Now here’s something that’s exercised my poor old brainbuds for a few days: my good blogger friend meeyauw tagged me with a meme. Here’s how it works: Name between five and ten songs that have made an impact on your life. I’ll leave it up to you to decide how many you wish to describe.
Pass it on to five other people with a link back to your own post and this one as the original.

Here’s the link back to meeyauw’s post. The originator of the meme was Loz at Sunrays and Saturdays – An Ordinary Life on 21st June. I, in turn, am to pass the meme on to five other bloggers, which I’ve listed at the bottom of this post. Please don’t feel any obligation to do it — I can appreciate that not everyone will feel like participating in these things, but if you have the time and the inclination, that’s great.

How to choose just a handful of tracks from the 4,500 or so in my iTunes collection? Well, it’s not impossible, but bear in mind that if I were to be asked to do it again in a year’s time I’d probably come up with a completely different selection. These, though, are the ten tracks that have risen to the top in the past few days I’ve been considering it, so here goes …

STEELY DAN – Babylon Sisters
This is the opening track on the 1980 album Gaucho. The whole album is technically perfect in my opinion (I believe it was one of the first to be recorded in an all-digital studio), and this is the track I still always play first whenever I buy new sound equipment or want to test some new settings on my existing gear — it’s become a sort of ‘reference’ track for me. The drums are particularly outstanding, the brass is superbly scored, and the lyrics give the track what I perceive to be an archetypal, laid-back west coast feel.

BENJAMIN SHEPHERD – Chopin Ballade No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 23
Meeyauw chose this Chopin masterpiece too, though played by her son, not by Benjamin, my friends Chrissie and Mike Shepherd’s son. Benjamin began studying the piano at the relatively late age of 14. Now in his early twenties, just last week I was privileged to see him receive his Batchelor of Music degree at the prestigious Trinity College of Music in London, which he achieved after five year’s extremely hard work. I first heard Benjamin play this as a complete piece at a charity recital in Gloucestershire when he was in his late teens. The audience was spellbound. For our part, our hearts were in our mouths because the piece is so complex, but he pulled it off flawlessly and received a standing ovation. I videoed the performance and then spent several days editing it on my PC to put onto DVD for the family, so I heard it over and over again. I never grew tired of it. Benjamin has shown me what intricate wonders there are waiting to be found in classical music, particularly featuring the piano, and especially in live performances. I love him dearly for it. He’s now preparing for his post-graduate course at TCM, which will occupy him for a further three years. As far as we’re all concerned, the sky’s the limit for this incredibly talented young man.

YES – Yours Is No Disgrace
Sitting in my bedroom in 1971 as a sixteen-year-old and playing this album for the first time was a revelation. It was my first progressive rock LP and it opened up a whole new world of music for me. It sounded so fresh and lively — Chris Squire’s aggressive, precise bass complemented Bill Bruford’s complex drum riffs, Tony Kaye’s keyboards and Steve Howe’s guitar work underscored Jon Anderson’s soaring voice, which conveyed the epic, often obscure lyrics so gracefully that they made sense while listening to them, even if on paper they looked incomprehensible. Later, Tony Kaye was replaced by Rick Wakeman — to whom I once gave a lift in my car, along with his (then) wife, ex-Page 3 girl Nina Carter, when they came in for an interview at a local radio station where I was working. (They’re about the only famous names I’ve ever met personally and have consequently been able to drop casually into conversations to impress, so please forgive the sycophancy.)

ABBA – Dancing Queen
Surely the best pop song ever written. As a prog rock lover during the 70s it wasn’t really terribly cool to say you liked Abba when they burst upon the music scene, but as the years have passed they’ve achieved such a legendary status I’m now proud to say I’ve always adored them. This was the song that brought the house down as the closing number at Abba: The Musical, which Marcy and I saw in London last year. Along with everyone else in the theatre, we were dancing in the aisles like potty teenagers, whooping and clapping and cheering, a little misty-eyed, remembering our lost youth with fond nostalgia. That’s the secret of this song — You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life, oo-oo–ooh, see that girl, watch that scene, diggin’ the Dancing Queen — subconsciously, it gives you permission to have a terrific time, no matter what your age — in fact, it commands you to let rip. Marvellous.

SERGEI RACHMANINOV – Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 18
I could have featured a number of performers of Rachmaninov’s work. I have several versions of each of his four piano concertos — played by Alexander Ardakov, Benjamin’s tutor at Trinity College of Music, and Martha Argerich and David Helfgott, for example — and their interpretations all move me in ways few other compositions can manage. But the one I’ve selected here is the great man himself playing his own work, recorded in the late 1920s. They’re a little hissy, but for me that just adds to the mystique I feel when listening to him play and I find it soon “tunes out” and I don’t notice it. The second movement, from where Eric Carmen got his inspiration for his hit single All By Myself, sends shivers up my spine every time. It’s my fervent wish to have the privilege of one day watching our Benjamin perform a full Rachmaninov piano concerto at somewhere like the Royal Albert Hall (though his living-room would do just as well, if only he could fit the orchestra in there as well!). Then I could die a truly happy man.

