"Top Jimmy"

...meanwhile, on the other side of town, where the heavy metal kids hang out, Van Halen is in the house. This is emphatically NOT your average turn-it-up-to-11 crunch-a-rama. It's a shuffle, dammit, a relatively underplayed dose of rhythm and a shedload of talent at work. The guitar is mostly clear as a bell - which is rare for Edward v. H. - and the drumming is just fantastic, a splashy-cymbal, chugging, totally unstoppable twelve-cylinder affair. Yes, there's the obligatory guitar solo, but admirably restrained, which is not something you'd associate with these guys. Van Halen in blues shuffle shock!

"Wherever God Shines His Light"

This has long been a favourite of mine. The plain, simple, piano figure that drives the song is just fantastic, the beat is infectious in a quiet, shimmying sort of way, a pulse of air that gets your hips twitching gently, and the voices - Van Morrison and (gasp) Cliff Richard - work really well together; Van is reaching out for those extra notes, those little jazzy, shouty flourishes, while Cliff is as straight and un-souly as.....well, as Cliff Richard. It's a simple, elegant song, worth enjoying.

"Fooled Again (I Don't Like It)"

Once again, a song from the other perspective. There's no end of songs about your cheatin' man, the double-dealing no-goodnik from the other side of town who's been stringing a girl along, while all the time he has a girl at home. This time, Tom Petty's been on the receiving end: "Strange voice on the telephone/Telling me I'd better leave you 'lone/Why don't somebody say what's going on/Uh-oh I think I've been through this before/Looks like I'm the fool again/I don't like it." From a guy's point of view, though, this is about anger. When a woman sings about this, it's all about heartbreak and disappointment. Tom's voice is all broken and busted here - he's bitter, and his hoarse cry of "I don't like it" can only have come after some serious howling at the moon.
Let's not get into a debate here - this sort of thing cuts both ways, but Tom's in a real state here. His line "It's good to see you think so much of me" cuts very, very deep.
Once again, at the outset of his career, Tom and the Heartbreakers were such a stripped-down, spare sounding band, but the addition of a wash of strings in the background steers this song straight out onto the Ventura Highway, driving very very fast indeed despite the song's medium pace, as if the song has to run away from someone for their own sanity.

"Don't Touch Me There"

Whatever happened to the archetypal Phil Spector wall-of-sound? All those sweet-singing soul groups who bravely stood out in front of his rolling, all-devouring monolith of sound have gone, the producers who engineered the miracle aren't working any more, and so an entire genre of candyfloss drama has gone by the board. Happily, The Tubes remembered the sound, the operatic vastness of it. They took it out of mothballs, opened up their high school yearbooks and created this duet, a satirical masterpiece: "Ooh baby, you give me the chills/Whisper low in my ear/Let me know how it feels/Just to know you are near." This is all about heavy breathing, hands shaking, foreheads popping with sweat, until.... until..."The smell of burning leather/As we hold each other tight/Our rivets rub together/Flashing sparks into the night/At this moment of surrender, darling/If you really care/Don't touch me there." This is so perfect, the younger, nastier sibling to all those pure, virginal Ronettes songs: "I love your sweet, sweet lips/I love your salty taste/I love your fingertips/But when I reach for your waist/Oh no....."

"Sorry Mr Harris"

Tom Robinson must have been a particularly difficult guy to have a quiet drink with in the 70s. He'd have arrived at the pub wearing a long coat, collar up, a hat pulled way down over his face. He'd have wanted to sit way at the back of the pub, next to the jukebox, back to the wall, and he'd have jumped every time the door slammed. Maybe that's what being an agit-prop singer did to you. In any case, after the youthful anarchy of his first album, the second one was a dark, paranoid affair, no more so than here. He sings in character, as a friendly policeman in charge of interrogations, so that's got to be unique for a start. His jolly, Oxford-educated sounding officer clearly has a distaste for the work: "I'm sorry if the soldiers had to hurt you Mr Harris/You haven't really left them any choice/This must be quite a trial, not having eaten for a while/I wonder what's the matter with your voice." But as time goes by, the persuasion gets ratcheted up: "That fellow Charlie Jones you were detained with Mr Harris/I'm afraid we found him hanging in his cell/So we've asked your little brother to assist with our enquiries/I hope he won't be difficult as well." Beyond the lyric, there was never a huge amount to recommend Tom's work, but he did have the great luck to have a terrific guitarist - Danny Kustow - who really did know how to tear it up. It's a nostalgic pleasure to come back to this once in a while, to remember the whole era and wonder how the guys at Guantanamo Bay are doing.

"Jerusalem"

This is quite possibly the most pompous, ridiculous, over-the-top piece of self-indulgence it's been my pleasure to listen to. Start with a band that was the ultimate in overblown pomp-rock - Emerson, Lake and Palmer - and then fill their heads with ideas of being proper "artistes" with Things To Say. Give them every noise-making implement known to man and lock them in a studio, and boy, do they deliver. Trying to do justice to one of the most famous hymns ever written, the music is completely massive, suitably martial; the band throws everything at you, all manner of twiddly bits, fills and runs. It's as if they're competing with a particularly impressive church organ and they know they're losing. And, in a strange sort of way, it actually works. What doesn't sadly, is Greg Lake's voice. While he sounds great on tracks like "Karn Evil No 9", on this he's just not up to the bombastic, full-on production and his voice just gets lost.
Having said all that, I have a huge soft spot for ELP, and I can't help but like this. One of those moments in music where the band fell just a smidgen short of the job.

"Dream Police"

Cheap Trick may not have invented "power pop" but by God they define it. There's such a fine line between power pop and proper rock that you blink and you've gone from Cheap Trick to Boston. Cheap Trick's art was to know how to ride that line. Sure, they played rock too, but they knew how to keep it under control. And you just couldn't take seriously someone who played a six-neck guitar. Rick Nielson couldn't write a duff song if he tried (but don't test me on that), he just ladles on the gorgeous hooks, aching harmonies, steamhammer beats and rabble-rousing choruses and cooks up fantastic tunes. "Dream Police" was probably their last truly great album, jam-packed with hummable songs, arena-sized singalongs that you could play just about anywhere.

"I Try"

How good is Macy Gray's voice on this? It's a husky, breathy, rough-edged smoker's voice that slowly wraps you up and refuses to let go. A proper 60s soul diva voice with just the merest hint of anger behind it. "I Try" is a proper torch song, all desperation and need, vulnerability and surrender: "I may appear to be free/But I’m just a prisoner of your love/And I may seem all right and smile when you leave/But my smiles are just a front/Just a front, hey/I play it off, but I’m dreaming of you/And I’ll try to keep my cool, but I’m feenin."

"Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't Have)?"

There's no messing around here. From the moment the song just materialises at full speed until the final note, this is a jittery, straight-ahead, clattering pop-punk classic. in fact, you'd be hard-pressed to call it a punk record at all: the pop sensibilities are too good, the harmonies (harmonies? on a punk song?) are terrific and the lyric is just perfect: "You spurn my natural emotions/You make me feel like dirt/And that hurts/And if I cause a commotion/I run the risk of losing you/And that's worse." And ever since this song, the boys-needs-girl thing has been a rich vein for writers to tap. Pete Shelley's voice is completely non-punk. It isn't a pop voice at all, in fact, but the beauty of punk was that you didn't have to have any kind of voice to sing. It's a vulnerable, whiny, needy kind of voice which means it fits the song like a glove. Two minutes and forty-three seconds of bliss.

"You've Got My Number"

Just to let the world know that The Undertones didn't just write one perfect three-minute rock song; they went and did it again, just to prove "Teenage Kicks" was no fluke. This is sharper and more polished, but there's no mistaking the same inspiration. Fantastic drumming, a great chorus and an inspired ending.

"Rock and Roll Music"

There are probably about twenty songs that just about every band in the world started out with in their repertoire. You know the sort of thing: three chords, easy choruses and a heavy beat. This is probably one of those twenty, but when a really great band get their teeth into it, like the Manic Street Preachers, the song just takes flight and becomes something bigger, better. The Manics' version has just about the greatest guitar sound I've heard - a great, big, fat chewy wall of sound - and fantastic vocals, the sort you get when the singer doesn't care that he's shredding his vocal chords - think John Lennon in "Helter Skelter". Throw in some proper biff-bang-pow drums and two perfect rock 'n roll screams and you have a perfect package. This is for raising your heartrate, feeling the rush run up and down your spine and throwing yourself around a padded room.

"Who Are You"

After blogging The Clash yesterday, I happened to listen to The Who and realised that here, possibly, were the roots of punk. Four guys with serious attitude -- and The Who were about nothing if not attitude in their youth -- and a catalogue of dizzyingly varied songs. Listen to "Pictures of Lily", "I'm a Boy", "My Generation" and you get a complete picture of angst-ridden teenage confusion and alienation. To see them in their time would have been as electrifying as to have been at the 100 Club to see the Sex Pistols in 1976.
Skip forward twenty years and The Who have gone from sulky teenagers to grumpy old men, a whole lot wiser but still angry, still brash. This track proves it. There's an menace to Pete Townshend's guitar, as there always has been, and Roger Daltrey summons up a hard-edged roar that hasn't been heard since he was stuttering on "My Generation". And the lyric... maybe the preoccupations have changed with time, but the alienation, the rage is still there: "I stretched back and I hiccupped/And looked back on my busy day/Eleven hours in the Tin Pan/God, there's got to be another way/I spit out like a sewer hole/Yet still recieve your kiss/How can I measure up to anyone now/After such a love as this?" This is snarling, spitting, swearing, proper vitriol, which just goes to show that we don't always grow old - we just pick our fights better.

