Have set myself the challenge to write a blog post a day throughout May. Probably going to regret it, but here we go.
THERE are a few habits which have developed when it comes to writing blog posts on this A-Z journey through my iPod. It adds up to the following routine.
- Listen to a load of songs on my iPod.
- List the tracks worth mentioning in the next post.
- Try to find some theme for the next post among those tracks or work out how to shoehorn them into the subject matter already worked out.
- Find loads of other things to do rather than actually write.
- Decide it is time to stop putting it off.
- Spend too much time looking through YouTube videos to drop into the post.
- Watch TV.
- Finally get round to writing – largely ignore what you worked out, head out on some tangent, realise you have overwritten and then cram in mention of the music at the end.
Managed to follow the first two of these through the latest section from track 4,701 past 4,800 (at least at the time, there’s been a few additions) and the second threw up a longer than normal list of tracks.
So rather than try to knit them together into some form of coherent narrative (or squeeze a few of them on the end of something else), let’s try something new and rattle through that list. Not every song, just the ones which somehow seemed worthy of note when drawing up that list.
Heaven, Sittin Down – Phosphorescent
We are doing some catching up here, the lack of posts in recent weeks means there has been a bit of a backlog. To the point that this was track 4,701 when listened to but has dropped to 4,724, courtesy of new arrivals on the iPod.
Phosphorescent fall firmly in the ranks of Americana acquired when staying at a friend’s with no TV, no WiFi and only his music collection to keep me entertained when getting a job after my first bout of prolonged travelling had just ended.
This is their take on an old blues standard.
Heavy Metal Drummer – Wilco
Two outings for this one from a band which took me a while, all while they were being eulogised by one major influence on this journey.
Their more muso moments still pass me by a little bit, but when they are good, they are very good. And this is one of their best.
Hell Is Around The Corner – Portishead & Tricky
This loop was pretty much everywhere for a while as Portishead started to mean more than a place where we somehow got taken for an unlikely day out near the seaside on the edge of my Dad’s patch as a rep for a builders’ merchant. Great song.
Hell Is Chrome – Wilco
Wilco sort of took over one trip to the gym with two versions of this as well. There’s a lot of bad drumming on the weight machines.
Hello, Goodbye – The Beatles
This whole journey started with A Day In The Life and opened with a wall of The Beatles in the first 100 or so songs. It would appear they wrote an awful lot of songs beginning with H as well. Three versions of this while on the treadmill in the gym.
Help Save The Youth Of America – Billy Bragg
Frequent visitor on this journey and always a very welcome one. Bragg has been a constant in my music collection for more than 30 years and this is not that far below the rarefied air of his very best.
Two versions, one from the first Bragg album in my collection and one live recording from Russia. Which is up there on that video.
Help! – The Beatles
Told you they were popping up a lot. Three times again, plus a version by The Damned which is preferable purely for ditching the exclamation mark.
Helpless – Ryan Adams with Gillian Welch
Think (can’t be sure, went through a stage of getting pretty much anything by him) this was in Adams’ post-Whiskeytown days when he was fighting a difficult reputation.
Helpless – Sugar
To go with those rules on the process of posts for this blog, a few others have emerged over the last 4,700+ songs.
One of them is pretty simple – anything off Sugar’s Copper Blue album gets a mention.
At The Drive-In come close with Relationship of Command, but it remains the choice when you want to blast away the cobwebs with some loud guitar and you don’t carry the metal gene. Not sure how a spoonful of Sugar did not damage my hearing.
Helplessness Blues – Fleet Foxes
Something a bit quieter. Twice. Another in the category of bands which are always welcome visitors, but rarely leave a major impression.
Helter Skelter – The Beatles
It’s not just The Beatles, there are also the cover versions which somehow have worked their way into my collection. Siouxsie and the Banshees and, surprise surprise, Oasis this time.
Her Majesty – The Beatles
This is getting silly.
Here Comes A City – The Go-Betweens
It’s a bit slicker, a touch more polished in the production than some of their early stuff, which perhaps explains why The Go-Betweens’ second coming got sort of shunted aside in my mind towards Radio 2 territory.
Right up to the point when another listen reveals something missed along the way. It’s not in the same league as the wonderful Cattle & Cane, but better than first thought.
And Robert Forster’s new solo stuff well worth a listen.
Here Comes A Regular – The Replacements
A bit of research (or timewasting) on YouTube reveals this was used to soundtrack the death of a character on One Tree Hill played by Sheryl Lee. So maybe The Replacements killed Laura Palmer.
Mixing the cultural references, the school in the film Heathers (Westerberg High) was named after Replacements singer/songwriter Paul Westerberg as they were star Winona Ryder’s favourite band.
One of those great songs this A-Z journey has rediscovered.
Here Comes The Blackout – Stornoway
Pretty sure agreed to see Stornoway live without hearing anything by them – not the first and one of the great advantages of review tickets. And well worth the visit it was.
Shared fondness with a fellow traveller soundtracked a couple of mellow evenings sat on the beach in Togo watching the sun go down over the incoming oil tankers on the horizon.
Here Comes The Summer – The Undertones
Yeah, yeah… Peel loved them, Derry boys and all that. But for nine-year-old me still largely unexposed to anything beyond my parents’ music (even then was fairly sure The Band of the Royal Marines and Glenn Miller was not the way forward) and whatever was on the radio (Junior Choice?), The Undertones were just fun.
Remember loving this and then they released My Perfect Cousin – the first song I knew all the words to, still remembered in my first attempt at karaoke. Many years and quite a few pints later.
Here Comes The Sun – Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel
Oh yeah, The Beatles as well. Again. Twice.
Here Comes Your Man – Pixies
Two things popped up in recent weeks about the Pixies (one fewer than appearances by pretty much their poppiest track).
First a Facebook music group was discussing a gig at Gloucester Leisure Centre which has cropped up on YouTube and a live bootleg. Was tagged in it as someone who was there and if there is anything to promote some form of cool among younger people with any concept of good music, having seen the Pixies live is pretty much there.
Remember it being very loud. Or rather quiet, loud, quiet, very loud. Leisure centre closed as a live venue due to structural issues not long after. Wonder why.
Secondly, Doolittle came out 30 years ago last month. Was still in my teens for Christ’s sake. It’s still brilliant.
Here Today – The Chameleons
In studio was track 4,800, accompanied by a live version. Beyond that, not much too add. Think this got loaded onto my iPod in a bout of, ahem, borrowing ahead of travelling.
Here, There And Everywhere – The Beatles
Look, this is really silly now.
Here’s Where The Story Ends – The Sundays
For about five minutes, they were the future of slightly introspective, jingly indie guitar music. Best viewed through a fringe. Can’t Be Sure still on several playlists.
Heroes – David Bowie
Confession time. Was never a massive Bowie fan when younger. Certainly not compared to many.
But have sort of revisited and re-evaluated over the last few years, especially a bout of downloading focused on filling in the gaps in my knowledge most serious music fans are not supposed to have.
And you can’t really knock this, can you?
Heroin – Velvet Underground
Think this is on my iPod from the same bout of musical education. Bowie had more of an impact than his old mate Lou Reed and co.
Heroin (Live) – Echo and the Bunnymen
Somehow fitting the Bunnymen, albeit with someone else’s song, round off the first blog since the loss of Steve Tucker – a shared musical passion.
He’d have been appalled at my less than glowing reviews of Bowie and Velvet Underground though, pointing out the error of my ways over a few pints in The City Arms.
