"Keep On Rocking in the Free World"

There's a word to describe Neil Young: curmudgeon. Uncle Neil is like your original Angry Old Man. He's pissed off with the State of Things, and he doesn't care who knows it. At least, he is these days. Time was when he produced whimsical hippy-type odes like Old Man, Heart of Gold and After the Goldrush. Then the seventies got a bit ugly, and he began to see the dark side. Albums like "Tonight's the Night" and the great, great "Live Rust" showcase his gradual descent into chronicling the essential nastiness of man: "There's colors on the street/Red, white, and blue/People shuffling their feet/People sleeping in their shoes/There's a warning sign in the road ahead/There's a lot of people saying we'd be better off dead/Don't feel like Satan, but I am to them/So I try to forget them any way I can." He's not afraid to address The Issues and climb on that soapbox to make us listen and think, and for that he should be a Canadian National Monument.

Get well soon, Neil.

"Shipbuilding"

There are two versions of this song that seem to have two completely different emotions and interpretations. Elvis Costello wrote the song, and his version plays for quiet dignity and a clean, strong production. But Robert Wyatt's spare, jazzed-down take goes beyond dignity and achieves utter pathos, due mainly to his shaky, reedy voice. And for me, this is much the more powerful version. The economic and social devastation wreaked by successive years of Thatcherism is laid bare, exposed not so much by direct accusation but more by implication: "Is it worth it?/A new winter coat and shoes for the wife/And a bicycle on the boy's birthday/It's just a rumour that was spread around town/By the women and children/Soon we'll be shipbuilding." And the simple, plain facts: "With all the will in the world/Diving for dear life/When we could be diving for pearls." This isn't a song that gets you caught up in righteous rage, but one that lays a hand gently on your arm and points you in the right direction.

"Stop Dragging My Heart Around"

Stevie Nicks has, on the whole, been very clever in choosing her duet partners. Lindsay Buckingham, Don Henley (probably the best), and this one, with Tom Petty. There's something very catchy about the way their voices meld together: Nicks' bewitching, beguiling, soul-inflected call and Petty's keening nasal whine, but what probably tips the balance here is the fact that it's a Heartbreakers song, rather than one of Nicks' gossamer-clad occultist weirdnesses. This is important: too many misguided people think Nicks wrote this. There's no nonsense in the tune, led by Mike Campbell's trademarked chime, while Petty does anguish, as he always has, so damn well. A dark, angry, cathartic song.

"Misty Mountain Hop"

After seeing "Almost Famous" and hearing this song playing as the band arrive in New York to the memorable line: "Welcome to New York. It's OK to be nervous", I can't help but think of the dark underbelly of late 60s and early 70s so-called "innocence" whenever I hear this. Before, I had always enjoyed the back-beat, the hardcore opening riff and Robert Plant letting it all go: "Baby, baby, baby do you like it?". But I've read enough rock star biogs to know that there was just as much unpleasantness as there were God-like moments in front of a stadium crowd. There's something about the heavy-as-fuck beat -- perhaps it was the sheer size of Bonham's drumsticks -- that reminds me of ELO's "Don't Bring Me Down" (or should that be the other way around?) and makes me wish I had been around to hear this when it first came out, rather than filtered through history and a hundred and one pastiches.

"Saturn 5"

Today's lesson is how to mix 60s keyboard perkiness with crunchier-than-kitty-litter guitars and a hellacious beat. So ironic that this peach of a song should come from the dying days of the Inspiral Carpets' career: but sometimes the death throes produce the best work. You can dance your most abandoned, E-fuelled dance to this, you can strut across the bathroom like a lizard with the horn, or you can just howl along with the trippy lyrics: "Lady take a ride on a Zeke 64/Jerry wants to be a Rockette/There's a popular misconception/Says we haven't seen anything yet/Laying down the lifeless corpse of/President 35/The lady crying by his side is/The most beautiful woman alive." Happiness!

"Boy Crazy"

Everyone has their guilty secret, their embarassing baggage. Mine is that I was -- and to some extent still am -- a huge fan of the Tubes. They never really scaled the heights of chart success, they never had the critics swooning in the aisles, but they were sharp as hell, great musicians, and when it came to live shows, there are few bands that have ever come close to them for sheer spectacle. They trawled the bottom of the barrel of human experience for a good few years, with songs like "Mondo Bondage", "White Punks on Dope", "Smoke" and this sniggering dose of teenage libido: "Wasn't Jimmy's fault/On your first date/Promised Mom you wouldn't be home late/At the drive-in you climbed in the back/Skipped the movies and forgot the snack/Petting heavy didn't bother you/Your eighth grade teacher showed you what to do/Failed your English and biology/But you learned the facts of life from A to Z".

"Pink"

To me, Aerosmith fall somewhere between the cock-rock of Led Zep and the eternally nudge-nudge double-entendres of ZZTop. They can turn on the metal when the mood takes them, but I get the impression they sometimes prefer to be hoary old bluesmen with a nifty line in crotch-grabbing rhythms. I have an image of Steven Tyler as a properly randy old goat, all furry haunches, hooves and a nifty pair of horns, lasciviously licking his lips and smoothing his hair as he prepares to debauch yet another unsuspecting shepherdess. This is one of those good old-fashioned sex songs, crammed to the gills with groans, pre-orgasmic intakes of breath and a healthy dose of hip-pumping rhythm. If words and intonation get you hot, then this song is for you.

"Let's Work Together"

Canned Heat were yet another band who pleased the critics but who just didn't translate that into pan-galactic success. They should have been massive, the biggest blues band ever. Certainly, Bob Hite was one of the biggest blues singers ever, all umpty-seven stone of him, but from that enormous frame came a voice that could do just about anything: his reedy falsetto on "Going Up the Country" and "On the Road Again" is quite unreal. But on this track, he lets it all hang out - a deep throaty growl that just says "blues". Happily, the rest of the band sounds as individual, unique as Hite does. The fuzzed guitar makes you think of Formula One engines; the spare, driving bass is like an enormous elastic band drawn taut. Do not be fooled by Roxy Music's inferior, renamed take on this ancient classic: despite Bryan Ferry's howls and yips, they just don't understand what is needed here. Canned Heat, blues fanatics and record collectors, did.

"Classical Gas"

This was a one-off hit that came out of nowhere and disappeared the same way, yet it lives on in the theme music from pretty much every sports show I've watched, half-time shows by marching bands at US colleges, and any number of friends who've learned to play the guitar. The main theme is utterly fantastic and I only wish the song lasted longer.

"Welcome to the Pleasure Dome"

Along similar lines as the previous song, was ever a band formed around a single, simple concept...like sex? No matter how hard I try, I fail to see much more to Frankie Goes to Hollywood. That's not to say their stuff was bad: far from it. But their whole work seemed to be shot through with a salacious, tongue-in-cheek, knowing wink and sly tweak of our collective arse. I get the feeling that all they really wanted to do was fuck themselves silly. Sure, there are no end of artists who spent an inordinate amount of time pondering sex, but to be so one-dimensional, so obsessed about it was something I found totally new and somewhat limiting. This is an immense re-mix of the title track from their debut album, thirteen and a half minutes of it, but it's a fabulous cross-dressing, genre-bending epic. At one point Holly Johnson intones the opening lines of "Kubla Khan", replacing the word "decree" with a lascivious, tongue-rolling "erect!", and you realise that even when the're trying to be serious, they're sending the whole game up. There are hot, sweaty jungle sounds in the background, a hip-entrancing beat, the whole experience is meant to set you up for what follows on the album: it's the Frankie Manifesto. Free your ass and your mind will follow.

