"st thomas" - sonny rollins

my baby girl loves st thomas. ive known it turn her from a screaming ball of grumpiness into a giggling tiny dancer. it might not be specific for this tune - it could just be a good example of an upbeat, accessable tune with interesting rhythms - but i like to think shes developing good taste at her very young age. im probably fooling myself - but to those of you who are doubting (not unlike st thomas himself) i would ask you to give her the benefit of your doubt until she is proved to just be responding to my enthusiasm or some other theory

"saltwater towns" - monsters4GODS / sultry lemon

"we fade in and out of our saltwater towns with gardens of dreams and temples of sound"


the earworm is specifically the sultry lemon recording of this song about 70% of the time, but occasionally lapses into a more familiar m4G arrangement.


i think i'd hate to live at the seaside. i cant see what attraction all the retired people see in it. i can see how it would make more sense in a climate where there is a higher proliferation of scantily clad lovelies, but i can see those on the interweb any time i like and i dont think even that would outweigh the negatives. now i realise the cynic would argue that i lived at the coast, but swansea is more a city that happens to be next to a beach, and to me doesnt really count as the seaside. it doesnt exist to pander to holidaymakers and daytrippers. its not a depressing economic wasteland the coldest 8 months of the year. it could never be described as a resort. these are the thingsthat i associate with the seaside. swansea does share some of the other drawbacks though - such as seagulls, constant wind and the sand that gunks up the bearings on your skateboard.

"for the birds" - the juliana hatfield three

"if had wings, i’d try to fly. but they don’t make it harder to die. you can take it up to the sky, but no-one ever stays that high."


i absolutely adore beome what you are. i love juliana's voice on it, i love the guitar sounds and overall feel, and its full of songs i have to battle myself hard not to rip off when im writing. i cant believe it was released half my life ago when it still sounds so fresh to my ears - albeit that it is very much in and of the time. i hold my hands up to being a grunge casualty, so my opinion is far from biased, but so many fantastic albums were made around that time - yet this is song is from one of the standouts.


it was stupidly blustery, with trees shaking to such an extent that all kinds of things were falling out of trees onto the ground. no nests, obviously, because of the time of year, and actually mostly stick and twigs and things but i also saw several trees shaking themselves free of rubbish that had been caught in their branches like a dog emerging from a filthy pond. its been a day for looking up because you never know what flying objects you may have to avoid. i dont think i look up often enough.

"noises for the leg" - the bonzo dog doo dah band

"i found the men sir. God i wish i hadn't"



on a night when the act of getting to sleep proves more difficult a challenge than it has any right to, the last thing you need in your head is a cycling 24 bars of sinister vaguely oom-pah-esque saxophone bottom end honking topped by a theramin rendition of tortured screaming.
its not exactly guaranteed to be relaxing and restful.
it must have soundtracked some fairly warped dreams since each of the many times i woke it was still in my ears.

"rollercoasting" - helen love

"i got the mc5, suicide, nancy sinatra and neil young live, i got heavenly, peggy lee, captain beefheart and the vaselines"


some sage advice, dear reader - if you move to a city because someone you would like to meet lives there and there is the incredibly remote chance of you bumping into them you are only fooling yourself. it just wont happen. the odds are stacked against you in an overpowering way. even in a small city.

unless you take up stalking, of course, in which case you may be able to see the person every day by camping outside their home and following them up to the limits of your restraining order. thats if you can find out where they live - many people you would like to meet are known by a different name or are ex-directory.

ive never tried stalking - except a little bit on the interweb - but im pretty certain i would be rubbish at it. it takes far too much application.

"young crazed peeling" - the distillers

"are you ready to be liberated?"


theres something about the way brody screams those words that really moves me to want to care (theres also something about brody's arse in those stripey trousers in the drain the blood video that moves me in an entirely other way - but thats another story).

the best thing about the question is its use of the passive voice. too often revolutionaries ask if you are ready to liberate yourself, or be part of a movement to liberate each other, or even to liberate someone else, but brody is offering to liberate me without any effort on my part. sure i need to prepare myself to be liberated, though the implication is only that the liberation process will be easier and go much more smoothly if i am properly prepared. theres enough passion in that question to make me believe that brody is quite prepared to liberate me, whatever my state of preparation. it is the "coming ready or not" that marks the end of the seekers countdown in hide and seek. it is the "brace, brace" over the aeroplane tannoy. its that glance that butch and sundance exchange just before that final futile shootout.

to be honest, brody, im not really very ready to be liberated, but im sure ill cope when you decide the time is right to liberate me.

