I was going to further this musical meme, spotted over at Mike’s gaff, but I haven’t got the attention span at the moment to interpret the lyrics and try to manipulate them to fit the teenage-psych-test questions.
So instead, here’s my version of a meme: Musical Musings, in which I note down the first twenty songs which appear when I put my itunes player on mad shuffle, and what they make me think of, in real time.
This list, whatever it ends up being, may well be more revealing about my personality than any amount of pop-psychological internet questioning.
Or, indeed, not.
- Station Approach - Elbow
(first heard this a couple of weeks ago on an HMV listening post late one night after a night out in the middle of London. Went home and immediately got the album this comes from - Leaders of the Free World, which is quintessential Elbow, and quite fine with it. This is a highlight - I especially like the way it builds. It reminds me of being on a train, going somewhere you really really want to be.) - Perfect - Sam Shaber
(I can honestly say I can’t remember hearing this ever before, and indeed itunes confirms that the play count is a resolute 0. I got the CD after a recommendation from a friend, and I don’t think I ever listened to it, but it got transferred to the computer when I recently went through the laborious process of digitising ALL my music - even the random albums I’d never actually listened to all the way through. It’s not bad…very mid-nineties-angry-folk-punk-vaguely-ambi-sexual-girl with guitar. This doesn’t really remind me of anything apart from being a mid-nineties-angry-folk-punk-vaguely-ambi-sexual-girl with guitar myself.) - Misalliance - Flanders and Swann
(Not especially cool, but I make no apologies. I love the cheesiness of Flanders and Swann, clever smug lyrics and all. I think this is related to many long car journeys as a kid with my dad, listening to F&S At the Drop of a Hat and At the Drop of Another Hat while winding across Belgium or Germany in search of the right road. Happy days.) - Blue Valentines - Tom Waits
(When I first heard Small Change, back in 1991, I was convinced Tom Waits was a decrepid old chunky black guy, especially when he sang “I’ve got a bad liver/and a broken heart”…inspection of the album cover several weeks after I first heard the album revealed that he was, in fact, a weedy-looking haggered white guy. He can write some absolutely cracking tunes, mind, and this is just one.) - Afrika Shox - Leftfield
(God, this reminds me of being a student in mid-nineties Liverpool, though the album this comes from wasn’t actually released until 1999. “The millennium is coming!” Er, yeah, right. OK, then, this reminds me of working for a dot com when the millennium came and nothing whatsoever happened.) - Glory Box - John Martyn
(This is one of those rare, beautiful things - a cover version that actually brings something new to the original, without overshadowing it. I liked Portishead’s original - who didn’t? - and I am rather fond of Martyn’s shambolic cover, performed in his inimitable laid-back style. Dear me, but that man is utterly fucked, isn’t he? Anything John Martyn related reminds me of an ex-boyfriend who idolised the man, but could never quite duplicate his musical panache. Also, he had both his original legs.) - Mercy, Mercy Me (The Ecology - Marvin Gaye
(Marvin Gaye - coke fiend and unlikely environmentalist. Not one of his finer efforts, but chugs along pleasantly in its own early-seventies-thumping-bass-and-piano-zing-with-angelic-chorus-and-strings-and-sax-solo kind of way. Does sound an awful lot like he wrote the backing track first in a rare moment of lucid genius, and then later, utterly drug-addled, decided to lay down some lyrics, which is presumably why we end up with some gentle lalala-ing about fish and things. And the worst ending to a seventies song ever. It just sort of peters out like he can’t be bothe….) - Brassneck - Wedding Present
(Excuse me while I bounce around the study. Well, I would if I had the energy I did when I used to hear this. I do remember dancing in a club to this (The Cube somewhere in West London c.late 80s, IIRC) and thinking it was funny that all the soft southern goth-indie types sounded uncomfortable shoting “Brassneck” rather than their preferred “Braaaarsneck”. And then I had another swig of warm Newcastle Brown Ale from the bottle, and got over myself.) - A Kind of Loneliness - Rory McLeod
(He’s sort of an acquired taste, is Rory, but I’ve got a soft spot for this album (Footsteps and Heartbeats), even though (or perhaps because?) it relies heavily on his accent, harmonica, lack of singing finesse and storytelling to get by. It’s like a busking album, and he’s quite similar to Manu Chao in that sense. “What is madness/but a kind of loneliness/that we all have?” <insert harmonica solo here>) - I Love Being Here with You - Peggy Lee
(Sometimes, right, you just can’t beat a bit of swing-era cheese. Peggy Lee knows how to deliver, alright. This one’s from the Six Feet Under Soundtrack, and is not especially representative of the show, just in case you know the song, but not the series.) - Sao Demais Os Perigos Desta Vida - Vincius & Toquinho
(I have to say that - shallow as this sounds - there’s for me there’s something so insanely sexy about someone wibbling in Brazilian-flavoured Portuguese, that I’m a sucker for songs like this which have a minute or so of random chat at the front before the generic MPB guitar etc gets going. Because I speak Spanish, my understanding of Portuguese is pretty good, especially when written or spoken by people who live on the Iberian peninsular. When spoken by Brazilians, however, I’m afraid to say it sounds to me like Spanish spoken by someone with a wine-filled sponge in their mouth - all indulgent squelching and interesting labial shapes. I go weak at the knees, I tells ya.) - Mike Mills - Air