"Love The One You're With"

Now, I'm an admirer of Crosby, Still, Nash (and Young). Some of their harmonies are heartbreakingly beautiful, many of their songs are lifelong favourites of mine, and Neil Young is a veritable God. As far as CSN are concerned, though, the whole is definitely more than the sum of its parts, with virtually the sole exception of this song, by Stephen Stills. And even with this one song, despite its bustling optimism and washes of organ, I have an issue. Stills exhorts us to "love the one we're with", even if we can't "be with the one we love": "Turn your heartache/Right into joy/Cos she's a girl/And you're a boy". Now there are a hundred and one songs about being betrayed by the one you love, but there aren't that many songs that encourage the screwing around that inevitably leads to the heartbreak. And here it's presented so innocently, like some hippy utopian ideal that will make the world a better place. But as events proved, stripping away the old-fashioned mores of our parents' society didn't turn us all into happy, contented commune-dwellers who were happy to share out possessions and our partners. All of which goes to date this song horrendously and turn it into some sort of sociology exhibit.

"The Fletcher Memorial Home"

Anyone who's ever despaired of tyrants, politicians and self-important nobodies peering into the recesses of our lives and making decisions for us will probably feel some empathy with this song. Towards the end of their lifespan, Pink Floyd Mark 2 were really just a vehicle for Roger Waters' grandiose concepts, none more so that the "Final Cut" album from which this comes. It comes over as a mini-opera, with Roger-As-Narrator butting in on this track to express the fervent wish that all World Leaders should be locked up. It's a fine sentiment, eloquently expressed, but for me the clincher is Roger introducing various characters as if they were arriving at a grand occasion: "Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome/Reagan and Haig/Mr Begin and friend/Mrs Thatcher, the Paisley/Mr Brezhnev and party/The ghost of MacCarthy/And the memories of Nixon/And now, and in colour/A group of anonymous Latin American meat-packing glitterati". I may be a ghoul, but I think the reference to Latin American dictators as "meat-packing glitterati" is pretty humorous.

"I Wish"

When the bassline just ups and starts walking all over your head, you know you're in for a good time. This song takes absolutely no time at all go straight to your hips. Stevie Wonder has scaled the heights of magic and he's produced some unutterable dross, and here he is at his finest. I can't decide, between this and "Superstition", which is the finer track. And who cares? The joy, the funk, the sense of freedom and fun just blasts from the speakers, and that's about as good as music gets.

"She Still Loves Him"

No, not one of those remembrance-of-times-past nostalgia songs, but a bittersweet, no-nonsense song about falling out of love and domestic violence. This comes from Jellyfish, who've given us "All Is Forgiven" and "He's My Best Friend", so this wasn't what I expected them to produce. The gentle piano intro is rudely interrupted by a jarring guitar riff, and the story takes over: "He writes her a letter, tells her he won't be home soon/She still loves him/He lost his temper and belted his love 'cross the room/She still loves him/Drinks when he's sad gets happy then mad at the world/She still loves him/Never remembers that day in September when wed/She still loves him". I like to think I can see the look on someone's face that tells of a life that's gone this way: pear-shaped, but that tiny spark is still busy shining away at the bottom of the pain: "I know some day this will all work out/She'll never face this alone/The light in her eyes may be flickering dim/But she still loves him". Tragedy, optimism, love: all human life is here.

"One Of The Boys"

Growing up in the era of punk and the new Romantics, I was only dimly aware of the whole Glitter Rock thing. But isn't TV grand? I got to see and listen to all those romper-stomper bands: Slade, Sweet, Mud, Gary Glitter and eventually I got round to Mott the Hoople. I reckon Mott were the crossover point between glitter and rock; they had the crazy outfits - roll upon roll of aluminium foil and stack-heel Doc Martins, customised guitars, big hair, big attitudes. But they also had a fair amount of rock and roll working for them: it wasn't all shoutalong bovver-boy choruses with Noddy Holder's eldritch scream. Instead, they had the nous to write from a wider perspective, songs like "All the Way From Memphis", "The Golden Age of Rock n Roll", "The Ballad of Mott" for example. More literate, more far-seeing than "Mama We're all Crazy Now". But "One of the Boys" is probably their best nod to the glitter rock craze: "I'm one of the boys/I don't say much but I make a big noise." It trundles along at about 5 mph, there's plenty of heavy, fuzzed-up guitar, it's the sort of song that the bovver boys could stomp along to without breaking too much of a sweat. But the Glitter Rock wasn't about subtlety....

"Overnight Sensation"

Right up there with Badfinger as the Band That Almost Made It Hugest, The Raspberries had everything: irresistible tunes, perfect harmonies, all the requisite Beatles-meet-Beach-Boys talent and inspiration. This is probably the best way to meet them; five and a minutes of just about everything the band could think of in hooks, flyaway choruses, clever production tricks. It's power pop, it's chart-friendly in a 1970s way, and it's the sort of song that should never be unearthed by some ambitious Pop Idol band that wants to showcase its talent, because they'd never come even close to the original.

"Blinded By The Light"

Sometimes you don't hear a song, but instead you hear a torrent of words that whirls around your head like bathwater and refuses to go down the drain until you sort out exactly what it's all about. "Madman drummer bummers/Indians in the summer/With a teenage diplomat/In the dumps with the mumps/As the adolescent pumps/His way into his hat/With a boulder on my shoulder/Feeling kinda older/I tripped a merry-go-round/With this very unpleasing/Sneezing and wheezing/The calliope crashed to the ground." It's been well over twenty years, but this song is still up there in my head looking fr a way out. You would hardly credit these words came from Bruce Springsteen. But after a while listening to this, you can sort of see where he was going, on his way to "Born to Run".

"FM"

I have a sneaking regard for Steely Dan. They write such well-constructed, restrained, literate songs, mature in an I-don't-go-out-clubbing-anymore-but-I-can-still-let-it-all-hang-out sort of way. And there's the major jazz influence as well, so the general vibe you always get is a relaxed, late-night drinks, chill-out lounge thing. Steely Dan's music reeks of money, warm weather, privilege, insider knowledge and an utter lack of trendiness. It transcends trends, it's a pleasure you can revisit at age 28, 38, 68, whenever. As long as you've a full wallet and the top down on your Mercedes.

"Teenage Dirtbag"

More bubblegum with amplification, but very tasty this is, too. Wheatus sort of came and went in a hurry, but they left behind this fantastic song, filled to the brim with hummable, danceable hooks and one of those everlasting boy-fancies-girl-from-a-distance storylines that appeal to the kid in everyone. "But she doesn't know who I am/And she doesn't give a damn about me".

"Authority Song"

I forget the name of the film, but someone asks James Dean what he's rebelling against, and he replies: "What you got?". There are no end of songs that deal with teenage rebellion, but this one sort of sums them all up. John Cougar Mellencamp has been labouring for most of his career in the shadow of the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and Bob Seger as sort of heartlands troubadours, glorifying the simplicity and honesty of the midwest US. I don't buy that myself, but I do buy Mellencamp's honesty and ethic. This is almost a cartoon song, trying to encompass as many perceived teenage injustices as possible, but it's neatly wrapped up in the chorus: "I fight authority/Authority always wins", and lines like: "I call up my preacher, I say "give me the strength for Round Five"/He says "You don't need no strength/You need to grow up, son"/I said "Growing up leads to growing old/And then to dying/And dying to me don't sound like all that much fun". It's all strung over a vaguely rock/country/billy beat that chunters along in a gunslinger sort of way, and you get the feeling that Mellencamp wrote this one in front of the mirror in his bedroom.

