Friday 10 February 2012

Five for Friday, 10/02/12

We start with a song I hadn't listened to in ages and then it came on my ipod shuffle.
I remember being blown away when I first heard this. I love the spoken word/story bits that just rush headlong into the chorus. The chiming guitars, melodies and harmonies send warm tingles down my spine.

It is no secret that I am a huge Teenage Fanclub fan. They turned me on to The Byrds (and loads of other amazing bands) through their interviews and fine selection of covers that they played live or snuck on to a b-side. This week the bands Gerry Love stuck a couple of videos from their 'Man-Made' album up on to YouTube. 'Fallen Leaves' is Gerry Love at his best, soothing vocals, great hooks and the sound of sunshine.



What could I lead on to via 'Fallen Leaves'?

How about a 'Shady Lane' by Pavement? This was a favourite of mine along with my great friend Reddy, we used to love the 'oh my god, oh my god.......' section and sing-a-long drunkenly when we were having carryouts and raiding each others record collections.

Speaking of my friend Reddy, we went to (and still do, although not as much) loads of gigs together. One of the drunkest ever gigs I have been to was Ben Folds Five at King Tuts. I think I had finished work and gone to meet Reddy at his student union and hung out there until Tuts. I vaguely recall jumping about like a loony to this with Reddy and clearing a bit of space on the Tuts dancefloor in front of the stage as we played air piano along to Ben!


The second part to this story occurred in 1999 when we were on holiday in New York and discovered Ben Folds was playing Central Park. We got tickets and went to a bar for the day, then to the gig where we drank pints of wine for some reason! We tried to climb a security banner to get backstage to tell Ben Folds we had seen him at Tuts, only to get over the fence and thrown back out! Blitzed we met two girls and promptly fell asleep on their picnic rug for most of the gig and woke to the sound of Underground and then proceeded to jump about like loonies again for the last few songs. We had people asking to take our pictures as we were so drunk! Anway, this is a great song!





I'll end todays song with a cover version by a Glasgow singer/songwriter who goes under the guise of Beerjacket. I bought his latest album this week and I'll review it in a future blog. This is the song that first turned me on to his music. Rather sublime. 


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