Tag Archives: The Pogues

These singalong songs will be our scriptures

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21. Stay Positive – The Hold Steady

So this is halfway, the 21st record of the 42. Except it’s not really. It’s actually an excuse for me to cheat the initial remit of this blog and repurpose it slightly for the future.

Of all the things that I have chosen to do in the last three or four months this has been one of the most rewarding. Not the easiest – usually in the reading back and painful awareness of my limitations – but rewarding nonetheless. So I’m absolutely committed to finishing the list, chronicling another 21 records that have been important to me so far, but I’ve also found that there have been times that the original premise has been a constraint; there have been things I’ve wanted to write about that just didn’t fit. Or could only fit via an arduous process of shoe horning. I could start a different blog I guess but it seems a shame to waste any accumulated goodwill and traffic (limited though it may be) in starting something again.

So here’s the broadening of the remit. For a while I’d been playing around with the idea of 42 as an important milestone number with half an eye (not an entirely serious eye I’ll grant you) on Douglas Adams’ answer to the life, the universe, and everything in The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. I’m not about to claim anything as grandiose as genuinely illuminating the question as to what it’s all about here but I think there is something in that sentiment for me personally – some of the moments captured here have touched on the things that are fundamental for me. I will try to make it less wanky than that sounds.

So that was a long winded way of saying that I’m going to carry on writing this but also write about some other things too. I imagine that music will continue to figure pretty strongly.

The rest of this post is essentially given over to a number of people who’ve been kind enough to read what I’ve written so far. A few weeks ago I had canvassed opinion on songs that were important to other people with the notion of constructing an alternative 42 compiled from friends and family. Turns out I either don’t have 42 friends or I don’t have 42 friends who were prepared to offer up a song; a mix of the two I suspect. However, I did manage to pull together a list of 21 songs (a couple of people came up with more than one) which seems fitting and, ahem, convenient as this is post number 21. Here’s the records (all with links if you want to hear them):

A Rainy Night In Soho – The Pogues

Remember You’re A Womble – The Wombles

Hocus Pocus – Focus (link is to a live version even more bonkers than the studio recording)

Page One – Lemon Jelly

Best Of You – Foo Fighters

Total Eclipse Of The Heart – Bonnie Tyler

The Stairs – Inxs

Why Worry – Dire Straits

Freakscene – Dinosaur Jr (dreadful video, incredible song)

Days Go By – Keith Urban

Defying Gravity – Idina Menzel / Kristin Chenoweth

Accidently Kelly Street – Frente

Fairytale Of New York – The Pogues & Kirsty MacColl

Verdi Cries – 10,000 Maniacs

Ring Out Solstice Bells – Jethro Tull

You Do Something To Me – Paul Weller

Everything I Own – Ken Boothe

If You’re Going Through Hell – Rodney Atkins

Letter To Me – Brad Paisley

Alive – Pearl Jam

<childhood album, title forgotten> – Rolf Harris

There isn’t a neat and tidy way, thematically, to tie these songs together beyond the fact that what became apparent in hearing different people’s take on the importance of music to them, or the specificity of time and place inherent to them in some of these songs, was that songs can be a powerful anchor in people’s lives. So the headline song on this post – the mighty Hold Steady’s “Stay Positive” – was as close as I could come in wrapping up that sentiment, particularly with respect to the line about “these sing along songs will be our scriptures”. The Hold Steady have never run shy of declaring the redemptive, life affirming power of music – specifically for them rock and roll –  and its capacity to move people in extraordinary ways and this song pretty much sums up their mission statement.

It also, in its opening lines, ties up nicely one of the great things that has come out of the experience of writing many of the posts so far: I got a lot of old friends that are getting back in touch and it’s a pretty good feeling, yeah it feels pretty good. The stats will say that I’ve had something like 1200 views of this blog over the past three or four months. Pretty small beer. But I’ve worked in market research long enough to know that stats lie or, at least, never tell the whole story. I’ve also had extremely kind comments, compliments, suggestions of other songs I might like, virtual conversations about choral pieces, and shared reminiscences. The connections have made the experience far more rewarding for me.

So, that list of 21 records. There were a few new songs here for me – Brad Paisley and Rodney Atkins bringing the country (two kinds of music, y’all), Focus bringing the frankly barking mad yodeling (track reminds me a lot of Muse), and strangely I’d never heard the Jethro Tull song despite being familiar with some of their early stuff. I didn’t know the INXS track either which was a reminder for someone of a concert experience and I can imagine the song as a great opener with its steady build; plenty of time for Michael Hutchence to make his entrance. Not so much now, obviously. We’ve got songs of childhood (or some people winding me up) from The Wombles and Rolf Harris – reminders of a more innocent time. At the time of writing Harris has been charged with twelve counts of indecent assault and, depending on how the trial goes in April, may end up being expunged from the cultural record in much the same way as Gary Glitter has been. There’s Bonnie Tyler’s power ballad par excellence, an impassioned pile-driver from Foo Fighters, the sunshine pop of Frente – very hard to listen to without smiling – and the ambient electronica of Lemon Jelly. There’s Elpheba’s anthem from Wicked about realising your potential and discovering who you are (my daughter’s pick) and Keith Urban’s country rock call to live life to its full (don’t tell my wife but I actually really like this song and Urban is a remarkable guitarist). For pure romance you won’t find many finer songs than “Rainy Night In Soho” (or, indeed, the differently romantic “Fairytale Of New York”) and you won’t find many finer songs, full stop, than “Verdi Cries” – in mine and a friend’s ever shifting list of the top 5 songs ever written this was always (only half jokingly) the only ever fixed point. There are songs attached to unhappy memories from Ken Boothe and Dire Straits, and songs attached to great memories from Pearl Jam and Paul Weller.

