My Crucial Tracks this week - Just Like Honey, Emerald City, Working Class Hero, Lost Platoon, World Is Africa, Ain't Goin' to Goa, Mas Que Nada, and Are You Being Served?
These were the Crucial Tracks that I dug out from my mental record boxes over the last few days.
Describe music that reminds you of a specific place you've traveled.
"Are You Being Served?" by Matt Berry
I've been to a few places as more-or-less a 'music tourist' - I've been to Memphis, and Liverpool, and bits of Ireland. I think you could argue that that was more the place reminding me of the music rather than vice versa.
So there are two choices where it’s very much the other way round.
I worked for a few years for Sony and we had some sort of conference in Dublin. From memory I think around half the presentations started with a video soundtracked by either ‘Beautiful Day’ or ‘Vertigo’. I like U2…but it got rather wearing.
Anyway, the song for today is the theme to a 1970s slightly naff, and very, very English BBC sitcom.
I was stuck in a hospital in New Orleans for a few days in the early 1990s and I had nothing to read apart from the Times-Picayune. The paper had a three-page spread about Are You Being Served?
Reading about the show wasn’t how I was expecting to be spending my time in New Orleans
Apple doesn’t seem to have the original theme, but it’s a good song (better and more amusing than the show tbh) and Matt Berry does a good version.
Let the good times roll!
What song do you associate with your biggest accomplishment?
"Mas Que Nada" by Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66
This makes me think of Kid #2
What song makes you feel understood when no one else does?
"Ain't Goin' to Goa" by A3
This is off-prompt...but the prompt set off a train of thought that led me to this song.
What's a song you initially disliked but now love?
"World Is Africa" by Black Uhuru
This isn't a song I disliked, but it's from a genre I initially disliked
As a teenage punk rocker I thought of Jamaican music as songs for drippy hippies, but then I saw a couple of local-ish reggae bands, and then 2 Tone happened and I changed my mind
I think this was on the first reggae record I bought
What song feels like a secret between you and the artist?
"Lost Platoon (Live at Cheltenham College 1981)" by The Dancing Did
This song reminds me a bit of the Pogues. It seems to be reaching back in time to fuse some older music with a sort of punk rock, without really having that tradition to fall back on
It was a great single, but it’s so secret that it’s only available on Apple music in a live version
"Lost Platoon (Live at Cheltenham College 1981)" by The Dancing Did on Apple music
What song makes you think of your childhood home?
"Working Class Hero" by John Lennon
A strong memory of my first home was coming downstairs to hear the news that John Lennon had been murdered
This is maybe my favourite of his solo songs…and it fits a bit with where we lived
What's your favorite track one on a debut album?
"Just Like Honey" by The Jesus and Mary Chain
A difficult one for me because I've always tended to listen to singles, or to cherry-pick from LPs
I liked this one though
"Just Like Honey" by The Jesus and Mary Chain on Apple music
What's a hidden gem you wish more people knew about?
"Emerald City" by Bethany Eve
I have to pick a song by Child #1
It’s a feature of being a parent that eventually your kids get better at some things than you are. In my case the kids are massively better than me at two things I’d really like to be good at - music and sport, respectively