“ – the dangerous words, the padlocked words, the words that do not belong to the dictionary,
for if they were written there, written out and not maintained by ellipses,
they would utter too fast the suffocating misery of a solitude …”
Jean Genet
Introduction to “Soledad Brother – The Prison Letters of George Jackson”
At night he composed his musical scores amid the discomposed and the decomposing. That mound of bodies heaped in the camp’s “Pathology Department”. Where the deceased were harvested for chimerical medical trials, their flesh sown for decorative ornaments to give as gifts to Nazi Frauen. Even the Germans didn’t dare enter this human tannery past sunset. For fear of ghosts. Though he took up residence there, precisely because all was unutterably still for him to pen his movements. For he couldn't concentrate in this concentration camp. To hear the music in his head, he needed to be away from the diminuendo outside. Of groans, gurgling stomachs consuming their hosts and relentless recitations of the mourners’ Kaddish. The only ghosts to be had, were the shuffling wraiths of the still living skeletons.
Emerging from the charnel room with the dawn, he would clutch a new tune inscribed on the toilet sheets he’d solemnised from the dysentery sufferers. Dodging the sleepy sentries, he slipped his latest opus to the conductor of the camp orchestra during the shambling gathering for roll call and any unused candle tallow. Their neighbours in the file rounded on them both.
- In this place music is an affront. Your orchestra an abomination - My friend, music lifts the spirit. It offers hope there is still beauty and refinement in the world - Modest ain't he? You’re no better than parasites. Like our Rabbis, you were only ever provided any means through the generosity of patrons, people who toiled for their money and who you cozened funds from, in the myth it would redeem their souls - Ah, good to see the art versus business dichotomy still rages on in a place where neither hold much in the way of currency - So you admit it? Besides, how can your music have anything to do with refinement, when you lock yourself up in that heinous room of all rooms to write your notes? It can only but be permeated with the benighted spirits of the departed there. Your dead muses. I bet they light your way at night, it’s their fat you use for those candles isn’t it? - No sir, absolutely not. How could something so profane be associated with the making of noble art? - You are still nothing but a ghoul - No sir, a golem. To uplift our hearts in order to conduct us into survival - To conduct us into the afterlife more like. Die Totentänze. Do you expect us to dance a muzurka as we work in the quarries? Or perhaps demand that we waltz on into the ovens to your accompaniment? A little chamber music as tribute to our three-to-a-bunk barracks? Or maybe you have written a march for our victorious host to parade triumphantly out of this camp as we overthrow our captors? - Those with art and beauty in their hearts will stand more chance of enduring through the greatest hardship than those without - Oh really, will your uplifted soul float above the gas in the chambers and preserve you pure air to breathe? - No, but it will help preserve pure air for those that come after us to breathe. To know that from such an abyss, the human spirit could still soar.
A few years ago I was invited by the fabulous "Dear Teen Me" website to pen a letter from my contemporary self, addressing the teenage me. Sadly the website no longer functions, but I'm reproducing that letter I Wrote for the site.
Dear Marc from author Marc Nash
Seeing as like the primitive tribesman you have a dislike of having your soul captured by a camera, tracking this shot down from your Gap year back in 1982 was something of a coup. Fortunately even though you have no pictures of your youth, your mother clung on to the few photographic morsels you granted her. This is you sat at the top of a cathedral either in Paris or Italy in the days you used to travel. And yes you are wearing a music T-Shirt, that of Joy Division a band who were to play a very important part in your life, not least because one of your first plays was about them and the fact that their lead singer committed suicide. But here at age eighteen, the sun is shining, you’re underneath the sky on top of the world where anything is possible ... and you’re wearing summery black!
*
1977 aged thirteen and the year of family parties sitting in marquees in back gardens talking about punk rock. Well Marc, you never did master the paltry four strings of a bass guitar and fulfill your dream of being in a band, but you did make it into the arts. You didn’t write any lyrics, but you did still compose words in the form of stage plays and novels. Even though you have still never read a classic novel other than the handful you studied at school. At the age of fourteen, it was a recommendation from one of your cool older cousins to listen to The Cure’s song “Killing An Arab” and then read Albert Camus’ novel “The Outsider” that kindled your love of modern novels, while still burning the fires for music from which you have never looked back.
Teenage years were when you finally turned your head away from the childish world centred around the home and started to think about the wider world. You discovered politics through a concern with the nuclear arms race and mutually assured destruction. That fusion of the political and the fear of death has never left you and permeates all your writing as you now approach the age of 50. Cleaning the blood up off the floor of a parent after a serious suicide attempt in your last year of teenagehood probably saw to that. Though a terrifying and brutal initiation into other people’s misery, it has set you up for not shying away from tackling dark subjects in your writing and probing the extremes of human behaviour. When you wrote about suicide bombers in “Not In My Name”, you could balance the ‘bomber’ aspect with the ‘suicide’ part like few others possibly could.
There were wars a plenty around the world while you were a teenager. On your doorstep there were the charmingly euphemistically named “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland. There was the ongoing conflict in the Middle East which was of grave concern to your family, but which you couldn’t engage with as you held an opposite point of view from them. In your Gap year Britain sailed an army halfway around the world to bafflingly fight over some barely inhabited islands against the Argentinians. That was when you realised you had a love-hate relationship with your own country, another theme you would go on to write about extensively, particularly in your debut novel “A,B&E”. Interestingly you chose to write that from the point of view of exile from Britain, even though after extensive Gap year travel as a teenager, you resolutely decided to stay in London and set your face against further travel. These days you don’t have holidays, you only write in your time off. You travel extensively in your imagination.
Yet it was a another conflict about which little was reported because journalists couldn’t gain access to the closed country, which really caught your attention, perhaps because you could not confront these other wars which were supposed to prompt your allegiances more directly. And that was the rule of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and the subsequent horrors of the Killing Fields and the disastrous famine. That warzone resonated more than any other with you, but you could never find the words to express such a scale of depravity and horror. It would take you 30 years until you were finally able to write a story about it. Before then you had written on Northern Ireland and the Middle East, intricate, complex works making no judgements of the various parties involved. But your story on Cambodia pulled no punches in delivering its searing condemnation of the cult of death.
And where did this passion for writing and particular the novel develop from? Well you got into Britain’s supposed best university to further you hunger for knowledge, But your were appalled by the closed and prejudiced minds of many of your fellow students. You were also disillusioned with your History course as you felt the teachers were not really interested in teaching, only in pursuing their own research. You were on the point of walking out, when a new student theatre stage space was opened and you decided to try your hand at writing stage plays. Even then with no experience, instinctively and temperamentally you opted for some radical staging and the whole play was performed behind a wire mesh fence separating the cast from the audience. And because you had difficulty casting it, you decided to back up your words by stepping in and performing yourself. You even learned to smoke for the part and scaled the fence to confront the audience at the play’s ending. From that short 20 minute piece, you then went up to the Edinburgh fringe Festival with two new plays, which in retrospect was complete madness, but you had no fear. You were hooked by creative writing back and you also completed your degree, as playwriting kept you in college.
You knew an office job wasn’t for you, so playwriting seemed like a good way to avoid that, which of course it wasn’t as there was no money to be made. After four years you secured a job in an independent record store to pay the bills, but the number work there left the word side of your brain free to continue writing in the evenings. You kept pushing the boundaries in what you did, moving away from dialogue and more towards movement and dance. The dancers looked at you like you were mad, what need did they have of the written and spoken word? It was only cut short when your beloved twin boys arrived and you became the main carer for them. No more hanging out networking in theatre bars for you, with bottle feeds and dirty diapers to see to at the double.
