Given the stunning lack of success surrounding my 10 songs blog from yesterday, I shall build on my failure by doing it again, playing 10 songs on my iPod on shuffle so see what comes out.
1. “Runway, Houses, City, Clouds” by Tame Impala. I couldn’t remember the album (“Innerspeaker”) without cheating, but the tune was easy enough to recognise. All a bit muddled musically and I haven’t a clue what the words mean since you can’t hear them properly, but some cracking percussion and dreamy harmonies. Kevin Parker’s band are superb.
2. “They All Ask’d For You” by The Meters. I didn’t have a clue what this was because I always associate the Meters with pioneering funk and this sounded almost country in style. Embarrassing that here is a song in my record collection which I didn’t vaguely recognise. Sorry.
3. “On A Good Thing (Chubby Chunks)” by Chubby Chunks. No, nor me. It’s from one of my Rush Hour compilations and it samples something I vaguely recognise.
4. “Blackberry Way” by the Move. Roy Wood returns me to semblance of normality and of being able to recognise one of the songs from my own collection. It’s from 1968 and is definitely slightly psychedelic. A year later Jeff Lynne joined the band. I wonder what happened to him?
5. “Seven Naked Valleys” by Graham Coxon. I didn’t know which Coxon album it came from (“A+E) and I wrongly called Damon Albarn at first. He’s a very distinctive player and I’d quite forgotten how good his solo albums were.
6. “Living In The Past” by Jethro Tull. An easy one here, on which Ian Anderson seems to sing and play his flute simultaneously, which must take some doing. It must be an old CD that wasn’t remastered so I have turned it up a bit and it still sounds quiet. 1969, I reckon.
7. “For Your Life” by Led Zeppelin. This is live so it must be from the “Celebration Day” album (I checked, it was). Robert Plant sounds a little croaky on the top notes, but otherwise a stellar performance by arguably the greatest rock band of them all.
8. “Just Like A Woman” by Bob Dylan. This is live, too, from the “Concert for Bangla Desh”, George Harrison’s star-studded fundraiser at Madison Square Garden from 1971. This was during the time when if you saw Dylan in concert, you could actually make out not just the tune he was singing but also the lyrics. Nowadays, you can barely make out either but the old boy still makes some great music.
9. “Raspberry Beret” by Prince. The first time I ever heard of Prince was when he was featured regularly on Jonathan King’s excellent “Entertainment USA”. Sadly, his career came to an abrupt halt when it transpired he had a thing about young boys. This came to light when one of his victims approached Max Clifford of all people. Anyway, Prince – fantastic. Still a huge talent.
10. “Atlantic Avenue” by Average White Band. The only accurate word in the band’s name was band since they were neither average nor white. Blue eyed soul doesn’t come close to describing the astonishing sound of this wonderful band who sounded like they had emerged from the heart of black America and not Scotland.
