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Post by Trumpy's Magic Snout on Feb 10, 2008 9:05:38 GMT -5
Well they played a gig in Cuba so that may have shafted their chances even if they wanted to!
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Post by Trumpy's Magic Snout on Feb 16, 2008 21:44:02 GMT -5
Right here goes with the soundtrack of my life.
King Of The Swingers from The Jungle Book
I start with this as it was the first song I truly loved. The Jungle Book was the first film I saw at the cinema when it was rereleased in about 85. My Dad took me to this wonderful old two-screener in Paisley called the Kelburne, now long-gone, that was the start of my love affair with the movies. The great thing about the place was how bad it actually was. Sticky floors, no fresh popcorn and cigarette smoke so thick you could barely see the screen. It would be the place where i saw Jurassic Park on opening day, queuing outside in the rain for three hours and then having to stand on my seat as the place was sold out and packed with adults. Anyway, I got the Jungle Book soundtrack on tape and played it endlessly. King Louis' turn was the one that did it for me. It was just so fun, and the skat singing in the middle was exactly the thing a four year old wants in a song! I knew every word of this by heart, including the skat. When the song pops into my head it brings back my childhood growing up in a highflat, no money but happy.
Theme tune to Mysterious Cities Of Gold
As does this. Maybe the first cartoon show I loved, before Ghostbusters then Ninja Turtles and Bucky O'Hare. The theme tune's a belter and it brings back all of those weeks spent running home from school to watch it. 35 episodes is ridiculously long for a small kid! Of course I saw the first 33 before a trip to visit family in Liverpool forced me to miss the last two. It is only recently I finally saw them. I remember having to watch some of this on a black and white TV because the colour one we had that was about 15 years older than myself finally gave out.
Donkey Kong Country Soundtrack
Game music had to appear somewhere as the best brings back those memories of that bit where that amazing thing happened. To me games have been there since I was 4 when my uncle gave me his old ZX Spectrum 48K. When I was young games were everything to my group of mates. One even lived above an independent game shop and we'd spend hours in there. We worked out that between us we probably played every game released on the Sega Megadrive (Genesis) and the SNES. Since then games have taken a bit more of a back seat but have always been there. The sheer excitement that I felt as a youngster playing them has recently been rediscovered thanks to the Wii and DS. So when thinking back on my upbringing there are strong memories of times like when we used to sit on someone's house's steps and play Super Mario Land on the newly released original Gameboy.
So when picking a single game soundtrack I had to plump for this one. The songs themselves are incredible and it's a wonder that the SNES could generate anything that sounds like this. When I played the game recently again i was amazed that after about 12 years I remembered every bit of it and every tune. Those tunes took me back to the time I got it. Connected to this are some unhappy memories of the first Xmas my Dad wouldn't be in the house. This game was essentially bought for me to make up for it. So as much as i love it to bits when I hear the music it gives me some mixed feelings.
A Girl Like You by Edwin Collins
A song that featured constantly on the radio near the end of my Dad's life. It always came on while driving to the coast or Loch Lomond. It always brings a smile to my face because of my Dad's summing up of it: "I like this, music's great. Those lyrics are utter sh*te though." Sums him up.
Definitely Maybe by Oasis
This was the first band I truly loved and in High School it was constant Oasis for about two years. The first girl I loved made up the tape of Morning Glory for me as I couldn't afford to buy it and two of my oldest friends and me formed a band to play Oasis covers. As there were no bass players in the entire school (unbelievable, eh?) we pioneered the White Stripes sound to far less success. Most lunchtimes saw us in the music room playing so loid that the teachers could hear us in the staff room, three floors above us! I was on drums with my other mates on guitars with one singing. Problem is that the singer was so obsessed with tuning his guitar that he barely ever played or sang, he just tuned and asked the other guitarist constantly to "play a C". Problem was it was usually in the middle of a song.
Years later in a talent show we eventually got a bassist. Shamefully he wasn't really one, couldn't play it, had no rhythm, but his sister was hot so we thought it was a good way to make her a fan. Well my mates amp blew and i was left to carry the song from the drumkit as everyone else insisted on not really playing the song. That was the year we did Cum On Feel The Noize and called ourselves Spade. We even had a picture of a shovel on the bass skin.