"I Love L.A."

Only Randy Newman could write a song called "I Love L.A." and turn it into a stinging rebuke on yuppies and the whole Californian 80s age-of-excess thing: "Hate New York City/It's cold and it's damp/And all the people dress like monkeys/Let's leave Chicago to the eskimos/That town's a little bit too rugged for you and me." Instead, he prefers to drive the Pearl Highway, soak up the hedonism and revel in the mindlessness of cheap thrills and perfection. But then, there's a sting in the tale: "Look at that mountain/Look at those trees/Look at that bum over there, man he's down on his knees/Look at these women, ain't nothing like them nowhere" as if to say "Sorry, no time to stop and think about important things, I have a lifestyle to complete." Just wonderful.

"Police On My Back"

Ask anyone who was around in the late 1970s who was the most influential punk band and eight times out of ten they'll say The Clash were. While it may have been the Sex Pistols who crashed through the door and did the donkey work of raising expectations and outraging the bourgeoisie, it was The Clash that documented the fizzing, heady, anything-is-possible firework mood. Unlike the Pistols, who lived the punk ethos every waking hour of their life, The Clash watched all, saw all, took themselves off to the studio and created the soundtrack: all of the anger, frustration, paranoia and outrage that punk threw up is there in every Clash song. This comes from their fourth album "Sandinista!", a sprawling record that heads off in all directions. "Police" was originally a reggae tune written by Eddy Grant, but The Clash do something extraordinary to it by yanking out any trace of reggae and crash-landing a squad of guitars on top instead. The main guitar figure is the siren, the drumming is the footsteps running, it's tight, sharp and encapsulates the whole period perfectly. The Clash were sharp operators, having experienced and understood the power of reggae in the cities, but this goes beyond simple appropriation - they pick the original apart like an old car and rebuild it as a hot rod.

"The Rain Song"

After the party's over, after the tumult and the excitement has ended, we all need time to sit back, take stock, remember and reflect. This is Led Zep's morning-after song, their moment of calm amid the storm that was the velvet-clad fist of their "Houses of the Holy" album. Of course, it's not a totally laid-back song, it swells and grows, ebbs and flows, borne on waves of strings, a lovely melody and the eternally amazing musicianship. Even on a song as pensive as this, John Bonham's drums still sound like tree trunks being laid against brick walls, and Jimmy Page's guitar grows from the gentlest strumming to properly electric howls. While yet again, Robert Plant reaches into his grab-bag of mysticism and comes out with something that makes more than a little sense: "These are the seasons of emotion and like the winds they rise and fall/This is the wonder of devotion - I see the torch we all must hold/This is the mystery of the quotient - Upon us all a little rain must fall."

"This Is the Sea"

This song has "rites of passage" written all over it. I'm still trying to work out just how many different ways you could apply this song to life in general: coming of age, leaving home, getting married, getting divorced, giving it all up and running away to Thailand, having children, retirement, getting out of jail... the list goes on. The Waterboys were very, very good at this kind of sense of yearning and ambition. Every song I hear seems to be packed full of cheap 'n easy metaphors for both students and lateral-thinking middle-aged ponderers. Yet for all that, this is a song of empathy, a song of understanding. It rattles along at a stately pace, driven by what seems like an orchestra of acoustic guitars, woodwinds and Mike Scott's folk-gypsy voice cruises through the middle of it all, burning with conviction and the urgent need to persuade us all that everything's all right: "Now if you’re feelin’ weary/If you’ve been alone too long/Maybe you’ve been suffering from/A few too many/Plans that have gone wrong/And you’re trying to remember/How fine your life used to be/Running around banging your drum/Like it’s 1973/Well that was the river/This is the sea!"

"It's About Time"

I love this. It's quirky, charming, interesting and off-the-wall enough to make me stop and listen to it every time I hear it. The Lemonheads didn't cross my radar an awful lot, apart from their excellent cover of "Mrs Robinson", but when I heard the off-beat lyric, the 60s vaguely Beach Boys influence, I was hooked. I would almost call this the California version of Britpop, a gentle, late afternoon kind of song with something not quite normal going on way down underneath.

"Funny How"

I just googled the chorus for this song. Judging by the number of times it's been written about, there's something universally appealing about a song that lays out the basic rules for going about finding yourself a girlfriend: "It's funny how the girls you fall in love with never fancy you/Funny how the ones you don't, do/It's a pity how pretty girls don't take the time to talk to me/Just walk away whatever I do." Now that I think about it, I can't remember hearing a song that dealt with the disappointment, the insecurity, the crushing humiliation of it all quite as well as this. Most songs in this genre tend to focus on a single rejection, a particular person, rather than a syndrome that seems to accompany us boys in our breathless, anxiety-riddled teenage years.
I never did hear another song by Airhead, but looking at Google, I'd say their immortality was assured in a hundred million teenage bedrooms.

"Parklife"

The explosion that was Britpop was one of the most enjoyable phenomena since the boil-lancing that was punk. All of a sudden the air was full of canny, sharp, intelligent music, drawing heavily on the late 60s influences of bands like the Kinks, the Small Faces, new wave groups like the Jam and giving the occasional nod to the Beatles as well. It was such a pleasure to hear guitars again in all their glory, harmony choruses, from the light-as-air "There She Goes" to the wall of rumble that was anything by Oasis. And in between, with a cheery wink, throwing shapes like a ducking-and-diving wide boy, were Blur. Perhaps "Parklife" is a bit of a cartoon, but it's a perfect picture, drawn in wonderful shades of attitude and thumping East-End charm, a little like a Chas & Dave singalong down the pub. I like that they brought in Phil Daniels to do the vocal, slightly weary yet optimistic, cynical yet fresh-faced. You can see a hundred faces in his voice as he brings the song to life: "I get up when I want/Except on Wednesdays when I get rudely awakened by the dustmen/I put my trousers on/Have a cup of tea/And I think about leaving the house/I feed the pigeons/I sometimes feed the sparrows too/It gives me a sense of enormous well-being/And then I'm happy for the rest of the day/Safe in the knowledge/There will always be/A bit of my heart devoted to it."

"Synchronicity II"

This is a bit spooky. Towards the end of their active career, the Police were getting into some pretty off-the-wall stuff. Think of Stewart Copeland's "Miss Gradenko" or Andy Summers' "Mother", but for some reason Sting's oddness never made itself felt in the music. The words were pretty thought-provoking, though: "Another working day has ended/Only the rush hour hell to face/Packed like lemmings into shiny metal boxes/Contestants in a suicidal race/Daddy grips the wheel and stares alone into the distance/He knows that something somewhere has to break/He sees the family home now looming in the headlights/The pain upstairs that makes his eyeballs ache." How dysfunctional do you want life to be? The gimmick here is the split-screen vision of the gradual descent into chaos and madness of the average family, while far away a primordial monster is coming alive and getting set to wreak havoc. Clever writing, a properly chilling image...

"No Sell Out"

This is a little like "found art" - someone's trawled through the archives for recordings of Malcolm X's speeches and chopped and edited excerpts over a fairly lean dance track. Think of Paul Hardcastle's "19" or Les Patriotes' "C'est La Vie Charlie" - great fun to dance to and with crunchy, nourishing content too! Malcolm X, for you young 'uns out there, wasn't the star of a film by Spike Lee, but rather a passionate equal rights activist in the US who broke from Martin Luther King and took the principle of resistance to extremes and paid the price for it. As he says "I was in a house last night that was bombed - my own. It isn't something that made me lose confidence in what I'm doing." Belief in a cause like that deserves to be celebrated, even though we sometimes might wince at the methods that are used.

"Heart As Big as Liverpool"

There must be thousands of songs written to celebrate a hometown: think of "New York State of Mind" or "Welcome to the Jungle", "Sweet Home Chicago", "Dirty Water"... thousands of them. These are not quite love songs, because they're not writing just from the heart, but from the gut and the head as well. You can lose a girlfriend but you can't lose your hometown.
There are so many other things wrapped up in this song as well. Pete Wylie is one of rock's harder-luck stories: shedloads of talent but awful, awful luck. But he's bounced back every time, fresh, optimistic and refusing to be cowed by the slings and arrows. That refusal to lay down shines through brightly here, in the great surging chorus that proclaims his allegiance, his pride in himself as well as in his town: "When all the lights go out forever/Somewhere near the end of time/The noise will pass and the dust will settle/And you'll be on my mind."
Pete's always known how to build a song that will stand the test of time, and this is no different. "Heart" clocks in at a good eight minutes, building and swelling like an opera, bathed in sympathetic strings, absolutely chock-full of hooks and fist-raising, arm-pumping moments: it's no surprise that this song gets a lot of airtime at Anfield whenever Liverpool are playing at home. After some of his kitchen-sink overkill productions like "Come Back", "Heart" is mellower, older and wiser but no less passionate, and it's all the better for it. There are songs made to be remembered, and this will probably be one of them.

