So Scarlett Johansson is singing Tom Waits, heh? Why can't these actors stick to the day job? It's been proven that musicians, for the most part make crap thespians (yes, that's you Sting, and you Mr Bowie, and you Madge) and, by the same token the reverse is true. One-off novelty songs aside ('If" by Telly Savalas, 'Common People' William Shatner), who's going to really take Ms Johanson seriousy? Or Minnie Driver for that matter, and didn't Kate Winslet try out a mic for size a few years back? Stick to the red carpet, I say.

If we were all compelled to fill out a musical questionnaire when meeting people for the first time, could ill-fated relationships and friendships be avoided? Here's a few choices to get the ball rolling:

Beatles or Stones?
Sgt. Pepper or Pet Sounds?
Revolver or Sgt Pepper?
The Monkees or Arctic Monkeys?
Girls Aloud or Sugarbabes?
60s & 70s or 80s & 90s?
Country or Folk
Oasis or Blur?
TOTP or Later?
Pink Floyd or Pink Fairies?
Tom Waits pre 'Raindogs' or after?
Duran, Duran or Spandau Ballet?
Radio 1 or Radio 2?
Kylie or Madonna?
Elvis Presley or Elvis Costello?

etc. etc. P.S. The answer 'neither' is not an option!

I'm putting together a cowboys/western-themed collection. Any contributions/ideas? I don't want any of that Ghost Riders or Singing Cowboy stuff. I'm looking for contemporary references. (That said, I hate Where Have All The Cowboys Gone/Rhinestone Cowboy etc.) Here are my leading contenders:

Oh Well (Part 2) Fleetwood Mac
Brothers In Arms - Dire Straits
Cowboy Movie - David Crosby
Theme From An Imaginary Western - Mountain
Doolin' Dalton/Desperado/Outlaw Man/Bitter Creek - The Eagles
Riders On The Storm - The Doors
Wanted – Dead Or Alive - Bon Jovi
Bad Company - Bad Comapny
The Devil's Right Hand - Steve Earle
Chestnut Mare - the Byrds
Colarado - The Flying Burrito Brothers
Horse With No Name - America
Romance In Durango - Bob Dylan
Knockin' On Heaven's Door - Bob Dylan
Cowboy Romance - Natalie Merchant
Paris, Texas - Ry Cooder

As a left-hander (though I play my guitar-based musings as a right-hander), I was always impressed and felt more than a little sense of pride when I learned of the many stellar musicians who are/were similarly afficted/talented. We all know about Hendrix and McCartney, of course, but I was surprised to hear that Ringo, Phil Collins, both Everly Brothers and Robert Plant also lean to the left. (How can you tell a left-handed drummer, I wonder?). Any other lefties out there in the music world we should know about?

As The Spice Girls' final stagger around the world's stages grinds to a halt, it's time once again to reflect on how much dead wood they bore, namely in the form of too posh to push Victoria Beckham. Utterly devoid of vocal talent, it was a pity that she never left the original line-up instead of Geri. But thinking about it, quite a few acts have carried non-contributing members along for the ride. Chas Smash in Madness the superfluous 'nutty boy', Bez of the Happy Mondays mainly there to keep the drugs intake up to speed. And back to girl bands, how the ginger one insinuated herself into Girls Aloud goodness only knows. Back in 'The Gods' when looks were handed out, as acknowledged by most of their video directors who give her the odd cameo appearances versus the exposure of Cheryl and the rest. Any other andidates for the also-rans?

Wow! What a great album the Shelby Lynne covers of Dusty Springfield hits is. Recent subscribers may have received a copy free with a Word subscription and are no doubt enjoying one of this year's best releases – sublime, seduction music at its best. Got me thinking that Shelby should consider following it up with an album of Aretha Franklin covers. Along the same lines, I've also long thought that Rod The Plod Stewart should follow Shelby's lead and do a covers album with better credibility than his re-works of American crooning classics. Rod, if you're listening, try getting back to your roots and if the voice is still up to it, try Wilson Pickett's repertoire. I'm thinking that he'd not do a disservice to numbers like 'Midnight Hour', 'Mustang Sally' 'Land Of A 1000 Dances', 'I'm In Love' and others. He covered Sam Cooke's 'Twisting' The Night Away' with merit, after all.

