97. 10 Songs about Strangers

Strangers in the Night - Frank Sinatra
If I Am A Stranger - Ryan Adams
The World Is Full of Strangers - Camera Obscura
The Kindness of Strangers - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
I Saw the Stranger - Ace of Base
Goodbye Stranger - Supertramp
Strangers - Ed Harcourt
Rank Strangers To Me - Bob Dylan
Stranger to Himself - Sandy Denny
Mistaken for Strangers - The National

Well, what a magical mystery tour this blog has been, I had rather forgotten than Ace of Base existed. I think when that song came out I thought it was one of the very worst ever, but at my tender years, what did I know? A couple I'd have included if they'd received a few more votes were Madonna's Beautiful Stranger, Michael Jackson's Stranger in Moscow and Dina Carroll's Don't Be a Stranger - all in their way, horrible songs.
In any case, these are generally extremely serviceable songs - if you heard Ray Stubbs singing Strangers in the Night on Celebrity Fame Academy, you'll never hear the Frank Sinatra song the same way again. When I thought of songs involving strangers, I immediately thought of Van Morrison at the end of Astral Songs mumbling "I ain't nothing but a stranger in this world, I got a home on high, so far away, way up in heaven, in another place, in another time etc etc." What a mental!" But then again, I could have gone down the line of being a stranger in this world with songs like 'I Just Wasn't Made For These Times'. But I suppose I've been quite literal, cos I don't want to babble on about how really we're strangers to ourselves and to each other and no one really knows each other and blahblahblah...
I hate the phrase "Hello Stranger!" because the people that usually say it to you are people you hardly know trying to be overly friendly or familiar. Not that people say it to me often. I think the last time was in 1997. And maybe that was just someone on Neighbours.
But anyway, strangers become friends, friends become strangers. I'll do 10 Songs about Friends next, i suppose.

For ten years I was dreaming
you were drowning; so you tell me.
But I swear the river's not mine
as you should know, I'm non-swimming.
It's been so long but you've noticed
my hair thinning and eyes glazing.

If I'm doing you a favour
I'd say we're strange as strangers.
If I tell you that it feels right
it's cruelty that befriends us.
You're at such pains to be earnest -
I embraced the age of fakers.

[NB I note, a couple of years after writing this post, that it's one that people often enter the blog with. If this is is your first look here, feel free to look at other stuff in the blog, general musings on popular music, a lot of it more entertaining (I hope) than this one]

96. 10 Mathematical Songs

Mathematics - Mos Def
The Magic Number - De La Soul
The Calculation - Regina Spektor
Black Math - The White Stripes
Mathletics - Foals
Music is Math - Boards of Canada
Mathematics - Cherry Ghost
One Plus One is One - Badly Drawn Boy
I Believe in Symmetry - Bright Eyes
When I Argue I See Shapes - Idlewild

To begin with, a 1965 quote from Bob Dylan
"Well, you know my songs are all mathematical songs. You know what that means so I'm not going to have to go into that specifically here. It happens to be a protest song ... and it borders on the mathematical ... It's sort of a North Mexican thing, uh, very protesty. Very very protesty. And, uh, one of the protestiest things I ever protested against in my protest years."

So many wonderful things in that, but the main thing is that there are plenty of mathematical songs. All songs are mathematical, some more obviously so than others.
I suppose mathematical can often mean formulaic and formulaic is seen as a bad thing, but it depends what the formula is - The Motown Formula was just fine, the Westlife Formula less so.

I have a funny, unfulfilled relationship with Mathematics. As people know, i'm pretty obsessed with numbers and statistics and was pretty capable with the basics of mathematics when I was younger, but I let it go before I believe it got interesting and turned into the real thing.
I tend to feel those that really pursue their mathematics are much closer to knowing what's really going on than the rest of us, so I rather regret that I began to find it boring and unworthwhile. I was wrong.
And once you let it go, it's one of those things you definitely won't get back. Even if I wanted to reengage with something I did well when i was younger, if it was Latin, French, History say, that would be possible to some extent, with Maths that opportunity has gone for ever. We get worse and worse at Maths the older we get, and, for me, it's not just a case of not remembering trigonometry and calculus, it's the basic stuff which you find yourself struggling with, which is incredibly annoying.
There are times now where I, like many people, find myself haunted by numbers and puzzles. I suspect a lot of people have this worse than me.
Furthermore, in attempting to establish truths about life, sport, culture, politics, the worth of anything, I do think there are algorithms that exist that reveal everything, and i feel like my capacity for numbers ought to put me, in a good position here, but these days my maths feels imprecise and speculative, to the extent to which I can't really prove a lot of things I know to be true. The other side to this is that people who aren't numerical often dismiss the use of statistics in argument (lies, lies, statistics etc - hate that shit). Dare I say one of the areas where this is enormously vexing is sports punditry, where so few experts who get paid for their opinions have any grasp on even the basic numbers. A recent example of this was Alan Shearer talking about Jon-Dahl Tomasson after he'd missed a couple of first-half chances. Shearer said "Jon was with me at Newcastle and he wasn't prolific then and you can tell from these missed chances he's not a prolific type of striker" Ok, Al, have you checked his record? 52 goals in 112 international games. Prolific. This man gets paid to talk about this stuff, it's unacceptable.
And, less sportily, maths and people not understanding numbers properly impacts on loads of things, like my continuing blood-thinning treatment requires an INR (thinness) level kept between 2 and 3 (with 1 as the norm) but it varies so needs to be checked and dosage changed from time to time, and whenever my dosage needs to be changed, they always get it wrong, obviously wrong, so my blood often sinks below the level it should be, which results in unneccessarily regular checks, and if i was just left to look after my own dosage (which really i suppose i should do, and sometimes do, but whatever), i'd keep it just right. It's not medicine, its maths. Everywhere.
But the thing is some people just aren't numerical and have intelligence which lies in other areas. And there's only so much you can do about that. Of all the things I was terrible at teaching when I was terrible at teaching, I was most terrible at teaching Maths - I had no clue how to even explain how and why 2 + 2 = 4 to children who couldn't simply grasp that that was true. It was utterly tortuous, both for me and, no doubt, for my intended victims.

I wish I could have made this more of a mathematical song. It does start off like that. Anyway, there's not much in it which hasn't been dealt with above.

THE TRIANGLE GAME
I sang my sums when I was younger for golden stars and cold Mars Bars
built unending towers of number with bold mastery of old dark arts.
Then I played a game of trains which never reached their destinations -
the game plagued deep sleepless migraines with bleak answer-free calculations.

Every week i'd build a maze and set my sore self at its centre
then lose the plans within two days until no human soul would enter.
I'm building simple shapes and trainlines but never can complete the angle,
collecting wires to connect cables impossible to ever untangle.

95. 10 Songs about Glamour

Faded Glamour - Animals That Swim
Vogue - Madonna
The Model - Kraftwerk
Glamour Girl - Chicks on Speed
Fashion - David Bowie
She's In Fashion - Suede
Glamorous Indie Rock'n'Roll - The Killers
Glamorous - Fergie
Modern Girls and Old Fashion Men - The Strokes and Regina Spektor
I'm Too Sexy - Right Said Fred

An uneven group of songs ... but how about I'm Too Sexy - funnily enough it's very evocative for me - it reminds me of a fun holiday in the summer of 1991. It really is the most ridiculous song ever. In this week's Guardian Magazine, Richard Fairbrass went on a blind date with Peter Tatchell. You couldn't make it up.
The song which this post is all about is Faded Glamour by Animals That Swim, one of my favourites. It's 90s indie, it's the kind of music everyone likes, and if you haven't heard it yet, do so now, you'll like it.
Apart from that, what can I say about glamour? If you know me, ponder for a moment how far down the list of adjectives to accurately describe me "glamorous" would come. Somewhere just behind "immortal" and "Asian" basically.
I don't really have much time for glamour and fashion, that's as true now as ever, but I do like the idea of faded glamour (a stupid art-school idea) and I am sometimes impressed when people have really made an effort and actually look like they're from films.
But is glamour in itself seductive, surely it's just the beauty contained within glamour, which would be there anyway ... no, i think I'm wrong as I'm writing this, I can perfectly see how glamour is seductive, though not really to me, except in the idea of creating a funny pastiche of glamour. Anyway, I'm rambling. I'm on safer ground when talking about sport.

