music

[8] David Bowie, ‘Space Oddity’

Some records have been absolutely battered, but still sound fresh. I always think I’m tired of ‘Space Oddity’ and then I happen to play it again and enjoy it anew. We went for a “method” airing of this: played through the tinny laptop speaker as if it was being transmitted from a spaceship, dislocated, drifting, alone and doomed. Really, I couldn’t find a CD with it on, and have only just remembered that I have it on vinyl. No matter – the distorted, scratchy rendition was a winner.

Junior latched on to the lyric – “It’s like Tom!” – so far as the tragic hero shares a name with her uncle. He’s drifting in outer space too. Perth, to be precise. She then floated in orbit around the dining table and went on to protest wildly at having to put her shoes on.

As for me, yet again I enjoyed a subdued record that is nevertheless an epic. Perhaps I never play it loudly enough, but for all ‘Space Oddity’’s lush innovation and instrumental variety it still seems light of touch. It’s also bleak, poignant and immense. On reflection, I prefer Bowie garish.

[9] Diana Ross & The Supremes, ‘Someday We’ll Be Together’

Heart-stopping, heart-rending and band-rending, the final single from Diana Ross & The Supremes doesn’t even feature The Supremes. Motown boss Berry Gordy had it pegged as Ross’s first solo single, first nabbing it from under the noses of Junior Walker & The All-Stars, then using the track that original writer Johnny Bristol had patched together with a couple of session singers to underpin Ross’s seductive vocal. Who was going to argue?

It’s a sensitive, swinging arrangement that has Junior swaying. Our girl has a distinct sense of rhythm, and is starting to respond to records in conspicuously different ways. Her hips click into the rising, plucked guitar signature and she glides with the embracing strings.

‘Someday…’ has no conventional chorus, only a release as Ross bursts to tell what she believes. It can be taken as a promise that the band will reunite one day, but she sure as hell had no intention of that. The Queen of Motown didn’t want any baggage weighing her down.

[10] The Beatles, ‘Something’/’Come Together’

It’s 7.21 in the morning and Junior is wearing pink fairy wings and carrying a plastic wand that makes a “magical” sound when you bash it against the furniture. ‘Something’ has, well, something of the fairy dust about it, representing the blossoming of George Harrison’s songwriting shortly before it came to full fruition on cruelly overlooked triple solo album All Things Must Pass. It was written for his then-beloved Patti Boyd – who would shortly hand him in for Eric Clapton when he wrote the inferior ‘Layla’ for her.

‘Something’ is stately and meditative with a masterful middle eight and gorgeous strings. Junior drifts around in fitting manner.

Its partner ‘Come Together’ is a Plastic Ono Band record in all but name. A bluesy strut with the coolest throwaways – “walrus gumboot”, “mojo filter”, “toe-jam football” – it’s a nonsense but a convincing one all the same. Great organ, woozy guitar a sense that The Beatles could still be on their game. Junior is now roaring like a lion and showing her claws – showing the contrast between the songs too.

A No.4 hit. The game was up.

[11] Thunderclap Newman, ‘Something In The Air’

The hopeful strumming and coaxing bass that opens this one-off gem is as enticing to a Noughties two-year-old as it was to any counter-cultural firebrand at the close of those Swinging Sixties. Junior plays a relaxed air guitar in true appreciation and later waltzes with her dad to the triumphant lead into the final verse – after the piano goes all honky-tonk on us.

It’s a fantastic record that appears to harness real power. I’ve no idea how much it articulated a state of mind or movement in 1969, apart, perhaps, from vestiges of hope that the new kids could change the world. Thunderclap (né, erm, Andy) Newman sounds like the sort of chap who might roll up his sleeves and spark a revolution, and a singer called Speedy Keen can only add to the fervour.

In the end ‘Something In The Air’ has soundtracked the collective spirit of people chatting on mobile phones, which is a little banal even if it is the new limit of human endeavour. We have got to get it together – now.

[12] Stevie Wonder, ‘For Once In My Life’

There are few more ecstatic records than this in the pop canon, and few better singers to express it. Stevie’s beautiful improvisation around a melody can convey pretty much any emotion, but joy is his calling card. And why wouldn’t he be on top of the world? At last, he’s found The One, “someone warm like you”. From the anticipation-building intro, a close cousin of Sam & Dave’s ‘Soul Man’ jump-off, to the delirious harmonica solo and beyond, Stevie etches a template for lovestruck abandonment.

As far as the Wonder catalogue goes – off the top of my head – this is only trumped by ‘Sir Duke’ when it comes to communicating the delight of just being. That’s a bit of a cheat, of course, because there’s no risk with Basie, Miller and Satchmo. Right here, Stevie is laying his heart on the line.

Junior recognised the bliss and let herself go, wheeling around the kitchen with her mum and admiring her reflection in the oven door as she did so. Narcissus would wilt.

[13] Bob Dylan, ‘Lay Lady Lay’

Usually possessing the vocal warmth of a crow with a bandaged beak, Nashville Skyline found Dylan recovering from a shady motorcycle accident and experimenting with a new tone. He sounds like he’s gargling plums, but at least he’s trying to stick to the melody.

‘Lay Lady Lay’ is a sweaty plea for a bunk-up, but manages to be charming and delicate, with a slide guitar that sounds like the sun rising on lucky Bob and his worn-down conquest. The title line sounds like a yodel and is easily mimicked by Junior – she’s inhabiting the songs a little more these days rather than offering just the perfunctory shoe shuffle. She’ll be hissing ‘Positively 4th Street’ at her nursery mates before long.