31 Songs – Andrew Gallant

In no particular order:
Hung Up – John Martyn
Kentucky Avenue – Tom Waits
You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin – The Righteous Bros
Steel River – Chris Rea
Anarchy In The UK – The Sex Pistols
Fifth of July – Terry Reid
Tinseltown In The Rain – The Blue Nile
Angel – Sarah McLachlan
Downtown Train – Everything But The Girl
Same Old Lang Syne – Dan Fogelberg
Fairytale of New York – The Pogues
With a Little Help from My Friends – The Beatles
Hot Shot – Karen Young
When Love Breaks Down – Prefab Sprout
Comme Un Arbre – Maxime Le Forestier
Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone – The Temptations
Try a Little Tenderness – Otis Redding
In and Out – Willie Hutch
Beautiful Ones – Suede
The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face – Stereophonics
Come Up & See Me (Make Me Smile) – Cockney Rebel
Star Spangled Banner – Jimi Hendrix
The Things We Handed Down – Marc Cohn
Star Wars Theme – John Williams
I Don’t Need No Doctor (live) – Humble Pie
Night Fever – The Bee Gees
Anchorage – Michelle Shocked
He’ll Have To Go – Jim Reeves
Michael Row The Boat Ashore – The Highwaymen
Mercedes Benz – Janis Joplin
If It Makes You Happy – Sheryl Crow

I make no apologies for the fact that the majority of these songs are downbeat. Sad, longing songs that speak of love, love lost, love unrequited and similar. I’ve always been attracted to ballads and slow songs. Indeed, even my classical music tastes veer towards the adagio, mournful movements. Yet those who know me well know that I can cut a rug with the best of ’em. I’m of the firm belief that anyone who can’t “get up, get on up!” and dance to Sex Machine probably can’t dance at all.

This list is by no means an accurate roll call of my favourite songs of all time. So is it a reflection of my own life and experiences? In many ways yes, but in some ways no, however, most of them do conjure up images of people, places and events. For instance, I first heard Angel by Sarah McLachlan as it played out a particularly moving episode of ER, during which Dr Carter’s coke-addled brother shuffled into that great crack den in the sky.
A Canadian, MacLachan has never really achieved the success in the UK that she enjoys in her homeland. I guess she’ll always play second fiddle to fellow canucks like Joni Mitchell and Alanis Morrisette.

I’ve always been ambivalent about Christmas. I enjoy it with my own family but as an adolescent I found it immensely depressing – New Year’s Eve even more so, with drunken hoards pretending to like each other and believing that all must be right with the world (for a few hours, at least, until the hangover kicks in). So Fairytale of New York, for me, sums up Christmas perfectly. At once melancholy (the drink talking) and exuberant. Shane McGowan and Kirsty MacColl exchanging vocal thrusts and parries vying for the most imaginative verbal insult. It’s the only Christmas record that can bear repeated playing. Most others are turkey leftovers by comparison.

Seven days later and it’s New Year’ Eve, the most depressing night of the year. In Same Old Lang Syne, Dan Fogelberg chronicles a brief reunion with a long lost love in the frozen food section of a supermarket. They share a beer in her car, catching up with each other before realising that having run out of things to say, they’ve found the reason they grew apart in the first place. A fine song with a biographical, cute though schmaltzy story, ending with a lone saxophone picking out the opening bars of the real Auld Lang Syne. I must admit I feel a little shiver every time I hear it.

Another fine Christmas-song-with-storyline, by the way, is Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis by Tom Waits, who grunts and gravel-voices his way through a message from a woman for whom love and life has gone from worse to much worse. Not that I’ve included this particular Waits’ track in my 31, preferring the interpretation of the “song-as-a-letter” genre to be Anchorage by Michelle Shocked. I had a photographer friend who was nuts about New York (aren’t all photographers?) so I made him a compilation tape of New York-themed songs. Anchorage was the exception that he insisted I included. So Paul, whether you’ve got your minimalist Manhattan dream loft or are still living at home with your mum in Stanway, this one’s for you.

