We all know what Frank is singing about here – we’ve all been there. I’m not a huge fan of his music, but the whole In The Wee Small Hours album is a great listen, up there with other classics of the genre – Blood on the Tracks, Sea Change, Tunnel of Love and so on. Right so, I’ll spell it out – the break-up album.

In my mind, Frank sits in his apartment, immaculately suited, drinking whiskey, watching the smoke from his cigarette swirl, and crooning morosely after Ava Gardner. No time for ol’ Dino and Sammy tonight, Frank’s got a broken heart and only time can mend it. Time and whiskey. And cigarettes.

Although Frank wrote neither the lyrics nor the music to this, he sings it with all his heart. The backing music is very soft strings, with no percussion at all, and Sinatra’s voice is gravelly, worn, almost resigned. There’s little in the way of lyrics, but what Sinatra does say pretty much covers all bases. He’s loved, lost, and is now weary. But there is hope, you can tell that much from his voice. I like to think that he’s having just one more whiskey, one more sorrowful croon of this great song, and then he’s going out to tear up the town. Here’s the studio version of the song. Swingin’.

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While generally not a big fan of The Chemical Brothers I’m a big fan of this song of theirs, taken from the 1997 album Dig Your Own Hole and features frequent Chemical Brothers guest Beth Orton on vocalist.  I finally figured out why I’m not an avid lover of electonic dance while watching these guys play live at electric picnic a couple of years ago and it because are so loud with sounds that will rattle your teeth for hours after and lights that will threaten to rip the retina from your eye socket. Give me lo-fi electronica any day of the week.

With the ramble over, the reason I really like this song is Beth Ortons voice and the simple lyrics describing a situation that we probably can all relate to at some stage, u know the one where you wake up from a heavy night on the town and your left wondering where it all went wrong while the hands shake and you try to gather yourself. The lyrics are simply

Sunday morning I’m waking up
Can’t even focus on a coffee cup
Don’t even know who’s bed I’m in
Where do I start
Where do I begin (X2)

repeated a couple of times to an admittedly catchy and again simple, musical melody. Gradually the music volume rises when the heavy drum line kicks and the singing has ended in which is approximately halfway through the song, bringing the song to a climatic, high pitched conclusion. I won’t mention anything about the chainshaw like noise that appears on the album version of the song. Anyway here’s a live version

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A recent issue of Uncut Magazine lists the top 30 Bowie songs – apparently these magazines sell x% more copies with Lennon, Dylan or Bowie on the cover. Interesting article, but I had one problem with it: ‘Station To Station’ wasn’t voted his best song, when in actual fact it is, objectively and obviously, Bowie’s creative high watermark.

The song kicks off the Station To Station album with over a minute of…train noises. Think ‘Down In The Tube Station At Midnight’, but going on forever. Then a very Germanic thump on a piano, some guitar feedback, and a monster bass line that cuts through the start of the song. These three instruments build up a fantastic riff that…keeps going. And going.

By the time Bowie starts singing, well past the 3-minute mark, you’re thinking “Hah? Oh yeah, it’s a Bowie song”. And of course, he starts with the immortal line, “The return of the thin white duke”. The lyrics make little sense to me at the start, but he appears to reference Kabbalah-related stuff (years before Madonna and Britney made it ‘cool’).

The monster riff tales off, and a driving piano line starts up, almost as if Bowie got bored of the ouija board and decided he wants to rock ‘n’ roll his paranoia away. The line, “It’s not the side effects of the cocaine/I’m thinking that it must be love” seems to sum up how things were for Dave in his mid-’70’s Los Angelese superstar period. The song has turned from alienated dirge to hip-grinding rocker, and all seems well, even though Bowie reckons that “It’s too late”.

It’s obvious that Bowie was listening to a bit of Kraftwerk, specifically Autobahn, with his references to stations, trains, and “The European Cannon”. Kraftwerk would repay the compliment, name-checking Bowie on their Trans-Europe Express album.

At 10 minutes, this is a really long tune, probably my favourite long song (although ‘Bros’ by Panda Bear is up there too). Unfortunately, I can’t find a studio version of the song on YouTube, only this performance by some bloked with an awful quiff from the ’80’s (nah, it’s Bowie). I strongly recommend you download the original song – if you ever need a song to get you geared up for a night on the town, you can’t do better than this.

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I first heard this song from Dave (the other blogger on this site) a year or so ago as I wouldn’t have listened to much of The Clash in the past although a lot of people kept recomending them to me. Dave has this fetish of creating ipod greatest hits playlists of his favourite bands. I think we were heading to the electric picnic festival last year and this song randomly came on. It was the only song that asked to play again and again on the way down. Not that I didn’t like any of the other songs, I did, but this song grabbed my attention. Big Time.