[NB I note, a couple of years after writing this post, that it's one that people enter the blog with. If this is is your first look here, feel free to look at other stuff in the blog, general musings at popular music, and some of it less gloomy and self-important! Thanks]

So, I wrote this somewhat based on the song Faded Glamour, and I think it's pretty funny, though I confess at the moment i'm finding pretty much everything I say and think funny, which is disturbing.

GLAMOUR AND WARMTH

I was never king of any city that you've heard of,
it was autumn when i realised that I hadn't packed the suncream.
I'm as ready as I can to be a modern alcoholic,
if I let you see my veins you'll know the future's not worth writing

All that I am missing is glamour
and a way out
All I feel is warmth when I know
how this might play out.


I wish I could play music for a different class of city boy
but nothing is forever, I see cigarettes are twice the price
I wish i could be king for a different class of city folk,
you said I was a prophet but, really, there's enough of those

All I've got to offer you is confirmation of your taste,
That nice chap in the flatcap was in a film a few years back.
No one knows the contests I am losing every second -
I put stickers on their backs and yet they go home unassaulted.

It was autumn that I realised that I'd skipped the golden summers
in a vain attempt to find at least 15 songs 'bout Leonard Cohen.
Children of the city can go one or two of three ways,
I'm so sick of people saying I've a good life and it suits me.

I got lost on Longacre with a bottle of red I borrowed
from a book about Bob Dylan. I was twenty - far too early
to be a modern alcoholic, now I think I'm getting closer.
I'm still basking in that warmth and it keeps my bloodlines flowing.

94. 10 Songs about Football

Ok, so I decided to do this one anyway, for reasons I'll explain below. These weren't to be football songs, but proper songs by proper bands on a football theme. They're not brilliant, but they're a decent bunch. James Corden is not here.

Leeds United - Luke Haines
Belfast Boy - Don Fardon
God's Footballer - Billy Bragg
Theme From Sparta FC 2 - The Fall
Flowers and Football Tops - Glasvegas
The Joyful Kilmarnock Blues - The Proclaimers
Don't Come Home Too Soon - Del Amitri
All I Want for Christmas is a Dukla Prague Away Kit - Half Man Half Biscuit
Munich Air Disaster 1958 - Morrissey
My Life in England - Dexys Midnight Runners

I said they're a decent bunch - the Morrissey song is fucking appalling . For a supposedly great lyricist, he has written some of the worst lyrics I've ever heard. Anyway, I suppose the Del Amitri song is, in a way, an actual football song, though it doesn't sound like one. Not all actual football songs are awful, and, of course, many football chants are magnificent. I have a huge soft spot for Chas and Dave's series of Tottenham songs as well, obviously. I think they were my favourite songs as I was growing up.
Anyway, I think it only right to do a list about football at this time - what is more important than football right now? I'm a little worried about football, though. I wonder if it'll go the way of rugby. Rugby very quickly fucked itself up after professionalism because the players got too big and too fit for the pitch, and the hits are too hard, and they keep on changing the rules to try to sort things out but end up making it worse, and i think it's in a fairly parlous state as a spectacle. Football, a much purer and less physical game, has survived very well many things, but will it survive Sepp Blatter? International football is rarely a patch on club football in anything except passion, spectators etc. The actual football at the World Cup is light years behind Champions League, i think ...
But today was a good day. Chile had some lush players. However, how many lush players aren't at the World Cup? As you'll see below, one central conceit occupied my thoughts at great length (and, bearing in mind the thread running through this whole blog, how could I resist it), as it has occupied many people's thoughts for many years, but, besides that particular issue, I think there's a bit of an absence of superstars at this cup - and certainly no superstars have come up trumps yet. It's pleasingly hard to have an idea how it's all going to pan out at this stage - I'm not going to make myself a fool by predicting anything. It would be a different matter if this central conceit had come into being. The central conceit is given away by the title.

IF RYAN GIGGS HAD PLAYED FOR ENGLAND
If there's anyone who hasn't worked out yet
how we reached the state we're in,
Stare hard at the brightest star and
find the enemy within -

If Ryan Giggs had played for England
as he would, had it been thought through,
O, white light, o bold red cross, then
things would have gone just as they ought to.

If Ryan Giggs had played for England,
David Beckham would be at Preston
winding down a solid career
with meagre laurels left to rest on.

If Ryan Giggs had played for England
as no heritage should have served to inhibit
France and Spain would still long for fulfilment,
Brazil would be a mere museum exhibit.

If Ryan Giggs had played for England
Cricket'd be dead as Latin and Greek,
Golf and tennis would be parlour pastimes,
Rugby'd long have gone up the creek.

If Ryan Giggs had played for England
I'd have shamefully hidden my Celtic connection
and prayed to John Bull and Henry V
to keep me under St George's protection.

If Ryan Giggs had played for England
I'd have discarded higher education
to sell flags and drugs on Ealing Common
to follow Ryan Giggs from nation to nation.

If Ryan Giggs had played for England
the Anglican Church would be packing them in
with thankful agnostics who bet it all
on Giggs and Shearer whacking them in.

If Ryan Giggs had played for England
the Worldwide Web would never have caught.
We'd all be crowded round little TVs
watching Ryan Giggs on Question of Sport.

If Ryan Giggs had played for England
Charles and Diana would still be married.
Prince and Princess of Western England
would be the titles that they carried

If Ryan Giggs had played for England
Tony Blair would still be in Sedgefield,
one failed coup then, life reexamined,
a background whinger from the leftfield.

If Ryan Giggs had played for England
all past misdemeanours wouldn't have mattered.
Bin Laden would be sharing prawn sandwiches
with Saddam Hussein in their box at Old Trafford.

If Ryan Giggs had played for England
America would have rejoined the Empire,
Pluto would still be a proper planet,
Frodo would never have left the Shire.

If Ryan Giggs had played for England -
a notion of which i've had dreams a plenty -
If Ryan Giggs had played for England
he'd have probably burnt himself out by twenty.

93. 10 Songs about Manliness

When A Man Cries - The Divine Comedy
You Masculine You - Lambchop
No Scrubs - TLC
Whatta Man - Salt'n'Pepa and En Vogue
A Man Needs To Be Told - The Charlatans
Manhood - Dexys Midnight Runners
Wolf Among Wolves - Bonnie Prince Billie
Am I Just A Man? - Steve Mason
How Men Are - Aztec Camera
It's A Man's Man's Man's World - James Brown

Ha! Good one. I like this one. And there were loads more, like Bob Dylan The Man In Me The Crib's Man Needs, Mannish Boy. And Westlife. It makes me think of that speech in The Big Lebowski by the big Lebowski - "Do my tears surprise you? Strong men also cry, Mr Lebowski. Strong men also cry." For what is a man? What is the definition of manliness? Widely accepted as the most manly thing of all time is Zinedine Zidane's headbutt of Marco Materazzi in the 2006 World Cup Final. Zinedine Zidane is undoubtedly no scrub. Although I myself am a weak-ass emasculated gimp, and that description applies to all my friends too, I'm lucky enough to have played a bit of football and also in my job come face to face regularly with roomfuls of baying city boys, so worry not, real men still exist, testosterone is still going strong. Damn straight.
These songs are actually mainly pretty good - the Dexys one is extraordinary, it's from only a few years ago, for their reunion greatest hits. The Lambchop song is a real beauty, i think i'm coming to love that band more and more as i get older, it's definitely music for older people, older men indeed  Now, to be fair, i also did a list of 10 Songs about Womanliness, or indeed Feminity or whatever, so 2 for the price of one you lucky people, though only one poem, if that. Anyway, those songs are

Independent Women Pt 1 - Destiny's Child
Stand By Your Man - Candi Staton
Three Times A Lady - The Commodores
For Today I Am A Boy - Antony and the Johnsons
All Woman - Lisa Stansfield
Is A Woman - Lambchop
Just Like A Woman - Bob Dylan
What A Girl Wants - Christina Aguilera
Woman Like A Man - Damien Rice
She's Always A Woman - Billy Joel

An odd bunch, some beauties, some shockers, and mainly by men. I should really have included 9 to 5 and I Will Survive. I've heard it said the Bob Dylan song and the Billy Joel have a touch of misogyny to them, I don't know, maybe they do. I've always thought they're misogynistic in the way Born in the USA is triumphalist i.e. not at all, but what do I know? I confess that John Lewis ad even I found somewhat touching, but you know, i spent my 8th birthday being dragged around John Lewis, Brent Cross by my mum, so i guess I'm the target audience.
And, look, Lisa Stansfield! Amazing. No relation to Marlo Stanfield ...
Anyway, back to men and manliness ... Who else is manly?
Miguel Cotto
Howard Webb
John Prescott
Phil Brown
Idris Elba
All darts players ...
I think that's about it, really. I suppose the idea of Gerard Butler is that he's manly, but goddamn if that's manly in 2010 we're all doomed ...

