"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.