"5:15"

As if by magic, a clever counterpoint to "Every Picture Tells A Story" . Where Rod Stewart's song followed the middle classes off on their travels around the world, The Who's "5:15" sits on the commuter train with those unlucky enough to be forced into work at an early age, where recreation is restricted to cinema dates, weekend trips to the coast or the country, or hanging around on street corners. After Roger Daltrey asks "Why should I care?" in the intro, the song dives straight into a blast of brass, a driving rhythm that suggests the hectic, dedicated pursuit of pleasure in those few free moments stolen from a prospect of drudgery: "Magically bored on a quiet street corner/Free frustration in our minds and our toes/Quiet storm water m-m-my generation/Uppers and downers, either way blood flows". And the plaintive, angry chorus: "Inside outside, leave me alone/Inside outside, nowhere is home/Inside outside, where have I been/Out of my brain on the five-fifteen". Along with Ray Davies, Pete Townshend seems to have captured the essential drudgery and frustration of homebound youth and found it a wellspring for fantastic, life-affirming music. It's one of those contradictions that you can spend a long time trying to come to terms with.

"Every Picture Tells a Story"

I guess the days are past now when a kid could leave home and travel the world with a guitar and a backpack, hang out in exotic places that hadn't been discovered by the masses, become an adult the hard way and come home with a treasure chest of stories and experiences to sustain his or her old age. Must have been a 60s thing. Anyway, Rod Stewart seems to have written a load of songs on the back of this kind of experience - Maggie May, Stay With Me, for example - and this, which is a true classic and serves to remind us that he was, once, a serious songwriter with huge talent. I don't suppose we should begrudge him his comfortable dotage, so that he can reflect on his well-spent youth. This song fairly gallops along with the occasional pause for sober reflection, underpinned by a beautiful-sounding acoustic guitar and Rod's younger, less-ravaged soul howl. There's sadness, nostalgia, joy, the ebullience of youth and wisdom all wrapped up in six minutes. What more can you ask for?

"Voices Carry"

Love songs are twenty a penny. Everyone writes them, everyone sings them, and we all have our favourites. But this love song, by Til Tuesday, comes with a twist, the kind that brings you up short and makes you think just a little. It's an affair song, a bit-on-the-side song, sung from the bit-on-the-side's perspective. "In the dark I like to read his mind/But I'm frightened of the things I might find/Well, there must be something he's thinking of to tear him away/When I tell him that I'm falling in love, why does he say/Hush, hush/Keep it down now, voices carry." And later, "He wants me/But only part of the time/He wants me/If he can keep me in line". Confused, sad, bereft, an innocent cast into the shark-infested waters of dating.

"American Idiot"

Yeah yeah, so sue me. At least Green Day remember how to write a great three-minute pop song. You're never too old to pogo round your kitchen!

"Will We Be Lovers"

There's a point in a relationship when danger is uppermost: when things could go either way, when you're not sure if you're going to make it, when there are still so many choices facing both of you. And then you agree to a second date.......
I like this track's nervous energy, the hesitant menace, the vaguely feline chorus. Deacon Blue aren't most people's idea of fashionable, but this is a real treat. Ricky Ross has the edge of the blues in his voice, the tired, raw edge that gives the song extra punch, while the girls in the chorus mock him gently: "Will we be lovers/Or will we still be......?"

"The Load-Out/Stay"

There's no end of songs about touring: any band worth its salt has written about the hard-luck days living out of the back of a van, humping amps and eating at greasy-spoon roadside shacks.
But when a band or artist makes it, they get to relax, travel in a little more style, and have people to do things for them. Personal managers, cooks, you name it, they're on the road these days. But one group has always been there, the backbone of any touring act: the roadies. "Now the seats are all empty/Let the roadies take the stage/Pack it up and tear it down/They're the first to come and the last to leave/Working for that minimum wage/They'll set it up in another town."
There's something about live, solo performance that is more compelling than any amount of studio production. Call it courage, call it chops, but that's when you really find out if an artist can hack it. This song is an ancient Jackson Browne track, a tribute to the road crew, to the audience, to the whole romance of being on the road. He strips away the bravado, the whoremongering, the attitude and the dirt of touring, leaving just the essentials: performance, hard work and travel. And it's proof positive that he has one of the great, pure voices. He doesn't need to hide.

"Hold On, I'm Coming"

One of the things I like best about the blues is the ramshackle, pickup way in which songs can start. One person's just noodling along, riffing quietly to himself, and then someone else steps in and offers a counterpoint, perhaps a syncopation, there's a hesitation, a moment's juddering halt, and finally the drums and bass step up to bring structure to the whole thing.
Another thing I like about the blues is the sound B.B. King's guitar makes: I can only call it limpid, pure, like droplets of water falling into a pool of mercury. No wailing, flying divebombers of feedback like Hendrix, but simple straightforward playing. Watching King, a big bear of a man, wring the neck of his guitar to produce these clear notes is a great great pleasure: he's perhaps the last of the great original bluesmen.
This track is from an album he made with Eric Clapton, and in listening to the whole CD you get a sense of the reverence Clapton has for King, and the cameraderie that exists among bluesmen. They know the language, the shorthand, the riffs, and they can talk to each other with just a little flick of the wrist along the neck and strings. They're proud of their traditions, but not too proud to let the blues grow.

"Neon Lights"

If you read the liner notes on Queen's album "Night at the Opera", there's a proud statement at the end: "No Synths!". Today that statement sounds a bit like Canute trying to hold back the sea. Queen's album was made back in the late 70s when electronics were only just beginning to sweep across the music business, and there were a few sturdy artists pioneering the use of synthesizers. Probably the greatest of these was Kraftwerk, four Germans with a complete concept for the coming electronic age: down with the histrionics and mass-adulation gymnastics of the guitar heroes, away with the screwed-up faces and emotions of the misunderstood lead singer, and who needs a circus animal for a drummer anyway? Kraftwerk were precise, controlled, they knew what they wanted to say and they knew how they wanted to look while they were saying it. Throughout the mid-1970s they created a host of absolutely seminal sounds that showed the way for the New Romantics and after. "Neon Lights" comes from what is probably their finest, and most remote album, "The Man Machine": it's a gentle, hypnotic, dangerously emotive song, coming as a total surprise when set against the ice-cold lust of "The Model". And that's where they genius of Kraftwerk may well lie: the medium is not the message, it's just the medium.

"Asleep In The Desert"

One thing that annoys me from time to time is the careless dismissal of rock musicians for being merchants of sheer volume. You know the sort of thing - headbangers can't be artists because they can't play their instruments... well, whenever I do come across something that refutes that argument, I rejoice loudly (sic). And here's one that does just that. ZZTop are more or less caricatures these days, two bearded guys and a clean-shaven dude (called Beard), who like to boogie, who aren't always the epitome of political correctness, and who do have a penchant for outlandish silliness. But, every once in a while, they sit down, get serious, and remind us just how damn proficient they are. This track is a lullaby, an instrumental lament, a quiet night by the campfire; glorious, delicate guitar, soft textures and lots of space in which to ruminate.