He remembers all the bad days,
eerie sad smiles, how their lifestyles
seemed ill-suited, and he felt like

Sonny Liston, he'll end useless
sad and neutered, using squalor
as a fortress. Then he feels worse,

so he acts just like Dwain Chambers,
played his power wrong, lost all caution,
flexed those muscles till they tore.

This is progress; these are lifestyles
more in keeping; these are light lies
best passed over, light and useless.

Men of honour, hot and scornful
know a failure when they see one,
roll their eyes at his appeasement

and he looks like Laurence Olivier
as Othello, strange and shameful,
stained and hollow, thieved and seething.

92. 10 Songs about Parklife

Itchycoo Park - The Small Faces
Round Are Way - Oasis
Old Friends/Bookends - Simon and Garfunkel
Down At The Reservoir - The Bluetones
No Woman, No Cry - Bob Marley
Another Sunny Day - Belle and Sebastian
Heavy Metal Drummer - Wilco
Stealing Beauty - Spearmint
Summertime - Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince
Parklife - Blur

More than parks, I was going for songs about chilling out and relaxing in the summer, often with a nostalgic "aah, those were the best days" feel to them. The list actually started from trying to put together a list of 10 songs about football which weren't per se football songs, like Round Are Way, one of those great Oasis b-sides. I also realised this was a very Britpoppy song subject, i left off Alright and Staying Out For the Summer and things like that. Funnily enough, I was chatting to someone last night who was trying to put together his own definitive Britpop compilation and, for him, Parklife was the definitive Britpop song, which i suppose it was, though I never liked the song itself at all.
Who doesn't have nostalgia for days spent hanging out in parks? I look with envy at the kids with cans of cider hanging out on the swings. I didn't do enough of that, still don't. These days I'm surrounded more by commons than parks, and I spend plenty of time on them, but mainly running, rather than basking. Whichever I'm doing, I tend to wish I was doing the other. I've said this before, I'm sure, but London's huge array of greenness is, for me, its greatest feature. Everywhere you go, there is something magnificent in its own way. I do not believe another city tops it, I really don't.
I was up at the top of Centrepoint last week (hardly the Sears Tower, but still a great view) and trees, trees, a sea of trees was all you could see. I'm almost inclined to list London's 10 Best Green Bits cos, you know that's the kind of guy i am, obviously, but ... o sod it, i will. These are my favourites - personal associations, of course, come to the fore, but I'll be reasonably objective

Battersea Park
Hyde Park
Richmond Park
Clapham Common
Regent's Park
Victoria Park
Gunnersbury Park
Holland Park
Lammas Park
Clissold Park

Yay, and there are so many more, good lord, Kew Gardens. Hampstead Heath, Wandsworth Common. Green Park, Boston Manor Park - dammit, I love parks. What is not to love?

LAMMAS DAY

Raise your hands for Lammas, David, Demon Days are here again,
Let's go down to Lammas Park - the sun will never disappear.
You and me and everyone else and Happy Shopper Kola Kubes,
Raised by wolves in Lammas Park, we're right back where we belong.
Find the secret stash of conkers hidden by the tennis courts.
No one really enjoyed conkers - maybe it's better when you're drunk.
Someone bought these cans of Pimms -they'll be done in half an hour.

But I'm tired of all the drinking
I've got to keep on running
someone get me fresh legs
light and made to order
by some unexplained magic
it seems a day for smoking
but there's never one of those,
there's never one of those

The season smells of suncream
the devil's in the detail
get the stumps and bat out
the kids are getting restless
Let's put them in their hutches
you never learn from mercy
I'll be Curtley Ambrose
it's not too big a stretch

I wonder if I'll get away with graffiti on the picnic benches.
After all, you only live once; tomorrow belongs to the Queen Mother.
Maybe just one gin and tonic - heavy legs can't quite face running.
Lights are out in Lammas Park, look! there goes another year.

91. 10 Anti-Tory Songs

Tramp The Dirt Down - Elvis Costello
Stand Down Margaret - The Beat
The Lodgers - The Style Council
Thatcher Fucked the Kids - Frank Turner
Waiting for the Great Leap Forward - Billy Bragg
Maggie's Farm - The Specials
Margaret on the Guillotine - Morrissey
Blue-Skinned Beast - Madness
The Grocer's Daughter - TV Personalities
The Day That Thatcher Died - Hefner

Well, it's almost topical. As yet, I haven't heard any anti-coalition songs.
As you can see, most of them are more specifically anti-Thatcher than anti-Tory, and there seems to be a shared idea of revelling in the notion of her death. Also, nearly all these songs are from the 80s - the lack of anti-Tory songs for the last 15 years or so is understandable, and one hopes will soon be redressed.
The Specials, incidentally, adopted Dylan's Maggie's Farm, and the best song here is the Elvis Costello one
Thatcher is still the British left's main bogeyman, and we grew up hearing about her that she "destroyed the unions", "believed there was no such thing as society", "destroyed the north", "ripped apart communities" etc and these were obviously bad things. If, like many people, you had direct experience of your world being inexorably changed by Thatcher's policies, it's easier to make this hatred concrete, but as a public school west london leftie like myself, who was 12 when Thatcher resigned (i do still remember the moment i heard, incidentally, walking down the corridor past the common room, being told by a boy called Max), you can trot out the anti-Thatcher cliches, but i think you can easily end up looking exposed and silly.
My political awakening came via things like the pages of the mid-90s NME, where loads of leftie journalists still traded in fiercely honed anti-Thatcher rhetoric, and shows like Our Friends In The North, but the anger and righteous fury it gave me was vicarious, and looking back, rather phoney, albeit well-intentioned and grounded in the correct instincts.
I've read books about Thatcher and tried to get a balanced picture as well as trying to find fuel for fury, but what I'm left with is still a very unclear picture, almost a ghostly figure at the centre, which surely is the last thing one should ever think about Thatcher, but there we go.
I could never vote Tory, never will, but i don't necessarily see that as something to be proud of, or something that reflects any certainties i have. Nor can i truly say it's "tribal" (I'm not a tribal kind of chap).[I just don't like tories. They're not as nice as lefties. That's just my experience 80 to 90% of the time and always has been. It's simple.] [[Drawn back to this post as I am in April 2013, I abhor this piece of writing, this reduction of my own beliefs and stupidity of these words. Many of the people I love most in the world are a bit, or a lot, right-wing. I suppose it does represent my inherent prejudice, so it's honest, but really. I'm left-wing because I believe in a politics of compassion and fairness and welfare. I am sickened by current Conservative policy, and i'm not sickened by critical reaction to Thatcher on her death, but I think I am sickened by the slightly dim gloating. That's what we're meant to be better than, brethren. I am extremely moved by the song 'Tramp the Dirt Down' and think it is a valid statement, but there is a difference between that 1989 song about realising that you hate someone so much that you can imagine yourself celebrating their death ... and actually celebrating an 87 year old's death. Her death is bad for the left, so should not be celebrated. It is a boon to the right, and has also exposed ugliness in many people of a leftish persuasion. Don't all those folk who always imagined themselves celebrating her death feel a little like Benjamin at the end of The Graduate. Anyway, back to 2010 ...] What ought to be admirable about right-wingery is its honesty, its realism, its ability to do what needs doing in a straight, albeit nasty way. It's not the same kind if idealism that is endlessly corruptible as leftism. And yet we all know that that is the last thing one would actually associate with western conservatives of the last 40 years.
What I do remember also is that Thatcher cried self-pitying tears for herself when she left Dowing Street, and I, along with may others, felt sick, and that Gordon Brown left with warmth and grace, perhaps aware of his fuck-ups and why people wanted him out, but back, now he was out of it, to being a proper human being again.

