Any Major Dude With Half A Heart

It has been a while since I inaugurated this series of songs about murder. In the three songs for the second instalment, we observe a musician killing in self-defence, a crime of passion, and a family making excuses for their very fucked-up son.

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Bill Brandon – Rainbow Road (1969).mp3
This deep soul track by the little known Bill Brandon used to be very rare. Thanks to the Internet, it is now accessible to a wider audience. And what an absolutely breathtaking record it is. The song apparently was written for Arthur Alexander, who has previously featured on this blog, but Alexander recorded it only in 1973. In the song, a down-on-his-luck singer is discovered and takes the fork in the road marked success, the Rainbow Road of the title. The mentor pays of his debt, clothes our friend in finery. “And then one night a man with a knife forced me to take his life,” Bill tells us. As bad luck would have it, he finds himself before an unsympathetic judge who clearly does not buy the self-defence line. So instead of his signature shining in bright lights, he is wearing a number instead of a name. But “I still dream about Rainbow Road”.

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Conway Twitty – Ain’t It Sad To Stand and Watch Love Die (1968).mp3
The killing of passion was a staple in 1960s country. Porter Wagoner based a whole, excellent album on it. One can understand what drive the narrator to murder: not only was his woman cheating on him, but he caught her in the act with his best friend. So it’s not only a sense of jealousy and possessiveness the triggers the killing, but the anger of a double betrayal. There isn’t much confrontation: the narrator shoots them “were they lied”. He records his unfaithful wife’s last words, which evidently do not elicit mercy from our friend, because having watched love die, he is not open to negotiation.  The neighbours are coming over, posing the reasonable question: “Oh my God, what have you done?” His response is unnerving; putting the gun to his head, the narrator asks repeatedly: “Neighbour, ain’t it sad to stand and watch love die?”

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Warren Zevon – Excitable Boy (1978).mp3
The great Zevon imparts a valuable lesson: if your son mistakes Sunday lunch for an occasion to rub pot roast all over his chest, don’t laugh it off. And when he bites the usherette on the leg, don’t put it down to the high japery. Because next, he’ll take little Suzie to the junior prom, then rape and killed her, and take her home. And his idiot family still thinks it’s because he’s just being “excitable”. After ten years he is released from custody at an appropriate facility, and promptly goes to Suzie’s grave, digs her up and take her bones home. And guess what the family is saying?

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More Murder Songs

The theme of unrequited love continues to provide a goldmine, and we’re not even close to even scratching the surface! It’s a universal thing, of course; most people have had a bout of unrequited love. If it was infatuation, they got over it fairly soon. If it really was love, they bear the scars forever. Or at least until they find another true love. Surveying the search engine terms that bring visitors here, there are many people looking for music to soundtrack their lovelorn existence (there are also lots of hits for the songs about impossible love, which tells you all you need to know about just how fucked up a thing romance is). Anyway, if he or she doesn’t love you back, remember to love yourself.

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Cat Stevens – Here Comes My Baby (1967).mp3
Well, it does sound like everything is well with the still beardless Cat. He’s taking a walk at midnight, which is nice. But soon we are alerted that all is, in fact, not well, for the mile he walks is not only long (as miles go), but also lonely. And he keeps “seeing this picture of you”. Which is were the songtitle comes in. But, oh no, she’s not alone: “It comes as no surprise to me, [she’s] with another guy”. And things don’t look like she’ll dump the chump any time soon: “Walking with a love, with a love that’s all so fine. Never could be mine, no matter how I try.” So is Cat entirely discouraged and looking to move on? Is he fuck! Like anybody in unrequited love, he hangs on to that thread of hope woven from the strands of a particularly thin cobweb: “I’m still waiting for your heart, because I’m sure that some day it’s gonna start.” Let’s make a bet it won’t, Cat. The loser turns Muslim.