[14] Elvis Presley, ‘Suspicious Minds’

Boil it all down and I’m ambivalent about Elvis. I shouldn’t be so bloody ungrateful, what with his sterling services to rock’n’roll, but the big-hitting and prolific late ‘50s/early ‘60s stuff just doesn’t float my boat, odd exception aside. Maybe I heard it all way too late, or perhaps it didn’t help that the only Elvis single my mother owned was ‘Wooden Heart’, or that too many teenage friends in the late ‘80s thought they were buying into some sort of authenticity – “this is real music” – when I wanted to convince them that Detroit techno was the one true path.
 
Ok, I love the more inventive moments like ‘His Latest Flame’, but have the most time for Comeback Elvis, when he was allowing a bit more slack in his music – and waistline: ‘In The Ghetto’, this, ‘Burning Love’ and – oh go on – ‘The Wonder Of You’. ‘Suspicious Minds’ is masterful Country & Western pop, with a drama that sweeps you up and a welcome false ending. Go on, Elvis, keep it going. I have some repressed memories of Richard Gere striding naked into a bathroom – in Breathless, I believe, not personal experience – but will strive to keep them quashed.
 
Junior’s prior knowledge of Elvis is gleaned from a day’s drive into the Omani interior, a terrifyingly limited selection of CDs in Grandad’s glove box. As ‘That’s Alright, Mama’ hoved to for the ninth time that December afternoon, she howled for a change, for anything, even that breathtakingly weak Snow Patrol album. Possibly. A few months later, ‘Suspicious Minds’ is accepted with grace and a highchair shuffle. Redemption for The King.

[15] Creedence Clearwater Revival, ‘Bad Moon Rising’

CCR had been knocking around for donkey’s years under various names, but only tasted real success with a change of moniker – “Creedence” apparently after a mucker of the band called Credence Nuball, “Clearwater” for topical environmental reasons, dude, and “Revival” for whatever it says on the tin. And “Revival” was right: John Fogerty and crew enjoyed huge sales for this and other infectious bluegrass swampy fare and never looked back… until acrimonious split and lawsuits, obviously.

‘Bad Moon Rising’ is a classic only-know-one-line tune, but everyone loves it. It’s a timeless music and, as I recall, a cornerstone of any self-respecting second-year student’s layabout playlist.

“Is this about the moon?” asked Junior, bless her. “Not quite,” I replied. “Fogerty claims it was written on the day Richard Nixon was elected to power in the States, and it reflects the sense of unease in the air and the portents of what was to follow.” Junior shot me a look that suggested she could get more sense out of Junior 2, asleep in her cradle upstairs, barely two weeks old.

[16] Fairport Convention, ‘Si Tu Dois Partir’

Aged 15 and in the throes of a short-lived U2 obsession – The Joshua Tree was the best album ever for a summer at the very least, the musical equivalent of a pair of black jeans, a flat-top haircut and a misguided strut down the high street – I bought the freshly minted Island Story compilation, a bit of self-congratulation for 25 years of quirky eclecticism from the label that always insisted white men could dance to reggae. The U2 contribution was ‘With Or Without You’, which I had anyway, so Lord knows what I thought I was getting. An intro to more impossibly earnest chest-beaters with ringing guitars and unforgivable headgear? Turned out to be an intro to Jim Capaldi, Pete Wingfield, Bob & Earl and Fairport Convention. And I was grateful.

Like any kid who grew up in the 70s and 80s, I nurture a natural suspicion of folk music. Where are the synths, the make-up, the safety pins and the snarls? Get these guitar-fumbling drips away from me! My stance has softened now, but Fairport Convention – at least from a distance – threw another problem into the mix: Q Magazine and their bewildering worship of Richard Thompson. I’m sure he’s brilliant and everything (this is 15-year-old me speaking, but it might as well be me, here and now) but I haven’t heard anything, and besides – he has a tidy beard and astonishing taste in shirts. If I drop my guard now, I’ll be championing Little Village and The Robert Cray Band within minutes.

Chaos and joy define Fairport Convention’s French Cajun and French language version of Bob Dylan’s ‘If You Gotta Go, Go Now’. Sandy Denny’s woeful accent (worse than Jane Birkin’s in the serendipitously adjacent entry) and her “Come on, children, join in!” schoolmarm-ish tone could be a turn-off, but I prefer to get involved. Anyway, you can only love a song that makes a tumbling stack of chairs meld seamlessly into the percussion. Junior swanned around the kitchen and didn’t get involved herself until the last few bars, but I think we can put that down to reticence – she’s obviously tired of grown-up rock mags prostrating themselves in front of Thompson too.

Hey, maybe he really is great. 

[17] Jane Birkin & Serge Gainsbourg, ‘Je T’Aime…Moi Non Plus’

Perhaps not an ideal track to play to a two-year-old, but Junior appeared to be more embarrassed at me trying to whistle along to the organ than anything else. ‘Je T’Aime…’ isn’t brilliant, but it has a good groove and is, frankly, hilarious. What a lecherous old goat Serge was, and isn’t it splendid that this record is so tied up with its pastiches it’s become a parody of itself?

What more can we say? Some trivia: Fontana got cold feet in the less-permissive-than-reported late ‘60s and dropped the Birkin/Gainsbourg original, only to see it vault to the top of the charts on the minor Major Minor label; Birkin’s wispy voice lives on in daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg, who released a very fine solo album in 2006, aided and abetted by Jarvis Cocker and Air; Misty Oldland’s ‘A Fair Affair’ made, well, fair use of the rhythm track to shape a winning little number in 1994. It’s a gossamer-thin legacy, as quaint as the song seems now.