"Deutscher Girls"

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

"Wrecking Ball"

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

"Ezy Ryder"

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

"No Matter What"

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

"Superstition"

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

"Waterloo Sunset"

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

"Rumbleseat"

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

"Theme From Boat Weirdos"

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

"Stay On These Roads"

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

"Exit"

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

"In The Bath"

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

"Heroes"

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

"Welcome to the Boomtown"

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

"I'm On My Way"

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

"Every Night"

Phoebe Snow has an incredible voice. That is all.

"Rex Bob Lowenstein"

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

"Everything Must Go"

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

"Power in The Darkness"

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

"She's A Star"

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

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

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