So you turned to writing novels through the night, interrupted only by feeds and changes. The books you liked to read weren’t really out there in the market, so you set out to write them. Stories that pushed the narrative form into new places, books of ideas and a rigorous pursuit and examination of language. And once self-published, you started giving live readings, the closest to the dream of performing live in a band. And you put on a show live. You inhabited the characters, you dialogued with the audience through the way you staged your readings.
So it wasn’t quite how you imagined it might turn out, but looking back a lot of the seeds were in place in the teen you. Here’s to our salute of the old age us, pen in arthritic hand still writing and challenging the status quo.
Songs about actors, who could have imagined it would produce such a rich vein? And none of includes songs about ex-actor Ronald Reagan since they tend to address his post-actor career in the White House. Sadly no songs either by the wonderfully named band JFA, as in "Jodie Foster's Army". Still, no shortage of ditties devoted to thesps.
1) Julian Cope - "Robert Mitchum"
Only Julian Cope could pull off something so twee as this. Imagine it as the soundtrack to "Night Of The Hunter"? Nope, me neither.
2) Kim Carnes - "Betty Davis' Eyes"
Not to be confused with The Adverts' "Gary Gilmore's Eyes", or Half Man Hal;f Biscuit's spoof on this "Dickie Davis' Eyes". Which is a pity as I prefer both of those infinitely to this pop pap, even if in the video people beat out a rhythm on the floor with their hands. Too much of that and they'll have Betty Davis' hands.
3) Lee Perry & The Upsetters - "Clint Eastwood Rides Again"
But Marc I hear you cry, this is basically an instrumental, so what has it got to do with Clint? Other than the ridin' along on ma horse rhythm and the increasing insinuation of gun shots you mean? Reggae artists love cowboys and spaghetti Westerns, honouring them in many a song and even artists taken the names of cowboys, such as well Clint Eastwood and Dillinger (all right he was more 20s bankrobber than cowboy). My chart, my rules.
4) Angel Corpus Christi - "John Cassavetes"
Try tracking this obscure album down... Amazed it's on YouTube to be honest. John Cassavetes, actor and film director. His work was talked about in hushed tones with great reverance, I saw one called I think "Husbands". It was fairly turgid. I wonder if he's still so highly regarded now that he's been dead for so long? The movie world can be as unforgiving as the music biz if you don't put out new product. Anyone remember Alex Cox these days? Thought not.
5) Bauhaus - "Bela Lugosi's Dead"
True story this. After my university finals but before we graduated we had a lot of time to kill. So we decided to play a gig outside the halls of residence. Plugged into the basement and off we went. Only the bassist could actually play, I was hitting a beer barrel with a sledgehammer for percussion (I was heavily influenced by Test Department at the time). And the song the bassist could really play well was this. The singer knew the lyrics. He was very active in the Animal liberation movement, hardly what one associates with the Goth revival as typified by this song. Funny world.
6) Billy Bragg - "Ingrid Bergman"
In which Billy punctuates his stand up repartee with a song 6 minutes into this video. Sorry about that.
7) Beastie Boys - "Lee Majors Come Again"
Let's crank it up with some noise. Lee Majors played the 6 Million Dollar Man on TV. As an actor you might not have given him more than 6 dollars. I think the Beasties may have drawn similar conclusions as the connection to lee Majors is tangential at best.
8) Nirvana - "Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge On Seattle"
KK was obviously much taken with Ms Farmer since he named his only daughter after her. I was never a great Nirvana fan, actually preferring the work of his Mrs, Courtney Love's "Hole". You want to make sure you put the speech marks round that or it takes on a whole different meaning. This song is even more dirgey than the usual Nirvana output. The name "Nirvana" was ironic right?
9) The Clash - "The Right Profile"
The Clash were always dropping references to real people in their songs. This checks the name of Montgomery Clift, actor in the classic "From Here To Eternity". Another actor who suffered a serious car crash, although he managed to eke out a tad more of his career after that. Now we've covered that, I don't have to post The Eagles' song "James Dean". What? If this was a chart for songs about actors involved in car crashes, then maybe...
10) MDC - "John Wayne Was A Nazi"
I don't feel I have to add anything to the song itself.
11) Natalie Merchant - "Lulu"
Okay let's take it down a notch or two. Merchant's paean to silent actress Louise Brooks, she of the famous hair do. What I called in one of my novels, the 'Roman helmet' cut.
12) Banarama - "Robert De Niro's Waiting"
God I hated this song when it came out. Still do. See, this is how generous I am posting songs I can't stand.
13) Madness - "Michael Caine"
This song was rubbish too. I'm beginning to think actors make lousy subjects for pop songs.
14) Sonic Youth - "Madonna, Sean And Me"
Bit of a cheat this one because everyone knows the song as "Expressway To Yr Skull", but for some reason when the album was released, this was the name they gave the track. Still, this revives my faith in the concept of the actor themed song, cos it is epic! Was lucky enough to hear them play it live a couple of times, walk off the stage at the end of their set and the guitar feedback was still squealing through the amps for a good few minutes later.
15) Serge Gainsbourg - "The Initials BB"
A song about his sometime collaborator on songs Bridget Bardo". Unless you speak french, you'll just have to take my word for it. I think Bardo has gone on to become the ultimate cat lady in her dotage.
16) Roxy Music - "2HB"
No, not a song devoted to the middle of the road in pencils, but extolling Humphrey Bogart. Bryan ferry sounds even more drawly than normal in this.
Just In From our NRA correspondent"
17) Stump - "Charlton Heston (Put His Vest On)"
God knows which bit of my deep-lying memory I dragged this one from, but a day after compiling the chart, this came to me.
Those that know me as a writer say I don't write many stories about love. I'd disagree with this and indeed in my latest collection there are a couple of heart-rendering love stories, but yeah it's true, they don 't end well. Actually, there's a third story "Eyes In The Back of His Hands" that's an intense portrayal of love with a blind lover. You can read it here.
So I thought my next music themed chart should be love related. But I'm not really one for the classic pap love song, sorry I meant pop love song. But here's ten of my favourite love tinged songs.
Ramones - "Baby I Love You"
Two-minute thrash rockers go all slow strings and syrupy on this track and I Loooove it!
Keith Rowe - "Groovy Situation"
When Keith belts out "This is how I feel" towards the end, it sends shivers down my spine. He means it he really, really means it. He's in love, with all of his soul. Mesmerising despite a reasonably unpromising beginning to the song.
Undertones - "You Got My Number (Why Don’t You Use It?)"
Hey I never said the love had to be requited in these songs did I? Love this song as I did of so many of the Undertones' output. Perfectly crafted 3 minute pop-punk, cheeky and belligerent at the same time, with catchy choruses, which when push comes to shove, no one really gets hurt in the end.
CSS - "Let’s Make Love And Listen To Death from Above"
Probably wins the award for best titled live song. Don't know if anyone else feels this, but it has the feel of a post-coital song to me, lying back on the bed, smoking a cigarette and letting your thoughts float free. Oh just me then...
Infadels - "Love Like Semtex"
The only song of theirs I really liked. It's not particularly coherent lyrics wise, but it manages to convince through the beat and the delivery.
New Order - "Love Vigilantes"
Joy Division wrote the searing "Love Will Tea Us Apart" with it's mea culpa and realistic sensibilities about the flaws and failings within a relationship. New Order pen this potty ditty about a soldier returning home from war to his wife who believes him dead. It lacks any gravitas or even much in the way of credibility, but it's bouncy and hummable and I like it in spite of myself.
The Rezillos - "I love My Baby Cos She Does Could Sculptures"
What better reason could there be? Never overlook the significant part Art Colleges played in the rise of UK punk in the middle of the 1970s. Perhaps that's why Paul Weller penned such an acerbic song called "Art School" to distance people from the notion that The Jam were associated with punk. Anyway, hilarious intro to this song about how the band hated each other.