OK, so bearing all that in mind, I wrote this almost exactly five years ago, as you'll be able to tell from its title. I suppose it has some prescience, though there is a worrying undercurrent to it where i thought i was getting more right-wing and was really troubled by terrorist bombings and my experiences trying to teach in South London, (god, there's even a shadow of Cameron's "broken Britain" in it - horrendous ... incidentally, i think a personal demonisation of Cameron and the Eton clique should be avoided, i don't think Cameron seems per se like a villain and until he acts like one, lambasting him may seem pretty cheap and weak) and thankfully, I haven't gone that way, and i don't think i see Britain pulling itself apart in the precise way i did then, i think the good will pull itself together again and separate from the bad, yes i do. This is Obama's world and Britain will have its Obama - it's not Diane Abbott but i think she's doing rather well at the moment
(by the way, there are some lines in this i really don't understand, i wrote it as stream of consciousness, i thought i'd leave it as it was as it mainly make sense, but the fourth verse, your guess is as good as mine)

A SLIGHTLY RIGHTY REACTION TO THE ELECTION NOBODY CARED ABOUT EXCEPT ME

Bus rides through Camberwell and I know a bit about race -
Car trips to Alnwick and this ain't one England
or Britain or United Kingdom or whatever.
My throat's strained from trying to shout my way out of
all these peculiar worlds, every estranged day.

I get the percentages and I get the picture -
London, this universe unto itself,
Suffocates then uplifts, uproots then cements
every stunted society they tried to disavow
and remind me why we need a strong opposition ...

And in Bamburgh, I wonder if they've a clue
and in St Andrews, I doubt they have a care
about these scarred streets and sickening stories
and I'd spit on your trickle-down effect
and you, you worm, where's your Respect now?

God, i know the numbers and i know the fractions,
I've got them in deep and they won't come out
and the answer's not magic and the chances are small
that there's hope outside value in any restrictions
and sometimes it's hard to make a joke of it all.

And sometimes I feel like I hate diversity
and think the world would be a better place
if everyone was like me, a fair bit like me
and one day I won't be reciting humanist lies
and the dreams of progress will be dust.

So I know the numbers and have seem the map,
the blue, blue map of my selfish future
and no wonder we're in the state we're in
and no wonder this country has close to shattered,
and who'd put it back together again?

It's basically a mad rant, i think using 'and' quite so much recreates the feeling of someone a bit worse for wear down the pub, just having more and more thoughts popping into his head - "and another thing" "and another thing" "and also"

90. 10 Drinking Songs

Streams of Whiskey - The Pogues
Lilac Wine - Jeff Buckley
Hymn to the Alcohol - Hefner
Drank Like A River - Whiskeytown
Crocodile Shoes - Jimmy Nail
Woozy With Cider - James Yorkston
Tequila - Terrorvision
There's No Drinking After You're Dead - Paul Weller
Fill Her Up - Gene
The Parting Glass - The Clancy Brothers

This was always going to be a topic, it's kind of amazing it's taken me this long to get round to it. There really are plenty of drinking songs. I've done well to include Jimmy Nail too. Somehow this isn't a great list of songs, but they are all suitable to the topic.
Having said all that, perhaps I took so long to do an entry about drinking because really i have nothing to say about it. People who talk about drinking are a first class bore, and people who don't talk about their drinking are likely to be a worry ...
There's an interview with Christopher Hitchens in The Guardian recently where the interviewer rather takes him to pieces and says he's nothing but a classic pub bore and alcoholic, who orders another drink by saying "Put a Xerox in that". Cool.
My favourite drinks, in case you were wondering, are

Hooper's Hooch
Blue WKD
Liebraumilsch
Gin and Lucozade
Smirnoff Ice
Egg Nog
Turbo Shandy
Hofmeister
South Comfort and Lemonade
Rum Chai

Not actually, tho i'm sure, besides eggnog, i haven't always shown them all such disdain. Just typing the words rum chai made me feel a bit queasy.
But, hark, i wrote a drinking song one day ...

I was born one spring in a bone dry county,
I was trying to escape before I could walk.
My only role model was Norm from Cheers
I made for Boston, got as far as New York.
I learnt enough to last a lifetime
and burnt bridges in a thousand bars.
A thousand more bars back in the country
gave welcome to lucky wandering stars.

I lost my heart to god know's what
on at the least three nights a weekend
and two out of three set the priest on me
to tell me how I was set for a bleak end
He'd lost good friends to what I'd got
before there was any thought of retrieving.
Good father, please have the decency
to pray for your friends while you are leaving.

I didn't belong in Nashville and I
didn't last all that long in Jonestown
My money ran out halfway to Tulsa
but i steered a path back to my hometown.
My daddy said I was just back for money
but my mother cried and helped me to deny it.
I left a week later with pockets laden
though I hadn't believed for a second he'd buy it.

It's amazing how quickly something so laden
can suddenly seem so pathetically shrunk.
The phrase that I lived by had less and less meaning
"It's always the drinking, it's never the drunk".
Like it was yesterday, homewards again,
dry as I's born, on that late spring day.
My mother would only say one thing to me
"It's gotten so green since you went away."

And now for the first time, I longed to remain
in the driest county in all of the states
but the message was clear to my sobered brain.
What once wouldn't let go of me now had no place.
I've always kept moving but never before
has my heart been so heavy at time of my going,
no choice for me but to find the next bar
where work can be found and where whisky is flowing.

89. 10 Songs about Possibility

All Possibilities - Badly Drawn Boy
The Impossible Dream - Andy Williams
The Universal - Blur
Possibly, Maybe - Bjork
The Possibilities - Micah P Hinson
Something Changed - Pulp
Worlds of Possibility -The Pastels
You Give A Little Love - Bugsy Malone soundtrack
Impossible Germany - Wilco
One Of These Things First - Nick Drake


The song from Bugsy Malone is the one that begins "We could have been anything that we wanted to be ..." in case you were wondering where that fits in.
i don't know why I'm doing this post now, I just suddenly thought I really ought to. I'm getting increasing numbers of pangs of nostalgia, and for me nostalgia in its true sense is directly linked to the extinguishing of the possibilities of the past. Today I was just walking home and i saw a battered old Golf with a sticker on it which said "This car has security etching" and I thought about how long it is since that would have meant anything to anybody, like any bit of new-fangled technology that comes and goes and means nothing.
It's all very well talking about parallel lives, parallel universes, but does anybody think they actually exist? I'd have thought not. For me, it's not about regret, or thinking "ooh, that life would have been better", it's about considering the time when something that no longer exists as a possibility had potential importance. As the lifespan of the human race carries on, how sad it is that the number of things with potential importance, both personally and politically, will become fewer and fewer.
I'm looking at this the wrong way round, aren't I? I should be looking at the idea that anything could happen, it could happen to you, it really really really could happen, impossible is nothing, if you get one shot to seize everything you ever wanted in one moment, would you capture it or would you let it slip, but, what can i say, all that means nothing to me.
If anything is possible (which it isn't really) then equally everything will become impossible.
When almost anything can act as a lump-in-the throat sickener, that is not a good state to be in. I feel myself getting more sentimental, but am still just about resistant to most things that try too hard to manipulate that feeling. What I'm saying is that I still don't go weak at the knees when I hear 'Memory' from Cats. '
But nothing gets to me like 'The Sound of Music' ...
I haven't written a poem, i only have a thought about the saddest thing i ever saw ...

When I watch The Sound of Music and see our childhood in it,
I see those billion potentials erased
and there will not be so many again
and eventually there'll be no possibilities left.

Bummer, eh?

If you ask me nicely, I'll deconstruct that thought for you. But basically, it's lederhosen. Lederhosen set me off.

