Day 30 - Your favourite song at this time last year

This is the last day!  I had been following the month's dates in order but got a little behind over the weekend, hence the rush today.

A bit before last year I had (rather late) been introduced by the great Mark Lamarr to the great Tom Waits, about the time the live album Glitter and Doom was released.  This was the track which got played on Mark's radio show a few times, and although I now love all the Tom Waits stuff I've heard, this one was the one that really grabbed me:

Lurching, menacing, swaggering and awesome.

Day 29 - A song from your childhood

Depending on how you define childhood (actual childhood or teenager?), I was listening to one of two things:  music my parents were listening to, or music my parents wouldn't listen to.

In the former category, one song I do remember absolutely loving was Queen's 'Radio Gaga':

Both my Mum and Dad were fans and the Greatest Hits albums in particular were never far from our stereo in the 80s, and apparently this one was my favourite.  I do like a bit of Queen these days although 'Seven Seas of Rhye' and 'Stone Cold Crazy' would probably be more up my street now.

In the latter category, there are loads of bands, but after a bit of reminiscing with an old friend recently I remembered how much I loved the first Amen album.  It might just be your generic shouty angsty metal to some but there was something about that record which marked it out as a bit special:

Oh, and as an afterthought, do you know what the first ever record I owned was?  It was this:

On 7" vinyl, bitches.  I still have it.

Day 28 - A song that makes you feel guilty

What does this mean other than the obvious 'guilty pleasure' angle, which is covered in another entry anyway?  Well, here's my interpretation:

I've been a lifelong Metallica fan.  The black album was one of the first three records I bought myself (along with Green Day's Dookie and Faith No More's King For A Day ... Fool For A Lifetime), and I absolutely worshipped it.  By the time Load came out, I'd got all the Metallica back catalogue and a fair amount of the rare stuff too.  I even liked Load, and I liked Reload even more.  Metallica at Birmingham in '96 was my second gig (the first having been Michael Jackson at Roundhay Park in '92 or '93!), and I saw them again headlining the Big Day Out at Milton Keynes Bowl in '99 - basically, for me in my adolescent years Metallica could do no wrong.

I've never been into downloading music so I didn't care about the whole Napster thing.

I didn't shed too many tears when Jason left, either.

But St Anger, dear god.

St Anger was unforgivable.

I probably don't need to expand on this statement too much since if you didn't close the window on first seeing the word 'Metallica', you already know that it's their career nadir:  a dreadfully misguided attempt at making themselves more relevant by downtuning all their guitars à la nu-metal and replacing their drumkit with dustbin lids.  It sounds atrocious, and the songs are appalling - unmemorable, weak, clumsily lyric-ed and far, far too long.  Much as I generally regard Pitchfork with suspicion, their review will probably tell you as much as you may further need to know.

St Anger came out in 2003 when I was halfway through uni, and although I was massively disappointed I didn't care quite as much about Metallica as I had done six or seven years earlier.  I was well into punk and hardcore by that stage, so it wasn't too painful an experience.  So naturally I wrote off my childhood favourite band, assuming they would never come to any good ever again.

I was wrong, and that's why Metallica make me feel guilty.

Regular readers of my occasional blogging will be aware that last year I wrote a still-not-quite-finished Top 50 Albums Of The Decade piece, which included Metallica's most recent album Death Magnetic.  [Sidenote:  this piece will eventually be finished, as this meme has got me interested in writing about music again.  Honest.]

I'm just going to paste my little outline of it here ...

Death Magnetic is the best Metallica record since ...And Justice For All. There, I said it. If there were an award each year for Album Most Expected To Be Uneventful And Boring But Actually Turns Out To Be Surprisingly Brilliant, this would surely have taken 2008’s title. Who would have thought that a bunch of rich middle-aged men could make a record which basically takes the best bits of all their previous records and smashes them all together? Well, I suspect that that’s exactly what happened: they’ll have taken on board the fact that St Anger was a big bag of bollocks, and they’ll have paid a bunch of lawyers or estate agents other such hell-bound scumbags a fuckload of money to tell them what to do and what not to do on the next record. “Hey guys ... lose that shitty drum sound. Put solos back in. Lots of them. If you’re going to do a ballad, you might as well link it to a respected song you already have (‘The Unforgiven III’). Let’s have some intricate Justice-esque riff-melody (the brilliant post-solo segue in ‘Cyanide’, and all of the excellent ‘Suicide & Redemption’). Stick in a heavy anthem (‘Broken, Beat & Scarred’). Take some of the underrated bluesy bits from Load / Reload and whack them into a metal track (‘The End Of The Line’). Have a media-friendly single which starts as a deceptive ballad and morphs into a five-minute riff-fest (‘The Day That Never Comes’).” Fanks, here’s a million dollars. But I don’t care how inorganic the birthing process for Death Magnetic was: from the heartbeat opening through to the frenetic finale, Metallica have not sounded this exciting in 20 years, and that is genuinely astonishing.