"Here Comes the Flood"

Peter Gabriel seems to get a mixed press. To half of us he's an eccentric, mumbling mad-professor type with a penchant for world music and we vaguely remember he had a couple of off-beat hits and did a wicked video. To others, though, he's a miraculous songwriter on his day. A lot of other folks will remember him for "In Your Eyes" with its soaring, epic guest vocal from Youssou N'Dour, or his gentle, dramatic duet with Kate Bush, "Don't Give Up". But this song, this song, comes from somewhere only he's been to. There are two particular versions that I enjoy; the first, from his first solo album gets the full, intense epic treatment, with a chorus that reaches up to his personal muse and tries desperately hard to leave this world. The second, a blindingly personal, vulnerable rendition with just his voice and a piano at the forefront: a stately, low-key but painfully powerful version that completely eclipses the original in many ways: "When the flood calls, you have no home, you have no walls/In the thunder crash, you're a thousand minds, within a flash/Don't be afraid to cry at what you see/The actors gone, there's only you and me/And if we break before the dawn/They'll use up what we used to be."

"Hello It's Me"

The first song I blogged here was Todd Rundgren's "I Saw the Light", and this is probably the right moment to write about his other sure-fire, slam-dunk contender for the Ultimate Three-Minute Pop Song. This is Carole King, Neil Sedaka, The La's, the Beatles, Stevie Wonder and Lord knows who else, wrapped up into one shining lump of perfection. The best songs are the simplest, and they don't get much simpler than this, you'd think. But if you listen a few times, there is so damn much going on in here... the melody is straight out of the Brill Building circa 1965, the harmonies are so good it hurts - listen to the voices singing "Think of me" at the start of the third verse, and I swear you'll not find a better harmony moment. This is a fallen-out-of-love-song, but one that can't quite let go: "Think of me/You know that I'd be with you if I could/I'll come around to see you once in a while/Or if I ever need a reason to smile/And spend the night if you think I should." And, being the anorak I am, I enjoy the fact that this song was recorded live and both before and after the song, you can hear the musicians laughing, joking, fluffing the beginning. One of the backing singers confesses at the end: "I think I'm falling in love with the singer." What better song to fall back into love to?

"Kamikaze"

Now here's a topic which can't have been used all that often for a song. Somewhere I still have the old Thompson Twins album "Quick Step and Side Kick", which is one of those fifty-fifty albums where you quite like the memories attached to the songs, even one or two of the songs themselves, but it's not something that's going to be right up there at the top of your Desert Island list. But this track just seems to slide sideways out of the discard pile and into the "pretty damn good" box. It's totally out of character, in the same way that "Being Boiled" wasn't representative of the Human League's later output. A dark, almost brooding lament, played at a stately, funereal pace. Oh it's pop all right, plenty of stacked chorus and fab production, but it is still.....dark. At one or two points there's a deep, throbbing synth bass line that almost sounds like an old piston-engine, carrying someone off to their rendezvous with Valhalla. Sadly, the lyric is almost, almost spoiled by the last line: "Feeling alone/Flying above you/I'm not coming home/Now I know, now I know that I love you." But you can't have it all.

"The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face"

It's quite possible there has never been a love song quite this perfect. Proper, pure, almost metaphysical in its plainly-expressed, heartrendingly-sung beauty. There's not a single thing out of place here. Led by a wispy bass, with reflective taps on a hi-hat to punctuate the solemn, early-hours-of-the-morning feel, and then Roberta Flack's voice that grows from a gentle murmur to a soaring call, and then drops back to a gentle valediction. You could listen to this anywhere: on a beach at sunrise, in your bed at three in the morning while your love sighs in their sleep next to you, in a roadside cafe in the middle of nowhere or in the depths of despair. It works every time.

"Das Boot"

Here's a change: a film theme. You know how film soundtracks tend to be completely nonsensical when they're taken out of context? While the track may have sounded sensational while the film was going on, you try to listen to it at home and it's utterly pointless. There are some exceptions, mostly by Ry Cooder I find, but this is terrific. "Das Boot" is probably one of the finest war films ever made, a claustrophobic epic set on a German submarine, a warts-and-all, honest-to-goodness account of what it was like 600 feet down. A good movie theme will take you right into the story, deposit you among the characters and leave you feeling as if you have been part of the story. This track works in spades; you hear the thrashing of propellers, the ping of the ASDIC, the dense of depth and closeness and the slow, deathly inevitability of everything that happens. And when the track winds up to its conclusion, you feel the relief of breaching the surface, of having cheated the deep once more. Atmosphere (or lack of it), tension, fear, frailty and death, all wrapped up in one brief piece of instrumental music.

"Calypso"

One of the frustrating things about being a devotee of Jean-Michel Jarre is coming up against a generic prejudice against instrumental or electronic music. Too much of it sounds like widdly, droning techno-boffin crap, you might say, and hell, there's enough out there to suggest you are probably right some of the time. But this kind of stuff has been going on since the 60s, even with bands like the Beatles and Pink Floyd, who started playing around with primitive synthesizers and sequencers and tape loops well before the advent of transistors and computers. So it's not exactly new, even if "new age" is what people often call this music. Jarre at least has the merit of having a classical musical background, and so more often than not he's composed something that has structure and texture. Anyway, to "Calypso": this is a steel band wig-out. Steel bands might not be to your taste, but Jarre's upped the ante here and got them to play at 100 mph. The band swaps the lead back and forth with the synthesizers until before you know it, you're dancing. This is holiday music, pure and simple, it's like letting a Caribbean carnival into your sitting room for nine minutes.

"Sit Down"

I've waited long enough to get to this one. "Sit Down" was a baggy anthem when it first came out, in the same welter of guitar-based dance music that brought us the Happy Mondays and Stone Roses, but for some reason, James always seemed to stand slightly apart. Maybe because they were more literate, less party-oriented animals, maybe because they seemed to hook into a pop tradition more easily. This has possibly one of the greatest lines written: "Now I've swung back down again/It's worse than it was before/If I hadn't seen such riches/I could live with being poor". This is a solidarity song, one that tells us it's alright to be human, to be weak, because we're in the majority: "Those who feel the breath of sadness/Sit down next to me/Those who find they're touched by madness/Sit down next to me/Those who find themselves ridiculous/Sit down next to me". It's one of those quiet classic songs that will stick around for a long time: a simple message, a seductive melody.

"Snake Oil"

Thinking about Dr Feelgood down there took me on to Steve Earle, who's probably the country version of their straight-ahead blues. "Snake Oil" is just about as good a song as he's ever done: yup, it's political, because Steve is a political animal, but damn, he rocks! This song starts off quietly, just a honky-tonk piano and Steve rambling over the top about nothing in particular. Then, in comes the muted guitar and the first verse and the country influence is already clear. But there's a little something more solid, more rock creeping in as well. By the time he launches into the song proper, all hell breaks loose and things get particularly funky. Fantastic guitar that wouldn't be out of place on an early Elvis track, piano being battered into submission, slide guitars filling in the spaces, this is literally exhausting to listen to. You just *know* they were having an absolute ball making this. And at the end, as the dust settles, Steve calls out: "I knew there was a first-taker on this album somewhere!" Just as well: I don't think they could have done this twice.

"Go Your Own Way"

Some songs get taken completely out of context and find themselves appropriated for totally inappropriate reasons. Think back to Bruce Springsteen's "Born In The USA" being used by Ronald Reagan for his re-election campaign in 1984: the collective glossing over of the song's subject matter is one of the great examples of society turning a blind eye to something so painfully obvious. Anyway, I digress. But "Go Your Own Way" must be right up there in the same list. It's a painful, bitter song about the break-up of a relationship: "Loving you/Isn’t the right thing to do/How can I ever change things/That I feel/If I could/Maybe I’d give you my world/How can I when you won't take it from me?" Heck, the whole of the "Rumours" album is about four musicians in relationships falling apart. It's a rare experiment in reality, if you like. Everyone wrote songs about each other, except Mick Fleetwood, who sat at the back behind the drums and kept the whole thing going. Even his drumming on this track is fantastic, solid without being flashy. What constantly amazes me is how so few people tend to listen to this song, this album, and not recognise or at least acknowledge what an immensely painful experience it must have been, and what an incredible achievement it was to even put a record out. Even the optimistic song(s) on the album is/are infused with the same bleakness. And remember Bill Clinton standing up in Little Rock in 1992 while they played "Don't Stop"? Full circle. I thank you.

"Down at the Doctor"

Once in a while it's good to stand up at the cliff's edge and feel the elements in your face, to open yourself to the wind, the bleaching sun and let nature's simple but immense force wash over you. Similarly, after years of over-produced, tweaked, EQ'd and glossed music, one in a while it's good to get back to basics: rock and roll, played loudly without a hint of irony or pretence. Which is where Dr Feelgood come in. Nothing sophisticated here, just good old fashioned straight-ahead blues, sung in a sandpaper voice that's harder than brickwork, guitars that slash like an alleyway switchblade and a thudding, solid rhythm section that isn't going anywhere but straight ahead. This is all about sweaty clubs way after closing time, smoke hanging in the air, wet floors, a crowded stage and blues bouncing off the walls in all directions. You'd be a hard person not to get caught up in the moment here; this is loud, brash, fun music with a rhythm that starts in your guts and spreads through you until your ears hum and you can feel the bass at the bridge of your nose. If you thought the "Blues Brothers" was about the blues, then you need to hear this.

