Song 87: Impossible

Tim Burgess’s twitter listening parties are one of the few highlights of this situation, in case you’re missing them. Simply, the idea is for everyone to listen to an album at the same time (8, 9 or 10 pm usually)  and he and one or more of its participants tweet about it. Often the choices have been right up my street (Midlake, SFA, Blur, B and S, British Sea Power etc) and it is really wonderful to see, in unadorned form, a creator’s love and enthusiasm for their own work, not to mention the shared enthusiasm of fans. eg last night I felt unembarrassed to tweet Tim Smith, formerly of Midlake, who only has a few hundred twitter followers, that I think Van Occupanther is one of the greatest albums of all time, and that is, I think, a nice thing.

Burgess, has, reasonably enough, included a couple of Charlatans albums.

I always liked the Charlatans a lot, without ever quite falling in love with them for any given length of time. I saw them once – third on the bill at Fleadh behind Counting Crows and Bob Dylan. I recall, they were, for me, the most unambiguously enjoyable hour of the day.

They’re a bit of a third-on-the-bill band, aren’t they? 3^rd on the bill at Knebworth, 3^rd on the bill in the bands of their generation, behind the Stone Roses and Happy Mondays. Truthfully, I prefer them to those other two more storied acts.

Their run of singles from the early 90s to the early 2000s is really very good indeed – Just Lookin, Just When You’re Thinking Things Over, North Country Boy, Forever – this, my favourite, Impossible.

Songs that amble along tunefully  …that is a bit of an unfair generalisation of course – some, like Forever, do anything but amble … maybe that’s the point … they seem like an ambling band. A bit like bands like Teenage Fanclub, it can be hard to know where the “genius” comes from. That’s no bad thing. I used to love Charlatans interviews – they combined great pleasantness with clear and unvarnished tales of great hedonism – it was an odd juxtaposition.

It has not, of course, been an easy, ambling career for them. Two of their founder members have died in extremely sad circumstances. And yet, however these stories sometimes go, rock’n’roll immortality evades then.

It strikes me they are the Tony Cottee of English rock’n’roll – spanning three different eras, much better and more successful than they are believe to be – Cottee has scored more goals in top flight English football in the last 50 years than anyone except Ian Rush and Alan Shearer. The Charlatans have had thee Number 1 albums, 11 Top 20 singles.

Anyway, give the listening parties a try if you haven’t already. They’ll cheer you up. As will listening to The Charlatans, I reckon.