"I'm Free"

A long time ago, a friend and I were in an art gallery, staring at a work by David Hockney (if I remember rightly). My friend muttered something to the effect that this art business didn't seem like a lot of hard work. Splash a bit of paint here and there and bingo.

But is anything as easy as it looks to others? I've had heated debates with people who've doubted the amount of real work that goes into all sorts of skills. Take motor racing. "It's just going round and round in circles," someone scoffed in the pub a few years back.

Right, I said. It's as easy as that. You just push the "go" pedal all the way down and turn the wheel when you get to a corner.

Ask Martin Brundle, Peter Dumbreck, Yannick Dalmas - all guys who have shown, graphically, that it isn't as easy as all that.

If it were that easy, we'd all be Ayrton Senna or Jackson Pollock, right?

Which is where this song comes in. Now, when I started this post, I was looking for a way to celebrate this fantastic news. And, oddly enough, this song was playing in my ears on the way home and I thought, "Yeah! Let's do it."

On the surface, the title, the lyric and even the film from which it comes (which is, spookily enough, on TV later tonight) all look positive and upbeat enough:

"I'm free, I'm free...
And freedom tastes of reality,
I'm free, I'm free...
And I'm waiting for you to follow me."

But then I started to mistrust Pete Townsend. I listened to the song again, and wondered who is really speaking here. Is the character of Tommy spouting populist cod-psychology because Townsend believes it, or because he wants to poke fun at it because it's ridiculous? I mean, this *is* the sixties we're talking about, folks. Nothing's as simple as it looks (again).

So it looks like I'll have to find a more appropriate song for you, Min. Cheers!

"Elusive"

Human memory is a frail, rickety, idiosyncratic affair. We're not always in charge of what, or more importantly, how we remember things. For example, if someone hands me a home-made BLT sandwich, I'm instantly transported to my childhood, to my grandparents' kitchen and the big pile of BLTs that my aunts and uncle would make, in a production line, for lunch on the front porch.

Taste, smell, touch, these are senses that can raise a more powerful reaction than a proper, retained memory.

I've spent the last two days commuting to and from work with this song on repeat, listening to it over and over again, trying to get my head around it, to find a way to explain what this song does.

I think it's like a sensory trip-wire; the scent, taste or sound that drives flat-out to the very core of your being and sets off every alarm bell. It's like (guys, pay attention), sitting in a crowded train and suddenly smelling the perfume that a long-lost, long-missed girlfriend used to wear.

Being a guy, of course, you can't remember the name of the scent, but oh boy, do you ever remember the old girlfriend, the happy times, the longing that you're shocked to realise you still feel, and above all the emptiness that you briefly believe has been your fate ever since you dumped her.

Or rather, you *think* you remember. Only the picture isn't quite clear. Her face is blurred because, at this distance of time, you really can't exactly remember the shape of her nose or the curve of her chin.

You remember what it being with her was like, how she felt to hold. Or rather, you remember what being with her felt like to *you*, how holding her made you *feel*, because you really can't remember how, when you held her, your arms would rest on her narrow waist, and how you used to lock your fingers together behind her back.

That's what this song is like. It's the bare bones of a memory, something that feels so wispy and insubstantial, and yet is crammed chock-full of atmosphere and pin-sharp sensory memory.

It starts with the briefest hint of menace, fingers gently dragged over guitar strings with a hint of echo, before, with a slightly weary sigh, Matthews launches into the mystery.

"She's elusive and I'm awake,
You're finally real, there's nothing fake.
A mystery now to me and you,
Open my eyes and I'm next to you.
She said my destiny lies in the hands that set me free."

Even as he wakes up next to her, it's clear that she's not there to stay. She's always just out of reach, eluding our need to capture, pin down and pigeon-hole. She's like a memory that won't go away, yet won't come into focus.

"If it's true, then I am doomed,
What more is there to hold on to?
A strand of her hair is all I own;
A gift to me, this sorry soul."

