"deeper shade of blue" - steps

"into each life some sun must shine - well someone else must be getting mine. the days are so empty, nights are so long, awaking to find again that you've gone"



i have a grudging sort of respect for steps. they're not good. i wouldn't endorse them, i wouldn't ever choose to listen to them but, the painful (and truly tragic) cover of tragedy aside, always enjoy it at least a little when i do. sure they were throwaway pop, but they had the redeeming value that they knew they were and didn't care. also, i think they had some pretty good people writing for them. lyrically at least, there are some well crafted pop songs, with more emotional lyrics than the bland child-friendly production would imply.

someone i know mentioned recently that he had had a thing for claire. i think i over-expressed my surprise and it came across as a criticism. i would never criticise anyone for finding another person attractive, however little i understood the reason for it. i was however surprised since i'd never met a claire-person before. i know of several faye-people, and i know i'm not alone in the lisa-people, and i've even met some h-people (though that's a very different thing), but no claire-people.

chaqu-un a son gout, je suppose

my wife asserts that steps were rubbish, and to an extent she has a point, but then she tries to claim that s-club were the far superior pop band. this is clearly an error of judgement since i have rarely heard an s-club song without wanting to hurt someone (this would preferably take the form of hannah-homicide, but has a range of options right down to scooping out my own inner ear with a screwdriver). the only faintly acceptable member of s-club was jo o, and she has now proven herself, through the medium of "celebrity" "reality" tv, to be a dull, slightly racist chav.


oh dear, how sad am i to even have an opinion about any of this rubbish?
(please note that this is rhetorical)

"cement" - feeder

"i'm in quicksand sinking in again. i've got concrete shoes and i can't swim"


i love this song. it reminds me of why i used to be a fan of feeder. a combination of melody and power. a summery sort of pain. when he sings "how can i stop this?" it meant something to me. buck rogers leaves me cold.
but they've been disappointing me for a long time. when i saw them live, just before the rerelease of polythene, they were quite good but what i remember most of their set was the disappointment of the songs everyone wanted them to play but they didn't - how could they not play tangerine for example.
actually what i remember most from that gig is just how fantastic tampasm were in support. they looked great, they wore plastic devil horns, they played hard fast and tight, i moshed like a mentalist, some guy jumped on my head when i went down, i got back up and they were still rocking, they played glorified vibrator - they deserved to be much much bigger than they were.
oh and it was this gig where i spilled the beer of a music journalist, and he made me buy him another and then when he realised that meant i had no money to buy my own he said i could have as much of it as i could down in one - i was terrified i was about to hurl on his feet.

it was also on the way home from that gig that i experienced the man on the tube with the pizza hut balloon who killed rock, the saddest molko-wannabe i've ever seen and the drunk guys who thought it was hilarious to say "what rhymes with bank" over and over again.

"reginasaurus" - regina spektor

"if i was a philosophy i'd be registentionalism, and if people spoke using quotes of me they'd say reginaisms. if i was a religion, then my church would surely have a schism"


some time ago now, i got an instant message from pat. "you have to go and see regina spektor when she plays in london," she said, "my friend messaged me and told me to go and see her and i did and it was great so now i'm telling you" [i'm paraphrasing a lot here]

so based pretty much solely on that recommendation and only having heard "baby jesus" before i duly went up to islington to see her. after enduring a competent but incredibly self-involved support band and an interminable wait a slightly ditsy-looking girl with just a hint of kooky-cuteness walks out onto the stage, sits at a piano and captures the full rapt attention of the entire crowd for her full set. she makes jokes, she plays requests (and has to give up on "baby jesus" quite early cos she hasn't played it all tour), she is genuinely concerned for all the young girls fainting in the sweltering heat of a poorly ventilated box, she is genuinely likable.

i was singing this song for days afterwards and it has regularly been an earworm since. it's so not her best song but it is sweet and funny and pretty in a throwaway kind of way

"king of the kerb" - echobelly

'"sugar smile savvy"

nothing was quite as era-encapsulating of the whole britpop thing as the shine compilations. anyone with a full set has an amazing assortment of huge hits, indie gems and forgotten classics. whoever it was at polygram picking the tracks did a fine job. anyone planning an indie-disco could get by with just a few of them - as long as they were discrete and prepared not to do many requests.

i'm pretty certain this song was on shine 3 which is probably one of the best ones. i must have heard it dozens of times before i worked out what the lyrics were she was singing and i think i liked the song less once i knew what it was about, but you've gotta admit it's catchy

"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.

