Songbook (11 page)

‘Your Love Is The Place Where I Come From', Teenage Fanclub

If you have no Teenage Fanclub at all, then you might want to start with
4766 Seconds – A Short Cut To Teenage Fanclub
, a 2002 compilation that includes both the songs I write about in this book. They're also both on
Songs From Northern Britain
, which, if you've already got
Rubber Soul
, is the next best comfort food you can buy.

‘Thunder Road', Bruce Springsteen

You know where to get this.

‘I'm Like a Bird',
Nelly Furtado

From the album
Whoa, Nelly!
, which doesn't really offer anything quite as good as ‘I'm Like a Bird'.

‘Heartbreaker',
Led Zeppelin

From
Led Zeppelin II
, the best Zeppelin album for riffs (‘Whole Lotta Love', ‘The Lemon Song', etc.).

‘One Man Guy', Rufus Wainwright

From the album
Poses
. ‘One Man Guy' is atypical, however: Rufus seems to derive more inspiration from showtunes than from folk or pop, which is fine by me.

‘Samba Pa Ti',
Santana

If you feel compelled to buy a Santana album, then a greatest hits should be more than enough for you. There's one great Santana solo, however, on an album called
Havana Moon
, which I would never have come across had Jerry Wexler not introduced me to it; the song's called ‘They All Went To Mexico' (Willie Nelson sings it), and the solo is lovely, disciplined, elegiac and – fear not – short.

‘Mama You Been On My Mind',
Rod Stewart

From the album
Never a Dull Moment
, the one with ‘You Wear It Well' on it. Both this and
Every Picture . . .
stand up remarkably well.

‘Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?',
Bob Dylan

From the album
Biograph
.

‘Rain',
The Beatles

From the album
Past Masters Volume Two
, although annoyingly you'll probably have all the other tracks – ‘Day Tripper', ‘Hey Jude', ‘Lady Madonna', etc. – worth having.

‘You Had Time',
Ani DiFranco

From the album
Out of Range
, which contains the lovely ‘Overlap'. On most of her albums, however, Ani prefers to rant and rap, and more power to her – but it seems a little perverse, given how few people are capable of writing songs like ‘You Had Time'.

‘I've Had It',
Aimee Mann

From
Whatever
, Mann's first solo recording. All her albums are good (as are the last couple of efforts from her band, Til' Tuesday), but on her new one,
Lost In Space
, her writing seems to have become even sharper.

‘Born for Me', Paul Westerberg

From the album
Suicaine Gratifaction
. Westerberg's solo stuff is as patchy as his Replacements work, which is one of the reasons why he isn't more famous. There's a worthwhile Replacements anthology called
All for Nothing/Nothing for All
, and the good songs on that will go some way to explaining the passion of his devotees.

‘Frankie Teardrop',
Suicide

Everyone should listen to Frankie Teardrop once. Get someone who owns Suicide's first album, which is available on CD, to tape it for you.

‘Ain't That Enough',
Teenage Fanclub

See notes for ‘Your Love Is The Place Where I Come From'.

‘First I Look At The Purse', the J. Geils Band

From the album
Full House – “Live”
, one of the very few records to have survived every vicissitude of my musical tastes.

‘Smoke', Ben Folds Five

From the album
Whatever and Ever Amen
. I can't believe the number of reviews I've read which have compared Folds to either Billy Joel or Elton John; this is obviously and blatantly pianist.

‘A Minor Incident', Badly Drawn Boy

From the soundtrack to
About A Boy
. Novel available now from Penguin Books.

‘Glorybound',
The Bible

You can't find the version I like. There's another version on an odds-and-sods album called
Random Acts of Kindness
, but it really doesn't have the same swing. Boo and Neill can't find the recording I refer to.

‘Caravan', Van Morrison

From the live album
It's Too Late to Stop Now
. The BBC once showed a fantastic film of this concert on
The Old Grey Whistle Test
– someone should show it again.

‘So I'll Run', Butch Hancock and Marce LaCouture

From the album
Yella Rose
.

‘Puff the Magic Dragon', Gregory Isaacs

From the album
Reggae for Kids
, which also features a pretty good ‘This Old Man' by Yellowman. If your kids are listening over and over again to stuff that makes you want to smash the cassette recorder, then try the Music for Little People series: there are great kids' CDs by Los Lobos, The Persuasions, Buckwheat Zydeco, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, etc.

‘Reasons To Be Cheerful, Part 3', Ian Dury & the Blockheads

From the greatest-hits album
Reasons To Be Cheerful
, which closes with the overlooked and gruffly beautiful ‘Lullaby For Frances'.

‘The Calvary Cross',
Richard and
Linda Thompson

From the album
I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight
. Linda Thompson's 2002 album
Fashionably Late
, her first recording for seventeen years, is a delight.

‘Late for the Sky',
Jackson Browne

From the album
Late for the Sky
.

‘Hey Self Defeater', Mark Mulcahy

From the album
Fathering
. This year's top tip, via my friend Dan DeLuca of the
Philadelphia Enquirer
:
The Instigator
by Rhett Miller.

‘Needle in a Haystack',
The Velvelettes

From
The Best of The Velvelettes
. They did the original version of ‘He Was Really Saying Something', also on this compilation.

‘Let's Straighten it Out', O.V. Wright

Available on
The Complete O.V. Wright on Hi Records Vol. 1
, a double CD that is pretty much all good, if you can stand the whistling teeth. You can find Latimore's original version, with its long, moody organ intro, on
Straighten It Out: The Best of Latimore
.

‘Röyksopp's Night Out', Röyksopp

From the album
Melody A.M
. The Gotan Project's
La Revancha Del Tango
is the best and most innovative ambient album I've heard – even its Starbucks-y ubiquity hasn't entirely ruined it for me yet.

‘Frontier Psychiatrist',
the Avalanches

From the album
Since I Left You.

‘No Fun/Push It',
Soulwax

From the album
Too Many DJs
, although this particular track is also on a (bootleg?) album called
The Best Bootleg Album in the World . . . Ever!
, which you can find in the better class of independent CD shops.

‘Pissing in a River', the Patti Smith Group

From the album
Radio Ethiopia
.
Land
(2002) anthologizes just about everything you'd want – including this track – on a two-CD set.

Favourite songs of 2002

‘Our Love', Rhett Miller; ‘Dy-Na-Mi-Tee', Ms Dynamite; ‘People of the Underground', Marah; ‘There Goes the Fear', the Doves; ‘Good Man', Eileen Rose; ‘Flesh and Blood', Solomon Burke; ‘Jesus Etc', Wilko; ‘High Class Music', Roddy Frame; ‘All I See', Linda Thompson; ‘It's Not', Aimee Mann; ‘If You Only Knew', Jurassic 5; ‘Hunger', Boo Hewerdine; ‘Trouble Over Me', Tift Merritt; ‘Seven Years', Norah Jones.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's Imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

 

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