You can almost sense the despair that's wrapped up in those words. Matthews' voice is worn, tired, his falsetto a wondrous combination of soaring hope and resignation.

I remember one of Sting's first singles after he left The Police was called "If You Love Someone, Set Them Free."

Well, what he didn't bargain for was that if we do let someone go, we can be imprisoned by a memory that fades and can never be fully recaptured, but that never fully disappears either.

"White Punks on Dope"

"Teenage, had a race for the night time;
Spent my cash on every high I could find;
Wasted time in every school in L.A.:
Getting loose, I didn’t care what the kids say."

A long time ago, I blogged Warren Zevon's "Detox Mansion," in which he sang:

"Left my home in Music City in the back of a limousine
Now I'm doing my own laundry, and I'm getting those clothes clean.
Growing 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."

The whole point about that blog was that, back when rock still had hair and all its own teeth, rock stars didn't want you to know about their drug problems. When Famous Singer A had to have his stomach pumped, or Guitar Hero B needed a shot of adrenaline when his heart stopped in the shower, the record company executives closed ranks to make sure the story didn't find its way to the papers.

These days, when Lily or Amy teeter blindly out of a nightclub and into the arms of the Priory, the record company execs, the publicists, the stylists, voice coaches and hairdressers all parrot exactly the same line. They all talk about "exhaustion."

Now, to you or me, that means we've been sitting up all night with a kid who's been throwing up, or we've just pulled a 48-hour stint at work to get the presentation done in time.

When *they* use that word, *their* concept of exhaustion is about as alien to real life as possible. What *they* mean is that poor Amy has been digging around in her arm looking for a vein for the last 48 hours. How fatiguing. What *they* mean is that Lily has been pouring so much alcohol down her neck that her she could fit an optic to her bladder. How desperately tiring.

What's even more distasteful is the conspiracy that the media and these hangers-on engage in. The papers want to sell more stories, while the hangers-on have careers to think about. So the hangers-on can put their hands on their hearts and parrot the officially-sanctioned "exhaustion" line, while the papers just wink and look for new ways to say "dope-addled twat."

I don't want to pick out any particular performers -- though I have taken two names in vain -- because frankly they're all just as bad as each other.

"I go crazy ’cause my folks are so fucking rich;
Have to score when I get that rich white punk itch.
Sounds real classy, living in a chateau:
So lonely, all the other kids will never know."

Fee Waybill (I think) once explained that White Punks on Dope was about all those teenage kids living in California, waiting around in a drugged stupor until they were 18 to get their hands on their trust fund.

It kind of fits today's rant. We've hot-housed a generation of under-cooked little pop tartlets who've been handed the keys to the world after one appearance on MySpace, and most of them have taken the inch they've been given, and run a mile.

Ask twenty kids what they want to be when they grow up, and they'll say "famous." Ask them "famous for what?" and they'll probably shrug and say "whatever."

Let's look back at some other famous drug users

Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Lewis Carroll
Thomas Edison
Charles Dickens
Salvador Dali
Marcus Aurelius
Benjamin Franklin
Sigmund Freud
Cardinal Richelieu
William Wilberforce
Paracelcus
Thomas Jefferson

Not exactly a bunch of "whatever," are they?

But until our current crop of drug-users starts producing the goods on a par with the folks above, they're really just a bunch of white punks on dope.

"Born on the Bayou"

I have an affinity for what Americans call "Southern rock" - a friend of mine calls it "rock with more than a pinch of soul added," and that's a fair a description as I've heard. All the way from Creedence Clearwater Revival right through the the Black Crowes, there's a great fat seam of soul-tinged rock that moves you just a little more persuasively than, say, Boston or Aerosmith does - though to be honest Aerosmith have picked up more than a little southern influence along their way.
I don't know how it's done, and frankly I don't spend a lot of time worrying about it, but there are times when rock needs to be a little more...re-fried. And if there was ever a piece of music that conjured up a place, a day, a feeling, this must be one such tune.

