Nirvana Top Five

As Kurt Cobain fades into history and poor old Courtney remains to be withered by age like the rest of us, Nirvana become less a band and more an icon.  Cards on the table city. I own a copy of Bleach but for some unreason never bought Nevermind.  Nevertheless, I do love both and I'm not going to just pick from Bleach, cause I'm not that kind of pretentious.

1.  Lithium - There is little I can say to this.  I love this because I've lived it so often and so long.  When Kurt died, well you know, it's only because Courtney said "A fucking lie" as she read his suicide note.  Courtney saved a lot of lives that day.  This is my favourite.

2.  Sliver - Still hurts so damn good to listen.

3.  Heart Shaped Box has beautiful lyrics and beautiful music to compliment Kurt Cobain's lovely, lovely voice.  I love the way the guitars shred as Kurt's voice starts to change from melancholy melody to an angry fractious scream.

4.  Smells Like Teen Spirit - I am not one of those people who pretends not to love this because it's been done to death.  So no, Weird Al, this song does make sense to me and I love everybody's version, even Paul Anka's, but nevertheless, Nirvana's performance of this was seminal.

5.  About a Girl, in which Kurt Cobain sings melodically like Neil Young's choirboy and on Bleach there was some awesome guitar work to back it up, but yannow, thought I'd give the unplugged version a go, cause I loves it so.

Hurts to leave out In Bloom, Tourettes, You Know You're Right, Sifting and that's just the ones I'm thinking of right now.  Oh wait, Come as You Are, can't forget Come as You Are can I?  And on and on it goes.

Music of Irish Origin

Layzangentlefiends.  I get asked so often to come up with a top five of a particular artist.  Sometimes I copy them here, sometimes I don't, but this week, for the first time in ages, I said no.  No Ladies and Gentlemen, I am NOT going to do a Todd Rundgren top five.  Ain't gonna happen.  Nosirree Bob!. Instead, I'm going to do my very own MOIO (music of Irish origin) awards.  So without further ado, here they are.

And rather than begin with a number one, I thought why not begin with a theme tune for the whole show.  I'm not judging this tune at all, merely placing it, as a traditional tune at the beginning and end.  So we begin with a version by the Dubliners. So take your seats as you listen to the traditional song Oró sé do bheatha 'bhaile.  This is the modern version updated by Padraig Pearse, who among other things changed the leader who will come with a thousand warriors from Séarlas Óg to Gráinne Mhaol

1 Let's begin with Sinead O'Connor.  Well obviously, of course I'm going to choose Sinead.  The question is, will I choose, "This is a Rebel Song", or "This is the Last Day of Our Acquaintance", or maybe "Troy"?  All of those are marvellous songs but I'm going to pick "Famine", which tells the truth about the Great Hunger, often called the 'Famine' by those who would call it a natural event.  I confess that my own Irish ancestors left Ireland long before the Hunger, and even before the Wolf Tone Rebellion and became travelling people, but that doesn't mean this song doesn't make perfect sense to me.

2 I've noticed that with this one exception, I've chosen solo artists.  But my favourite Irish band is Stiff Little Fingers, and in defining them as such, I have of course defined Ireland with the most inclusive possible definition.   Might as well pick this one then mightn't I? Alternative Ulster!

3 Christy Moore wrote some brilliant songs, such as "Viva La Quinta Brigada", many find themselves sung by crowds, but he's also a fine singer.  And a man who sings that which is Truth to those who need to hear.  This is my favourite "If They Come In The Morning"

4 Shane McGowan produced some brilliant work in his career, from that Christmas Song that gets played so much we have to pretend we don't like it, to The Snake With Eyes of Garnet, but my favourite is this.  A Pair of Brown Eyes.

5 Luke Kelly cannot be missed from any list of Irish music.  A singer so great, a man so famous, they names a bridge after him.  A man loved on all sides and here he sings Patrick Kavanagh's "On Raglan Road".

There are so many I regret having to leave out.  Teenage Kicks by the Undertones.  Much of Mary Black's Gaelic work.  The Wolfe Tones, even the Boomtown Rats but that's all there is so let's go back to the theme tune.  It's a song sung by so many Irish artists.  I could have had Sinead or th Wolfetones singing it but let's go for the great Mary Black.  Goodnight.

Roy Orbison

So here they are, the favourite five, the fervid fantastic feeling-fuelled five, the best of Roy Orbison as he exists in my head.

I Drove All Night
Beautifully sad, fascinating. I mean kinda creepy as well yeah, but I know how he feels. I know how she feels as well. This is the best kind of pop music, the kind that makes you cover your ears and rip your own heart out with a nailfile even while you love it beyond reason. Even while you shouldn't. Cause it IS kinda creepy.

