspirationally true to the original humour. Never mind the books themselves, the actual translations were a serious master work in their own right. It’s sad, as much as anything, that despite large numbers of covers of his songs, almost no-one seems to have taken the time to actually put the work into the lyrics as well as the music. And as I said, this is not an industry that lacks for monumental acts of self-aggrandising pretension artistic ambition.

I can understand, grudgingly, why people insist on singing translations – there’s no point singing songs by someone famed for his acerbic wit if your audience can’t understand a word – but why people are paying so little attention to which translation they use and why is a little disappointing.

Professor Arnold Jonhston is the only man who has translated his stuff to a standard acceptable to Brel’s widow, and has recorded an album of these translations. I can’t find it anywhere, but I have to say I am as dubious about a musical work by an academic as I am about a literary translation by a musician, although if anyone wants to mention Toms Stoppard and Lehrer here they should feel free. I’d like to hear that album though, if anyone has any suggestions.

Other than that, I’m not really sure where I’m going with this. It was all started by Richard Godwin sending his music through to me for a listen. He has a lovely style that is somewhat similar to Jacques Brel, and he covers Brel himself. It’s not the same translation as Scott Walker used though, and I don’t think I recognise it at all. Anyhow, I started listening to some other Brel songs and it all snowballed from there really.

Right. I’m off to the pub. Have a good weekend, Toadlings.

Richard Godwin – Next! (Brel cover)
Jacques Brel – Au Suivant
Dusty Springfield – If You Go Away
Jacques Brel – Les Bourgeois
David Bowie – Amsterdam

Jacques Brel on Amazon

Back in the 80s that soulful-yet-rock ‘n’ roll sax solo was just about the pinnacle of any song’s achievement, and the uppermost point of its emotional trajectory.  It was, one might say, the vinegar stroke.

I know 80s sax was for the most part risibly, splendidly awful, but it certainly wasn’t considered so at the time.  Even the ubercool likes of David Bowie had a go: he’s listed as the sax player on a number of early albums, although this was largely in the 70s. It was a weird mix of soul and what was laughably considered to be rock that brought the two together at the time, if I remember.  Even the toughest rockers seemed to want to show their emotional underbelly, and that comically earnest, eyes-clenched, blouson-sporting, big-haired, backlit solo was quite frequently the way they did it.

Apart from slight bafflement at how this was ever considered cool in the first place, I am surprised it got left behind in the 80s revival – it’s not like we’ve had much of a quality filter on what has been dragged back into popular culture.  The man satirised so dismissively, and brilliantly, as Mr. Sensitive Ponytail in ‘This is Definitely Now the Nineties’ zeitgeist flick Singles would not have been seen dead without a considerable collection of albums by assorted posturing milk-toast soft rockers looking tough.  These albums almost by definition contained a portfolio of comedy sax solos, and we shouldn’t underestimate how actually, genuinely cool Mr. Sensitive Ponytail was in the 80s.

So here we are approaching 2010, and the inevitable 90s revival, and it looks like the sax has been forever consigned to the rock ‘n’ roll dustbin which is, erm, well probably no bad thing.  I can’t think of many current groups who do decent sax stuff really.  The Dave Matthews Band had some good sax moments about ten years ago, and that’s about it except for one: The Low Miffs.  Brilliant, brilliant sax.  It’s a one-group revival, and not the least bit Mr. Sensitive Ponytail, thank god.  If anyone needed to be left in the 80s and never ever revived again, it is him.  Probably liked fucking world music and jazz as well, the slippery cunt.

The definitive 80s saxophone solo:
Hazel O’Connor – Will You
Not far behind:
Bruce Springsteen – Jungleland
David Bowie – John, I’m Only Dancing
Huey Lewis & the News – The Power of Love
Dave Matthews Band – Two Step
The Low Miffs – Where Are Your Songs Now?

[After the success of Crash and Nate, I am afraid I have been bullied into allowing my darling girl a go, by dint of threats of castration, involuntary abstinence and not having my tea on the goddam table when I get home from work. So without further ado I cast you into the arms of my one true love, the gorgeous, the swoonsome, the dazzling Mrs. Toad...]

