Thursday, May 12, 2011

Loose Living

We were watching one of those Top of the Pops archive programmes last night. This one was a collection of gems (live performances from Nirvana and REM) and atrocities (was there anything more embarrassing than bands pretending to play keyboards?) from 1991. I experienced a vertiginous sense of time passing when I realised that this was twenty years ago - that's twenty years since Madchester, grunge, rave and the like. Yikes.

Anyhoo, I've been tagged for a meme, so here are five songs beginning with the letter L - if anyone else wants to play, comment below and I'll give you a letter.

Loose Living
- The Velcro Teddybears - we saw this band for the first time at the LMHR festival two weeks ago, and I can't recommend them highly enough. If you listen to this track, you wouldn't guess that it is being sung by somebody who looks barely old enough to shave.

Louisa on a Horse - John Otway - from young shavers to a true veteran of the music biz. Otway has been gigging for well over thirty years and still has as much energy as he ever did. This track is one of his very earliest ones (produced by Pete Townshend, fact fans), and still a staple of his well honed live set. This version is a typically energetic and shambolic live performance complete with a handsfree microphone crafted from a wire coat hanger.

Lazy Eye - Silversun Pickups - this is a track that I got to know through playing it in Rock Band. I love the way the song builds around a simple, repeated riff to a stonking thrash before calming back down again.

Lion Man (Deep House mix) - Nathan Jay ft. Andrew Collins - On one of the early Collings and Herrin podcasts the usually quiet Andrew Collins started telling a story of an unusual encounter on a train which turned into a bit of an epic. Nathan Jay set it to music. This is the result.

Let's Go Trippin - Dick Dale and the Del Tones - You probably will have heard Dick Dale's famous cover of 'Misrlou' (featured on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack) but I prefer this jaunty little number that the late John Peel used as the theme tune for his Saturday morning chat show on Radio 4. Surf guitar at its very best.

2 comments:

Ceska said...

Can I just say this blog got me through the day today? Every time I read it, I just get more and more excited about what’s next. Refreshing blog and brilliant ideas. I’m glad that I came across this when I did. I love what you’ve got to say and the way you say it.

Pewari said...

I *love* Lazy Eye and for exactly the same reason - I had the iphone version of Rock Band and that was by far my favourite song to play and it's still on my current playlist.