The Bounty Kitchen Paper Song

"Use, rinse, rinse, rinse, use"

Have you ever seen the Bounty Strictly Come Dancing spoof advert? I saw it yesterday evening at a friend's house and the "use, rinse, rinse, rinse, use" refrain stuck in my head for ages...

Even as we went to see Lukas Moodysson's latest film, it was still there, playing in my head and coming out of my mouth, annoying my friends. It only stopped when the film started.

What can I say about "Container"? That there was 6 of us in the cinema, and one person walked out. That none of my three friends liked it. That it was a succession of black and white images, to the soft, monotonous sound of actress Jena Malone's voice. That it was both beautiful and horrible. Shocking and inspiring. Poetic. It reminded me of "the love song of J. Alfred Prufrock".

"suddenly i see"/"sunday shining" - kt tunstall/finlay quaye

"she makes me feel like i could be a tower, a big strong tower yeah"
"i'm a hero, like robert de niro"


sometimes a couple of bits of songs remind you of each other so much that hearing one in your head makes you think of the other which you then hear in your head which makes you think of the first one again. round and round. this is the power of the double earworm.


it also brought back a strong memory of drinking vodbenas (a shot of vodka with a shot of neat squash as a chaser) with crissie in bar-boon. im not even sure if thats something that literally happened or a fictional composite of memories. an awful lot of drinking went on at that bar and in slightly hazy retrospect the sessions tend to blend a little. i knew crissie well enough to know she was awesome, but i wish i knew her well enough to say i knew her. i do know she is nothing like kt tunstall or robert de niro though - so maybe im associating with the strength of her figurative tower.



though i have always suspected that that line of lyric has a phallic undertone

"i begin to wonder" - danii minogue

"and i-i-i begin to wonder"


2 girls on my train were listening, at a volume that seriously distorted on their mobile phone's tiny speakers with every pounding bass note, to some androgynous-voiced r'n'b singer's pseudo-romantic whinings and singing along in between their equally loud conversation. i think between them they totalled about 40% of the notes in tune and the guy's [i think] top range was well beyond them, but there was something about their enthusiasm for this aural drivel that was infectious and a tiny snatch of it stayed with me.

as is so often the case with things you really dont know and didnt hear well enough to have any grasp on becoming earworms, it quickly mutated into something vaguely similar that i did know better, though not really in this case because it is significantly better.

"little sunflower" - freddie hubbard

standing on the platform of blackfriars station, staring down the thames towards tower bridge and the rolling hills of se16 beyond, the wintery wind whipping off the water and through my hair with this tune in my head.

for some reason i have never been able to fathom, this tune always reminds me of jacqui, whom i have never met and only know through cohabiting a discussion forum. our greatest bond was that sick determination with which we clung to the last tattered fragments of a once-vibrant community right up until we finally had to give it up as dead. ive had no contact with her in months, i wouldnt even know how, and to be honest ive rarely spared her a thought, but every time i hear this tune i remember something clever, or funny, or bitchy or just plain relevant and necessary that she contributed and it makes me smile.

nirvanaweb is dead - long live all the former nirvanawebbers in whatever it is they do now

"desperate guys" - the faint

"you were warming the bass up, your hair covered your face up, i was acting indifferent at the merch booth putting on make-up"



for a brief period about a year ago i was a bit obsessed with this song. i first heard it on xfm walking home from the train station at night after a jazz workshop. the snatch of lyric above almost literally stopped me in my tracks - even with its dodgy scansion and not-quite-as-clever-as-it-first-appears word play i just found it so evocative. theres a sort of swagger to this song that is strangely aspirational. and those ridiculous string samples. and that squelchy bass riff.
as i write its been in my head for the last five and a half hours. its that kind of song. i recommend anyone to listen to it, but only if theyre prepared for the earworm consequences.


i was never that cool, but i did at least used to be cooler than i am now. acting indifferent. putting on make up.

