Music I'm Listening To This Week

I should be forgiven for thinking that Stornoway were a new band from Scotland - not just from their name, or the fact that they sound a little like Belle & Sebastian (meets Mumford & Sons), but also because it was my old Glaswegian music blogger mate JC, The Vinyl Villain,who first brought them to my attention.

Turns out though they're actually from Oxford - home to Radiohead, Supergrass and my recent obsession. Wherever they hail from, they make a glorious summery sound on this single, and their album Beachcomber's Windowsillhas shot to the top of my Must Buy When I Have Some Money list.



A record I bought much earlier this year (when I had more money!) was the not-at-all-difficult second album from Fleet Foxes. Unlike many of the critics, their debut took a long time to grow on me, and only really made its mark with the release of the "bonus tracks" edition featuring the sublime Mykonos.

Helplessness Bluesowes an even greater debt to Simon & Garfunkel than its predecessor and includes a couple of lyrical moments that sneak up and mug you with their beauty, notably the title track's bridging refrain...

If I had an orchard,

I'd work till I'm raw
If I had an orchard,
I'd work till I'm sore

Maybe it's not grammatically ideal (and the linguistic pedant in me wants to quibble with their clumsy repetition of 'unique' in the same song's opening stanza), but it's a sentiment I think we can all get behind.

However, the Fleet Foxes song that's wedged itself in my head this week is this one, with its timely commentary on the education funding debate...

The borrowers debt is the only regret of my youth



Mentioning Simon & Garfunkel reminds me of the long-awaited new long-player from Paul Simon, So Beautiful Or So What.Now in his 70th year, Simon was seen recently grouching on the Glastonbury sofa that his voice isn't what it used to be. Well, neither are my ears, Paul - but I'm damned if I can hear any kind of deterioration from the voice I fell in love with as a teenager (when you'd already been using it for 25+ years).

The best thing about the new Paul Simon album is that he's written a song about Jay-Z (I can't wait for Jay-Z's riposte... "I'm Wearing Diamonds From The Soles Of Paul Simon's Shoes"?) but that's not the one I've chosen to feature here. No further explanation should be necessary...



I stumbled across this next track during a completely random youtube search. If you're a fan of the deep south soundtrack of the Coen Brothers movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? then I think you'll dig The Civil Wars too. Barton Hollowcomes from the album of the same name.



This week's music has been all very folky and melodious so let's finish with something completely different... and so wrong it hurts. A greasy, spotty, belching chunk of shamelessly juvenile, spectacularly un-pc, nerd-rap-rock from the late 90s. Ladies and gentlemen, it's The Bloodhound Gang... from the album, ahem, Hooray For Boobies.

You and me, baby, ain't nothing but mammals

So let's do it like they do it on the Discovery Channel...

Billy Bragg - The Progressive Patriot

"Mixing pop and politics - they ask me what the use is
I offer them embarrassment and my usual excuses..."

Part history of England, part history of popular music and - oh yes, part history of Billy Bragg and the Bragg family... I've never read another rock star autobiography like The Progressive Patriot.

Of course, to refer to this book as an autobiography is as erroneous and misleading as calling Billy Bragg a rock star. Neither is a perfect fit for the title in question, and both are so much more besides.

Anyone who's ever seen Billy Bragg live will be familiar with the story of how as a young man he became politicized on seeing The Clash perform at the Rock Against Racism Carnival Against The Nazis in Victoria Park, Hackney, in April 1978.

"The Clash taught me a valuable lesson that day, which I have in the back of my mind every time I write a song or step out on to a stage: although you can't change the world by singing songs and doing gigs, the things you say and the actions you take can change the perspective of members of the audience..."

"And although the world was just the same as it had always been as I travelled home on the Tube that evening, my view of it had been changed forever."

Another thing you'll know if you've seen the Bard of Barking live any time in the last five years is the anger and revulsion he felt when the far-right British National Party won a dozen seats on his home town council. Much of his work in recent years has been dedicated to defeating the rise of racism across the country, and The Progressive Patriot is a natural extension of that mission. It begins by tracing the multicultural past of Barking itself where Julius Caesar marched his legions in 54 BC, long before the neighbouring town of Londinium was any more than a few shacks. From here, Billy recounts the origins of the Anglo-Saxon people themselves, forging his way through myth and mystery to uncover the truth that history is always written by the victors... and sometimes by the politicians who wish to stay victorious. The idea that there's no such thing as a native Englishman is not an original one, but I've never seen it expressed so clearly or emphatically, though I'm sure there are those who would dispute Billy's version of the tale... just as current BNP leader Nick Griffin once disputed the Holocaust.

