The M M & M 1000 – part 63

Here’s the penultimate batch of Music Musings and Miscellany’s unapologetically subjective selection of the twentieth century’s best 1000 singles.

COASTERS – Yakety Yak / Zing Went the Strings of My Heart (Atco 1958)
Teenage rebellion and the generation gap were big themes in the fifties. Sure, the young had always rebelled – the jazz age flappers, the bright young things, the zoot suiters and the like. But this was the first generation where there was a clear divide between the young and their parents across the whole class and race spectrum. Lieber and Stoller, as usual, took a humorous look at the issue with the put upon teen getting the usual grief that anyone who’s been fifteen can identify with. King Curtis’s saxophone work is a sublime mix of comedy and jazz-chops.

MARVIN GAYE – You / Change What You Can (Tamla 1968)
STEVIE WONDER – You Are The Sunshine of My Life / Tuesday Heartbreak (Tamla 1973)
MARY WELLS – You Beat Me to the Punch / Old Love (Motown 1962)
SUPREMES – You Keep Me Hanging On / Remove This Doubt (Motown 1966)
A quartet of classic Motown. You sees Marvin Gaye in rare uptempo mode with a pleading vocal performance that has echoes of Levi Stubbs. Back in the early seventies when Stevie Wonder was at his creative zenith, he could pitch warm, celebratory love songs without coming over all sentimental and cloying. Mary Wells, Motown’s first superstar, is seemingly only remembered in the mainstream for My Guy, but there was so much more to her than that. You Beat Me to the Punch is one of those lyrically clever Smokey Robinson compositions that you just know was built from title downwards. My favourite of the four, You Keep Me Hanging On has a brilliant morse code single chord that almost physically holds the song up before the rush to the chorus, adding real drama to the piece. I could have opted for Vanilla Fudge’s sublime cover, too. It’s a sludge tempoed prog beast that builds the song up to some kind of sub-apocalyptic epic.

ARTHUR ALEXANDER – You Better Move On / A Shot of Rhythm & Blues (Dot 1962)
WILLIAM BELL – You Don’t Miss Your Water / Formula of Love (Stax 1962)
It could be argued (too mealy mouthed? – OK, I would argue) that 1962 was a pivotal year for soul music, when it fully emerged from its rhythm and blues roots as a new and completely separate genre. These two songs have become soul staples over the years. Arthur Alexander is a neglected figure these days, best known for two songs, Anna (covered by the Beatles) and this one (covered by the Stones), that epitomised the way that the new generation of British groups were drawing not just from the blues, but from a new generation of African American music. William Bell’s You Don’t Miss Your Water is the foundation stone of country soul, with Booker T Jones’ churchy organ underpinning a ballad full of regret.

THE SOURCE FEATURING CANDI STATON – You Got the Love / mixes (Truelove 1991)
You can judge the impact of a dance track by the number of times it’s been reissued and remixed. This has been out in various forms any number of times in the last twenty years. The recipe is simplicity itself. Take an acapella version of an eighties Gospel tune sung by the inimitable Candi Staton. Take an instrumental mix of a Jamie Principle / Frankie Knuckles house tune (Your Love). Mix thoroughly and allow to settle. The result is a timeless upbeat anthem that has survived countless remixes and remakes (Joss Stone anyone? Thought not).

MY BLOODY VALENTINE – You Made Me Realise / Slow (Creation 1988)
More infamous now for the mid section full on noise burst (known as the holocaust in MBV circles) than for the song itself which has become merely a vehicle for the centrepiece. Without it, though, it would still stand up as a rare uptempo tune by the band that still has the melody and muffled mystery intact.

NANCY SINATRA – You Only Live Twice / Jackson (Reprise 1967)
If Robbie Williams deserves our hatred for just one thing, it’s his lifting of the classic string intro of You Only Live Twice and basing his own pisspoor song around it, leaving it the only memorable bit. Nancy S had a decent song to go with it, and a great, dramatic one too.

KINKS – You Really Got Me / It’s Alright (Pye 1964)
Punk rock year zero? Maybe. Heavy metal year zero? Maybe? One of the most exciting and influential tunes of the twentieth century? Without a doubt. Everything about is perfect. The riff, Dave Davies’s ripped speaker cone fuzztone, brother Ray’s snotty vocal delivery and the boldly basic tune.

SAM COOKE – You Send Me / Summertime (Keen 1957)
Cooke’s first hit, post Soul Stirrers, and a song that effortlessly fused rock, doowop and R&B styles into something smooth and new. Listen to this and then listen to the Miracles and the Impressions to see how influential it was.