Taken as a single from the album Combat Rock, The musical sound of the song reminds me a lot of reggae while the content is really a protest song, typical from what I hear in Clash songs, about various misgivings happening in the world around the time the song was written or slightly before it. The first verse talks about the steel workers in England during the Iron Ladies rule.

‘If you can play on the fiddle
Hows about a british jig and reel?
Speaking kings english in quotation
As railhead towns feel the steel mills rust water froze
In the generation
Clear as winter ice
This is your paradise‘

Is the second verse of the song that made me sit up straight and really listen to the song. From all the protest war songs that I’ve heard, I’ve never heard any singer sing about the consequences of fatherless children left behind when soldiers go home.  Generally war songs are about the soldiers themselves and what the war is about etc so this is a refreshing take on the subject of war. The war in the song is specifically about the vietnam war but applies to war in general. Check out the lyrics

‘Ywanna join in a chorus
Of the amerasian blues?
When its christmas out in ho chi minh city
Kiddie say papa papa papa papa-san take me home
See me got photo photo
Photograph of you
Mamma mamma mamma-san
Of you and mamma mamma mamma-san
Lemme tell ya bout your blood bamboo kid.
It aint coca-cola its rice.‘

The vision of America and Immigration are the subjects of the third and fourth verses respectively. While they are also good, but as stated above, its the second verse that got me hooked. There is a youtube video of the song here .  Never has a song really credited the tag as a classic more so than this song.

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The melody for this song, when Skip sings “…all over the wooooorld”, is so moving. This is a melody that Ocean Colour Scene would kill for. Apparently, Skip Spence went a bit “mentalist” (as Alan Partridge would say) from drugs, and attaced a bandmate (he was in Moby Grape) with an axe. After being institutionalised for a bit, he came out and recorded one album, Oar, before fading away due to mental illness and problems with the bottle. He died in 1999. Yep, the kind of guy you listen to if you also like Syd Barrett, Nick Drake, Daniel Johnson, and that type of stuff. ‘Outsider Art’, I think they call it.

As for Oar, the album, well ‘Little Hands’ is the only song that ever really caught me. But what a tune. Spence plays all the instruments himself, which is to say he plays drums, bass and guitar, while also providing vocals.

His voice sounds a bit broken and defeated, but that’s the point, right? The song shuffles along, carried by the brilliant melody. I don’t really know much about Spence, but this has long been a favourite of mine. Give it a listen.

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Very difficult to categorise Beck and his music as his albums vary greatly. Personally I prefer his acoustic, folky background as opposed to the more experimental , electronic offerings which is why the only time I saw Beck play live was while he was performing a solo tour in support of the Sea Change album in the Ambassador theatre in Dublin. Actually one of the highlights for me that night was a cover of the Justin Timberlake song Cry me a River which was unexpected and really good. I’m not sure he intended to play the song at all as prior to that he was slagging pop singers. The gig itself was probably one of the best unplugged gigs I’ve ever seen.

Taken from his latest album Modern Guilt with The Dust Brothers as producers. This a song that was available for streaming free earlier this year promoting the album and to me sees a return to the music that entices me to him again. The song starts off slowly with Beck singing in down tempo mellow voice. I actually thought origionally this song was about air pollution as he mentions ‘skies as fog‘ and ‘climbing a hole in the sky’ considering the environmentalism is such a big issue these days. The song gradually takes off after about 30 seconds with the introduction of pounding drums that raises the tempo of the song for about a minute before sticking in neutral as the drums take a siesta before awakeing for the remainder of the song. It’s really the sequencing and meldody of the drums that get me on this song. I haven’t had a chance to get the album yet but if this song is anything to go by then I’m in for a treat. For those of you unaware of chemtrails hypothesis you check out this article and here a link to the video

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The full title is ‘King Tubby Meets The Rockers Uptown’ (I think), and it’s probably the pinnacle of ‘dub’, which evolved out of reggae in the ’60’s and early ’70’s. Basically, dub messes about with the vocals of a song, sometimes leaving in just snatches of words, and pushes bass to the front. Often, sound effects are thrown into the mix.

There’s no better example of this than ‘King Tubby Meets…’. Taken from the album of the same name, this song helped to bring dub reggae to the mainstream. The last time I was in London, I visited Brixton, and heard this song played in the stalls on no less than three occasions.