"Love Me Two Times"

This is, by the Doors' standards, a really taut song. I can't help but compare anything the Doors performed with some of their more rambling, unfocused epics like "The End", which is just about as self-indulgent as any band could ever get and never fulfils the aching promise of the opening minute. This however is just fantastic, a dark, brooding blues - could a song about sex ever be as dark as this? Drummer John Densmore does some of his best work here, driving the song with tight little rolls and some excellent fills, and Ray Manzarek's keyboards are honky-tonk in just the right way. But of course it's Morrison we all focus on. His raw, hoarse voice is losing its power and this gives the song just a hint of despair (as perhaps the Lizard King was losing his mojo in real life?), and you can sense what a struggle it was for him to reach the final codas. There's a lack of confidence in that voice, a lack of the strutting, preening peacock who set the tone for the late 1960s. He's human now, and it scares him. There's a real irony for you: as Morrison starts to come apart at the seams, the rest of the band comes together to pick up the slack and carry him just a little further.

"The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys"

This is about as close to jazz as I am ever likely to get. Which probably qualifies me for at least a seat right by the band in hell, but hey, we don't make our own choices in these things. Traffic was Stevie Winwood's big sixties supergroup thing, the grown-up, experimental band he had after the Spencer Davis Group and well before his 90s resurrection with "Higher Love", "Valerie" etc. Incidentally, that Eric Prydz song that's been annoying the top of the charts of late is nothing more than the "Valerie" chorus beefed up, isn't it? Long live creativity.
Back to Traffic. This is epic stuff. No, "epic" here doesn't mean loud, passionate, bombastic or even huge. It's a low-key, winding, twisting, beautifully-performed track, with one of the best choruses I have ever heard, and some seriously sixties lyrics: "The percentage you're paying is too high a price/When you're living beyond all your means/And the man in the suit has just bought a new car/From the profit he's made from your dreams/But today we just read that the man was shot dead/By a gun that didn't make any noise/But it wasn't the bullet that laid him to rest, it was/The low spark of high-heeled boys." The song is long enough for plenty of solos, for recapitulation, for all the stuff that music and composition teachers teach us is important. It's something to play when you have time and space to really live "in" the song, to try to delve into it, understand it.

"Casey Jones"

I'm not a Deadhead, never have been, but for many years I lived among folks that were pretty obsessive about the Grateful Dead and got to see something of the subculture that surrounded the band. I guess you could say they were precursors of the "slacker" generation, just living till the next time the band rolled through town (and you could be sure they would) or packing up and driving however many hundred miles to see a show. There used to be a pizza restaurant in my hometown that had literally thousands of bootlegs of Dead shows in cabinets behind the counter; you could walk in, name a gig you'd been to seven years earlier, and they'd have that show on tape. We're talking SERIOUS obsession.
But when you listen to the studio albums, the one thing that strikes you is how laid-back they all were. The songs meander, they tend to shift in and out of focus (probably not surprising given the heroic drug intake). But they're great songs! Which is why I've tended to go for cover versions rather than the original. One of the best to my mind is this Warren Zevon/David Lindley version of one of their most famous songs. It's got a proper driving rhythm, it's focused, the musicianship is sharp and clear. "Trouble with you is the trouble with me/Got two good eyes but we still don't see/Come round the bend, you know it's the end/The fireman screams and the engine just gleams." A good song for driving.

"Follow You Follow Me"

I get confused by Genesis. On the one hand, there was this large, unwieldy eighteen-wheeler of a band that created songs that started off when you were leaving for work in the morning and were just about winding up when you got home from the pub at around midnight: songs like "Supper's Ready" with a cast of thousands, usually all played by Peter Gabriel. Though he might well have left the band by then. See? You needed one of Pete Frame's Rock Family trees to keep up with the personnel. Then there was the second Genesis, the spare, stripped down commercial outfit that was basically Phil Collins and two anonymous bandmates that produced "Abacab", "I Can't Dance" and other chart hits. Between these two versions of the band, there was a bright, brief moment when they managed to combine the eccentricity of the former with the commercial nous of the latter: the "And Then There Were Three" album, from which this song comes. Now, everyone has probably heard this, and more than a few have failed to connect it to Genesis, I'll bet. This is just great: the intro is probably one of the most recognisable moments in rock, the synth washes over the chorus like a cleansing shower, and the whole song is so underwritten that it passes beneath your radar until you're caught up in the emotion and you realise it's probably Genesis' first proper love song: "Stay with me/My love I hope you’ll always be/Right here by my side if ever I need you/Oh my love." And the chorus, which is one of the best written for a long time: "I will follow you will you follow me/All the days and nights that we know will be/I will stay with you will you stay with me/Just one single tear in each passing year."

"Easy On My Soul"

It's a Sunday morning, the excesses of the previous night are still echoing a little in your ears, so while you're waiting for the water to boil you need a little something to calm the stomach, soothe the spirit and slowly open your senses. Something that just sits in the air, wafts a gentle breeze over your heart and starts your day slowly. So I'm recommending a song by Free, best known for "All Right Now" and other 70s rock standards. You don't understand? Listen to this! Paul Rodgers' voice is reined in to a gorgeous blues whisper, almost, the song is driven by a repeated piano arpeggio that lifts, lifts your heart, the guitars are muted -- we're thinking of your hangover, you see -- and if you close your eyes, you're seeing a vast beach at low tide, a sunrise, smooth white sand and seagulls wheeling at the water's edge. This is a song for contemplation, for a quite moment on the sofa, perhaps with your love at your side, for saying nothing. "Some say love is/Some say what is love/Some say in love is love/When you're around me/I really want to know." It's not a song to make you think, but a song to make you feel, a song to make you stretch out and revel in your freedom for just a few moments.

"Hole-Hearted"

Time for an intelligent love song. You know, one that eschews the "oh baby, I love you *that* much, now let's get intimate" and goes for something a little more robust. Extreme seem to flip between two pretty different noods; on the one hand they can be as funky and rock as you like (viz. "Get the Funk Out"), but then they can create a mood of utter tranquility that draws you in and sets your soul at rest (viz. "More Than Words"). But this one for some reason straddles the two poles. The beat reminds me a little of the Proclaimers, a steady marching that won't take no for an answer, acoustic guitars duel on top and then the lyric comes in to set you to thinking: "Life's ambition occupies my time/Priorities confuse the mind/Happiness one step behind/This inner peace I've yet to find/Rivers flow into the sea/Yet even the sea is not so full of me/If I'm not blind why can't I see/That a circle can't fit/Where a square should be." This isn't a love song, per se, but rather a song that's about waking up and realising how life can be that much better when you can express everything that's in your heart and mind: "There's a hole in my heart/That can only be filled by you/And this hole in my heart/Can't be filled with the things I do."

"Fire"

Relationship advisors talk about "chemistry" without really offering much of a definition: is it sexual chemistry, the kind that reduces the two of you to drooling, humping canines for twelve hours of each Saturday and most weeknights as well? Or is there something more mental, emotional at work? Nobody seems to know, particularly the Pointer Sisters on this version of Bruce Springsteen's original. It's all sidelong glances, half-moves towards each other, playing coy and reserved, "but when we kiss......fire." Maybe the chemistry here is of two fairly inexperienced lovers, who still play the games of youth. "Late at night you're taking me home/You say you want to stay/I say I want to be alone/I say I don't love you/But I can't hide my desire/Cos when we kiss/Fire." Delicious, pent-up, and such great voices to drive it all home.

"Nick of Time"

Rock and roll has always been a young person's thing. Popular music is designed to go against the grain of the older generation, to cause outrage and huffing and puffing from the Establishment. But somehow, things have begun to stick in recent years. Perhaps it's the influence of the media, making megastars of people who haven't had a hit record in years, and keeping them in the public eye. Or is there another reason the Rolling Stones keep touring? Nostalgia has become big business, when twenty years ago you'd hardly remember the names of the stars of your youth. What is this about? Perhaps it's the generation of the 60s and 70s, who are probably thinking "when I was a kid, songs had proper tunes and all", voting with their feet and wallets. In any case, the theme of time passing is one that's taking a front seat in the minds of a lot of Baby Boomers these days.
Which brings me to this song by Bonnie Raitt: "I see my folks, they’re getting old, I watch their bodies change/I know they see the same in me, and it makes us both feel strange/No matter how you tell yourself, it’s what we all go through/Those eyes are pretty hard to take when they’re staring back at you." There are all kinds of ways to measure the passing of the years, but this is perhaps the most personal, the most visceral sign of age. It's a soft, gentle, reflective song that touches on those sensitive spots, backs away, and leaves you warm and somehow reassured.

Intermission

Seeing as how I've reached 200 songs on this blog, I thought it might be time to provoke controversy and outrage by suggesting some favourites in various categories. Not that I believe in these lists or anything, but just in case anyone's being anorak-ish about it..... Now, the categories are hotlinks to the actual entry, so try and guess in advance what it's going to be. Amuse your neighbours! Horrify your kids!