JESUS & MARY CHAIN – You Trip Me Up / Just Out of Reach (Blanco Y Negro 1985)
OK, here’s something to ponder. Who in rock music history has produced the best treble of opening singles?. Elvis? That’s Alright and Mystery Train are a given but the third one – I couldn’t say what it was without looking it up. Chuck Berry? Again, brilliant first two (Maybellene and Thirty Days) but a relatively anonymous third. The Pistols? Definitely up there, as are the Clash (but only if you discount CBS’s bizarre and disowned decision to release Remote Control as a 45). The Smiths and Frankie Goes to Hollywood – definite contenders. For me, though, Upside Down, Never Understand and You Trip Me Up are the unbeatable trio. Raw energy, screeching feedback and underplayed but memorable melodies are the cornerstones of all three. As a unit – immense.

The M M & M 1000 – part 62

Here’s the latest batch of Music Musings and Miscellany’s unapologetically subjective selection of the twentieth century’s best 1000 singles. The last of the Ws

TRIFFIDS – Wide Open Road / Time of Weakness (Hot 1986)
Being the most geographically isolated city in the world, there are a lot of wide open roads heading out of Perth in Western Australia, hometown of the Triffids. The nearest major city, Adelaide is 2100km away. That’s not far short of the distance between London and Athens (or New York and Houston). Driving such a distance gives you a hell of a long time for reflection, and this song captures that perfectly.

JOE VENUTI & EDDIE LANG – Wild Cat / Sunshine (Okeh 1927)
Before Grappelli and Reinhardt there was Venuti and Lang, two Italian-Americans who made the violin and guitar jazz instruments. Their best work together was as a duo. In the pre-amplification days, both instruments struggled to make themselves heard over horns and drums, so they work best without those distractions. Wild Cat is dynamite – frightening fast exremely hard to play. It sits somewhere between an old time country hoedown, hot jazz and show-off virtuosity of the Paganini kind.

TROGGS – Wild Thing / From Home (Fontana 1966)
The song’s ridiculous. The riff is mega. Hendrix concentrated on the latter, the Goodies on the former on covers that were both true to the original in their own way. British garage rock at its finest.

CARTER FAMILY – Wildwood Flower / Forsaken Love (Victor 1928)
One of the best loved Carter Family songs, and with good reason. I think its Sara who sings lead with a heavily accented but beautiful tone, but it’s Maybelle’s guitar that steals the show. It was credited as an AP song, but it’s really an arrangement of something much older. More than 80 years on, it sounds absolutely fresh.

SHIRELLES – Will You Love Me Tomorrow? / Boys (Scepter 1960)
Teen girl songs of fifty years ago tended to disguise the pubescent hormonal rush in something sickly sweet. Think Born Too Late or 16 Candles. Carole King took the formula and gave it some much needed grit, although she was obviously bound by the strict censorship and conventions of the day. On the surface, Will You Love Me Tomorrow? is a classic teen weepie that sticks to the template. But the underlying message of teenage sex (gasp) and the real fears of a girl worrying whether she lost her virginity in a one night stand or if the boy was serious about her is much more realistic, caged as it had to be by a heavy disguise.

SABRES OF PARADISE – Wilmot / mixes (Warp 1994)
A looped horn sample paired with a stuttering dub beat, this Sabres’ tune has a slightly nightmarish quality about it, like some hallucinogenic voodoo.

JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE – The Wind Cries Mary / Highway Chile (Track 1967)
A kind of psychedelic blues ballad that’s slightly disorientating. A world away from the heavy blues of Hey Joe or the trip-rock of Purple Haze. But just as great.

APHEX TWIN – Windowlicker / Formula / Nannou (Warp 1999)
The video was so outrageous and unforgettable, that the actual track was almost relegated to its soundtrack. A cheeky demolition of the clichéd hip hop video with the bootylicious babes turning into scary RJD-a-likes. The tune also warps convention, twisting Timbaland type beats and plastic R&B keyboards into something monstrous. A total mind-fuck on every level.

BOMB THE BASS – Winter In July / mixes (Rhythm King 1991)
Unfairly derided as the poor man’s Coldcut, whizzkid Tim Simenon made some startlingly good tracks. Winter In July is a ballad that would sit quite comfortably on Blue Lines and predated the trip hop clone army of the likes of Morcheeba, Sneaker Pimps, Mono (not the Japanese band) by some time. Singer Loretta Heywood is still active, but has never really made it beyond being guest vocalist on other folk’s records. It’s a shame, because she has a great voice.