"White Rabbit"

There's a fantastic, dark feel to this, a vague, unsettling menace. I'm not at all sure where the danger comes from here. Perhaps it's the first looping rush into an acid trip, perhaps it's the martial snare drum, like the approach of the army of playing cards in "Alice in Wonderland". Maybe it's the lyrics, which are clearly from the depths of someone's addled reading of Lewis Carroll. Magic mushrooms, white mice and above it all, Grace Slick's foghorn voice soaring like some modern-day Valkyrie. It's short, perfectly-formed and builds into a terrific climax with Grace shouting "Feed Your Head!" It's almost as if this song, rather than Altamont, was the moment the 60s died. This was when innocence tipped over into overindulgence.

"Foreplay/Long Time"

Hell, everyone hates Boston these days. Overblown, indulgent guitar frenetics, they call it. Pompous orchestral self-gratification, they sneer. Bugger that. For one album, one moment in time, Boston was everything you needed to know about AOR/MOR/FM rock. This is a meaty, sweaty air-guitar must-have. Yeah, most people go for "More Than a Feeling" and its soaraway chorus, but this is far, far better. "Foreplay" is like listening to the Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture with amplification and extra cannons, pure classical filtered through Marshall amps, and "Long Time" is just that bit more. You can almost see Tom Scholz hard at work at his kitchen table, plotting every last second of this epic, grandiose song, down to the last drum fill, the last hi-hat. More often than not, a song is "epic" because of the sentiment, the passion of the performance, but this is a "planned" epic, a carefully-crafted piece of virtuosity. The guitar sound is the by-now standard Boston squall, complemented by heavy work on the cymbals, and Brad Delp's contained vocal resting easy on top of the wall of noise. But it WORKS! For some reason, this is the ultimate driving song, the perfect tennis-raquet-and-bedroom-mirror workout, with two or three great guitar solos for that special wig-out.

"Bad"

Ah, U2. Spiritual uncles to the Manic Street Preachers. Another band that can't walk past a rabble-rousing riff the size of Texas, another group that fell in love with the Big Idea, the Grand Gesture. And however many millions of us loved them for it. This song is probably best remembered in the context of U2's messianic effort at Live Aid, when Bono-As-Jesus wrapped us all up in his loving eyes-screwed-shut-with-the-intensity-of-it embrace. Hell, I can't even be nasty about them. They have The Knack, the same joyous ability to lift whatever they perform into the realm of the ethereal. This one is driven by a soft but insistent patter of drums and The Edge's patented clear-as-a-bell guitar, while Bono just riffs over the top. The words don't really matter here, though they're well-chosen for that stadium anthem touch. It's a Big Song with a Big Heart.

"Total Control"

One of those rainy-night obsessive songs that steals up on you so stealthily, grabs you in a velvet headlock, and just doesn't let go. Martha Davis' voice just settles gently over an achingly slow, stately beat, persuading you ever so quietly that love is one of those deals where you do have to have all or nothing, and that if it's the last thing she does, she's going to have it all from you. It could almost be a love song from a stalker but it's saved by the break in her voice, the almost pleading note she sometimes hits.

"Journey of the Sorcerer"

You'll probably know this one as the theme to the BBC Radio version of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. One thing that it never fails to do for me, is put me in mind of "Love Reign O'er Me" by The Who, particularly the intro. Now, the Eagles aren't to everyone's taste; some folk think they were a little too country in their early days (from which this comes), while others reckon they ended up as nothing but a bunch of drugged-out dinosaurs. But that's neither here nor there: we're talking about their musicianship and songwriting ability here. Bernie Leadon didn't hang around to see in those Hotel California years, but he did create this masterpiece which, if all things were equal, would stand right up there alongside "Hotel California", "The Last Resort" or "Wasted Time" as songs the Eagkles are best remembered for. But as justice and record sales would have it, Don Henley's agenda won out (bless him anyway, you'll be hearing from me about him later) and so The Eagles played soft rock with a conscience. But, if you strip all that away, you're still left with a bunch of guys who knew how to play.

"Video Killed the Radio Star"

Now, I'm not adding this song because I feel my life would be immeasurably poorer without it. But I did hear it recently, and was paying attention to it for once; maybe the lyric doesn't particularly make sense, but there is a feel about the song that I tapped into, a sort of grumpy-old-man vibe.
We music fans don't really have an awful lot of influence when it comes to what we get to hear. I mean, how often is it these days that a band gets together in someone's basement, practices hard, gets some gigs and builds a following to the point where the Record Industry can't ignore them any more? And, more relevantly, how often does a band get signed up on the basis of its talent rather than its looks? Let's assume the present-day values of the industry were relevant thirty or forty years ago: would we have got to see Janis Joplin? Richie Havens? Mama Cass? Canned Heat? Carole King? Would the business sign up four older guys who can really play their instruments and write their songs? Well, the Stranglers got signed, and they're no oil paintings.....
I'm aware this is probably stretching things a bit far, but when the industry wants you to see a musician before you hear them perform, then things aren't right.
Thank you. I'll be in the corner, crushing Will Young CDs....

"Rollin' Over"

This is about as funky as rock gets.... snaking around your nether regions like a polecat on heat, and a gloriously out-of-control vocal from Steve Marriott. I defy you to crank this up and not think about doing the horizontal tango. Everything's been turned up to 11 on this, the cymbals splashing over the whole thing like testosterone on tap, and the requisite brass section hooting provides the final kick up the backside. It's one of the great tragedies of rock that the Small Faces were managed by Don Arden, who probably pissed off more people than was strictly required, hence never realy giving the band their full chance. But so many bands down the years have cited the Small Faces as a major influence that maybe they've been given their due...

"Well, Did You Evah?"

Oh what fun it must have been to make this. Debbie Harry and Iggy Pop romp joyfully through this Cole Porter standard. It's like being at a rock n roll cocktail party in some swish district of New York. It's hard to work out whether they're improvising some of the time, which makes it all the more fresh and fun. Debbie's vaguely bored voice and Iggy's throaty chuckles, combined with a bog-standard backing track make this a little delight.

"Lullaby"

I have no idea who Shawn Mullins is, and I forget when I first heard this: probably driving across Texas on a hot spring day. It's a hard luck story of a song, with a gritty vocal and a chorus that rises above the mundane. I just like it.

"Anarchy in the UK"

I suppose you were wondering when I'd get around to punk. And yes, it's one of those safe, middle of the road choices. But hey, growing up in London and not being totally hip to what was going on in the clubs, this was pretty much my introduction to the new wave. The crashing intro, Johnny Rotten's satanic cackle, and the sudden realisation that you didn't have to sing in tune to convey an idea, that was quite a moment. I bought the album as soon as it appeared and to this day, I still get a thrill from the wall of rancid, squalling guitar, the vitriolic, knowing, cynical tone of voice, and the carefree smattering of acronyms - MPLA, UDA, IRA - which place the song firmly in time.

"The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald"

As any proper folk music fan knows, the first ingredient of a good song is a good story. Usually you need star-crossed lovers, insurmountable obstacles, death and sacrifice. And a highwayman or two comes in useful too. But in the absence of those, a plain old shipwreck will do just fine. "When suppertime came the old cook came on deck, saying "Fellahs, it's too rough to feed ya/At seven p.m. a main hatchway gave in, he said "Fellahs, it's been good to know ya." But, as someone who's always loved the sea, the line that gets to me is "Does anyone know where the love of God goes/When the waves turn the minutes to hours?"

"What a Waste!"

