more random songs

Over the weekend the iPod was churning out songs on shuffle - here's some of them:

"It's A Long Way To the Top (If You Wanna Rock'n'Roll") a classic slice of AC/DC rocks like a good 'un with a Stones-like mega riff that just doesn't let go. Weirdly there appear to be bagpipes at one point (really). This track came to my attention via the brilliant Jack Black film School Of Rock which is enormous fun and has become one of Charley's favourites.

A complete contrast with "Open The Kingdom" from Philip Glass's Songs For Liquid Days. This is one of my favourite Glass records and one I frequently return to. The operatic drama of this track is all the more surprising when you remember that David Byrne wrote it. I love the singing on this piece.

"Re-make / Re-model" - I'm sure I've mentioned this before but can you think of a better opening song from a debut album? I can't. It's perfect. Roxy Music encapsulated in a five minute blast. Showcasing loads of different styles and sounds, this IS Roxy Music. Wonderful.

"If There Is Something" - more early Roxy but this is the Tin Machine cover from 1991. Now Tin Machine got a lot of stick, and still do whenever anyone wants to take a cheap shot at Bowie. But TM was actually a very successful attempt at a Pixies style hard / alt rock band. And DB gave that band some great songs too. Even this cover works surprisingly well, with the only weak spot being Hunt Sales' blanket bombing drumming (something that blighted a few TM songs - the man had no restraint). Bowie was obviously going through a bit of a Roxy kick at this point as he'd often insert verses from "In Every Dream Home..." into the breakdown parts of TM's "Heaven's In Here" during the 1991 tour.

"Banks Of The Ohio" - Johnny Cash singing a very traditional sounding country song. But then you listen to the lyrics and, like many of the best Cash songs, it's all about a girl pleading with her man not to murder her - 'I'm not ready for eternity' she rather poetically cries... but he still throws her into river anyway... All because she didn't want to be his wife. Not surprising is it, if he's that unstable!

"2,000 Light Years From Home" - the Stones recorded live at Atlantic City in late 1989. This was the last gig on the Steel Wheels USA leg and the show was broadcast live on US tv. Special guests abound (Clapton on "Little Red Rooster", John Lee Hooker crops up on his own "Boogie Chillum" and you can see the looks of awe on Keef and Ronnie's faces, and Axl Rose & Izzy Stradlin sing and play on a one off performance of "Salt Of The Earth" (Guns 'n' Roses were the support band on many of the US dates)). Anyway, it's a cracking gig. This song had never been played live before this tour and is played wonderfully with lotsa psychedelic lighting going on. It all dissolves at the end into a couple of minutes of mysterious swirly keyboards and dry ice everywhere which gives Jagger time to take the lift to the gantry high above the stage and put on a glittery top hat and billowing red cape. The swirls give way to Charlie bashing out the voodoo rhythm for "Sympathy For The Devil" and demonic Jagger yelps can be heard, but from where? It takes the crowd quite some time to realise that he's now perched atop the stage set bathed in blood red lights and he sings the first half of the song from there. Keef's first solo allows Mick time to get back down to the stage where he has enormous fun swishing his cape around and annoying Keef for the rest of the song.

"The Me I Never Knew" from one of Scott Walker's less well regarded albums, 1973's Any Day Now. These albums from the early 1970s may not contain any Walker originals and a couple of them veer a little too much into soft country rock, but Any Day Now is a fine album and Scott's vocals are arguably some of his best as he's just languidly crooning and enjoying the songs. The song may be fairly standard MOR fare, but Scott delivers the goods. The man is incapable of a bad vocal.

"Computer World II" which is basically the coda to "Numbers" but is so delightful anyway. Kraftwerk's synths are beautiful - so crystal clear.

"One Night" – I have a handful of Elvis songs on the iPod and this is one of them. And it’s terrific. What a voice that man had, and what a shame he wasted it on so many terrible MOR ballads and Vegas schlock before his way too early demise.

Part of the "Green Park Suite" from Robert Fripp’s soundscape performance in Bath in 1996. Here is where Fripp started incorporating those bell and piano sounds into his soundscapes. And it’s one of my favourite soundscapes. Very moving. The performance took place over some hours on a cold November day. Green Park Station had long closed to trains and had been converted into a shopping mall of stalls and bijou boutiques. No idea why Fripp was playing there, but he was. The performance was scheduled to last all day but Fripp packed up after just three hours due to a combination of the cold, the DGM team’s late arrival and over 100 complaints from the shoppers. Stallholders claimed that their takings were down and one even threw up, apparently because of the volume of the music. Because of this less than enthusiastic response, Fripp wrote in his diary - "Our overall impression was that it would be better for us to stop, and even better for us to stop very soon."

"All The Young Dudes" – Bowie live at the LA Amphitheatre in September 1974 just as the Diamond Dogs Tour was morphing into the Soul Tour. DB had very rapidly grown tired of the massive and complex set of Hunger City that was used on the Diamond Dogs Tour. After a month’s break (during which the bulk of Young Americans was recorded) the tour was due to resume on the West Coast, but DB decided to ditch half the numbers in favour of the new Young Americans songs, and restructure existing tunes into more Soul / disco arrangements. He also wanted to dump the massively expensive stage sets, but was persuaded to keep the sets for the weeks run in Los Angeles where he would be seen by loads of Hollywood stars (Liz Taylor came three times), would be filmed by the BBC for the Cracked Actor documentary and would upset Bob Hope. Really. Hope complained that the show’s volume was too high and such was his standing in Hollywood that the DB show had to keep the noise down over the remaining four nights. Anyway, the stage set was dropped completely after this week of gigs and the Soul Tour got underway in earnest with Luther Vandross and his friends helping DB out on a bizarre show which tried to be like a Night At The Apollo but fronted by a very skinny, very white honky with orange hair, who looked horribly out of place among these large black soul divas and seriously cool black dudes. This version of "All The Young Dudes" is slow, not terribly anthemic, and is thus rather dull. Which is a terrible shame when you consider how good the actual song really is.

"I Spit Roses" – from Peter Murphy’s last album. Superb stuff as always. Ninth is right up there with his best records I think. It sounds so alive and so exciting.

"There Ain’t half Been Some Clever Baskets" from the delightfully clever mind of the late lamented Ian Dury. And no of course he doesn’t really sing Baskets, but I can’t use the real word for fear of falling foul of the filters. (And how’s that for a bit of f'ing alliteration?) Great lyrics as always from Dury – one of my favourite lines is about Van Gogh "He didn’t paint the Mona Lisa, That was an Italian geezer." And at one point after the line "there ain’t half been some clever baskets" he says "they probably got help from their mum" which really makes me laugh.

More another day.