When writing about my love of ‘new music’, I need to remind myself of what the broadcaster Stuart Maconie said on the subject. “New music,” he said, “is just music you haven’t heard before.” While I think there is a difference between new music and some older music you haven’t heard before, I do not think it’s worth arguing the toss. I know what he means and I love what he means. I just can’t get enough new music.
My search for new music is, I am happy to admit, an obsession. If I am not listening to BBC 6 Music throughout an average day, I am searching websites, magazines (Mojo and Uncut) and trying out my findings on YouTube. I find it as exciting today to discover something new to me – that’s a better definition, isn’t it? – as I have done recently with Melody’s Echo Chamber as I was when I first found the musical love of my life, Steely Dan.
When I was at school, I managed to fit in reasonably well on the music front, liking enough music of the time to allow me some credibility. I was happy to admit being a massive fan of T. Rex and had enough nous about me to visit friends’ houses and listen to their new albums by the likes of Santana and Nazareth. What I didn’t admit to in my early teenage years was being a huge fan of Neil Diamond and the Canadian folksinger Gordon Lightfoot. The 13 year old me was obsessed with Neil Diamond’s incredible album Taproot Manuscript. Side One was mainly classic Diamond music, with his Cracklin’ Rosie the opening track and a somewhat overwrought cover of The Hollies’ He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother as the Side One closer. Side Two was a revelation.
The African Trilogy (A Folk Ballet) was incredibly experimental, with a bunch of songs with an African theme. Diamond, it soon turned out, was on the verge of leaving the singer-singwriter folky image behind, as the Vegas circuit beckoned. With everyone in school listening to very different music, I kept my counsel, quietly accumulating more and more Diamond albums. They were among my guilty pleasures.
As the 1970s went by, I was properly into American rock music, from the aforementioned Steely Dan, Doobie Brothers, Toto, Little Feat and many more, as well as the emerging British bands of the time, particularly The Clash who to my mind were the most important British band since The Beatles. From then on, I was more than content, possibly even boastful, of the increasingly eclectic nature of my music taste. If I liked something, I just said so. The thin skin of my youth replaced by the don’t-give-a-fuckery attitude maturity, if that’s the right word, brings. But there were still songs that I felt a bit guilty about liking. I was not bothered about being ‘hip’ or trendy, but there were some songs, actually quite a lot of songs, I liked rather a lot that I spoke very little about. Today, that’s going to change.
In truth, these songs are no longer guilty pleasures at all. Harmless pleasure is nothing to be guilty about and I’m at an age where my street cred scarcely matters. I could easily admit to watching the Antiques Roadshow, paying for things by cash or listening to Queen and younger folk wouldn’t bat an eyelid, so admitting to not just obsessing with music by the likes of Lightning In A Twilight Hour, Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs (TEED) and The Besnard Lakes, means the square root of fuck all.
Nonetheless, here are ten guilty pleasures, many of which are in my own collection, and there will be many more. Wait until I get onto TV themes I like. Let’s go.
- Land of Make Believe by Buck’s Fizz. 1981 and street cred is vital. I’m still listening to The Clash classic Sandinista! and Steely Dan’s Gaucho from the year before, the latter vying with the Dan’s Aja as my favourite album of all time and this came along. A band put together with the sole aim of winning the Eurovision Song Contest – which they did with the execrable Making Your Mind Up – actually performed a great pop song, written by Andy Hill and, better still, former King Crimson man Pete Sinfield. When I should have been listening to Washington Bullets or Time Out Of Mind, here I was listening to Buck’s Fizz. I remember pretending the only reason I liked the song was because of my love for Jay Aston, one of the lady singers in the group, but really it was the song I loved best. 45 years later I can finally fess up.
- The Promise by Girls Aloud. For some reason, the charms of Girls Aloud somehow passed me by. By 2008, I was old enough to judge music by its actual value and not whether I fancied one of the singers and I had no time for Girls Aloud. Then came The Promise. And even the gobbledegook lyrics and ludicrous American accents adopted for the song didn’t put me off. It’s a fabulous pop record and for some bizarre reason, I usually find it quite emotional, too. Maybe there’s some subconscious thing going on, I don’t know, and something happened at the time, but many years later I bought a digital download of the song and I never get bored with it.
