Day 50. 50 songs you need to listen to immediately. That I don't think I've mentioned before. (19/2/19)

I come from this tradition where you celebrate milestones. I think it's because of comics. They celebrate issue 50, issue 100, issue etc etc

So, in the first run of this place, I decided day 50 would be a list because I love a list. And then Day 100 would be as well.

I seriously make life difficult for myself. These things take bloody ages. And they get harder when you've already done them before and have to think up new ideas.

I had an idea in the car last week - another blog to go alongside this - "Every album I own and what it says about me." An album a day listened to, dissected and talked about in terms of where I was in my life and what mattered when I first heard it. Common sense took over by the time I got home.

So, here, 50 songs you need to hear immediately. Or hear again. And some of this is just talking about music but, buried in there, I'm exposing the fabric of my soul. As per usual.

Enjoy.

John Lennon. 'Watching The Wheels'. I know it's obvious but it just came up on YouTube and you can forget how good it is. It's darker than you think, there's instruments you forgot were there, it's a fantastic meditation on getting older and dealing with the later period of your life, becoming 40 and settling into something quieter and more family based. He's got months left. It's ridiculous.

The Rolling Stones. Ruby Tuesday. Specifically a version from a 1967 rehearsal for a TV show, quite possibly Ed Sullivan. It's a two for one deal this, you get Ruby... and Let's Spend The Night Together. They're both magnificent. There's a backdrop of screams. Jagger's all glittery jacket and frilled shirt, doing his best Jagger. But the others? Keef is on Piano, Brian sat next to him in a hat that can best be described as 'bippity boppity', Bill is as dull as always, uncomfortably bowing a huge double bass while Charlie is a study in cool nonchalance: polo neck, jacket, full on jazz mode and clearly above everything that's going on. The Stones - they start as the blues, they return to the blues but there's these two years where a confluence of a fully functioning Brian Jones and really good drugs turns them into the band you'd always want to be.

The Yardbirds. Heart Full of Soul. It's all brilliant, obviously but what really does it is the weird sitar-y guitar from Jeff Beck and the way that everything goes double time for the first two lines of the chorus before hitting you with the vocal title line over basically nothing. It's the sixties ready to break into technicolour, bursting at the strains of its black and white and smart suits limitations.

Dr Feelgood. She Does It Right. Growing up I only knew the Feelgoods from what appeared to be a one hit wonder in Milk & Alcohol. I had no idea that was the wrong Feelgoods. The real Feelgoods is all grimy London R&B (the proper version of the term), it's all Wilko Johnson managing to play the guitar parts of two people using just the back of his knuckles and it's Lee Brilleaux disintegrating with menace as he spits his lyrics. If it weren't for the flares and terrible lapels it'd be punk.

Scott Walker. Montague Terrace In Blue. Got to have some Scott. In my head, when I sing, I sound like Scott. In the real world the only person who sounds like Scott is Scott. Abandons teen stardom, abandons the spotlight and heads for the seedy backrooms filled with broken lives and desperate hopes. Makes it all sound majestic. "We know don't we? And we'll dream won't we? Of Montague Terrace In Blue." No idea what it means but it sounds like somewhere we should all live.

Bowie. Blackstar. The title song from the album. When the album came out I put it on repeat for the weekend. When he died, I put it on repeat for a month. Listened to nothing else. Except other Bowie songs. Its release as a single, that video, that was enough. That was the sign of a late period masterpiece. Two songs in one. A middle that bore no relation to the rest but works. Sonically brilliant but lyrically? Lyrically it's a challenge to others to take up his mantle, to carry on the work, to create, to matter. 'I want eagles in my daydreams'? That's my next tattoo.

If we're talking late period masterpieces - Leonard Cohen. You Want It Darker. He knew how little time was left, he knew (like Bowie) this was his final statement. He put everything into it. He summed up the darkness in the world and told the lord (his lord? any specific lord?) that he was ready. He said his goodbyes the way he had lived; in poetry set to music.

"She's nervous and her best friend is waiting, she's trying to pronounce my name." Microdisney's Cathal Coughlan has a dig at himself in Microdisney's wonderfully poppy Town To Town. An almost hit from a band who never made it big, possibly because their wry wrath was far too intelligent for the top 40.