For a few years, Ian Dury was the closest thing we had to a musical Poet Laureate. He wrote terrific lyrics, and fronted one of the tightest bands around, The Blockheads. His two albums from the period - New Boots & Panties and Do It Yourself - were stuffed to the gills with catchy, funny and clever songs that you could dance to. He's probably best-remembered for "Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll", but I prefer this one. "I could be a writer with a growing reputation/I could be the ticket man at Fulham Broadway station", he sings. "I could be the catalyst that sparks the revolution/I could be an inmate in a long-term institution". Good old fashioned eccentric English songwriting. Shame we've forgotten it.

"International Velvet"

I'm amused by the fuss and hype that's surrounding Joss Stone at the moment. She's got an absolutely terrific voice, granted, but the poor kid's barely old enough to have had her first kiss, and people are calling her a soul or blues singer? She needs to be let go for a while, allowed to grow up, experience life's bumps and burns. It's like when Whitney Houston first appeared: lovely instrument, girl, now go learn to use it properly. Which brings us neatly round to Catatonia. Cerys Matthews has the same voice, but by the time this song came out, she'd done the living as well, and you could hear it. If you wanted to know what Janis Joplin would sound like updated into the 90s, then look for Cerys, not Joss. Part of the joy of good blues singing is hearing the singer "let go", confident that the voice will feel its way through. I love this song: for a start, it's almost all in Welsh, which is fine by me even if I don't understand a word of it. Secondly, the chorus is magnificent; it illustrates perfectly what so many folks lack by not having a visceral attachment to their nation. This should be the Welsh National Anthem.

"A New England"

God bless Billy Bragg. He's become a bit of an institution, a "have guitar, will travel" kind of Queen Mum to the UK music scene. Never less than 110% committed to the cause, never less than 110% excellent, one man and his guitar. This song is perhaps where it all best came together, when instead of polemics, he simply let the song tell the story. But rather than Billy's version, I much prefer the late Kirsty MacColl's. I could write a whole chapter about her voice: it didn't soar, it held a close conversation with you. It was an understated, husky instrument, almost anonymous (which probably explains why she could do harmony overdubs so well), with a vulnerable quality that shines so brightly on this song; "I saw two shooting stars last night/I wished on them, but they were only satellites/It's wrong to wish on space hardware/I wish I wish I wish you cared."

"Slap and Tickle"

For a while in the 80s, Glen Tilbrook and Chris Difford were regarded as the new Lennon and McCartney, and listening to this, you can almost see why. A rattling, urgent beat and rapid-fire lyrics tell the story of everyone's teenage dramas: "He put his hand on her leg/You should have heard what she said/He tried again much later/It seemed to aggravate her/He drove home in silence/Avoiding more violence". Kitchen-sink operas like this and "Up The Junction" or "Pulling Mussels from a Shell" are what made Squeeze so special, in the same tradition as the Kinks. Sadly, Difford and Tillbrook mellowed out with age and couldn't quite seem to find the spark again, though they did create some beautiful music.

"Uneasy Rider"

It's a crying shame that Charlie Daniels has been co-opted by the good ol' boys of the American right as some sort of cheerleader for all that is conservative and Dubya about the USA. At one point he was a fantastic musician and a nifty songwriter. Yes, he worked in a country vein, he had fiddles and yee-haws, but he had an enormous sense of humour. This is a five-minute piece of joyous doggerel skewering the redneck culture, filled to the brim with laughs. It's sort of the redneck version of "Alice's Restaurant": "Just when I thought I'd get out there with my skin/ These five big dudes come strolling in/With this one old drunk chick and some fellow with green teeth/I was almost at the door when the biggest one/Said 'You tip your hat to this lady, son'/And when I did, all that hair fell out from underneath." It's ridiculous, hilarious and Charlie Daniels should be ashamed of what he's done since.

"Virginia Plain"

When music and art school came together..... you got bands like Roxy Music. What I like about this song is the lack of pretension about the pretension, if you see what I mean. They're not afraid to do eccentric, arty things like stick an oboe in there, make references to up-market holiday destinations (populated no doubt by exotic models drinking unpronouncable cocktails) and you just know that these guys are not short of a buck. I like the vaguely drug-fuelled paranoia about the song: it's skittish, unsure, a bit delicate and eager to get on with it. And the classic, abrupt ending, as if they were distracted by someone cutting monster lines of coke on the designer glass table in the studio. It's classical, it's pop, it's rock, it's "Vogue" magazine, it's completely Jerry Hall. And it's fun to sit for a while and wonder what exactly a "Harzog mane" is.

"Alright"

A snapshot from the imaginary life of a Supergrass fan:

"Dad, can I borrow the car?"
"Gary, the last time you borrowed the car, you stuffed it into a hedge. The repairs cost over a thousand pounds. You said you'd pay half the bill, you'd get a weekend job, but have you done anything? No, of course you haven't."
"Aww Dad, I don't need to hear this crap again."
"Fine. Then live up to your responsibilities and pay for the damage. Then you can borrow the car. Hand me the newspaper, please."
"But I need to get up to the city on Saturday. Supergrass are playing and I promised I'd drive the boys up."
"Well, you'd better take the train: after all, you're the one who's always banging on about saving the planet and reducing greenhouse gases. Aren't those jeans toxic as well?"
"Come on Dad, the train's not cool."
"And a Ford Mondeo is, I suppose?"

"Let Me Entertain You"

In which Robbie Williams borrows "Pinball Wizard" in its entirety and assumes the mantle of entertainer par excellence. Whatever else you may think of the guy, he does know how to put on a good show. OK, so there isn't an original thought in here, the lyrics are thrown together without any thought, but it just.....works. Part of it comes from his own energy, part of it is the colour-by-numbers rock that also doesn't break any new ground, but that's not the point! It's a crowd-pleasing singalong that doesn't let you down. OK, all together now with those lighters and scarves........

"Captain Jack"

Before Billy Joel went mellow and AOR, he had a bit of an edge, even though the presentation may still have been kind of polished. Songs like "Root Beer Rag" and "Roberta" from the "Streetlife Serenader" album are terrific, honest cuts, so I was so happy to listen to "Angry Young Man" many years later, which harked back to the early days of a guy who had things to write about that made sense. He does "slice of life" songs so very well. This is a huge thumping drug-references song, with an eight-mile wide chorus that he drives harder and harder to the end, and wry little observations like: "Your sister's gone out/She's on a date/You just sit at home/And masturbate".

"Information"

Why oh why aren't the Rainmakers massive? Another lost treasure here. Bob Walkenhorst has a really unique voice, sharp, biting, and he can wail - well, scream really - when he needs to. They came out of the same middle-America roots-rock wellspring as Jason & The Scorchers, the Long Ryders and Lone Justice, but were always a little more....cerebral. The songs are all clever, thought-provoking and heartfelt, no more so than this wonderful track: "And yes I know my brother well and the company he's keeping/Yes I know my brother well, he sings a different tune/Yes I know my brother well, I've heard it said he's queer as hell/Pray that he's in love as well, higher than the moon".

"Caroline, No"

If you still think the Beach Boys were all about upbeat, impossibly handsome Californian kids heading off the the beach in their woodies for some surfing, think again, dammit! Music may never have come up with a more beautiful, gentle, heartbroken lost-love song than this: "Could I ever find in you again/Things that made me love you so much then/Could we ever bring them back once they have gone?" Aching harmonies, perfectly-arranged instrumentals, this is the Beach Boys' finest and simplest moment, their "Blackbird" if you like.