WILLIAM ORBIT – Barber’s Adagio For Strings (Ferry Corsten Remix)
When I discovered the clubbing world a few years ago, with its heady mix of all-night raves and pounding beats, my musical life took another turn. This track is one of those iconic pieces of dance music that really gets me in the mood — whenever I hear it, I just can’t sit still. Before I was introduced to clubbing, I was one of those guys that you’d find in the kitchen at parties, getting drunk and saying: “Oh, no, I never dance”. Now, on those rare occasions when I actually venture out, you’ll be hard-pressed to get me off the dance floor and I’ll bop till I drop! Where before I was incredibly self-conscious about what I might look like, these days I love flinging myself about and couldn’t care less what anyone around me thinks about my particular dance style — not that anyone’s looking, as they’re all equally immersed in the music. It’s incredibly liberating. Very tribal, too, gathering to dance and socialize. It’s nothing new. We’ve done it from camp fire to club floor. So next time you’ve got a free evening invite a few friends round, put on this Classic Euphoria 3-CD album, get the lights down low and the visualizer on the TV, crack open a bottle of wine or whatever tickles your fancy, turn the music up and then all dance, dance like crazy and as though nobody’s watching, for a few hours. It’ll do you the world of good.

RALPH McTELL – Nettle Wine
A track from a 1972 album from this British folk singer-songwriter who plays amazing acoustic guitar. He’s famous for his Streets Of London, but he’s done so much more than that. I simply adore this song — I tried in vain for several months to master the intricacies of the guitar-picking on this track, only to discover when I eventually bought a Ralph McTell songbook that he often re-tunes his strings to different notes to achieve the unusual chords he coaxes out of his instrument. As it turned out, this wasn’t one of those songs, but the guitar was double-tracked on the recording, which might help explain my difficulty! This short, bouncy, happy little song paints a beautifully evocative picture: In my country garden, underneath the mountain with the dead nettles growing all around the door, early every morning the sun rolls up the mountain, setting in the sea in the evening once more … taking water from the brook, wond’ring who it was who took the stones from the mountain and built his cottage here, two up and two down, miles from the nearest town, I wonder who it was though the reason why is clear … take a bunch of nettles and add a little water, drawn from the stream running outside the door, leave it for a month or two then bottle it and drink the brew, and watch the suns go down in the sea once more … Taking wood to build a fire, could you really get much higher than standing in a doorway with a glass of nettle wine? My lady beside me, the mountain behind me, before me the sea and the red skyline. It’s a place where I’ve always wanted to live.

JAMES TAYLOR – My Travelling Star
A track on his 2002 album October Road. Like Ralph McTell, James has a special relationship with the guitar. He first came to my attention in the early 70s with the angst-ridden single Fire And Rain and has been a firm favourite ever since. Over the past thirty years I’ve listened to him mature as a song writer, though his voice has never seemed to change. He has a plaintive, poignant air that’s always appealed to me, and this track was a return to the kind of “on the road” song that often marked his earlier career. It was also the song that clarified just who the Walking Man was that he introduced us to in the title track of his best-selling 1974 album of the same name: it was his father — My Daddy used to ride the rails (so they say, so they say), soft as smoke and as tough as nails (Box Car Jones, old Walking Man), coming back home was like going to jail, the sheets and the blankets and babies and all, no he never did come back home, never that I recall … Oh my. Finding that out was like discovering some long-lost sad secret about someone in my own family and it makes me well up whenever I hear it. A magical, laid-back, nostalgic, melancholic track that somehow, like all the great songs, manages to get right in there and tug at the heart-strings in a way that leaves you feeling warm and fuzzy.

CILLA BLACK – Alfie
From 1966, when Cilla was still really big on the charts. This song reached number nine in the UK in March/April. Hated it at the time, now I think it’s one of the best recordings I’ve ever heard. As I’ve grown older I’ve come to appreciate the vocal skills of performers I used to eschew such as Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan, Dean Martin, Ella Fitzgerald, Matt Monro — and Cilla. Alfie is a Burt Bacharach/Hal David composition, and I’ve always loved their songs. Some years ago I saw a TV documentary that included footage of Cilla recording this song in the Abbey Road Studios with a full orchestra and Burt conducting. Cilla explained how Burt was a stickler for perfection and insisted on recording it again and again — something like thirty takes were involved, each one recorded as “live” with the whole orchestra playing its part. The documentary then showed her singing it in its entirety, in the studio in the 60s, up on her little dais in the corner with the orchestra arrayed before her and Burt conducting. It was an utterly unforgettable magical performance which made me reassess her virtuosity. As I’d taped the documentary, I dubbed the track and it’s the one now in my iTunes collection (though it’s identical to the version released as the single). Cilla’s included here to represent all those “earlier-generation” artists I used to disparage and who I now think are the bee’s-knees.

NATASHA BEDINGFIELD – Unwritten
My final choice brings me back to the present day, with a catchy pop song and a lyric that speaks so truly to my aspiring writer’s heart: Staring at the blank page before you, open up the dirty window, let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find, reaching for something in the distance, so close you can almost taste it, release your inhibitions — Feel the rain on your skin, no-one else can feel it for you, only you can let it in, no-one else, no-one else can speak the words on your lips, drench yourself in words unspoken, live your life with arms wide open, today is where your book begins, the rest is still unwritten … I couldn’t have put it better myself.

And so to the task of passing the meme on to five recipients. I’ve tried to pick people who’ve indicated a love of music in their blogs, or who I know by some other means are into music, so I hope I’ve made the right choices!

“Comprodman” Dave Baynham at English Blogger – My Back Garden

“Octane” Wayne Smallman at Blah, Blah! Technology!

“Syafthegeek” Syafrizal Abu Mansor at Syaf The Geek

“shepk1609″ Kate Shepherd at Kate Shepherd

Lisa Hartwell at Audible Marketing

As I said at the start, don’t feel under any pressure to participate — it’s just a bit of bloggy fun!

Tags: Meme, Music, Personal

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