Good afternoon all, and apologies for the large gap between this and the proceeding blog entry. This has been due to a variety of reasons, but perhaps the most influential were travel and then a bout of flu, which may or not have been the legendary swine variety. Whatever it was, it was utterly pants and not really what I needed after a double bout of food poisoning in Vietnam. On the other hand it has meant ive lost at least a stone so in years to come it may be regarded as the food poisoning/flu diet. I am better now though and have just returned from Tom and Racheal’s wedding which was a thoroughly pleasant occasion, the only blemish being some minor lyric recollection issues late on in the post reception guitar session at the hotel. A sketchy Like a Rolling Stone was not entirely unexpected, but I really let myself down when I missed a couple of lines of American Pie, which may well astonish the legions of people who have seen that over the years - it is not something I am particularly proud of. Otherwise another fantastic wedding which I have been extremely fortunate to have attended this year and look forward to more in the months and years to come.

I also had the pleasure of a 3 week holiday once more in South East Asia, and to be more precise Malaysia and Vietnam, which those brave enough to have sat through various slideshows will know I have visited on quite a few previous occasions. I was able to visit one or two old haunts and a few new places as well, and the highlights included Ha Long Bay (again) which never fails to impress with its awesome beauty, and the old quarter in Hanoi. A special mention must again go to the cuisine of this region and particularly the immense Mango Rooms in Hoi An, and the new sister restaurant Mango Mango, run by the same guy, who still recognised me from the last time Lance and I were in Hoi An so that was pretty cool. As mentioned earlier, a couple of bouts of dodgy food meant I was laid low for a couple of days but apart from that another extremely enjoyable trip which a couple of shots shown here give you a flavour of Vietnam at its best.

Apart from that, I have a brief few days in Ireland to come shortly which should be a fine way to end the summer and then onwards and upwards into autumn where I shall make the final push towards glory and taking a set and ultimately victory over my housemate at tennis. It is probably appropriate here to acknowledge the highs of the summer as we enter its demise, and these include 3 awesome weddings, trips to Asia, Paris and Cornwall and many other enjoyable days and nights. In keeping with the earlier thoughts on lyrical mishaps, I will spend todays list discussing lyrical masterpieces, which may astonish you to hear after citing him in my speech at Yozza’s wedding, does not include “the revered poet, Mr Phillip Collins”. So here they are, in their glory, the 5 best set of lyrics in my modest collection:

1) Don McLean - American Pie

Had to start here, as I have been in awe of these words for many a year now and is normally a key track in songs played at get-togethers, which makes it all the more frustrating at forgetting the first few lines of the “now for ten years” verse recently. The words have been interpreted and endlessly speculated upon over the years and some verses seem to be clearer than others – the opening verse appears to be discussing the death of Buddy Holly (I can’t remember if I cried when I read about his widowed bride//// February made me shiver…bad news on the doorstep etc etc), and the penultimate verse has been suggested by many to be discussing the infamous free Rolling Stones gig in California where a fan was stabbed to death (Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack Flash sat on a candle stick) and this moment represented many of the ideals of the sixties going up in flames (and as the flames climbed high into the night, I saw Satan laughing with delight, the day the music died). To me though, my favourite verse is the Helter Skelter in a summer shelter verse, which to me is largely ambiguous. It has been suggested that it is a discussion of the anti-war protest at Kent State University (later memorably covered in Neil Young’s Ohio), with the marching band being the troops that opened fire on the protesters, the players on the field in the song. I have no idea whether this explanation is correct, and Don McLean has remained silent on the explanation of the lyrics of this song, simply replying that it is up to the listener what they get out of it. Anyway, this extremely short analysis can in no way do justice to the depth of the material available in this masterpiece, and regardless of how many times this song gets butchered in karaoke booths and elsewhere (to which I must confess culpability on occasion), any list such as this one simply must include it.