One final thing you'll know if you've ever attended a Billy Bragg gig is that he's the first to admit that his fanbase can be divided into two distinct camps. There are those who follow him with fists held high for his strong political stance... and those who merely nod their heads while he's singing There Is Power In A Union and wait patiently for him to get back to the wonderful observational / relationship lyrics of Levi Stubbs' Tears and The Saturday Boy. Though I find myself agreeing with the majority of Billy's politics, I'll always be more comfortable in the latter camp, so I suppose it's natural that the chapters I enjoyed most in The Progressive Patriot were those dealing with music rather than multiculturalism... though the latter seeps naturally into the former throughout. Still, if The Clash politicized young William Bragg, it was Paul Simon who taught him honesty in songwriting...

"I am sitting in the back row of the coach (on a school trip to Belgium) with several boys of my own age. We are out of earshot of teachers and parents. Bored by the flat landscape, we have spent much of the morning kneeling on our seats looking out the back window, waving at passing motorists. We drive onto the car deck of the ferry and park. Another coach pulls up alongside us. It is full of girls who are about our age."

"The girls wave to us. We wave to them. They smile at us. We smile at them. They flirt with us. We act the goat, attempting to conceal our excitement..."

"But suddenly we are across the river. The ferry unloads and the girls are gone. Our sense of enchantment is shattered and we struggle to contain the feelings that our brief encounter has unleashed..."

"I was deeply upset, yet I didn't feel that I could express how I felt - to do so would be to admit that... I liked girls. Turning my face to the window, I realised that I was alone. I couldn't talk to my mates; I couldn't run to my teacher; my parents wouldn't understand. Where could I turn to for comfort?"

"And then this happens: from above my head, a descending guitar line comes tumbling out from a tiny speaker..."

"I am just a poor boy, though my story's seldom told..."

Despite all the passion of Billy's politics, it's this story - and the revelation that New Yorker Paul Simon wrote Homeward Bound late one night "while waiting for the milk train after a gig in Lancashire" - that had the deepest effect on this particular reader. I'm not sure if that makes me shallow... or soppy. Maybe, in the words of Upfield, I've just got a socialism of the heart.

Top Twenty Crazy Songs

These are crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy songs...

20. Slade - Mama We're All Crazee Now

Slade almost missed out on this list altogether due to Noddy's crazy spelling.

19. Super Furry Animals - Crazy Naked Girls

I include this purely because I know it'll double the number of hits this post gets. And not from SFA fans...

18. Huey Lewis & The News - Gimme The Keys (And I'll Drive You Crazy)

After releasing one of the biggest albums of the 80s, Huey and the gang came back with one of the cheesiest. It bombed. Still, you've got to love a video as bad as this.

17. Eminem - My Dad's Gone Crazy

Haillie Jade has just realised her dad is nuts. Took her long enough. But just how nuts...?

Cuz when I speak, it's tongue in cheek
I'd yank my fuckin teeth before 'd ever bite my tongue
I'd slice my gums, get struck by fuckin' lightning twice at once
And die and come back as Vanilla Ice's son

That nuts.

16. Aerosmith - Crazy

In which Steven Tyler gets his daughter Liv, and one of her sexy model friends, to dance around in and out of their school uniforms to sell his records. Which must be kind of the LA rockstar equivalent of sending your kid up the chimney. Crazy.

15. Dr Feelgood - Crazy About Girls

I remember a time when I was crazy about girls...

14. Hot Chocolate - Girl Crazy

...and so does Errol Brown.

13. James - Crazy

Tim Booth isn't crazy - he's just laughing at himself.

12. Guns n Roses - You're Crazy

Axl doesn't just think you're crazy, he thinks you're fucking crazy. It amuses me how many people on youtube dedicate this to their ex-girlfriend... and to Charlie Sheen.

11. Gnarls Barkley - Crazy

Before he found solo fame singing "fuck you and fuck her too" to everyone who dissed or dumped him in high school, Cee Lo Green was crazy too.

10. Madonna - Crazy For You

This reminds me of being a teenager in love. I can't even remember who the girl was, but I was ridiculously smitten and certain that if I got her on her own and played her this song she'd reveal her mutual desire. Did it ever happen? What do you think...?

"From the motion picture Vision Quest".

You know - Vision Quest!

No, me neither.