The Wonders. They didn't exist. They were one hit wonders who never existed in anything we would call the real world. They were the subject of a film about a band with that one hit to their name, directed by Tom Hanks. Their one hit was called 'That Thing You Do' and so was the film. It's a classic of 60s bubblegum pop that didn't exist in the 60s

And if we're talking about 60s bands that didn't really exist then we have to talk about The Rutles. The further we get from the Rutles' film, the further we get from their once removed tribute to the 60s and to one very specific band, the better, and more accurate, they sound. The genius of Neil Innes on the soundtrack to the film is that he gets the style of The Beatles throughout an entire decade so right. And that he can be parodic and affectionate at the same time. Oh, and that they sued Oasis. And won. For Noel stealing the beginning of one of their songs. The Beatles didn't sue Oasis but The Rutles did. Go for Blue Suede Schubert. Its the best version of Roll Over Beethoven you'll ever hear that isn't actually Roll Over Beethoven.

Her Eyes Are A Blue Million Miles. I was in the car this afternoon, listening to Guy Garvey. (This happened a while before you read this, did you really think I did all this in one day? Loads of cheating going on here.) And this Captain Beefheart track came on. Totally unlike the madness that bleeds from every second of Trout Mask Replica this has a sane vocal, a beautiful melody, delicately psychedelic guitar and is as genuine a song about love as you'll ever hear.

Side 2 of Springsteen's The Wild, The Innocent and The E Street Shuffle. All of it Incident on 57th Street, Rosalita (Come Out Tonight), New York City Serenade. I'd had this for years before I really listened to it, really heard it. My mate Ben said once "it's the greatest side of any album ever" and I think he may well have a point. My nan gave me money for Xmas one year, about nineteen years ago, I spent it on a box set of the Boss's first three albums on CD. It was the last thing my nan was ever able to buy for me. Special.

The Specials Nite Klub. I never liked it. Now I do. Sometimes things go that way. It reminds me of the early days of Vanilla Beserk (the band I was in from 84 to 86), those days where we're getting to know each other and what we're really into. Me and Mark, the singer were best mates until the band split, as bands do. I've covered that before, go back and look for it. He used to play this all the time. It always makes me think of him. Favourably nowadays. They're days you miss. (He also used to play Madonna's Like A Virgin album and a lot of Abba. They remind me of nothing.)

Lot of Neil Diamond in those days as well. I'm sure I've extolled the virtues of 'I Am, I Said' before so let's talk instead about Stones from his album of the same name. Graceful singer songwriter artistry of the highest order. Diamond is one of the greatest writers we've ever known. Which makes it curious that this album features covers of Cohen's Suzanne and Joni's Chelsea Morning. Neither as good as the original but worth a spin.

One for J as she insisted I include this. Though I've a feeling I had this in a list last time out. Underworld. From their first album. 13 minutes and 10 seconds of dream state dance. The sound of wind, the words of a walk through New York, the hallucinations of dead pop stars, tribal drumming. "I see Elvis". I'm sure it sounds incredible on Ecstasy but I don't do drugs so there's very little chance of me knowing. The first time I heard Underworld's debut album 'Dubnobasswithmyheadman' I thought "this is jazz". I stand by that belief. Mmm...Skyscraper I Love You is genius.

Prince. I only saw Prince twice. That feels so little now, now that he's gone. On the plus side - I saw Prince twice. The first time at his residence at the O2 arena, the last on the hit and run tour. Four hours waiting in the cold outside the Manchester Academy, seventy five quid on the door. He comes on so bloody close to you and he starts this dirty, grungey, Zeppelin-esque guitar riff. Dark and insistent, powerful and bewitching. And then he sings: "If you don't like the world you're living in.." and you realise you're in Let's Go Crazy. He played forever in that small room, that room that was far far too small for him,  and it was nowhere near long enough. One of the most incredible nights I've ever seen.

"Everybody's singing the same song, it goes 'Tonite, Tonite, Tonite' - I never realised that these artists thought so much about dying."  I don't think we talk often enough about how LCD Soundsystem are the greatest, most inventive, most brilliantly creative band of this century. They're as much the sound of New York now as Talking Heads were of it 'then'. Tonite was brilliant on their last studio album and is better on the Electric Lady Sessions live album. How great are they? They cover 'I Want Your Love' (which is a terrible song but I know so many of you like all that Chic/Sister Sledge stuff for some bizarre reason) and it has literally no right to stand alongside the band's own vastly superior material. Krautrock, techno and The Fall, Bowie and Kraftwerk all blended.

The Who. You have to have the classics, don't you? Quadrophenia doesn't really have a story. You know that, don't you? But, for the moments that it does coalesce into some kind of narrative? The Punk and The Godfather is about having heroes who weren't good enough to stand with you in the first place. It's about being let down.

