394. Hyper-Ballad by Bjork 1995

I saw Bjork at the Melbourne Sports and Entertainment Centre on March 12 1996. It was right up there with the best concerts I'd ever seen. And although her albums were full of beats and lots of club atmosphere she replaced strings with an accordion (the band was also very simple) and just let the songs and her fantastic voice do their work. I was glued to the stage. My mind didn't wander once. Those songs on Debut sounded better plus she had the new songs from Post which had just come out.  It was also the only night I've ever taken a pair of binoculars to a gig. And they were good ones so they brought me up real close. Unfortunately I've never taken to another gig. Maybe they made me too conspicuous. Oh and I was on the side so I came away with a bit of a sore neck. But while the music played and Bjork just glowed I didn't notice.
And of all her songs this is the one that gets to me every time. It's the lyrics with their details and the singer at the top of a cliff looking down at the waves. While her lover sleeps. It's almost a companion piece to Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights" in the atmosphere it creates. This was one of my Walkman classics. Press the play button and it sound tracked the everyday things people were doing and made them something a little more special. It takes you some place else. Nothing better than that.

393. The Rat by The Walkmen 2004

If you're going to get angry in a song this is the way to do it. It reminds me of Positively Fourth Street by Dylan in a lot of ways but this one just rocks like a locomotive. And it still stands up 8 years later. I don't need to be angry to listen to it, mind you. It works on it's own level as a great driving song. Although with songs like this I do tend to drive a little faster. It would have been a good song to play at the Lizard Lounge but when this came out we were really in the last days. Although we had closed two years earlier the owners of the hotel were half heartedly trying to resurrect the place. I was just came in for a  few hours at the start of the night and played stuff that was easy to dance to. I thought I was keeping my hand in but it wasn't fun. One night I got dizzy and fainted. Never went back after that. And the times I've DJed since then can be counted on my fingers. If it's not fun best to get out. Playing in a band again and regularly as been great though. I'm loving it. Tonight we rocked at the Great Britain in Richmond. We were tight. People danced. Compliments were thrown our way. Brilliant.
But of course I digress. The Rat by The Walkmen. A New York classic.

392. God Only Knows by The Beach Boys 1966

From the amazing "Pet Sounds" which just seems to get better every year. Though I must say the copy I have now is a thousand times better than my old vinyl that I picked up from Burwood K-Mart. It was a re-packaged album. Released on a budget label like Music For Pleasure. Didn't even have the title so I had it for years before I realized I actually had the Pet Sounds album. Even the liner notes by Molly Meldrum of all people don't mention what I'm listening to. A classic album.
When I bought the album I was just looking for some surf music to round off my education of music. I'd been reading the Story of Pop magazines and got to the part where they mentioned Brian Wilson's little symphonies to God. I'd always deplored songs like Surfin' USA. Tinny Chuck Berry rip offs. So I couldn't work out why John Cale could write an ode to Brian Wilson on his Guts album. Or why Paul McCartney talked up the Beach Boys. Then I heard Pet Sounds. And mostly I heard this song. An amazingly beautiful song. It just takes you somewhere else for that 3 minutes it plays. I'm not going to get all sentimental here but it's also very emotional. It even put a lump in my throat in the closing credits of Love Actually.  Enough said. As love songs go this is the big one. And even if you forget it's a love song just listen to those sounds. Amazing.

391. New York Mining Disaster by The Bee Gees 1967

Because this was the week that Robin Gibb died. And he sings the opening verse of this fabulous song by The Bee Gees. And because it was the first song of theirs that I thought was incredibly brilliant. Even though I was still at Primary School at the time. The first time I heard it I was in the top bunk in my bedroom at Beaumont Hostel in Sydney. Lucky I didn't fall off it was so good. I leaned over the side to turn up the sound on my little transistor radio. Despite the tinniness of the speakers in those early days our ears could turn the sound they were hearing into something quite powerful and magical. I became quite obsessed by the song. At the time there was this major disaster in Aberfan in Wales where a whole school was destroyed by a coal disaster. Later I found out this was the inspiration for the song. I'd read about it in the English papers. Each week I'd buy a bundle of two month old UK paopers to keep myself in touch. My step father's parents also used to send me the Manchester Evening Gazette each week so I could keep up with the doings of Manchester United. I guess I was desperately trying to hang on to being English.

Later on my brother bought the best of the Bee Gees. He would play it continously on the portable record player he kept between our beds. Those early Bee Gees songs soundtracked the late sixties for me. So it was really hard when they had all that success in the 70s with Saturday Night Fever. And Bee Gees became the enemy of what punk stood for. I remember going to a 21st and almost being physically sick because all they played was Saturday Night Fever. And when you said you liked the Bee Gees you had to point out which era you were refering to. And so we buried those Bee Gees records for a long time. 

But really it was all good. 

390. Chill Out Tent by The Hold Steady 2006

This is from the album Boys And Girls in America. Craig Finn writes these great tales of life in America with thumping choruses and what sounds like the best bar room band in the world making a healthy racket behind him. Actually it takes me back to the first bunch of bands I use to see around Melbourne before punk rock exploded in 1977 and they kinda became old hat. Or those records by Brinsley Schwartz in 1975. or even early Springsteen. Especially when the piano comes tinkling in.  Or someone else takes over the lead vocals for a line of the song. And the lines of the song that keep tumbling out. This guy is like some modern Jack Kerouac.
Whatever the ingredients it's like reading a short story that you never get sick of. And even though the characters go through a bad time meets good time it makes we wonder why I never went to a festival in all these years. I've played a couple but then we drove in and left a few hours later. And that was the Sunny Sedgewick festival run by our friend Ayesha. Up in the hills outside Bendigo. which was fun. But never overnight. Actually I think I've only stayed in a tent 4 times in my life. In the back yard of a friend's house when I was 11. In Army cadets when I accidentally shot a hole in the tent with my 303 rifle. I was 13 and they let us carry guns to bed. It was a blank but still could blow a hole through thick tarp. Only in the 70s. Wilson's Prom where I was attacked by a wombat! And those things are big. Yeah and at the snow. Enough said on that one. I've realised I'm not big on tents.