"I can remember the fourth of July,
Runnin' through the backwood, bare.
And I can still hear my old hound dog barkin',
Chasin' down a hoodoo there."

John Fogerty's voice has got to be one of the most recognisable larynxes around. Nobody else quite has that ability to sound like he's gargling with crude oil while trying to scream.
At the same time, the band's sound shimmers as though you were viewing it through an oppressive heat haze, brushing aside fat, dripping leaves hanging over the water as you try to get closer.
There's a lazy, insistent rhythm too, like organic machinery at the point of collapse, that just wills you to move. I don't know if Fogerty invented the word "choogling," but that just about sums up the rhythm of this song.

"Birdhouse In Your Soul"

Oh, it's been a long time. And if anyone thought I'd run out of songs, well...

When I first tried to put this baby to bed 18 months ago, I wrote that "anyone who can find more than 500 songs that they can't live without is probably spreading their jam a little too thinly on the toast."

Well, maybe.

On the other hand, I've tracked down and downloaded some 2,600 songs that accompany me pretty much everywhere I go, and while a few of them were downloaded for fun, or mischief, the vast majority are with me for a damn good reason.

Case in point:

Allegedly, this is a novelty song. Allegedly, They Might Be Giants is a novelty band. But anyone who can write, and sing a lyric like:

"There's a picture opposite me
Of my primitive ancestry,
Which stood on rocky shores and kept the beaches shipwreck-free.
Though I respect that a lot
I'd be fired if that were my job,
After killing Jason off and countless screaming Argonauts."

..has got to have a little tiger in his tank.

This is a jaunty song. I can think of no other word that accurately describes it. It's got an annoying, catchy chorus -- yes, that's annoying AND catchy -- and lopes along with all the grace of a tweenie playing hopscotch on a cracked and uneven pavement.

What I like are the casual hints that beneath the surface of this song, there's a really intelligent mind at work. Someone who can dredge up old-world sayings like "bee in your bonnet" (I mean, who says that any more?), or who can imagine someone filibustering "vigilantly."

Hell, just putting "filibustering" in a song makes it something special. The video shows the band to be just what I always thought they were - college nerds, but what's the point of a college education if you can't use it?

Lastly, maybe someone could reassure me. This song is all about a night-light, right?

"I'm Alive"

I've just read the always-excellent Barney Hoskyns' "Hotel California", which is no more and no less than a complete history of west coast American music in the early and mid-1970s: think of The Eagles, Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne and you get the picture.

The early part of the period -- the first flush of creative serendipity -- is wonderful to behold. The gradual ebb and flow of musicians living up in Laurel Canyon, sharing songs, trying new combinations until they hit upon the right creative blend, be it Glenn Frey and Don Henley or David Crosby and Stephen Stills, is smooth, seductive, so happy. Inadvertently idealistic, you might call it.

And then cocaine happened.

And while it didn't always hurt the quality of musicianship, while, for the most part, the hits kept on coming, something really did go sour. Partnerships made in Heaven broke apart, truly talented individuals like Gram Parsons or David Crosby fell apart, the well simply ran dry.

A host of "coulda been huge" bands were formed, made one album, broke up and their members moved on. Lesser-known names like Bernie Leadon, Richey Furay, John David Souther, Doug Dillard, David Blue were all noticed, applauded, recruited, hyped and then made, were persuaded to make, the wrong decisions or were just cast aside. Nowadays they're remembered, if at all, as a co-writer's credit on an album sleeve.

Does anyone remember that Bernie Leadon wrote the song, performed by the Eagles while he was a member, that became the theme from "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy"?

Today we have the unedifying sight of a generation of talented musicians, the survivors, touring on their past glories. In many cases the original partnerships were ruined by drugs to the extent that there are two or even three versions of the same band playing the nostalgia circuit.

