(Every Christmas, I compile an eighty-minute CD of the stuff I was listening to during the year. This is a tradition that Andy Humphrey started and that I have seen fit to reciprocate. It's the sort of exercise that really gets you thinking about what was important to you....the new discoveries, the old gems that for some reason took on new resonance, or - more recently - the stuff your children liked. I try to go for eclecticism but maintain something resembling a thematic unity.
Once again, I've decided to put my liner notes up here, along with downloadable extracts of each song, in case you wanted a frame of reference - full tracks are not available for copyright reasons and also space limitations. The extracts are about a minute in length and are encoded as 192 kbps MP3s. They can be accessed by clicking the header of each song. You could risk opening them in your browser, or just right-click and save if you prefer.)
1. The Sugarhill Gang – Apache
Another year, another version of ‘Apache’. When I introduced Josh to this version, he immediately fell in love with its powerful, driving rhythm, and singalong chorus. We watched Will Smith and Alfonso Ribeiro gyrate their way round a Las Vegas nightclub in a memorable clip from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, but one of Joshua’s favourite things to do was to get out of the bath, and then bounce all over the bed, dancing and laughing hysterically while I towelled him dry. Of course, he had no idea about the historical significance – mythical or otherwise – of the characters mentioned, and had never heard of General Custer, which meant that for some time we were greeted nightly by the sound of a small voice echoing from the bedroom, bellowing “Custard...jump on it! Jump on it! Jump on it!”.
Available on: Back To The Old School - Rapper's Delights (Sequel)
2. Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich – Legend of Xanadu
When I was much, much younger, my father had a recorded C90 that contained two greatest hits compilations. Side two featured the early hits of the Bee Gees: I grew up knowing the words to ‘Massachusetts’, ‘First of May’ ‘New York Mining Disaster’ and ‘Don’t Forget To Remember’ as well as I knew any nursery rhyme, and you may imagine that the later discovery that these pleasant, tuneful Australians were largely responsible for the disco craze came as something of a shock. Side one, on the other hand, contained the greatest hits of Dave Dee and the gang, and opened my eyes to the eclecticism of pop music: here were songs that embraced early heavy metal, Mexican cowboy music, tribal chanting and even Greek dances, thanks to the electrified mandolin on ‘Bend It’. The success and enduring appeal of Dave Dee and his posse was due in no small part to the songwriting talents of Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley, who managed to come up with catchy, memorable tunes with lyrics that ranged from melodramatic (‘Last Night In Soho’) to plain bizarre (‘Zabadak’, whatever the hell that was about), in a variety of musical styles. Dave Harman – the aforementioned Dee – was still playing with the band right to the end, before prostate cancer took him in January. Here is perhaps their finest hour, a ghostly echo of lost love, with whips straight out of Rawhide and a fantastic horn arrangement.
Available on: The Best of Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich (Commercial Marketing)
3. Wilson Dixon – The Man With No Name
I knew nothing of Wilson Dixon until a chance encounter on Radio 2 of an evening, in a show that I waited all year for them to repeat so that I could record it and then rip the audio. The stage persona of comedian Jesse Griffin, Wilson Dixon’s Radio 2 series consisted of four half-hour shows in the company of Johnny Walker, where he sang about love, life and divorce in an authentic-sounding western drawl. This particular song marks the beginning of a lengthy tale about his pursuit of a bank robber through small town America, a land where people like to pretend they’re in cowboy films even though times have moved on, and where “We needed someone to blame, so we picked that Chinese family who run the laundry”. “He rode on a horse as big as a bus / In fact it could have been a bus,” Wilson sings, before conceding, “I didn’t actually see him arrive”. Wonderful.
Available on: YouTube (albeit in a different version)
4. Angelo Badalamenti – Twin Peaks Theme
Having exhausted ourselves with 24 in 2008, we decided we needed a break this year: the first three or four months were therefore taken up with a rummage through the vaults of what is perhaps David Lynch’s best work. It’s surprising how well the series has aged, considering it’s now twenty years old: there is a timeless, almost 1950s quality to the small town, where the inhabitants slow-dance to finger-snapping jazz and doo-wop, and everyone eats far too much cherry pie. Old jokes were heard again and characters were rediscovered – I’d forgotten just how wet James Hurley was – and despite the programme jumping the shark drastically after the unmasking of Laura Palmer’s killer, there is a tremendous amount of goodness in there, helped in no small part by Lynch’s sinister and surreal direction, and wonderful performances from Kyle Maclachlan, Michael Ontkean, Michael J. Anderson, Sherilyn Fenn, Miguel Ferrer, and Lynch himself. Nowhere else on television are you likely to see David Duchovny in drag, or hear the words “Cooper, you remind me today of a small Mexican Chihuahua.” Still good.