88. 10 Songs about Doctors and Hospital

Danny Callahan - Conor Oberst
Switching Off - Elbow
Nothing Compares 2 U - Sinead O'Connor
Down at the Doctors - Dr Feelgood
Dr Feelgood - Aretha Franklin
Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors - Editors
St James Infirmary Blues - White Stripes
Wires - Athlete
Sick Bed of Cuchulainn - The Pogues
I Don't Want to Die (in the Hospital) - Conor Oberst

There's one particular stinker on this list, but I suppose that depends to some extent on how you view people smoking outside hospitals. Editors think a deep and powerful line is "The saddest thing that I ever saw was smokers outside the hospital doors" whilewhen i see people smoking outside the hospital I see something rather joyful about it. Worth bearing in mind that Editors are a band so bad they apologise for how bad they are during their gigs.
Hospitals aren't great, they're not great places to be, they're always the wrong colour and things either happen too slowly or too fast. I think I'd spent about two hours of my life in a hospital before the age 27 (well apart from the first few hours of my life) and now I've probably made about 200 odd separate trips since for various reasons. I wouldn't want to work there. It freaks me out that so many people i knew growing up wanted to become doctors and then went through with it and became doctors. Why do people put themselves through it? It's just a mindset I don't have, and i'm not entirely without compassion for my fellow man. Most doctors are excellent but always give you the impression they need to stop talking to you as quickly as possible. When one actually slows down and gives you an unexpected bit of time, even if it's just 30 seconds, it is a rare gift they possess and give. Like JD from Scrubs. Bloody good doctor, JD from Scrubs.
Imagine if you went to the doctor and he actually told you "Boy, you better try to have fun no matter what you do." He'd be a fool.

Here be a storm cloud of spitting impatience,
mechanical aides and marvellous devices
as likely to be the mute victims of racist
abuses as sweet-natured Malaysian nurses
reduced to the role of hectoring harpy
by stubborn, frustrated, bed-ridden nasties
who once were warriors, or at least worthies
as likely to stand without fear in a crisis
as now lose control of any/all functions.

Here be the Gods, all clean-shaved and sleeveless
remembering a name for the quarter hour needed,
straight words employed to back up firm smiles -
disarm then attack all remaining hostiles -,
and peace descends, hard won, briefly and barely
till the next shift steel themselves for new curses
on curtains that close at the wrong time entirely
and orderlies that bring you a meal you didn't order,
on the country of birth of the physiotherapist
who's doing the reverse of what the nice doctor told her.

87. 10 Songs about California

In California - Joanna Newsom
California - Rufus Wainwright
California Girls - Beach Boys
Lithuania - Dan Bern
California Soul - Marlena Shaw
California - Joni Mitchell
California Dreamin' - Mamas and the Papas
California Love - Dr Dre ft 2Pac
California Stars - Billy Bragg and Wilco
California Uber Alles - The Dead Kennedys

Some of these folk are from California, but I think more of them aren't. I haven't been to California, I expect I will some day soon. I was made for sunny days.
There are a huge number of songs about California. California is a very easy word to fit into a verse. A lot of the songs about California are magnificent. Listen to the Joanna Newsom song (which has triggered this post). You may not get into it. If you do get into, it will stop your heart several times, over and over again. At the moment, I would consider it the best song on the best album of all time. I hadn't been a massive fan of Joanna Newsom before this year. She's from California.
There's a seaside village in Norfolk called California, with shut-down arcades and boarded up cafes. I went there and it was raining. It's on the East Coast. Doesn't work.
I haven't been to California, but i know it's as far west as you can go, 10000 miles from Lithuania, and until I've had it proved otherwise I'm prepared to believe that the people there wouldn't kill me for no reason.
OK, I can pretend this is about California even though it doesn't have California in its words. Thankfully it's about nothing, but it does contain my second use of the phrase 'lament for the death of the left' for those eager blog spotters. That phrase still lags a long way behind Ryan Giggs in the 101 songs wordle though.
I've almost finished this 101 songs marathon, but what happens to people like me when they get near the end of a marathon is they kind of give up and crawl apologetically across the line, so having done the stopping for a wee, stretching the legs, dropping into a shop for banana and cursing one's own inadequacies bit, I'll probably totter rather disappointingly to the finish from now. Till next time, when i'll nail it.

Look west, young man, beyond the whimpering smokestacks
and squint a second less than you may need to.
High speed's coming, high time fast toward you spinning,
bringing new rules no fool would e'er agree to.
Go long, young man, read notes on bigger pictures,
Ignore that misanthropic instincts tell you
Sincerity's a tool for worlds of conmen
touching your sleeve to steal back what they sell you.

Be epic, be ten thousand miles by airplane,
'cross deserts, mountains, valleys, winking neon.
A harp will soothe those first few nights of sunburn,
Wrap yourself in magic, disregard doctrine.
Laments of the left's death are easy writing -
there's only one extreme that you can be on.

86. 10 Songs About Longing

A Short Weekend Begins With Longing - The Leisure Society
Without You - Nilsson
Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want - The Smiths
I Want You - Elvis Costello
Unsatisfied - The Replacements
The Wanting Comes In Waves - The Decemberists
Wichita Lineman - Glen Campbell
Still I Long For Your Kiss - Lucinda Williams
Unchained Melody - The Righteous Brothers
Take This Longing - Leonard Cohen

Before we get down to business, did you know that Unchained Melody was originally the theme song to a 50s movie called Unchained? - which makes sense, when you think about it.

I choose this topic as an excuse to write a little bit about Nick Cave's lecture called 'The Secret Life of the Love Song', which I bought on CD about 10 years ago, and which has been inordinately influential on my thinking about songs, particularly love songs. It's a brilliant piece - I listened to it again recently and it still rang so true. Who, after all, is more qualified to talk about the nature of the love song than the man who wrote the immortal lines ""I'll stay here till Billy-Dilly comes in, til time comes to pass and furthermore I'll fuck Billy-Dilly in his motherfucking ass" said Stagger Lee "I'm a bad motherfucker don't you know, and I'll crawl over 50 good pussies just to get to one fat boy's asshole."" Aah, Cave, Cave, Cave.
But seriously folks, what Cave introduced me to, in his clever, slightly unhinged, way, was the idea of Duende in art, and even more pertinently, the Portuguese word Saudade, which he claimed was at the heart of all great love songs.
When in doubt, go to wikipedia - to spare you the trouble, the second paragraph of Saudade's entry in Wikipedia reads
Saudade has been described as "a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist ... a turning towards the past or towards the future." A stronger form of saudade may be felt towards people and things whose whereabouts are unknown, such as a lost lover or a family member who has gone missing. It may also be interpreted as a deep longing or yearning for something which does not exist or is unattainable.
Well, if that ain't just the human condition right there.

Now, as I write, I know that Cave talked about what I'm just about to write about, but I can't remember the full extent to which I extrapolated to form my own theory based on his words - that the managing of this Saudade, this hole at the centre of us, defines what kind of people we are. We all have it but we don't all know it - not knowing it may lead us down many paths, religions, lifestyles, relationships, triumphs and disasters, knowing it may do the same, but may more likely lead to attempts to contain and even harness it. I do remember even developing an image in my head that this saudade was like a balloon which you could never pop but you could push and shape as you needed it. I wonder if i even pushed the somewhat folksy image to the extent of wondering if some very smart people even did eventually learn how to untie the knot and slowly let the air out. Perhaps. I honestly can't recall.
So, I think it's true, all great love songs, maybe all great works of art, have longing at their heart, maybe sometimes more in the sense of making the audience long for something within the piece, whether in terms of desire, nostalgia, talent ... whatever.
I suppose longing, lacking, wanting is seen as a necessarily bad thing, but if it is just what is, unavoidably, then perhaps people should stop seeing it like that. For, really, what would we be without it?
(I intended the question to be rhetorical, but then it strikes me the answer might be Simon Cowell)
Anyway, this is called

THE LONGING

Words fail
The beating of the heart
The child in the womb
You think I'm going soft
Words fail me
Every time I speak
I can't account for that
Or ever speak away
the longing
Words fail
The sudden flush of grief
The instant sight of death
You think I've lost the will
to back my own beliefs
but what do I dare say
when all that I can feel's
this longing.
And words fail
the love i've thrown away
and how it couldn't have gone
any other way
Words fail
The wilting of ideals
Coming home to roost
And longing's all I have
it's all I'd never lose
for any stylised speech
for any frozen love
Words fail
the poets of the age
whoever they might be -
Oh, let's not kid ourselves
I won't kid myself
when all that I've got
is borrowed
barring brief respite
from ever-thriving longing.

85. 10 Songs about the Coppers

Hey there, schmucks, i thought i'd ease my way back into this here blog thing, which has taken such a long winter break i can't really remember what the point is or whether any of it is good or bad. I'd got it onto my head that it was all bad but i just reread some of it and you know, it was ok. Especially the lists of songs. Those are the best bits. Obviously.