"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down"

A shambling, rambling, tumbledown log cabin of a song, yet stately and dignified at the same time. There's a certain stubborn pride that pours forth from this and other, similar songs about the North-South divide: check out Neil Young's Powderfinger or Warren Zevon's Renegade, both of which are mentioned elsewhere on this blog. I never really properly understood The Band: they were roots-folk with rock influences, but this song seems to sum them up entirely. It's a bitter-sweet, lyrical ode to times past, delicate yet strong enough to withstand the slightly ramshackle arrangement. I love the stop-start intro, the fluffed beginning, and finally it cranks into gear. You can see why Bob Dylan appreciated them so much.

"Finishing Touches"

Talk about the lost treasure of the Sierra Madre. I'm going to be revisiting Warren Zevon's work frequently. For those of us who are fans of cinema noir, or novels set in the darker half of the human experience, Charles Bukowski for example, Zevon is the essential soundtrack. He doesn't shy away from telling it like it is: "I'm getting tired of you/You're getting tired of me/And it's the final act/In our little tragedy/So don't feign indignation/It's a fait accompli/You can screw everybody I've ever known/But I still won't talk to you on the phone". You can't BUY that kind of bitter, knowing, resigned yet outraged acceptance of humankind's essential beastliness. Yet at the other end of the scale, he'll produce a sweet, sweet paean to the better angels of our nature. Zevon was an optimist at heart, but one who took his umbrella with him. This is straightforward rock, so much the better to showcase his incomparable command of language and his ability to sum up an entire life, a whole relationship, in half a dozen words.

Oh, and can you think of any other song in which the protagonist confesses that his cock is sore?

"I Want To Take You Higher"

Imagine you're wearing the sharpest clothes in all Creation, made out of all sorts of spacey fabrics and colours, moving like a snake with the serious horn, showing off all your fine booty and emphasizing just what a tip-top lover-man or -girl you are. You're sipping on fine wines, dropping 'bon mots' like confetti and generally feeling just about as good as you can. OK. Got that? Well, you may just be cool enough to hang out with this song. Sly & the Family Stone were a riot of colour, rhythm, noise, space and light. They threw great big house-parties of songs, crowded funk-outs that were always this short of spiralling out of control, rhythms falling over one another... this is for dancing like you just don't care.

"Vigilante Man"

Simple blues, going back as far as you care to go. If you work from the basic premise that modern music finds its roots in cotton-field blues, then modern music has forgotten its roots in the worst fashion. Less is more, guys. I've become accustomed to a version of this song performed by David Lindley and Ry Cooder, which lazily, menacingly winds its way along for seven minutes or so, effortlessly carried along on Ry's slide and Lindley's picking, reeking of the same parched elegance that the likes of Robert Johnson must have had when they walked into some roadhouse on a dry dusty evening. As Ry says in the intro: "This is an old Woody Guthrie song. Some of these songs he wrote for ... all time."

"Go"

You know when you first hear a song that gets its hooks deep into you and you can't stop listening to it? This is me with "Go" at the moment: I caught the tail-end of this song on a TV show and just had to have it. I have no idea who Steriogram are, or where they are from, but this just gets to me. I think it's the chorus, the great guitar, the cleverness of the writing, the hint of grunge. I had the same thing happen to me with "Smile" a couple of years ago, and I'm still not tired of that either.

"Ocean Spray"

This song literally ACHES. A love song that's in love with nobody in particular. I like the video too, which suggests James Dean Bradfield's got an acute case of insomnia, but what clinches this for me is the distorted riff at the end of the chorus, and the plangent, otherworldly horn solo. Now, a horn solo maybe isn't to everyone's taste, but this one just... just... works, and takes the song into another dimension entirely. "Ocean Spray" is a long way away from what you'd expect from the Manic Street Preachers: it's a delicate and quite beautiful song. You don't need to prepare yourself for the perfect slogans or the slightly heavy-handed sermonizing they can sometimes be prone to. And the song is the more powerful for it.

"He's My Best Friend"

Pure bubblegum, sure, but what bubbles!...... Jellyfish were as unlucky as any band could ever be not to make it huge. Perfect pop performers, they were the natural heirs to the Archies, the Beatles, Badfinger, Squeeze, and with lyrics that took you on a long, fun, and slighly freaky trip. "Best Friend" sounds perfectly harmless, a joyful romp through layers of harmony, and about the second or third time you listen to it, you have to reach over and hit the Pause button, and think about what you just heard. The double-entendres are so well-couched that you dig out the liner notes, just to check those lyrics. And then you realise it's a song about masturbation. "My hand's a five-leaf clover/It's Palm Sunday over and over/I never had the luck of sinners/Til I was wrapped around your finger"..... priceless.

"American Girl"

I can't think of any way to describe Tom Petty's voice other than a "keening nasal wail". This is epic stuff, tons of atmosphere, an unstoppable beat and Mike Campbell's guitars never sounded more like bells. There's a couple of moments right at the start when one of the band makes a "tch" sound, which just seems so perfect as the song winds up. It's a spare, stripped-down rocker, under-produced, with a terrific biff-bang-pow dry drum sound and just the right amount of harmony. I can't help thinking of this song as some sort of companion piece to Bob Seger's "Hollywood Nights", which might be doing Tom Petty a huge injustice, but hey, it's my list.

"Crazy"

Have you ever met someone, fallen utterly head-over-heels in love with each other, felt like you were reborn, and then, in your quieter moments, not quite been able to completely believe your luck? This must be your lucky day, 'cos I have a song that fits that particular bill. Gorgeous power chords, shovelfuls of of echo, and a voice that fits the sense of wonder and disorientation. "Hey I'm a lucky guy/Without a reason and I/Don't understand." Or "Could be I'm happy, I'm sad/Could be I'm losing my head/Over you." Or "So if I'm dreaming, don't wake me tonight/If this is all wrong/Then I don't want it right." Too simplistic? Too much goo-goo eyes? Pah. Go and make love to a dictionary, then. Icehouse were never much cop, but they did a fabulous version of Killing Joke's "Love Like Blood", and then they did this. Listen to this song, and then you'll know what you've missed all your life.

"Powderfinger"

You have to love Neil Young. If he wasn't singing gentle, post-hippy comedowns like "Heart of Gold", or pissing off the Southerners in his thin, reedy warble of a voice, then he was cranking up the monitors to 11 and stamping on the electro-fuzz-distorto-crunch pedal with the guys in Crazy Horse, and pissing off the Spanish instead. Ain't no pleasing some folk. Anyway, a lot of people reckon "Live Rust" is one of the best live albums made, and it's hard to disagree when you hear him lurch into "Powderfinger" here. You can't help but get the feeling that this song was meant to be acoustic, but here it gets the electro-fuzz-distorto-crunch treatment. It puts me in mind of the Band's "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", the sense of a way of life fading before the bright light of war, and it makes sense that this should be a Neil Young song. I mean, he wrote the book on intelligent, if occasionally impenetrable, lyrics.

"(Get a) Grip (On Yourself)"

Aahhhhh, literate new wave. It's hard to classify as "punk" a song that's so well performed. The Stranglers were old men by 1977, but they had the chops and weren't afraid to use them. "Grip" is fuelled by unstoppable keyboard runs and a proper thudding drum, with guitars well in the background. The lyrics are a bit dense, but rather that than some of the mysogynism they came out with ("Peaches", anyone?). The song fairly hammers along at 100mph with Hugh Cornwell's vaguely knowing, sneering voice reciting over the top. This one's useful when your lip curls of its own accord and everyone around you is being tiresome.

"I'm In Love with a German Film Star"

Achingly hip and laid-back. This song wears dark shades and a long overcoat. You can imagine it sitting in the back of some cafe, watching tourists, locals and idly passing the time. Lots of echo, vaguely Gothic in a sort of Siouxie way, some noodly guitar and a gentle insistent beat, while the lyric rhapsodises about just how amazingly cool one human being can be.