Available on: Twin Peaks Soundtrack (Warner)
5. Lily Allen – The Fear
To be perfectly honest, Lily Allen greatly annoys me. The silly cow just can’t seem to keep her mouth shut. Determined to burn more bridges than a Venetian pyromaniac, and forever Tweeting about piracy, Katy Perry and Cheryl Cole until we’re bored to the point of suicide, Lily’s behaviour is less rock ‘n’ roll rebel than it is whinging socialite hussy. But the new material is astonishing: abandoning the ska roots to be found on 2006’s Alright, Still, she explores Goldfrappesque shuffles, bluegrass and electronica that’s reminiscent of 1980s Pet Shops Boys on this year’s It’s Not Me, It’s You, and the result is a record that’s powerful and biting, if occasionally preachy. ‘The Fear’ has got pretty much everywhere this year – it’s been in danger of overexposure (much like Allen herself) but it’s an absolutely cracking song.
Available on: It's Not Me, It's You (Sony BMG)
6. Malena Ernman – La Voix
In May, we were all told that Alex Rybak was in love with a fairy tale, while Graham Norton proved an adequate replacement for the departed Terry Wogan, and Britain didn’t do too badly at all, despite having a third-rate song by a second-rate composer who is well past his prime. But while ‘My Time’ did at least partly atone for the UK’s dreadful performance in the past few Eurovisions, it couldn’t hope to keep up with Norway, who walked away with a record number of points (although that’s largely because Europe keeps dividing). Here’s the Swedish entry – a song that should have done much better than it did but which was hampered by the frankly scary eyes of would-be Galadriel Malena Ernman. The ‘popera’ segment in the third minute is more than a little creepy, the changes are passé and viewed in retrospect the whole thing sounds rather jaded and 1997, but it works.
Available on: Eurovision Song Contest 2009 (EMI)
7. Bat For Lashes - Daniel
The birth of son no.3 took us all by surprise, not least because he was two weeks early. Emily’s waters broke just before lunchtime; she threw clothes in a bag and we bombed up the A34, and found ourselves with another child before that evening’s watershed. Daniel is a generally contented baby (except when we’re on the road) who is now in possession of teeth: he has yet to state any musical preferences but I am raising him on Dire Straits and the Beatles. The number one song on the day he was born, as I later found out, was Calvin Harris’ ‘I’m Not Alone’ – a record I bought for the sake of archiving and which I really tried to like, but which was frankly tedious. Thankfully, my sister-in-law came to the rescue, offering up this contemporary alternative from Bat For Lashes, which is full of pulsing, earthy percussiveness, sounding like 1980s Kate Bush.
Available on: Two Suns (EMI)
8. Danny Elfman – The Batman Theme
In 2009, Emily and I realised we’d been married five years. But there was another anniversary: The Dark Knight became a septuagenarian. In an age of mob rule and obsession with miscarriages of justice the image of a costumed vigilante seems somehow more relevant than ever, even if he does dress up as a flying rodent. Tim Burton’s first take on the caped crusader was released twenty years this summer, a realisation which made me feel very old. While I was rediscovering that film – and yes, it’s still as good as it ever was – and introducing Joshua to the 1960s TV show, Emily and I were playing through Lego Batman, which features a cacophony of dastardly villains, a bewildering array of modified costumes and excessive use of Danny Elfman’s score, which has as a result been in my head for much of the last six months. It’s more overstated than a lot of his work, and Elfman maintains it was mixed badly, but it’s still great fun.
Available on: Batman (Warner)
9. Swashbuckling Sea Songs – Welcome To The Caribbean
2009 was the year that Joshua officially discovered pirates. We soon found our home littered with dress-up costumes, model ships (the Playmobil one has been a particular favourite), books and activity packs, and Muppet Treasure Island has been in the DVD player more times than I’d care to count. Talking like a pirate (which in most cases consists of adopting a gravelly West Country accent and rolling your r’s; Brian Blessed does Somerset) is a curiously liberating experience, and the imaginative games we’ve played have been some of the most fun I’ve ever had with my eldest son. In June, I bought a Disney CD full of sea songs – some traditional, some from films, some commissioned – that has been much loved by all the family, particularly Thomas, who insists on hearing it almost nightly. There are some dodgy rhymes, and I’m pretty sure that the original version of ‘Blow The Man Down’ doesn’t contain any references to Jack Sparrow, but if it stops Daniel wailing in the back of the car, it must be good. Here’s one of the highlights.
