Your Desert Island Discs

Joe writes: On Saturday morning, Radio 4 broadcast Your Desert Island Discs, featuring a rundown of the tracks that listeners would take to a desert island.

Skip forward to 38 minutes to hear an anecdote about Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika, the South African national anthem. I was moved to tears. This song played a big part in my youth.



Then right after that on the Radio 4 show is some interesting background on Beethoven's Ninth, and how it was received when Beethoven conducted its first performance.

Joni Mitchell was listeners' no. 1 female artist and A Case Of You the no. 1 female song which is also true on my desert island.



There's a discussion of why this song is so great, plus some footage of Joni Mitchell performing live at 7.30 in this video:



The Desert Island Discs website now features details of every track chosen by guests on the show.

Sorry Azerbaijan....

Phil writes: ...there's only one 'Running Scared' and this is it, the song you'd use to demonstrate pop music to a visiting Martian who would then return home convinced that we had a vastly superior civilisation:



(Would have posted this before but I've been on holiday!)

"You light up another cigarette and I pour the wine"

Joe writes: listening to the new Birdy single on Radio 1 reminded me of Promise Me by Beverley Craven:



My first girlfriend could play this on the piano.

Note added September 9th 2012: Scooter have borrowed a couple of lines from Promise Me for their new single 4am, along with a big nod to Million Voices by Otto Knows.

Bob Seger

Joe writes: Writing about Tonight by Tanya Stephens below reminded me of We Got Tonite by Bob Seger - one could almost be an answer record to the other.

Like John Mellencamp, Bob Seger is sometimes denigrated as being a poor man's Bruce Springsteen, which is a bit like denigrating The Kinks for not being as good as The Beatles.

Here's another Seger favourite, Still The Same. I must have heard my dad sing this a hundred times before I ever heard Bob Seger's version (I think my dad had lost his copy), but in the internet era Bob's version is of course at my fingertips. I love the internet.

Tanya Stephens' Sintoxicated album

Joe writes: Around the turn of the millennium, Jamaican dancehall star Tanya Stephens made a Macy Gray-style pop album with two Swedish producers, Emil Gotthard and Peter Cartiers, and released it on Warner Sweden. The songwriting on the album was brilliant but the campaign ended in tears. I raved about the music to a Warner US executive; he said the meeting he had with Tanya was one of the worst he'd ever had with an artist.

The album's thank-you list is the best I've ever seen, and makes me think Tanya's searing anger could somehow have been turned into an angle:

There are two songs on the album that are crying out to covered.

Lying Lips (Words I Should Have Said) is such a brilliant lyric and melody - imagine if Amy or Adele did it.

Tonight is great too:

I really recommend buying the Tanya Stephens album on iTunes. And if anyone is still in the CD era, I have a spare copy.

Finally, there's a kind of EPK here which might have set a few alarm bells ringing

some of my all-time favourite tracks

Joe writes: some of my all-time favourite on a Spotify playlist: http://open.spotify.com/user/josephdtaylor/playlist/6m4nF0oJAB1oBW0P9h9lpQ

Miles Davis - So What

Joe writes: amazing TV performance also featuring John Coltrane

Suuns - Up Past The Nursery

Kate Bush interviewed by Ken Bruce

Joe writes: another consummate lesson in how to be an artist (from Kate, not Ken, although he is pretty good too)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00gtnyf

The Electrician: has music progressed beyond this in the past 30 years?

Joe writes...

John Walker from The Walker Brothers has died.

The Electrician by The Walker Brothers used to be my favourite track of all time. Like many of my favourites, I taped it from Mark Radcliffe's brilliant Out On Blue Six show on Radio 1 in the early '90s. At the time, I don't think it was available on CD except as a bootleg. When I did eventually get it on CD and so heard it without tape hiss and FM compression, it lost a little of its mystery, but it's still an incredible, unique and hugely ambitious piece of music. You can hear the link to Scott's recent material but it is much more accessible.

Sean O'Hagan writes about it in this interview with Scott Walker (as it happens, Mark Radcliffe also used to play Sean's band The High Llamas). Brian Eno might have a point. Most of the classic albums of all time were released in the ten years prior to 1978 (the year The Electrician was released on the Nite Flights album). I was a big fan and early adopter of Eno's two recent collaborators Coldplay and Dido, but I'm not sure either is really doing anything that wasn't done in the '70s. How many great albums have been released in the past 30 years that genuinely couldn't have been made in an earlier era? (dubnobasswithmyheadman by Underworld springs to mind, and the whole of hip hop, but not too much else.) What's more, it's hard to imagine any of today's artists having the ambition or resources to make a track like The Electrician.

Not that everything was better in the past. In the early '90s, I had no idea what The Electrician was about, and had no way of finding out. Now, in the internet era which has transformed music discovery for the better, Sean's article plus a quick Google search suggest three themes - drug taking, S&M sex, and torture techniques employed by the CIA. Chris Martin eat your heart out.



I've also posted a Brian Eno track that I discovered via Out On Blue Six. One day I'll do a more comprehensive Out On Blue Six post.



(update of post originally from 11/11/08)

my favourite ever TV programme about music

Joe writes: How Pop Songs Work is presented by Charles Hazlewood, the classical conductor, Mercury Music Prize judge and Wyclef Jean fan.

It features Charles and an array of experts explaining not only how pop songs work but why they are so great. Too many goosebump moments to mention but I particularly loved the footage of Joni Mitchell performing A Case Of You live (oh to see that in the flesh), Dire Straits doing Romeo & Juliet, plus the deconstructions of Back To Black (Amy not AC/DC) and Salvador by Jamie T.

Tom Waits - I'm Still Here

Phil writes: Awesome!

Donovan - don't switch off!

Phil writes: A bit of an acquired taste, particularly maybe if you didn't follow his career as it developed. Best if you don't listen too much to what he says as it's often very pretentious (Macca without the humour) especially when reviewing his career. He wrote some fine songs. This is one of my favourites, though sadly not in the version I first heard:

Surrounded By White Men

Joe writes: I really like Antlered Man, partly because they sound like System Of A Down but also for their lyrics.



Here's System Of A Down's greatest hit Chop Suey which was almost unique amongst rock records of the time in managing to be hard, cool, melodic and modern all at the same time. Wonderfully clean sound as well:

Dominique Young Unique

Joe writes: this girl has got something

So Many Records, So Little Time

World's Greatest Music writes:

So Many Records, So Little Time is probably my favourite mp3 blog. It's written by Kevin Patrick, once A&R for Wheatus and now manager of Matt & Kim.

SMR,SLT posts I've enjoyed today include one on Don Fardon and another on Terry Reid, featuring a gripping version of Stay With Me Baby produced by Mickie Most.

There's also an early Appearing press release for The Orb. I consider myself a music geek but frankly I have nothing on Kevin.

Kevin, if you do want to listen to a second Boo Radleys song then I recommend Find The Answer Within:

Church by T-Pain

World's Greatest Music writes: Grimmy just played this on Radio 1. Good track.


T-Pain - Church by foxysoul

excellent remix of Someone Like You by Adele

World's Greatest Music writes: This song isn't going anywhere yet

I heard this on the excellent Middle Eight blog.

Adele - Someone Like You (Jonathan Gering Remix) (Download link in description) by Jonathangering

interview with Tyler The Creator

Sade - still streets ahead of the rest

(Joe writes)