After the fun of launching the site last week, hopefully I’ve risen to the challenge of the second week with six tunes as different as they are entertaining. Enjoy!

A reminder that Spotify plays from this box in the annoying ‘Preview’ mode with short excerpts of each track. Please click the icon in top right corner to open the full playlist in a separate Spotify window.

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Never Let Me Down Again – Depeche Mode (1987)

So The Gold has been binged and over the weekend we finally caught the first episode of The Last of Us. Over Christmas dinner, the younger half of my extended family got the full force of my scepticism when they told me about this great post-apocalyptic drama which was based on a computer game. After the exhilarating opening episode, I am hooked! When this track played over the ending, I started breathing again. The second single from DM’s 1987 Music For The Masses album, it continues the band’s move from the jaunty synth pop that began their career into much darker, more atmospheric sounds. Built on a thundering drum pattern, the opening line “I’m taking a ride with my best friend” is generally regarded as a reference to the drug use by singer Dave Gahan which was to have an increasing impact on the band in the years ahead. Listen to the the synth refrain in the coda and you may hear a tip of the electro hat to Soft Cell’s 1982 top five single Torch.

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Give Me Love – George Harrison (1973)

It must have been really tough being George Harrison in the Beatles. You are a great guitarist who knows his way around a melody and a song structure, and you find yourself in a band with John Lennon and Paul McCartney! Harrison would have been 80 on Saturday and I was reminded of this single from his second post-Beatles solo LP Living In The Material World. I recall listening it on the radio back in 1973 and being struck by something ‘sad’ in the sound of it. My 13 year old brain didn’t know that this was down to Harrison using a minor chord at the start of the second and fourth line of the chorus. He also plays the beautiful slide guitar solo on the track, a technique he was much admired for. He must have loved that it went to No 1 in the US and in the process knocked My Love by Paul McCartney and Wings from the top of the Billboard singles chart. Karma!

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El Basement – The Kevin Fingier Collective (2020)

I’m exchanging messages this week with my mate Dave who is major music aficionado with a wide and eclectic taste – we initially bonded over our shared love of the wonderful Mott the Hoople. Living in Walton-on-Thames, Dave has easy access to London and frequently makes me jealous of the cool gigs he goes to. This week was no different as he told me his two recent gigs were the Kevin Fingier Collective at the 100 Club and PP Arnold at the Jazz Cafe. Fortunately, I was able to comment on some tracks I had heard from the latest record in PP Arnold’s long career – she began as an ‘Ikette’ with the Ike & Tina Turner Revue in 1965! But as for Kevin and his collective, I was completely lost. Dave came straight back with a link to this track which is an absolute belter of a tune demanding inclusion on this week’s blog. All I can add from my research is that Fingier Records is a label dedicated “100% to the to Soul, R&B, Boogaloo and Raw Funk productions by the Argentinian producer Kevin Fingier”. Personally, I love how his sideburns match his shirt.

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Northern Sky – Nick Drake (1970)

We went to Iceland in late January hoping to see the Northern Lights and, like many people before us, the weather meant we saw hee haw. So we headed home and switched our aurora trackers off on our smartphones. And so it was that we missed the unique light show right outside our door on Sunday night, even with a torch-lit dash up the hill behind our house when someone belatedly sent us one of their pictures. This wistful sound of Nick Drake’s best known track from his Bryter Layter LP seems appropriate for these circumstances. Famously only becoming famous after his sad death aged 26 from an overdose of a prescribed antidepressant, his delicate acoustic based songs have been cited as an influence by many artists as diverse as Kate Bush and Peter Buck of REM. The lovely piano and organ parts on this track were improvised by John Cale, formerly of the Velvet Underground, under the encouragement of producer Joe Boyd.

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The Girl From Tiger Bay – Shirley Bassey (2009)

There ain’t nothing like a Dame! I’m not sure this is what is passing through your mind as you see Shirley Bassey on the playlist. But Wednesday was St David’s Day and what better way to mark this than to listen to Dame Wales wrap her impressive tonsils around a fantastic tune. Especially when this one was written for her 2009 comeback album The Performance by none other than Welsh noise-niks The Manic Street Preachers. Clearly this is the post Richey Edwards disappearance version of the Manics – so less Generation Terrorists and more Everything Must Go. Nicky Wire’s biographic lyric successfully pitches the world renowned singer as just a girl from Cardiff – “I bought a ticket of a lifetime, there’s no denying who I am“. And James Dean Bradfield’s soaring melody and by now trademark strings lends the whole thing the sense of drama her voice fully deserves. Classy.   

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To Be Someone – The Jam (1978)

If getting this new blog up and going over the last couple of weeks hasn’t been exciting enough, on Thursday night I was invited to be the first guest in my mate John’s new music podcast. It’s a media circus on the Fife Rivieria, don’t you know. John’s idea is that he sends out his recently catalogued vinyl collection to interesting people (or, more accurately, people with an interest!) and asks them to select ten tunes. You then go round John’s house with a bottle of wine and blether to him about the songs when he presses “record”. What could possibly go wrong? Well, actually the mic wasn’t working so the recording has been postponed. As a taster of what’s to come, here is one of my choices taken from The Jam’s 1978 masterpiece All Mod Cons. Considering the LP was written by an under pressure Paul Weller on the back of a disappointing first American tour, it’s a stone cold classic from start to finish. Although retaining the familiar musical punch of their early work, the arrangement on this particular song shows them maturing – the short instrumental bridge and the intensity drop at the finish. Bruce Foxton’s harmonies stand out more with the the restraint in the playing. I also love the imagery in the lyrics about the failing rock star, a status that the 20 year old Weller was yet to achieve. “There’s no more swimming in guitar-shaped pools” makes me smile every time I hear it.

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Last Word

Before I sign off this week, many thanks for all the positive feedback I’ve had from the people who have been kind enough to respond to my gentle promptings to try out the blog. Those not signed up yet can subscribe below to be notified of new posts as they are published.

AR