"dancing in the moonlight" - thin lizzy

"i always get chocolate stains on my pants"


i first got into this song on a smashing pumpkins acoustic bootleg where it is haunting and great, and then got into the original which is more powerful in its own way.

the main trouble with cover versions is that - even if you totally understand the lyric and empathise with the emotion behind it and can use it to express your own emotions - noone can ever convey the message of the words with as much emotional power as the person who wrote them.

hearing this song so much on that stupid cider advert is starting to make me sick of it - i really hope that doesn't continue.

"saints and sailors" - dashboard confessional

"this is about as social as i get now"



i like the first two dashboard albums. theres an undercurrent of something smug about the band i dont really like, and the over-reliance on open tunings feels weird on my ears after a while, and the songwriting is occasionally mawkish or linguistically awkward, but there are just some lines that leap out at you from the middle of songs. lines you feel a real empathy for. lines that sum up a moment so well that all similar moments from then on seem to be soundtracked by it.


i cant remember when i last did something properly social with a real friend


i do want to kick in the head all of the muppets singing along on the dashboard confessional mtv unplugged album. but something of the band's sound has coloured or informed my acoustic playing since i heard them.