Best Torch Song.
The Best Song to Play When You're Bouncing off Walls.
The Best Guitar Intro, Ever.
Best Lullaby for Grown-Ups.
Best Pop Song, Ever.
Greatest Weepie.
The Best Closing-Time Mumbled Anthem.
Greatest Kitchen-Sink Opera.
The So Damn Infectious You'll Need a Hip-Replacement Special.
The Greatest Song Never to Make it Absolutely Huge.
The Song That Taught Me To Love the Rave.
The Song That Proved Punk's Not Dead.
The Best Prelude to Sex.
The Greatest Moment of Self-Indulgence Ever Written.
The Song that Proves The Future's Not as Bleak as We Oldies Think.
The Song That Proves R&B's Gone Terribly Wrong.
Possibly The Most Intelligent Songwriting of the Last 20 Years.
How To Be Unpleasant to an Ex.
And the Greatest Love Song

"Bela Lugosi's Dead"

You want mood? You want atmosphere? Right this way, sir and ma'am.... meet Pete Murphy and Bauhaus. If you ever wanted a song to perfectly convey a mood, a time, a place, even a person, this song does it all. Nine minutes plus of scraping, looping, chiming guitars, monotone vocals that rise to a howl, a gentle insistent beat; and a million and one images of shadows flitting across castle walls, candles flickering, everything those late-night Hammer Horror films strive to achieve....is perfected here. "White on white translucent black capes/Back on the rack/Bela Lugosi's dead/The bats have left the bell tower/The victims have been bled/Red velvet lines the black box/Bela Lugosi's dead/Undead undead undead." This is sensational. It always was, and always will be the ultimate Goth song.

"Stainsby Girls"

This is a love song to bygone youth, to the memory of things that were so vital, so all-encompassing and important at one time, but which have mellowed with time and bring a wry smile to the lips instead of a grimace of pain or balled fists of ecstasy. For forty-somethings who've taken a more relaxed attitude to life but who remember their fast-paced days, this is a gentle, bittersweet reminder. I love Chris Rea's laid-back, blues-inflected style, his hoarse, tired voice and squealing slide guitar - so rarely heard these days. This song starts so gently, so quietly, as if it were a gentle reflection that begins to solidify, to take shape in front of your eyes. The guitar kicks in, the drums shortly afterwards and before it, you're rocking along: "Now some had games that you had to play/Making rules along the way/Strange attractions newly found/Pride and passion kicked around/Some girls stole your heart/Like most girls do/But a Stainsby girl could break it in two." There's no shame here, no furtiveness, no embarassment at remembering. The time has come to grow up, this song is saying, and there's nothing wrong with that.

"Detox Mansion"

Once upon a time, rock stars were larger-than-life characters, living expensive yet grubby lives at 100 mph, partying all night, doing industrial quantities of drugs, drinking till their livers imploded and, for a few years at least, living to tell the tale. Sadly now, more and more of those titans from the edge are being gathered as their youth catches up with them. They're being replaced by clean, polished, PR'd, corporate kids, who are more concerned with the long-term yield on the investments they made off their first album, whose sound, image and look is carefully focus-grouped until it meets the very widest possible demographic. Compare and contrast Led Zeppelin defenestrating televisions from the Edgewater Inn in Seattle with Robbie Williams' tours being underwritten by corporate America. Hmmmm.
And when these new, young stars do go off the rails, as in the case of the Libertines' Pete Doherty for example, their descent into the time-honoured tradition of excess is documented in salivating detail by the media. I don't recall any headlines reading: "My Drug Hell, by Jimmy Page", for example. And when Doherty got packed off to the Priory, or whatever detox centre it was, we all travelled with him.
"Detox Mansion" is Warren Zevon making more or less the same journey as Pete Doherty, but a tad more anonymously: "Left my home in Music City/In the back of a limousine/Now I'm doin' my own laundry/And I'm gettin' those clothes clean/Growin' fond of Detox Mansion/And this quiet life I lead/But I'm just dying to tell my story/For all my friends to read." There's a howling sense of irony all through this song, an amused outsider's perspective, as if it were being told to a journalist: "Well, it's tough to be somebody/And it's hard not to fall apart/Up here on Rehab Mountain/We gotta learn these things by heart."

"The Distance from Her to There"

Can you sing country without being "country"?. I'm not sure Lambchop are really country, anyway. Their record company website describes them as "Nashville's most fucked-up country band". I have a hard time explaining why I love this song. Maybe it's the gentle, wafted intro, borne ashore on waves of a brushed drum, or it might be Kurt Wagner's warm, deep half-spoken lyric: "so shy tonight I'm told you were/I'm in the thick of it/I've been a dick with it you're just not used to it", before he breaks into a fragile falsetto chorus. It might be the various noises and whistles that murmur gently in the background, filling the spaces in what is a fairly laid-back, sparse tune. Or it may just be the attitude of the song, which is "I'm me and you're you, so maybe we will get it together or maybe we won't". Oh, and thanks CJ for reminding me about this!

"That's Entertainment!"

I've already blogged "English Rose" by The Jam, and to my mind, this one is right up there alongside as one of the best songs to come out of Britain in the 1980s. If you wanted one song to tell you about what living in Britain was like in the 80s, you could do no beter than this. If I recall rightly, Cocaine Jesus blogged this a while back, and it's that good a song that it deserves all the exposure it can have:
"A smash of glass and the rumble of boots/An electric train and a ripped up 'phone booth/Paint splattered walls and the cry of a tomcat/Lights going out and a kick in the balls".
There's no hidden meaning, no grand metaphor, just the facts, ma'am. It's real, it's harsh yet tender: "Two lovers kissing amongst the scream of midnight/Two lovers missing the tranquillity of solitude" and it's brilliant.

"Once in a Lifetime"

Probably one of the more thought-provoking songs I've blogged, this is one of those moments when you can't decide whether to dance or to sit and ponder life's eternal verities. Talking Heads do this to me. Every song of theirs I've heard and enjoyed has been a tussle between my hips and my head. What is this about, anyway? Is it the realisation that time passes and you'd better not let a day go by without grabbing life by the short and curlies? A sort of midlife crisis? Are Talking Heads poking fun at the archetypal American "perfect life" of the 50s and 60s? Or are they talking about nuclear power? The melting ice-caps? Deforestation in the Amazon basin? Does it matter? There are probably as many interpretations to this as there are copies of the album knocking around. And that's just fine.

"Sunset Grill"

This is a very definite song about a very definite time and place. You're sitting in the front window of a bar, probably in Seattle, and very likely the Victoria Inn near the Pike's Place market. You're having the last latte of the day or the first beer of the evening, and you can't think of anywhere else to go, or anything else to do. Life is happening all around you, people passing in blurs of fast forward and stopping, freezing just for a second in front of the window to let you in on the secret of their lives, before they pass and the moment, the insight is lost. You came from somewhere depressing to this point, and you're waiting for the next current, the next eddy, to carry you on your way. in the meantime however: "Let's go down to the Sunset Grill/And watching the working girls go by/Watch the basket people walk around and mumble/Gaze out at the auburn sky/Maybe we'll leave come springtime/In the meantime. have another beer/What would we do without all these jerks anyway/And besides, all our friends are here." One of Don Henley's better days at the office.

"Sign o' the Times"

Let's go back and re-examine the theory that Less Is More. This is so spare, bare and simple that it feels, and almost sounds, like nothing at all. Yet it's probably Prince's best song: trembling with suppressed rage, anger and frustration. He doesn't let it show in his voice, which is a gentle and fairly laid-back drawl. The beat doesn't betray anything either - it's a slow, evil, snaking thing. It's in the lyric, which just lays it all out in front of us:

"In France, a skinny man died of a big disease/With a little name/By chance his girlfriend came across a needle/And soon she did the same/At home there are 17-year-old boys/And their idea of fun/Is being in a gang called The Disciples/High on crack and totin' a machine gun/Hurricane Annie ripped the ceiling of a church/And killed everyone inside/U turn on the telly and every other story/Is tellin' U somebody died/A sister killed her baby cuz she couldn't afford 2 feed it/And yet we're sending people 2 the moon/In September, my cousin tried reefer 4 the very first time/Now he's doing horse - it's June."

I make no apologies for quoting so extensively: this is as powerful a lyric as you're likely to come across, and by playing it absolutely straight, and by using such a minimalist musical approach, Prince makes this bold, heartfelt statement ring loudly. By some curious irony, the song that came up on my jukebox right after this was Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA". Now there's a pair of styles to compare and contrast!

"Devoted Friends"

At the other end of relationships, now. After everything has gone as wrong as it could, after you've parted ways for whatever reason...you can't let go, but you can't hold on either. "If you have to leave after all that we've/Been through, been through/I can't be a friend if your heart has the end/In view, in view/Because lovers never can be/Just devoted friends/How can we meet on a day in the week/And be true, be true/And how can I speak and pretend that I'm happy for you/For you, for you". Wang Chung never floated my boat in general, but this song just leapt out and grabbed me. We've all been here, right folks?

