Monday, August 11, 2008
"...of every small town institution and every big town flirt"
17.18 On Time
There are the songs that mean so much more.
The ones on repeat, played to death, the ones to cling to when all else fails.
The ones loaded with a sub-text from desperate times that can make them unlistenable at others.
The songs that stop you in your tracks when you hear them unexpectedly, knocking you off balance, skewing your vision, taking the wind out of your sails.
I didn't buy much music between the end of 1981 and the middle of '84.
When the drought came to an end I was a sponge, soaking up nuance and wringing out every drop of meaning. I squeezed significance from coincidence and listened, with the absolute conviction that no one else's life had ever been so perfectly crystallised into three and a half minutes*, to the songs that made sense of the senseless.
Of course, sometimes you don't get to hear that perfect song until it's far too late, and sometimes it's wishful thinking.
Man Of Such Great Promise - The Style Council
Appetite - Prefab Sprout
St Swithin's Day- Billy Bragg
I Want You - Elvis Costello
I Was A Playboy - Joe Henry
*or six minutes forty four seconds in the case of Elvis, etc
There are the songs that mean so much more.
The ones on repeat, played to death, the ones to cling to when all else fails.
The ones loaded with a sub-text from desperate times that can make them unlistenable at others.
The songs that stop you in your tracks when you hear them unexpectedly, knocking you off balance, skewing your vision, taking the wind out of your sails.
I didn't buy much music between the end of 1981 and the middle of '84.
When the drought came to an end I was a sponge, soaking up nuance and wringing out every drop of meaning. I squeezed significance from coincidence and listened, with the absolute conviction that no one else's life had ever been so perfectly crystallised into three and a half minutes*, to the songs that made sense of the senseless.
Of course, sometimes you don't get to hear that perfect song until it's far too late, and sometimes it's wishful thinking.
Man Of Such Great Promise - The Style Council
Appetite - Prefab Sprout
St Swithin's Day- Billy Bragg
I Want You - Elvis Costello
I Was A Playboy - Joe Henry
*or six minutes forty four seconds in the case of Elvis, etc