Neil Young -- one of the few straighter individuals of the period -- wrote "It's better to burn out, than to fade away", but even he can't take his own advice, and maybe it's his monumental exception that proves the rule.

Read the book. Marvel at the names that flit past, find yourself thinking "I never knew he/she/they were involved in this album." Marvel at Linda Ronstadt and Joni Mitchell's steely resolve to survive in a business that still treated women like chattels.

Throughout Hoskyns' book, a few key figures stride through the period, surviving everything that wealth, taste and indulgence could throw at them. Neil Young, for his ornery, cussed stubbornness that kept pulling him to the left of centre; David Geffen, for his sheer ambition to create an environment for artists to thrive and for him to make vast sums of money; and Jackson Browne, for his reckless honesty.



Yeah now I'm rolling down this canyon drive
With your laughter in my head
I'm gonna have to block it out somehow to survive
'cause those dreams are dead
And I'm alive

I want to go where I will never hear your name
I want to lose my sorrow and be free again
And I know I've been insane
When I think of places I could have been

"Soul Sacrifice"

If you've been watching the news or reading a paper this last week, you'll know that this is festival season. Glastonbury, Download, Wireless, Isle of Wight, V, Reading, the list goes on and on.
I haven't attended a festival for many years, and watching The Who show the kids a thing or two late Sunday night made me keen to strap on the backpack and get out there again.
Wait a minute. The Who? At Glasto 2007?
Let's put some perspective on that. The Who played Woodstock, thirty eight years ago. THIRTY-EIGHT years ago! And while Sunday's show wasn't the same four guys who tore up the stage in 1969, while time has laid its hand on the grizzled heads of Roger and Pete, they still had "it".
It's an education to look back at the Woodstock line-up from 38 years ago and see who's still carrying the flag: Richie Havens, Country Joe MacDonald, John Sebastian, Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, Santana, The Who, Joe Cocker, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young...
History shall recall that The Who played a 24-song set to close the second day of the festival. And while there were four songs they played at Woodstock that they ALSO played at Glastonbury there was one that, to me, stood out head and shoulders, both times:



There may have been better performances, but they're not on film. This is charisma, this is skill, this is passion, this is excitement, this is everything that was ever good about live performance.

So why is this entry named "Soul Sacrifice"? Because wanting to pay tribute to The Who after their performance Sunday sort of sidetracked this blog, but mainly because, hidden away among the great performances that weekend in upstate New York was one that, when I first saw the film of the event, knocked me sideways and still does.
Santana only played seven songs at Woodstock but the one that made it on film was "Soul Sacrifice," in which drummer Michael Shrieve, who was 19 at the time, played what I imagine most drummers would call "a blinder."
For over nine minutes he's at the center of this song, driving it on, trading the lead with Carlos Santana's guitar, filling, rolling, and delivering a solo that I have yet to hear the equal of. And he's loving it. Who wouldn't love, at nineteen years of age, to be playing alongside one of the legends of music?
At around 2:26 into the clip, Shrieve looks skywards with a smile of sheer delight on his face, and ten seconds later the camera pan over the percussionists, hunkered down tight over their congas, and you see the same smile on their faces. This is music played for the sheer pleasure of it, and extended workout that's been so well-learned that the musicians can relax and enjoy it.
And while the entire band's performance is irresistible, it's obvious that the one who enjoyed it most was Michael Shrieve.

"Darling Nikki"

George Bernard Shaw once said “Dancing: The vertical expression of a horizontal desire legalized by music." He might as well have gone the whole hog and added "...by Prince."

What is it with Prince and sex, anyway? His music has explored pretty much every single kink or proclivity known to man; Mary Whitehouse would definitely not have approved. Though I wonder if she could have resisted dancing.

Here's a song that takes you into the bedroom, ties you down and has its wicked way with you for, oh, a weekend or so. The guitars make a sound like cotton panties being ripped, the chorus is the musical equivalent of the vinegar strokes, and the whole thing winds itself up in an orgiastic cataclysm.