I was introduced to Tom Waits by a wild-spirited girlfriend and whenever I hear Kentucky Avenue it brings back memories of summer nights, sleeping on the floor of her untidy council flat in south London. The thought of Tom Waits as lullaby material might be a touch disconcerting for those familiar with his stuff, but Kentucky, the story of the bond between a young boy and his invalided best mate, is so sad, it’s enough to make you cry yourself to sleep. It’s essential Tom Waits; a classic booze-sodden ballad: “Eddie Grace’s Buick’s got four bullet holes in the side…”

Though Waits’ songs have been covered by all and sundry, the interpretations tend to be pretty faithful (I’m thinking Tom Traubert’s Blues by Rod Stewart and Heart Attack and Vine by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins), adding nothing extra to the mix. An exception that springs to mind is a cover from “Rain Dogs” the album that came out at the time when Waits was starting to experiment with oddball instruments and effects, when his music began to sound as weird as he often looked. Everything But The Girl took the mid-tempo track Downtown Train, pared it right down to a solitary keyboard and quiet vocal, with Ben Watt, unusually, taking the lead. A much gentler version opening with a typically metaphorical Waits’ lyric, “Outside another yellow moon/has punched a hole in the night-time…”

It’s a fact that many good songs are made great by dint of the voices that carry them. Take Try A Little Tenderness. I read somewhere that Bing Crosby covered the song. Now, when it comes to White Christmas, nobody else can touch ol’ wife-beater Bing, but just the thought of him crooning Tenderness is agonising. Otis Redding steps up to the mike years later, however, and all but re-writes the song, attacking it with the kind of ferocity Crosby is alleged to have reserved for his nearest and dearest. It’s got the whole Atlantic soul caboodle: horns, organ, piano and a rhythm section starting off with a quiet but insistent rim-shot holding the beat, while all the way Redding builds up the vocal until it descends into a short fade. In the words of the late Steve Marriot, “My skin is white but my soul is black”. I’ve stood by the lake where Redding’s tour plane crashed on a freezing Wisconsin winter’s night. Today, on top of the terrace of the Frank Lloyd-Wright-designed convention centre that lines the shore in Madison, is a plaque commemorating the untimely death of Mr Soul.

How much do parents influence your choice of music? Depends on how much your parents like music, I guess. In our home, listening to music was a deliberate, selective choice of spending one’s leisure time. In those days the radio was there for the news, Women’s Hour followed by Listen With Mother and, on Sundays, Two-Way Family Favourites (remember Snowbird anyone?). My late father’s Dansette-style record player, housed in a stout grey and red vinyl-covered box, was stored on top of my wardrobe like a suitcase and was used about as frequently, i.e. on high days and holidays. Dad’s record collection by most people’s standards was, well, meagre. An eclectic mix of old 78s (the playing arm had a flip-over stylus that could be used for both platters and modern, micro-grooved discs), 45s, and the occasional long-player. A number of the singles were cover versions of the hits of the day bought from Woolworths and released on the scarlet and silver Embassy label; things like Tell Laura I Love Her and I Love You Because. The auto-changer could accommodate eight discs that Dad chose and we voted for. Often two discs would drop at once and I’d find my choice – say, Elvis’s It’s Now Or Never – sandwiched between Jim Reeves and The Highwaymen. Typically, the record player was brought out on a Sunday afternoon during the winter, when Dad couldn’t potter about outside or take me off on a bike ride. I can remember waiting impatiently for it to warm up, peeking through the grill at the dull orange glow of the valves, inhaling the strange electrical smell mingled with burning dust. Christmas was the other occasion it saw serious action – the time when we listened to Harry Belafonte’s Mary’s Boy Child and a couple of other religious songs by a Salvation Army ‘pop’ group called The Joystrings.