"monday night pet shop madness" - sid shuttle and the space cadets

"if you want to have fun on a monday night, come down to the petshop with me."


when i was, i think, 9 my friend chris and i started writing poetry together in the playground. the compass grew to include jack, and the other chris and some other people, but it was our project. i remember the battered spiral-bound notebook chris would pull out at break and lunch times - chock full of the scrawlings of our collective art. in fairness, most of it was derivative or just plain ripped off, and a lot of it was ruined by trying, in our own small-child, pun-obsessed way, to be funny.

one day we realised that a lot of the better material we had written wasn't poetry so much as song lyrics and we formed a band. it mattered not a scrap that none of us could play anything (though i think i was already a very poor clarinetist by this point) - hey, many bands have formed and then worried about learning to play things.
heavily inspired by "morris minor's marvellous motors" - a popular children's tv comedy at the time - we settled on the name sid shuttle and the space cadets. i wish i could remember the ridiculous themed pseudonyms of other band members but i can't even remember which out of chris and i lost the battle and ended up being sid shuttle.

why we chose to write a song about a pet shop also escapes me, and with the cynical eyes of hindsight it all seems rather pathetic, but for a few moments we believed in something - and made some (albeit faintly ridiculous) assertions about our collective future.

i'd settle for a childish clarity now

"beheaded" - the offspring

"the way his body is severed in two his vocal cords are gonna be hard to use"



i'm not quite sure when the offspring turned into a parody of themselves. maybe it was the shift to the major label placing different expectations upon them. although ixnay was on epitaph and there are a few novelty-ish songs that kinda point to the direction they ended up going in for columbia.
but right back in the dying moments of the eighties there were tracks like this that blended so-cal punk with a twist of the cartoon horror of the misfits. this song is as much about finding ways to silence those try to control you as it is about collecting heads in a sack under your bed.

"mambo number five" - bob the builder

"a little bit of tiling on the roof, a little bit of making waterproof, a little bit of concrete mixed with sand, a little bit of bob, the builder man"




oh no. oh please no. a million times no.
inane drivel with gratingly poor scansion.
for several hours.
my poor poor brain

"the most beautiful girl in the world" - the artist formerly known as prince

"when the day turns into the last day of all time i can say i hope you are in these arms of mine"



everyone knows that the most important question in understanding a person's musical taste is "elvis or the beatles?"
in my opinion, though, the second most important question is "michael jackson or prince?"
the third question i usually add in is "ramones or sex pistols?"

i think its the second question that people don't seem to expect and is really more telling than you would think.

i don't like michael jackson. almost nothing he has done since his earliest stuff has really done anything for me. i have respect for him as an artist, he has written popular and influential songs, though i'm not keen on them. i have less respect for him as a person - i'm never sure if i believe the rumours and allegations but i do know i can't relate to him on any level. i don't think i let that influence my opinion of his music much, though its possible i do.
prince is notoriously weird. i very much doubt there's much about his life i could relate to either. but i do know he writes incredible songs, seems to play every instrument ever invented with amazing passion and somehow manages to touch me.

but i think the question - like the elvis or the beatles issue - goes deeper than your specific preference between these two artists. to me, although their styles could be considered similar they diverge enough to make the comparison significant. jackson to me represents all forms of dance and soul music, while prince represents all forms of rock music . jackson represents commercialism, prince experimentalism. jackson mawkish sentimentality, prince genuine expressions or powerful emotions.

maybe thats just the way i see it.

someone once tried to argue with me that i was just asking people to choose between black music and white music - but it's not about that, it's really not.

"don't let me get me" - pink

"every day i fight a war against the mirror"


i know it's not a universally held opinion, but i think pink is gorgeous. she's had so many looks but they are pretty much all good. once upon a time one of the music tv channels (the hits i think) was having a pink weekend where all her videos were available for selection so she was on about every 4th or 5th video. i foolishly decided i wasn't going to go to bed until i had seen them all - which at the time was eight videos i think. at about a quarter to five on sunday morning they finally played the most girls video and i could finally get some sleep. by this time i think i had seen the lady marmalade video 5 times. the biggest problem was that most of the videos in between were the drossiest pop which was quite soporific.

