No great sea-change to report. My notebook shows that I only bought 20 albums last year - and just three of those were first released in 2022.
Artist of the year award to Tamara Lindeman for the splendid Weather Station album How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars and a great show at Brighton's Komedia in March.
My writing task this year has flowed from a Christmas present at the end of 2021 from my daughter: a subscription to Storyworth - website which sends you a question to answer each week and then assembles the answers in a printed book at the end of the year.
I thought I'd share here my answer to the question "What would be your choices on Desert Island Discs?"
Just in case anyone is not familiar with the radio show’s format, guests are asked to pretend that they are going to be cast away on a desert island and to choose what eight pieces of music they would like to take with them. They are then asked, if they could only save one of the eight, which would it be? And then they choose a book (other than the Bible and Shakespeare, which are provided routinely), and a luxury to take with them.
Guests are not being asked what they think the eight best records of all time are – which I think would be even more of a challenge. Rather, which eight they want to be marooned with, whether because they really like them, or they are otherwise significant for them. As will be obvious, I see myself as a bit of a music fan and a critic – so the problem, clearly, is not finding eight tracks one could choose, but ruling out the thousands of others there won’t be room for.
The only ground rule I gave myself was no one artist is allowed more than one track, because I’d like to have a reasonably broad range – and I’d have no problem naming eight tracks each from the artists I’ve opted for.
If I did this tomorrow, I’m sure the list would change. For example, I’ve realised that there is no instrumental music on this list, and I spend a lot of time listening to word-free music as well as songs. And lots of acts I really love haven’t made the cut – the Stones, Bruce, Joni, Jackson, Warren Zevon – but I’m not going to agonise and tweak things too much. This is the list I came up with pretty quickly, and that must be significant: they’re all close to my heart.
Let’s go.
Patti Smith – “Gloria”. I first heard Patti on John Peel’s late night radio show, in the Christmas holiday after my first term at college in 1975. John clearly thought this was significant stuff that deserved an audience, but he personally wasn’t entirely sure. I was. The track I’d heard was “Land” and I bought a copy of the “Horses” album a few days later, thrilled by the combination of riff, repetition, attitude and pure poetry. And “Gloria” was the first thing I heard when I put the needle on the disc. “Jesus died for somebody’s sins…but not mine”. Whoa! The world found some new colours, and kept them. Robert Mapplethorpe’s amazing cover photo summed things up. The record became an integral part of the soundtrack to college days and we went to see her live at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1976 – supported by a new band who’d just released their first single, the Stranglers.
Bob Dylan – “Tangled Up in Blue”. I could write a book about Bob, and nearly did once. I love so many of his songs, but have settled on this one. It’s taken from the “Blood on the Tracks” album from 1974, when he was past the first flush of inspired and uncontrolled creation: having to work at his craft, and also raw from his recent divorce. This is a gloriously dense and cinematic narrative, capable of all sorts of different twists and turns (as the out-takes show), but grounded and convincing at its centre – and sung and played like it really means something. It is an important party-piece for me that I can play it on the guitar and know all the many words…
Van Morrison – “Listen to the Lion”. This one, I did write a book about. The gorgeous centrepiece of “Saint Dominic’s Preview”, with our unpredictable hero at his very finest, scatting, snarling, proclaiming – and entirely convincing.
Neil Young – “Four Strong Winds”. Neil had to be in the list too, as I have treasured so many of his songs and performances over the decades. He’s another of the inconsistent ones, of course – capable of the throwaway and uninspired, alongside the stone-cold classics. It is probably perverse to go for this cover of an Ian Tyson song, rather than choosing one of his own. But this is emblematic of a lot of things. It is the song that always closes the Edmonton Folk Festival. We have been to six of them now, the first few with the girls, and have a wonderful collection of discoveries and musical memories drawn from them. But the song also seems now to symbolise our family’s close connections with Canada – from my sister-in-law and her children, the links that first led me to Alberta and the west, to my daughter-in-law, and our newer connections to Ontario and the east. The country does feel very much like a second home.
Wussy – “Halloween”. I’ve gone up till now in the list for big stars with decades-old careers: hits, acclaim, money and awards. Step forward Wussy – the best band most people have never heard of – to remind you that great music can be found all over the place, and you’re just as likely to encounter genius when crammed into a pub (like Brighton’s Hope or Brixton’s Windmill) as in a video-screened stadium or concert hall. Cincinnati’s finest have yet to give up the day jobs, but when they get into the studio or onto a stage, magic very often happens. Again, I could have chosen a number of their songs, but have gone for this: Lisa Walker’s luminescent evocation of the morning after the night before, shot through with undefined nostalgia and regret, in a lovely arrangement featuring organ and pedal steel.
Fairport Convention – “Come All Ye”. Lots of North Americans so far, so let’s redress the balance with a classic representation of the British folk tradition. An incarnation of Fairport featuring Sandy Denny’s voice, Richard Thompson’s guitar, Dave Swarbrick’s fiddle, and the mighty Dave Mattacks on drums – who all cropped up in many other places before and after, to glorious effect. It’s a song I’ve secretly had in mind to be the standard opening number, if I’d ever got to form the band I wanted to be in:
”Come all ye roving minstrels and together we will try
To rouse the spirit of the earth and move the rolling sky”.
Which is what every self-respecting performance should aspire to.
Jefferson Starship – “Have You Seen the Stars Tonite”. I love a lot of British music, but the American West Coast bands were a seminal early musical attachment, and the Airplane pre-eminent among them. I remember seeing a picture of them in the NME when they were playing the Bath festival of 1970 – at a point when I was reading that organ from cover to cover each week, in search of the meaning of life. Grace Slick was so gorgeous and the chaps so effortlessly cool… I bought and devoured this spin-off album from the Kantner/Slick axis before moving to all the Airplane-proper albums. This song also features the Dead’s Jerry Garcia and Mickey Hart alongside them, plus the ubiquitous David Crosby, and needs no explanation in its beauty, which transcends its now slightly dodgy concept album context.
Prince – “Raspberry Beret”. Finally, an important reminder that there is no need to be deep and meaningful. Genius can have fun and the lightest of touches and an irresistible beat, “…and when it was warm, she didn’t wear much more”. Fuck art, let’s dance, as someone once said.
But I am going to get arty for my book. “Ulysses” by James Joyce, first published in 1922 alongside “The Waste Land”, another key artefact of modernism and another personal favourite. The choice is not a pose: I love the book and would want it on the island because I know there is so much more I could still get out of it. It’s bursting with ideas and life and characters who are so real you can smell their breath. I bought my first copy as a sixth-former and didn’t get very far. It took some research and reading commentaries in my twenties to break the ice. So far, I’ve read it all through twice and bits several times over. About time for another go, I think – even if I haven’t been marooned on an island yet.
My luxury is probably obvious: a guitar. You never know what might come from a bit of practice – plus I can play along with the eight discs, and then recreate some of those songs that didn’t make the cut.
And which would be the one of the eight that I would save from the waves if I had to? “Have You Seen the Stars Tonite”, for its hope and wonder.
And a happy, safe and healthy 2023 to anyone reading this.