Although I introduced my Dad to other records when I was a teenager, his all-time favourites were early ’60s hits – namely Michael Row The Boat Ashore which he’d sing to me when we were out on our bike rides, and He’ll Have To Go, a Jim Reeves’ B-side. My enduring and endearing memory of that song is Dad on the stage at my brother’s wedding giving an impromptu, unaccompanied performance, the disc jockey’s headphones sitting incongruously on his head as he sang into the mike. It was a kind of early karaoke, I suppose. As a postscript, the very first single I bought – Saved By The Bell by Robin Gibb I’m now ashamed to admit– was given its first airing on Dad’s faithful old banger. (Heh, I was a fan of the Bee Gees their first time around, years before white suits were de rigueur on the dance floor. But more of them later.)

My greatest education into the delights of pop music was the result of being a child during the sixties. First, I was able to witness the rise of The Beatles – together with my best mate we would stand next to my parents’ old Marconi radio, miming to their latest hit, our junior tennis racquets poor substitutes for the ‘groovy’ plastic guitars emblazoned with the faces of the Fab Four that cost about three quid. (My only piece of Beatles’ merchandise was a soup bowl obtained by slurping gallons of Heinz cream of chicken and sending off the wrappers.)

Secondly, after my luddite father was harangued into buying a TV set, I was entranced by The Beatles, Stones, Herman’s Hermits, The Animals et al being beamed into our living room courtesy of Top of the Pops, Juke Box Jury and Ready Steady Go. Those were the days, remember, when the obsequious JBJ and TOTP host, David Jacobs, was considered something of a cool guy. I recall My Boy Lollipop by Millie was the very first pop song I saw on TV.

Thirdly, was the simultaneous growth of the pirate radio stations off the Essex coast. While other kids swam in the murky Walton-on-the-Naze water or played beach cricket, I was content to lie in a deck chair, idly turning the dial of my Dad’s crackly transistor radio between Radio Caroline (‘It sounds fine on 199’) and (‘Wonderful’) Radio London to hear the hits of the week. On clear days, with binoculars, I could make out the actual ships and was envious of the people who queued to take boat trips out to wave to the disc jockeys. Envious too of the DJs, living at sea and having nothing else to do but play records all day. Then, as now, to a child, a pirate’s life always seems so exciting. At night, drivers would be encouraged to park on the cliffs and flash their headlights to communicate with the ships – “Two flashes for ‘yes’ and one for ‘no’”.

Pop music continued to weave its way through the entire passage of my youth, although sometime around eleven or twelve, football took over for a couple of years. Nevertheless, Top of the Pops and Pick of the Pops were always firm fixtures and I nodded off to sleep making do with Radio Luxembourg playing in the background after the killjoy Labour Government forced the pirate stations off the air.

Moving up to secondary school was illuminating. Suddenly girls and music became more important and inextricably linked. Exposure to the record collections of others gave me access to an entirely new world. Here were guys, or brothers of guys, who not only had original rock & roll tracks (Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran etc) but who were into music played by ‘bands’ with names that either read like firms of accountants – Crosby, Stills & Nash, Emerson, Lake & Palmer – or like the colours on a ‘groovy’ paint chart – Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd. Suddenly, pop music was pigeon-holed into sub-genres such as ‘progressive’, ‘rock’ and ‘underground’. I bought my first reel-to-reel tape recorder and discovered the magic of borrowing mates’ records and taping them to play back at my own leisure. Pick of the Pops and latterly John Peel proved fruitful sources for adding to my listening pleasure. I started to buy Record Mirror and Disc & Music Echo and, latterly, Sounds, NME and Melody Maker. The charts, at the time I started secondary school, were filled with a strange mixture of namby-pamby pop such as Edison Lighthouse and The Archies, fused with quasi-country singers including Glen Campbell (Honey Come Back) and Kenny Rogers (Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town).

The upshot of all this was that to be cool, or to be seen as cool, you had to buy albums. Serious and substantial chunks of real music by bands which never came within a hair’s breadth of the singles charts. And of course, the album sleeves were like mini works of art, there to be shown off, touted under the arm like trophies of good taste.