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Warren Zevon – A Certain Girl (1980).mp3
Zevon is having a conversation about his unrequited love — and not just unrequited love, but the dreaded frienditis —coyly refusing to reveal the name (aaah!) of the “certain chick I’ve been sweet on since I met her”, which is “a long, long time” ago. He resolves that “someday I’m going to wake up and say: ‘I’ll do anything just to be your slave’”. In the interim he’ll do what most guys in unrequited love do: procrastinate, hoping that the girl will suddenly realise that actually she is in love with him. Which she won’t, not because Warren refers to her as a “chick”, but because, as she will point out, it’ll destroy the fucking friendship.

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Earth, Wind & Fire – Wait (1979).mp3
Frienditis is indeed a bastard. Here, our singer is suffering his frienditis with a heroic and surprisingly jaunty optimism, as though he is inebriated with the godfather of self-help books, The Power Of Positve Thinking. “To wait, it takes love that’s for real”, and if his love is authentic, he reasons, reciprocity is inevitable. The certainty — not just mere hope — that she will eventually fall for him sustains him. All he needs is patience, that great source of succor for the poor devils suffering from frienditis: “It’s crazy if you think we’re just friends. Loving when infatuation ends. The wait for you, baby it now begins.” He seems to pick up mixed signals — “You sigh, when I come close to your heart” — which persuade him that she shall come around (“someday you’ll grow”). Of course, these sighs might be prompted by her discomfort at his clumsy moves, perhaps because she knows how he feels, and how she feels, and that there will be one broken heart and the end of a friendship.

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Sam Cooke – Cupid (live, 1963).mp3
Ah, a Cupid who unquestioningly follows orders would be a fine thing. Alas, the best alternative, if one wishes to invoke imaginary entities, is to outline your predicament with a plea for intercession. Sam, heard here in his live performance at the Harlem Square Club, states his case to Cupid with humility and urgency: “Now, I don’t mean to bother you, but I’m in distress. There’s danger of me losin’ all of my happiness, for I love a girl who doesn’t know I exist. And this you can fix.” He knows Cupid’s methods — “draw back your bow and let your arrow go straight to my lover’s heart for me” — and makes a pretty big pledge should Cupid choose to make “a love storm” for him: “I promise I will love her until eternity”. Ah, go on then Cupid, let’s test the dude’s ambitious promise.

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Pete Yorn – A Girl Like You (2001).mp3
If you can’t get the one you want, aspire for a clone. That’s what Pete Yorn is doing on this rather good bonus track from his musicforthemorningafter album: “Some day I’ll look into her green eyes and know that she’ll come with me – a girl like you. Tomorrow I think I’ll tell you something, the thing that I haven’t said – to a girl like you.” The poor girl-like-her will, of course, be just a proxy, forever liable to be compared to Unrequited-love Girl, and possibly hear Pete moaning Unrequited-love Girl’s name in the throes of passion. And, unless Pete isn’t just throwing a strop here, he might pass on some perfectly great girls who don’t have green eyes…

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Liz Phair – Extraordinary (2003).mp3
An anthem for the outsider girl in love with a guy who she thinks has too high expectations. He might see her as average, but she thinks of herself as extraordinary. And not just ordinarily extraordinary; she’s “your ordinary, average, every day sane psycho supergoddess”. And she’ll go to extraordinary measures to get him (or at least his attention); “I drive naked through the park, and run the stop sign in the dark; stand in the street, yell out my heart…To make you love me.” I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there probably is a good reason why the guy isn’t falling for Liz.

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Mama Cass Elliott – I Can Dream, Can’t I? (1969).mp3
The story of Cass’ life in the ’60s was defined by her unrequited love for Papa Denny Doherty, with whom she started on the road to stardom in the Mugwumps. So when she sang about unrequited love (as she did with Denny on Glad To Be Unhappy) in this beautiful version of the old standard, she did so from her broken heart, the pain of which is palliated by daydreaming. She doesn’t go into the specifics of her reverie, other than “that I’m locked in the bend of your embrace”. She takes a frequent reality check as she justifies why she won’t give up on her dream: “I can see no matter how near you’ll be, you’ll never belong to me. But I can dream, can’t I?”