And Prince? After the girl kicks him out, he gulps, he sighs, he pants, he mewls like an underfed kitten, and when it's clear Nikki isn't coming back, he lets loose with a shattering, piercing scream that strips the paint off walls, while his trusty Revolution...well, they might as well not have even been there.

This is Prince's (bedroom) show and he's not taking any prisoners.

"Tipitina"

I don't think I need to say anything about this song. Enjoy

"Dixie Chicken"

This is just great. A slow-burning groove, honky-tonk, soul and blues all wrapped up into one seriously hip-shaking piece of lazy good-time music. Lowell George's voice is just fantastic, a hint of Boz Scaggs' half-swallowed gargle and plenty of raw southern emotion.
It's one of those stories of misadventure that manages to inject humour as well as a little pathos. Instead of pain, we get hungover regret and a sense that he got what he deserved: "Many years since she ran away/Yes that guitar player sure could play/She always liked to sing along/She always handy with a song/But then one night at the lobby of the Commodore Hotel/I chanced to meet a bartender who said he knew her well/And as he handed me a drink he began to hum a song/And all the boys there, at the bar, began to sing along."
Listen to this: these guys are seriously talented. The whole song, the feeling, the rhythm, all are utterly, utterly effortless. I can't shake the image of a bunch of bearded, heavyset guys, sitting round someone's front room and laying down this blistering groove.
"We made all the hotspots, my money flowed like wine/Then the low-down southern whiskey, yea, began to fog my mind/And i dont remember church bells, or the money i put down/On the white picket fence and boardwalk/On the house at the end of town."

"You Belong to Me"

One of the things about growing up that I don't think I'll ever forget was how goddam important everything was.
From being selected for the first team in sports, to being invited to the coolest party on the weekend, to having my girlfriend tell me how much she loved me, to telling her how much I loved her.
If anything didn't work out, it was as if the earth had turned itself inside out and all the madness and badness had been let loose.
Remember all that?
A while ago I blogged "Here Comes My Girl" by Tom Petty, and it reminded me of how I looked at the world and felt about things when I was a spotty teen with too much of some things and not enough of others.
Now that a lot of water's gone under the bridge, I've come to think of this song as an older companion to the Petty song. Both songs are about how important a particular woman is, how she makes them feel, how they feel about her and what they plan to do about it.
So far, so vanilla.
But where Petty's song is all youthful agression and determination -- "When I got that little girl standing right by my side/I can tell the whole wide world to shove it" -- Steve Earle is older, wiser, sadder and a lot more bruised.
"Now your mama said you could do better than me/Baby I know that's true/But you believed me instead, and every word I said, and I did too/Now every day's a little bit harder out there no matter what I do/I could carry the world on my shoulders girl, 'long as I got you."
And while Petty's protagonist comes across as wild, unfocused, determined and a bit like Marlon Brando in "The Wild One", Earle's got too much experience for blind optimism. He's got the bumps and scrapes to prove it, though there's still a spark deep inside: "Well my shining armour is rusted and worn/There's a heart inside here entrusted and sworn to you/Just tell me baby what I need to do/I can win you over again if you want me to."

"Into Dust"

This is a blog about a feeling. About learning how the feeling is caused, about how much it hurts and about the song that brings it back, every damn time I hit "repeat" on the stereo.

How do we hurt people? In a hundred million ways, small and large, very day of our lives. Anyone who's managed to get through a life without hurting or being hurt by other people is either lying or living in a sealed bubble somewhere out beyond Betelgeuse. To get through even one day without doing so is a stretch.

From the father who cuffs his child because the child knocked over a bottle in a restaurant, to the child who betrays his or her parents' trust for the hundredth time, to the commuter who stalks guiltily past the old man huddled over a steam grating for warmth, to the lover who dredges up any unpleasant, insulting, hurtful remark he can to make a clean break from his devoted partner; we've all hurt and we've all been hurt.