Super Furry Animals. Fire Inside My Heart. Purely for the fact that our Tom loved it when he was little but thought it was called 'Fire Inside My Hat', which I think might be a better title.

Richard Hawley. The Sheffield rock'n'roll troubadour's 'Truelove's Gutter' album is eight very long songs played on bizarre instruments. It's obviously beautiful beyond belief. For Your Lover Give Some Time is about the priorities you sometimes miss in life and how you make amends. It's about the small moments.

And since the phrase came up - Beyond Belief kicks off side one (in old money) of Elvis Costello's magnificent 'Armed Forces' album. It's the moment that he and The Attractions discover the fun of using everything they can in the studio and it's produced by Geoff Emerick who engineered Sgt Pepper. There are too many words but not one is out of place: "History repeats the old conceits, the glib replies the same defeats." Love that line.

Sometimes cover versions give you an option. The Mercy Seat is the last will and testament of a convict heading for 'the chair'. He may be guilty, he may have nothing left to lose, he may not be afraid to die. Nick Cave's original is defiant, savage and feral, Johnny Cash's late period reading of it is stately, desperate and accepting. Both are equally dark and brilliant.

There were four of them, all 'faces' on the mod scene. All four quite short, so: The Small Faces. Ripped off by management, never given the respect they were due but they were incredible. All Or Nothing, from that first guitar riff through the Hammond laying underneath the verses to a chorus that just kicks, a middle eight that has 'ba-ba-bas' to die for and a breakdown that builds again immediately. A slice of the very purest pop.

Dream Baby Dream by Suicide. It's a fragile lullaby from one of the darkest bands that ever walked the planet. The half muttered vocals over the twinkling keyboards shouldn't work, nor should the fact that Springsteen chose to cover this piece that seemed to have nothing to do with his worldview. On harmonium. But both do.

Coney Island. This will always be me and J. This is something we played so often; the period covering engagement through to marriage. The key is "I look at the side of your face as the sunlight comes streaming through the window in the autumn sunshine. And all the time we're going to Coney Island I'm thinking 'wouldn't it be great if it was like this all the time?'" When Van Morrison gets it right, he gets it right. It's only the story of a day out but it's a perfect day out. 'Wouldn't it be great if it was like this all the time?' Hold on to those moments.

'I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night.' Get on Youtube. Look for Paul Robeson singing Joe Hill to a room full of Welsh miners. It might be the greatest piece of politics you'll ever see. It's unity.

We used to play You're So Vain live. I say 'we used to', we did it once. It's actually really hard to sing. Started high, got higher. For literally decades I didn't notice that Mick Jagger, who is reputedly one of the potential subjects of the song, along with Warren Beatty, sang backing vocals on it. That's meta-textual isn't it? And if you've never noticed either, listen, you'll never be able to hear anybody else on that record THAN Mick. All over the bloody thing.

My Life Story were, possibly, the victims of bad timing. They were round in that space between 90 and 94 where they were just too early for Britpop. Which is a shame as their gauche leanings would have sat well a few years later. 12 Reasons Why (I Love Her) charges in on strings that seem to have decided that Scott Walker's version of Mathilde wasn't manic enough and then just gets bigger and bigger until it's performing in front of 30ft high neon letters spelling out the word 'EPIC'

Want to know who else were the victims of bad timing, this version in the post Britpop comedown? Bad timing and skewed public perception? The Boo Radleys. Their C'Mon Kids album was semi-derided as being 'a bit proggy' when it came out in September 96. In June 97 Radiohead went full on prog with OK Computer and the world decided it was possibly 'the best album ever'. It's not. By a long way. C'Mon Kids is just one album that's better. Listen to Everything Is Sorrow

Death In Vegas were, theoretically, a dance act. But Aisha is a long way from a dance track. It's guitars and darkness. And it has Iggy Pop as a murderer. Give me the line 'Aisha, I'm vibrating' to shout over a churning rhythm and it'll sound pathetic. Give it to Iggy and it's a threat.

The first time I ever heard Belle and Sebastian was on (I think) Steve Lamacq's show. In the car. Must have still been on Radio One. Way before I had DAB in the car. "Sounds like Nick Drake" I thought. And it did. It was Stars of Track and Field and it made me buy the 'If You're Feeling Sinister' album, which ends with the beautiful Judy And The Dream Of Horses. Great way to end an album.

