Tagged: 30daysofsongs

When Storkboy and I were very young we had corkscrew curls and looked like identical miniature Leo Sayers in matching dungarees - novelty children by any measure (and well used to stares). The curls disappeared by our fourth birthday because, according to our mother anyway, we stopped eating vegetables. The rest of our childhoods and teenage years were spent in an open revolt against the identity-crushing tyranny of matching outfits. Now that we're 30 and don't give a fiddler's about such things, our outfits have not only begun to match again, but look like the sort of shit we wore [...]

• Orbital - You Lot

Last fm is great, but it doesn't seem to get used that much anymore. I'm worried that it's slowly getting slurped into the chute that leads to the shitheap where bebo and other banjaxed sites rot. For the purpose of this post, I used last fm to check out what I was listening to during the later stages of May 2009. It appears that, album-wise, John Cale's 'Paris 1919' was squaring up to the Thermals' 'Now we can see' in a fight for my affections. This is no surprise, because John [...]

Back in '84 everything was this colour. We lived in the glow of a nuclear sunset from Chernobyl I have a very deep, primal memory of a trapezoid of evening sunlight moving slowly across the kitchen wall of my house, the smell of rashers, and this song playing on a radio somewhere. "That great Cathedral space which was childhood" ~ Virginia Woolf

I can imagine how I might listen to a song for solace if I felt guilty, but I cannot for the life of me imagine how a song itself could make me feel guilty. No dice, but what the heck here's as fucking class no-guilt, humdinger of a song as I can rustle up!

Considering that I can't play anything - I sort of wish I could play, well, anything. Indeed, down the years I've considered the skills, or smaller body parts, such as baby toes, that I'd swap to just have the ability to hold a note, tune a guitar, beat a paint-can to a rhythm, or even manage to synchronise my wibbly fruit-picking dance to the beat at a techno set. Way back when, like most introverted teens into music, I used to fantasize about being great on guitar. I had a lucid dream about actually being Johnny [...]

I have rudimentary guitar skills. My voice is half Kells town councillor/ half magpie. I'm just not that dude. The dude with the instrument and sex appeal. Although, I can just about manage one thing. Thank you ringo starr and your shitty singing ability. You gifted me this magical Paul McCartney nursery rhyme that I can just about pull off - even the chords. ALTOGETHER NOW: "In the town/ where I was born/ lived a man/ who sailed to sea. When I get carried away at Karaoke, I sometimes spout out "full steam ahead [...]

Ween are a band for chronic stoners right? I think that's why most of their wacked out jokes go over my head. A few years ago, I missed a Kings of Leon gig (yah, yah, I know, I liked them ok?) to check out Ween in the Ambassador. I came to the gig after an epic struggle with their back catalogue. I mean, months of marijuana-free days and nights had been spent trying to parse what the deal was with these dudes. I finally resolved myself to the fact that I would never 'get' Ween unless I smoked prodigious quantities [...]

I watched this yoke on Sky 1 once, about how many English people who popped their clogs are getting 'Candle in the Wind' or Robbie William's 'Angels' played at their funerals. Now, I know it is off-colour to joke about the dead, but that shit is fucking rotten. Cringe dot com. To have something so melodramatic piped through the P.A. at your own funeral is a definite sign that you were living in la la land and attaching a celeb-inflected significance to your own passing (one out of six billion, remember yeah?) which will only annoy overworked priests and undertakers. [...]

My sister, who is getting married in October, decided she wants Bruce Springsteen's 'Jersey Girl' as the first dance at her wedding. She picked it out of an A4 sheet of paper that had about ten options and has since learned to love the song on her iPod. Hmmm. I dunno. If I got married it would not be in a church. There probably would not be a lot of people there. Indeed, it would be under a tree, so people would not fit. A tree that sheds blossoms or brightly coloured leaves. And the music played [...]

Good - now we are in familiar territory. I am a weepy man, and when I am sad I listen to sad music to remind me that I am not the only sad person in the world. There are two pieces of music that I would turn to for solace if I was in absolute ribbons. Both are from movie soundtracks. One is Danny Elfman's theme to 'Edward Scissorhands' the other is John Barry's theme to 'Midnight Cowboy'. He looks so much like troubled nearly-man snooker player jimmy white. Both broke my heart [...]