9. Queen - Stone Cold Crazy

One from my youth. Freddie dreaming he's Al Capone. Exhibit A in the case against anyone who believes Queen didn't ROCK.

EDIT: Oh, and I just rememembered Crazy Little Thing Called Love. Why the heck did my computer not suggest that? Has it deleted it? Bugger!

8. Prince - Let's Go Crazy

Let's go crazy
Let's get nuts
Let's look for the purple banana
'Til they put us in the truck, let's go!

Dear old Prince. He didn't have very far to go.

7. The Osmonds - Crazy Horses

The Osmonds got so pissed off about the exhaust fumes from their neighbour's car that they abandoned their traditional boy band shtick and went all heavy rawk... with pleasingly mental results.

Apparently Westlife covered this in 2003. Thankfully I can neither confirm nor deny that rumour.

6. Fine Young Cannibals - She Drives Me Crazy

Whatever happened to Roland Gift?

5. Magnetic Fields - Crazy For You (But Not That Crazy)

You know how Meat Loaf would do anything for love but not that...?

Stephin Merrit has similar issues.

I treated you like radium. I treated you like God.
You were my glass menagerie, did you not find that odd?
I dwelt within and went without and broke my virgin flesh.
I performed acts of devotion as if you were Ganesh, but now
I'm crazy for you but not that crazy.

4. Paul Simon - Still Crazy After All These Years

Sometimes a lyricist writes straight from my heart...

I'm not the kind of man
Who tends to socialize
I seem to lean on
Old familiar ways
And I ain't no fool for love songs
That whisper in my ears
Still crazy after all these years

See also Crazy Love Volume II, from Graceland.

3. Patsy Cline - Crazy

Strictly speaking, this is probably the best song on the list. It should by all rights be Number One. But there's two songs in my collection that, while not quite so classic, mean just a little more to me...

2. Kiss - Crazy Crazy Nights

I've been listening to the Kiss Greatest Hits CD recently. It was suprisingly amazing. I know, you won't believe me.

This was their first big UK hit, though in the States I guess it was considered their comeback. We missed out on the ridiculous furore first time round. I was 15 when I first heard this. No further explanation is necessary.

1. Robbie Robertson - Somewhere Down The Crazy River

And then, one year later, I heard this. Until then I thought Robbie Robertson was just J. Jonah Jameson's stressed out city editor. I'd never heard anything by The Band... and I'd never heard anything quite like this. Legend has it that producer Daniel Lanois created this track by secretly recording Robbie talking about growing up in Arkansas. (I'm not sure I believe that.) It's spoken word, gravelly voiced magic that paints wonderfully vivid pictures and sounds more like an excerpt from a movie soundtrack than a chart hit. And yet somehow it ended up getting played on the radio and made it to number 15 in the charts. There's no way anything like that would happen today and our charts are much worse for it. This remains one of the most atmospheric singles I've ever bought - it's right up there with Ghost Town.



So. Those were my craziest songs... what was I crazy to leave out?

No crazy frogs allowed.

Top Twenty Train Songs

I know, it's been a while. You've been getting Top Ten withdrawal, haven't you? To make up for it, here's 20 songs about trains. Because there's a new Denzel Washington movie out this week where the train don't stop for nobody... or something. It's got Captain Kirk in it too (no, not The Shat). I might have to go watch that...

20. The Doobie Bros - Long Train Running

Likely to be the first and last time the Doobie Brothers appear in one of my lists, unless I do a What A Fool Believes Top Ten.

19. Whistler - Don't Jump In Front Of My Train

A wistful indie gem from the mid-90s, dedicated to all of you who have been held up on your way home by some selfish suicide...

18. ELO - Last Train To London

Considering my love for all things Electric, Light and Orchestral, this should be higher in the list. Unfortunately it suffered a little overkill in my head between 15 and 20 years ago when "the radio" decided it was one of the best testing oldies ever and subsequently played it three times an hour for about 6 months nonstop.

17. Johnny Cash - Hey Porter

You can't help but think it was a simpler, better world when Johnny Cash began writing songs back in the early 50s. You know, when train companies paid someone to help you with your bags...

See also Rock Island Line, Orange Blossom Special, and a bunch of other Man In Black songs I don't have time to link to.

16. Thea Gilmore - Don't Set Foot Over The Railway Tracks

Sadly, one of Thea Gilmore's greatest songs can't be found anywhere online for me to point you to. It's available on her album Songs From The Gutter though, and well worth tracking down.