Thinking of horses leads me to the theme tune to White Horses. Which makes me think of the theme tune to The Flashing Blade which may be the greatest TV theme ever. Makes me want to start a revolution. Or fight in an obscure French war that the 10 year old me didn't really understand.

There was this point in the early 80s where Blue Rondo A La Turk where nearly the vanguard of a popular jazz revival. Which probably means they were famous in three clubs in Soho. They gave us Klactoveesedstein as their second single. Which is a corruption of the Charlie Parker tune Klacto-veeseds-tene and an obsession with the tune. What does it mean? It don't mean nothing. What did that scene ultimately give us? Sade and Curiosity Killed The Cat. 

Went to a party in a flat the other week. Lots of people far younger than us. What filled the floor? Fatboy Slim's remix of Cornershop's Velvets indebted 'Brimful of Asha'. Those of us who are deliberately obscure elitists will always argue that what you really want is the full 13 minutes of 7:20AM Jullander Shere from their Woman's Gotta Have it album. Sitars and trance. Why would you not?

Real Bowie fans know that his supposedly Drum&Bass album 'Earthling' contained within its grooves (as we used to say) an absolute classic by the Dame. I'm Afraid Of Americans became a live staple back when Bowie playing live was still something we had. The fact we'll never get it again is a tragedy. The fact I didn't see him on the Reality tour remains a massively stupid decision on my part.

I underestimated The Grateful Dead. Growing up I assumed they were appalling hippies playing endlessly stoned jams. Not without evidence, obviously. But they could do succinct. Trucking' is actually extremely gorgeous. All acoustics and harmonies. And contains their key lyric "What a long strange trip it's been". The problem with 'The Dead' is there's just too much stuff, I've no idea where to start.

Same thing with The Fall. When I first came across The Fall they had put out too many records for me to figure out where I should start with them. Their catalogue was too intimidating. It was 1980. Maybe if I'd just randomly alighted on Rebellious Jukebox back then it would have changed my life. Or maybe I'd have just been really confused and a little bit scared. Not that there's anything wrong with music that confuses and scares you.

Another thing I got wrong in early life: I blamed Hendrix and Zep for heavy metal. That's highly unfair. It was only when hearing the title track of Are You Experienced? on The Tube that I realised how wrong I was. Backwards guitars, backwards cymbals fading in, always going to get to me. J? Not convinced by this at all. "Not necessarily stoned but beautiful." Always a handy mantra for those of us who don't do drugs.

It's very easy to forget how good The Pretenders were at one point (that point being forty years ago) and I've managed to on many occasions. It became hard for me to listen to the band because my first Xmas at HMV was soundtracked by the greatest hits albums of The Pretenders and The Police. Can't listen to either anymore. The other thing with The Pretenders is it's very hard to forgive Chrissie Hynde for those appalling duets with UB40 in their karaoke reggae period. But. Kid is bloody fantastic. Greatest guitars ever? Definitely up there.

One of the enjoyable things about gigs in the early 80s was we were exposed to all this stuff we'd never heard before; either through bands covering older bands or through the tapes played before going on stage. I'm sure people still discover music this way but I'm old so I don't know. I learned about The 13th Floor Elevators through Julian Cope covering I've Got Levitation and will love its muddy sound and strange background noises forever.

Look, I know I bang on about these, and I know you could accuse me of bias because it's a mate but...  Hightown Pirates' This One's For You is as vital a new piece of music as I've heard in years. It's impassioned and ferocious and melodic and about community. It's got guitars and horns and soulful vocals and my god, the drums... It makes me feel the way I felt when I was 17 and discovered a new single by a favourite band. It's Funeral Pyre and Reward. Swear to god, check it out, you'll feel the same.

Ian McCulloch. Candleland. I probably have talked about this before but the reason has changed so much in the last five years. We use it to close Those Two Weeks. There's the closing monologue and then there's this song as we turn off the last light on the stage. This was always the song to close. This is the only song in the show that comes from after the fortnight that the show portrays. It's there because McCulloch once said on stage (and I paraphrase) "I used to think this was about heaven but it's actually about Liverpool. Which is the same thing really." I adore this song. It makes me cry and always will.