Ah, the High School Movie, that much maligned genre. Cherished by few regular movie goers, certainly few over the age of 25. My guilty pleasure and the cause of numerous taunts and exclamations of, “oh, for fuck’s sake” from Mr Toad at the video store.

These films are inevitably focused on a few themes; the ascendance to high social status through some crafty plan, bet or blackmail (The New Guy, She’s All That, Can’t Buy Me Love), the last blast of youth before adulthood beckons (American Pie, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, American Graffiti, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off), breaking down social boundaries (The Breakfast Club) or a love story worthy of Austen or Choderlos de Laclos (Clueless, Cruel Intentions). Occasionally attracting critical acclaim (Brick) but more often leaning towards the execrable (Road Trip), I hire them all with a frisson of pleasure and anticipation.

Snort with disdain, but some of the films above helped launch the careers of George Lucas, Harrison Ford, Richard Dreyfuss, Sean Penn, Forest Whitaker and Reese Witherspoon, a fair shake of Oscar winners and nominees. So the next time you see some teenage pap on the boards at the multiplex, take a shufti. You may just find yourself one up in the “I saw him/her first” Dinner Party Artistic Oeuvre Sweepstakes one day.

Now, the other facet of High School Movies is that they generally enjoy a healthy turn from their soundtracks. A party scene is inevitable, being the main forum (apart from exactly where one sits in the canteen/bleachers, a curiously US phenomenon) where social wheat is sorted from chaff. If you wish to see dancing scenes that approach the horrific brilliance of David Brent in The Office, 80’s High School Movies are often fertile ground for a spot of coordinated white boy body poppin with bat wing sweaters and rat tails flying (Corey Haim has a lot to answer for). You can laugh but 20 years ago you wanted to be them, Ice Ice Baby…

Soundtracks are often complemented by “live” prom turns from bands on the up and coming (or down and out..). The prom night denouement is virtually universal and real bands often turn up to have a turn on the silver screen. The legendary Pretty in Pink features the Plimsouls and the Rave-Ups at various points. Its such lucrative ground that some artists such as Sixpence None The Richer specialise in offering journeymanlike poppy nonsense just for the market, having scored “Kiss Me” on She’s All That, they later feature in Smallville (TV) and Not Another Teen Movie (shitting on their own doorstep surely?). Still, it has to be a step above screeching “Whoaaah, Bodyform!!! Bodyformed for youuuuuuuuu” in fanny pad ads at least. We can’t all be Radiohead (who condescended to have a song on the Clueless soundtrack btw). Of course, featuring on a film soundtrack is no guarantee of enduring success. One hit wonders are a frequent occurrence, Steal My Sunshine by Len anyone?

I could talk High School Movies all day and I’m always looking for more to watch, so suggestions welcome. In the meantime, I will leave you with a few instantly recognisable tracks from High School Movies past. In memory of Heath Ledger, who you may remember from an Oscar winning turn in Brokeback Mountain but I from such delights as 10 Things I Hate About You and medieval High School Movie, A Knight’s Tale, I have listed a couple of tracks from those movies.

Len – Steal My Sunshine (From Go)
David Bowie – Golden Years (From A Knight’s Tale)
The Raincoats – Lola (They weren’t on the soundtrack to 10 Things I Hate About You, but pretending to like them was Heath Ledger’s opening gambit in snaring Julia Stiles.)
Sixpence None the Richer – Kiss Me (From She’s All That)
The Platters – The Great Pretender (From American Graffiti)

Posts in this series:
- Crash Calloway from Pretending Life is Like a Song writes about The Commitments.
- Nate, who plays viola in The Young Republic explains why some terrible films have excellent scores.
- My dearest darling Mrs. Toad sings the praises of the High School Movie.
- DC, presenter of The Waiting Room, goes on a truly interminable ramble about the great Tom Waits and One From the Heart.
- Brother of Toad talks about how the context of music can interfere with its use in a movie.
- John sums up Natural Born Killers in three sentences.
- I have a go myself by writing about the art of referencing films in your song lyrics and what it lets you do.
- Tim from The Daily Growl digs away at the sensual texture of In the Mood For Love.
- Matt from Draped in Velvet might never forgive the false start of the world of rap-rock.
- Ian from Broken Records delivers the rant that started this all off: why soundtracks just don’t work!

