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Inspired by Chartroose, an alphabatical trawl through my favourite music. When considering this exercise I first thought about consulting my vinyl collection. Ah… my poor vinyl collection, yellowing sleeves squeezed together and gathering dust in the corner of the spare room. But I just didn’t have the courage to face those long neglected records. So instead, I turned to my iTunes library, with a flippant if it’s not on there, it’s not a favourite approach.

However. My iTunes collection was a touch uninspiring. And as I’ve written about it quite a lot recently, I was faced with no option other than guiltily climbing the stairs to face the music…

Here goes then. Artists beginning with…

A

The Associates enjoyed some success in the early 80s. Despite being touted as the band to be scaling great musical heights unfortunately this never happened, and they faded into obscurity. A shame, but I think this clip of them performing 18 Carat Love Affair reveals their couldn’t-care-less attitude towards that serious thing called the music business. They had quite a lot of charm, perhaps not needed for success in a climate where the Durans and Spandaus triumphed.

Alas, they threw all their money away on chocolate and never had another hit after this.

B

I wanted to avoid The Beatles in this listing but it’s difficult to find anything else warranting a “B”, even my obscure Easy Listening album Beatles Bach and Bacharach Go Bossa has a Fab Four connection. So here’s my Beatly anecdote, a transcript of my short meeting and exchange with Paul McCartney as I remember it:

the scene is just before a recording of Top of the Pops

Me: could you sign this please?

McCartney: sure

he begins to sign his name but has difficulty because the ink has run dry. He turns to somebody in the shadows and asks to borrow their pen. He signs the autograph and hands it back to me along with my faulty pen.

Me: thanks. Sorry about that

McCartney: it always happens

Now I suppose that was something of a wasted opportunity, and I could have quizzed him about his days in Hamburg, the cruel side of John Lennon or even the hidden meanings behind the songs on The White Album, but hasn’t he had all that a million times before? And when you come face to face with a surviving Beatle you do just tend to crumble a little.

For an alternative “B” how about an artist that isn’t, unlike most of my choices, actually alternative. John Barry is famous for co-writing the best of the Bond themes but also wrote countless other music for movies and tv including The Ipcress File, Born Free and The Quiller Memorandum. In many ways Barry appeared to effortlessly create the soundtrack to an entire era.

Somehow Persuaders episodes never lived up to their great opening titles and music.

C

Back to my more recent collection for this one from Graham Coxon. I kept changing the clip below in a bid to sell Mr Coxon to the uninitiated, showing him in the best possible light, but he probably wouldn’t thank me for such a marketing scam. So here he is in all his nerdy glory.

The real brains behind Blur, and no mistake.

D

Today I rediscovered New Boots and Panties by Ian Dury and the Blockheads in my vinyl collection. I was lucky to see the late Mr Dury twice in concert, once at the Brixton Academy in 1990 and then again a couple of years later supporting Madness and Morrissey at the notorious Finsbury Park concert. Here’s a clip from the very odd Revolver, introduced by Peter Cook:

The Lionel Bart of the 70s!

E

In the early 1980s Ian McCulloch earned himself the nickname Mac the mouth. The music papers loved any band frontman who spoke an endless stream of bollocks, and the lead singer of Echo and the Bunnymen fitted the bill perfectly. He was eventually surpassed by Morrissey, who spoke an equal amount of, although a different kind of, bollocks.

F

During my delve I uncovered a couple of records by the Cocteau Twins. I remembered this Cocteau Twins/Felt collaboration Primitive Painters which I found on YouTube. I’m listening to Felt right now and they’re great. Sadly forgotten.

Look at that hat!

More episodes of this series will follow, but I’m waiting for Chartroose to take the lead. Keep watching though, as I have a really good Z!

Comments [3]

It’s possible that I’m the first person ever to announce that Christmas is a good time for simple data tables. But they come in very useful, especially when you’re thinking about the music you’ve listened to in the last year. Here’s my table, which is taken from my iTunes Top 25 playlist:

Two of my purchases from early in 2008 dominate my playlist. Duffy and the Last Shadow Puppets both released excellent albums, although Duffy was also a favourite of my daughter’s which is part of the reason for its high positioning. There was a time when Mercy and only Mercy echoed around our house. The Age of the Understatement proves Alex Turner (usual Arctic Monkeys frontman) an increasingly gifted songwriter. The Last Shadow Puppets put the familiar tinkle of the Monkeys on hold, and deliver a more retrospective sound that recalls the era of The Walker Brothers. It’s not just trying to recreate the 60s though, this album is as good as some of the best releases from that decade.

A more mainstream favourite of mine was Coldplay’s Viva la Vida, although if you want a real slice of moodiness I would prescribe The Seldom Seen Kid by Elbow, which quite rightly won the Mercury Music Prize this year. It’s good to have one great discovery per year. Editors were my great discovery of 2007. In 2008 I discovered Elbow. A band that’s also confidently crept into the mainstream are The Killers, and I think that Day and Age, their third album, is their best to date. It’s very commercial, but they manage to pull it off and there are any number of tracks there ready to follow up the excellent single Human. Another choice from the year is We Started Nothing by The Ting Tings, who fall just outside my top 25 plays, as do Snow Patrol with A Hundred Million Suns.

For something more obscure The Fireman appear in the table with the song Sing the Changes. It’s from the excellent album Electric Arguments. This is the third Fireman album and their first in over a decade, but one half of The Fireman has been around for a lot longer than that. This is a collection of some of Paul McCartney’s best songs in over thirty years. Trust me. Buy it and see.

