New Order – Temptation

Well so here I am 50 blogs on, later than planned as I have now been 50 for just over two months. But of course you, dear reader, will understand that these special dates in reality mean nothing at all other than what we read into them, and I plan to get better at being late for everything henceforth apart from death which I will be precisely on time for. I still find it odd that I am writing backwards as far as you are concerned, though the chances are that you won’t bother to read posts 49 to 1 so you won’t suffer any disorientation at all.

Anyway, the point of this blog was to do it and write about some music that I really like and try to explain why it means something to me. One post for each year of my life. It turns out to be easier to talk about what it means to me than to say why I like it, perhaps this is one of the things that I really like about music it is hard to convey anything about why music is good with words, you just have to listen to it.

I have quite enjoyed writing the blog although it is fair to say I have slipped rather in the last month or so but I think now I am freed of the responsibility of a desert island like 50 I can relax and maybe just write about the songs that I chant (well it can’t be described as singing, chanting is probably stretching it) as I cycle to work, drown out the noise in boring meetings (just in case you are wondering this would be silent chanting in my head) etc. etc. And I am conscious I have left lots of great stuff out and I hope I will hear lots of new great stuff.

In other words if I carry on I will try and cut back on the nostalgia trips but for one last time …

When I went inter-railing with Chris and Izaac in 1982 having finished A-levels it felt like the world changed in the month we were away. Partly I changed, travelling through bits of Europe by myself and realizing that I could probably survive as an adult, almost managing to chat up a girl and camping in the arctic circle. When we left Temptation had been released and it broke all the rules (self imposed) about what I should like in music at that time, it was really long and very danceable. Oh and of course as the possessor of a pair of green eyes it seemed to speak to me. But it was a John Peel record, this meant that it belonged to a small club of aficionados. Imagine our surprise when it started creeping into the charts, ok so it only made it to 29 but still it felt like a revolution. If other people liked New Order enough to buy the record then maybe the world was becoming a better place. What a daft idea but then I was only 18 and I think in those days daft ideas seemed more plausible than they do now, when everyone has seen it all, done it all and rejected it all. Or perhaps it is just the optimism of youth.

Tracy Thorn

This seems to have been a very hard post to write, once I had decided what the 50th one would be then the 49th became hard as it needed to try and capture some bits of music that haven’t been properly represented so far, to improve the general coolness quotient (what is the phrase for adjective that can’t possible be linked to the noun?) and to try and suggest that I might carry on with this but looking to the more recent past rather than ancient history.

I’m not entirely convinced that Tracy Thorn serves all these purposes but here goes:

I think I saw the Marine Girls in 1982 at what was then Kingston Polytechnic as part of a cherry red tour. They were already a favourite from listening to John Peel and so I drove up there in the Austin A40 with a couple of friends from university. I don’t remember much about the gig, perfectly pleasant but perhaps not as exciting as the other gigs I had been to, the number was still less than 10 then and most of those would have been the Fall! One of them, Michael, had somehow worked out how to write for the student newspaper I think so he went backstage to interview people while I kept the engine running. Looking back I seem to have known and maybe still do like to engage in a more proactive way than I do. Music is something I like to receive, I don’t want to know much about how or why it is made. Anyway, the Marine Girls stand for a line of Easy Listening which I have always enjoyed, catchy tunes that make you tap your feet but not get out of bed to dance with clever lyrics (though mind you I had the Cocteau Twins in this mould and I am not sure there lyrics are clever – more impenetrable). Hard to choose a single song but

I must admit that I was never that huge a fan of everything but the girl, not really sure why but then this rather changed everything, an incredibly moving song

 

 

I guess the key to all of this is that I think Tracy Thorn has an amazing voice and perhaps what could be called pop sensibility. Reading her biography, one of the few music ones that I would recommend, she seems like a reasonably ordinary person who just likes making music. It is tempting to finish with plain sailing which is probably my favourite of her solo pieces but instead I think I should go for something more recent

X LionTamer – Life Support Machine

 

Why wasn’t this more popular? Actually not that many songs with suicide notes in them seem to storm up the charts or maybe although I like the name X Lion Tamer it seems to be written in a range of ways in the blogosphere maybe dampening the visibility on search engines etc. I don’t know it is a mystery to me.

Anyway, I really like the way that synth bands seem to have been making some thing of a comeback in the 21st Century, they were too easily dismissed as a passing fad driven by the technology in the 80s but actually there can be something rather moving about the contrast between the fragility of the human voice and the relentless perfection of the synthesizer.

A good song for anyone else passing through a difficult period in their lives – 50 year-olds and teenagers I am thinking of you.

 

Submotion Orchestra – All Night

This comes from James really, and him going through a phase of playing this it felt like constantly but actually I think this is one of those songs that one immediately likes and once you have heard it then you recognize it second time around if you see what I mean. I am still rather surprised that James (my son) has ended up liking things which have a distinct jazz tinge to them – where did that come from?

A really good song to have on lying in bed, in the dark contemplating life.