2) Bob Dylan – Love Minus Zero / No Limit

If one must begin with American Pie, then for any list such as this not to include Bob Dylan would be surely absurd. If parts of the aforementioned pie are obscure, then large parts of Dylan’s work are, to me at least, unfathomable. Lots of the time his songs are essentially the product of imagery and verse simply pouring from his creative mind onto the page and huge swathes of his vast back catalogue stand alone as works of poetry without the melody and his (in my view) underrated voice. Picking one is almost impossible, and in doing so I have omitted many worthy choices. I must at the very least mention Visions of Johanna, With God On Our Side and Desolation Row, but I have chosen what has for some time been my favourite Dylan song, if it is possible for one to reduce it to one, the relatively simple Love Minus Zero / No Limit. Essentially a simple love song, it’s four verses contain are worth showing in their entirety, and are infinitely more accessible than, for example the staggering Visions of Johanna or the epic It’s Alright Ma, I’m Only Bleeding.

My love, she speaks like silence

 Without ideals or violence

 She doesn't have to say she's faithful

Yet she's true like ice, like fire

 People carry roses

 And make promises by the hour

 My love she laughs like the flowers

 Valentines can't buy her

 In the dime stores and bus stations

 People talk of situations

 Read books, repeat quotations

 Draw conclusions on the wall

 Some speak of the future

 My love, she speaks softly

 She knows there's no success like failure

 And that failure's no success at all

 The cloak and dagger dangles

 Madams light the candles

 In ceremonies of the horsemen

 Even the pawn must hold a grudge

 Statues made of matchsticks

 Crumble into one another

 My love winks she does not bother

 She knows too much to argue or to judge

 The bridge at midnight trembles

 The country doctor rambles

 Bankers' nieces seek perfection

 Expecting all the gifts that wise men bring

 The wind howls like a hammer

 The night wind blows cold n' rainy

 My love, she's like some raven

 At my window with a broken wing

Some time I’ll get round to a list of five Dylan tracks, and then perhaps we can do a little more justice to surely the best lyricist ever to have recorded music, but for now that’s your lot.

3) Joy Division – Decades

Taken from the album Closer which has been mentioned in previous postings, the final track on the album is illustrative of the bleak and traumatic mind of the troubled lead singer Ian Curtis, who committed suicide shortly after the album was completed. Other members of the band were shocked to read his lyrics back after his death, realising for the first time the dark nature of the words to the songs they had been playing live for some time. It is in keeping with the rest of the album – uncomfortable, dark but a stark and vivid illustration of the creative and personal nature of his lyrics. As mentioned this album is on occasions uncomfortable listening, and it is difficult with the benefit of hindsight to avoid the idea of the ten tracks being an extended suicide note from the troubled singer, but as an album from start to finish it is an astonishing body of work, and one which was undoubtedly ahead of its time and continues to influence many bands today. Once again, probably worth showing them in full, with the first verse particularly anguished as he struggles to cope with fame and other issues, which if you are interested, are excellently covered in Anton Corbijn’s recent film biopic, Control.

Here are the young men, the weight on their shoulders,

 Here are the young men, well where have they been?

 We knocked on the doors of Hell's darker chamber,

 Pushed to the limit, we dragged ourselves in,

 Watched from the wings as the scenes were replaying,

 We saw ourselves now as we never had seen.

 Portrayal of the trauma and degeneration,

 The sorrows we suffered and never were free.

 Where have they been?

 Where have they been?

 Where have they been?

 Where have they been?

 Weary inside, now our heart's lost forever,

 Can't replace the fear, or the thrill of the chase,

 Each ritual showed up the door for our wanderings,

 Open then shut, then slammed in our face.

 Where have they been?

 Where have they been?

 Where have they been?

 Where have they been?