Caught By The Fuzz - Supergrass
Police and Thieves - Junior Murvin
Get Myself Arrested - Gomez
Stay Too Long - Plan B
Fuck tha Police -NWA
I Fought The Law - The Clash
Highway Patrolman - Bruce Springsteen
99 Problems - Jay-Z
I Shot the Sheriff - Bob Marley
Cop Killer - Body Count

Now, being an unnervingly law-abiding fellow, my encounters with the filth have been sickenly few. I see plenty of them about South London but I'm afraid I'm one of those people who walks past police and gives them a smug look as if to say "you're not interested in me, are you, you can take one look at me and know that i'm not the kind of person you need to bother ..." What's worse is not that i don't look like i commit crimes but that i really have hardly ever done anything illegal even to the pettiest, pettiest degree.
And i don't really have an opinion on the police in general - i acknowledge that something with such immediate power over people's lives is going to be more corrupt than anything else, that there's going be any number of nasty scumbags in it, petty tormentors, institutionalised psychos etc but i also think it's obvious it's a great and noble profession we should all give thanks for every day. I'm not the kind of person that says or thinks things like "go catch some real criminals".
I experienced the police at close quarters a couple of times a) when my flat was broken into, when they were quick, competent, pleasant, amused at what a tip my room was in ("Did the thief do this, sir?" "No officer, i'm afraid this is the state the room was in anyway." "You might want to do something about that, sir") but ultimately useless and b) when i was on a jury for a robbery and there were various cops as witnesses and you realise what a drag it must be for them to be treated like corrupt criminals by defence lawyers desperately seeking to establish an element of doubt in the jury's mind. "When did you write those notes up, Sergeant? I put it to you that you wrote them up fifteen minutes later than you said you did and therefore your account cannot be used as accurate evidence ... etc")
But, like most people, mainly i've seen police on TV, which they are never off. Police shows make up so many of the great TV shows, it's unreal. Obviously The Wire is the best one, but there really are so many others it's not worth listing. I will mention Our Friends in the North, though, which wasn't a police drama as such, but it's expose of corruption in the Met in the 60s and 70s was one of the most eye-opening things I ever saw.
So, the songs, the songs, a fair bit of reggae and hip-hop, where trouble with the law is standard fare, and I love the Bruce Springsteen song, which belongs to this beautiful subgenre of the lonely noble American hero, the Wichita Lineman, the Engine Driver. It begins "My name is Joe Roberts, I work for the state" such a bold and disarming lyric. Many's the time I've sat down to write something and just started with "My name is Joe Roberts". There's something brilliant about it in a way I can't really describe - it tells you the kind of song it is, the kind of person the narrator is, the world we're inhabiting, there's so much loaded in starting a song with that line.
The other two songs I just mentioned begin in the same way - "I am a lineman for the county"; "I'm an engine driver ...". I didn't begin this below like that, perhaps i should have done. It's that kind of verse.

THE COLL POLICEMAN

The Oban ferry's two miles distant,
framed by suspicious sky of blue
but I can feel the storm from the west
conspiring to wreck the summer revels -
a tear winds tired down my cheek.

I've paperwork to do this morning
six drink/drives since midsummer's,
two small crashes, one more serious.
Work needs doing on the river road
but they can't make it till next week.

Each morning I thank the good Lord
this isn't Govan or Summerisle.
I hear there's a ceilidh band on the boat
who're making waves all over Argyll -
a long night ahead, not too long, I'm afraid.

I'm moving on to Tyree in October
then I'll be back home in the new year.
Megan turns two at Halloween,
but I can't be sure I'll make it back.
Maybe you could come visit instead.

It's hard, my dear, to be without you,
so hard to keep my thoughts on home.
You can't imagine how tired i feel.
I wasn't born to be alone -
I find it so hard here on my own.

There's more young folk on the island
than I've known before, all free and fair,
dancing, lauging, unresentful
of the tepid duties I carry out -
they're not like the young folks back home.

There'll be girls on the ferry who don't mind
the wind and the rain and wild reception.
They'll fling their bodies into the storm
and joke about the licensing laws
and what they'll do to dance 'til dawn.

I wish you'd come see me less seldom -
i don't know why the city binds you.
I find it so hard alone sometimes
I forget myself on this wild isle
just to feel human, just to stay warm.

84. 10 Songs About Fathers

Papa Don't Preach - Madonna
Father and Son - Cat Stevens
Bloody Motherfucking Asshole - Martha Wainwright
Papa Was a Rolling Stone - The Temptations
My Old Man - Ian Dury & the Blockheads
Daddy's Gone - Glasvegas
Dance With My Father - Luther Vandross
Alcoholic - Starsailor
Five More Minutes - Mull Historical Society
Dinner at Eight -Rufus Wainwright

It would probably be possible to create a whole list from the laundry washed in public of the Wainwrights, but i've just included a couple, though Beauty Mark is another good one by Rufus Wainwright. Dinner at Eight is an outstanding song, definitely my favourite by Rufus Wainwright, even though it sounds like it belongs in a musical.

There are also quite a few of these in the world of extremely adult AOR, what with Vandross, Clapton's My Father's Eyes and the beast that is Mike and the Mechanics' The Living Years. Hey, nothing wrong with it if people have got something to get off their chest.

It does strike me, though this is hardly a new thought, that the role of fatherhood has declined without measure in the last few decades and that we no longer live in a patriarchal society at all.

There are various different levels to this. First of all, how many people do we know or hear about whose defining parental relationship is with their father - this applies both to people we know and the number of celebrities who go on and on about how great their mother is in interviews. I suppose it was always thus that the father was a distant figure but his clear and defined status as head and provider of the household overrode that - it goes without saying that this is not so often true anymore, but next to that and linked in to it is, i think, the passing of the idea of a paternal god. If God was a father, that fed into the idea of one's own father - now it is not hippy-thinking to view "god" as female, whichever way you look at it, mainly in the sense that we are realise our status as a race is entirely wrapped up with the Earth, and the Earth has always been personified as female. I think both subconsciously and consciously people's highest power now is an alma mater rather than a pater familias. There are various other little factors governing this as well, like the fact the monarch has been a female for nearly 60 years - all this is pretty obvious stuff, I guess. I think, as fatherhood finds its new role, what's interesting is that the modern conception of a "good" father is a father who is able to take on several of the roles traditionally given to a mother as possible. All good stuff.

This is just an outsider's view looking in, on various levels, but i guess the fact that more and more people are outsiders to what fatherhood means is indicative of the point. The whole line of thought was triggered by what I wrote below, based on one of the great fathers of all time, Agamemnon, and the seemingly inescapable idea of the sins of the father passed down from generation to generation, whereas now I feel the sins of the father can, if lucky, be very easily escapable, and one no longer needs to put oneself before the judgment of Athena ...

This one is dedicated to some of the great fathers, Agamemnon, Royal Tenenbaum, and of course, our current "Daddies' Sauce Father of the Year", John "JT" "Captain Fantastic" Terry...
It's intended to be comical, rhythmical and littered with allusions that give value to my education ...

FATHER OF THE YEAR

They say that things get better.
The future is unwritten.
There's no cycle of violence.
Sometimes things just get better.

He named his son Orestes.
Wit was his only refuge.
The son he named Orestes
took beatings in the playground.

He said he had the illness
to end all feuds and bad blood.
It wasn't consequential
if that was true or not.

For years even the furies
bowed down to his royalty,
this king through generations
destroyed all things around him.

You see, Little Orestes,
this pattern that emerges.
There's really no avoiding
the judgement of Athena.

He died one summer evening
in mystery and in torment.
Orestes did not do it
if that's what you are wondering.

Sometimes things just get better.
The furies leave the mirror.
Succession is forsaken.
A new story is written.

Orestes became Duncan.
No one is any wiser.
Duncan had a girl called Jo,
not Iphigenia.

A king has many enemies
and chance has many allies.
He paid and was not paid back
on that summer evening.