"Life Is Hard"

There's a nice little genre of songwriting that skewers the mores of the age - call it social commentary, satire, whatever. Timbuk 3 were never really more than a novely act in most people's eyes, simply because their one big hit, "The Future's So Bright (I Gotta Wear Shades)" was so oddball. But this is an entirely darker affair, more on a par with "Welcome to the Boomtown", in which disgustingly self-satisfied yuppies get what they deserve: "After he stiffed the waitress, and ran out on his tab/Big Mac had a heart attack in the back of a yellow cab/By the time the sound of the sirens said the ambulance was coming/His heart had stopped beating, but the meter as still running/Life is hard." It's tough not to like a song that takes aim at a whole sub-generation of the greediest, most ruthless and self-serving people since the days of the British Empire.

"Bitter Suite"

This one comes courtesy of the Tortured Teenage Angst Department of the Fellowship of Deep and Meaningful Songwriters. I don't know which way to lean when it comes to Marillion - some say they were originally shameless Genesis rip-offs, but others (mostly students like me at the time) thought they were great. Anyway, this is terrific, absolutely dripping with atmosphere, imagery and proper, bitter lyrics: "The mist crawls from the canals/Like some primordial phantom of romance/To curl under a cascade of neon pollen/While I sit, tied to the phone like an expectant father/Your carnation will rot in a vase." Wow. Gotta run, my English professor's waiting......

"No More I Love Yous"

When Annie Lennox covered this and took it into the charts, I had this great big smug smile on my face, since I had the original by The Lover Speaks in my collection and knew the song inside out. "I used to be lunatic from your precious face" is a wonderful line for those moments when you can't quite believe your luck that your girl/boyfriend's chosen YOU (obsessive types might want to cross-reference to Icehouse's "Crazy"). It's an odd, sort of ramshackle song, held together by the aching voice and the mocking chorus girls.

"There She Goes"

Yet another contender for Most Perfect Pop Song of All Time. So simple, so elegant, so....fine. The La's came out of nowhere with this beauty, full of the required ringing guitars, aching harmonies, a soaring chorus, and then they promptly disappeared. But few other bands have left a three-minute legacy to match this. And it's about drugs.

"Space Truckin'"

Is this unfashionable? Ah well. Come on, this isn't one of your ponderous heavy-metal riffola blowouts. Given that it's Deep Purple, you'd be forgiven for thinking the worst, but "Space Truckin'" is pretty nimble and packs a mean punch. Ian Paice's drums are sensational on this, Ritchie Blackmore's guitar riff constantly pushes on, and the song builds up unstoppable momentum. Just great. Yes, certain later songs just don't really work ("Child in Time", anyone?), and Deep Purple moved on into more turgid territory, but this kicks ass all over the place.

"The Pretender"

Jackson Browne's a brave man. So is any of those sensitive singer-songwriter types. They put their inner weaknesses and demons out there for all to see, and find by happy chance that there's a bunch of us out there who can TESTIFY! I like this one for the nifty device he uses at the start of the chorus, and the wonderful line "Caught between the longing for love/And the struggle for the legal tender." Oh, and the fact that children *solemnly* wait for the ice cream man. I'd be pretty certain there's a little of The Pretender in all of us. So while he might have written a song called "For Everyman", I think *this one* might be it.

"Find You"

One of the few songs I haven't got in my collection that I really, really need to find. Jason & the Scorchers were from Steve Earle's branch of country rock, and they knew how to light up your stereo. This is all sorts of things: chiming, driving, rocking, flat-out, twanging, you name it. There's even a hint of hillbilly in there somewhere. "I'm gonna find you, to find me/I want to climb into your family tree". Chortle.

"La Grange"

It's a simple enough formula: one guitar, one bass, one drumkit, two beards and a Beard. Build a base of filthy driving rhythm, apply blues licks liberally, add healthy doses of vaguely suspect humor and a healthy growling howl on top. Voila; ZZ Top. This is merely my favorite of theirs, but i can listen to them ad infinitum and enjoy every second. What's not to like about music that makes you move and brings a smile to the face?

"Renegade"

There seems to be an occasional theme of dissing the South among songwriters. Neil Young's "Southern Man" is the one we all know, Randy Newman wrote "Rednecks" and then there's Warren Zevon's "Play It All Night Long" which, in the words of David Letterman, may be the only song ever written to use the word "brucellosis". Anyway, I've always thought that "Renegade" was Warren's apology for having written "Play It All Night Long". The version I listen to is a live solo performance, just Warren, a piano and violin, and it's a stately, epic, bitter indictment: "We ain't seen no reconstruction here/Just the scorched earth all around/And the high school band played Dixieland/While they tore our tattered flags and banners down".

"Istanbul Not Constantinople"

Sometimes you have to have a laugh. I think this is funny as hell, and it always makes me smile. In fact, They Might Be Giants always make me smile.

"Sneaking' Sally Through the Alley"

Robert Palmer had a fantastic soul voice: "Every Kinda People", "Some Guys Have All the Luck", even "Simply Irresistible" are all wonderful performances, but on this song he takes it to a whole new level. It might help that he's jamming wth the Meters, who were about as funky as it's possible to be, but you can feel the joy and hear how much fun they're all having. This is a joy to dance to.

"Being Boiled"

I have a soft spot for electronic music, the idea that wires and transistors can do what catgut and wood have done for centuries. The whistles, squeaks and buzzes that the Human League started out playing with are assembled into a sparse, droning dystopia about as far from Bach as you can get. And the lyrics - baffling art-school vocabulary. You could call it Meccano music.

"State Trooper"

Sometimes the simplest things are the best. Bruce Springsteen may have gone through a period when he was writing commercial, but this is sensational. One man and his guitar, a dusty, hopeless night, a highway that won't end, This is right up there with "I'm on Fire" as an example of how good Bruce can get: "The only thing that I got/Been bothering me my whole life".

"Song 2"

Someone's taken "Song 2" and "Smells Like Teen Spirit' and spliced them together, and it just about works. Weird. Blur are fun - they'll try anything. This is a kitchen thrash chorus from hell, great to jump up and down and throw yourself around to. Brilliant.

"Pick Up the Pieces"

I love this. I was re-introduced to it when browsing a furniture stall in Camden Market, and couldn't help dancing around the achingly expensive retro lampshades and occasional tables. It's hard to believe this comes from a bunch of bearded Scots blokes who look like they've been debating Descartes in a pub all afternoon, rather than some taut-as-a-drum soul band from Chicago. Stick this on your MP3 player and embarass the hell out of yourself on the Underground platform.

"Deutscher Girls"

Twenty-five years on, after the pop-sociologists and the music journalists have had their say, wasn't punk just another pose? Yes, the anarchy thing was liberating, the permission to be unpleasant, to shock and to speak the unspeakable were all great, but when you listen to early Adam and the Ants, for example, don't you get the feeling that these were just art-school kids looking for a peg to hang their hats on? On the other hand, songs suddenly became real, and if they weren't addressing An Issue, they were telling a Real Story. And the guitars were sharp, angular, vicious. Made a nice change from twelve-minute concept songs. For a while, anyway.

"Wrecking Ball"

Another Neil Young song that sounds immeasurably better for being sung by someone with a fantastic voice - in this case, Emmylou Harris. I can only describe her voice as a diaphanous country moan, but Lord, it send shivers up my spine. It almost sounds like she's fronting Lambchop - the music is muted, echoing, with a gentle insistent beat and plenty of atmosphere. The whole thing sounds like a half-remembered date that might or might not have been a dream anyway.