The Pogues - "Kitty"
Shane Macgowan was a master of writing aching love songs full of loss and regret, often tied up to exile and leaving your country behind. Of course everyone knows "Fairytale Of New York", but for sheer weary emotion I don't think you can top this.
Boss Hog - "I Dig You"
Husband and wife team Jon Spencer and Cristina Martinez pen a daft song pledging their troth towards one another. But I loved this band with their blend of swamp dirt blues and Spencer's later incarnation Jon Spencer's Blues Explosion that deconstructs and reconstructs the Blues with a particular 21st Century spin.
Gun Club - "Fire Of Love"
The primal sound of love, lust, concupiscence the whole shooting match. The fire of love, does exactly what it says on the tin.
Gang Of Four - "Love Like Anthrax"
Okay, so I just couldn't help myself and reverted to type. A song that deconstructs the notion of love as mythologised in 3 minute pop songs. Apart from what's going on musically, this is really interesting in the way the two vocal narratives cut across one another with no concern as to which one the listener gloms on to. A bit like a married couple having an argument, which kind of summed up the relationship of guitarist Andy Gill & lead singer Jon King who periodically broke up and came back together/. I think right now King has left the band again.
In my teens I listened to a lot of music genres (though the word hadn't been coined then, even though music audiences were quite tribal). And one that was very influential was reggae. I'm not sure how I came by it, although I lived in London where it was very prevalent, also I was into punk and New Wave which were both acknowledging their affinity for reggae. John Peel almost certainly had something to do with my love for it, as he promoted reggae artists on his show along with all the other music he introduced the likes of me to.
But as I grew older, reggae fell away from my music loves and was replaced by US rap and hip-hop. However now in my early 50s I find that I am returning to reggae with a renewed enthusiasm to expand my old musical favourites in the genre and explore further. I still love rap and hip-hop, but I am delighted that I've rehabilitated myself to embrace reggae as well. There is plenty of crossover between reggae and rap or reggae and dubstep, while industrial funk 80s band 23 Skidoo even did a straightish reggae song in amongst all their musical experimentation.
Anyway, for what it's worth, here are my fifteen favourite reggae songs. Normally when I do one of my music charts I'm a bit snarky about the bands or the video. but in this case it is straight up veneration.
1) Ras Michael And The Sons Of Negus - "None Ah Jah Jah's Children No Cry"
First and foremost reggae is a spiritual music. And in Ras Michael's words and phrasing you really get a sense of that as he sings of a world to come free of pain and misery. The drum beat also has direct links back to a style of traditional African drumming though this style of reggae made it its own.
2) Misty In Roots - "How Long Jah?"
A British Roots Reggae band from West London who were very active in the Rock Against Racism movement playing gigs on the same stage as The Clash, Specials and The Ruts. Roots Reggae connects the spiritual messages of Rastafari directly with the lives of its followers usually in city ghettos, linking the two within the lyrics.
3) Scotty - "Clean Race"
This song is more demonstrative of the playful side of reggae as deejay Scotty morphs in and out of singing and 'toasting'. Many early reggae singles had an instrumental version of the song serve for the B-Side and certain artists 'borrowed' these tracks and did their own vocals over them. Toasting is improvising or chatting over the beat as Scotty does to wonderful effect here asserting his prominence in the hierarchy over both record producer and the public who buy his music. And yet the song is utterly catchy. In reggae, deejays are not those who produce the beat and spin the records as in hip-hop, they are called 'Selectors' in reggae. A deejay in reggae is the singer over the beat.
4) Dillinger - "Cocaine"
Reggae became big in the UK and other European countries because of the emigrant Caribbean populations living here. But on the back of Bob Marley it made some inroads into the US and here Dillinger wonderfully observes US culture through the eye of a near neighbour. Many reggae artists took their names from US gangsters (Dillinger, Capone) or cowboys (Clint Eastwood & General Saint).
5) Wailing Souls - "Kingdom Rise, Kingdom Fall"
A band with more line up and band name changes than most who have been around since the 1960s, again here the vocals remind the listener of the devotional spiritual nature of the music.
6) Barrington Levy - "Murderer"
One of the most prolific reggae recording artists, he started singing at age 14. He has also crossed over working with artists such as Snoop Dogg. The 7" single has always been important in reggae, at times more important than albums, but Levy has always committed to albums as much as singles.
7) Soul Vendors - "Swing Easy"
Trojan, Studio One & Coxsone records were perhaps the most significant record label in the 1960s and early 70s, releasing 7" single gem after gem by a multitude of artists. This was one of them by a group I can tell you nothing about. But the song itself sounds so mournful and plaintive, despite it's upbeat title. A song packed with emotion despite its lack of lyrics.
8) Althea & Donna ' "Uptown Top Ranking"
This was a hit when I was growing up and I hated it because I hated pop music (still do). But when I rediscovered it a few years ago, I fell in love with it because it is both poppy and yet completely from outside the pop realm with its uncompromising patois delivery. Teenagers when they recorded this, sadly one of them died very young from cancer.
9) John Holt - "Police And Helicopter"
A singer associated with a sweet voice and songs of love often backed with strings, here issues a defiant and wrathful political song to his government.
10 Steel Pulse - "Handsworth Revolution"
Another British band who were brilliant on stage, this 1978 song forecast the riots of the 1980s, particularly the one in their home borough of Handsworth in Birmingham. Even though it is somewhat of a call to arms, it still drips with a sense of spirituality, hinting at a different kind of calling.
11) Burning Spear - "Marcus Garvey"
Oh what a voice!
12) Sylford Walker - "Chant Down Babylon"
A song I only recently discovered once I had come back to reggae, through the happenstance that it was on the same YouTube page when I was searching for Scotty. Again I know nothing of him. But put it this way, it's the first song on my reggae playlist.
13) The Congos - "Fishermen"
One of the qualities of reggae (and particularly of dub) is a certain liquid or watery sound as befits a music made mainly within a group of islands. Ostensibly this song appears to be about the noble profession of fishing, but actually it's a paean to ensuring the smugglers successfully bring in the collieweed, or marijuana.
14) Keith Rowe - "Groovy Situation"
Reggae also has a fine line in romance and songs to lovers. Gregory Isaacs, Denis Brown and John Holt to name but three. A genre called Lovers' Rock encapsulated this although it largely grew out of London initially rather than Jamaica. This Keith Rowe song predates Lovers' Rock but to me is the finest example of a reggae love song. It starts playful and giggly before his voice goes stratospheric as he proclaims his deep love. Wonderful stuff.
15) Augustus Pablo - "King Tubby Meets Rocker Uptown"
Perhaps the most significant legacy of reggae, one which has spread into many other sorts of music, is dub. Dub uses electronic effects to make the music more spacey with echo and reverb and focuses more centrally on the rhythms of the drum and the bass. More often that not it removes the vocals so that they are instrumentals. Augustus Pablo is one of the finest exponents of dub, but what makes his sound unique is the use of a melodica. Sublime stuff, you can just switch the lights off and bask in his albums for an evening in perfect bliss.
Well if it's good enough for Shakey (William, not Stevens) then it must be a subject rich for the arts. here's a music chart of Dream themed songs (but not David Essex's "Silver Dream Racer")
1) Sonic Youth - "I Dreamed I Dream"
An early SY song this, before their layered sound had really started to cohere. But it's still brooding with menace and the husband and wife swapped vocals is really effective. Kim Gordon's book "Girl in A Band" has just come out. She was anything but that in Sonic Youth.
2) London Underground - "Dreams Are Better"
Spacy, dubby soundscape does conjure up a dreamy sensibility.
3) Mamas And Papas - "California Dreaming"
Infinitely prefer this version than the Beach Boys, even prepared to overlook the fashion faux pas.