Friends were very influential. I remember the future head boy and fellow folk-head, Richard Addis, lent me his sister’s copy of Déjà Vu simply because he couldn’t be bothered to carry it home one night. Thus began my love of folk and country rock. Then one term, a weird guy called Piers joined our class from a posh, fee-paying school in Suffolk. (Thinking back on it, he’d probably been expelled.) He had long, dark, greasy hair, a double-barrelled surname and worshipped a rock ‘supergroup’ called Humble Pie. Pretty soon he’d converted most of the musos in my year to a double live album called Rockin’ The Fillmore, until we knew every hiss and crackle of the record by heart, practising Steve Marriot’s cockney lilt linking the tracks. “We go ’ome on Monday, but we wanna tell ya we ain’t half ’ad a gas this time – it’s really been a gas!” Whereby the Pie launch into a storming version of Ashford & Simpson’s I Don’t Need No Doctor. Were the Stones the best rock band in those days? Not when Humble Pie was around – ‘all right?’

Around the same time, the three-disc soundtrack to Woodstock came into my possession. I think I bought it in a bargain basement sale. I’d already seen the film a couple of times and going through my hippy phase, imagined that it must have been one of the most incredible experiences a teenage music nut could have gone through. I played the records continually until I knew every word of every stage announcement off pat. Although I’d never fully appreciated Jimi Hendrix, I found his performance of Star Spangled Banner awesome. To see him perform it on screen was doubly awesome.

Piers and I hung out a bit and befriended an American guy who spent a year at our school while his father worked at Essex University. Joel Coen (he spelt his name ‘Cohn’ in those days), and his brother, Ethan, was something of a novelty. He was confident, worldly, well travelled and talented. The kind of guy who could pick up a guitar and play a song note perfect after hearing it just once. Of course, back in those days I hadn’t a clue that he would one day become a well-respected cult movie director. We kept in touch after he went back to the States and a few years later he stopped off en route from a trip to India and spent a couple of days at my house. By that time, I was working weekends on the local hospital radio station. On the occasion of his visit, I had to make a jingle promoting the personal appearance of Darth Vader at a local supermarket. Joel joined me in the studio and he scripted and did a voice-over for the jingle using the Star Wars Theme as the backing track. I never was much into Star Wars myself but Joel, obviously with an eye on his future career, was a big fan.

After taking my A-levels, a girlfriend and I spent a couple of weeks hitchhiking around France. Our aim was to reach Provence where she had a penfriend. We managed the journey in just a couple of lifts but I remember it was hell getting out of the suburbs of Paris. Our longest ride was with a small Corsican guy driving an artic. Also sharing the cab was a puppy which he’d bought en route and was taking home as a pet. All the time he drove with one hand on the wheel, the other scrambling around the cab trying to contain the animal. In Provence, we spent a few days at the French girl’s house. Her sister and her boyfriend, who looked like a young Georges Moustaki, had a den in the basement and it was there that I was introduced to a French hippy-cum-folksinger called Maxime Le Forestier. There was one album we played over and over and one song Comme Un Arbre sticks in my mind. It reminds me of warm evenings, the chirping of the cicadas, and the smell of Gauloises.

Back in the UK, I returned to education and started a course in journalism at Harlow Technical College. I shared digs in a council house run by an old woman who had been blitzed out of the East End into this supposed model New Town. She was the archetypal landlady from hell. She smoked Woodbines, her stockings were around her ankles, Nora Batty style (she also wore one around her waist to tie her candlewick dressing gown), and she just couldn’t cook. Julian, my fellow sufferer, and I used to grimace at each other over the slippery fried eggs she served for breakfast.

College was not too demanding and being near to London we could cop off to see gigs.
On my course was a short, spotty guy called Adrian whose ambition was to write for the NME. He became Adrian Thrills and went on to make a name for himself as a respected rock journalist. At the time, 1977, he was nuts about punk and wrote his own fanzine called. I believe, 48 Thrills. He was always at the 100 Club and raved about the Pistols, the Clash and the Damned. I have to admit that for me, punk wasn’t quite the musical epiphany that everybody says it was. In fact, I guess I was almost as shocked as my landlady when I witnessed the Pistols swearing their way through Bill Grundy’s LWT teatime show. Almost, but not quite because secretly, I quite liked the venomous Anarchy In The UK and the fact that the Sex Pistols knew about as many guitar chords between them as I did. And, like most of my fellow students, I was bored rigid by all the fuss about the Queen’s Silver Jubilee.