Available on: Pirates of the Caribbean – Swashbuckling Sea Songs (Walt Disney)
10. The Pogues – Dirty Old Town
One of the highlights of 2009 for me was rambling through the peaks, travelling from Piccadilly (Manchester) to Haversage. The Folk Train is a monthly event that sees folk and blues bands hijack one of the carriages on a two-carriage stopping service and playing their material (and a lot of other people’s) all the way to the resting place of Little John. Then everyone troops off to the pub, and then gets back on the train again. The journey through the Peak District fairly hummed with the sound of jangling guitars, wooden sticks scraping on washboards, rustling sweet wrappers as complimentary chocolates were distributed throughout the carriage, the sound of singing and chattering and laughter and at least one mobile phone (“Yeah, I’m on a train. No, really, I am!”), and this tale of smoky Salford was perhaps the most memorable part of the set. Emily is still cross that I didn’t include a Mancunian version (“It just doesn’t sound the same sung with an Irish accent”) but it seems to be a favourite of Irish folk compilations, and MP3s of alternative versions were quite hard to track down – unless you’re going with the MacColl original, which is a bit too laid-back for my taste, you’re more or less stuck with interpretations from the Emerald Isle (and Rod Stewart, but let’s not go there). And it’s the Pogues, and I’m writing this at Christmas, and they did a song with Kirsty, so I guess it works. Kind of.
Available on: The Very Best of the Pogues (Warner)
11. John Martyn – May You Never
John Martyn: a man I didn’t know before his death, save his bizarre acceptance speech when receiving a lifetime achievement award at the BBC Folk Awards in 2008. When I read up on what he was like, a lot of what I’d heard that night made sense. His death in the early weeks of this year was a major blow for British music, even if it wasn’t exactly a surprise. He was one of the few true characters still hanging around in an industry that’s becoming increasingly bland, and we are poorer for his absence, although his legacy remains. Here’s John with the oft-quoted ‘May You Never’, from 1973.
Available on: Solid Air (Commercial Marketing)
12. Yello – The Race
One of the joys of listening to music alphabetically this year was that on weeks where the letters came from the bottom of the Scrabble bag, you often found yourself having to improvise. We have nothing in the ‘Y’ department, for example, except for Neil Young and a Yes compilation. So it was with great joy that I rediscovered this little gem from Yello, when Mark Radcliffe played it on The Chain one evening: it was then that I realised I spent years listening to a re-recorded version on an old compilation CD. The video is suitably grotesque, but that brass hook is wonderful.
Available on: Essential Yello (Phonogram)
13. Theme from Escape From Monkey Island
Ron Gilbert’s pixelated creation reached nineteen years of age this year, which wasn’t necessarily cause for a party – however, fans of everyone’s favourite graphic adventure were thrilled to discover that the long-defunct Monkey Island franchise had been magically resurrected. Thus we were treated not only to a faithful, high definition remake of the original (complete with full voiceover), but also a whole new set of stories that saw Guybrush Threepwood once more take on the ghost pirate LeChuck, as well as an army of marauding zombie pirates. I spent most of my summer humming Michael Land’s irritatingly catchy theme, as well as using the words “How appropriate. You fight like a cow”. A lot.
Available on: Download at http://www.scummbar.com/tx/games/music/
14. Mike & The Mechanics – Word of Mouth
I’ve had a Mike & The Mechanics album in our collection for almost a decade – ever since I discovered the moving and powerful (if emotionally manipulative) eighties ballad that is ‘The Living Years’ – but it wasn’t until this year that I really started to listen to it. Rutherford and pals produced all number of great songs over the years, from the screaming-down-the-motorway-at-ninety powerhouse of pop that is ‘All I Need Is A Miracle’ (with a video guest-starring Roy Kinnear, of all people) to the apocalyptic ‘Silent Running’, but this stadium stomp about the danger of believing everything you read seemed to have particular resonance for me in a year when I became perhaps more aware than ever that most of what’s printed in the papers is either exaggerated, inaccurate or downright false. Beware the angry mob, who like who they like and hate who they hate, but who are also easily swayed.
Available on: Hits (Virgin)
15. Duke Special – Let Me Go (Please, Please, Please)
Watching Duke Special was the most fun I had at this year’s Greenbelt: travelling to Cheltenham straight from another festival that he himself had organised, the tired noble launched into a hyperactive display of frenzied, crowd-pleasing antics and dazzling showmanship, over the course of an hour or so. No crowd member was left unsurfed, and no piano untipped: it was sometimes bizarre, but it was always fun to watch. Duke’s new album is loaded with catchy pop songs, and this ‘Lady Madonna’ soundalike was arguably the highlight of his Greenbelt set, embellished as it was with guitar and Hammond solos. The impact is lost somewhat in the studio, but you get the general idea.