SAM COOKE – Wonderful World / Along the Navajo Trail (Keen 1960)
Pop-soul at its finest

WHO – Won’t Get Fooled Again / I Don’t Even Know Myself (Track 1971)
WAR – The World Is a Ghetto / Four Cornered Room (United Artists 1972)
Neither of these songs are best represented by their single edits, especially Won’t Get Fooled Again which was cruelly butchered to sit on the side of a 45. The World Is a Ghetto, too, works much better when its full ten minutes are allowed to slowly unfurl.

KATE BUSH – Wow / Fullhouse (EMI 1979)
Wow is like a stage musical about the life of an ageing, failing actor crammed into three minutes. Magnificently dramatic.

Two to go!

The M M & M 1000 – part 12

Here’s the latest batch of Music Musings and Miscellany’s unapologetically subjective selection of the twentieth century’s best 1000 singles. This wraps up the Cs.

TEMPTATIONS – Cloud Nine / Why Did She Have to Leave Me (Gordy 7081 1968)
In which Norman Whitfield hears Sly & the Family Stone, thinks “I’m having some of that”, and lays down the blueprint for psychedelic soul. “Cloud Nine” was quite unlike anything that had gone before it – especially at Motown. Much has been made of the drug connotations of the lyrics, but “Cloud Nine” is more of a metaphor for social isolation – a blocking out of the horrors of riots, assassinations, Viet Nam etc etc that were ripping the fabric of American society, and in particular African American society, to pieces.

ASSOCIATES – Club Country / It’s You Again (Associates / WEA 2 1983)
Billy MacKenzie’s quasi-operatic vocals, and the lush production of Sulk both soundtracked and satirised early eighties excess. Unlike a lot of pop from the era, Associates records don’t sound dated, just splendidly grandiose.

CLUBBED TO DEATH – Clubbed to Death / mixes (Mo Wax 37 1995)
You may not think you know this, but you probably do since it’s been used as background music on zillions of TV documentaries over the last decade or so. Clubbed to Death was Rob Dougan, who was uncredited on the original release. It’s basically big hip hop beats welded on to symphonic samples to give something grandly cinematic. The method’s a cliché now, but was quite extraordinary when it appeared.

EDDIE COCHRAN – C’mon Everybody / Don’t Ever Let Me Go (Liberty 55166 1958)
Rock ‘n’ roll in its simplest, purest form. It rocks because it has rhythm, not because it has two thousand Marshall stacks turned up to eleven.

CHI-LITES – The Coldest Days of My Life / Part 2 (Brunswick 55478 1972)
This isn’t a very well known song, but should be. As a single, it has its shortcomings, since it’s an eight minute album track split in two. But it’s a truly heart-rending song about loss and loneliness with a violin figure that is just about the most lonesome sound since Hank’s whistle. The album A Lonely Man is the Chi-Lites masterpiece, a neglected classic that deserves to be venerated alongside What’s Going On, Innervisions etc – it really is that good.

MARTHA & THE VANDELLAS – Come and Get These Memories / Jealous Love (Gordy 7014 1963)
SUPREMES – Come See About Me / Always In My Heart (Motown 1068 1964)
Motown’s top two girl groups caught at a moment when they were just embarking on an era of chart domination. The Supremes were pure pop, while the Vandellas had a more soulful edge. Both of these tunes adhere pretty strictly to the central template of dancefloor and radio friendly mid-tempo pop, but are no less brilliant for that.

WEDDING PRESENT – Come Play With Me / Pleasant Valley Sunday (RCA 45313 1992)
The Wedding Present’s strategy of issuing a single a month through 1992 is remembered more than the actual records, most of which were Wedding Present-by-numbers. “Come Play With Me” is the exception. It has more drama and emotion about it. It’s quite a leery record, actually, which is not so surprising when the title was lifted from a ‘classic’ seventies Brit-porn movie. Nice rip through the Monkees’ classic on the flip, too.

APHEX TWIN – Come To Daddy / To Kill a Weakling Child (Warp 94 1997)
It’s impossible to hear this without visualising the nightmarish Chris Cunningham video that went with it. All those little children with deranged Richard D James faces and that poor grannie getting the fright of her life. Yikes. With its death metal vocal growl and skittish beats, it still sounds like nothing else. And it’s still well creepy.