My iTunes table also features Paul Weller and Graham Coxon with a song from last year. Weller released 22 Dreams in 2008 which was one of his better solo efforts in recent years. Alas nothing new from Coxon recently, although we have the Blur reunion to look forward to in 2009…

Comments

This year I’ve been busy compiling our Christmas music. Pausing for thought, I’ve noticed that some of my choices are a little eccentric. Let’s go through them.

All I Want for Christmas is You by Mariah Carey

My daughter asked for this one, so I downloaded it from iTunes in one of my isn’t technology great? moods. My argument was that it was a joy to purchase a song in several seconds for only 79p – the same price that Woolworths charged for singles 30 years ago. And you had to leave the house too. It’s been less of a joy to have to listen to it though.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year by Andy Williams

What’s Christmas without a bit of easy listening? It’s also easy to imagine the accompanying film to this one. A perfectly groomed Williams in a snowy outdoors that doesn’t look cold at all. Rosy cheeked kids on sleighs, leaping off them to run indoors and open presents. But not Nintendo DSs – just simple and humble teddy bears and wooden toys. This song plays throughout – on wind up gramophone.

Stop the Cavalry by Jona Lewie

What, I don’t own this song already? Well, the thing is that our usual Christmas CD, called something like Now That’s What I Call the Best Christmas Compilation Ever Although in Truth Featuring Only About 40% of What You’d Really Call Decent Christmas Records, is damaged through overplaying. The terrible irony – you’ve guessed it already – is that whilst classics like Stop the Cavalry are damaged beyond repair the lesser songs, such as Sleigh Ride by the Spice Girls, play with perfect clarity.

Christmas Wrapping by the Waitresses

Ditto.

Last Christmas by Wham

My download excuse for this one is “my wife likes it”. You can tell I’ve been practising this one. I saw the video for this song recently and it’s weirder than I remember. A big haired George Michael looked very miserable at a Christmas gathering with Andrew Ridgely and Pepsi and Shirley. You can’t really blame him can you. Dreaming of a more fulfilling solo career, although not of the problems his later indulgences would invite.

It’s Christmas Time by Status Quo

I downloaded Status Quo’s 2008 Christmas single. “Why?” you demand. The funny thing is that the first time I heard this I thought it was truly awful. The second time I heard this I announced in the car that it was truly awful. However, by the time the boys had finished singing I was singing too – I’d grasped the simple pleasure of the song. My first Status Quo purchase. “About time too!” Rick and Francis will cry.

The downloading continues … but I’ll spare you the results.

Comments [8]

Anyone of a certain age will remember the very strange television programme called Monkey. This Chinese TV series was dubbed into English and aired by the BBC in the late 70s/early 80s. Each week three characters called Monkey, Pigsy and Sandy had mad adventures and jumped about. That was about as far as it went, and if you were a fan of Monkey you probably also liked The Water Margin.

My ears pricked up recently when I heard that Damon Albarn had written a stage musical based on the 16th Century Chinese novel by Wu Cheng’en. Monkey: Journey to the West continues the Monkey legend and features artwork by Jamie Hewlett, who was responsible for the Gorillaz look and feel.

I’ve been a fan of Albarn for ages. His music, through Blur, Gorillaz and The Good, the Bad and the Queen has always been excellent and inventive. He’s also never shy to push the boat out, and this latest project sees him leaving the shore completely. The album Journey to the West was released this week and I admit my first impressions were ones of bafflement. I guess I was expecting an extension to Gorillaz, but that’s not the case. Whilst the two albums Albarn made with that band were pretty experimental at times, Monkey makes them look like Bucks Fizz records. It’s challenging to say the least, Albarn doesn’t sing on it and it largely comes across as Brian Eno after too much rice wine. I kind of gave up on it all last night. I even emailed a friend saying the album was rubbish.

But gingerly I put the album back on again tonight (or, in the modern way, fired it up in iTunes). The headache that’s been bugging me all week and making me grumpy has almost cleared and I’m finding fresh and original things in this weird music. What’s a barrier is the lack of the visual feast I would imagine that the original stage show was, but this is still a worthy addition to the Albarn canon. It’s not one for the dinner party, even if you’re cooking for die-hard Damon Albarn fans – they’re likely to have the same first impressions as me. But it goes in the grower category, and I’ve already identified two really stand out tracks, Heavenly Peach Banquet and Monkey Bee. This is a record I might be listening to for a long time to make sense of. At least until his next project comes along.

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Unusual for a music autobiography, Alex James hasn’t used a ghost writer for his memoir Bit of a Blur. He has an easy, engaging writing style of his own that strolls through his time as bass player with Blur, living a booze-fuelled hedonistic lifestyle in the 1990s. He’s proud of the achievement of one of the most successful bands of that decade, but he’s also fond of recounting stories of drinking in the Groucho Club and his friendship with Damien Hirst and Keith Allen. James comes across as a pleasant enough chap, but he can’t help also revealing that he’s been incredibly lucky, sailing through his life and grasping all of the amazing opportunities offered to him.

Blur peaked in 1994 and 1995, following the incredibly successful (and also very good) album Parklife with their part in Britpop and the much talked about public battle with Oasis. James talks less about this that you might expect, and most interesting is the few years in the early 90s that Blur spent struggling; a run of very minor hit singles, a poor selling album and a lengthy US tour orchestrated to beat bankruptcy. Here is the seed for what could have been a very good book, although I suspect that James is very much aware that his fellow band members Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon were the talented ones. James was content to get drunk, look pretty and go along for the ride – he’s more at home writing about this than of any enduring artistic legacy.

Bit of a Blur gets the award for most reviewed paperback in British broadsheets this weekend. It’s also one of the best marketed books I’ve seen recently, although it could have been so much better, and I left it knowing little more than I already knew about a band I was so fond of in their heyday. The drinking and sexual exploits I could have done without. A bit of a bore really.

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