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Wilco – I’m The Man Who Loves You (2002).mp3
Tweedy goes all poetic on us, blathering on about unsent love letters and dropping metaphors about him apparently being like the sea. Basically your average victim of unrequited love who can’t find the right words to say. And then he nails it when he makes the most basic observation: “But if I could, you know, I would just hold your hand and you’d understand: I’m the man who loves you.” Sometimes that works better than complex literal devices.

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Indigo Girls – Ghost (1992).mp3
The spectre of a person the singer was in love with (unrequited, death; though a line in the first verse suggests that it might have been a failed adolescent relationship) lingers still, and does terrible injury. “And time passed makes it plain, of all my demon spirits I need you the most. I’m in love with your ghost.” She has sexual dreams about the person which just add to the pain: “When I wake, the things I dreamt about you last night make me blush. And you kiss me like a lover, then you sting me like a viper.” The protagonist is trapped by a love that will never find expression: “Unknowing captor, you never know how much you pierce my spirit. But I can’t touch you. Can you hear it? A cry to be free. Oh, I’m forever under lock and key as you pass through me.”

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Merle Haggard – Always Wanting You (1975).mp3
Apparently a song about Dolly Parton. As country singers do, Merle is telling Dolly, and us, exactly how he feels: “Always wanting you but never having you makes it hard to face tomorrow, ’cause I know I’ll be wanting you again. Always loving you but never touching you sometimes hurts me almost more than I can stand.” And there he had thought that he had it all together. The song could go into the post on love that can’t be, and maybe that’s where it belongs, since there seemed to have been “a yearning and a feeling across the room that you felt for me”, suggesting that Merle’s feelings were reciprocated, if not actually acted on. Of course, when a relationship isn’t possible, love remains unrequited even when the sentiments are reciprocal. Either way, Merle regrets knowing her: “I’d been better off if I’d turned away and never looked at you the second time.”

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This is the first of two Halloween mixes I’ll be posting this week. The present mix, timed to fit on standard CD-R, is supposed to comprise vaguely creepy or eerie music. The kind of stuff that might  freak out Bart, Lisa and Milhouse in their treehouse. Ghosts, spooks, witches, devils, murderers, weird people (like the coffin-building boy in Florence and the Machine’s excellent song), voodoo and so on. Marie Floating Over The Backyard apparently still scares Any Minor Dude’s friend, two years after he first heard it.

The second mix, which will go up mid-week, will be a bit more lighthearted, and even without the overcooked Monster Mash and Rocky Horror Picture Show.

TRACKLISTING
1. The Go! Team – Phantom Broadcast (2005)
2. The Never – The Witch (2006)
3. Dr John – Gris Gris Gumbo Ya Ya (1968)
4. Jim Stafford – Swamp Witch Hattie (Back Of The Black Bayou) (1973)
5. Alan Price Set – I Put A Spell On You (1966)
6. Tony Joe White – They Caught The Devil And Put Him In Jail In Eudora, Arkansas (1971)
7. Donovan – Wild Witch Lady (1973)
8. Fleetwood Mac – The Green Manalishi (With The Two Pronged Crown) (1970)
9. Eels – Marie Floating Over The Backyard (2005)
10. Violent Femmes – Country Death Song (1984)
11. Florence And The Machine – My Boy Builds Coffins (2009)
12. Godley & Creme – Under Your Thumb (1981)
13. Alan Parsons Project – Raven (1976)
14. The Box Tops – I Must Be The Devil (1969)
15. Sidney Hemphill – Devil’s Dream (ca 1942)
16. Howlin’ Wolf – Evil (Is Going On) (1954)
17. Louvin Brothers – Mary Of The Wild Moor (1956)
18. Squirrel Nut Zippers – Hell (1996)
19. Mazzy Starr – Taste Of Blood (1990)
20. Imogen Heap – Getting Scared (1998)
21. Iron Butterfly – Real Fright (1970)

DOWNLOAD (new working link)

I have a good few songs left over for a mix next Halloween. But there are two ghostly soldier songs I’ll want to add to this lot, one as an antidote to Warren Zevon’s more ubiquitous Halloween song:
Warren Zevon – Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner.mp3
Stan Ridgway – Camouflage.mp3