4) The Fall - "Lie Dream Of A Casino Soul"
If you're going to include a Fall song in any music themed chart, chances are Mark E Smith's sensibilities are going to cut against the grain of the theme and sure enough, here the Hip Priest warbles his disapproval of the Wigan Casino's soul capital reputation.
5) Gang of Four - "We Live As We Dream Alone"
A quote from Joseph Conrad and I always want to put a comma after the 'Dream' and before the 'Alone'. Talking of fashion faux pas... Still one of my favourite songs by one of my favourite bands.
6) Fire Engines - "Big Gold Dream"
Here's a band that somehow haven't featured in a chart of mine before even though I really like them. The perspective is very odd here, the band look like tall thin giants compared to the dancers in the front.
7) Magik Markers - "Bad Dream"
I only discovered this band relatively recently and their album "Boss" has gone into my all-time top 20. Usually wig-out noise merchants, this shows an alarming degree of disturbia through a much lighter touch. Fabulous.
Pauline Murray sounding just like she did when fronting punk band Penetration, though with more poppy backing than the thrash 3 chords of punk.
9) New Order - "Dreams Never End'
Fascinating track that shows the partial emergence of the New Order sound from that of Joy Division, but still with its roots very much traceable. They all look so tentative here.
10) Suicide - "Dream Baby Dream"
If there was ever a soundtrack of nightmares, Alan Vega provided it.
11) Eurythmics - "Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This"
I wasn't really a fan of the 80s, most of my favourite bands expired in the early 80s. I always associate this song with the grim politics of the era. A kind of corporate sponsored vision of nightmarishness.
12) Supertramp - "Dreamer"
Before punk came along, I used to listen to stuff like this. Thank god for punk I say. These days this sounds like Leo Sayer to me. Crime of the century? That this type of music held sway for so long.
13) Television - The Dream's Dream"
This was probably around a similar time to the Supertramp and represented a precursor of punk and new wave that swept away the old rock dinosaurs. But these guys could still play their instruments, apart from Richard Hell obviously!
14) Nas - "Sweet Dreams"
I like Nas, but he really needs to get himself a decent artistic director to make his videos. they're all the same and universally awful.
15) Chemical Brothers - "Dream On"
They're called the Chemical Brothers for a reason. Spacemen 3 would have killed for this song.
16) Electric Prunes - "I had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)"
Dressed like choirboys yet their sound was a distortion, fuzzed up glorious romp.
17) Tricky - "Bad Dreams"
And we're back with the paranoia latent in dreams. or not so latent in this case. Tricky regarded all life as a bad dream.
18) Lil Kim - "Dreams"
Oh do get on with it! Once she's 43 seconds in it really locks in to a remorselessly mean vibe.
19) The Bug - "Thief Of Dreams"
Dubstep is supposedly an edgy dreamy urban soundscape and The Bug is all that and more. But the vocalist in this spins a terrifying narrative that is anything but dream like.
20) Minutemen - 'Dream Told By Moto"
Or the 4 minute warning till the bomb drops... no dream this for us in the 80s, we really had these thoughts and anxieties.
American Pie, songs about women called Candy, bubblegum pop... food is meat for coverage in music. So feast your senses on this cornucopia of nourishment, or not as we tuck into a chart of ten songs about grub. Enjoy!
1) Lee Scratch Perry - "Roast Fish & Cornbread"
Traditional Caribbean repast, traditional (ie pre-commercial) reggae. If you listen to some of the songs of this era, you can hear the water background as befits an island culture. Moreish.
2) Gary Clail - "Beef"
A song lacerating the treatment and slaughter of cattle for our consumption of meat. People preferred Morrisey's reedy exhortation that "Meat is Murder". I know which one gets my vote. Juicy.
3) The Undertones - "Mars Bars"
Throwaway song on the B-Side of the "Jimmy Jimmy" 4-track 7" single, but it grew a life of its own. More boyish than laddish which encapsulates the band. Toothsome.
4) Pink Floyd - "Apples And Oranges"
One of Syd Barrett Floyd's last offerings, this is a curious mix of the Beatlesque and psychedelic. it almost seems that the vocals are trying to catch up with the instrumentation, or that there are too many words to deliver and fit into the rhythm. Very odd. Tart.
5) Gang Of Four - "Cheesburger"
I love Go4 but they really seemed to have lost it by the time of their fourth album "Hard" where this track came from. Maybe they'd just sung all their protest lyrics that they had and run out of ideas, while the punk-funk vibe jarred with the critical nature of their lyrics. Since their recent return however, they seem to have rediscovered their mojo and their first album in years isn't half bad. Gristle.
6) Cop Shoot Cop - "Eggs For Rib"
If you want a bit of beef in your music, or even a bit of full English behind it, takes a bunch of Americans to deliver this glorious greasy spoon fry up of a song. No idea what the lyrics are on about, but love it all the same. Calorific.
7) The Carpenters - "Jambalaya"
Carpenters do Cajun, who knew? Hey it's the Carpenters, so what could be bad right? Is it in bad taste to include anorexia sufferer Karen Carpenter in a food-themed music chart? Piquant.
8) Jack White - "Sixteen Saltines"
Do the English have saltines? I love my crackers, Ritz, Water Biscuits etc, but can't say I've ever knowingly bitten into a salteen. To me it sounds like a dried fish or something like anchovies. Still it's a good riff and a half decent song. Seasoned.
9) Squeeze - "Pulling Mussels From The Shell"
A classic. I myself don't trust seafood as to its healthiness given the pollutants pumped or jettisoned in the seas, so don't indulge. But then I guess this song warns against trusting too much as well so I seem to be in step with its sentiments. Squeeze were one of those bands who you were glad populated the charts with a level of edge and quality that kept the bland pap music in check, but you never actually went out and owned any of their records yourself... Brackish.
10) Portishead - "Biscuit"
Not sure what this has to do with biscuits, but oh my what a voice dripping emotion. Savory.
Gustav Holst's "Planets Suite", the music of the spheres, the harmony of the cosmos, music has always had an association with the stars. We even call our heroes 'rock stars', that is something out of this world. So here are ten songs about the solar system. Rock(et) on!
1) The Rezillos - "Destination Venus"
The Rezillos were a touch under-appreciated punk/art school band from Scotland. With great song titles such as "My Baby Does Good Sculptures" and "Someone's Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In Tonight". Perhaps they never made it because they were so bad at miming for 'live' TV pop shows
2) The Cure - "Jupiter Crash"
I'd totally lost interest in The Cure once they turned from indie new wavers into silly Goths chasing invisible rabbits down unseen holes. So I was totally unaware of this song from their ouevre. It's odd to think how different a persona guitarist Robert Smith presented when he played in Siouxie And the Banshees when he was no longer the main man and didn't have to adopt all the teased hair and smudged make-up as he did with the Cure.
3) Jimi Hendrix - "South Saturn Delta"
From the man who invented the out of this world "Acid Rock" this song shows just how much Hendrix drew on Southern Delta Blues for his style. Since there are no words to this, not sure what Saturn has to do with it exactly, but any excuse to include Jimi is alright by me to be honest.
4) David Bowie - "Life On Mars"
Considering the whole Ziggy Stardust album could have made this list, it's perhaps surprising that this song actually appeared on the Hunky Dory album. Bowie was best when he was obsessed with spacemen and he and guitarist Mick Ronson wore shiny space age clothes on stage. Just my two cents.
5) B52s - "Planet Claire"
From a band who took their name from the stratospheric carpet bomber the B-52, they made some really knock-about music such as "Rock Lobster" and "Strobelight". Here the professed love object is utterly out of this world.