83. 10 Songs for the Free Spirits

Ruby Tuesday - The Rolling Stones
Me & Bobby McGee - Janis Joplin
I'll Fly By the Seat of My Pants - King Creosote
The Freeest Man - Tilly & the Wall
King of the Road - The Proclaimers
Liza Radley - The Jam
Wherever I Lay My Hat - Marvin Gaye
Wild and Free - Curtis Mayfield
Free Man In Paris - Joni Mitchell
Restless Farewell - Bob Dylan

Of course, none of these are a patch on the theme from The Littlest Hobo, but I've already used that at least once, and I feel it's so universally applicable, it's cheating to overuse it.
It's hard to know what to feel about free spirits, for as Cliff Huxtable said "Theo, you've got to take responsibilty for your actions" and free-spiritedness is often just selfishness, isn't it, but I don't imagine there are many people who don't do their best to avoid being trapped, and free-spiritedness is one of the most enviable states. If you can manage it without messing too many people about, you've got it made.
When I was doing room service as a gap year job, we used to sit round for about 1/2 hour when shifts had finished at 2am, and I, a callow youth, used to listen in wonder and contempt to the self-aggrandising exploits of head waiter Eddie. He did at point actually say, with no irony "I guess I'm just too much of a free spirit for this institution" which is one of my favourite quotes of all time, one I've reused at every opportunity. He was a cock. A total cock. Which is perhaps why I, rather unfairly, assume anyone who is described as, or who describes themselves as, a free spirit is 99% certainly a total cock ... deep down.
Having said that, I've been described as a free spirit myself. There are two possible responses to this 1) Yes, I am a bit of a cock 2)I'm really not a free spirit in any way, I'm entirely self-conscious, hung up and linear, and all the better for it.
Perhaps one confuses free-spirited with free-mindedness. Then again, I can't exactly pinpoint what the distinction is, but i'm sure there is one.
Still, many paeans to free spirits have been written, the most famous of them being Ruby Tuesday, and I think it's a nice figure to idealise and idolise in song.

Frankly, I have no idea what the following is about, but I do recall that many years ago, when I wrote it, I called it

For the Free Spirits

so it must be appropriate in some ways

For the Free Spirits

These strictly suburban images etched
on this loosened memorial board
serve as the last cursed of this middling class
(bracketed with the trusted and ignored).
I never quite believe another life
sweats and shimmys and sulks elsewhere,
dances on mountaintops, sleeps in gutters;
In winter, sure, we shiver, stepping out
of the shower and into the towel,
and tritely talk over the all the disorders
of which we hope we can fall foul.

All those CDs and all those shoes -
a worthless search for discounts, bargains,
unnoticed, self-serving sins of our age -
save our souls from more pointed arguing.
Maybe, at night, our impoverished minds
unite and cry to the elemental.
Til then, I prepare, praise, check fore and aft
for one vague chance of the accidental.

82. 10 Songs about Blue Skies

Blue Skies - The Longpigs
Sky Blue Sky - Wilco
Let Those Blue Skies - Gorky's Zygotic Mynci
Mr Blue Sky - ELO
Blue Sky Blues - Ryan Adams
Blue Skies - Noah and the Whale
Blue Skies - The Young Republic
Sky Blue and Black - Jackson Browne
Into the Blue - Geneva
What a Wonderful World - Louis Armstrong

Funny how, in the depths of winter, there have been more and more posts about the elements - I've had this one ready for a while, but there were some striking blue skies this week - I could look out of my window and imagine it was the height of summer, only to go outside and it was so baltic you could barely feel your fingers. It reminds me of 'Winterlight' by Clearlake, which would be here if it hadn't been in "Winter" - "I can't explain in words, at least none that I've heard, the quality of light around this time of year".
Blue skies are obviously one of the most obvious and well-used symbols of good things and good times, hence the number of good songs about blue skies - and yet blue, in a general sense, itself still means bad. But people don't say "I feel blue like the sky" - the blue of the blues is, I suppose, a darker blue. Still, it's a slight anomaly.
I like the Longpigs song - "Blue skies and children keep you off my mind" - it begins. I always thought that was a great line. The Longpigs, often described as Britpop also-rans, but a band who could probably have been massive. The singer and guitarist have both gone on to have various types of success afterwards.
There was a kid at school called Day and he had sisters called Sky and Blue. Good? I suppose so. I'm sure they turned out well.
So, hmmm, this is about falling in love with someplace where the sky is always blue, though you probably get sick of constant blue skies if you're born with it.

My heart is in your hometown
where I, for once, was young
where winter had been banished
to a wry, unenvied memory,
a lament which went unsung.

My thoughts turn to your hometown
each time my squinting eyes
regret a change of season -
a ballast and a liferaft when
I'm drowning in blue skies.

The castle tower stands tall and proud,
the sailboats crowd the spit.
Who wouldn't love your hometown?
Who could think some grey expanse
would make a better fit?

Month after month your childhood
saw not a single cloud.
Your heart pined for a new land,
for wild, uncertain feelings,
mercurial times and sounds.

I first came to your hometown
proud only of my flaws
and cold contempt for virtues
but I'd never seen virtues
as clear and fair as yours.

You hardly need to tell me
the ways I let you down
but trust that for a short while
you held me up: the short time
I found myself your town.

And now I hear you're travelling
far above the highest cloud.
I'm told that I should follow
but the thought I'd ever catch you's
more than my mind's allowed.

I'm travelling to your hometown
now for the final time
There's a chance you'll return
and if that day should ever come
you'll find your hometown mine.

81. 10 Songs About Monday

My Shadow Is A Monday - Lavender Diamond
Manic Monday - The Bangles
She Left On A Monday - Bic Runga
Monday - The Jam
Monday, Monday - The Mamas and The Papas
Monday Morning 5.19 - Rialto
Crying Like A Church On Monday - The New Radicals
Rainy Days and Mondays - The Carpenters
Monday - Wilco
Blue Monday - New Order

Sometimes I truly wonder at the banality of the subjects I pick - so now I have to write something about Monday, eh? Well, today's Monday, and generally people hate Mondays, but it's not quite as bad for me as it is for other people - in fact, it's often not that different from Saturday and Sunday. This is both a good and a bad thing.
Anyway, Monday must have enough symbolic significance to have produced all these songs, some fine songs, albeit pretty cheesy. Anyway, nothing screams of someone who bought too much music in their time than knowing a New Radicals album track. And knowing any songs by Rialto.
They're pretty much all about Monday being bad, apart from The Jam one and the Mamas and the Papas, and well, we all know they can't be trusted, the seedy fucks. I used to enjoy taking part in a pub quiz on a Monday. That was my way to make Monday fun. Getting drunk on Mondays and in the daytime are usually moments of release and triumph - it's a surprise it's not done more often.
But anyway, as you can tell, I'm struggling to elevate this ... erm, monday is named after the Moon, as in French, Lundi and most other European languages, though in Portuguese it's called Segunda Feira, as in the second market day cos let's not forget, Monday is actually the second day of the week.
But I thought what can I write about Monday, bearing in mind its all banal and meaningless and that, so I thought about the most profound and serious thing I've ever thought about Monday and that is in the last verse here.

Your last words ...

Some fine phrase from a Lambchop song
at their so-called commercial peak.
Gentle, doom-filled - wisdom, wit,
a way to add to your mystique.

Some pronouncement bold and strong
lest you should be judged as trite
"Envy alone can't be corrupted
and so, cruel world, I bid good night"

"In love alone we all endure" -
some balm for anyone who'll care.
Perhaps a song! one hummed bar
from, say, the Londonderry Air.

"La tristesse durere", or "Bugger Bognor",
self-knowledge to the very end.
"Stinks in 'ere", "farewell, sweet prince,
you've been my truest, finest friend."

Though prepared, you were not ready
and fluffed the line which was your last.
"Monday Night Football never caught on"
thus you spoke and so you passed.

80. 10 Songs About Couples

Jack & Diane - John Mellencamp
Penny & Jack - The Essex Green
Donna & Blitzen - Badly Drawn Boy
'03 Bonnie & Clyde - JZ and Beyonce
When Johnny Met June - Shelby Lynne
The Ballad of John and Yoko - The Beatles
Johnny & Mary -Robert Palmer
Scenes From An Italian Restaurant - Billy Joel
Waterloo Sunset - The Kinks
Romeo & Juliet - Dire Straits

Check me out with my cool taste in music - Dire Staits, Billy Joel, Robert Palmer and John "Cougar" Mellencamp on the same tape - we're in MOR heaven.
Couples are awesome, but only if joined by an ampersand, like Peter & Katie, and not if they are merged together, like Brangelina, Bennifer or Jedward. These over-eager attempts to merge into one will only end in wretched wrenching apart, you mark my words. You need a cool, clean ampersand.
When I go to weddings and social events everyone is in a couple pretty much - except little old me, of course, so I get to be a louche, devil-may-care dandy before crying myself to sleep at the bitter sting of eternal solitude. It's pretty cool.
I ponder and puzzle at couplings of all sorts, but tend to be pretty impressed by how people keep it together. Did you know that divorce rates are at their lowest in years? Cheering news. Apart from for bitter misanthropes like me.
Who are my favourite couples of history, I hear you asking?
Well, there can only be one
Number 1 - Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince, of course. Friends, lovers, partners in music and comedy gold, every time Jazz got thrown out of the Banks household, separated from his beloved Big Willie, you felt a schism in everything good and noble in the world
Number 2 - David Gest and Liza Minnelli
Number 3 - Saint and Greavsie
Number 4 - Frank and Pat Butcher, especially when he was wearing only a bowtie. Hepburn and Tracy? Bogart and Bacall? Do me a favour
Number 5 - Pat and Mick, as in Pat Sharp -woowoo! - and Mick Brown, superstar DJs and late 80s chart stars, kind of a British version of Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince.