on world aids day diva's bar had a porn star themed charity fancy dress night. like most fancy dress occasions this was generally an excuse for girls to look slutty whilst guys generally made as little effort as possible. i'm pretty sure i saw several people whose costume consisted of sticking a name label to their chest of a punny porn-star name. anyway, i had decided at that time that the sexiest moving image i had seen was pink's video for like a pill and that, although there was no actual sex or nudity in it i had drooled over it more than enough times for it to count. so i decided i was going as pink. the biggest obstacle i faced was that i am outrageously cheap and i had to go as pink on a budget of a couple of quid. so i went on a charity shop crawl. so that gorgeous flowing gaping black jacket was substituted by a "silk" robe (made by killing genuine acrylics) , that tiny tight skirt was replaced by the smallest skirt i could find and legally wear without being arrested for exposure, i already had some stockings so that wasn't a problem, the shoes i gave up as a dead loss on my budget and hoped people would be too distracted by the rest to notice, i copied her eyeliner style as well as i could, put loads of product in my hair so it came across my face "just so" and then came my big mistake. a feature of this outfit in the video is the crosses of black tape across her nipples. i'm pretty sure pink is wearing insulating tape, but the only tape i had was gaffer tape. now, as you are probably aware, insulating tape is much less sticky than gaffer tape. suffice it to say that removing the gaffer tape from my nipples was more than a little painful (pixie chris did it for me).
i had clearly made more effort than most of the males there put together.
a good night though.

"watch this" - the slackers

" i cry but i can't complain. i supply my own ball and chain"



this song is about fear of commitment. strangely i've never had that fear of commitment in relationships that's so stereotypical of men - i found an awesome woman and i married her - but i have a real fear of committing to a job, to a task, to a role or to a routine.

maybe i'm just scared of some pathetic idea of selling out

"pavlov's bell" - aimee mann

"nobody knows thats how i nearly fell. trading clothes and ringing pavlov's bell"



despite the fact that several of the ones i used to go to have closed down, there is still some choice of cinemas in croydon. admittedly your choice is mostly the big vue in the centre of town or the big vue next to ikea, but there is also the david lean cinema. its a strange little place, 3 or 4 rows of chairs in a surprisingly small room tucked away in a fairly obscure part of the clocktower complex - past the museum of croydon, past the bar - and they usually get things at least a few weeks after the bigger cinemas.

because its so small you can really get a feeling for what the other people around you think of the film. when i went there to see magnolia i got a real sense at about 2 hours in that the room was split into two approximately equal groups. the first group - including the girlfriend i went to see it with - were clearly of the opinion that it was confusing, boring and crap while the second group - including me - found it complex, subtle and fantastic. strangely, about 45 minutes later as things were tying together and making more sense some of the people who had been enjoying it were beginning to flag under the sheer length of the thing whilst some people who had been hating it realised that it had all made some sense all along and realised they enjoyed it.

my advice to you is that you don't buy the soundtrack album though. get aimee mann's ultimate collection instead - a much better album. and then buy lost in space that this great tune is on - even if just for the comic in the inlay.

"tell him" - the exciters

"i know something about love"



i have had a sad evening. not earth shatteringly tragic in the scheme of things, but enough to put me in a real downer.
my wonderful wife bought me a saxophone from e-bay. not just a saxophone, a 1954 conn 12m baritone - the sax of my dreams (though in my best and pickiest dreams its a mid 40s model with mint gold plate finish - and for free rather than the many thousands market forces would expect for such an item). i was so excited that it was arriving, but then so shocked when i opened the case. it instantly didn't look right, though the true horror was hidden until i lifted it up. the loop of the crook had taken a serious blow in transit and was bent right up against the body. this crushed the octave key meachanism, bent the top f key and snapped the top e key right off. coupled with the sadness of disappointment was the greater sadness of seeing something so beautiful that had been abused so badly. and it really was beautiful. and it really was brutally damaged. in its own way it was kinda heartbreaking.

stupid parcelforce clumsy delivery drivers. what have you done? what have you done?

"losing ctrl" - whale

"it's not as easy losing control"


this song leaps aggressively at you out of the middle of all disco dance must end in broken bones and always, but always, makes me want to scream along. it is, in and of itself, an opportunity to lose control, which i guess is its strength. and points out that often what we are uptight about is our own uptightness.