6) Rush - "Cygnus X-1"
A song about one of the earliest discovered black holes, taken from an album "A Farewell To Kings" that also flirted with the radical ideas of author Ayn Rand, while the album "Hemispheres" contained a track "Trouble With The Trees" which saw the band accused of having fascist leanings. My jury's out on that one, but I just fixate on the bloated size of that drumkit, it resembles a solar system in its own right.
7) The Carpenters - "Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft"
And breathe.... Calming it all back down, here we have Karen sending out a beauteous plaint into space. I'd answer if I were an extra-terrestrial wouldn't you? Imagine the heartbreak of landing to meet this siren's call, only to discover she'd died from the very sustenance that is supposed to keep her species alive...
8) Husker Du - "Books About UFOs"
And cranking it back up again, the finest 3-piece power trio introduce some plinky-plonk piano against their wall of noise. Delicious stuff.
9) Pink Floyd - "Astronomy Dominé"
It could have been "Interstellar Overdrive" or "Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun", but this track from the Syd Barrett days namechecks more planetary bodies and besides, shows just how heavy and dissonant sounding a band they were in those days. Also some rare archival footage of Roger Waters being quite polite.
10) Grinderman - "Honey Bee Let's Fly To Mars"
Glorious inchoate noise that was Grinderman's debut LP. Then they cut their second one and all that was lost... Also note to Nick, excessive facial hair is not rock 'n roll unless you're ZZ Top.
11) Only Ones - "Another Girl Another Planet"
Shame frontman Peter Perrett was lost on another planet most of the time with his heroin addiction, cos they were a great pop-punk band who could have produced so much more.
The music that was birthed by "The Blues", personal laments of woe, depression and the like, mental states have always been present in rock music. So here's 15 songs around the theme of mental states.
No prizes for guessing the first one-
1) Black Sabbath - "Paranoid"
I was never a fan of Heavy Metal, but this song broke through my natural resistance and affords the grudging acknowledgement that it is undoubtedly a classic. Doesn't excuse hair and clothes though as demonstrated on this video. I own a pair of Ozzy Osbourne style slippers by the way. Oh what has become of Heavy metal? it's become merchandised into asininity like every other music style.
2) Jimi Hendrix - "Manic Depression"
Not great quality I'm afraid, but in a way it only lends to the unsettling nature of its subject matter. Of course mental health experts would insist on the track being renamed Bi-Polar disorder. My father suffered it under its old guise. Not easy to live with, not knowing if he would be bouncing off the ceiling one day, and refusing to get out of bed to go to work the next.
3) Clipse - "Ego"
The heart of it all if you're a Freudian. In an industry dominated by the exaggerated projection of the ego, perhaps Rap projects it the furthest. In this particular case, Clipse's album tracks are littered with song titles drawn from therapy such as "Counselling" and "Life Change" as they struggle with the trappings of their success.
4) Talking Heads - "Psychokiller"
David Byrne is a curious egg, (though not as odd as David "Behemoth" Thomas from Pere Ubu, must have been something in the New York water in the late 1970s) but I've just bought his learned tome "How Music Works" which I'm looking forward to reading.
5) Rolling Stones - "19th Nervous Breakdown"
Not one of my fave tracks of theirs, I prefer "Paint It Black" to be honest and it's such a strong song it even survived a murdering by the band The Mo-dettes.
6) Pink Floyd - "Comfortably Numb"
The shadow of founding member Syd Barret who succumbed to mental illness possibly brought about by drug use, sits large over Roger Waters' composition with other titles such as "Brain Damage" and "Shine On You Crazy Diamond".
7) King Crimson - "21st Century Schizoid Man"
8) The Kinks - "Acute Schizophrenia Paranoia Blues"
Ray Davies was known to have the odd quirk or two wan't he?
9) Cypress Hill - "Insane In The Brain"
Or kids, don't do drugs...
I recently tracked down a book called "Whispers - The Voices Of Paranoia" for some research, but was very disappointed that although the case studies were interesting stories, most were prompted by drug abuse which wasn't quite what I was after. The author did that to me deliberately...
10) Coil - "Panic"
Coil were a band who actively pursued the lesser known regions & emotions of the human mind in their music. Partly through drugs and also through the occult, myth and ritual. Big Alastair Crowley fans. Still, I don't hold that against them.
11) Sonic Youth - "Schizophrenia"
Their best ever song was called "Expressway To Yr Skull" which I saw them play live and was blown away by and couldn't wait to own on the forthcoming album. And when the record came out, they'd renamed the track "Madonna, Sean & Me" which doesn't quite carry the same impact somehow...
12) Suicidal Tendencies - "Institutionalized"
I first came across this song on the movie "Repo Man" and what a great song it is. But then the band went all stupid skate rock and that was that.
13) Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers - "She's Cracked"
Trouble with Jonathan Richman is that you can't really take any of his songs too seriously with his droll delivery. Still can't disguise how great some of his songs were though.
14) Breeders - "Happiness Is a Warm Gun"
Yeah I know it's a Beatles song but I infinitely prefer this version. So shoot me. Mind you even the Beatles' original is better than U2's version.
15) Nirvana - "Lithium"
The fact that Kurt Cobain put a shotgun to his head probably suggests her knew what he was singing about in songs like this one. My father was prescribed lithium; imagine putting a metal into your bloodstream, well that's what lithium treatment is.
The Supremes, Super Furry Animals, ZZ Top, The Fab Four...
So it's a new year and there haven't been enough days yet for my usual pessimism to reassert itself over the fresh slate newness of the year. Everything's hunky dory super right? At least for another 5 minutes. So in honour of that, here's a music chart on all things exaggeratedly upbeat and optimistic.
1) Holy F*ck - Super Inuit
Even the band's name expresses a level of incredulity, but this jaunty little number fairly sweeps along. I wonder what the destination in mind was however...
2) The Fall - Fantastic Life
You just know acerbic curmudgeon Mark E Smith is laughing the other side of his face when he pens any song with "Fantastic" in the title. I once saw this live and the organ break just went on forever. It was erm fantastic...
3) Jimmy Cliff - Wonderful World, Beautiful People
Is this not the man who sung the gritty "The Harder They Come"? Whatever was he thinking? Maybe he was thinking of the royalties...
4) Mos Def - Life In Marvelous Times
Wonderful building tension in this as you think def's gonna hit you with the chorus, but just cranks the lyrical torque up some more. You can hear the disbelief in his voice when he does pronounce the title.
5) Gang of Four - Not Great Men
Post-punk feminism, as played by 4 geezers. While one welcomes the handclap on the rock record, the disturning sight of Jon King's Arsenal shirt counters any kudos going their way.
6) Public Enemy - Don't Believe The Hype
I won't if you wont... Have you noticed how this chart has veered into pessimism? From the band who's debut album claimed "Mi Uzi Weighs a Ton"
7) Jon Spencer Blues Experience - Blowing My Mind
From the man whose first band was called Pussy Galore... Everything about Swampblues is hyperbolic really. Nowt wrong with that mind.
8) The Specials - Too Much Too Young
Classic SKA, what a band. No hyperbole involved when describing them.
9) House Of Pain - Top O The Morning
Their follow up to "Jump Around". Not that good really. Plastic Paddies I'm afraid.
10) Beastie Boys - Finger Licking Good
Yes, probably that type of smutty innuendo rather than Kentucky Fried Chicken
11) Schooly D - Mr Big Dick
Um, er... Tongue firmly in his cheek... no not that cheek, get your mind out of the gutter
So 2014. A brand spanking new year. And yet here's me sticking to a tried and trusted old theme, a music chart. But in with the new, the theme of this one is all things new. There are lots of bands with 'new' in their name, New Order, Brand New Heavies, New Puritans, New York Dolls, New Kids On The Block (um).
So here's to the optimism a new year and fresh start brings. Or sumpting...
