98. 10 Songs about Friends

See My Friends - The Kinks
Old Friends/Bookends - Simon and Garfunkel
All My Friends - LCD Soundsystem
We Are Your Friends - Justice vs Simian
Good Friends Are Hard to Find - Ed Harcourt
Thick As Thieves - The Jam
I See a Darkness - Bonnie "Prince" Billie
You've Got a Friend - Carole King
Thank You Friends - Big Star
We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful - Morrissey

I said this one would be the next one last time, though I wish I hadn't. Though the songs are excellent, with particular recommendation for the third and fourth - and special mention for gallant runners-up like the theme tune to 'Golden Girls' and those two friendy songs by Queen - the idea of writing about something worthwhile about friends beyond that seems more ridiculous than most.
In particular as the phrase that has been stuck in my head for the last month is "musical statues", so i felt dutybound to shoehorn musical statues into a post about friends, which hasn't been easy.
Anyway, I haven't written something about friends so much as the dirty word that is nostalgia - I'm nostalgic for a time when people used to, in all seriousness, ask each other question like Who's your favourite out of 'Friends' and Which one of 'Friends' do you think you're most like? I'm like a combination of Gunther and Tom Selleck, people would say, and we'd laugh, how we'd laugh.
I think our age-group, specifically, is slightly lucky to have made our friends before the internet redefined what friends were. I'm all for having hundreds of friends I've never met or if i have met them I'd cross the street to avoid, but it's just a little different from the old days, isn't it, when one solitary person to call a friend was hard-earned gold dust.
Having said that, my friends are a bunch of bitches who've all secluded themselves in their mansions with big plants and little babies, so don't have time to do fun, youthful things like putting firecrackers in postboxes anymore, so maybe it's time I used the internet to find a new brigade of cool kids to hang out with.
Anyway, this is called
MUSICAL STATUES (ha!)

I miss the summers of tarmac and gold dust -
I knew I'd miss them before they began
when friends hid in corners and never unravelled.

We made a pact not to talk about blackboards,
Bravestarr and shit and whatever else
people pretend makes them kindred spirits.

But something has given, ticked over, repeated
and i'm right back playing at musical statues,
now cracking and crumbling when the song ends.

I miss your blacklists of dull words and concepts
but i'm too tired now not to swallow whole those
mist-covered mountains ands smoky top decks.

I swear I've kept my half of the bargain
'cos i heard us talking - I think it was us - about
how hard it is making friends after thirty.

I miss the summers of vomit and chocolate
though I'm almost sure I was boring and awful,
so just let me control these shrinking circles.