48. 10 Ghost Songs

Is There A Ghost - Band of Horses
The Ghosts Parade - Ed Harcourt
Easter Parade - Emmy the Great
Ghosts - Laura Marling
Walking With a Ghost - Tegan and Sara
Lithuania - Dan Bern
Theologians - Wilco
Ghosts - The Jam
Haunted - Shane McGowan and Sinead O'Connor
Ghostbusters - Ray Parker Jr

This is a slightly odd one, as while Ghosts have produced lots of fine songs, I can't say they mean anything to me.
The Band of Horses song is one of those great spare rock songs where dynamics are all, and you're amazed to see in retrospect how little there is to the song, as there seems to be a lot more, (like a lot of Micah P Hinson songs). The only words the song has are "I could sleep when I lived alone. Is there a ghost in my house?" but they somehow manage to build an epic out of that.
Of course, generally, when songs refer to 'ghosts' they don't mean scary ghouls etc (Ghostbusters an honourable exception) they mean, like, you know, figuratively, and people often refer to their ghosts as being things like their regrets, guilts, past relationships, ancestors etc or someone can be a ghost if they're not the person they were. So, when I say ghosts don't really mean anything to me, I mean in both senses really. I don't believe in ghosts and I don't really have a large collection of ghosts in my head or on my back or wherever they go. I can't say I'm the most haunted of people, a good thing in a way, though equally one can't help wondering if the quantity and quality of the ghosts one acquires give the measure of how fiercely one has lived.
Many people refer to the Holy Ghost as being part of the trinity, but when we were growing up we called it the Holy Spirit, and there is a subtle distinction which meant there was a time I could embrace spirit but dismiss ghost*. Spirit is used as an almost tangible quality, esprit de corps, the human spirit, something always real, always alive, whereas ghost doesn't have that meaning, its meaning is entirely supernatural. Ghosts always seemed silly to me, quite frankly. Maybe that is the job Ghostbusters did on my generation.
*though now my attitude to both concepts is pretty much equal.
When we used to tell ghost stories as kids, mine never really were ghost stories, I was much happier in the realm of the escaped psychopath, and i used to insist that my story really had happened and i wouldn't tell anything that contravened my boundaries of physics. That's just the way some people are.
Consequently, while I very much enjoy the above work with ghosts, I struggle to come up with anything meaningful of my own.
There are a couple of extraordinary songs in the list, which I've never been able to decide if they're the greatest ever or too much. The Dan Bern song is an 11-minute speaky-singy song about Americanness and Jewishness and ancestry and the holocaust and cars and lots of things which emerges in the middle with one of the prettiest refrains I've ever heard - I've always found it very powerful, but if someone told me it was indulgent cack, i wouldn't be surprised.
Likewise, the McGowan/O'Connor song is the definition of a jolie-laid song, their two weird voices going up against each other, telling the ugly story of Sid and Nancy in a rather striking way. Again, it could well be awful, but I've always had a very soft spot for it.
Unable to come up with anything so meaningful, I struggled in my bunker and finally came up with this new form which best exemplified my light attitude to the subject form. So here it is, it's pretty mindblowing - the first two lines rhyme, the third and fourth line rhyme, then the fifth rhymes with the first two. Revolutionary, I know, but it may just catch on. I don't know what I'll call it, the Galway perhaps, the Waterford, hmm ...

I once knew a poor ghost called Fred
who'd no benefits from being undead.
He'd died young and whole,
so scared no living soul -
and a ghost can't cut off his own head.

There was once a bad murderin' hombre
who packed up the corpse in his Kombi.
Though the stench became strong
he left it too long
and his own life was stripped by the zombie.

Awful, i know, but, hey, this is a new form to me, i did my best.