1) U2 - New Year's Day
Ha ha ha, Bono's hair and dancing. never really liked U2 but I'm feeling charitable and all celebratory for the turn of the year.
2) Joy Division - New Dawn Fades
Didn't last all that long to be honest. "A loaded gun won't set you free". This song represents their musical epicness as it builds, an epicness built on a very stripped down, clean mix of just the 3 basic instruments of guitar, bass & drums.
3) James Brown - Papa's Got A Brand New Bag
Let's get the mood back up and who better to do that than the Godfather of Soul himself? The song that launched a thousand hip-hop samples. BTW there ought to be a show called "Shindig" on TV these days too.
4) Queen Latifah - New Jack City
I went to see this film in the cinema when it came out. It was my introduction to hip-hop. Taught me everything I know today. Okay, maybe that's a slight exaggeration. The film was considerably better than this theme tune
5) Clipse - Chinese New Year
Actually, if you want an introduction to hip=hop, you could do a lot worse than Clipse's debut album Lord Willin'. Unfortunately this isn't a track from that album.
6) The Fall - New Face In Hell
Probably wouldn't be one of my music charts without a track from the Fall. But then with about a hundred albums to their name, they have song titles to cover every single theme eventuality I could come up with. They had another song called "New Puritans" just to make my point and yes, that band took their name from the Fall song.
7) 23 Skidoo - The Gospel Comes To New Guinea
Great title, great song. They seem to be back around playing live after 25 years away. Think I may just try and come out of my own gig retirement and catch them if I can.
8) Tricky - Brand New You're Retro
Must be cold up on stage under all those lights, but Tricky has come prepared with a nice big coat. But he won't feel the benefit once he steps outdoors...
9) The Stylistics - You Make Me Feel Brand New
It is an abomination when you type the song title into YouTube, you are first offered Simply red's version. I had the same thing on the radio last night when "swing Low Sweet Chariot" was a version from UB40. Gaaaa! When you listen to some of the early reggae collections from Trojan & Studio One, you realise how UB40 built a career on the backs of other, better artists. "Red, red wine" anybody? Or "red, red whine" as UB40 made it. Rant over.
10) Dizzee Rascal - Brand New Day
Ah, Dizzee counsels da yout to do their homework. A case of 'don't do as I do, do as I say'.
In a historic week in which all three chief spies in the UK came out of the shadows and reported live on TV to Parliament, well I say live but there was a two-minute delay on the transmission which was a bit useless as people were live tweeting it - but anyway, I thought I'd do a chart of spy and secret-agent related songs.
Enjoy (in private, unless the NSA are listening in to your internet surfing).
1) Last Of The Secret Agents - Nancy Sinatra
Or James Bond goes jaunty country & western. Actually this is nothing of the sort, but a paean to her man who is a complete fantasist, but Nancy still stands by him
2) Secret Agent Man - Devo
Devo sounding more like Cabaret Voltaire here. Do you remember a time before music videos? Well Devo in the late 1970s were making quite disturbing ones and were way ahead of the trend. The keyboardist here looks like he's moonlighting from Doctor Who.
3) Espionage - Green Day
I never got the whole Green Day thing, but well here they are. It;s funny how most songs about spies/secret agents have the chugging rhythms that reference TV shows like "Dragnet"and of course the James Bond movie themes.
4) I-Spy - Beat Happening
... or they go a bit Oriental to suggest the exotic climes in which the spies work. I love Beat Happening and yet couldn't recall this song at all.
5) Double Agent - Rush
Rush appear far too many times in my charts, not because I particularly like them (punk rock saw an end to my flirtation with heavy rock), but because their song titles seem to chime with whatever zeitgeisty theme I happen to choose, to make a chart for, so props to them for that. This song is pretty dreck though!
6) The Spy (In The House Of Love) - The Doors
Named after an Anais Nin novel, Morrison again resorts to literature for his lyrical delivery. This one is sort of whiskey bar boogie. Musically the band were so damn good.
7) Spy Vs Spy - The Spinto Band
I remember casting around for some music to listen to and The Spinto Band came highly recommended. Too floppy and feeble for me, I didn't really get on with them though. I only dredged this from my recall because Spy Vs Spy echoed a Billy Bragg album title and I was ,uch more into him.
8) CIA Man - The Fugs
See what happens when you give some poets a bunch of musical instruments? All good fun really, I do wonder if one of my favourite bands were influenced by them both politically and musically in songs like "Big Stick".
9) Spy - They Might Be Giants
Here's a band I haven't featured in my charts before, so glad to welcome TMBG. Again that chugging rhythm albeit with a jazz vive over the top of it. I don't know, maybe the rhythm is to suggest a pursuit or something...
10) Surveillance - Clint Mansell
Now this one definitely breaks the mould compared to the others. No chugging rhythms, just a genuinely creepy sense behind the music. I've not seen the movie, but am tempted to track it down.
Not on your nelly! Ten top tunes dedicated to the medium of the radio. Enjoy
1) Wall of Voodoo - "Mexican Radio"
Stan Ridgeway's voice is so knowing, classic pop that merrily subverts that itself.
2) World Domination Enterprises - "Can't Live Without My Radio"
West Londoners cover LL Cool J's massive hit, swapping 'my name is Cool-K' for Cool James' own name check. Apart from the lowest of low bass registers that was the signature of the band, I love the choppy guitar noodles on this version.
Trivia - on the back of an early collection of The Fall (The Step Forward label collection I think), the back cover artwork has a handwritten note that says "I love this band in a way I can't describe" or words to that affect. It's signed 'Steve J' - who just happened to be the bass player of World Domination Enterprises.
3) Public Image Limited - "Radio 4"
The ambient closing track of the furious record "Metalbox" and perhaps the antidote to the earlier track "Poptones". It showed how radical the band were in their early incarnation by finishing an album in a totally different and unexpected way to what had gone before.
4) Joy Division - "Transmission"
As good as this paean to the radio is, I never quite understood why live it always seemed to bring out the most febrile of Ian Curtis' performances compared to the searing emotionality of his other songs. maybe that was it, maybe it was a release and a dance of well joy for him, although you wouldn't gather that from his demeanour in his moves (about 2 minutes 20 secs in).
5) The Ramones - "Do You Remember Rock And Roll Radio"
R-r-rock and roll high school slowed down a tad and the word 'radio' replaces 'High school'. Sorted
6) The Clash - "Capital Radio One"
"You can't say cr*p (the word) on the radio" all seems very tame nowdays, but that's how punk got its kick start remember when the Sex Pistols swore on live tv. And The Clash were right, London's local music radio station Capital Radio was dire and slow to catch up to punk rock.
7) Eazy-E - "Radio"
Old skool hip hop. Nuff respec'
8) Elvis Costello - "Radio Radio"
You'll notice that a lot of these songs extolling the virtues of radio were by punk bands. When their early records were being championed by a few progressive radio DJs, fighting against the soporific mainstream of the Chart hits that were soon to be rudely invaded by punk bands like Costello, The Stranglers and Sex Pistols. Radio helped spread the gospel for punk when often its records were hard to get hold of due to poor distribution, hearing the songs on radio was a vital way for fans to get to hear them.
9) Ultramagnetic MCs - "Funk Radio"
And in the same way that punk had struggled for a foothold in radio airplay with its provocative lyrics, so too hip hop and rap in the US, until MTV really got established for TV audiences.
10) Rush - Spirit of The Radio"
Ah dear old Rush. How many identity changes did they go through, from cosmologically obssesed heavy rockers, through the Ayn Rand flirtation and accusations of fascistic sympathies, through to their tilt at mainstream stadium rock and radio friendly airplay. This comes from that last incarnation, when the best thing about the album the song was taken from was a visual pun on the album's title "Moving Pictures".