After leaving college, I spent a few months in Germany working as a disc jockey in a nightclub in a small village. As a foreigner I was something of a curiosity and I soon got into the local scene. It was the time of disco – Boney M and Saturday Night Fever had swept the world. Before leaving England, a few mates and I had learned the steps to Night Fever and I took it upon myself to teach the local kids. The manager of the bar loved the extra business it brought in but things soon turned sour and I was kicked out.

One night, a truckload of US GIs stopped by – they were on manoeuvres in the area and were camped just outside the village. Most of the guys were black and rather than chasing the local talent, they were more interested in drinking and ‘getting down’. I trawled through the record boxes and picked out all the Tamla and Stax stuff I could find. Soon the dance floor was heaving with a mass of uniforms strutting their stuff and high-fiving to the Temptations, Sam & Dave and Stevie Wonder. It was brilliant and I was offered (though declined) all kinds of narcotics for my services. Then one pushy German local lent over the desk and insisted I played a Janis Joplin B-side I’d never heard before. He was bigger than me so I reluctantly put Mercedes Benz on the turntable. The club suddenly stood still, the dance floor emptied and everybody turned around on their bar stools. I could see the angry eyes of the manager as he stormed over. He paid me off before Janis had even finished her acappella ditty, with that funny little chuckle at the end. Whenever I hear that and Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone, I think of that night at the Old Fashion Discotheque in Gladenbach.

As I said earlier, I love a good dance number and for me the hideous fashions we wore at the height of disco (I’m thinking of the high-waisted, multi-buttoned ‘Coventry Bags’ and ‘Birmingham Bags’ trousers, and floppy collared shirts in puke-inducing pastels), were more than compensated for by the quality of the music. Okay, so there were a few exceptions (still like The Fatback Band and Van McCoy anyone?), but in the main it was enduring stuff – I’m thinking Chic and the like. And whereas parties in my early teens had been mostly about joss-sticks, ‘freaking out’ and snogging, now it was all about doing one’s thang on the dance floor and crashing out in the spare room along with about a dozen other people. In the words of the Whicker Rap, a novelty record of the time, ‘Bad was good and good was just about as good as you could possibly get.’

Of course, not all the best dance records were mainstream and I recall having my white socks and dancing shoes blown off at a party in Wanstead. A Colchester girl who was soon to make good brought a 12-inch single called Hot Shot by Karen Young (no, Karen Young, not Faron Young, stupid!). It was a little in the vein of Right On Time by Black Box but was long before whiz-kid DJs started sampling and became feted for their knob-twiddling prowess. The track was played over and over and the front room of that house reverberated with revellers, including the girl who brought the record along. Eventually, her time came. Thanks for the dance, Sade.

I never considered Colchester, my hometown, to be a hotbed of musical talent. But it’s had its moments. Apart from Sade, it fostered the pre-superstardom careers of Damon Albarn, Jay Kay and Steve Harley. Sade and Jay Kay have made their multi-millions, of course, but for me, the best record ever cut by a Colchester-linked singer is Come Up And See Me (Make Me Smile) by Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel. It surfed to number one on the crest of the glam-rock wave when Bowie and Bolan were the chart’s bigshots. Such a joyful, exuberant one-off by the boy who used to be a news reporter on the local rag, it reaches a wonderful crescendo with the Spanish-style guitar solo that plucks the spirit of summer from every note. And it is one of those few records that manages to come to an abrupt stop mid way through, with a surprise second of silence which almost has as much worth as the song itself. ‘Ooo-ooo, ooo-la, la-la …’

I have consciously left out songs by the Beach Boys (God Only Knows), the Stones (The Last Time) and The Beatles (Eleanor Rigby), (favourite songs in brackets), with the exception of With A Little Help From My Friends, for it coincided with a new chapter in my life following the break up of a relationship. There I was, mooching around town one Saturday when I bumped into Grahame, an old friend from school who I had not seen for a few years. During our school years we had played together in a folk-based group, playing traditional and original (mostly Grahame’s) songs at Colchester Folk Club now and again.