The drums are scattery, as if they’re trying to settle into the song. The guitars clang on the off-beat, with heavy echo. Pablo’s use of the melodica (probably the first use of this obscure instrument in popular music) is phased in and out. It all combines to give a really smoky, improvised feeling to proceedings. The only words in the song are “Baby, I…”, “I love you so” and “and I…”. These half-phrases are scattered throughout the song, as if someone messed up the vocal tape.

This is the kind of song that could be on constant rotation in an Amsterdam (cough) cafe (/cough) and you’d get no complaints. But you definitely don’t need to consume any of Jamaica’s finest to appreciate the chilled-out vibe of this classic.

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One of the more popular tracks by The Dandy Warhols and taken from the fourth Dandy Warhol album ‘Welcome to the Monkey House‘. I always thought that this band doesn’t get the attention they deserve apart from the time ‘Bohemian Like You” was a single, that song was flogged to death across the airwaves. With song titles like Not if you were the last junkie on Earth, Hard on for Jesus, The Dandy Warhols Love Almost Everyone etc, they’re bound to be eclectic and intriguing even if it doesn’t interest you.

The title pretty much gives it away unless there is some hidden meaning that I’m not getting, An acknowledgement that he used to be friends with someone but they have since went their separate ways and he is completely comfortable with that as can be seen in the first verse:

‘A long time ago
We used to be friends
But I haven’t thought of you lately at all
If ever again
A greeting I send to you
Short and sweet to the soul I intend ‘

The second verse seems that the singer is contemplating the possible reasons as to why their friendship has deterioated in the first. Seems like the reasons are pretty petty and that the friendship was already gone at that stage.

‘It’s something I said
Or someone I know
Or you called me up
Maybe I wasn’t home
Now everybody needs some time
And everybody knows
The rest of it’s fine
And everybody knows.‘

The chorus is very catchy with a couple of people sharing haromonies while the music composition is tapped up a notch from the verses. It’s like the whole song is basically We’re not friends anymore and I don’t care. If your interested in listening to this song then check out a youtube video for it here . Another interesting titbit is the use of Synthesisers which I haven’t heard in other Dandy Warhol songs but then again I haven’t heard many of their albums. Apparently this is the theme tune to a tv show called Veronica Mars, the show itself better bloody do this song justice !

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A good friend of mine loves this song. We’ve got a running joke whenever he’s near my iPod, in that he’s only got seven or eight songs that he’ll play, and ‘White Man…’ always gets a dusting off. He’s got a point – it’s a great song, probably the Clash’s finest moment. If you haven’t heard this before, and thought of the Clash as just another punk band, set your ears to, well, slightly surprised.

The ‘One, two, ah-one-two-three-four’ intro, followed by fairly loud guitars, might have you reaching for the volume control, but it then settles into a reggae-ish beat with one of the best basslines ever. And it’s well-known that I enjoy a good bassline. Well, this is easily in the top 5 all-time great basslines.

Joe Strummer starts giving out about going to see a ‘roots rock’ band, and finding that they have nothing of relevance to say to an audience that has “many black ears here to listen”. The next target is the British Army, and a bit of a whinge about how the government doesn’t care about young people, be they white or black.

Finally, Strummer belittles the ‘new wave’ groups that have followed in the Clash’s wake, with a sneer at Joy Division and their ‘overcoats’, and the Jam and their ‘Burton suits’. The story ends up with a white guy (presumably Strummer) in the middle of a riot and pleading with the angry mob that he’s just there as a cultural tourist.

At least that’s what I always got from the lyrics. Better explanations here, maybe. I always thought that Joe Strummer was a bit of a whinger, but at least he was always passionate. I saw The Future Is Unwritten a while back, and he comes across as very socially-conscious but also personally distant. Anyway, good documentary.

What really gets me with this song is the music. Mick Jones and Paul Simonon harmonise backing vocals, the bass needs no more eulogising, the chopped chords give it a cool reggae feel, and Topper’s drumming is magnificent as always.

Here’s the studio version, but for some reason the bass is a bit muted. If you can get this, do so, and listen to on headphones. The bass really is something else.

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Doing something different today as its a special day – Dave,the other blogger on this site, celebrates his birthday today. I’m not going to divulge his age, let’s just say he’s still a stunted adolesent. So in honour of this occasion and the fact that he’s currently travelling in South America, I’ve decided to dedicate a song to him. Taken from the godfather of Bossa Nova ( a newer form of Samba) Jao Gilberto, this song was origionally recorded in 1958 and considered the first song from that style. A song that was created by another famous musician from Brazil Antonio Carlos Jobim but made famous by Gilberto.

Dave is due to be in Brazil sometime this week, well after he’s finished eating steak, drinking wine and terrorising girls in Buenos Aires that is so I think its appropiate. You can find a video of the song here so enjoy !

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAVE

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