Summer, balmy weather, holidays abroad and the concept of the Summer Read for lazing around on deckchairs and not having to engage your brain. All concepts which are pretty anathema to me. I don't holiday anymore, I write, but even when I did I took those books that demanded my full concentration which i could never give them during the daily hurly burley of normal life.
So with that Mr Scrooge in mind, here are some songs not celebrating summer in an overly optimistic way like the Travolta/Newton John song from the film "Grease".
1) "School's Out" - Alice Cooper
Remember when you couldn't wait for your schooldays to end? That last summer before the plunge either into University and overwrought romantic drama after drama and essay crises after essay crisis, or the full lunge into the workaday world. Either way that's why the carefree, responsibility-free days of school don't seem quite so bad in hindsight "school was the happiest days of my life" etc. And all the time that last extended summer holiday punctuated by the anxiety of waiting for your exam results to determine your fate... I dunno, maybe Alice Cooper wasn't too bothered whether he passed woodwork or business studies exams or not, cos he knew he was headed foe the top anyway.
2) "Summer Wine" - Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazelwood
Summer wine? More like copious narcotics to judge by the lyrical content. But you gotta love it anyway! Not to be confused with the awful cover version by Lana Del Ray and her *Boyfriend In The Band* scenario. He ain't no Lee Hazelwood that's for sure.
3) "Long Hot Summer Night" - Jimi Hendrix
Now Jimi may have been as high as a kite, but his guitar and almost spoken word delivery conjured up a vision of cities in the summer that are totally inhabitable ("Crosstown Traffic" anyone?) Of course the Hippie Summers of the late 60s of festivals and flower children messed things up for all progressive politics and culture ever since, but you can't fault them for trying.
4) "Summer babe" - Pavement
When Pavement came around, everyone was hot about how different and trailblazing they would be. But to me they were the logical extension of West Coast bands from Creedence Clearwater Revival through The Tubes to American Music Club (and today's BlackRebel Motorcycle Club). Maybe it's the vocal delivery. They are to rock what MacSweeneys is to literature. I still like them though! Just think head honcho Stephen Malkamus' solo stuff is way more interesting.
5) "Here Comes The Summer" - The Undertones
Short, stripped down & to the point. The rush of the delivery as you change out of your scholl uniform and into a t-shirt and shorts and pelt out into the garden to the paddling pool. But as with most undertones' songs, you just know that holiday romance is going to end badly. Most of The Undertones' songs invoke the summer somehow, probably because of their indefatigable upbeat optimism in the delivery of the songs.
6) "Hot Fun In The Summertime" - Sly And The Family Stone
This song almost, almost breaks me out of my curmudgeonly carapace and doff the peak of my sun hat in the direction of the bright star in the azure sky. What a fabulous arrangement of the band on stage too. They don't make them like this anymore. Thanks Britain's got talent...
7) "Celebrated Summer" - Husker Du
Husker Du's songs were always a world of pain,so even when singing about the summer their faces were fully grimaced, attacking their guitars with the full fury of those spurned at the beach cos they're in Speedos when everyone else is in Nike.
8) "Indian Summer" - Beat Happening
We'll be lucky to even get an Indian Summer in this rain-soaked season we've had so far (though as I type this today is sunny and warm). Calvin's vocals were always suffused in the it's too hot to really go for it vein, even though I believe they came from Washington State which has very cold winters. REM covered this song, so it must be cool. Beat happening the best band you probably never heard of.
9) "Holiday in Cambodia" - Dead Kennedys
From summer listlessness to its complete obverse. All the rage fuelled punk of the Dead Kennedys singing about Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge when at the time most of us struggled to locate Cambodia on a globe, let alone understand what was happening there in the isolationist state.
10) "Long Summer Days" - EMF
This band got lots of stick because they were part of the Madchester dance/rave scene, even though they came from the country bumpkin land of Gloucestershire. I don't care what anyone says, "Unbelievable" was a great song, but yeah it's probably true, to judge by the evidence of this, they took every recognisable element of the scene and stitched it together to form an identikit band. Oh well. They're unbelievable!
11) "Holiday"- Happy Mondays
And so to the real thing! For their latter career, all year round was one long holiday and let's not forget the multi-car-crashing, drug binge stay in Barbados the band had which probably brought their record label Factory to its financial knees. This song just drips holiday from its first notes. But then it turns...
12) "Sunshine" - Mos Def
Over its classic summer sample Def lays his bleak litany of disappointment and cynicism. Wonderful juxtaposition.
13) "Holidays In the Sun" - Sex Pistols
"Cheap holiday in other people's misery" and there we have misery tourism in a nutshell. Do they still offer holidays to drug-fuelled ghettos and active warzones? I find this troubling.
14) "The Holiday song" - Pixies
Kim Deal just left the Pixies recently. Hasn't Black Francis ballooned up? The last band I ever saw live before I retired from moshing.
15) "Summer Jam" - The Cool Kids
See in the US you can probably get away with an outdoor jam, but here in soggy old Britain you've no chance! (Yes I know the band are rehearsing indoors here, but feel that vibe!)
I know it's Tuesday and that friday & the weekend looks a long way off, but here's something to look forward to: 10 songs around the themes of partying.
1) Beastie Boys - "Fight For Your Right To Party"
The granddaddy of all party songs, or perhaps the snotty grandson might be more appropriate. Crass, crude and a killer guitar riff sample, this one should get them flocking on to the dancefloor, fists pumping the air. The video even has custard pies to underline its schoolboy level. There's a wonderfully fey version of this by Scottish indie band BMX Bandits and a typically mournful & lugubrious version by Coldplay on the occasion of Beastie Boy MCA's death from cancer last year.
2) Velvet Underground - "All Tomorrow's Parties"
From the ridiculous to the sublime... Art noise Velvets with the uninflected emotionless vocal of Nico, is anything but inviting. I used to get stuck in a corner at parties with dead-eyed men or women like Nico trying to extol the virtues of whichever god they followed. I don't go to parties anymore...
3) Bob Marley And The Wailers - "Punky Reggae Party"
Bob Marley recognises the kinship between the 1977 punks and reggae, as punks like Johnny Rotten and Joe Strummer acknowledged their love of reggae and DJ Donovan Letts spun reggae tunes before the bands at London punk venue The Vortex Club. He was a bit late on the bandwagon, as reggae band Culture had already released "When Two Sevens Clash" (two sevens as in 1977), which is a far better song that this pretty lame effort. Can't see the punks pronouncing it as 'par-tay'
4) Minutemen - "Maybe Partying Will Help"
Punk-funksters Minutemen slice up another slice of jerky rhythms to set the hips in motion. God I loved this band and was one of my regrets that I never got to see them play live before lead singer/guitarist D.Boon died in a road accident.
5) Black Flag - "TV Party"
Black Flag with Henry Rollins at the helm were always regarded as this intense hardcore punk band, but they had a sense of humour too, as this witty ditty suggests. Sort of Frat Boy level like the Beasties, but done with a little less leaden satire I feel. When I was growing up, America seemed to have a slightly different take on partying to us in the UK. There it was sex, cocaine and weak beer. In the UK it was sexual repression, heaps of booze and maybe a spliff or two. Times have changed and we've caught up.
6) Nelly - "Party People"
I don't have this song in my collection, but YouTube didn't have the Parliament song of the same name so you're stuck with this piece of audio and visual dreck. How hard can he be, he's got a girl's name for flipssakes! Parliament's song is much better believe me...
7) Beat Happening - "Pyjama Party In a Haunted Hive"
I'm really surprised this is on YouTube so low-fi underground were this band, but delighted all the same. Very off the wall and with those deep, deep vocals, bliss!