FRANÇOISE HARDY – Comme / Je Changerais d’Avis (Vogue 1374 1966)
“Comme” isn’t one of Hardy’s better known songs. It’s more Brel or Orbison than most of the Yeh-Yeh genre – a short, but big-hearted, emotional climactic ballad.

PULP – Common People / Underwear (Island 613 1995)
I really hated Britpop – all that Union Jack, Spiceworld, Blairite, Beatly nonsense. The bands were almost all utterly awful. Pulp got lumped in with it which led to their commercial zenith, but also to their spectacular commercial demise when they were the unfortunate babies to be chucked out with the gallons of stagnant indie-bathwater. “Common People” is a great song, and is applicable to Cameron and Osborne and chums’ patronising fake-cool as it was to the Blairs and Mandelsons a decade earlier.

CLASH – Complete Control / The City of the Dead (CBS 5664 1977)
MONKS – Complication / Oh How to Do Now (Polydor 52952 1966)
Whining about your record label. How punk is that? Still, Joe was always at his best when he was angry, even if it was about something that nobody outside the band could be expected to give a toss about. The best single of ’77, no question. The Monks were punks too, albeit a decade to soon. They were a bunch of German-based GIs who dressed in robes, had the tonsures and played kindergarten-simple three minute rock songs. The only comparable band of the era were the equally bonkers Sonics from Seattle.

KRAFTWERK – Computer Love / The Model (EMI5207 1981)
The single got flipped, and “The Model” was a number one, but I prefer “Computer Love”. In KlingKlang world, this is the band’s slushy romantic ballad. A very perceptive prediction of internet dating, and even social networking, and a really lovely song to boot.

MAMIE SMITH & HER JAZZ HOUNDS – Crazy Blues / It’s Right Here For You (Okeh 4169 1920)
At the dawn of the roaring twenties, this early blues ballad crossed over spectacularly, and for a while was the most popular tune in America. It was also the song that alerted the recording industry that there was a whole market out there not being catered for, and led to the signing of artists like Bessie Smith, Ida Cox, Victoria Spivey etc etc, and the birth of the ‘race’ label – companies, or divisions of companies, who produced records aimed at a black audience. Without “Crazy Blues”, it’s possible that very little of that would have happened, and the recorded legacy would be very much the poorer for it. There are better blues records, but few as important.

RADIOHEAD – Creep / Lurgee (Parlophone 6078 1992)
“Creep” was their Teen Spirit, and was stacks better than anything else on their debut album. A decade and a half on, it seems like juvenilia compared to some of the marvels that followed. Still a great piece of pop misery, though.

ROBERT JOHNSON – Cross Road Blues / Ramblin’ On My Mind (Vocalion 3519 1936)
The song that provoked the legend, and a staple part of any self-respecting blues band’s set more than seventy years later. He seems like some mythical figure of a dim and distant past, but was actually younger than Ronald Reagan. The music has had so much hyperbolic nonsense written about it, that it’s surprising how literate, fresh and sophisticated it is. Johnson was no primitive vessel disseminating his ancestor’s voices, but a proud and dapper showman and entertainer.

JEFFERSON AIRPLANE – Crown of Creation / Lather (RCA 9644 1968)
A great double this. “Crown of Creation” is the kind of big, confident call to arms that the Airplane did so well. “Lather”, on the other hand, is a spooky and sad treatise on the fight against getting old in spirit.

JULIE LONDON – Cry Me a River / S’Wonderful (Liberty 55006 1955)
We just don’t have the sultry-voiced, seductive singers like Julie London any more. In real life, she was a shy homebird, but on record she sounds like a cross between Rita Hayworth and Lauren Bacall – a mesmerising, but slightly dangerous femme fatale. When she sounds upset, you know you’ve got to watch out – she’ll get even, buddy.

SAM COOKE – Cupid / Farewell My Darling (RCA 7883 1961)
As light as air. A fine sweet song.

More soon

The M M & M 1000 – part 11

Here’s the latest batch of Music Musings and Miscellany’s unapologetically subjective selection of the twentieth century’s best 1000 singles. Continuing with the Cs.

SAM COOKE – Chain Gang / I Fall in Love Every Day (RCA 7783 1960)
“Chain Gang” stems from the tradition of field hollers and work songs that go back to the days of slavery. The parallels of the convict chain gang and the field slaves are obvious. Cooke’s sweet Gospel pipes are a long way from Lead Belly or Alger Alexander’s untutored moans, but the spirit is no different. Quite a radical thing to get into the charts in 1960.