"sos" - rihanna

"you on my mind has got me losing it"



kurt cobain would have been 40 today. i really wanted a suitable nirvana earworm to celebrate it and give me an excuse to write about him, but i've been getting tiny bits or fleeting visits from about 50 different nirvana songs and thus none of them count.

instead i got this. i couldn't even remember where this line was from for ages until it clicked with this song. somewhere in the murky grey area between sample, mashup and cover - a pretty enough girl with a mediocre voice and a riff everyone's sick of by now even though it comes from a classic song.

maybe there's a connection

probably not

"down in a hole" - alice in chains

"don't understand who they thought i was supposed to be. look at me now a man who won't let himself be"



it's a common misconception that there's no such thing as the truth. the trouble is that everyone has a different truth and they can be incompatible. like extreme said - the three sides to every story are yours, mine and the truth. in reality its more like that fable of the blind men and the elephant. there is an absolute truth but for the most part we don't have the ability to perceive enough of it at once to understand it. concentrating too hard on the bit of the truth you can see will stop you understanding that the bit someone else can see can still be the truth.

i think this is even more true about roles. nobody else's idea of who and what you should be is right, but in all honestly yours probably isn't either.

"ten shades of grey" - terrorvision

"it's night again all the time - shadows are lurking but i can't find mine"



one of the times i came closest to losing respect for a friend was when fred claimed that in his opinion regular urban survivor was a better album than how to make friends and influence people. its not just because he was clearly wrong, but because that album holds a special place for me. even though i have heard it and played it many times in many situations it will always be the summer of 1995 to me. on holiday without my family i was finally - at not quite 15 - able to step away from the roles i had been cast in in my normal situations and start to become myself. making friends, flirting outrageously with girls (by my standards) and generally not being dismissed by people out of hand gave me a boost of self-worth that was severely lacking in my life around that time. this album was everywhere that summer, and its bouncier songs like oblivion and time of the signs set the soundtrack for a slight tempo shift in my life.

"the sound of silence" - simon and garfunkel

"people writing songs that voices never share and no one dared disturb the sound of silence"



i don't get the graduate. there's nothing sexy about it. hoffman is too old looking at 30 to convincingly be young. bancroft at only 6 years older is too similar an age for the age gap thing to be believable. i know the jumpyness is part of the mood but it just irritates me - as does the whole formality of pretty much noone having a first name. far be it from me to disregard what is widely regarded as a classic - but i honestly don't understand what all the fuss is about.

and then there's the soundtrack. maybe my modern ear expects too much from a soundtrack but it mostly seems to consist of variations on mrs robinson and sound of silence over and over again - doing nothing to enhance for me the viewing experience.

but here's the kicker. i don't get simon and garfunkel. i don't understand why anyone would choose to listen to them - let alone get excited about them. i'll give you that paul simon is a talented songwriter with a pretty good voice - but i'm not really sure what garfunkel is for. the pretty much live versions of the same songs on "the paul simon songbook" are much more listenable. but i still don't really like that material. his eponymous album, or even graceland, are so much better and have videos where he takes pride in beating children at baseball or pretending to be chevy chase.

and if i never hear bridge over troubled waters again it will be much too soon.

"hedonism (just because you feel good)" - skunk anansie

"how do you remember me, the one that made you laugh until you cried. i hope you're feeling happy now"



stuck in a traffic jam on the south circular and this came on xfm. i had no choice but to crank it up and sing along (though i have to drop out the really high bits). hours later i was still singing it. it probably only just scrapes into my top 10 tracks of theirs but its great. the band is great. the songs are great. if you don't own either of their first two albums then shame on you.

i used to be really bothered about how people remembered me. surprisingly much more so than what people thought of me in the moment - which i never really cared about. i remember writing long quasi-deep meanderings in the school leaving books of people i had barely given a second thought to most of the years we had coexisted. it always meant more to me if someone mentioned a long time later that they enjoyed one of my gigs, rather than straight after which meant quite little. being memorable was its own way of ensuring i was being significant. being memorable is a far greater aspiration than being popular, or even than being liked.

go out there and be memorable, readers, go.

"all your way" - morphine

"i was raised with the strong of heart but if you touch me wrong i fall apart. i found a woman who's soft but she's also hard, while i slept she nailed down my heart"



there's something deeply attractive about a strong woman. i don't mean by that that i get off on images of female bodybuilders or have an obsession with world's strongest woman contests. the strength i'm referring to is something less physical. she and her strength may take many forms but the beauty is still there. it may be some form of emotional strength, mental strength, sexual strength, strength of character, strength of will, strength of determination, or some combination of the above. its the spark of controlled power. she knows how to destroy you but chooses not to.

that's probably what sea bass is about.

there's probably something attractive about a strong man as well but i've never met one.