We all know how it feels to be hurt. And, with luck and some awareness, we know what it feels like to hurt someone in just the same way: the churning, acid tumbling empty space in the pit of our stomach.

It doesn't, however, stop the cycle from turning, slowly, inevitably, around to the next dose.

There's something just as inevitable about the vibe on this song; the ethereal, helpless voice, the interminable, constant guitar picking, and the caress of the cello as it lays you down on the floor in preparation for your next experience, your next let-down.

This song is the sound the soul makes as it looks up from the pit of despair.

"Crimson and Clover"

One of the things I struggle with on SWW is those favourite songs that I can't explain away. For the most part, I can bore at Olympic standard about the lyric, the riff, the chorus, or something that you might recognise and agree with.
Then there are those songs that you play just to listen to the particular dry "pow" sound that the drum makes, or the wonderful harmonies half-way through, or the animalistic beat that takes over executive control of your hips for about twenty seconds during the intro... otherwise, you can take them or leave them.
And here's one such song. I enjoy the Tommy James original, drenched as it is in phased guitars and just a hint of flower power. But for some unaccountable reason, I prefer Joan Jett's version.
Well, I say "unaccountable," but I've worked out that the reason I like the meathead cover version is firstly, that Joan does this breathy vocal that completely strips out any of the brash punk that you get listening to "I Love Rock & Roll" or whatever else Joan Jett you might indulge in.
But mostly, I seriously like the thirty seconds from 1:20 through 1:50 when her band -- Wayne's World extras to a man -- provide the falsetto harmony background to the verse. It's a trip to picture what must be hirsute, leather-clad "proper" rock musicians all raising their voices together in an approximation of schoolboy innocence and purity.
Enjoy the somewhat cliched video, but as I said, keep your ears on for those harmonies. I reckon the video director missed a trick there.

"They Called It Rock"

"Well, they went and cut the record/The record hit the charts/And someone in the newspaper said that it was hot." Ain't that always the way?

Form is temporary, they say; class is permanent. In that case, this is the case for Nick Lowe.

For a start, he was a member of one of the greatest missed opportunities of the 70s -- Brinsley Schwarz -- and wrote the wonderful "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding?" which I hope you've heard by now.

When the Schwarz broke up, Lowe moved on to join one of the greatest live bands from the "pub rock" era -- Rockpile. Dave Edmunds may have been the leader, but Lowe was the soul and when Edmunds couldn't move on from rock 'n roll, Lowe strapped on his boots and went to work as the house producer for one of the top punk record labels - Stiff Records.

His list of producing credits is a veritable who's who of punk and new wave: Wreckless Eric, Dr Feelgood, the Damned, the Pretenders, Graham Parker, even Elvis Costello passed beneath his studio benevolence.

And he found the time to record what may be the first punk 45 -- "So It Goes" -- and to put together one of the truly great new wave albums, "Jesus of Cool," also known as "Pure Pop for Now People," a record so perfect that even today it sounds fresh, clear and relevant.

It's stubbornly anti-punk. Instead of fuzzbox powerchords, you get twang, shuffle and proper tunes. How punk was that? "Tonight" is one of the truly great love songs, "Marie Provost" is just epic, and epicly strange as well, while "They Called It Rock" is the music business in a nutshell.

Imagine a straight-ahead country-billy workout and you're half-way to this song. It's tight, driving and complete in a way that so few songs are.

"Well, they cut another record/It never was a hit/And someone in the newspaper said it was shit."

Not Nick Lowe, then.

"Whipping Post"

Edgar Varese said "Everyone is born with genius, but most people only keep it a few minutes."

Musicians, more than most, have to make the fullest use of those minutes, to grab the tiger by the tail and refuse utterly to let go until they absolutely can't hold on any more. Look at the collective genius of Lennon and McCartney: together they rewrote the book on songwriting, but there won't be many who will argue that their post-Beatles output was the equal of their work together.