"You and Me Song"

There are almost too many songs that try and glorify love by talking about the first flush of a romance, the passion that kicks off a relationship, the can't-keep-our-hands-off-each-other obsession. What's harder to do is find something trancendent in the mundane, to lift up the every-day currency of being with someone and try to show how special it is: "You tell me I'm a real man, and try to look impressed/Not very convincing, but you know I love it/Then we watch TV, until we fall asleep/Not very exciting/But it's you and me always and we'll always/Be together." The Wannadies hit the nail perfectly on the head with this song: the verse is a gentle, summery whisper, a softly-spoken "I love you" in the perfect silence of a Saturday afternoon in the park, while the chorus is the burst of realization and confirmation, the moment of passion that returns, time and again, to refresh and invigorate. "Always when we fight, I try to make you laugh/Until everything's forgotten, I know you hate that/Always when we fight, I kiss you once or twice/And everything's forgotten, I know you hate that/I love you Sunday sun, the week's not yet begun/And everything is quiet/And it's always you and me always and forever." I'd rather listen to this than to a thousand dance-floor smooching songs.

"Living in the USA"

Another song that has an irresistible grip on the hips, this is all about shuffling backbeat, blues blasts on the harmonica and fantastic soul singing from the Space Cowboy himself, Steve Miller. This is probably the best place to point to when you're discussing the blues-rock crossover. While James Brown may have patented "Living in America" and glorified all that is great about the nation that brought us obesity, mutually assured destruction and corporate fraud, Steve Miller is a little more down to earth here: "I see a yellow man, a brown man/A white man, a red man/Lookin' for Uncle Sam/To give you a helpin' hand/But everybody's kickin' sand/Even politicians/We're living in a plastic land." And frankly, if the dancing's as good as this, you're almost tempted to forgive America its sins if they keep the beat coming. As he sings on the fade-out: "Somebody get me a cheesburger!"

"Hot Pants Explosion"

There are two different bands called the B 52s. The first is the edgy, parallel-universe group that surfaced in the 1980s and produced spare, stripped-down dance music for frat parties, songs like "Planet Claire", "Private Idaho" and of course "Rock Lobster", low-fi electronically-assisted beats. The second band is the B 52s that resurfaced after the death of guitarist Ricky Wilson, a polished, more commercial and highly camp beach-party wig-out band. They'd found funk, they'd found power chords, they'd found slick producers. They still had the alternate universe thing going on, particularly in the way they looked and the subjects for their songs. "Hot Pants Explosion" is probably the best example of the second coming of the B 52s. There's absolutely no shortage of camp: "I'm in shipping, if you're receiving/'Cause what I see I ain't believing/The longest legs in the shortest pants/You got me doing a mating dance/Pant pant/You got me panting like a dog/Pant pant/Ooh I'm a hot pants hot dog." This is unashamed good-time music, something the B 52s always knew how to do, but it's polished, meaty, relishing its own naughtiness like Kenneth Williams rolling his eyes and saying "Oooooh, matron!"

"Revolutions"

Imagine you're walking through a north African souk, feeling breathless in the heat and slightly light-headed from the sun, the smells, the blinding whitewashed walls. You're being pushed this way and that, losing your bearings from time to time and struggling to keep up with the sea of people ebbing and flowing in and out of the squares, the narrow streets and courtyards. You hear the feminine wailing of the muezzin echoing in your head from the previous evening, you hear drums and gradually a beat begins to form around you, a tense, insistent patter of percussion that presses against your head. You're getting dizzy and the people, the market stalls, the houses are beginning to spin around you.....and you find you're the one spinning around, losing yourself in the insistent seduction of the music.
But then you come to, and realise you've been smoking opium and listening to Jean Michel Jarre in Finchley. Bah.

"Buddy Holly"

Over on Cocaine Jesus' blog, he reviews "Teenage Kicks" by the Undertones and quite plausibly calls it "one of the best singles ever". I suggested a couple of others that might vie for that accolade, but CJ reckoned they're a bit too "Beatlish", which is fair enough. So it set me to thinking what more recent tunes could arguably be called one of the "best ever".
And then I played "Buddy Holly". Weezer have got it just about 100% right with this: it's got perfect pop roots, a snappy chorus, great harmonies. But better yet, it's got the buzz-saw guitar favoured by grunge and the lyric is just off-centre enough to be a love song with a difference: "What's with these homies dissing my girl?/Why do they gotta front?/What did we ever do to these guys that made them so violent?" It's vaguely dysfunctional, disaffected, but there's no hiding the fact that underneath lies a great, great pop song.

"Snuff Rock"

Some time in the late 70s, Alberto Y Los Trios Paranoias recorded the now-infamous "Snuff Rock" EP; four tracks about death, recorded as a spoof on the punk movement: "I don't give a damn/I don't fucking care/Gonna kill me mum and dad and pull out me hair/Fed up with the dole and the human race/Gonna cut me liver out and shove it in your face." If there has ever been a set of songs - "Kill", "Gobbing on Life", "Snuffing Like That" and the reggae rip-off "Snuffin In A Babylon" - that better skewered the whole New Wave attitude, I can't think of it. The Albertos went on to do the same to heavy metal with "Heads Down No Nonsense Mindless Boogie". But these four tracks are perfect: the music is a perfect pastiche, the vocals are spot-on, in fact these songs are better than most punk output. Even the reggae is right: "Snuffin in a Babylon/All de people/Dropping like flies/Nobody left 'cept I an I."

"I Touch Myself"

There's something abandoned about this song, something of the obsessional: "I love myself/I want you to love me/When I´m feeling down/I want you above me/I search myself/I want you to find me/I forget myself/I want you to remind me." This song is half-clothed, utterly spent after an intense night of passion, carelessly caressing a cup of coffee at the kitchen table and staring blindly out the window while trying to make sense of a storm of emotions. It's all in the voice here; the song bravely tries to keep up with the lyric, but it's doomed to fail. What's sad is how the Divinyls never topped this.

"S-s-single Bed"

I can't help but think of this as the musical equivalent of a clumsy, half-cut fumbling in the back of a taxi after the company Christmas party. You know the idea; you've drunk a glass or two too much, you've ended back up at her tiny flat, you've listened to some music, drunk a bit more, clumsily kissed and made very hazy love in the sitting room. There's just a single bed, so you have to sleep on the sofa, and tomorrow morning, you're both going to turn up in the office and try not to be too obvious. Noosha Fox's voice is half-apologetic girl, half not-at-all-apologetic seductress: "Ain't it a shame/You missed the last train/Cos all I've got/Is a single bed/There ain't no room/For your sweet head." Jittery and funky, a stop/start beat, this is enjoyable in a nudge-nudge kind of way.

"A Design for Life"

"Libraries gave us power/Then work came and made us free", and ever since then we've been on a colossal bender, according to the Manic Street Preachers. "I wish I had a bottle/Right here in my dead face/To wear the scars/To show from where I came". Evidently the life of leisure that 21st century progress has afforded us is being wasted, misspent, pissed against the wall round the back of a nightclub. Once again, you have a chorus that reaches for somewhere up near Jupiter, soars as high as our drunken aspirations, borne away on some most un-Manic strings, and you just wish for a moment, sadly, that this was a song about love, children or peace, and not about the fetid blast from our inebriated lungs. But for all that, it's a massive, huge song.

"We Care a Lot!"

Faith No More were still an unknown band when this came out, a raw slab of thudding bass and a slash of guitar -- a bit like a tribute to Killing Joke -- and singer Chuck Mosley chanting relentlessly: "We care a lot!/About disasters, fires, floods and killer bees/About the NASA shuttle falling in the sea/About starvation and the food that Live Aid bought/It's a dirty job but someone's gotta do it!" This is a caustic, ironic, angry look at compassion fatigue, at the efforts of celebrities to parlay their caring into bigger sales, and the state of things in general. This is as angry and vital as the Sex Pistols or the Clash when they first burst into view, but it's not the unfocussed scatter-gun aggression of punk, or the shoe-gazing squall of grunge. It's taking careful aim and letting rip.

"Here Comes My Girl"

Once in a while you hear something that manages to capture the defiance, the spirit, the raw courage that life sometimes needs. This does that job beautifully. Tom Petty does the swagger and aggression of gunslinging youth so well, and his shout "When I got that little girl standing right by my side I can tell the whole wide world to shove it!" is one of the great in-your-face moments in rock, like Roger Daltrey's scream at the end of "Won't Get Fooled Again". The redemption of love, the relentless optimism of youth, the certainty of the here and now, it's all here.

"Albedo 0.39"

Utterly spooky, totally out there. This comprises nothing more than gentle electronic patterns, over which a man's voice recites various characteristics of the earth:
"Maximum distance from the sun: 94,537,000 miles
Minimum distance from the sun: 91,377,000 miles
Mean orbital velocity: 66,000 mph
Orbital eccentricity: 0.017
Obliquity of the eccliptic: 23 degrees, 27 minutes 8.26 seconds
Length of the tropical year, equinox to equinox: 365.24 days
Length of the sederial year, fixed star to fixed star: 365.26 days
Length of the solar day: 24 hours, 3 minutes 56.555 seconds in mean solar time
Length of the mean sederial day: 23 hours 56 minutes 4.091 seconds in mean solar time
Mass: 6,600,000,000,000,000,000,000 tonnes
Equatorial diameter: 7,927 miles
Polar diameter: 7,900 miles
Oblaqueness 1/298th
Density: 5.41
Mean surface gravitational acceleration of the rotating earth: 32.174 ft/sec/sec
Escape velocity: 7 miles per second
Albedo is defined as "The fraction of incident electromagnetic radiation reflected by a surface, especially of a celestial body."