4) The Smiths – Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now

Don’t be alarmed, this is not another poem of despair - do not be deceived by the apparently bleak title, I find this and many other of The Smith’s work humerous and witty, often wrapped up in miserable titles – other notable titles include Last night I dreamt that somebody loved me, Cemetary Gates, and the bizarrely titled Girlfriend in a coma. What is (to me, at least) interesting about the way the band wrote their songs, is that Johnny Marr (guitarist) would write the music and melody and then Morrissey (frontman and lyricist) would take the tape away and write the words around the music. As a result, you often have a marked contrast between beautiful guitar riffs and melody with apparently bleak, yet as previously stated, amusing lyrics. This track is one such example, but could have chosen any one of several songs, but the clincher was my favourite line –

What she asked of me

At the end of the day

Caligula would have blushed

As with lots of their songs, it is a simple observation of one person’s life in Britain in the 1980s and the various contributing factors towards his supposed miserable existence. Before they disintegrated towards the end of the 1980s, they left a considerable body of work which probably peaked with The Queen is Dead but also other fine albums, two of which I’d also recommend would be the final body of work Strangeways Here We Come, and also the earlier and somewhat less imaginatively titled The Smiths. For a more detailed body of work on the stories behind their songs, Simon Goddard’s book Songs that Saved My Life is an interesting study for those that are interested!

5) The Libertines – Time For Heroes

I suspect this may be a controversial selection with some of my peers - once upon a time before his regular run ins with drugs, the media, band sackings and all that modern ‘celebrity’ entails, Pete Doherty and Carl Barat wrote some of the most fresh and original songs in recent years. In my humble opinion, their debut album Up the Bracket (from which this selection is taken) is one of the two essential albums of this decade (the other, incidentally, is Rufus Wainwright’s breathtaking Want One, which I am sure I will be referring to in future postings). Is was essentially a toss-up between this and Tell The King, but the winning selection, Time For Heroes, clinches it for its commentary of inner cities in the new millennium and the ongoing class rivalries. Many of the songs contain witty social observations that echo those made 20 years earlier by Morrissey & Marr, and the chosen track here contains one such instance

There are fewer more distressing sights than that

Of an Englishman in a baseball cap

Yeah we'll die in the class we were born

That's a class of our own my love

Were in a class of our own my love

The relatively small body of work they left is well worth exploring, although the second album, despite some exceptional individual tracks, shows clearly the cracks that were emerging and is not as consistent as Up the Bracket.

Regular readers (if there are such avid readers out there) may or may not have raised eyebrows at some of those omitted from this admittedly brief and absurdly difficult task. No Springsteen, Van Morrison, Neil Young or the Doors, you may say; and those who know me well may be surprised to see the omission of Radiohead, the Stone Roses and Jeff Buckley, and most notably perhaps, Mr Collins (surprise may well also be expressed at the lack of another famous resident of New Jersey, Bon Jovi, who has bequeathed us such masterpieces as You Gave Love a Bad Name and Bed of Roses). Anyway, I am rambling now so will call it quits there – probably my longest posting so far which I hope goes some way to make up for the gap between this and the preceding post, but I’d welcome any thoughts praising or criticising any selections, or bewilderment as to the direction this project is heading. Until next time, the title ties all the themes together as it a line from the aforementioned Visions of Johanna, and also used my Michael Herr in his excellent book on the Vietnam War Dispatches, so hopefully that all makes sense.

With apologies for the delay between my last entry and this, but I've yet to receive any requests for another entry (except for a couple from Yoz and Kieran, possibly out of sympathy). In keeping with the so-called silly season for the press in August, this posting will be brief, and perhaps mercifully, free of all things cricket (ironically though, im watching the test as I compose the latest eloquent offering).

So I seem to have got some immediate responses, with as expected, some hostility, and even an implied suggestion that my top 5 was not, in fact, true. I wholly refute these accusations and will undertake to only post articles here of the utmost integrity. There was a slight, if unintenional inaccuracy in that it wasnt actually my debut in the live music sense, as this picture confirms a 2 song set played on a boat in the south china sea a few years ago with a boat full of vietnamese tourists. Lionel can confirm this when he comes to see this. Was a more restrained set than earlier this month though, as only contained a couple of numbers, and could not compete with the energy and atmosphere of Squeeze Box by the Who. 