Pretty Woman
I think I don't like this song. Maybe think I hate it even, but then I listen and remember that, yeah actually I do. It's camp and kitsch and beautiful. Roy Orbison sounds as though he ought to be wearing a red coat at Butlins, but the truth is, he's what they would sound like if they could get the best to play and sing for them. He is the Uber Redcoat.

Running Scared
Yes. I know this fear. The knowledge that I'm not good enough for you. The knowledge that you'll always choose the other over me. And so I play this song and by the time it reaches the crescendo, the bath is full. But before anything bad happens, I have to go pick up the arm and move the stylus back to the beginning again. Thank God they never invented MP3s.

Crying
I sing this in the bath. There, that's a confession from me. And Emily says to say she loves the version where Orbison plays with the delicious K D Lang. This is splendid. It's delightful and everything pop should be. So what happened?

In Dreams
I love it, I hate it. I want to kill this song. I want it to kill me. It is so brilliant. Do I want it at number 1 or number 5 or a number so large it's stretched to Peoria with the numbers on my screen. It's sad, it's great. God, I thought I was going to have trouble finding five Orbison songs I love. How was I to know I'd love the ones I hate? Thanks Mr Orbison for being.

And do you know which one it really hurts to leave out?  End of the Line, by the Travelling Wilberries because it celebrated Roy's life and marked his end.

Polly Jean Harvey

So.  P J Harvey.  Damn was it really only eight albums? It feels like eighty eight.  Achtentachtig!  It's like she's everywhere.  Somebody you forget when thinkign about your favourite records because she's as everywhere as Elvis.  Damn but I love you Polly Jean!

THE WHORE'S HUSTLE AND THE HUSTLER'S WHORE.  Polly Jean does rock and roll and she does it brilliantly.  I would love to cover this.  So would Emily.  Maybe one day.  Maybe one day soon.  For now though.  Love it.  P J Harvey at her best.

IN THE DARK PLACES almost my favourite song by her.  Another day it would be, but today, well who I am today is who I am.  Let it be said though, that this is a song I love.  It rips out my heart with a rusty bayonet and then buries me in beauty.

DOWN BY THE WATER is the song I hear in my head when somebody says, 'P J Harvey'.  It's not the first of hers I heard but that chorus about her lost daughter is beautiful, evocative and enough to drive me even crazier than I already am.

IS THIS DESIRE? Well yes it is.  Minimalist and beautiful.  That's the thing about Polly Jean.  Voice is good, yeah but the music comes not from musical instruments but from Polly Jean's Oh so human heart.

MAN SIZE takes a while to get going but it is full of perfect humour and perfect spirit and PJ's perfect sense of rock n roll timing and of course, her perfect voice, and words that make the paper bleed.

Hurts to leave out: Horses in My Dreams; One Line; Big Exit; Shame; Bitter Branches; White Chalk; The Words that Maketh Murder, and that's only the solo stuff.

Janis!

Twenty seven years old, and you know what, when she died, I hadn't a clue WHO Janis Joplin was, and that's okay, because I never knew who Jim Morrison or Jimi Hendrix were when they died either, or for that matter, Buddy Holly, Eddy Cochran, Ritchie Valens or even the Big Bopper.

And in retrospect, I never even knew who I was when I was twenty seven although I sure wanted to die.  I was writing and sending off to publishers these short stories and the nice people at Interzone would send kindly notes back explaining what was wrong with them and so I was getting a kind of education.  Unlike Fear Magazine and 2000AD who never sent stuff back despite the stamped self addressed envelope, which pissed me off.  But the letters from Interzone, they could be like the apprenticeship I wanted, a chance to practice and get good and get great and build a great career (even though every letter felt like they ripped out another little piece of my heart, cooked it and ate it). So I guess I graduated as a short story writer when Interzone wrote back and said, "This is a good story and moves along well but is not suitable for Interzone."  I died that day, twenty seven years old but unknown.  I got in the bath and cut my wrists wrong way and then began to make plans to blow myself up, if only I could think who to take with me. Never knew, never did, still here, still alive more than 27 years later.

So that makes number one pretty obvious.

1) PIECE OF MY HEART - I love this song so much that I would love to give it all fifteen points, but I guess that isn't possible, so it's just number one, with a bullet fit for a president.

2) BALL AND CHAIN - recorded at the Monterey Festival in 1967.  Love the intro, love Janis Joplin's voice.  Feel those weaponised teardrops flowing down like angel falls.  Oh my.  I can only watch, open mouthed and wait fro angels to fly in.  This is why it's unfair that I was only ten when she died and never got to wonder what she'd produce next.

3) SUMMERTIME - I love to sing this song myself when they'll let me, which pretty much means in the shower these days.  George Gershwin, an excellent composition, performed over and over by so many.  Here it's Janis and Jimi.  Rock music? Sure but this is exactly what jazz should be about as well! Love and Peace to the both of them.

