Somebody please take Wayne Coyne to Mars before he puts anymore heads in jars. Taken from the album In a Priest Driven Ambulance (With Silver Sunshine Stares), this was allegedly inspired by the Can song Mushroom. Or maybe just some mushrooms.
OK, so it might not be the planet... but it does help Feargal work, rest and play. And it's a perfect reminder of how supremely ACE The Undertones were.
Look, it may be a godawful small affair, but Bowie's already had one Number One on this journey and I very much doubt it's the last we'll hear from him. Let's give someone else a chance at the top position...
1. John Grant - Marz
John Grant's spelling might need a little work, but his songwriting is out of this world.
Golden champagne juicy grapefruit lucky Monday High school footall hot fudge buffalo tulip sundae Almond caramel frappe pineapple rootbeer Black and white pennyapple Henry Ford sweetheart maple tea
So. Those were my favourite Martians... what are yours?
Which brings us to the most maligned decade of the latter half of the 20th Century. Quite unfairly, if you ask me. The 80s were ace. They gave us Jet Set Willy, The A-Team, Back To The Future, The Queen Is Dead, Frank Miller's Daredevil, Rubix Cube, Born In The USA and Tunnel Of Love, Moonlighting, John Byrne's Fantastic Four, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Total Eclipse Of The Heart... and all they asked in return was our souls. Sounds like a perfectly fair trade to me.
Anyway, as usual, this isn't a list of Best Songs FROM The 80s... just Best Songs ABOUT the 80s. Don't make me have to explain that to you again.
Having said that, let's start with three songs that were actually recorded in the devilish decade, each dealing with the year George Orwell predicted fascism would run rampant. In reality, we had Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan... phew, lucky escape there, eh, George?
Apparently we're all supposed to hate John Mayer because he's a precocious pretty-boy who's had his hands (and, no doubt, other bodily parts) all over Jennifer Love Hewitt, Jessica Simpson, Jennifer Aniston and a dozen other Hollywood bimboids. Ah, good on him. I'm not jealous. (If he ever goes near Kate Winslet though, I'm calling him out.) Anyway, this is probably the best song he's ever recorded, from early in his career, before he went all rockstar cliché.
Ah, but if it's rockstar cliché you're after, look no further than Kid Rock, bringing the obscenity of his expense account to this video with speedboats, tattoos and pretty girls. Not a bad tune though, despite the fact that he owes most of it to Warren Zevon and Lynyrd Skynyrd. At least he's not afraid to own up to the thievery...
A more respectable face of American Mid-West musicianship, Randy Travis arrived on the scene in 1985 when Marty McFly was just beginning to travel in time. Here Randy's experimenting with a little cross-chronal communication of his own, calling on the phone company and the post office to help him contact the girl he left behind in 1982. Probably Kim Wilde.
Trust the Manics to pour scorn on the decade of their teenage riot, remembering a year in which Orwell was proved right and the Civil War failed. Still, from misery comes hope...
In 1985, my words they came alive, friends were made for life, Morrissey and Marr gave me choice. In 1985, in 1985.
What killed the 80s music scene? If you'd asked me in 1989, I'd have screamed "dance anthems". S-Express, Technotronic, Black Box and their sordid, wailing ilk. (I quite liked MARRS and Pump Up The Volume, but it was a grubby, guilty kind of like, and I knew it was wrong.)
Regina Spektor remembers a much more enticing 80s dance anthem though... if only they'd all sounded this good.
Ash narrowly missed out on last week's list due to the fact that their debut album was called 1977 and kicked off with the sound effect of Lucasfilm Tie Fighters to celebrate the year of their birth.
Those Ash boys grew up fast though... look at what they were getting up to by age 3!
Another artist who really should have made it into last week's list (check out Lawrence's heartfelt 70s tribute The Osmonds if you don't believe me), particularly when you consider that he's not actually that fussed about the decade in which he first shimmied onto the indie-pop scene...
Well I’m against the ‘80s bands that couldn’t play I’m against the ‘80s singers with nothing to say You heard it on the radio You saw it on the TV You still went and bought it
Bruce Springsteen, Madonna Way before Nirvana There was U2 and Blondie And music still on MTV Her two kids in high school They tell her that she's uncool Cuz she's still preoccupied With 19, 19, 1985
Audio & lyrics below, full video on the link above - worth watching, even though the record company don't want me embedding it. After all, there's a danger you might like the song and want to go out and buy it... and that'd never do.
A few weeks back, when the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull started spewing ash clouds over Europe and disrupting everybody's flights in the process, Reluctant Blogger suggested I put together a Top Ten Volcano songs in tribute. I toyed with the idea, but feared I'd missed the boat. Good old Eyjafjallajökull though, I knew it wouldn't let me down. Topical blogging ahoy! (Well, as topical as Sunset Over Slawit ever gets.)
Apparently there's a Damien Rice song called Volcano, but as I've never heard it and can probably die happy without ever doing so, it doesn't feature in the list below. Just in case you were wondering.
And I heard Of that Japanese girl Who jumped Into The Volcano Was she trying To make it back Back into the womb Of the world?
Who says you don't learn anything from listening to Beck records? Right here I learned about Japanese student Kiyoko Matsumoto who committed suicide in 1933 by throwing herself into the Mount Mihari volcano, starting a trend which resulted in 944 people doing exactly the same thing over the next year. Those crazy Japanese, eh?
Embrace hail from Brighouse, which is halfway between where I live (t'other side of Huddersfield) and where I work (Bradford). There aren't a lot of volcanoes in Brighouse, but there is a huge crater in Bradford where six years ago they knocked a huge chunk of the city down in preparation for building a new shopping centre... and then left it to rot.
Embrace are currently recording their sixth album... hurry up, lads, it's been ages!
Kilimanjaro is considered by many the best album the Teardrop Explodes ever recorded. It's also one of those albums where the original running order didn't include the title track. That popped up on an EP released later, and on subsequent re-issues. Julian Cope originally planned to call this album Everybody Wants To Shag The Teardrop Explodes, which would have been a must better title, but wouldn't have got a mention in this list. (EWTShagTTE was eventually used as the name of a compilation, long after the band had split.)
Not actually a volcano song, nor a song about the country of Iceland, this is actually about the chain of frozen food shops. I don't care - it's bloody marvellous!
Every now and then, I think, "actually, David Bowie's not all that mad really"... then I see a video like this one and I remember... no, he's barking.
The shrieking of nothing is killing me. Just pictures of Jap girls in synthesis And I ain't got no money and I ain't got no hair
1. Silver Sun - Lava
Perfect power pop with peerless Beach Boys harmonies and an opening line to die for.
"I fucking give up!"
(Though sung so high and harmonised, nobody could actually tell those were the lyrics... certainly we didn't know that, when we used to play this on the late 90s indie radio show I helped produce.)
So. Those were mine. If you've got a favourite volcano song... you know what to do with it. Equally, if you'd like to suggest another Top Ten subject, be my guest. I can only ignore you if I don't like it.
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