feeling listless

Meme Me and six thousand other people, though frankly I can't name seven songs like that. So instead, here are the next seven songs I come across on Winamp that I can sing along to:

(1) 'Basket Case (Live)' - Avril Lavigne

Words first learned through shouting sessions at The Krazy House in Liverpool from the time it was new through to the moment it became a matter of nostalgia. This is from the period when the live Lavigne had little or nothing to do with the version who appeared in the recording studio and she pretty much hauls through it too, which is no doubt the proper response.

(II) 'Someone' -- Astrid Williamson

It's now ten years since I visited the Edinburgh Festival and bought the 'Boy For You' album on which this appears. I remember it being a major release at the time with massive advertising in all of the record shops, though there's narry a person who knows who she is these days. There's a bluesy texture undercut by the sound of rain and the odd thunderclap. The incessant lyric is "You look like someone I should know, I shooould know" and there's certainly a Fleetwood Mac element to some of the sound, Albatross 'specially.

(III) 'The End' -- The Doors

I once dozed through Oliver Stone's film. It was during a screen at my old student hall and I was dolloped on a cushion at the front of the crowd in front of the telly in the common room. Apparently I snored, rolled around, and made gurgling noises. No one thought to wake me up which is good because I can't imagine any other way of enjoying Kilmer's performance and the photography than through a semi-conscious haze. My favourite other story about someone watching the film I heard from my old friend Tris, who said that he'd been talking to a girl he fancied and she'd said she'd loved the film, especially the bit at the end when Jim Morrison fell asleep in the bath.

(IV) 'Wonderful Christmastime' -- Paul MacCartney

In my defense it's impossible not to know the lyrics to every Christmas related song in this consumerist age. But I do think this is one of the best, and certainly one of the few high points of Paul's career since The Beatles split. With all the random noodling on various synthesizer instruments its almost like a three minute festive version of Tubular Bells. Which isn't to say that listening to it in mid-June isn't totally depressing.

(V) 'Runaway' - The Corrs (Unplugged)

Whatever happened to The Corrs? We just fell out of love apparently, but constantly repackaging your songs without much in the way of new material will do that. This was the third different version of Runaway to hit disc having appeared on their first two albums and then here. I was never sure which Corr I fancied the most oscillating between all three girls depending on how well they were lit in the videos, but it was usually Caroline. The rot set in for me with In Blue, in which they pretended to be a mainstream pop band rather than a folksy crossover, but unlike other genre tourism it seemed like an act of desperation rather than an attempt to be interesting. Entertainment Weekly called it "a disheartening example of musical ethnic cleansing"and they were right.

(VI) 'Come See Me Tonight' -- Daniel Johnson

Which might well look like a desperate attempt to look hip after this list has already referenced Lavigne and The Corrs and you'd be right. It is in truth the only Johnson track I own, piggy-backed on the My So-Called Life soundtrack. Only now do I notice its similarity to Ravel's Bolero, the guitar rhythms here paralleling the drum beat there. Has there yet been a better teen series since Life or has it's reputation grown simply because it wasn't given enough time to become anodyne like Dawson's Creek? Either way, I'm not sure there's been an episode of anything as good as 'The Life of Brian' if only because of the cleverness of the title.

(VII) 'Life of Riley' -- The Lightening Seeds

When my friend Chris's brother Tim was married not too long ago, he gave the reception DJ a not list, a bunch of artists and songs sure to ruin the evening. Top of that list was Robbie Williams. The final song he decided to play that night? Angels. Perhaps at most other parties that was a keeper, the one to send the crowd home with a tear in their eye (the saps). Here it caused a near riot as twenty people descended on the DJ's box. Not really knowing what hit him, he grabbed the only record he could find which had anything vaguely to do with Liverpool. This.