389. Your Love Alone Is Not Enough by Manic Street Preachers 2007s

Never been a big fan of the Preachers but they do have some really good songs now and then. The best song of theirs by my reckoning is this wonderful slice of power pop from 2007. With the added attraction of Nina Persson from the Cardigans sharing the vocals the first time I heard it on the radio I almost had to pull over. The Manic Street preachers releasing a perfect 45 inch single. That's what this song reminded me of. Those 45s tucked away in boxes waiting to be played when I find room to restore my records to their rightful place in the home. might have to wait until the kids get a little older. Although I picked up an old record player and put it in my son's room and he goes mad playing all my old unwanted singles. It does mean that some rubbish was coming from his room so I had to go out and buy some copies of old eighties stuff. God knows how it will affect his taste in music.
As I was saying, not a huge fan of the preachers but there is something about them. Maybe it's the Welsh connection and my family originally coming from there. Maybe it's because just when you get sick of them they throw up another great single. i look forward to the next one.

388. Metal Firecracker by Lucinda Williams 1998

Didn't really know much about Lucinda Williams before this song came out althought a few of my friends were really into her records. I just never got to hear them. And then I bought the latest copy of Uncut magazine and played the Free CD and Metal Firecracker was on it and it was just such a good song I kept coming back to it. Uncut, a bit earlier, had this CD on it which was a compilation of newish country songs and I was really liking what I heard. So I kinda went through a bit of a country stage. Just on the side mind you. And it was lead by the fact I was enamoured by Lucinda Williams voice. Truly one of the great vocalists. The album it came from was great too along with all the other stuff of hers I tracked down. I even found myself writing some country lite songs.  Then again as with a lot of the songs I write, being based on simple chord structures, easily lend themselves to a country makeover.
And as for those magazine CD cover disks. I'm a subscriber to Uncut, Mojo and The Word. Each of those mags has free Cds. 36 compilations a year. They're piling up and I've never been one to throw out music. I follow up on the tracks I like but I think I'm building a mountain of sampler CDs.
Now and again they do put out a themed CD which turn out to be be ripper comps however. Sounds Of The New West was an ear opener for me. And Lucinda wasn't even on it.

387. Boy in The Bubble by Paul Simon 1986

I was over in the UK when this record came out. I was at my brother's place in Blackpool and he had himself a nice little music machine and he was playing Gracelands a lot. In my mind I remember it as being on CD but were they out then. I didn't start buying them until around 1989 so maybe they were. whatever the facts the sound on Paul Simon's album was just amazing. It was like nothing I'd heard before but at the same time was very familiar. They were playing this single on the TV regularly so it really got into my head. Right from the get go it achieves lift off with that first instrument which is either an accordion or some panting wind organ. Then it as Paul Simon's familiar honey like vocals singing about bombs in baby carriages and the wonders of life and it just burst with life. Everyone got excited about this sound. It was World music in the pop charts. Even Hugh Cornwall of the Stranglers picked it as the best album of the year.
And it's still very listenable. I downloaded the Joe Strummer "London Calling" radio shows the other day and he plays this song. I was driving down Neerim road in Carnegie and got caught at the railway crossing.  I sat there there and turned up the music and sang along to "Boy in The Bubble"

386. That's Cool, That's Trash by The Kingsmen 1964

I first heard this song not by the Kingsmen but by the Hoodoo Gurus. They were playing at the Armadale Hotel.  A gig we'd played many times before but also one of my favourite places to see bands. Upstairs, since downstairs was a cover band playing and usually a bunch of drunk suburbanites happily dancing away. This was the early eighties and the Gurus had just released Stoneage Romeos. They sounded brilliant. And they played this old Kingsmen song and to me it just stood out. I think James Baker the drummer might have sang it. Whatever,  it started me on a search to find the record. Another one that took me months to find. It even took me a few days to find out who sang it. I had to ring around all my musical mates.
There were hardly any Kingsmen albums around in the first place never mind one with this song on it. When I got the record it didn't have the same punch as the Gurus live performance but it was still a great garage version. And after seeing the Sonics the other night I'm having fun playing all this old garage rock. The sound is lo fi but they've captured magic in the grooves.

385. Who's Gonna Tell Mary? by The Moondogs 1980

Don't have a clue where I first heard this song nor where I picked up the record. Though I think it was while I was in England in early 1980. I didn't hear it on Melbourne radio that's for sure. Actually I have a few of these well loved singles which are in my record selection and I don't know where they come from. Sale bins in Indie record shops. Small articles in NME. Singles reviews. Live reviews. A combination of reading about stuff and then finding it cheap.
This song was absolutely brilliant. Couldn't stop playing it to everyone that came round. I was kind of obsessed with the Moondogs for about six months. I bought their other singles and although great 45s they didn't have the same impact. This one was almost up there with the Undertones singles. I even wrote a kind of homage to them in one of my early songs.  "After The Fire" I adapted the opening guitar refrain to my song.
I thought they disappeared after a bunch of singles but reading about the Moondogs I found they even had their own TV show.
Named after an early John Lennon group name their was for a brief moment something magical about the Moondogs. When Little Murders got up to Sydney later in the year I found a few fellow Moondogs fans. Seems they had a bit more popularity up there.