Available on: I Never Thought This Day Would Come (Universal Music Ireland)
16. The Bellamy Brothers – Let Your Love Flow
Winner of this year’s ‘follows you round everywhere’ award, this Bellamy Brothers M.O.R. masterpiece in miniature first came to my attention when it was used to advertise Barclaycard – a pleasing mixture of images as a businessman descends through the financial district on an enormous water slide. After that, it seemed to be playing every time I switched on the radio. Whether this was because its use on TV shunted it up their playlist – an audience-winning tactic that runs dangerously close to advertising – or whether people were just in the mood for something light and happy has never been clear. Damned good song, though.
Available on: Let Your Love Flow & Other Number One Hits (Warner)
17. Kaiser Chiefs – Ruby
I’ve mentioned Joshua’s pirate awakening – as far as I’m concerned, 2009 was the year I officially discovered the Kaiser Chiefs (or Kaiser Chiefs, as they would rather be called, although personally I think the definitive article adds something). Frequently lambasted by the music press for being somewhat bland, the Chiefs have if nothing else succeeded in impressing me, largely through stomping guitar riffs, catchy choruses and insightful lyrics – any song that opens with “I remember nights out when we were young / They weren’t very good, they were rubbish” has got to be a winner. But it’s ‘Ruby’ who comes a close second to the previous cut on this collection when it comes to records that seem to follow you round. There is some dodgy word-setting in the second verse, but the chorus is great. If you get the time, the live version where the band are accompanied by the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain (who, are in the words of Ricky Wilson, “are also from Leeds”) is worth seeking out.
Available on: Yours Truly, Angry Mob (B-Unique)
18. Rolf Harris feat. Rick Parfitt – Christmas In The Sun
Hurrah! Uncle Rolf’s back, and this time he’s bringing his band – specifically, stone age rockers Status Quo, who provide a jaunty backing track to Harris’ seasonal celebration of yuletide festivities down under. Refreshingly devoid of Australian stereotypes (save the beer and barbecue), this David to The X-Factor’s Goliath couldn’t really hope to make a dent on the Christmas charts; pleasing though it is to find the bearded one sing about childhood holiday periods in a land he now inhabits for only six months of each year, the melody doesn’t really go anywhere, and there seem to be an awful lot of lyrics to fit in there. Rolf’s apparently been working on this for twelve years, but it doesn’t show. Trash, but fun.
Available on: It's Christmas Time (UMTV), or download
19. Michael Jackson – Earth Song
It was pushing midnight when we got the call. I turned on the news and there it was: Michael Jackson dead. Except he wasn’t, not really, because we all know that he’s faked his own passing to get out of debt and is now living on a goat farm in Fiji, where he’ll probably stay for the rest of his life. But to the rest of the world, he might as well be. And so we mourned him, an artist who’d (like Lloyd Webber) had long since passed his prime but who was responsible for more than a few cuts on the soundtrack of my childhood. The day it was announced, Radio 1 played ‘Earth Song’ just after 5 p.m., and every car on the road rolled down its windows and cranked up the volume. Everyone knows the stories behind this one, and some of them are notorious, but it remains a fantastic pop record – immaculately produced, competently scored, passionately performed and packing a real emotional punch.
Available on: HIStory - Past, Present and Future Book 1 (Epic)
20. The Muppets – Bohemian Rhapsody
Created in order to promote YouTube’s HD channel, this bungee jump into the Queen canon is about as anarchic as you’d expect from Henson’s finest. Choosing to neglect the more questionable lyrics of the original in favour of having Animal bellow “MAMA!” at the screen for almost a minute, the Muppets’ ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ gets even sillier once cyberspace is invaded by Bunsen and Beaker, Statler and Waldorf, Crazy Harry (“let me blow!”) and Fozzie, before the Electric Mayhem rock out (even though it’s only a mime, with re-dubbed vocals). The almost (but not quite) final word goes to Miss Piggy, perched atop Rowlf’s grand piano in utter defiance of the laws of physics, while a worried Kermit surveys the scenes of mayhem and destruction from afar. Somewhere, you can almost hear Freddie Mercury laughing. Insane, but quite glorious – and a suitably apt closing number for a slightly off the wall compilation, reflecting a surreal and occasionally hazy 2009.
Available on: YouTube
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