"mental dreamers' club"

"sina olet hyvin kaunis
porquoi est-ce que je revais
ces sentiments? about to drown this
time in words my conscious mind cant say"


this was a song i started writing for someone else at a time when i barely managed to finish anything i started , so its little surprise i let her down. one day i'll finish writing it, and one day after that i'll make her sing it.
if i can ever remember what its supposed to say

"here is what i dreamed" - mike keneally

"then i was jostled by police to hand my wallet over"



the strange, zappa-esque, mildly self indulgent hat album has been in my cd rack for some time and i'm not entirely sure how and why i came to own it. im pretty certain i wouldnt have bought (or even lifted) a cd by someone i've still never heard of in any other context, i dont think i know anyone who would have lent it to me for me to forget (deliberately or otherwise) to give it back, and its not something most people would give as a present. but however it came into my life, its an album i fairly regularly rediscover having forgotten it and there are some real gems on it.


i was reminded of this song, with its bizarre narrative of repeatedly being stopped by the police who gradually steal everything he owns, when i saw 3 policemen pushing a young black guy against a wall. despite his protests, he had the resigned look of someone to whom this happened a lot. its ages since ive been stopped by the police, but when i used to walk home alone late at night a lot it was fairly regular. i felt a strange, if fleeting, sense of solidarity for the guy, and then i started to think that maybe hed actually done something to warrant this treatment which made me worry about the moral implications of siding with a criminal.
before id had time to think about it much though, i had walked past the situation and away, got distracted trying to remember the lyrics to the earworm and forgotten everything else.

"band you love to hate" - j church

"backstage passes for the both of you, again, what does it mean to you, you think you're writing wrongs with your old typewriter, but you haven't got a clue"



i was going to write about the best gig i ever went to, but ive done that several times in several places and can wait for this blog until im short of ideas.


the only person i knew with an old typewriter was the guy we only knew as "the cool emo drummer". i cant remember the first time we met, but the second time was at an open mic night where he was drumming for 2 drunken middle-aged characters playing glam and blues covers. i cant really think of a generous way to say they didnt suck, but sitting in his own happy world at the back in an old comfortable jumper, hair flopping from side to side with every head-dance, the cool emo drummer effortlessly held the enthusiastic row into something resembling musical structure. he oozed cool in a gentle, self-effacing way and speaking to him that evening left me with the impression of the best sort of quiet man.
im ashamed to say i dont think i ever spoke to him again, though i did see him around several times. he used to sit on the steps in the sunshine writing poetry on a beat up old typewriter. i was never quite nosy enough to try to read the stanzas over his sholder as i passed, so i cant say whether he wrote anything of any artistic or literary merit. but from the little i knew of him, i wouldnt be at all suprised

"somebody kill me" - adam sandler

"somebody kill me please. somebody kill me please"


i must have watched the wedding singer on video a lot. i was one of those films my ex-girlf would put on in her room to distract us from the fact that our relationship had long-since slipped from "romantic and physical" territory into "convenient, needy and habitual" - though i for one didnt really realise it at the time. there were several videos that fell into that category - but with hindsight tws was a notable example because it reminded us of early in our relationship when we had gone to see it. its a likable nothing of a movie with two real strong features. the first is the couple of scenes in which drew barrymore looks really cute, and the second is the soundtrack. sure if you feel like being a pedant it doesnt entirely conjure 1985 - but it consistently falls on the cool side of cheesy.


the reason the song is circling my mind with accelerating angular velocity is that ive just come to a shuddering realisation of just how bored i am at my job. dont expect me to do anything about it, mind.