BIG COUNTRY – Chance / Tracks of My Tears (Mercury COUNT4 1983)
Never has a band fallen out of fashion quite as quickly as Big Country, but their first album was a massive commercial and critical success. They resonated at a time when the industrial north of Britain was being dismantled. They somehow represented traditional working class values – the coal-face, the steel mill, the shipyard and the factory. “Chance” is a spare and simple, but moving ballad that plays like a 1960s Kitchen Sink drama.

JOSEF K – Chance Meeting / Pictures (Postcard 815 1981)
Despite their propensity to self-sabotage – the scrapping of Sorry For Laughing in favour of the much less penetrable The Only Fun in Town, for example – Josef K could still turn a mean tune. Despite Paul Haig’s flat-as-fenland vocals, and the guitars being all top end and no middle, “Chance Meeting” has a real anthemic quality to it – particularly when the horns blast in towards the end.

DAVID BOWIE – Changes / Andy Warhol (RCA 2160 1972)
Although pre-dating the Ziggy era, “Changes” feels like an intrinsic part of it.

THE COASTERS – Charlie Brown / Three Cool Cats (Atco 6132 1959)
THE CURE – Charlotte Sometimes / Splintered in Her Head (Fiction 14 1981)
Two songs about schooldays. They could hardly be more different. “Charlie Brown” is the class clown whose misdemeanours are minor, but who has an unerring capacity to get caught. Classic Leiber and Stoller. “Charlotte Sometimes” is a children’s book by Penelope Farmer. Its heroine gets caught up in a time travelling body-swap at her boarding school with a girl from the Edwardian era. It has a heartbreaking ending. The Cure more or less sketch the broad plot in their song, including chunks of lyrics that are directly lifted from the book. Sonically, it is the bridging point between the subdued misery of Faith and the outright psychosis of Pornography, and is, for me, the group’s best single.

PLANET PATROL – Cheap Thrills / instrumental (Tommy Boy 835 1983)
Planet Patrol were legendary producers John Robie and Arthur Baker. For this project, they took an electro template and applied a pop sensibility. “Cheap Thrills” sounds like a disco song, but the music behind it is pure underground. It’s one of the best feel-good dance floor fillers of the era.

ELVIS COSTELLO – (I Don’t Want to Go to) Chelsea / You Belong to Me (Radar 3 1978)
“Chelsea” runs on a bassline that is part ska, part post-punk and part dub. It’s a perfect chassis for one of Costello’s most sneeringly awkward, but nevertheless catchy songs.

THE BYRDS – Chestnut Mare / Just a Season (Columbia 45259 1970)
The Byrds were long past their best when “Chestnut Mare” came out. It sold squat in the US, but was a big hit over here – more as a novelty, than due to a solid fan base. The verses sound like those cheesy, talky country tunes that you’d get from the likes of Red Sovine, whereas the chorus is pure Rickenbacker jingly-jangly Byrds. It works, though, and you find yourself rooting for McGuinn as he struggles to tame the wild force of nature that is the horse of the title.

THE MISUNDERSTOOD – Children of the Sun / I Unseen (Fontana 998 1969)
The Misunderstood were a psychedelic garage band from Riverside, California. They moved to London in 1966, only to split up a few months later. They left very little recorded music, but “Children of the Sun” was eventually issued two years after their demise. And what a song. It has the energy of the 13th Floor Elevators, but bizarrely comes out sounding like the Stranglers.

ORBITAL – Chime / Deeper (Ffrr 135 1990)
Famously recorded for about £20 or something, “Chime” was the track that took UK techno to the masses. Simple, but hypnotic, it laid the foundation for all of what was to follow during the first half of the nineties. It still sounds brilliant, too.

THE HEARTBREAKERS – Chinese Rocks / Born to Lose (Track 2094135 1977)
Johnny Thunders’ life story encapsulated in two tunes. Both songs are the epitome of loose garage rock that had its roots in the New York Dolls, the Stones and the Ramones, but would influence countless bands from the Replacements to the Libertines.

IMPRESSIONS – Choice of Colors / Mighty Mighty, Spade and Whitey (Curtom 1943 1969)
Outside of Motown, the Impressions were the greatest vocal act of the sixties, with a peerless lead singer and songwriter in Curtis Mayfield. Where many acts tackled the civil rights issue with inoffensive “let’s all live in harmony” type platitudes, Mayfield got down to the nitty gritty, but never in a militant way. It was always about self-education, self-empowerment and self-respect with Curtis. “Choice of Colors” is such a call, and a mighty moving tune too.