There’s probably only one song that I might have picked for my own list, much as I like many of the selected songs. Dinosaur Jr’s “Freakscene” is one of a handful of songs from the US alt invasion of the late 80s and early 90s that I strongly associate with a club in Bristol that a group of us frequented. Happy times and one to revisit in a future post – either with that song or one of its brethren. God I love that song though.

The stories attached to all of these songs aren’t mine to tell but a sincere thank you to those who shared them and when no story was forthcoming I had fun imagining the significance of the song. A virtual group hug would be in order if that was, you know, the sort of thing I do. As it’s not I’ll leave you with the rallying “we gotta stay positive” chorus from The Hold Steady. It’s no bad way to start the year, particularly if you’ve just had a year like mine.

They’re singing deck the halls…

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20. Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) – Darlene Love

I make no apologies for the faint whiff of predictability in posting about a Christmas song four days before Christmas. I really hadn’t intended to but I’ve found it particularly hard to write about any music in the last couple of weeks and I think part of the issue has been the steady invasion of Christmas music into my auditory landscape; in shops, on the radio, and increasingly at home.

This got me thinking about all those very specific, seasonal songs and why it hadn’t occurred to me, when initially drafting the list of the 42, to include any of them. The reason is obvious, of course. I drafted the initial list in August and, more than any other type of song, these are records that I only really think about for a finite period every year and then they’re gone. But think of them I do and, every year, they’re a big part of my musical life so, on reflection, it feels remiss to not acknowledge that.

I also got to thinking about the lack of Springsteen thus far in the 42 and, post rationalising furiously, decided that I was covering a number of his key influences first – deconstructing some of the elements of his appeal before tackling the man himself. It would have been quite smart if I’d set out with a deliberate intention to do that but it’d also be completely untrue so I will just have to claim it now as a happy accident. So there’s been a post on Dylan and some bits and pieces on Motown and 60s soul records, still missing Elvis, Chuck Berry, The Animals, Van Morrison and James Brown (to name but some), but now, at least, I can add Phil Spector to the list.

Spector has been hugely influential in how popular music sounds, famously through his wall of sound production techniques; progressively layering multiple tracks and a large range of instrumentation to create a big sound. He was at the forefront of the explosion of girl groups in the 60s, writing and producing for The Crystals and The Ronettes, and was at the helm of two of the finest recordings, in my opinion, of the 20th century: The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” and Ike & Tina Turner’s “River Deep, Mountain High”. His influence covers everyone from Brian Wilson to The Jesus & Mary Chain and was an acknowledged touchstone for Springsteen, particularly with respect to the sound he created on “Born To Run”.

Spector’s career petered out through the 70s and he largely disappeared in the 80s and 90s before he was found guilty of second degree murder in 2009; he had shot actress Lana Clarkson at his home six years previously. He had always been a somewhat infamous figure – allegedly frequently pulling guns on recording artists working with him – and now his reputation will always be tarnished by the severity of that crime. Before all of that, back when he was establishing himself as a producer, Spector put out “A Christmas Gift For You”, a collection of festive songs from his stable of artists at the time. It even includes a take on “Silent Night” over which Spector himself thanks everyone for working on the record and wishes us all a merry Christmas; it’s slightly bizarre to reconcile his softly spoken tidings with the man he evidently became.

“A Christmas Gift For You”, which is pretty much brilliant throughout, also includes this: “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)”. It’s far and away my favourite festive song. I share the general appreciation for, say, “Fairytale of New York” and have a big soft spot for The Waitresses’ “Christmas Wrapping” but this is the one. Start to finish it is the work of a genius (and I don’t use that word lightly). First sixteen seconds, those big chords echoing out on the first beat of each bar, tambourine (sleigh bells ?) counting out the tempo, strings shimmering in the background, bass climbing up a scale, before the drums accelerate us into the vocals and that first burst of “Christmas !”. That, right there, is the entire experience of the expectation and anticipation of the run up to Christmas climaxing with the day itself wrapped up in sixteen seconds. Darlene Love hasn’t even opened her mouth yet.

When she does she absolutely lets loose and belts out the song. No frills, just a show stopping display of raw singing power. It’s a vocal that could level buildings. It’s testament to Love that she invests some fairly straightforward lyrics – girl misses boy at Christmas, wants him to come home – with real feeling. There’s a desperate longing in her performance which culminates in the pleading “please please please” section towards the song’s close; it’s terrific hairs standing up on the back of your neck stuff. Spector, of course, was something of a specialist in evoking that sense of yearning – “Be My Baby” later elevating it to stratospheric heights.

Christmas for me has taken on a series of rituals over the years; whether it’s decorating the tree, watching “Elf”, putting out a carrot for Rudolph on Christmas Eve (and whatever booze we have in for Santa, this year will be port), and visiting family and friends. This song is part of that fabric and, as such, carries lots of happy associations. It always makes me smile.

Halfway through writing this it occurred to me that this is such a quintessentially Spector sounding record and consequently, in some respects, such a quintessentially E-Street Band sounding record, that surely Springsteen must have covered it. Especially given that he’s always had no qualms about goofing around with a fun Christmas song when the time of year is right.

Sure enough here it is. It works well (not as perfectly as Darlene Love’s peerless take – there have been tons of covers of this record but none of them get close to the original) and I feel vindicated in my notion of deconstructing his influences ! If only I’d kept quiet it could have looked like a brilliant pre-conceived plan.

So, Merry Christmas, and if you want to make a case for why, for example, I should have gone with Wham!’s “Last Christmas” or Lennon’s “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” – also produced by Spector funnily enough – then let me know in the comments. Would love to hear which festive tune does it for you.