desert island thing

it slipped my mind, lisa's desert island disc thing. i thought about it a little bit last friday but it sort of did not compute. i am a child of the ipod, you see, and the eight song limit is a bit like thinking in old money. and funny thing, i couldn't think of eight songs. i only got to six then i was stumped.

1. i'd rather go blind etta james
this one is easy because it's my favourite song ever and i could listen to it forever and never realise the time, or get bored with it. there are about a million people playing on it yet it is wonderfully sparse and measured, beautifully arranged, angelic backing vocals, everything about it is perfecto. my favourite bit is where etta's voice catches a little in the middle of singing,

and the reflection in the glass that was held to my lips now baby reveals the tears that was on my face yeah.

that's poetry, that is.

2. mr walker wes montgomery
let me make it clear that i loathe jazz. i also loathe fretwankery. yet this song contains both, and it's fantastic. how can i put this - it's like the guitar playing sends out a fish hook on a line that sinks into my heart and the melody jolts my insides around all over the place. the song sounds like the theme to a chat show. i used to think i'd make an excellent chat show host, and this would have been the theme music to my show. on the island i will play this song and have my own imaginary chat show in my mind.

3. friction television
i used to put this on before i went out to have a good time, before i forgot what a good time was. it got me in the mood. on the island, presumably i'll be able to bang it out at ear-bleeding levels. it's just a fantastically ferocious guitar song with no bloat. it's the overdubs what really punctuate the song.

4. paper-thin hotel leonard cohen
leonard cohen, what a dude. this song comes from an album he made in the seventies and he doesn't like it - death of a ladies' man. what a title. he's got bad memories of it because phil spector produced it and held him at gunpoint. wouldn't let him leave the studio. i think some of the vocals are just guide vocals but i could be wrong. it's yer usual tasteless over the top spector production job, with little lennie's voice almost lost in the middle of all the chaos.

so this song, the conceit is, he's in a hotel room next to the room his ex is in. she's with her new bloke.

i stood there with my ear against the wall
i was not seized by jealousy at all
in fact a burden lifted from my soul
i learned that love was out of my control

oh my god it's so great. on the island, love would be out of my control. except for self-love, which i imagine there would be rather a lot of.

5. summerness melodie group
is it crap to include one of your own songs? i just love this song so much. i love the recording. it's perfect. it's a fucking classic. i really knew what i was doing the day i recorded this. i was visited by god, i think.

6. sleeping gas (live) the teardrop explodes
this is the teardrop explodes
coming to you
from club zoo
and it's december twenty-two
and soon it's gonna be 1982
it's gonna be 1982!
let's push forward
let's gatecrash
into 1982
when you come out of the club tonight
you may well be in a completely different year...

nine minutes and twenty-seven seconds of a drugged-up (presumably) julian cope making a complete tit of himself on stage while the band groove away behind him. he's just ridiculous yet seems to come out of it sounding so cool. it's got a lot of humanity in it and might help to distract me from my loneliness on the island. or exacerbate it, maybe.

that's as far as i got. i can't think of anything else. maybe 7. primitive painters felt. my life was a film, once, and i'd get up each day to this. it was another theme tune. and 8. the boy with the thorn in his side the smiths. i was the boy with the thorn in his side. how could they see the love in my eyes, and still not believe me? how could they hear me say those words, and still not believe me? eh?