"Ezy Ryder"

Possibly the greatest guitar intro ever (well, it's either this or "Gimme Shelter"). Jimi Hendrix invented funk-rock and the everlasting guitar solo and they're both on display here. Hendrix was a genius for letting songs follow their own arc and flying off on tangents before getting everything back together before the close. Nothing here is what you could call "tight" but it doesn't matter - this song is unstoppable.

"No Matter What"

Absolutely fan-bloody-tastic. Another one of those perfect three-minute pop gems from the 60s, harmony, happiness, hearts and flowers....

"Superstition"

I miss Stevie Ray Vaughan. He did things with a guitar Clapton could only dream about. If you thought Stevie Wonder's original was was funky, this is downright dirty.

"Waterloo Sunset"

It must be a particularly British thing, this ability to write small, perfectly-formed kitchen-sink songs, because I can't think of anywhere else that I've heard anything like this. You start off with a big picture to set the scene - in this case the river, the night - and then you focus in very tightly on two people, meeting at Waterloo Underground station. Paul Weller wrote like this too. The sort of song that makes you feel warm, looking out of your window overlooking the city.

"Rumbleseat"

I have a sneaking admiration for John Mellencamp. Hey, it can't be easy having to live with unfavorable comparisons to Springsteen, Seger, Petty et al, but he just keeps on keeping on. This is a great tune; I can almost imagine line-dancing to this. What Mellencamp does, he does very well. I was almost tempted to recommend "Small Town" but then I figured it was more or less the same song...

"Theme From Boat Weirdos"

I thought Joe Walsh's song "Life's Been Good" was a hoot, I loved his crazy album titles, so when "But Seriously, Folks..." came out, I went out and bought it straight away. I enjoy the album still, and this track, for some reason, always gets in very close. It's an instrumental, there's nothing outstanding about it, but it just... just.... brings peace. And that's got to be a good thing.

"Stay On These Roads"

I don't want to talk about this. It's by A-Ha, I think it's fab, if totally incomprehensible, and that's all I'm going to say on the subject.

"Exit"

I suspect that U2 bear more than a small responsibility for latter-day Manic Street Preachers. U2 can't walk past a song without turning it into an anthem, which is why this is so unusual and such a treat. It's like the Velvet Underground were writing about a firing squad - there's real darkness in here, like some Freudian couch-trip, and it explodes into jackhammer life. Another great song if you're dark-angry and feeling like you want to punch the wall.

"In The Bath"

I'm a fan of ambient music these days. I like the fact that you can project your own images over it, that you don't always *have* to listen for a lyric. Lemonjelly seem to have a great sense of humor too, which means that you can toy with some fun imagery. It's hard to describe ambient music, though... This has a rolling beat, cascading strings in the background, and really does make great listening when you're in the bath.

"Heroes"

Possibly one of the very few songs out there that really, really deserves the name "epic". I'd never totally trusted David Bowie - when I first listened to Ziggy Stardust and properly understood it, I began to wonder where *he* really was in all this. Everything he wrote seemed to me too cool, too icy calm, too......remote. And then I heard this, and for a brief moment, I hoped he was being honest. Now, I'm not so worried about his honesty, just the song's. This is fantastic: the hooting synthesizer completely makes this track, and the fact that out of all that cold, electronic whirlwind he produced such a passionate vocal just slam-dunks this one.

"Welcome to the Boomtown"

I got into David & David while I was living in Washington DC for a while, working restaurants and watching the yuppies get on with their lifestyles. This was a perfect soundtrack: acidic, edgy, spearing the unutterable self-satisfaction of an entire generation. You could have played this over Robert Downey's death scene in "Less Than Zero" and it would have been perfect.

"I'm On My Way"

My kids introduced me to this. I knew about the Proclaimers already, and I furtively liked "500 Miles", but this is great. It marches along like some deeply uncool song by some half-remembered sweater-clad grand-dad, but who cares? It brings a smile to my face. And I'm a fan of Scottish accents anyway.

"Every Night"

Phoebe Snow has an incredible voice. That is all.

"Rex Bob Lowenstein"

Having been a disc-jockey once (for a couple of months, but what a gig!), I have some sense of what it must be like to be a jock on a small-town station, with three cats for listeners. I like songs that pay respect to the down-trodden, ever-hopeful, folks who love what they do and don't ask for the world in return. So this song is fab. Rex is a drivetime DJ who's about to lose the job he loves. "He's forty-seven, going on sixteen/He's frequently heard but he's seldom seen".

"Everything Must Go"

This one's a real tough choice. The Manic Street Preachers are my guilty pleasure these days. I don't identify so easily with their early stuff, but I'm a slave to anything that came after Richey Edwards disappeared. I like their inability to write a song that isn't an football anthem, I like that they always want to draw on a big, big canvas and talk about big ideas, and I love the fact that they can't seem to avoid writing commercial. They write great big chiming church bells of songs, James Bradfield's voice always sounds like it's about to unravel, and Nicky Wire looks fantastic in a skirt. What a band. They make me want to jump up into space and chew on Saturn.

"Power in The Darkness"

Wasn't Margaret Thatcher GREAT? A strong-minded political leader, riding roughshod over any and all opposition, destroying the unions, shoring up the forces of conservatism against us students. It was a lot of fun being a paranoid, conspiracy-theory-believing, badge-wearing, meeting-attending lefty back then. Tom Robinson was one of the standard bearers for politics-as-identity, with these great anthems of oppression and victimisation. This one is great for memories of Greenham Common, roll-ups and political correctness before it became mandatory.

"She's A Star"

I should have chosen "Sit Down" really, but I've got sentimental reasons for this choice. It's got such a great chorus that any guy simply isn't going to be able to sing since it's so high, swooping guitars and bittersweet lyrics. James wrote such great songs but never really got the interest they deserved.

"How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live"

You have so much choice with Ry Cooder: he writes funny, he writes blues, he writes low-life and low-rent, he writes Latin, the man's a genius, basically. This is low-rent, and it's beautiful, short and to the point. What I like about Ry is that he's happy to just play; doesn't matter who with; and he does turn up in the strangest places. Any man who can write an ode to "One Meat Ball" has got to be all right.

"Somewhere Only We Know"

Usually, I like to take some time, you know, mull over, consider and think about a band or song before I get all preachy or enthusiastic, but this grabbed me right away. I think Keane are damn good: they've got an unusual schtick, with a keyboard and vocals leading, but the voice reminds me a lot of James (who were great) and the songs are interesting. OK, it's not down with the kids, for sure, but it's intelligent and at times achingly sad. Works for me.

"First/Second/Third Rendezvous"

I'll be frank here: I'm a huge, I mean HUGE, Jean-Michel Jarre fan. I had a classical music upbringing, so his music has always resonated, despite the electronic nature. I thought "Zoolook" was a riot, I loved "Magnetic Fields" to bits, and I even thought "Equinoxe" was damn fine. But Rendezvous 1-3 blew me away. It's like Bach's Toccata & Fugue, a Requiem Mass at 200 mph, a soundtrack to the Day of Judgement, you name it. It's very, very classical, but Jarre throws the kitchen sink of noises and gadgets at this and it turns into some forbidding piece of High Gothic. If you're out driving through the Black Forest or the Dolomites at two in the morning in the pitch black, crank this up and watch out for vampires.