THE HOUSE OF LOVE – Christine / Loneliness is a Gun (Creation 53 1988)
For about a year during 87/88, I thought the House of Love were the best guitar band in Britain. They took the jangly indiepop blueprint of Creation’s other acts and gave it depth, power and focus. The songs were tight and concise, but packed a real punch, both physically and emotionally. “Christine” was probably the third best of their first four singles, but still a masterpiece.

NEIL YOUNG – Cinammon Girl / Sugar Mountain (Reprise 911 1970)
After the psychedelic acoustics of his first solo album, Neil Young knuckled down to rock & roll basics on his second, accompanied for the first time by his stalwart sidekicks Crazy Horse. “Cinammon Girl” remains a live staple, and is his archetypal short and punchy rock song.

TINDERSTICKS – City Sickness / Untitled / The Bullring (This Way Up 1811 1993)
“City Sickness” was the first Tindersticks song I heard, and I was instantly smitten. In some ways, it remains their perfect song – lush, world-weary, downbeat, but with a zip of defiance and a glorious melody.

BETTY WRIGHT – Clean Up Woman / I’ll Love You Forever (Alston 4601 1971)
Betty Wright was just seventeen when she recorded this. She sounds twice that age, and I mean that in a good way. Her voice has a grit and wordliness that sounds like it has years of experience behind it. “Clean Up Woman” was her first single, and remains a prime slab of earthy funky soul.

CYBOTRON – Clear / Industrial Lies (Fantasy 216 1983)
Cybotron was Vietnam vet Richard Davis and a teenaged Juan Atkins. Their first couple of records were typical electro outings, but with “Clear” there was something new happening. The beats were crisper, harder and the pulse somehow more robotic. Many would argue that it was the first true techno record. I wouldn’t argue with them.

More soon

The M M & M 1000 – part 9

Here’s the latest batch of Music Musings and Miscellany’s unapologetically subjective selection of the twentieth century’s best 1000 singles. Whizzing through to the end of the Bs.

MADONNA – Borderline / Think of Me (Sire 29354 1984)
Eighties dance-pop at its best.

UNDERWORLD – Born Slippy / Born Slippy .NUXX (Junior Boys Own 1995)
Pounding techno-trance with stream of consciousness vocals. It still sounds as euphoric today as it ever did.

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN – Born to Run / Meeting Across the River (Columbia 10209 1975)
Another obvious selection, I suppose. Bruce’s Spectoresque anthem of teen rebellion is a thing of unfettered joy.

GIL SCOTT-HERON – The Bottle / Part 2 (Arista 225 1976)
It’s a sad irony that the vibrant, righteous author of this anti-alcoholism anthem ended up a crackhead.

SIMON & GARFUNKEL – The Boxer / Baby Driver (Columbia 44785 1969)
Another well-thumbed classic tune. Li-le-li, li-le-le-li-li-le-li, li-le-li (boom).

THE SMITHS – The Boy With the Thorn In His Side / Asleep (Rough Trade 191 1985)
The Smiths were always at their best, for me, when Johnny Marr provided sunny, uplifting melodies to contrast with Morrissey’s innate miserablism. Although B side “Asleep” is one of their best exercises in morbidity.

THE CURE – Boys Don’t Cry / Plastic Passion (Fiction 2 1979)
Thirty years old now, the Cure have never made a better pure pop record as far as I’m concerned.

THE POGUES – The Boys From the County Hell / Repeal of the Licensing Laws (Stiff 212 1984)
Booze, rain, taverns, disreputable landlords, and stacks more booze. Perhaps the quintessential Pogues song.

DON HENLEY – The Boys of Summer / A Month of Sundays (Geffen 29141 1984)
In which one of the figureheads of seventies excess satirizes eighties excess, and somehow gets away with it, with the help of some memorable lines and a damn fine tune.

THE DOORS – Break on Through / End of the Night (Elektra 45611 1967)
I’m of the school of opinion that Jim Morrison was a fat, misogynist drunk rather than some mystical, poetical spirit. Even so, the first couple of Doors albums are undeniably good. “Break on Through” whizzes past, borne aloft by a vital bass organ riff.

WEST STREET MOB – Breakdance – Electric Boogie / Let Your Mind Be Free (Sugar Hill 460 1983)
One of the seminal electro tracks to come out of early eighties Brooklyn.

THE GUN CLUB – The Breaking Hands / Crabdance / Nobody’s City (Red Rhino 89 1988)
I was never much of a fan of Robin Guthrie as producer. Too often he seemed to sap all the dynamism out of records. “The Breaking Hands” is one notable exception where his trebly guitar sheen fits amazingly well with Jeffrey Lee Pierce’s southern Gothic crew.