Don't say you never learn anything from this blog!

"Lemon Incest"

I'm making no apologies for blogging this. Serge Gainsbourg was one of the most provocative artists of the 20th century, never settling for anything less than controversy in all he did. But people tend to be blinded by the provocation and tend not to look beyond the surface. For a start, he was one of the wittiest writers going, and if you have even a basic understanding of French, you'll see what I mean. This track caused an immense furore when it appeared: a duet with his daughter Charlotte. Obviously, he's doing his best to outrage. But in French "Incest de citron" sounds awful close to "un zeste de citron", or, a zest of lemon to the cooks out there. And the song itself is an arrangement of one of Chopin's finer moments. I'm sorry, but I'm prepared to give the man some latitude. Look beyond the deliberate attempt to upset morals, and give him some credit for seeing humor where it might not always be evident.

"Disorder In the House"

This is a song with a story. In September 2003, Warren Zevon was diagnosed with inoperable cancer and given weeks to live. In the time he had left, Warren decided to record some more music with his friends. By the time he got around to recording this, his senses were so dulled by painkillers that it took him innumerable takes to sing in time: the video footage of this final act of defiance is heart-wrenching, as Warren's co-writer Jorge Calderon tries to help him with the beat.
Given that background, this song is an incredible achievement. The fact that it's up to Warren's life-long standards of wit and intelligence is beyond incredible. "Disorder in the house/All bets are off/I'm sprawled across the davenport of despair/Disorder in the house/I'll live with the losses/And watch the sundown through the portiere". The incendiary guitar is courtesy of Bruce Springsteen, who does his friend proud. Warren lived for a year after his diagnosis, saw his final album released, and left this world a better place for his work.

"Rough Boy"

This song never fails to raise the hairs on the back of my neck. It's a slow, stately blues, something you can wallow in, powered by an insistent drum machine, but lifted into a totally different plane by two of the most plangent, simple, tearing guitar solos I've ever heard. They say Jimi Hendrix could make a guitar cry, but when he met Billy Gibbons he must have passed the secret on. There's a moment close to the end of this song when the guitar, which has been crying for a couple of minutes already, breaks out into a jagged sob, and it just kicks the whole song into that final, ethereal plane.

"Three Lions 98"

Here's an odd one. Every time the World Cup comes around, and football fans around the world go collectively gaga, the music industry takes it upon itself to provide musical encouragement to the national teams. Over the years, there have been some pretty dreadful efforts which I won't detail, though "World in Motion" by New Order was pretty special. But, for some unfathomable reason, this effort by the Lightning Seeds sticks in my head. Partly it's because of the awful record the England team has compiled in major championships since 1966, and partly it's the relentless optimism of a nation that won't give up hope. Musically, there's little to recommend this, but STILL I have a soft spot for it. Maybe it's the radio commentary spliced into the mix, but mostly I think it's the fact that this, reissued version of the song also mixes in the sound of the crowds chanting the chorus - recorded two years earlier when the song was originally issued. Some of the singing is pretty awful and the lyric is a little impenetrable to non-fans, but there's an enormous sense of pain and regret, hope and anticipation, that never fails to raise a small lump in the throat.

"Every Day is a Winding Road"

This is wonderful. The congas stutter into gear, a bass comes rumbling up from somewhere near the center of the earth and is joined by what I can only describe as a guitar that sounds like it's plugged into a racing engine, and then the whole thing is off and running. A wonderful, hip-shaking backbeat and a kooky, marginalised lyric that opens out into a chorus as wide as sunset in Texas. Off-beat observations, and Sheryl Crow's voice sounds like it's always reaching for something more... "I hitched a ride with a vending machine repair man/He says he's been down this road more than twice/He was high on intellectualism/I've never been there but the brochure looks nice."

"Night Moves"

I remember seeing the animated film "American Pop" many years ago, in which this song played a pivotal part. One of the characters has long wanted to make it as a singer-songwriter, and plays this song as his audition piece. It's a gentle, moody song, reeking of experience and dust, of harsh lessons learned and electric, humid summer days when the thunderclouds lie close to the ground. It's one of Bob Seger's most atmospheric songs and one of his best. The kid got the gig in the film, by the way, and became a huge star.

"Isn't It Time"

More pure pop heaven. The Babys weren't around for long, just long enough to showcase John Waite's voice -- later heard on the AOR staple "Missing You". This reminds me a little of the Raspberries; an orchestral rock ballad, with all parts present and correct: the piano riff that hooks you, the brass blasts that kick the chorus into touch, the strings hanging on for dear life and the female backing vocal that comes back, time and again, to warn you that this whole love thing is a hell of a risk.

"Tiny Dancer"

This song has undergone a bit of a renaissance in recent years, perhaps due to its climactic "appearance" in the film "Almost Famous", but almost certainly because millions of music fans have realised that, before he dove head-first into high camp and Liberace-like excess, Elton John really could pen a fantastic tune. He's not quite a singer-songwriter, given that the lyrics were almost always by Bernie Taupin, but he had a gift for finding the killer hook or the aching chorus. And lyrically, too, here's an aching chorus for you: "Hold me closer tiny dancer/Count the headlights on the highway/Lay me down on sheets of linen/You had a busy day today". Wonderful. Like Billy Joel, Elton John has/had a knack for writing a chorus so high and wide you could drive an 18-wheeler through it. There's an almost-hippy air to this song, as if he's chronicling something he remembers from a decade or so earlier, but at heart it's a song about the music business, touring, groupies. Which is probably why it was a shoo-in for the "Almost Famous" soundtrack.

"Pretend We're Dead"

I love the guitar sound on this. It's like a dentist's drill recorded at 78 rpm (for you under-30s out there, look up "gramophone" at www.dictionary.com) but played back at 33 rpm; it just reaches into your head and literally tickles your ears from the inside. I don't know a great deal about L7, but I know when a song is hitting the spot: "Turn the tables with our unity/They're not a moral nor majority/Wake up and smell the coffee/Or just say no to individuality." This is either grunge power or girl power, but it rocks.

"25 or 6 to 4"

OK, hands up who gets this song. It's either a bad acid trip or random word association, but it's a nervous, jittery song, like a panic attack. I have masses of respect for Chicago, seeing how long they've survived in the business and what great songs they've produced, but I just do NOT get this. The skittish drum pattern sets the tone, while the short, sharp blasts of brass drive home the worried, sweaty feel. I have no idea what "25 or 6 to 4" means, but I'll bet it's a drug reference. Please correct me if I'm wrong. And please someone, explain to me how Peter Cetera went from singing this to singing the execrable "Power of Love" 20 years later.

"Life in the Fast Lane"

The Eagles, again. This is probably the clearest explanation of what the whole "Hotel California" album is about: "They knew all the right people/They took all the right pills/They threw outrageous parties/They paid heavenly bills/There were lines on the mirror/And lines on her face/She pretended not to notice/She was caught up in the race/Out every evening/Until it was light/He was too tired to make it/She was too tired to fight about it." Pure unadulterated hedonism that started to take its toll way too quickly. "He said call the doctor/I think I'm going to crash/The doctor said he's coming but you got to pay in cash". The fact that this song still sounds even vaguely country is a testament to the fact that a good musician is still a good musician no matter how many drugs he's taken.

"Riders on the Storm"

There seems to be a healthy debate concerning the Doors and particularly, Jim Morrison's status as a cult god. Was he an unutterable wanker who faithfully inflated his own sense of self-importance before expiring in a haze of his own overextended imagination? Or was he really a poet-genius who simply couldn't control his impulses? When the Doors were restrained, when they held themselves in check and when Morrison wasn't allowed to run riot, they were a pretty damn decent band. This track is probably the best example of low-key Doors, minus the Ghormenghast of Morrison's indulgences (such as "The End"), or their occasional forays into straight-ahead rock. It's almost jazz in some ways, delicate keyboards and a gentle but insistent beat, and you can almost forget the lyric as the melody swirls around you like smoke in a crowded club. This really works.

"Gimme Some Lovin'"

Remember when dance music was just that - music you could dance to? Nobody talked about hard house, old school, garage, trance etc... hell, dance music nowadays has more genres than jazz. Better yet, it didn't matter if there were guitars to the fore; as long as it had a beat you could move to, you were out there on the floor shaking your stuff. Well, this is one of those wonderful, genre-defying songs that I remember getting totally overexcited to in the days before the United Nations forces told me I didn't know how to dance and therefore shouldn't try to. When you hear the Hammond organ stutter into gear like a twelve-cylinder engine and the unstoppable bass rhythm leads you into Stevie Winwood's soul-drenched yelp, you know you've entered the happy zone.

"Angel Dressed in Black"

"Sitting on a sofa/Sucking a bowl of crack/Thinking to myself about my/Angel dressed in black." Paranoia, hallucination, inertia, fear, the hint of self-harm, this song is holding a kitchen knife behind its back. There's a cheery, drug-fuelled dismissal of all the possible Bad Things that could have happened to her while she has been away: "She might have been arrested/She might have been attacked/She might be lying dead somewhere/My angel dressed in black" and then the suggestion that she may well be just a hallucination anyway. Listening to this is like having a rambling, confused conversation with someone who's picking the yellow M&Ms out of a large bowl, scratching their arms uncontrollably and muttering to themselves about nothing in particular.

