Quite Random

Soundtracks

A nerdy confession this may be, but I think a lot of people do it.

Sat on the train this morning, the commuters stood with hangdog expressions, maybe dreading the inevitable crush to get on the tube at Victoria. No-one was talking and everyone looked sort of lonely, or at least in their own world. How appropriate then that Queen’s ‘Somebody to Love’ came up on my MP3 player – all of a sudden a mundane train journey became a tragi-comic music video, and the expression in the face of the girl sat across from me became yearning, not gormlessness.

Crawling up a hill in Peru at three thousand meters, I was beginning to flag quite seriously, my pace slowing, my knees sore. Santana’s ‘Migra’ came on, and I practically sprinted the rest of the way, the tribal drums and chanting lyrics propelling me along as if I had all the wind in the valley blowing right up behind me.

Driving through deep troughs of sand on Fraser Island, winding through the inland forest, without much of an idea where we were going, Talking Heads’ ‘Road to Nowhere’ came on, again randomly, and a slightly bewildering meander became a devil-may-care adventure into the unknown.

Music’s good like that. I can see why commuters always have headphones on – a good song can put a gloss over the mundane. When the crescendo of a song breaking out coincides perfectly with the sun hitting your face as you walk off the train, it allows you to feel, just for a moment, that you could be in a film of your life.

Elbow

Last night a friend and I saw Elbow play at Somerset House – and it was utterly fantastic. I discovered Elbow through an animation about a bunch of Northern kittens singing Independent Woman (of all places). I got a copy of their album Cast of Thousands, and that was it. Grace Under Pressure is one of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard.

The setting – the wide-open courtyard of Somerset House, and the atmosphere – friendly and happy, was great. The performance was brilliant. I spent most of the night with a big gormless smile on my face, as did most of other people in the audience. Great live music really is an unforgettable experience – note to self: must see more. For the time being, I’ve seen my favourite band – and they were brill.

Clubbing back when

Time was when we all trooped down Toffs nightclub on a Wednesday night, or Silks if we were going classy, for a dance, a few pints of soapy lager that cost 50p if the big wheel span right, and a go at trying to cop off with girls from the third year. Ah, York in the early nineties – Manchester may have thought it was the centre of the universe but we knew different.

This was nightclubbing before people started going to clubs dressed in neon colours, waving glowsticks and whistling, and before bouncers thought little of giving you a kicking for wearing a checked shirt. Well it might not have been, but we didn’t see any of that kind of thing at student night. The nights were funner, the carpets were stickier, the music was betterer.

Here’s the soundtrack to an average night, if memory serves me correctly, and with the really, really bad music not included. Click the little  to the right of ‘clubbingbackwhen’ to play the tunes.

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Senile delinquency

The new BBC series Planet Earth has a theme tune nearly as great as the visuals. It’s called Hoppípolla, by Icelandic band Sigur Ros, and the video is here, the music set to scenes of a group of old dears getting up to mischief.

Pete Doherty ‘edgy’? Give me strength.

I’ve found myself commenting on Pete ‘hang on, I’ve not been arrested for something for at least three days’ Doherty on the Guardian Culture Vulture blog, just when I was doing quite a good job of ignoring him. Caroline Sullivan has opined that Doherty is ‘edgy’ and ‘revered’ in a manner similar to Keith Richards. I see that as seriously dissing Keef. He has been working for many a long year on his image of ‘elegantly wasted’ by taking more drugs than the population of Birmingham have collectively had hot dinners, playing in the most long-lived rock band ever, and has miraculously survived to become the gnarled, fly-blown, wrinkled god of rock and roll decadence that he is. Pete doesn’t look like he’s started shaving yet – and Babyshambles is the most underwhelming rock act since Noel Edmonds, Keith Chegwin and Maggie Philbin formed Brown Sauce. It’s like comparing Lindsay Lohan’s acting career to Lauren Bacall’s.

Aye Tunes!

An embarrassing confession – two of my finest music finds weren’t from the coolest sources. After seeing Shrek I found out about the brilliant Jeff Buckley, as a cover of his song ‘Hallelujah’ was used in the film, and I found out about my favourite band Elbow from a Rathergood animation of northern kittens singing the Destiny’s Child song Independent Woman.

I’ve since made countless new finds through the Internet, and it’s getting easier all the time to find good music. Pandora is still churning out superb music for free, Last.fm is like the Flickr of music, and the Download.com music site has some brilliant finds and a great newsletter. Also, eMusic.com has some good stuff, and is worth a basic membership even after you’ve taken advantage of the trial that gives you 50 free MP3s - although admittedly it can be hard to find good music amongst a lot of filler. The best album I found on eMusic so far is the brilliantly catchy Twin Cinema by the New Pornographers.

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Good vibes needed

I’m heading to London tomorrow, cap in hand and eyes wide open and hopeful, to trip down the streets that are paved with gold and find my fortune. Well, nothing quite that poetic. I’m off to try and get a job. I’m useless at getting work – I take every rejection incredibly personally, and assume that my CV is an utter bunch of arse that no-one in their right mind would bother with past putting it through the shredder and using it to line their rabbit cage. Having said that, I have been told that I’m very well qualified for this job, so we’ll see. I’m hoping this or something else comes through soon, because funds and patience are running low.

I saw the graffiti on the right on a wall in Ipswich today – OK, graffiti is not for everyone and this isn’t the most stunningly original work, but it caught my eye, not least because NWA haven’t been doing much for years on end. Ice Cube became a movie star, Dr Dre ended up producing for some guy called Eminem, and the others might well show up on Celebrity Big Brother some time, they don’t seem to have achieved a great deal. I remember a time when some of us played NWA’s Straight Outta Compton at full blast in our rooms in school – probably mainly because there was lots of swearing and it was daring to play it really loud. It seems a bit strange for white boys in a nice school to be playing gangster rap, but then again I also wore a T-shirt that said ‘Make Love Not War’, cherry red Doc Martens, and a haircut that frightened old ladies, so who the hell knows what I was thinking.