Don't set foot
Over the railway track
The Heathens and the spin-doctors
Are waiting round the back
The skies are always sullen and
Rain races to the tarmac
So don't set foot
Over the railway track

Don't set foot
Over the railway track
The grass isn't green its yellow
And the pavement is all cracks
The graveyard's in a coma
The church has got the blues
And Jesus has a nose-ring
And Mary has tattoos

Girls paint their skins like corpses
And have hair of scouring wire
And the men all look like demons
See them dancing round their fires
Every door has leprosy
Every house has got the clap
So don't set foot
Over the railway track

15. The O'Jays - Love Train

A prime slab of Philly cheese.

14. Bruce Springsteen - Downbound Train

You should have realised by now... if these lists don't contain a Morrissey track, they must by law feature The Boss. If you don't like it, you know where the Next Blog button is.

13. Gordon Lightfoot - Canadian Railroad Trilogy

A true story of blood, sweat and tears. Songwriting as history lesson - if my history teacher had sounded like Gordon Lightfoot, I wouldn't have dropped it at the end of the Third Year.

12. Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip - Last Train Home

In which the beardy rapper finds himself on the last train home, surrounded by people who are "either stinking of weed or stinking of beer, being loud and obscene or sitting in tears". No wonder he doesn't want to be there.

11. The Monkees - Last Train To Clarksville

I'll meet you at the station... for our last bit of nookie before they ship me off to war.

10. Soul Asylum - Runaway Train

I'll play this one for Tony McGee, the biggest Soul Asylum fan I know.

9. The Cure - Jumping Someone Else's Train

Don't say what you mean
You might spoil your face

8. Spearmint - The Train

Shirley Lee's observational tale will be familiar to most commuters...

Everybody runs down the steps in case the train is coming
They didn't run when they left their houses
Didn't run along the street or down the escalators
Just for this very last bit

As the train arrives they start to walk along the platform
As though it might just go right past
As though today it might be too short

People crowd around the doors, initially letting people get off
But soon pressing forward
Even though there are empty seats they push anxiously
As though the doors may close before they manage to get on

A man insists that people should "move down, please!"
He does this in a haughty and petulant manner
But he's the same man who didn't move down the other day
I see him often

And just as the door is closing, and as the beeper's beeping
A man with a backpack hurls himself in
His rucksack gets trapped between the closing doors
He struggles, the doors re-open, and he stumbles into the carriage
Embarrassed and relieved
People look disapproving
"How selfish," they think
Some look away, but each of them has done the same at some point in the past

Some people are reading newspapers
Many seem transfixed by the newspaper of the person next to them
And are snatching covert glances
Even if they have the same paper themselves

Several people are reading novels
You can tell what the latest bestsellers are
Just by looking down the carriage...

And that's when the story really begins.

7. Gladys Knight & The Pips - Midnight Train To Georgia

I never realised just how sad this song is until I heard the Neil Diamond version.

6. Elvis Presley - Mystery Train

I love the illiterate arguments people have on youtube...

The words to the song is : Train I ride , sixteen coaches long NOT Train arrive ..... At least if you are gonna put up info on the record at least get it right ........

THANQ a lotttt for ur info but this is not my problem, It's the lyric 's web site problem ,and The English not my 1st language ,I just love the King and adore this song u should thank me and say good word .

5. Stephen Duffy & The Lilac Time - The Girl Who Waves At Trains

You're as welcome as a Christmas rose
Like a shotgun in a field of crows
As breathless as my fifth form prose

Stephen, I hate to pick, but how welcome is that shotgun if you're a crow?

4. Elbow - Station Approach

Guy Garvey describes the uplifting emotion of returning to your hometown by train after a long time away...

The streets are full of Goths and Greeks
I haven't seen my mum for weeks
But coming home I feel like I
Designed these buildings I walk by

This song also wins through the typical Garvey compliment, "You little sod, I love your eyes". What an old romantic he is.

3. Paul Simon - Train In The Distance

Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance
Everybody thinks it's true

One of the best songs Paul Simon ever wrote.

2. Ocean Colour Scene - The Day We Caught The Train

Say what you want about Britpop, say what you want about Ocean Colour Scene... but this is a gorgeous blast of euphoric, picture-painting singalong pop that I'll never grow tired of. Could have been Number One but I bottled it...

1. The Jam - Down In The Tube Station At Midnight

Weller used to be such a great storyteller. Why doesn't he tell stories like this anymore?



So... which train did I miss?