4) TELL MAMA - Oh my goodness there's not much to say about this.  Watch the video.Be still my heart.  Emily loves this and she's screaming in my ears to make it number one.  Well sorry Emily, it's number four but that doesn't mean it ain't brilliant.  Janis plays fast and loose with the so called rules and makes those little notes sit up and BAYYYug.

5) I NEED A MAN TO LOVE - now just listen to this.  This was done when it was.  There was no reason for much of the seventies, for blue eyed soul, for disco, for Blood Sweat and Tears, for so much of the music that was around in the seventies (you know the kind, the stuff that in retrospect makes you imagine that music wasn't all THAT dire in the seventies).  There was no need for any of it, because Janis had done it all before. I pick this at number 5 as a generic track of hers, not a particularly brilliant one, but one that shows how damn GOOD Janis was.

Leonard Cohen's Covers

So many people have covered Leonard Cohen. His popularity with musicians is comparable to Elvis, or the Beatles, to Jacques Brel or Brecht and Weil. So to try to come up with a top five Cohen covers is going to be hard, perhaps harder than picking a top five of his own tracks. Difficult or not, let's have a go

Beautiful though it is, 'HALLELUJAH' is not one of my top five Leonard Cohen tracks... his own version is special and so is Jeff Buckley's but listening to IMOGEN HEAP's breathy acapella version, it becomes something new, something that is entirely her own. Beautiful.

When she first came to the notice of the media, I decided I didn't like TORI AMOS without even really giving her a listen. That was wrong of me, as I realised when I heard her singing along with Maynard from Tool in their version of Mohammed My Friend. After that, I listened to much of her stuff and among her lovely covers was a cover of Mr Cohen's "FAMOUS BLUE RAINCOAT"

NICK CAVE's version of I'M YOUR MAN is so firmly fitted into his own ouevre that for a moment, one might forget it's Leonard Cohen's. And yet it's one of Cohen's finest songs as well. Both bring something wonderful to the party. I love it. What more can I say?

BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE doing "THE PARTISAN" is something wholly different. A free woman of the Piapot Cree Nation singing of resistance to the invaders has a different ring to it. And of course, Buffy's voice is something extraordinary, partaking as it does of the prairie winds themselves.

Sorry that Mr Cohen is speaking over this, but it's lovely. I love Antony's voice and it feels so, so very right for this song. ANTONY HEGERTY of Antony and the Johnsons singing "IF IT BE YOUR WILL".

Hurts to leave out. Loads including multiple versions of Hallelujah, The Partisan, and Famous Blue Raincoat.... And if anybody asks, I may add a link to the one I forgot.

Leonard Cohen

Oh my my, Leonard Cohen.  What can I say.  Ever since my music teacher, Marijke turned Class Three Y at Deliverance Grammar School (which included me) onto Cohen back in 1974, I've been a bit of a fan.  never heard a song of his I didn't like.  Never found a band that'd let me do covers of his work (bastards! - whatever my favourites are, I wanna do a cover of The Traitor).

So... top five Leonard Cohen sings Leonard Cohen's songs? Now that is HARD!

Leonard Cohen was a telepath and a prophet.  He could see into our hearts but even more, he could see the future in his crystal ball.  He was so RIGHT.  He still is.  There's a whole load of shit gonna come down this river before the clean meltwater of the former icecaps gets here,  Ladies and Gentlemen! THE FUTURE

Oh! How I was wrong!  You see I did not miss the attack.  I was waiting for the bus to picket the Stockport Messenger back in 1983 and I was kissing a girl I thirsted for.  But I was not what I should have been and I bid farewell and joined my comrades for a futile battle.  I was wrong and I hate to sing this song, but I know I should, in penance.  THE TRAITOR

Tears drip like acid down my ravaged cheeks as I listen.  I don't know how I know how it feels but somehow I do, and I think Cohen had a lot to do with that.  Over and again, they pour across the border (or maybe win by 'democratic' means) and we're cautioned to surrender, but that would break our hearts and sear our souls.  THE PARTISAN

Oh how Leonard gets me.  He knows where I feel so often.  The love that wants to sacrifice, to demand, to offer all and beneath the promises well... I was always a beggar for love, but you know I'd howl just like Leonard.  Yeah  I'M YOUR MAN!

Suzanne was somebody I knew when we were still children of 20 (and yes twenty IS a child) and we would spend nights together in her room talking until the world tasted of coffee and cigarettes and yeah, like the song, she got me.  I was a one and she was at worst a seven so I couldn't imagine why she'd want to know me.  Anyway, this was our song.  SUZANNE.

Hurts like cancer (and yes I know) to leave out: "So Long Marianne"; "Gypsy Wife"; "Famous Blue Raincoat"; "Dance Me to the End of Love"; "Bird on a Wire"; "Stranger Song", "Waiting for the Miracle"; "Halleluiah"; "Darkness"; and so many more.  But oh forget cancer, some of these hurt like gangrene (no, I had to ask my wife about that one).