Anger music: this is an entire genre of music I don't understand. I don't think I've ever consciously listened to a song while angry, and I would never turn to my iPod if I felt peed off. I was at Oxegen last year with a bunch of friends who managed to whip themselves into a frenzy of uncontained anger when Rage Against the Machine were playing. "It's RAGE Darragh" they told me, with froth bubbling out of the side of their mouths. "RAGE. THE FUCKING RAGE". I was very far back in the crowd, tired, and [...]

It's all feckin' and Mumford and Sons these days. The radio sucks. If I was in control, this would get an airing on all stations at least once a day. People would be happier about life in general as a result, I think :) MP3: Dinosaur Jr- Freak Scene

• Dinosaur Jr - Freak Scene (old)

I'm not a big radio dude, but I like to tune into oldies from time to time. Stuff like Larry Gogan's golden hour. This is a song that always tickles me when I hear it on an oldie show or whatever - and it's on the radio a lot. Wow! Who is it about, Mick Jagger or Warren Beatty? In fairness, why give a fuck now. It's just a class song about a preening man who thought he was to cool for Carly Simon's love. Loser.

Are the Offspring the Tory Party of American west coast punks? After the song below, they had a hit with a song called 'why don't you go out and get a job?'. That could possibly be the most hectoring, stuffy slogan to ever be barked over a three chord punk thrasher. What disenfranchised American teen is going to whap out his skateboard and cut a few halfpipes while listening to a fortysomething millionaire asking him "why don't you go out and get a job?" on the headphones? When I went to the Gaeltacht in Gaoith Dobhair back [...]

'Where you'll find me now', by Neutral Milk Hotel "But I've let you down/ and swollen and small is where you'll find me now" This one comes so, so close: 'Gold Soundz' by Pavement "so drunk in the Autumn sun/ and you're the kind of girl I like/ because you're empty and I'm empty too" And to prove I'm not a self-loathing trainwreck, hot on Gold Soundz's heels is Love and their song 'Alone again or' "Yeah, I heard a funny thing/ Somebody said [...]

• where you'll find me now » 06 Where You'll Find Me Now.mp3

This is the point where I say "boo/hiss" to the plonker who invented the meme. There is no such thing as a guilty pleasure. Just pleasures. If you like Girls Aloud, you like them because their music is fantastic. The same goes for ABBA, Erasure, Backstreet Boys, Duran Duran, etc etc etc etc. 'Guilty Pleasure' is such an assumptive concept. Anyway, seeing as I am sticking to this brief, I will post a song. It's not a pop or indie song. It is a song I hear day in and day out in my current professional [...]

This is tricky cos I have a reputation with friends as a fella who will listen to absolutely anything. Nevertheless, I have about two curveballs in my repertoire. This is one of them.

The overriding soundtrack to the strange alternate reality-bubble we find ourselves in at music festivals tends to be a dull, thunderous thud about a half a mile off. If you mix this noise with ridonculous amounts of alcohol, the smell of hotdog onions on your fingers, the sound of zany campsite chatter, and the hyper-clear/ hyper-profound patter of rain against the sheeting of your tent (made interesting by drug spidey sense), then you are coming close to mapping the strange alchemy that causes music festivals to live on in your memory in the same way that past Christmases do. [...]

Do you know the type of visual demonstration that you sometimes see by trendy TV lecturers such as Prof. Brian Cox where they try to demonstrate vast differences in outer space by scaling them down using everyday objects? Like when Cox demonstrates the distance between planet pluto and the sun by placing an orange representing the sun in the middle of a football pitch before driving five miles out the road with a raisin or currant that's supposed to be pluto? Well, I wish to borrow the analogy please - you see, if Guided by Voices, Pavement and Neutral Milk [...]

This is a powerfully hypnosedative song. I should know, because I listen to a lot of this sort of shit, you see, *snorkle* ugh yeah I am very well placed to write about songs you can fall asl....*snurp* asleep to....*snerpederp* to because i love ambient musi................zzzzzzzzzZ ZZZZZZZZZZ [Fuck off crows - fuck off!!! Why is it always crows? Why can't I have the Joan from Mad Men/paddling pool dream again? No not the beaks, please, please not the beaks. Leave me alone!] MP3: Taylor Deupree- Northerm It [...]

• Northerm » 02 Northern.mp3