Grahame was playing in a Beatles tribute band, The Fabs, long before tribute bands were fashionable, and he invited me to a gig. Before long, I was hanging out at rehearsals, lugging equipment and helping out creating posters, T-shirts and promotional material. Eventually I was co-opted as a kind of honourary member of the band, while at the same time the line-up was augmented by a brass section dubbed ‘The Cream Horns’. My role was as percussionist and backing vocals, and learning the songs was a revelation of how key the tambourine was to so many Beatles and other classic ’60s songs. The Cream Horns enabled The Fabs to cover Tamla and other soul numbers and, most importantly, added the dimension of Sgt Pepper to the repertoire. I was knocked out to be offered the role of ‘Billy Shears’ along with the opportunity to sing With A Little Help From My Friends, which was, you might say, my fifteen minutes of fame.

Of course, Grahame was a muso of the first order with a staggering collection of albums, 12-inch singles and picture discs that decorated the walls of his little terraced house. He introduced me to more new music than I can remember, although the traffic wasn’t entirely one way. I believe I introduced him to Chris Rea (no doubt he’ll correct me if I’m wrong!). One of the bands he introduced me to was The Blue Nile, and in particular, Tinseltown In the Rain. At the time it was unlike anything I’d ever heard; Grahame even had the video, which if I remember, is very eighties ‘lifestyley’.

That summer was a carefree cruise of music, The Fabs, music, five-a-side-football, music, girls, music, gigs, music, drinking, music, Sunday afternoon walks, and more music, though not necessarily in that order. One of the gigs we went to was Prefab Sprout. Grahame worked in the music business and was always managing to wangle tickets for this or that. At the time, the Prefabs had just released Steve McQueen which soon became one of my favourite albums of all time. Although he was being feted as a new Dylan or Lennon-McCartney, Paddy MacCloon’s songs really struck a chord with me. Quiet, plaintive and really clever, lyrically. It’s difficult to pick out just one song from that album but if push comes to shove it has to be When Love Breaks Down. Perhaps it was a little autobiographical for me at the time, but my personal life aside, it will forever remind me of driving down the A12 in Grahame’s Sierra on the way to the gig in London on a balmy summer’s evening.

This time coincided with a new period of freedom for me, re-discovering my independence and old friends in equal measure. I was wont to throw a major party occasionally and, with the help of Grahame’s impressive collection of 12-inchers, spent hours compiling the perfect party tapes to fuel four or five hours of serious dancing and serious drunkedness. One of the tracks guaranteed to shake the foundations of the house was In and Out by Willie Hutch. I had the 12-inch but haven’t managed to find it on CD as yet , so it’s been ages since I last heard it.

People often talk about Bob Dylan selling out when he went electric back in the mid-sixties.
But here in Britain we had our own home grown folk son, John Martyn. Whether these two balladeers should be mentioned together in the same breath is open to question. I can only speak for myself when I say that Martyn has given me as much listening pleasure as Dylan and often, a lot more.

I went to see Martyn play at Essex University during the early ’80s when he’d just moved from Island Records and cut a deal with WEA. The crowd comprised many hardened Martyn fans who remembered him sitting cross-legged on the stage, just him and his acoustic guitar, maybe a double bass for accompaniment. That night at Essex he was full-force electric, with raw, edgy, razor-sharp riffs and almost incomprehensible lyrics. He alarmed many in the crowd to such an extent that someone, in a parody of that famous Dylan gig, shouted out in frustration, ‘Judas!’ Martyn cut just two albums for WEA before going independent. His second, Well Kept Secret, like the first, was patchy, with the occasional gem shining like a jewel in the mud. As usual, I veered towards the low-key numbers and picked out a track called Hung Up. It’s about the frustration of man in the throes of a break-up with the telephone as the mediator. Pretty depressing, I know, but I remember it playing in the background once as a soundtrack to a particularly satisfying seduction.