They were also exceptional at Reading in 2008, their set including 'Cyanide' and 'The Day That Never Comes' which at the time were new to the UK.

Does all this mean a newer, leaner, sharper, more relevant Metallica is here to stay?  No, probably not.  They're still not high on my list of favourite bands, not any more; whatever follows Death Magnetic may well be pretty poor in comparison.  And they are now so, so mainstream that I feel guilty for that reason as well.  To acknowledge that, the clip I'm choosing for this post is their performance of 'Cyanide' on that most middle class of music programmes, Jools Holland:

The little section at 5:10 makes the hairs on the back of my head stand up.  Guiltily.

Day 27 - A song you wish you could play

Following on from the previous post, one thing I do slightly regret is not keeping up an instrument, which is partly because the instruments I played when I was younger (violin and then flute) were not really top of my wish-list.  From what I can recall my primary school offered different instruments to different age groups, and violin and viola were the ones available at the youngest age.  Then I took up flute at secondary school because it was the most interesting to me of those in the orchestra.  I was relatively good at both, but once I got started on A-levels I didn't really have the time, and I haven't played either since.

Instruments I would definitely be interested in learning obviously include the guitar, which I have dabbled with on occasion but never actually made a proper effort with, and the piano, which I think really requires owning one to become anywhere near good.

When I was in Singapore last year I went to see the Singapore Chinese Orchestra in concert, which was a really fantastic experience as it included lots of traditional instruments I'd never even heard of before, let alone seen.  One which I had heard of but wasn't that familiar with is the yangqin, which we know as the hammered dulcimer, and I found it especially captivating (not least due to the boyish enthusiasm of the happy fat man playing it).  I can't find any performances specifically by that orchestra online, but there are loads on Youtube under two broad categories:

- the westernised hammered dulcimer clips, which are often very fast and technically proficient:

- the oriental yangqin clips, which are more traditional and poised:

I suspect this is an instrument that takes a lifetime of learning so I will probably never get the chance.  I also did a little research into their prices and they're not cheap ...

Day 26 - A song that you can play on an instrument

Another tricky one, this, as I don't actually play any instruments.  I played violin and flute years ago when I was at school, but I probably couldn't get anything meaningful out of them these days.  It might take me about half an hour to learn the chords on a guitar required to play improve Oasis songs, but still.

If I were to learn an instrument now I would teach myself by picking songs that are fairly easy, or at least which I perceive as 'easy'.  Someone will probably tell me that these aren't easy to play at all, but I regard them as pleasantly simple, because they have uncomplicated riffs or rhythms:

So they're either songs which are easy to play or songs which I would choose to play as soon as possible, I guess.

Stupid category.

Day 25 - A song that makes you laugh

Some of these categories only make me think of one song immediately, but this is one where there are loads.  Not novelty songs, which are largely Not Actually Funny, or certainly not for repeated listening, but songs with amusing lyrics or clever wordplay are often ones I enjoy.

I'm a big fan of Reverend Horton Heat, who play amazing psychobilly rock'n'roll songs about women and drinking.  Most of their stuff is very funny.  Here's a little ditty about getting rich after finding a load of crack in Texas:

It's sunny and I'm in a good mood, so you can have some more.  A heartbreaking song about a woman who leaves a man with nothing, not even the means to clean his teeth:

And of course, a song about being drunk:

How can you not smile at a song which contains the lyric, "I'll explain in the morning 'cause the kitchen bright's too light"?

Happy weekend, everyone!

Day 24 - A song that you want to play at your funeral

My funeral will be forward-looking and positive, without being cloying and sentimental.  I hope.

Soundtracked by the best pop song ever written.  Its lyrics are wondrous:

<3