Hang the DJ: some Willie on Willie action

Over on Hang the DJ's blog they just began a week of guest entries devoted to Musical Moments of 2008, with one post a day from five of the book's esteemed contributors: Peter Murphy, Richard Milward, Willy Vlautin, Laura Barton and Tom McRae. The justly celebrated Mr Vlautin is first up today, talking about Willie Nelson, dontcha know?

Hang The DJ: Now In Stores & Collectable

Hang The DJ: An Alternative Book of Music Lists is now in shops, and editor Angus Cargill blogs here. Last Saturday night Angus and I did a phone interview for the Irish radio show Cultureshock. I don’t know what was going on round Angus’s homestead that night, but for my part I kept cupping the receiver to muffle the Noises Off of a very tired little girl whose mummy was trying to entice her into the Land of Nod.
The presenter Fionn Davenport also had a female rock writer in the studio with him, and in the back-chat for my list of Top Power Ballads this scribe rather stunned me by endorsing my #6 pick of 'Alone' by Heart as her own personal All-Time Top Tune, albeit with the qualifier that it is ‘ridiculous’. It's not a record I feel the need to own or even hear too often, but I think it's great and reflects my general feeling that I'd rather overhear music (e.g. on the radio) than consume and collect it. As I say in the book, '[Alone'] was playing in Woolworth’s just the other day as I was buying my daughter some sweets, and I found myself loitering in the aisles long enough to hear Ann [Wilson]’s unearthly howl of frustration that launches the second chorus.'
Talk later turned to Alexandra Heminsley's list of 'Songs for the Dumped', and I gave a shout to Lloyd Cole whose unexpectedly delightful Don’t Get Weird On Me Babe album has two peerless pieces of solace in that department, 'There For Her' and 'Margo’s Waltz'. The marvelous 'Like Lovers Do' from his Love Story album is also a witty, wise retrospective on the whole fraught business, just right for the age you get to when you can see your romantic history as an interesting sequence rather than anything more painful or disappointing.
Then we discussed John Williams' list about great ‘Rehab’ records, where the hopelessly soused/doped artist nonetheless did far better work than he/she would ever accomplish while clean and sober. I’m not entirely behind this thesis but I see its appeal, and as an 'Oo fanatic it reminds me to stick up for the oft-maligned Who By Numbers, for which Keith Moon was often incapable/nearing the sorry end, and Pete Townshend was steeped in brandy (cf. the self-hating 'However Much I Booze'.) Yet plenty of this record is brilliantly barbed and rocks hard, and it also contains the inimitable brass-and-ukelele of 'Blue, Red and Grey' one of Townshend’s loveliest songs, not about eros but, rather, the unconditional love of this world, a tune to which I was happy to introduce my darling wife, and which we played (not very loud, mind you) at our wedding.

Hang the DJ and YouTube's great video jukebox

I've just been looking through a finished copy of the previously mentioned music lists book Hang The DJ (Faber, ed. Angus Cargill), and it's been giving me great pleasure, along with the inevitable individual pang of regret for how much more I could have said were there the space, time, or interest on anybody's part in what very little music I listen to these days. Thankfully I have this blog...
On which note, here in no real order are ten tunes that I don't actually own on either vinyl, cassette, CD or MP3, but which I find myself looking at quite regularly on YouTube. Some are obvious gems, others are what connoisseurs might tactfully describe as guilty pleasures, whereas I am far too old for that sort of nonsense now:
Richard Thompson, Needle and Thread: In my mind I did buy his last album and yet I find no evidence about the house.
Stewart Copeland & Stan Ridgeway, Don't Box Me In: From the soundtrack of my favourite movie c. 1984, amazed I never bought it.
Sinead O’Connor, Jealous: before she took the veil, a characteristically Beautiful Love Song
Gerry Rafferty, Baker Street: where did he get it from? And where has he taken it to?
Wall of Voodoo, Mexican Radio: Shaky Stan Ridgway again (pictured) - and he should have been in pictures.
Siouxsie and the Banshees, Kiss Them For Me: I know she's a legend and that, but who knew she'd scrub up like so, and move so sinuously to boot?
Lou Gramm, Midnight Blue: If you want to feel like Bret Ellis's Patrick Bateman... REM used to cover this tune, in naked envy.
The Blue Nile, Tinseltown in the Rain: A fine singer who's got better and also sorted out his hair and shirts.
Black Uhuru, Great Train Robbery: the matchless power of Sly and Robbie.
Level 42, Something About You: to be viewed alongside its diptych 'Leaving Me Now' in which Mark King also plays a crying-on-the-inside clown.
I will play this game again...

Hang the DJ: rock scholars start listing...

The Bookseller reports on a forthcoming title from Faber and Faber in which I'm pleased to declare an interest:

"Faber fiction editor Angus Cargill has drawn on his personal love of music to produce a book of music lists chosen by high-profile literary names. Hang the DJ: An Alternative Book of Music Lists (Faber, October) contains eclectic top 10 song choices from writers such as Jonathan Lethem, Hari Kunzru, Patrick McCabe and Michel Faber... Lethem contributes “10 Smutty Moments from Bob Dylan”, David Peace offers his “10 Favourite Japanese Bands”, and Cargill has also included his own list of “10 Songs of Heartache, Misery and Woe”, which include “Let Me Down Easy” by Betty Lavette and Dolly Parton’s “Jolene”. Cargill said: “We did a book last Christmas called Ten Bad Dates with De Niro [by Richard T Kelly] which was a film compilation and did nicely, so we had the idea of doing a musical equivalent.”

Great idea! I can't wait for the finished item. I contributed a list of my own to the book by request, a canon of the best 10 'power ballads', that dubious term narrowed by definition to mean tunes that reveal the sensitive side of otherwise extremely hard-rocking turn-up-to-11 artists. I won't waste time being coy on Who is my #1: see photo above. This brilliant image of the 'Orrible 'Oo is by Richard E. Aaron, and you can find it on his Flickr photostream.