(Is this really Air? Are we sure? It’s not some film music score composer creating a soundscape for the opening (closing?) credits of a flick, or perhaps the background to a scene in the middle where the girl and the boy are apart but thinking of each other - she’s on a train and he’s at his computer, maybe in his living room, and he looks up with a wistful look in his eye while she’s scribbling urgent lines on a page - a poem? Love letter? Who knows? Ahem.) - If Not For You - The Flatmates
(See, there I was up above, saying how a good cover version is a rare thing, and then not (several, can’t be bothered to count) songs later comes this one. Actually, this one is a definite improvement on the original - although the singer in The Flatmates shares Dylan’s vocal ability, the production values make it sound suspiciously like it was recorded in a tin can and it sounds very much like the band get lost about halfway through. Still, it’s joyful and uplifting, and reminds me a little bit of The Housemartins. In a good way.) - Honeychild - Eddi Reader
(More folky-female-guitar-driven-early-nineties-era ephemera. Gosh, I didn’t realise I had so much. Anyway. Eddi Reader. I know, she has a reputation for having a big mouth and being thescreechvoice behind Perfect (which I loathed, by the way, and if I ever hear another busker intone that it’s got to be-ye-ye-ye-ye-ye-ye-ye perfect, I shall throw up into their guitar case), but here’s two things you might not know about La Reader: One, her concerts give good value for money. They go on for litereally hours. I went to see her a few years ago, and my arse is still numb. Two, this song, taken from her first solo album, Mirmama, is actually quite good. Three, and you get this one for free because you’re nice and you’re still reading, this song (and in fact the whole album) reminds me of sitting on a train between Liverpool and Edinburgh, speeding through the dark, guiltily not doing my course reading, zooming up to see my then boyfriend (not yet a swine, though time would tell) and wearing his ugly leather jacket. The memory lives within the song, though the sentiment in the song is bittersweet - “clouds from chimneys rise/there’s something wild and free/that river always runs/away from here/and you and me”) - St. Swithin’s Day - Billy Bragg
(Have we reached 20 yet? Damned LI tags. No clue. Anyway, this song is one of my all-time favourites. I was - I still am - moved by its simplicity and tenderness, layed out in stark contrast to Billy’s (ahem) rough delivery. “The polaroids that hold us together/will surely fade away/Like the love that we spoke of forever/on St Swithin’s Day” Bless him, the boy can write a good lyric.) - Sit Down You’re Rocking The Boat - Guys And Dolls cast
(Oh dear. Musicals. That’s not really forgivable in these enlightened too-cool-for-school days, is it? Still, When I was (insert young impressionable age) I somehow won some tickets to see the National Theatre production of G&D and enjoyed it SO MUCH that I somehow managed to persuade at least one parent to take me again, and buy the soundtrack, to boot, which I would then sing along to. Frequently. Loudly. I haven’t done that for years, but apparently I still know all the words. Take my word for it. The neighbours can testify to the veracity of this statement.) - For Real - Tricky
(Tricky’s a …um…tricky one. (See what I did there?) On one hand, I liked Maxinquaye, and think he’s done some interesting things over the years. On the other hand, I’m never really in the mood to listen to him. Complicated.) - She Cries Your Name - Beth Orton
(Now, Beth Orton can’t sing - that much is abundantly clear. Both of her first (and for all I know, only) two albums were slightly atonal throughout. Despite having a good crack at songwriting, she still seems to bark the songs out a little bit flat. This song, however, I have a soft spot for, because it reminds me strongly of sitting in Trading Places cafe, round the back of Bold Street in Liverpool, drinking pot after pot of strong tea (and for �1.50 a pot, you couldn’t go wrong), trying to find inspiration to write an essay/read coursebooks/get over hangover with my flatmate and best mate at uni, Charlotte, while eating yummy salads which, if memory serves, always involved a lot of grated carrot for some reason. They played this song on permaloop for a few months, and it just sort of got lodged in my brain, as firmly as carrot slivers between the teeth.) - One Tree Hill - U2
(When Joshua Tree came out, I nearly died of happiness. An album full of songs I a) liked and b) could play on guitar and c) had the infernally sexy Larry Mullen Jr drumming on them. Times change, as do opinions, and these days I’m not quite so keen on the JT songs, can’t strum for toffee, and find LMJ a bit craggy looking. Listening to the lyrics of OTH now, I realise that despite singing along to them all those years ago, I didn’t have a clue how very convoluted they were. So, er, there you go.) - Stabat Mater - VII. Eja, Mater - June Anderson, Cecilia Bartoli, Charles Dutoit, Sinfonietta De Montr�al
(I love the Pergolesi Stabat Mater. I first heard this in Canada, writing like crazy for the EE part of my IB. I taped it off a friend and listened to it round and round and round as I worked through the night on the one college computer, writing about ritual and identity in Nigeria, until I started to hear word-patterns in the music that weren’t there. Specifically, a passage about someone having “lovely trainers”. I suspect it was at about that point that I decided I needed bed.)
I fully admit that I skipped forward over several songs which came up during this assortment, but couldn’t be arsed to listen to at the time (Bon Jovi, Philip Glass, Wyclef Jean, bunch of Bill Hicks live comedy tracks which are notoriously difficult to type to). You didn’t miss much, though.