Look, this might be the most obvious thing I'll ever say but - do you genuinely appreciate just how bloody startlingly brilliant Ghost Town by The Specials actually is? Listen to it now. Listen to it with fresh ears and imagine you've never heard it in your life. How bloody alien does that song sound? How threatening, how dark, how vicious and foreboding. Now remember, if you're old enough, imagine if you're not, how that sounded nearly 40 years ago. It sounded like nothing else that had ever been made. It still does. It has no genre. It's a work of genius and it's a warning from history. It's the soundtrack to the inner cities exploding and we must surely be on the edge of that once again. If we're not, why aren't we? There's a lot to explode about.

"I don't believe in an interventionist god but, my darling, I know that you do." Seriously, who starts a song with that lyric? Well, Nick Cave in Into My Arms obviously. One of the many wonderful things about the success of Peaky Blinders is that the whole world now knows how great Red Right Hand is. But may not have any clue who sings the bloody thing. Dig deep into Saint Nick's works. Start with this, the song he genuinely played at Michael Hutchence's funeral. A beautiful thing.

Because I've just heard it on the radio and it reminded me of its grandeur. Chicago by Sufjan Stevens from his Illinois album. The idea was that he'd make an album for each of the states of the US. I've no idea how far he got and I only ever bought this one but it features this track's orchestral beauty and, in Casimir Pulaski Day has a song that I'll never fully understand the narrative of as it feels like a series of hints but feels like the saddest thing ever.

Something's Coming from West Side Story. Genuinely. The greatest musical ever, the genius of Bernstein.  The forward pace, the stalking cellos, the double pace in the second half of the verse. The fact that there isn't really a chorus because it's all chorus. I repeatedly use this song to prove to myself that I have no idea what's coming next but it'll be great. And that's why you see it pop up on Facebook from time to time. See what we're learning about me here? Everything I do is a message, everything has a motive. Even this last paragraph.

Sincerely by The Moonglows. Because it's on a compilation called Doo Wop Dynamite that played constantly in a bar in Ayia Napa that J and I used to frequent on holiday a long time ago. (Before Ayia Napa became a dance capital. That's how long ago this was.) A holiday so good that I bought the soundtrack. I also bought jarg VHS copies of The Exorcist and Clockwork Orange while we were there because they were banned over here. They were never played. Three days in the news broke that Christopher Reeve had been seriously injured in a riding accident. I remember that vividly.

I've been working, for some time on a musical based on the life and times of the Merseybeat group The Liverbirds (nothing to do with the TV show, the band had the name first) and, as ever, while I write I play appropriate music. This appropriate music starts with the girls themselves and moves round the 60s with a` lot of early Stones and, crucially for this moment, Chuck Berry. There's this seven minute long live version of  Reelin and Rockin that basically descends into a sea of innuendo. It's one of the greatest live performances you'll ever see. With a pick up band of scousers. (Billy Kinsley and Jimmy Campbell's Rockin' Horse). It's impossible to get tired of this entire set and this one song, this one song is perfect.

If we're going to talk Mott The Hoople. And we are. It would be easy to go for All The Young Dudes or All The Way To Memphis or Roll Away The Stone whose utter otherness made me sit up and listen as a nine year old. But I'm sending you in the direction of The Golden Age of Rock'n'Roll for the fact that it was nostalgia for something that was, at that point, about fifteen years old. The song is now 47 years old. "You've got to be young, you'll never grow old, the golden age of rock'n'roll."

And we're really at the end so soon? What are you supposed to go out with? What's your statement song to leave the audience with? Something poignant, something with a message, a clarion call to arms, a political rallying call at a time of stress and conflict? Maybe. Maybe some of that and more. Scritti Politti. Scritti at their finest, in the moment before you knew them as prime 80s popsters. Lions After Slumber. It's a list, like this. But funkier. I'm not sure of the point Green Gartside is making, no matter how many times I return to this, and I return to this a lot, but then I'm quite often not entirely sure of the point that I'm making myself. What he have here though is the end of the song. The end of the song may be the point. The end goes like this:

"Like Lions After Slumber in unvanquishable number."

It was the second time that I'd heard that line. The first had been on the liner notes for The Jam's Sound Affects album. It was simply listed as 'Shelley'. This is where music takes you, this is why music matters. It leads you back through the centuries to The Masque of Anarchy by Percy Bysshe Shelley, a poem that we weren't taught in school, written in 1819 in response to the Peterloo massacre when mounted cavalry rode into a peaceful protest by the working class, swords drawn and indiscriminate. The ruling classes do not change.


Rise, like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you:
Ye are many - they are few!

Remember that. Poetry, music, lyrics, art, they send us messages across the decades to remind us we are not alone. They leave us words to live by.

That's the point.