So those are some great couples. I also like Lennon & McCartney and Bacharach & David and Coen & Coen and Torvill & Dean.
Here is a song about Robson & Jerome ... it's called

The Ballad of Renee and Renato

You can't account for my unearned euphoria -
my ugliest face could shoot all the stars
up to a heaven that's out of the question
to the glorious despair I'd thought was ours

Oh love, what love, who's now more expertly
scornful of joggers in hers'n'his
but look at me, finding it hard to keep up such
mournful contempt to this wonder that is

to itself and for no perceptible purpose
yet wonder, o wonder, yes, nevertheless
(Now you condemn me as inconsistent -
Are you Melanie Phillips?) - but I digress,

Oh love, no love need be so shackled
that it finds its comfort in itself only
I can't cling to your respite every second.
I've eyes, they see wonder, got happy, still lonely.

79. 10 Prayers about Song

Or the other way round

I Say A Little Prayer - Aretha Franklin
Wood Beez (Pray Like Aretha Franklin) - Scritti Politti
Down To The River To Pray - Alison Krauss
Idiot Prayer- Nick Cave
Pray - Take That
Like A Prayer - Madonna
My Lover's Prayer - Otis Redding
Praying for Time - George Michael
New Year's Prayer - Jeff Buckley
Pray - MC Hammer

Prayer seems to have produced a broader church than usual in the songlist, which is only fitting. I'm glad to have finally been able to include MC Hammer in this blog. I'd be nothing without you, Hammer.
Prayer is of great interest to me. It's one of those things you lose when you relinquish faith which you wish you didn't really have to give up, so you hold on to to it in other ways, like the five minutes peace of the cigarette, the sound of a cat purring, the quiet wish for good outcomes. This secular prayer is dealt with in a poem by our poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, who i'm not sure has made a terribly good start to her tenure - but is not to be disregarded. I came across this poem as a 17 year old, and I think, now I reread it, it has had greater effect on me than any other piece of verse not accompanied by music. That's not to profess its quality, necessarily, but just to look at it and think that it sunk deep, deep into me...
I'm loath to include poems by professional poets, as it breaks any illusion I might build up that I'm not hopelessly inept, but anyway, here it is

PRAYER
Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade I piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer -
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

We were told as teenage Christians about the four ways to pray - ACTS A Adoration C Confession T Thanksgiving S Supplication, but I imagine that 90% of prayers ever uttered have been supplication, so I used to try to discipline myself. I was told i should really do ten minutes a day, so 2 1/2 minutes on each, no overdoing the supplication. It's hard mustering 2 1/2 minutes of divine adoration every day, believe me. "God, you're great, really great, massive, awesome, honestly, i think you're great .... how long's that ... shit, only 20 seconds ... o yes, Jesus, you're great too, and the holy spirit, great, great, awesome, can I ask for stuff yet?"
So prayer is a multi-headed beast, out loud, in silence, ex tempore, palms clasped, head bowed, hands raised to heaven, swaying and crazy, desperate, calm, ordered, prescribed, freestyle - what is it? Our attempt to communicate with God, to feel God's presence, but really, as the poem above suggests, to many it's not really about God at all.
These days I never pray. Never. Not even in that romantic secular way. Not even in the five minute's peace cigarette way. I never ask for nothing from no one and nothing from fate. I never confess nothing or say sorry to the world for nothing. I never give thanks except to the appropriate authorities, and I never adore, I just think on, and witter on, and list on, and watch on, and type on. I'm not the better for it. Perhaps our tweets and our facebook updates are the prayers of today. That line was meant sardonically.
Prayer is all about God, after all, isn't it? Carol Ann Duffy and my vague sense of a secular prayer is an unearned cry into the abyss. You give up God, you give up the right to a prayer. That's only fair, isn't it ...

I used to pray my idiot prayers
with empty hopes for lost civilizations
I used to believe my idiot wishes
would not be lost to aimless ages

I used to wash my sins away
seldom, but with feasome intent
I envied the wild, mercurial virtue
of the Baptist out in the desert

I used to pray my soul to keep
itself clear from pride and ambition
That soul I've now for so long lost
would grant I've managed that with honour

I used to think I could be heard if
I could stay silent long enough
and though there was no answer back
still i'd pray to be less alone

78. 10 Songs About the End

The End - The Doors
It's Not The End of the World? - Super Furry Animals
Talkin' World War III Blues - Bob Dylan
It's the End of the World As We Know It - REM
End of the World News (Dose Me Up) - Tom McRae
The Temptation of Adam - Josh Ritter
End of the World - Susan Motherfuckin' Boyle
End of the World - Ash
Doomsday - Elvis Perkins
We're All Going to Die - Malcolm Middleton

Although we've come to the end of the road, still I can't let go, it's unnatural, you belong to me, I belong to you.
Damn, i love that shit, but having Boyle and the Boyz on the same tape would just be toooo good.
Talking of tapes, i just threw out all my compilation tapes, just like that, my beautiful compilation tapes, lovingly constructed, labelled, titled, my proudest achievements, i just threw them out. Cos I'm moving, I'm at the end of the tenure (which is why i've done this post now) and I've decided to throw out everything of real emotional value to me (ie my tapes and my cds) and keep all the inconsequential shit which'll clog up my tiny new flat. Superfly!
By THE END, I don't mean any old end, I do mean THE end, beautiful friend, not just the death of one, but the end of all, woohoo, which might appear to occupy my thoughts, but actually doesn't in the slightest. Well, i suppose it must do a bit, but whenever you tell people that there are strong arguments that this has a significant chance of being the final century for mankind, for a variety of possible reasons, you get treated like a mad monk recruiting for a millenarian death cult. Which I'm not. I don't know much about science etc but i read some books and ... well, anyway, who cares?
But look - people say, every generation has its paranoia about some great cataclysm, in the 60s it was nuclear, it was the bomb etc and it didn't happen, did it? But just cos it didn't happen, doesn't mean it couldn't, and the possible ends now just multiply exponentially. One might suppose that things right themselves, self-regulation will prevent the ultimate disaster, but why would the earth's own self-regulation pay particular heed to humans. That's James Lovelock's idea, isn't it. vaguely, in brief.
Anyway, ironically, this isn't about the end of the world, or about death, or disaster, it's actually just about how it's very hard to know what's going on, we can't always be accountable for our omissions, cos we can't even tell what's going on in our best friend's head sometimes. You dig?
You may recognise the title, borrowed from a book within a book

THE WORLD WAS / SILENT WHEN WE DIED

The world was silent - all the bombs had faded
and I died quietly, as I'd always wanted
The fireworks had been unimpressive, and I
walked home alone as the crowds shouted dry
then, in silence, chose my last memories.
The world was silent, you say, when you died
Looking elsewhere, at its shoes, shamefaced
Too busy flitting through its own little tiffs
While you screamed in rage and pain
Disbelieving that no one was listening
And when you died, I, I was silent
Because sometimes my nothing's not enough
And grief and horror need meeting in kind
But i could muster no words when you died
Just dodged through crowds, deathly, dull,
Innocent or ignorant, both or neither.
The fireworks fire, the choirs sing,
There's beauty in places, why deny?
And the world groans, and I'm dancing
with my friends, and we're laughing
And I walk home alone and free to go
And I fall silent and you fall silent
And there's silence as the world dies.

so i can see how it might appear to be about the end of the world but honestly, it's not, not entirely ...