SIMON & GARFUNKEL – Bridge Over Troubled Water / Keep the Customer Satisfied (Columbia 45079 1970)
It may be over-familiar, but the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink production combined with Artie’s most soulful vocal ever, never fail to hit the spot.

JIMMY REED – Bright Lights, Big City / I’m Mr Luck (Vee-Jay 398 1961)
There’s a lazy, almost drunken lilt to this tune which is completely missed by the zillions of pub back room blues bands who have covered it over nearly half a century.

THROWING MUSES – Bright Yellow Gun / Like a Dog (4AD 4018 1994)
Post Real Ramona, the Muses moved more and more into fairly straight hard rock, and away from the quirky and original signatures and structures that characterized their early records. They still managed to pull some great tunes out of the bag, though, and “Bright Yellow Gun” is as good as any alt-rock tune of the era.

SAM COOKE – Bring it on Home to Me / Having a Party (RCA 8036 1962)
Sam Cooke could sing the phone book and make it sound soulful. “Bring it on Home to Me” is a love song that sounds like a Gospel tune.

BO DIDDLEY – Bring it to Jerome / Pretty Thing (Checker 827 1955)
Bo Diddley made plenty of great records, although, to be fair, they rarely diverged that much from his basic template. “Bring it to Jerome” has a kind of eastern raga feel to it which makes it stand out a bit from some of his others.

ECHO & THE BUNNYMEN – Bring on the Dancing Horses / Over My Shoulder (Korova 43 1985)
Like Simple Minds, there was a precise point when the Bunnymen went from making vibrant and compelling records to over-produced, slick and empty FM rock. This was their “Don’t You Forget About Me” – a good tune, but really the end of the line as far as interesting music went.

PUBLIC ENEMY – Bring the Noise / Sophisticated (Def Jam 440754 1988)
The best single of the eighties? Very possibly.

VAN MORRISON – Brown Eyed Girl / Goodbye Baby (Bang 545 1967)
They were playing this in the supermarket yesterday (which makes a change from bloody Xmas songs). It’s one of those songs that are pretty much ubiquitous, but unlike most, doesn’t make you want to tear your ears off every time you hear it. Still sounds pretty fresh, actually.

MILES DAVIS – Budo / Move (Capitol 15404 1948)
The tunes that Miles recorded with his nonet in 1948/9 were some of the most remarkable and forward thinking jazz tracks of the post-war era. “Budo” and “Move” were tow of the best. All are now readily available on The Birth of the Cool, of course.

INNERZONE ORCHESTRA – Bug in the Bassbin / mixes (Mo Wax 49 1996)
Is it jazz or is it techno? Frankly, who cares. This ten minute bass and percussion dominated piece was a long way from the futuristic techno that Carl Craig recorded under his own name, but remains one of the best and most influential tracks of the mid nineties. It proved that jazz/dance crossover needn’t be spliff-toking noodling.

GIRLS AGAINST BOYS – Bulletproof Cupid / Sharkmeat (Touch & Go 115 1993)
It’s the bass, stupid. A great rumbling, tumbling bass riff that drives the song along like a racing car. I’ve barely ever even noticed the rest.

JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE – The Burning of the Midnight Lamp / The Stars That Play With Laughing Sam’s Dice (Track 604007 1967)
L(aughing) S(am’s) D(ice). Do you see what he did there? If anything, the A side is trippier with a monster, panning riff and space rocket effects. Cool.

EVERLY BROTHERS – Bye Bye Love / I Wonder If I Care as Much (Cadence 1315 1957)
Boy, they could do some schmaltz (check out the hilarious “Ebony Eyes), but there’s no denying that there were few who could do close harmony better than the Everlys, as this early classic of theirs attests.

More soon

The M M & M 1000 – part 1

A few years ago I got hold of a copy of Dave Marsh’s book The Heart of Rock and Soul (ISBN 0140121080) that modestly claimed to be a list of the 1001 greatest singles ever made. While there were obviously loads of classic records in there, and it was fairly well written, it struck me as being totally beholden to the conventional Rolling Stone view of rock history, with very little outside of the mainstream aside from a smattering of obscure sixties soul and garage band records. I reckoned I could do better, and put together my own thousand. Then promptly forgot all about it.