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More mixes

In my notebook, I have shortlists for my albums of the year for 1979 and 1980 side-by-side. The list for 1979 is shorter, but infinitely better; 1980’s list includes 24 albums, but fewer which I’m particularly enthusiastic about. While I’m deciding which albums to bump from ’79, here’s the 1980 lot, with decent albums by David Bowie, Paul Simon, Kate Bush, Motörhead, Ideal and Roxy Music not making the cut for various reasons. It’s a rather predictable list, provided one knows that I never liked ska, got into New Wave only a year later, and mostly bought singles that year. And, it seems, I never really caught up with 1980. So no Specials, no Joy Division, no Talking Heads, no Jam, no The Beat, and (you’ll be surprised) no Gaucho…It is, in fact, a year to piss off the Taste Police (with the Police) with a pick of not the best albums of the year, but those I know and still enjoy.

Dexys Midnight Runners – Searching For The Young Soul Rebel
I had never heard anything like this before. Of course, West Germany was not a hotbed of soul music, at least not the soul music which inspired Kevin Rowland and his mates. Geno might well be my favourite single of all time; it certainly was my song of 1980. The album did not quite stand up to the pop sensibilities of Geno – the brass hook, the chanting, the idiosyncratic vocals – and at times seemed downright weird. Especially Rowland’s style of singing, even when he lurched into a falsetto in the song about Leeds, lost some of the novelty over two sides (minus an instrumental). It took the release of Too-Rye-Ay two years later to rediscover Soul Rebel. And what a fine album it is, with its jubilant sounds dressing the often cynical lyrics. There should be an NGO founded which would send a copy of it to every American who has the nerve to call Dexys a “one-hit wonder”. And a copy of Too-Rye-Ay, just to remind them that one Eileen not a group define.
Dexys Midnight Runners – Tell Me When My Light Turns Green.mp3
Dexys Midnight Runners – Geno.mp3

Bruce Springsteen – The River
A good writer will know that sometimes a great paragraph, a sparkling aside or a riotous gag will need to be sacrificed to maintain the flow, the rhythm of the whole piece. It’s what makes them good writers. Recording artists, even good ones, do not always exercise such disciplined judgment. Rock history is oversupplied with double albums which were rather good, but might have been bona fide classics had the artists limited themselves to two sides of an LP. The Beatles’ White Album provided a template for excess and the problem with that excess. Which leads us to Bruce Springsteen’s 1980 offering. Cut the thing by half, and you’d have an album every bit as good as his artistic peak, Darkness At The Edge Of Town. Having said that, one of the more popular tracks on The River is Cadillac Ranch, which I wholeheartedly despise. I love the cover, on which Bruce channels Pacino and De Niro. It’s a very popular cover, as thousands of contributors to Sleeveface prove. This song, to me, defines the Springsteen sound of the era.
Bruce Springsteen – The Ties That Bind.mp3
Bruce Springsteen – The River.mp3

Warren Zevon – Stand In The Fire
Sometime in 1983 I discovered Warren Zevon. At the time, South Africa (where I has moved in 1982) had very well-stocked record libraries, where you could hire LPs for a day. Somehow the record companies didn’t like that, and by 1989 these great shops were forced to close. But when I was introduced to Warren Zevon, by my boss, I took out his entire back catalogue. Two albums stood out: Excitable Boy (naturally) and this live set. It is a rather poorly recorded live album, as these things go, but the cooking atmosphere of LA’s Roxy Club that night is steaming through the LP’s groove. The title is apt, the gig is incendiary. Zevon is often called the missing link between Randy Newman and Bruce Springsteen; Standing In The Fire proves the point.
Warren Zevon-Bo Diddley’s A Gunslinger + Bo Diddley.mp3