- Crazy Horses by The Osmonds. In 1972, The Osmonds ruled the world, or at least brother Donny did. The pretty boy Mormon was the dreamboat for almost very pubescent girl in the land, almost every single one of them fainting when he sang Puppy Love. The brothers were saccharine sweet, too, until they dropped Crazy Horses. Raucous lead vocals, a banging guitar riff and a Theremin sounding Yamaha organ – it was a stone-cold rock classic by The Osmonds. I always felt it was slightly spoiled by the horn section later on the track, but still, what a tune. It was all about air pollution, too, not heroin as censors in South Africa thought when they banned it.
- Moonlight Feels Right by Starbuck. Soppy, insipid, cringy – all these things are true, but what a tune, featuring arguably the greatest Marimba solo in the history of music. I quite like the flowery lyrics, too.
- Afternoon Delight by Starland Vocal Band. 1976 now and it’s a song about shagging, more specifically shagging in the afternoon, not that you’d guess from the music and especially the soaring harmonies, or indeed by watching the video. But once you read the words, you get the general idea. “Sky rockets in sight“, I ask you. What can that mean? Come again?
- Downtown by Petula Clark. One of my all time favourites and it’s from 1964. A lovely song about escaping from the misery of real life, written by ‘Crossroads’ theme composer Tony Hatch. And how can you not like a recording that has Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page playing on it?
- Excerpt From A Teenage Opera by Keith West. Now we’re back in 1967 and we’re hearing about the sad story of an ageing door-to-door grocer, called Jack, who pisses off the people in his village by failing to deliver their groceries. Bastard. The poor sod is 82, he’s got heart trouble but the children of the village sing: “Grocer Jack, Grocer Jack, get off your back.Go into town, don’t let them down you lazy git, oh-no-no.” (Well, not the lazy git bit, but you get the drift.) The song omits the bit when Jack is found dead, presumably on taste grounds, but soon everyone in the village feels guilty, taking the old boy for granted. “People cry and walk away and think about the fateful day,” the kids sing. “Now they wish they’d given Jack more affection and respect.” Too bloody right. Classic song, though. What a shame this was the only part of the Teenage Opera that Keith West wrote and performed.
- Shiver by Natalie Imbruglia. Quite apart from being the most beautiful woman to have ever walked this Earth – this assertion is not open for debate, by the way – our Nat isn’t a bad singer. She’s done a few decent songs – Torn is one – and a few less decent ones, but Shiver, what a brilliant tune that is. I have to confess something very personal here: I used to watch Neighbours back in the day just for Beth Brennan to appear. Me and Nat go back a very long way. If only …
- Happy by The Carpenters. It was not considered hip to admit to liking, never mind loving, The Carpenters back in the 1970s. It was sickly, sweet, middle of the road, adult oriented rock. Well, that’s what I thought, except that Karen Carpenter had the voice of an angel. I secretly loved their music, especially the magnificent Goodbye To Love, featuring one of the great guitar solos by Tony Peluso. Happy is a much brighter, gentler song and also features Peluso, albeit in a bit part role and the legendary Derek and the Dominos, among many others, drummer Jim Gordon, who we don’t talk about these days because he later went mad and killed his mum.
- If It Wasn’t For The Nights by ABBA. Sitting alongside AC/DC in my record collection, there simply had to be some ABBA in my guilty secrets big reveal. I could have chosen one of many songs – The Day Before You Came ran this one very close – but I went for this because of its sheer joyousness. Their music is incredibly complex and the genius is making it sound so easy to listen to. I happen to believe ABBA were and remain criminally underrated. I always fancied the blonde one. Benny, wasn’t it?
Sadly for you, my loyal reader, there’s plenty more where this lot came from. I call them guilty secrets but I’ve come out now. And I’ll bet there’s a song or two in your collection that you once kept quiet about? Be honest, now. The more embarrassing, the better.