Chris Rea peaked with Shamrock Diaries, another of my “Desert Island Discs.” He’d been muddling around with mixed reviews and just one big hit to his name: Fool (If You Think It’s Over). Then, after a couple of years he released Stainsby Girls, on the strength of which I borrowed the album from my local library. It was a journey of discovery; a compelling listen from the opening track, Steel River, to the last note of side two. Many of the tracks on the album are autobiographical, including Steel River. As a soft southerner, I’d never experienced the grit and the grime that is life in the North-East. Rea sang from the heart when he bemoaned the demise of the steel and shipbuilding industries; leaving vast metal monuments dotted around the world, such as the Sydney harbour bridge. There’s a line, “…making love with a Carole King record playing,” that is so clever in its capture of teenage passion. When I was dating my first girlfriend, Tapestry was part of the soundtrack to our marathon snogging sessions in her bedroom! Another song that accompanied our illicit hugs and kisses was The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face by Roberta Flack. I loved it less for the lyric, more for the inconceivable slowness of the tune, almost classical in its form. Recently, it has been taken to greater heights by the Stereophonics on a B-side. This truly is the definitive interpretation, Kelly Jones’ voice more than reminiscent of Rod Stewart’s before he sold his soul to skin-tight trousers and sun beds.

I was interested to note that Bob Booth lists Fifth of July by Terry Reid in his own 31. I thought I was the only person on earth who knew about it! First heard on Nicky Campbell’s old Radio One Saturday afternoon show, it has particular resonance for my wife and me.
When her mother was dying of cancer in a hospice in Derbyshire, we used to make the long drive every weekend to visit with the radio in the car tuned in to Campbell. It was during the summer and the hospice was located in beautiful public grounds with a lake and church and tea rooms. Most of the people who went there were on days out and bought picnics to sit in the sun and relax. From the open window of the room, we could hear people laughing and children shouting, yet for us, the loudest noise of all was the sound of someone slipping quietly away.

The Lord giveth as the Lord taketh away, as my dear old dad used to say. And so, a couple of years later, we had our son, Jack. It was an uncomfortable pregnancy for Elizabeth, and we whiled many hours away on the sofa listening to music, and marvelling at the little kicks inside. As they grew stronger and more frequent we knew our baby was going to like music. In particular, he seemed to love Step It Up by the Stereo MCs. Today, Jack’s taste is, I think, incredibly wide reaching. In his 10 years, he has gravitated from the obvious (Spice Girls, Madonna, Shania Twain etc) to the, ‘Wow! Does he really like that?’ Falling into the latter category is Sheryl Crow’s If It Makes You Happy. Self-consciously he likes to listen to music on his own, with the door closed. Peeking through, we see him dancing, catching his reflection in any shiny surface, while in the car he sings along word-perfectly to songs played on Leicester Sound.

A couple of years after Jack was born, Marc Cohn came out with Walking In Memphis, a track that barely left my CD player. It was also played to death in the design studio where I was working. His second album was, as they say, ‘difficult.’ However, there is one track that every expectant parent should own. It’s called The Things We Handed Down and reflects upon the kind of thoughts one thinks about a yet-to-be-born baby. Will he have his father’s nose? His mum’s laugh?

Aware that my list is bereft of riffs, my penultimate pick, The Beautiful Ones by Suede, should make amends. For some reason, (probably having a baby), much of the indie scene passed me by completely. I was probably one of the few who discovered Oasis’ Definitely Maybe after What’s The Story? Similarly, I found Suede long after they peaked. Now I’m no musician but the opening riff to Beautiful Ones must be pretty hard to master (Rutty will probably tell me!). Difficult or not, it’s one of those intros that calls for an air guitar moment every time I hear it.

Remember at the beginning I said this wasn’t necessarily a list of my all-time favourite songs?
Well, to end I give you my absolutely, all-time ever, favourite song: You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling by The Righteous Brothers. It’s been covered by Hall & Oates and even The Fabs. Unlike the blue-eyed soul boys though, Grahame and Gary Leach of The Fabs didn’t chicken out singing the falsetto “Ba-by” and “Ple-ase!” peak of the song before it returns with the final chorus. In my humble opinion it’s the only decent record Phil Spector has made (apart from Be My Baby natch).

And on that controversial and somewhat sweeping statement, I bid you good night!