Speaking of integrity, much has been made of the conduct of the English cricket team on Sunday evening. Now, whilst anything that winds up the Australian team in an Ashes summer can be considered good entertainment, the antics of sending out the 12th man and the physio twice in one over seems to have rubbed some people up the wrong way (not, interestingly, Ponting who was quite measured after the game despite much that has been written subsequently). My own thoughts are

(a) Umpires need to reclaim the playing area as just that - no need for interference from 12th men, physios (other than when there has been an actual injury, not just when someones thirsty), or indeed anyone else.

(b) People shouldnt be able to wander on and off the pitch either. There are designated breaks in play - lunch and tea, there shouldnt be any need for other breaks other than these. 

(c) it actually probably hindered the batsmen. They were in that wonderful state that in the contemporary times we call "the zone" and the last thing they needed was someone tapping them on the shoulder seeing if they wanted a new set of gloves. Anderson, to his credit, took little interest in teh episode and seemed to want the game to get going again (see point (a) though - this should be the umpires role).

As ever, a decent summary of the incident and the test can be found via the Spin

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/jul/14/england-australia-the-spin

I'm going to stop there as one thing i categorically don't want this to be is rambling on for hours about subjects that the occasional reader will soon tire of.

Leading on to other thoughts, being the first (proper) entry on this page and therefore the beginning of its journey, the more eagle eyed observers will have recognised the title as being from the pen of Ian Curtis in the opening track of Closer. I therefore thought, leading on from last time's rather unimaginative top 5 most played (genuine, i assure you; and fear not, there are a couple of lighter numbers in the rest of the top 10), i would be a little more ambitious and expressive in choosing today's selection

5 Great Songs to Open an Album

1 Good Times Bad Times - Led Zeppelin Led Zeppelin 1 The first track of the first album sums up pretty well what i consider led zeppelin to be about. I wouldn't consider myself to be a connoisseur of their work, but the opening guitar is one of Jimmy Page's most distinctive and later on offers similar virtuoso work from Bonham, Jones and Plant.

2 Atrocity Exhibition - Joy Division Closer An intense intro to a dark body of work, but immensely rewarding to get through to the end. Opens with omnious drumming and then the distorted guitars kick in. The rich lyrics invite you in: This is the way, step inside. When I come to do the obvious sister list to this, songs to close albums, the epic Decades will surely warrant a mention.

3 I Wanna Be Adored - The Stone Roses The Stone Roses An obvious choice perhaps, but still the ultimate introduction to any album, and helped by the rest of the album, still the essential collection of songs that sits together as a masterpiece and the irreplaceable album to me still after all those years. Is there a better first line than I don't have to sell my soul, he's already in me?

4 Welcome To The Jungle - Guns N Roses Appetite for Destruction A monumental rock classic, leading the way for other masterpieces, notably Nightrain, Mr Brownstone and the soaring Rocket Queen mark this one out as a gem. It may not be the best track on the album (surely Nightrain?), but as in indicator of what is to follow, it is peerless and contains a suitably mesmeric solo from Slash.

5 Thunder Road - Bruce Springsteen Born To Run  Was genuinely gutted the Boss didnt pay this when I saw him last summer, but you can't have them all. Still my favourite track from Springsteen, although Bobby Jean runs it close (and thats another subject we may return to in due course) and contains many a familiar theme amongst his work - redemption and a fondness for mentioning cars and wide open roads. Contains the ultimate inspirational line

you can hide beneath the covers and study your pain, make crosses for your lovers, throw roses in the rain

waste your summer praying in vain for a saviour to rise from these streets.....

also inspired a great line from The Sopranos:  why were you late

Answer "the highway was jammed with broken heroes"

There you have it. i hope you disagree with some of these and let me know why, needless to say there were many that made it close, but wont spoil the fun and let you suggest some gems. 

Until next time.......

Hello all.