Sunday, March 05, 2006

Best Song Ever

Lisa has embraced a wonderful Desert Island Discs meme over at her place, which I feel duty bound to take up. Choose 8 songs that mean a lot to you, you have 2 days and the idea isn't to look cool you also have to say why they mean something to you.

So here goes, in no particular order whatsoever.

1. Fleetwood Mac: The Green Manalishi (with the two Pronged-Crown.)

Adjudged one Whisky fuelled night by Manuel and I to be the best song ever! I'm sure we invited Sharpie over one night on the condition that he brought his Fleetwood Mac's Greatest Hits with him. This was in the days before Broadband and the ability to download practically anything. We wanted to hear it.

We were planning the band that we were going to form solely for my fortieth birthday. Not that we were going to attempt anything as complex (although Manuel could have,) but we were going to give Sharpie a shot at being the bassist, for at least one song (seeing as Reidski had politely declined - he hadn't picked up a Bass in well over twelve years and couldn't make it up on the night anyway.) It was the funniest thing ever. Manuel showed Sharpie the bass-line and let him get on with it. He couldn't play it, so Manuel simplified it, he still couldn't play it. Manuel simplified it further. We are talking real simple here like two repeated notes. All that was required was rhythm. Sharpie has no rhythm. Absolutely none! Lovely bloke though.

When I did get Broadband and discovered Audio Galaxy in its early days, I asked Manuel for a list of songs he had on record at one time or another, but had probably long since loaned out and lost. Green Manalishi was the first one he thought of.

Manuel died a couple of years ago. It seems much shorter. I chose some music for his funeral. Green Manalishi was the first thing I thought of. There's a link there now. Every time I hear it I think of my good mate and I reckon it still is the best song ever.

2. The Beatles/Emmylou Harris: Here There and Everywhere.

Simple really it's a song thewife and I chose to be played at our wedding. We both love the Beatles and I have a particularly vivid memory of seeing Emmylou Harris at the Glasgow Apollo in the 70s singing it, alone on stage, acoustic guitar, solitary purple spotlight and just a simple thing of beauty that stuck with me for ever and a day. We couldn't decide which version to use so I spliced 1st verse Beatles 2nd verse Emmylou.

3. Michelle Shocked: Come A Long Way

I've seen Michelle Shocked a couple of times. The most memorable though was at a free "Peace Festival" organised by Ben and Jerry of the ice cream fame in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. I was with Reidski, who moments before had almost picked a fight by standing in front of a 6'00 plus, brick shit house of guy. Luckily the guy practised what he preached and put up with the lippy guy in his view. 'Chelle sang this first. It was perfect and following the outbreak of peace was doubly perfect, having as we had, come a long way. Perfect moment in a perfect holiday with my best mate, which in itself was the start of a personal renaissance following a period of illness.

4. Warrior: Wishbone Ash

Its not that long since I posted a piece about how Argus was probably the defining album in terms of the development of my very own personal musical taste. If that's the case then clearly there has to be a track from it in here. They're all pretty good so I'll go for this once, with its fairly crap lyrics which seemed so meaningful at thirteen.

5. White Rabbit: Jefferson Airplane

My all time favourite band. I had to have something in here I could easily have had the entirety of Surrealistic Pillow, After Bathing at Baxter's or Volunteers. It might even have been Have You Seen the Saucers as this was the first song I ever heard from Airplane, but in the end it was quite easy. White Rabbit was part of a double A Side with Somebody to Love. I remember I ordered it in Listen Records in Glasgow circa 1974, a mere 8 years after it's original release. I got it a week later and I think few things have made me as excited as that little 7" plastic disc. Red RCA Label even had the date of the recordings on the label. December 1965.

Sometime later it would become the one cover version featured in sets by both In Prague and The Tet Offensive

6. John Coltrane: Sentimental Journey

This is soooo good. thewife and me like to cook to this.

7. Neil Young: Like a Hurricane.

I was at this Neil Young concert once and to this day I remember it as possibly the best concert I have ever witnessed. Neil played an acoustic set for about an hour, and then came back on stage with Crazy Horse for an electric set. There were rumours that earlier in the day he had been busking in Central Station in Glasgow and I can believe that he did. He seemed to want to play forever. I was there with this guy called Stookie who was my best mate at the time. A fine guitarist in his youth who I believe went on to become a session musician. We lost touch though, but were musically close at the time. Anyway Neil Young played Like a Hurricane which seemed to last for ever. It took me away somewhere, I don't know where. No drugs, no alcohol just this sublime piece of music which just took me with him every soaring note he played. It was a fabulous place.

8. Jukka Tolonen: Last Night

This was from possibly the most grown up album I ever bought. I must have been 14 or 15 at the time. I saw this amazing Finnish Jazz Rock band, Tasavallan Presidentti, on The Old Grey Whistle Test. The guitarist was the epitome of cool and not only that, he had hair the length I wanted mine to be at the time. I headed into Glasgow at the weekend with Stookie and bought Jukka Tolonen's first solo album. I was not disappointed. I since lent it to Laurence Roache who never gave me it back. Bastard! I have it on MP3 thanks to Audio Galaxy. I really wanted it so badly I had my mate scouring the record shops of Helsinki for it once. He came back with a mislabelled follow up which in fact was the Mormon Tabernacle Choir - there's a disappointment for you. Got it changed though in a lengthy circuitous way. I still badly want the real thing though. This is the last track on the album and features Jukka jamming away with another Finnish band, Wigwam, live in a Helsinki nightclub. I really really wanted to be there. It's so so fluid and the guitar is just incredible. It fades off on record but you just know they were playing for at least another twenty minutes. I remember Father Bell reckoning way back when he was still very young that the thing he wanted most was what happened after the record faded out on Lynyrd Skynyrd's Freebird. Okay you may laugh now but when you are fourteen these things are extremely important. They didn't, couldn't, just have stopped playing once the fade came in there must be a good bloody ten minutes of something pretty marvellous in a can somewhere. The person who has this has they power to make teenage boys weep.

Like Lisa there are so many things that should be in this list that aren't. No Smiths no early REM but I'm happy with it. If I did it again in two weeks time it might be quite different, but I followed the rules for once and enjoyed doing it.
posted by timesnewroman at 9:14 AM  

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