The Police – Zenyatta Mondatta
In 1980, the Police were still cool. Sting had not yet revealed himself to be the pretentious, tantric twat we know and hate now. He had edge, as did the other two blond chaps. I really liked the raw debut, Outlandos d’Amour, but found the follow-up patchy, besides its three big single hits. Zenyatta Mondatta (whatever that means), the final album before mega-stardom, was more cohesive than its predecessors. Where the previous two albums required the occasional song-skipping, all of the first side of Zenyatta Mondatta is quite excellent, in particular Driven To Tears. And, well, for the tune we ought to forgive the lyrics of De Do Do Do De Da Da Da. Much of my affection for this album is nostalgic: it transports me back to the day in November 1980 when my step-father and I wallpapered and painted my room. I had taken all my posters off, and threw them away. Of course, since I was a teenager, new posters would soon go up again, but that day marked a rite of passage, to the soundtrack of Zenyatta Mondatta.
The Police – Driven To Tears.mp3

ABBA – Super Trouper
By the time this was released, I had come to hate ABBA, much as I still loved the glam-pop of the mid-70s. By 1980, ABBA had grown up; I was still growing up and yet had outgrown them. I had bought Voulez-Vous, and despised the album. On the cover, our four friends looked like Mom and Dad going to the disco (and my mom and step-dad were middle-aged contemporaries of ABBA). On the sleeve of Super Trouper they were glowing at the sort of extravaganza no 14-year-old would be invited to. ABBA had entered a strange middle-age world. It was only when I had caught up with adulthood (in as far as I ever have) that I came to discover what a fine album Super Trouper is. The title track, which I had despised, is actually very lovely. The Winner Takes It All, a melancholy ballad set to a quasi-disco beat, is a high water mark in the ABBA canon, Lay All Your Love On Me is luscious and gorgeous, and Happy New Year is at once sad, bitter and hopeful. No surprises here, really. Those reside in the album tracks. If the synth-pop number Me And I sounds familiar, it does so because it would be ripped off throughout the 1980s. The Piper recalls Benny and Bjorn’s roots in northern European folk music. Andante Andante (one of those infuriating non-English titles) is a lovely ballad which, with a different title, might have been a hit. And the final track, The Way Old Friends Do, is a gloriously sentimental masterpiece. It possibly was initially conceived as a simple folk song, but here becomes an orchestral anthem, recorded live. It is a pity that the CD re-release came with three bonus tracks, because The Way Old Friends Do closes the album perfectly. Instead, it’s followed by the (admittedly very good) Gimme Gimme Gimme, the throw-away Elaine, and the absolutely awful Put On A White Sombrero, which is as bad as the title would suggest and recalls the turgid genre of the German Schlager.
Abba – The Way Old Friends Do.mp3
Abba – The Winner Takes It All.mp3
Abba – Happy New Year.mp3

Joan Armatrading – Me, Myself, I
Shortly before she passed away in October 1980, my grandmother lived with us. One day she gave me money to buy myself a new pair of trainers. Fashion be damned, I first bought myself two LPs with the unexpected moolah, and invested the remaining funds in the cheapest pair of adidas available. And I had change for some sweets still. The albums I bought were this one and Cornerstone by Styx (the one with Babe, though I bought it for Boat On The River). The latter I never played in full; Armatrading’s would get many spins over the years. The title track is excellent: great guitar riff and solo, and Armatrading in great lyrical and vocal form. All The Way From America and Turn Out The Lights are other highlights. Looking over the list it seems that I was rather too much into AOR (which beats being rather too much into S&M).
Joan Armatrading – All The Way From America.mp3
Joan Armatrading – Me Myself I.mp3

George Benson – Give Me The Night
After Zevon’s LP, this is the other album on this list which I can’t connect to 1980. I discovered it two years later. Benson has acquired an unfortunate reputation has über-smooth, glitter-jacketed soulster of 1980s lurve ballads. While elements of that are true, this image suppresses the respect the man merits for his pre-crooning days (just listen to his version of Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit). Give Me The Night, produced by Quincy Jones, finds our friend at a crossroad: part jazz guitarmeister, part proto-Vandross. Here the combination pays off: lite-funk disco numbers such as the title track and the exuberant Love X Love cohabit with fusion instrumentals such as Off Broadway (a play on his 1977 hit with the Drifters’ On Broadway) and Dinorah Dinorah, and with a couple of nice but unremarkable ballads. The highpoint is Moody’s Mood, more recently sloppily covered by Amy Winehouse. The song was based on a sax solo on James Moody’s I’m In The Mood For Love, turned into a song by King Pleasure in 1952. On his version, Benson, usually an average singer, goes all Al Jarreau on us, with the help of Patti Austin.
George Benson – Moody’s Mood.mp3

Dire Straits – Making Movies
One day I might feature Dire Straits in the Pissing Off The Thought Police series. The credibility problem with Dire Straits was threefold: firstly, when CDs became popular, all the quasi-yuppies bought Brothers In Arms, which was seen (like Coldplay today) as “music for people who hate music”; secondly, Mark Knopfler and his red headband and C&W shirt; thirdly, Dire Straits negated punk by creating 9-minute songs. Of course, only the latter element applied in 1980. I had bought the first two albums, on strength of the excellent Sultans Of Swing. Apart from that, they were fucking boring to me. Not so Making Movies. Amid a few dodgy Knopflerifications which anticipated the hateful Money For Nothing, there were four magnificent songs: Romeo And Juliet, Tunnel Of Love, Espresso Love and the title track. When this album came out, one could buy miniature sleeves of albums containing pink chewing gum shaped like an LP, grooves and everything. I remember buying two: Billy Joel’s Glasshouse (the one Billiam album of the era I have no time for), and Making Movies. When I listen to the Dire Straits album, I can still taste the gum.
Dire Straits – Romeo And Juliet.mp3
AC/DC – Back In Black
This was the last AC/DC album I bought. When my friend Mike and I, both AC/DC fans at the time, first played it and Johnson’s voice burst forth, we burst out laughing. He sounded like a Warner Bros cartoon character doing an exaggerated imitation of the late Bon Scott. I still cannot abide by Brian Johnson’s voice. And for evidence to support my dislike, take Give The Dog A Bone from his first album with AC/DC. Bon Scott, who died just half a year before this album was released, would have invested his vodka-drenched soul into this schoolboy prank of a song to make you believe he was indeed looking to, er, feed a canine. In Johnson’s larynx, the song evokes a sleazy drunk about to get nasty with a blow-up doll while his virgin friends watch. So, I think it is fair to observe, I prefer my AC/DC with Bon Scott at the wheel. Johnson actually did OK on tracks like You Shook Me All Night Long (which is really Highway To Hell Redux), Hell’s Bells, Back In Black or Rock ‘n’ Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution. But he was not Bon Scott.
AC/DC – You Shook Me All Night Long.mp3

John Lennon & Yoko Ono – Double Fantasy
John’s love for Yoko was exemplary, a real fairy tale story. This slavish devotion created his foolish impression that the sound of his wife singing was in some way attractive, so much so that the world had to be treated to it. To the world, of course, Yoko’s singing was akin to a recording of a parrot being violated and the sound of his sad squawks being played on 78rpm. Or perhaps I am being unduly harsh. Yoko’s Hard Times Are Over is a fine song, and Kiss Kiss Kiss is a good disco number. John’s tracks were great though. Even Woman, which was overplayed so much after Lennon’s murder that few people alive in 1981 should wish to ever hear it again. I will always love (Just Like) Starting Over, and defy anyone who claims it is cheesy (other than the bit about the Ono-Lennon’s taking out a loan for a trip far, far away. I imagine that Lennon had so much possession as to make the notion of him taking a trip to the bank manager obsolete [Edit: oops, misheard lyric rendering my gratuitous dig at the hypocrite Lennon obsolete. Damn]). As a father, I can identify with the sentimentality of Beautiful Boy. I’m Losing You is potent. And Watching The Wheels is among the very best things Lennon ever did out of McCartney’s earshot. Back in the day, I taped all of John’s songs, and added Hard Times Are Over and Yoko’s Walking On Thin Ice single which came out a few months after the murder (don’t let it be said that Yoko spurned great cash-in opportunities in her 28 years of grief). These days, a playlist employing the same selection technique will do the trick.
John Lennon – (Just Like) Starting Over.mp3
John Lennon – Watching The Wheels.mp3

And what are your favourite albums of 1980?

Previously featured:
1950s
1960-65
1972
1987

It’s fun, this iPod randomising thing. And, as Rol of the excellent Sunset Over Slawit blog pointed out in a comment (I do like comments), my iPod does have good taste. So here’s today’s lot, though it’s a 8-track experiment, iPod having suggested two songs I just recently posted, by Josh Rouse and Miles Davis, and Ingrid Michaelson’s “Keep Breathing” which I just recently downloaded from the fine Don’t burn the day away blog, whose thunder I didn’t want to steal.

Foo Fighters – Statues.mp3
I love Foo Fighter’s new album, Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace. It might well have replaced The Colour And The Shape as my favourite Foo album, even if the new set has no “Everlong” on it. Clearly, my iPod loves Foo Fighters as well, having featured Grohl’s lot in the first random experiment. “Statues” is turning out to be one of the best songs on the album, a fine piano driven number which however reminds me of some other song I cannot place. The line “we’re just ordinary people” is driving me mad, I’m sure I’ve heard it before.

Serge Gainsbourg – Cargo Culte.mp3
From 1971’s Histoire de Melody Nelson, a mindfuckingly great album on which the music tells you everything you might not understand from the French lyrics (the album is about our dirty old friend picking up young English girl Melody and, guess what, seducing her). Someone once said that listening to Histoire de Melody Nelson is like being fucked by Gainsbourg (don’t worry, it doesn’t mean you’re gay). Listen to this incredible track to know what my pal meant. It drips with sex, especially when Melody introduces herself 5:40 in. Is that what the “Porn Groove” category on WinAmps ID3 Tag manager refers to?

Ron Sexsmith – Whatever It Takes.mp3
When I watch the Grammys and see how the music industry celebrates boring old dinosaurs (hello Mr Clapton), mediocre young boredom merchants (good evening Ms Jones) and assorted overrated nonentities (sorry, but who are you again?), I despair for all these great artists whose music stands well above these clowns, but receive recognition only in the blogosphere and, perhaps, on hip soundtracks of TV shows. Why is there no industrial felatio administered to the likes of Josh Rouse, Ben Folds, Joshua Radin or Ron Sexsmith. The latter has been around for more than a decade and a half, but while his fuckwitted compatriots Twain, Lavigne, Morrissette and Dion found fame and fortune, he remains a best-kept secret (one with the most magnificent surname). I love Sexsmith’s immensely warm and intimate voice, his songcraft and his variety. “Whatever It Takes”, from 2004’s excellent Retriever, has a great late ’70s soul influence, melodically rather than in its arrangement. It is a happiness-inducing song.

Howie Day – Collide.mp3
I don’t like the man’s name. It sounds like he might be a singer in a boy band. That he is not. Howie Day is, in fact, a singer-songwriter type. I can’t say I’m a huge fan of much of his work though there are three or four songs I really rate, and nothing I might despise. “Collide” is a very good, catchy tune. I think he sings it very well. It is Mrs Major Dude’s cellphone ringtone, and it reminds me of somebody I once knew. My favourite blogger in the whole world did the guitar tabs for the song. Check them out here.

Warren Zevon – Lawyers, Guns And Money.mp3
Everybody knows “Werewolves In London”, and maybe “Excitable Boy”. Fine songs both, but I think 1978’s “Lawyers, Guns And Money” is even better (though, perhaps, not as good as “Jeannie Needs A Shooter”). The powerful guitar and keyboard chords that drive the song grab your attention from the go, then Zevon tells his story about how “the shit has hit the fan” in a Central American cold war spy intrigue (which, one suspects, might be a huge bullshit story the waster scion tells his rich Dad). I love the “heya” at 1:35 and the “ugh” at 2:32, and the other assorted yelps, groans and exclamation marks. A fantastic driving song. If you don’t know much about Warren Zevon, try to get his live album, Stand In The Fire.