Similarly, what exactly happened to Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook? One moment they were lauded to the skies as brilliant, funny, clever writers of sharply-observed vignettes of everyday life; the next, forgotten.

There must be some kind of struggle, some kind of desperate fight, to hold onto whatever ethereal spell exists that makes songwriting such a simple affair for those lucky few. it must be hard to acknowledge the sense of helplessness in the face of an uncaring fate that exists just to give, and then to take away.

Now where did that come from? One minute I was all ready, prepped for a blog on the barbecue of greatness that is Southern rock, and then it's gone. Head empty.

I think maybe what started this off was the devil's brew that is "Whipping Post." There's the five-minute version from the Allman Brothers' first album, a frothy stew of blues rock from 1969 that sounds so far out of time and out of place that it could have been current a decade later.

And then there's the mighty, mighty 22-minute live version. It's not just a song; it's a jam, a spiritual revival, a heart-pumping chase scene from the movies and most of all, it's the very beginning of Edgar Varese's few minutes of genius. Here's a band just getting under way, confident, full of stamina and ready to stretch boundaries.

What sets this song apart from its time is the fierce grip that it keeps on its roots; the lyric is traditional blues, my-woman-done-me-wrong, combined with a hint of the cotton fields and a dash of old-time religion. There's a touch of jazz virtuosity too.

And all this at the height of the hippy era. While Country Joe MacDonald was fixin' to die, while Alvin Lee was tearing up his fretboard at 150 mph and while Jimi Hendrix was inventing feedback from outer space (and I mean that reverentially), Duane and Gregg Allman and Dickie Betts were going back to basics and doing more with less.

And one more thing.

Songs like this are why the Hammond organ was invented.

"Saturday in the Park"

Last time I wrote how sometimes it's difficult to just let music wash over you and just act as aural wallpaper. Today, I'm going to suggest that a particular song can be like stepping into a hot shower on a cold morning. No matter what the particular song is - it can be post-punk industrial for some, and the most saccharine gloop for others.
The point is to underline, to emphasise how the right music taps into our individual psyches and just....does something. Not that I'm suggesting a particular song may necessarily confer superpowers or X-ray vision, but there are moments.....
This song does all of that for me, and normally I wouldn't even have the time of day for Chicago (the unhinged "25 or 6 to 4" excepted).
Maybe it's the slightly funky piano intro, with that chocolate layer of horns on top, drifting slowly downwards, maybe it's the backbeat chorus with the blasts of brass, but whenever I hear this, I can open the convertible top in my head and just sit back and drink in the sunshine. I may be wearing a suit in the middle of winter in London, but in my head I'm in shorts, cruising south on Route 1 with the windows wide open.
I won't answer for the video - it's from 1973 - but it does set a mood. The song lasts only 3 minutes, but you get a bonus of "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is," which only serves to demonstrate how talented this band really was.

"The Man With a Harmonica"

I find it difficult to not listen to music, if you see what I mean. Too often, what is meant to be nothing more than aural wallpaper, a pleasant backdrop to something else, forces its way to the front of my consciousness and I start thinking about the music rather than just letting it wash over me.
Even when I'm on a gratuitious holiday of a lifetime, drinking in sights and sounds that I'd never expect to see in a year of Sundays, music manages to elbow its way to the front of the experience. Hence this track.
I guess when you're putting together a fancy getaway resort for cynical meeja folk and the like, you have to be pretty damn sharp when it comes to music. You want to create an ambience, sure, but it mustn't be an ambience these well-heeled jetsetters have experienced before.
And so Apollo 440 taking the iconic Ennio Morricone harmonica soundtrack from "Once Upon a Time in the West" and slipping it into a dub mood must be something even the most hardened music business lawyer would not expect when it came to mood music for his after-dinner drinks by the infinity pool.
All the cavernous space of the western frontier is still there in the tune, the lonely harmonica still beckons damned men to their doom, but the dub beat adds a note of urgency and a touch of urban thriller. It also brings The Clash to mind, which is frankly weird.
And it does create a mood, an ambience. Just not one that washes over me too easily.