A week or so ago, I came across the list when sorting through an assortment of unlabeled computer CDs. It’s about six years old, but holds up pretty well. I thought it might be worth sharing. Firstly I tweaked it a bit – added some things that were glaring omissions, cut some things which felt like flab. I also decided to limit it to the twentieth century, rather than attempt to bring it up to date. After all, the single is effectively a dead medium. Outside of DJ culture, and specially pressed up sevens for collectors, who actually buys physical singles these days? The singles chart is merely a most downloaded songs list – a great number which don’t physically exist as singles.

Doing a 1 to 1000 list in order struck me as absurd. Anyone who boldly claims that X or Y is the 823rd greatest single of all time is clearly an idiot. So this makes no attempt to be in any order of merit. It’s a combination of objective and subjective views – historical importance and how I feel about a song. Nothing was added for reasons of balance, but some records that I like were ditched in favour of others that I like equally, but which are probably more important in the scheme of things. Having said that, there’s a lot that I included that are obscure, or just not widely rated.

As far as what is or isn’t a single goes, I discounted EPs where there was no particular lead track, but included those which had one. Some are US singles, some are UK singles and a few are from elsewhere. This isn’t an exact science. I thought of doing them chronologically, or alphabetically by artist, but plumped for alphabetically by song title. It mashes things up a bit. Finally, this isn’t my pronouncement on the greatest records of all time. If it’s missing, it’s missing – it may be because I forgot it, or it may be that I don’t particularly rate it. It’s not important.

Here’s your first ten:

BANG BANG MACHINE – 16 Years (Parallel 1 1992)
I wrote a piece on this here.

ROLLING STONES – 19th Nervous Breakdown / As Tears Go By (Decca 12331 1966)
Classic Stones tunes showing their cocky, slightly misogynous side, and their sensitive, caring side at the same time.

GRANT HART – 2541 / Come Home / Let’s Go (SST 219 1989)
The story of a break-up which could be applied to both the demise of a relationship and the demise of the band (Hüsker Dü). When I first bought it (on a natty three inch CD), I played it to my girlfriend. She burst into tears. A few weeks later, when she’d left, it dawned on me why. Nearly twenty years later, it’s still quite hard to listen to.

MAYTALS – 54-46 / Version (Trojan 7808 1970)
54-46 really was Toots Hibbert’s number when he was jailed for marijuana possession. It’s a record that represents the transition from rock steady to reggae proper. Brilliant bass line.

CORNERSHOP – 6AM Jullander Shere (Wiiija 48 1995)
“Brimful of Asha” may have been their number one, but this remains their defining moment for me. A brilliant, lazy skank that combines the surly, bloody-mindedness of the Fall with the rhythms of the subcontinent.

SAM COOKE – A Change is Gonna Come / Shake (RCA 8486 1965)
This was Cooke’s brilliant, final flourish before his tragic death. It’s THE civil rights anthem – a mixture of secular and Gospel, hope and suffering. One of those records you can play over and over and never tire of. Few, if any, artists have ever gone out on such a high note.

RAY CHARLES – A Fool For You / This Little Girl of Mine (Atlantic 1063 1955)
I can’t think of any song that the normally cocky Ray Charles sounds quite as vulnerable on as “A Fool For You”. It’s a slow, blues/soul ballad that is full of suffering. It’s by far my favourite song of his.

THE CURE – A Forest / Another Journey by Train (Fiction 10 1980)
The combination of that thump-hiss beat, and the simple four-note riff that underpins “A Forest” gives it that slightly panicky, slightly paranoid air. There’s no real warmth to it, something the band took to its logical conclusion with the Pornography album two years later – possibly the coldest, most paranoid album I’ve ever heard.

ELBOW BONES & THE RACKETEERS – A Night in New York / Happy Times (EMI 8184 1984)
I seem to recall that there was an August Darnell involvement in this record somewhere. I got it in a WH Smith sale for 10p! It’s such a swanky tune – disco meets the big band era via Havana. It just oozes the glamour of Studio 54 and the other up town clubs, but at the same time, there’s no elitism about it. One of the great Saturday night records.

POGUES – A Pair of Brown Eyes / Whiskey You’re the Devil (Stiff 220 1985)
“A Pair of Brown Eyes” is a perfect example of us Celts’ predilection for alcohol, sentimentality and nostalgia. Combining the experiences of World War One machine-gun fodder and Soho drunks in one song, there’s a shared undercurrent of wasted lives, ruined by war and whisky. In stark contrast, the titular brown eyes offer a reason to go on, even if they merely represent the memory of something that has gone for good.

The next bunch coming soon.