As Be Here Now began to kill the Oasis love these songs became very important to me:
A Design For Life by Manic Street Preachers (then the insane Manics love began with Motorcycle Emptiness being my favourite)
Bittersweet Symphony by The Verve
and
OK Computer and The Bends by Radiohead
Young Hearts Run Free by Candi Staton
A song that became our high school anthem thanks to Baz Luhrman's Romeo And Juliet. The moment that this is used with that bloke from Lost cross dressing was just a moment that we all clicked to. Soon everytime anyone entered a room we'd parp the opening fanfare and it even became the punchline to a joke I now can't remember.
Of note, we watched Romeo And Juliet so as to analise the direction and themes. It was my first exposure to what would eventually be the thing i did at uni. I owe that teacher a great deal but sadly my old school was closed as it's so near to Glasgow Airport they wanted to put wanky flats on the land. Bloody yuppies.
The final great High School moment came when while we were operating as the backstage crew on the school panto. We were roped into being in the play as the sultan and his minions. We were to stride on pushing the Sultan's chariot, or a shopping trolley that we were sent to steal by our teacher during classtime from the local supermarket spraypainted gold, and do a little scene. Of course we decided to add our own touch. The fanfare became the opening to Young Hearts Run Free and then an incredibly bad dance routine to the song followed.
Shamefully it was axed from the show as the director "didn't get it". Still the song brings back some great times during the hell that was being unpopular and depressed thanks to my Father's illness.
Mercury Rev - Deserter's Songs
Or the most important record of my life. As my tastes were beginning to expand and my mind open to different musics I decided to give this record a chance thanks to incredible write ups by a number of music magazines. What I was presented with was the most beautiful album I'd ever heard. The explorations of different music, the fact that the band weren't afraid to do the emotional. This is music that soars in a way that the music I was listening to never could. Suddenly everything I liked seemed leaden and lumpy. Now music was something other than just big shouty choruses. It was the starting point of every experimental avenue I went down, and I've nearly worn the CD out.
Another reason that it was and still is such an important record in my life was the timing of it. It came out shortly after my Dad had died and I was lost, cut off from everyone in my life, be they family or friends. Music brought me out of the funk and this record was the awakening.
I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles) by The Proclaimers
Oh here we go. The token Proclaimers vote from the Scotsman. This song brings back the World Cup of 98, or the last time Scotland qualified for a major tournament. The excitement of being drawn in the opening game of the entire tournament against Brazil was amazing. Then I skipped school to see the game against Norway. Well this song was used in a commercial for it that ran for the entire length of the song and featured all the glorious moments and the many, many moments of heartbreak in the history of the Scottish national team. The song has become part of the furniture in recent years but back then it acted as such a thunderbolt and really tapped into that excitement. Happy times.
Last Night by The Strokes/Hotel Yorba by The White Stripes
The soundtrack to my clubbing days. They're both songs I dislike now but in 2001 they were the two songs that motivated an amazing woman to swing me about like a ragdoll on the dancefloor. There were so many great songs that were played but these two just bring back the club we went to all the time and the people from then that are now mainly out of my life for whatever reasons.
Race For The Prize by The Flaming Lips
Simply the finest band I've seen live and the sheer rush of this opener has to be experienced. Life changing in its brilliance!
Loch Lomond by Runrig/We Have A Dream by Scotland World Cup Squad 1982
Two stirring songs that soundtracked nights over the last year that i'll remember for the rest of my life. Two wins over World Cup finalists France then an incredible deciding game against World Champions Italy that inevitably ended in heartbreak, and funnily enough one of the greatest nights of drinking I've ever had! The latter especially sums up what it is to be a Scottish football (soccer) supporter. The key line "we hope and prey". Says it all really!
The Blue Nile - Tinseltown In The Rain
Or the sound of Glasgow on a wet night as the street lights reflect off the sodden tarmac and somewhere in the distance the sun starts to rise as the street sweepers are heard starting their rounds. On other words the one record that'll always make me think of home no matter where I end up in the world.
There and not a single Tom Waits or electronic song in sight. They act as a part of the ongoing soundtrack and don't connect to specific memories as readily as the ones above.
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Post by Shep on Feb 16, 2008 22:01:08 GMT -5
Definitely Maybe by Oasis A Design For Life by Manic Street Preachers Bittersweet Symphony by The Verve OK Computer and The Bends by Radiohead Lots of great stuff on your list, and the above remain some of my all-time fave albums/songs.
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