8) Lesley Gore - "It's My Party (And I'll Cry If I want To)"
You just knew this was going to appear right? Well it was either this or that godawful Whigfield song. Pop music just wasn't made to party... You need something a tad stronger with all those emotions flashing around!
9) Cool Kids - "Basement Party"
Restoring the cool quotient a tad, Cool Kids are a contemporary hip hop that only do old school stuff. And more power to their oscillating elbows I say
10) Happy Mondays ' "24 Hour Party People"
For the ultimate hedonistic dance band, this sentiment summing up everything about them is actually pretty terrible. But what's interesting to me about it is how trained and all played out Sean Ryder's singing is on this track. Like it's all caught up with him and left him on the precipice. We all have to come down eventually.
Bonus Track
Tupac Shakur - "California Love"
Doesn't have 'party' in the title, but the lyric says it all, "California knows how to party"
Animals, don't you just love them? Pop stars certainly seem to, "The Birdie Song", "Hungry Like The Wolf", "The Lion Sleeps Tonight", "Eye Of The Tiger", even "Ant Music" made it to the top of the charts. Then there are those throwaway songs such as The Who allowing bassist John Entwhistle to pen a song and he came up with the fairly execrable "Boris The Spider", or The Pogues doing their Tom Waits spoof "Worms" and tucking it away as the last track on the album. Pink Floyd did a whole concept album called "Animals" which in my opinion remains their best album despite the praise heaped on "Dark Side of The Moon" and "Wish You Were Here". But being a concept album, the tracks are too long to upload to the blog for your listening pleasure.
So here are ten animal songs for your delectation and petting.
1) Patti Smith - "Horses"
The queen of New York New Wave that brought a poetic and experimental sensibility to early US punk, here has an urgently driving and rumbling song that still holds up today in its power. The lyric "The boy looked at Johnny" was incidently the title of a short book on UK punk rock penned by teenage Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons in 1977 (their Johnny being Johnny Rotten). And to think what those two have become now... Punk rock RIP
2) Iggy And The Stooges - "I Wanna Be Your Dog"
And still on the subject of 'where did it all go awry?', that sallow faced man who sells you insurance on the TV used to be a bit of an all-out punk rocker who usually ended up bloodied on stage from the intensity of his performance. I used to know a music journalist who lived with Iggy in London.
3) The Cure - "Love Cats"
I have a love-hate relationship with this song. The love is that in my misguided belief that I would be a bassist in a band, when I bought my instrument and tried to teach myself, the bassline intro to this song was one of the few I managed to master. The con, was that this song seemed to signal the demise of The Cure as a cool low-fi post-punk/pop band and enter the world of Goth with bad make up and bombastic music arrangements. Robert Smith in his retreat from fame and adulation had sacrificed Camus' "L'Etranger" of the band's debut album and instead regressed into a child's world as represented by "Charlotte Sometimes" for his influence. "Love Cats" was of course a huge hit for the band.
4) The Birthday Party - "Release The Bats"
If you're going to do Goth properly, obviously you require bats, but you also need a bit of oomph in the music. And though they were never really a Goth band, Nick Cave's Birthday Party had twin drummers in their early incarnation and that gave this song oomph a plenty. "Sex vampire, horror bat bite": Quite.
5) The Beastie Boys - "Brass Monkey"
Hey it was this or "Funky Donkey". I think you all get off lightly! One of their more Frat Boy songs, even though I don't beleive they ever were...
6) Jefferson Airplane - "White Rabbit"
Far out man!
7) Genesis - "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway"
Double concept albums, twelve string guitars, costumes on stage, ah they don't make 'em like this any more. Phil Collins used to be in genesis you know!
8) The Cramps - "Human Fly"
The signature tune of the Cramps that announced their arrival as the swamp punk rock band supreme. Swaggeringly good. This music was grungy before anyone had heard of Kurt Cobain. The stage clothes however were not. Lux Interior RIP.
9) Jah Woosh - "Woodpecka Sound"
Dub heavy, reggae has lots of songs involving animals, not least the Lion of Judah.
10) Pixies - Monkey Gone To Heaven"
No idea what the song means but I do love it!
Since my kids are about to have a week off for half-term, thought I'd do a school-themed music chart in honour of having to cook two meals a day for them instead of just the usual one. But as they've got older, this half-term they're going to have to revise for their first serious external exams.
1) "Mary Of The 4th Form" - Boomtown Rats
Before he became beatified for shouty importuning on behalf of starving Ethiopians, Sir Robert of Geldof was the frontman of Irish punk band Boomtown Rats who to my mind didn't quite get punk rock. But that was okay, they knocked out a few half-decent singles that saw them regularly on our TV screens in the Pop Charts. Like Clockwork really...
2) "High School" - MC5
Remember when Bands were so politically dangerous the US authorities chased them from pillar to post, harassed them, arrested band members etc? No? Well Bobo & Simon Cowell could hardly prompt such fears now could they? Admittedly this is not one of their best tracks, but I love the band and this track is about school, so there! Kicks Out The Jams MFs!
3) "School's Out" - Alice Cooper
And though from a similar part of the post-industrial US decline in Michigan, Alice Cooper was non-political and just aimed to put on a good show. I was never a fan, but this is still a great anthemic song.
4) "Art School" - The Jam
The Jam always came in for a lot of stick form their contemporaries because they wore suits and looked
more like Mods and covered Who and Wilson Pickett songs. I always wondered whether this was partly their riposte to that wing of British punk that emerged from Art Schools such as Adam Ant and the Malcolm McLaren/Jamie Reid influence on the Sex Pistols.
5) "Headmaster Ritual" - The Smiths
Arggghh! Anyone who follows me online knows I really don't like The Smiths and yet here is the second recent one of my charts in which they appear. Guitarist Johnny Marr may well have been a fretboard wonder, but I always found his jangly sound reedy and thin. And yes Morrisey's reedy and thin vocal probably did compliment the guitar wonderfully well, but I just found it equally irritating. Still loads of people loved them so what do I know?
6) "I Don't Wanna Be Learned" - The Ramones
You gotta love The Ramones right? Millions of songs played very fast lasting no more than two minutes and then all sounding exactly the same! Sort of Status Quo but played faster. And then they go and play a goofy love song with a string orchestra backing them - genius! ("Baby I Love You")
7) "Playground Twist" - Siouxie And The Banshees
It's funny, those first two Siousxie And The Banshees' albums were really a cutting edge of punk, taking it away from being dumb one-chord thrash (take a bow The Damned) and into a really quite arty precursor of New Wave and yet Siouxie is never mentioned in the same breath as the New Wave bands like Gang of Four, Joy Division, Magazine et al. Partly because she went Poppy quite quickly, quite Gothy soon after that and because the two musical masters behind that early Banshee sound, Kenny Morris and John McKay departed the band after those two albums. What might have been eh? Instead Siouxie released "Hong Kong Garden" and "Israel".
8) "Another Brick In The Wall Part 2" - Pink Floyd
'But Marc' this has no mention of school in the title' I hear you cry. True, but it has the inimitable refrain "We don't need no education". Lead singer Roger Waters was thrown out of the same school I ended up attending and has said in interviews that it was his experiences at school that lie behind the whole concept of "The Wall" album. There, that's my shared claim to fame! I too was scarred by attendance of such a school! Though I failed to be expelled. Didn't even get a detention, ever.
9) "School Spirit" - Kayne West
With albums called "The College Dropout", "Graduation" and "Late Registration" Mr West takes this education thing very seriously. Still, the usual cussing and bad mouthing of rap, plus the ridiculous vocal manipulation makes this sound more like David Bowie's "Laughing Gnome". Ergo hard to take seriously...
10) "School Mam" - The Stranglers
The dirtiest bass intro in rock gives way to um a real smutty fantasy. I'm just going to leave it there...