"body parts" - licking chocolate jesus

"i know a secret about you, touching yourself in the bathroom, watching yourself in the mirror, wishing that you could be near her"


i suffer from a strange sort of licking chocolate jesus tourettes. it affects me a lot less now than it did when i watched them gig a lot (trying hard not to be that fan who mouths the words along) but still from time to time i catch myself singing snatches of their lyrics aloud in far from appropriate situations. more than once this has led to scaring or getting disgusted looks from (or both) old ladies. most people thought that jungle was their best song, and i always had a soft spot for prosthetic limb, but every time i heard neil scream "you're a paranoid lover" it made me shudder.

lcj remain the best unsigned band i have ever seen live - and the gigs we played together were far too few since they always made m4G raise our game to try to compete.

"shape of my heart" - the sugababes

"i know that the spades are the swords of a soldier, i know that the clubs are weapons of war"


this is my favourite sting song. i know to some extent thats a bit like having a favourite flavour of corrugated cardboard - it kinda tastes the same and its all very dull - but when pushed this was always my answer. it was a much cooler answer to give in the late 90s when this was semi-obscure and a lot of people hadn't heard of it, but the fact that thats no longer the case shouldnt be a good enough reason to stop it being my favourite - even though that cooler-than-thou-wannabe inside me still tries to insist it is. i remember this song being the background music to magic tricks on some inconsequencial kids tv show paul zenon appeared on - and it that context it had an air of mystery. this was before i had really heard of sting and started to disregard him out of hand for all the rubbish he comes wrapped up these days. atom and his package sang that sting cannot possibly be the same guy from the police, though i reckon he seemed to have a smug self-importance even before the whole rainforest thing.

sting, like a wasp, is a perennial annoyance - but he did write have a hand in writing both this song and "walking on the moon" for which you have to give him a little leaway.

"beautiful girl" - the gadjits

"she's using those number systems from reading blaise pascal. she's making babies for now"



i enjoy that show where noel edmonds asks you whether or not you would like to deal.
i am sure that the decision making process should be based on maths, but have always been frustrated by the fact that - since the deal offered is always less than the expected value of the game - simple probability theory states that you should always decline the deal. i have seen the show enough times to realise that there is almost always a point where the player should have dealt.
i am trying to formulate a strategy based on my new theory that - since the offer is a function of the expected value - the probability of getting a higher offer after the next round is the probability of the expected value being greater.
but the formula is getting more and more complicated and wasting more and more of my time - and i doubt if noel would be impressed were i to ask him to wait for a few minutes while i did some calculations before giving him my response as to whether or not i would like to deal.

sometimes i think that maybe theres an argument for thinking less. certainly the vacuous and thoughtless always seem to be ok, under their own limited definitions

"brain stew" - green day

"my eyes feel like they're gonna bleed"


the first 4 green day albums are some of my favourite records ever. even insomniac which seemed to mostly pass everyone by at the time. i remember how much i was looking forward to the release of nimrod - and even more clearly the numbing sense of disappointment when i heard it. how could a band i loved make something so mediocre?
remember kids - everyone lets you down sooner or later.

i really did wake up this morning with a strange kind of headache - the entire bottom half of my head (a bit like terry nutkins' haircut) - and throbbing eyes. the riff for this song was pounding round and round - occasionally getting to this snatch of lyric then sort of tailing off and starting the riff again.

"no such thing" - John Mayer

"They love to tell you: stay inside the lines, but something's better on the other side"

I woke up with these two lines from the song in my head. Only these two - not the rest of the song, in which the melody is very different - so I wasn't sure which song it was. They're the kind of lines too, that you can sort of play backwards in your head, and they become all muddy and weird, or sometimes they sound like a broken record.A

So I must have hit the "snooze" button at least a dozen times, because I was supposed to get up at 9 and I only emerged from my dreams at 10.20am. Oh well.

I dreamt that my brother was in prison (originally it was my BF who was in prison for using the word "crack" in an email that he sent from work) and my mum and myself visited him. The prison was at the top of a sandy hill, in the middle of town yet in the middle of the ocean. We were wearing swimming suits and kept climbing up these hills to get to the top, but kept sliding off them (they then became wet), they were like huge tobogans! Once at the top we could buy some wooden dolphin-shaped hairclips made by the inmates themselves.

Did I mention it was my 6 year-old brother who was in prison?