Pah, arse, minge, bah humbug.  Motherfucking technology.  Whorish inadequate fucking clockwork computers, stumbling blindly through the twentieth century like a fucking homeless card-trick con man at a magicians’ conference.

Over Christmas I tried to record a podcast with the whole family.  I asked everyone to pick a couple of songs that made them think of Christmas – not necessarily Christmas songs you understand, just songs that sprung to mind – and then I dragged them all to the computer one by one and we had a chat and introduced the songs.  It was almost a great podcast: haphazard, incoherent and yet entirely embodying that family atmosphere you get at Christmas where everyone gets jammed together in a wee house and you all have to make do with one another’s foibles as best you can.

The problem?  Well my parents’ stone age fucking computer mostly.  It just couldn’t handle the recording process, so all the conversations to introduce the various songs skipped and jumped, lurched and bleeped all over the place.  And then, every once in a while, when the useless old fucker got really confused, it just replaced five minutes of conversation with deafening static.  How fucking marvellous.

I tried to rescue the raw material on my computer at Proper Job this week, which really is a computer with some bite to match its bark, but no dice.  The files were so corrupted it just wouldn’t export anything, so there is no Song, by Toad Yulecast this year I am afraid.

I thought it would be a lovely idea, and there is a great, if somewhat silly, podcast in there somewhere, but the inadequacies of technology have foiled the best laid plans of turds and toads I’m afraid.  So, erm, here are a couple of really non-Christmassy songs from the podcast.  Fuck.

Better luck next year, wot?

Sex Pistols – God Save the Queen (Mrs. Toad’s choice.)
Bruce Springsteen – Thunder Road (Dad’s choice.)
Frankie Goes to Hollywood – The Power of Love (My Bloody Mother’s choice.)

And, erm, yes.  Before we all get too indie and pleased with ourselves, my sister in law dropped this depth charge of cheese into the middle of proceedings and ruined Christmas for everyone.  Pa rup a pum fucking pum David?  I thought you were cool you muppet.
David Bowie & Bing Crosbie – Little Drummer Boy

I could have sworn that I spoke English pretty well. I mean, I’ve always been confident, able to communicate and rarely had extreme misunderstandings with other people who also seemed to think they were speaking English.

Then I read the quote below and I wondered if I have even the slightest grasp whatsoever of the language we all claim to have in common. I mean, do we have it in common at all or do we just make similar-sounding noises whilst all the while each taking completely different meaning from the conversation.

This man is talking about the rack. The medieval torture device called the rack. This. And what he has to say is the following:

“I am not going to give aid to our enemies by disclosing details of our interrogation techniques. But if we do expose detainees to the Rack it is not torture, because we do not torture.”

Well that’s cleared that up then. The quote was from none other than Deranged-Lunatic-in-Chief George Bush and was perhaps the pick of the bunch which I found on this little post here on Brian Leiter’s Law School Reports. It looks like a pretty reputable source – given it’s part of the Law Professor Blogs network one assumes he’d be pulled up pretty sharpish if he was making it up, never mind the implications for his own career.

Reading some of the bald-faced justifications for torture (yes, torture: think witch trials, The Inquisition, The Middle Ages and other such bastions of enlightenment and civilisation) truly is breathtaking. It pretty much puts the current American government slap bang in that Axis of Evil they invented a few years back. ‘The la-and of the freeee, and the home of thuuuh barbaric medieval torturers’ Quite fucking splendid. This makes an interesting read about the equally insane technique of waterboarding.

The comedy of this whole nonsense is that terrorist acts have killed 3000 people in America in the last six years. This works out at an average of about 500 per year, compared to 40 000 deaths per year due to road accidents. 500 per year, versus 40 000 per year. 500 versus 40 000. When, oh when, will they stop hating freedom and start bombing General Motors.

U2 – Daddy’s Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car
Cracklin’ Moth – Car Wreck
David Bowie – Always Crashing in the Same Car