"Bad Company"

There's been plenty of songs written about gunfighters, bad boys, cowboys gone wrong, but I find that most of them romanticise, mythologize if you like. The Eagles' "Desperado" is a good example. This, by Bad Company, has a gloomier, altogether more dirty feel to it, like a sepia portrait that's been slashed once too many times. There's no redemption here, no happy ending, no triumph of good over evil, just a stately piano, gentle washes of cymbal, and Paul Rodgers' tired, aching voice, almost pleading for an end to the running, to the fear. "Now these towns/They all know my name/Six gun sound/Is our claim to fame/I can hear them saying/Bad company/And I won't deny it/Bad company/till the day I die".

"Girls and Boys"

From what I can work out, this song is about androgyny, unemployment, dumbing down, sex as a commodity, holiday romances, sexually-transmitted diseases and the lack of original thought. It's a sneering look down the nose at the lumpenproletariat in the same way that Pulp's "Common People" isn't. I didn't think the class divide was quite as entrenched as this. Or perhaps it's not class. Maybe something else has taken over as the main yardstick in judging our fellow humans. Our aspirations? Our thoughts? Our sexual preferences? In any case, Blur were terrific observers and chroniclers of the Brit life in the same tradition as the Who and the Kinks were in their time. The song is vaguely hypnotic, perhaps suggesting the mindless follow-the-leader thing that the lyric suggests. And the chorus is sung with an uncomfortable amount of relish...

"Temptation"

There are some songs that are just unstoppable in the same way that a gang of thugs backing you up against a wall in an alley is pretty irresistible. This is one of those songs. We're not talking about volume, but a stomping beat and a wall of voices in your face. Heaven 17 were, despite their pop sensibilities, pretty far out for the 80s. They broke out from the same electronic underground that spawned the Human League, and were a massive club success when "Fascist Groove Thing" came out. This song is all about winding you up into a ball of tension, taunting you with the starts-soft-but-gets-louder chorus and the general sense of abandoning yourself to a higher groove.

"Dignity"

I've got issues with this song. It's a fab song, but it's too damn straightforward, too simple in its message. According to the lyric, an old streetsweeper dreams of his retirement and buying a boat which he's going to name "Dignity". Even a ten-year old's going to get that... And compared to the rest of Deacon Blue's output, this is pretty entry-level stuff.
Or am I being too fussy? Maybe Songs About Issues shouldn't always make you think, maybe a straightforward message is good enough. All right, there's a pretty neat line in there about reading Maynard Keynes (hello, Mrs Thatcher) but all in all I'm left wondering whether Ricky Ross could have tried just that little bit harder....

"In Your Eyes"

Sinead O'Connor called Peter Gabriel "completely barking" mad once. Fair enough, he's worn some pretty strange stage costumes in his time, but at the same time he's produced some pretty astounding music. O'Connor's fairly thoughtless comment just makes one wonder whether sanity really is a prerequisite for art. Anyone who's heard the epic, elegiac "Here Comes the Flood" or "Don't Give Up" will testify that the man could draw tears from a stone. The difference with this track is that, for me, the emotion doesn't come so much from the beautiful sound the song makes, but rather from the closing vocal solo by Youssou N'Dour: a soaring, wailing, joyous sound that skips around the chorus like a child, absorbed in its own intricate patterns, a sound of innocence and redemption at the same time.

"Sebrina, Paste & Plato"

I think the best pop songs have to have an element of the ridiculous about them, a whiff of fantasy and unlikeliness. And this is just chock-full of al of that. Put aside the gorgeous harmonies, the perfect chorus and the outstanding musicianship, and listen to the whole thing and you get the impression you're at the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, where things are not quite as they should be. "Chesney's looking dapper in his brand
new dunce cap/Strolling down the runway to an "F" (never has he looked so lovely)/With all the others watching, eating paste and Plato (the one and only)/He fights the urge to run and kiss the chef". As the t-shirt would say, "Dude, WTF?" Jellyfish are sorely, sadly missed.

"Are You Ready To Be Heartbroken?"

"Looking like a born again/Living like a heretic/Listening to Arthur Lee records/Making all your friends feel so guilty/About their cynicism/And the rest of their generation/Not even the government are gonna stop you now/But are you ready to be heartbroken?"
Sorry? You lost me around Arthur Lee, Lloyd. And what's with "Pumped up full of vitamins/On account of all the seriousness"?
But never mind, I can forgive the slightly obscure cafe society literary thing, because the song's so damn good. And possibly because I envy Lloyd Cole's ability to whistle up a song as lovely as this over a latte in some Camden bar and grill....Delicate guitar, what sounds like an accordion that's just right for the mood, and a voice that betrays not one bit of sympathy for the victim of love, but instead just a hint of guilty pleasure, as if someone you'd been in love with from a distance for a long time had been crossed by a lover, someone who never loved them nearly as much as you do.

"They Shoot Horses, Don't They?"

Inspired by the film of the same name, this is an existential lament only it doesn't quite know it. It's a slow, seductive, round-the-dance-floor-at-the-end-of-the-party sort of song that has so many layers of interpretation it's dizzying. Just like the film. I never heard another song by Racing Cars again, but after this, I don't suppose I need to.

"English Rose"

Not many love songs have the merit of being as simple and straightforward, yet as plangent and ethereal as this one. Anyone who remembers The Jam and their angry indictments of modern day injustice and unpleasantness was probably as surprised as I was to hear this. Like Nick Lowe's "Tonight", this is as simple as ABC, yet it's packed with all the pent-up, raw, pure, idealistic emotions that we've all felt, whether 18 or 80. Paul Weller had the wit to write a song that takes us out into the depths of the universe, and yet brings us right back home in the next line which, to me, is what love feels like.

"Hoo Dee Hoo"

I was walking home this evening, listening to this song and it struck me how many good lyrics are obscured, hidden behind the music that's supposed to be the more important part of the synthesis. Here's a great case in point: the Rainmakers were one of the most literary bands to come out of the mid-West during the guitar revival of the 80s and 90s. This is a fairly martial rock workout, but the lyrics take it to another level entirely: "Well one year it was the factory, and one year the farm/We heated with wood and the house caught fire/I reached for a figure through the smoke and the sparks/But which one did I save, the girl or the guitar?" And then: "I made a lot of good money, got a lot of good press/Writing paperback novels like a man possessed/Every name was changed, every story was true/Every priest was me, every stripper was you/And we danced like angels cast out for being lovers/And I wrote their life story on a matchbook cover". Now THAT'S story-telling!

"The Indifference of Heaven"

"Time marches on/Time stands still/Time on my hands/Time to kill". There's something wanky and pseudish about this, you say? Hush, you're listening to a genius at work: "Blood on my hands/And my hands in the till/Down at the 7-11." As far as lyrics go, this song is perhaps as good as you'll get: "They say everything's all right/They say better days are near/They tell us these are the good times/They don't live around here/Billy and Christie don't/Bruce and Patti don't/They don't live around here." It's not a self-pity song so much as a world pity song. Things are bad all over, for you and me as well as Warren Zevon, and it doesn't hurt to sometimes point this out.

"Driving With Your Eyes Closed"

As you might have guessed by now, I'm a sucker for an interesting lyric. Don Henley doesn't often deviate from Worthy and Important Global Statements, but on this track he's more relaxed. It's a spare, stripped-down song, in which he drops in a wonderful couplet: "Some guys were born to Rimbaud/Some guys breathe Baudelaire" among other observations.

"Rise"

I never knew quite what to make of Public Image Limited: John Lydon's tilt at being taken seriously as an artist or just cashing in on the cachet of his reputation as a serious shit-stirrer? In any case this song, for me, outed Lydon as someone who could actually sing. I mean, listen to the chorus: He's in tune, dammit! And the rant: "Anger is an energy!" just seems to make sense in some inexplicable way.

"Life's Been Good"

If you're Joe Walsh, life has been damn good to you. First, you're part of The James Gang, who write two classic rock songs, "Funk #49" and "Walk Away". Then you go solo and write another great, great song, "Rocky Mountain Way". If this isn't enough, you get a call from The Eagles who need a new guitarist, and your first job is to stick a nifty solo into the title track of their new album. That album's called "Hotel California". So, while you're counting the money and reaping the plaudits for one of the most recognised solos in rock history, you whistle up another solo album and hey presto! Another classic! This track is a funny, knowing look at being a rock star, nothing too introspective or self-obsessed, just good "clean" fun. You have to enjoy a guy who titles an album "The Smoker Your Drink, The Player You Get".

"Fall At Your Feet"

Another very sexy song, but in a completely different way to Aerosmith's Pink which I mentioned a few days ago. This is a slow-burning, intense and passionate love song, prepared to let go with hope. Crowded House seem to be a thirty-something pleasure, not "vital" enough for the kids, but when you can create a mood such as this, and write lyrics like this, there's no shame in being appreciated by a more mature audience...."The finger of blame has turned upon itself/And I'm more than willing to offer myself/Do you want my presence or need my help/Who knows where that might lead?"

"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.