"Hoppipolla"

There are a fair few songs out there that defy any effort to describe. I've written before about Pink Floyd's "The Great Gig in the Sky" for example, which has the power to reduce me to a quivering wreck and robs me of the ability to make sense. I also get the same way about Jean Michel Jarre's "Rendezvous".
And now this.
A friend sent me this song not too long ago. I forget exactly why it was sent to me, but I listened to it, thought it was OK, and moved on. For a start, Sigur Ros are an Icelandic band, so I haven't zeroed in on the lyric as I often do. It's also what you might call "emo-ambient," which is not something I readily dive into.
But the damn thing keeps popping up on my iPod and it's been worming its way into my head to the extent that when it comes around now, I stop everything and just drink it in.
Everyone of us carries in our brain the memory of smells that take us back to our childhood, or to a particular time or place, something that brings a lump to our throat or that makes us smile: the particular smell of the sofa in your grandparents' front room, or a baby's freshly-washed hair. Instead of smells, I have songs.
And the damnedest thing is that this song doesn't bring a particular memory to mind, but it just raises ghosts, like the godfather I really missed getting to know or the feeling of security and comfort I remember having at the age of 6, but I'm damned if I remember what house I lived in at the time.
And maybe that's the joy of songs like this: perhaps they're blank canvases that allow us to make of them what we will. They provide the key to some internal door that accesses nameless, orphaned emotions and thoughts.

"It's a Shame About Ray"

As an impressionable teenager, I revered John McEnroe; I admired his fiery determination, his unwillingness to be anything but himself and the way that he made a virtue out of what I thought was an ungainly, awkward approach to the game.
As I grew older, I began to appreciate something different: his innate, untutored, helpless talent. I don't think he really had a great deal of choice in the matter - he was born to play tennis. All the tantrums, the anger were just so much static - no matter how crappy a day he was having, his tennis was still solid gold.
I know this might be a stretch, but I reckon that Evan Dando may well be the John McEnroe of music. A sublimely talented writer, gifted with such a fantastic voice, he seemed to just sweat great tunes while he was busy doing something else.
Evan Dando had the luck to be able to knock out such fantastic tunes while struggling with addiction and distraction. A song as simple as this, you'd think, must mean it's not all that hard, this songwriting business.
We think to ourselves, "I'm sure I could do it," but the problem is, we probably couldn't. We either don't have the talent or the application, or else we'd be doing it already, wouldn't we?
And the supreme irony is that, to John McEnroe or Evan Dando playing championship tennis or writing this song was probably reasonably easy. They were used to it - they grew up with the talent, they harnessed it.
There's nothing fancy here, but then listen to any truly great pop song - "There She Goes," "Teenage Kicks," "I Saw the Light" - and the genius is in the simplicity: "If I make it through today/I'll know tomorrow not to leave my feelings out on display/I'll put the cobwebs back in place/I've never been too good with names/but I remember faces."

"Home"

I really, really wish I hadn't seen the video for this song.
I happened to see it late at night and was sucked in to the simple, earthy rhythm of the song, and the images of simple enjoyment, the celebration of community and togetherness that it portrayed.
Then I went hunting for the lyrics:
"I woke up this morning/Now I understand/What it means to give your life/To just one man/Afraid of feeling nothing/No bees or butterflies/My head is full of voices/And my house is full of lies."
And I realised just how many promo videos are made that bear utterly no relationship - and in some cases a completely inappropriate one - to the song and its subject. Mind you, with a song as gorgeous as this you really would not expect a lyric like:
"I'm going crazy/A little every day/'cause everything I wanted/Is now driving me away/I woke this morning/To the sound of breaking hearts/Mine is full of questions/And it's tearing yours apart."
Watch the video and see what you think: