30 Day Song Challenge - day 30

day 30 - your favorite song at this time last year

Haven't the foggiest. My plans for a disco diary, where I list in painstaking detail every song listened to, with marks out of ten for the track, the video and the artwork for the album cover went by the wayside around about the same time my Boy George T Shirt finally fell apart* in the wash. I've instead had to resort to rescuing our old computer from the back of the closet, plugging it in and firing up iTunes.

It tells me that I listened to not one but three tracks on the 30th April, 2010. I just can't work out if they are my favourite songs from this time last year or the favourite songs of the iTunes shuffle.

If nothing else, it turns out that iTunes and me are both 80s pop kids.

Now where did I put that The Next 30 Day Song Challenge?

*That T Shirt finally fell apart in the autumn of 1985.

30 Day Song Challenge - day 29

day 29 - a song from your childhood

It's only from watching BBC4's repeats of 1976 episodes of Top of the Pops in recent weeks that I realised that this song is indelibly scorched into my memory bank from when I was a kid.

I still think it's catchy after all these years, Owen tries to copy the choreography and if it weren't for the fact that Kara's eight months pregnant she'd leap from the window screaming in horror.

A real family friendly tune.

30 Day Song Challenge - day 28

day 28 - a song that makes you feel guilty

I'm confused. Isn't this just a retread of the question for day 13?

Why would you feel guilty about a song? Maybe Mark Chapman has a pang of conscience listening to Double Fantasy but the rest of us? It is self-evident that whoever compiled these questions just ran out of steam towards the end. It's the Sparkle In The Rain of pop music memes.

A google search of "day 28 - a song that makes you feel guilty" doesn't really help. Clicking on a few links at random indicates that most people are just as bewildered as me by the question.

OK, I've already done the guilty pleasure pick so Hefner's 'The Day That Thatcher Dies' is just pure guilt on my part. Of course I'll play it at high volume come that particular day but as Hefner's Darren Hayman sings:

'We will laugh the day that Thatcher dies,

Even though we know it's not right,'

Speed the day and the guilt.

30 Day Song Challenge - day 27

day 27 - a song that you wish you could play

Always loved the guitar part on this post-punk classic:

30 Day Song Challenge - day 26

day 26 - a song that you can play on an instrument

I could spin you a yarn but the truth of the matter is that I can't play diddly - Bo or otherwise.

As I feel that I'm coming down with a bit of a cough, I guess I could do a decent rendition of the previously mentioned:

30 Day Song Challenge - day 25

day 25 - a song that makes you laugh

Don't laugh, this is a great song.

In fact all the songs from that musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer are pretty darn wonderful. According to wiki - and who am I to doubt what a geek writes on wiki - the show's creator, Joss Wheedon, wrote the score from scratch, never having written a song before. Even if you're not a fan of Buffy, you have to check out that episode if you can. You'll love it. That's a blog guarantee.

This songs makes me laugh for two reasons:

Forty seconds into the clip, when the demons do the sideways shuffle, well Owen re-enacts it every time.

And, one minute into the clip, when the rescued pretty boy sings '"how can I repay you?', and Buffy shots him down with a bored seen-it-all-before 'Whatever'.

Sadly the sound quality of the uploaded video doesn't really do the song justice.

30 Day Song Challenge - day 24

day 24 - a song that you want to play at your funeral

What do I care? I'm not going to be there.

Maybe this *cough* classic - just to be annoying and pretentious in equal measures:

30 Day Song Challenge - day 23

day 23 - a song that you want to play at your wedding

Already been married for a few years now, but for obvious reasons - obvious to us, anyway - it should have been this song:

30 Day Song Challenge - day 22

day 22 - a song that you listen to when you’re sad

Another day, another bullsh- . . . oh, wait, I've used that line already. And, anyway, isn't this question just this question by any other name?

I guess there's a certain melancholy to Edwyn Collins's 'Low Expectations' which fits in with a blue mood:

30 Day Song Challenge - day 21

day 21 - a song that you listen to when you’re happy

Another day, another bullshit question in the 30 day song challenge. I really should read the small print next time, cos some of these questions are absolutely bloody woeful.

I've racked my brain, and it - the brain - has brought you Le Tigre's 'Hot Topic':

I can't - hand on heart - write that I play this when I'm happy, but I'm all the happier after hearing it . . . and it's cheered me up no end after having to deal with this bullshit question.

30 Day Song Challenge - day 20

day 20 - a song that you listen to when you’re angry

As featured on the SPGB Glastonbury 2003 Mix CD, and still one of the best rap records of all time:

Who am I kidding? I don't listen to music when I'm angry. I sulk and pout in silence before retiring to a shadowed corner with my John Terry voodoo doll and a box of thumb tacks.

30 Day Song Challenge - day 19

day 19 - a song from your favorite album

I've not listened to this album in the longest time but I still think it edges as my all time favourite album. And 'Show Me' is one of the great opening album tracks.

*UPDATE*

Listened to it again - as an album - for the first time in years. It still stands up as a brilliant album from a wonderful era of music. Shame that they never reached those heady heights again.

30 Day Song Challenge - day 18

day 18 - a song that you wish you heard on the radio

Originally released in 2006, it should have been that year's sound of the summer but - and I'm hazarding a guess here - lack of radio play meant it never reached its intended audience. If ever a song earned the right to be played on the radio, it was this one.

I still hold out the hope that one day it'll be the beneficiary of a Facebook type campaign and it becomes the number one it so richly deserves. Maybe with 'Cocaine Socialism' as the b-side. (My dreams are still coated in vinyl.)

Such is the world we live in, I can't see the lyrics becoming redundant any time soon. :

30 Day Song Challenge - day 17

day 17 - a song that you hear often on the radio

Do people still listen to the radio? To my shame, I don't listen to the radio much these days . . . and that, no doubt, explains why my music taste is stuck on a permanent playlist loop circa 1981.

I knew this question was creeping up so I've been listening to East Village Radio these past few days and this track caught my ear via Mike Joyce's Coalition Chart show:

Very Vega and Rev, if you know what I mean.

30 Day Song Challenge - day 16

day 16 - a song that you used to love but now hate

I don't actually remember loving this song but it was on my favourite mixtape from the early 90s, so I must have really liked it at some point:

Never the greatest REM song to begin with, it suffered the fate of being played to death absolutely everywhere back in '92 and, for a period of time, being the song of choice for tv editors and producers when producing mawkish video montages.

What banged the final nail into the song's coffin was that godawful video. The wiki page informs us that the storyboard of the video was inspired by a Fellini classic, but what it really needed was this bloke to step into the frame and liven up proceedings.

30 Day Song Challenge - day 15

day 15 - a song that describes you

Once upon a time it would have been The The's 'This Is The Day' but twenty five years on that song's selling M & M's, and I've just shifted my carcass over to another song from Matt Johnson's back catalogue.

I'm just too bastard obvious:

One of the great harmonica solos in pop music, btw.

30 Day Song Challenge - day 14

day 14 - a song that no one would expect you to love

Muzzy, wherever you are - it appears it's just you and an Amazonian Indian tribe who are not on facebook - cheers for introducing me to this classic back in '83:

Thank christ Paul Di'Anno left Iron Maiden in '81. If he stuck around, I might have been wearing a faded denim jacket with assorted patches for the next 25 years.

30 Day Song Challenge - day 13

‎day 13 - a song that is a guilty pleasure

I don't really believe in guilty pleasures when it comes to music. If you love it, it doesn't matter what the muso police think but - for the purposes of this music meme - I guess some other people would mark this pop classic from Steps as a guilty pleasure:

The people from Planet Steps wouldn't let me embed the actual video on the video, which is a shame 'cos it has a certain awfulness that you can't help but be sucked into.

30 Day Song Challenge - day 12

day 12 - a song from a band you hate

Because of their decade and half of ridiculous gurning in videos . . .

Because punk should never be so poppy that it has Miley Cyrus retching . . .

Because their song, American Idiot, makes me want to take out American citizenship and vote for Michelle Bachmann . . .

Because Bon Jovi or the Beastie Boys would have been too obvious a choice for day 12 . . .

Because I'm bemused by that Stiff Little Fingers comparison in the film, High Fidelity.

30 Day Song Challenge - day 11

day 11 - a song from your favorite band

I'd be kidding myself on if I picked any other band for day 11.

One of their less celebrated songs from the fag end of their career:

Noel Gallagher gets it right again and again when discussing The Smiths.