Last orders: the Play It LOUD addendum

When compiling my huge, would-be definitive list of favourite songs to PLAY LOUD the other week (in two parts, of course: here and here), there were - inevitably - a few which really, really should have been included, but which somehow slipped my mind just then. The time has now come to rectify these unforgivable omissions.

So, this is the final supplement to the Play It LOUD list, bringing me up to 50 (or so) PLAY LOUD classics in all.

I treated myself to a few of these to wake myself up before heading out for dinner this evening.

Shoot Shoot - UFO

Got to have a 'metal' track in the list somewhere; and I've always loved Michael Schenker's guitar. (It would either have to be this or Rock My Nights Away from the Michael Schenker Group album 'Built To Destroy'.)

Dirty Boulevarde - Lou Reed

My favourite song from the great 'New York' album - which actually includes the exhortation "Play Loud" on the sleeve notes.

Road To Nowhere - Talking Heads

Nihilism was never done better. I've never been that much of a fan of David Byrne, but it's impossible not to love this track: a gospel intro, cowboy yells at the end, and that accordion.

Every Breath You Take - The Police

For sheer head-banging, I'd take Synchronicity 2; but Every Breath is such a compellingly obsessive love song, and the bass line demands to be played LOUD.

Home By The Sea/Second Home By The Sea - Genesis

I was never much of a fan of this group - either pre- or post-Peter Gabriel - but they were rather foisted on me by some friends at University. And the 'Genesis' album had a much broader appeal than most of their other stuff - it was one of those records that just about everyone seemed to buy. Side 1 ends with this very creepy two-part song (a kind of geriatric Hotel California); and - after a quietly atmospheric, suspense-building bridging passage - the closing instrumental section kicks off with a ferociously punchy drum pattern, a real floor-shaker; my hi-fi nerd buddies regularly used to use it as a speaker test (and I think on at least one occasion we managed to blow a woofer). I get tinnitus all these years later, just thinking about it.

I Fought The Law - The Clash

Had to have something by The Clash, the best English punk band - and this gets the nod narrowly over Should I Stay Or Should I Go? Mind you, the early version by The Bobby Fuller Four is pretty darned good, too.

Oliver's Army - Elvis Costello

Elvis really, really irritates me. I know he's terribly bright and his heart's in the right place and he writes some great music - but he is way too full of himself, his lyrics tend to be either perversely obscure or oafishly literal, and I find his voice almost impossible to listen to. Having said all that, this is just an irresistibly catchy song (maybe it's the piano?) - one of my favourite singles of all time. Great, great opening lines, too:

Don't start me talking;
I could talk all night -
My mind just sleepwalking
While I'm putting the world to rights.

She Drives Me Crazy - Fine Young Cannibals

I liked the name of this band more than most of their music - Roland Gift's thin falsetto got on my tits rather. But this song..... well, it just rocks. It's the guitar.

There She Goes - The La's

I don't know anything about this group, or about when this song was first released. I just know they often used to play it before the films started at my favourite cheapo arts cinema in London, the Prince Charles, when I was going there a lot in the late '90s, early '00s, and it instantly got under my skin. A perfect pop tune: sounds as if it comes from an earlier generation, sounds kind of like a Kinks song. And, of course, the theme of lingering infatuation struck a chord with me: I've never quite been able to rid myself of my fixation on the two great failed loves of my life.

Scapegoat - Chumbawamba

The final track on their awesome 'Tubthumping' album - I have come to think of it as my 'China theme song'. Sing along with me: "Scapegoat, looking for a scapegoat..... There's always someone else for you to blame." Oh yes, play it LOUD.

OK, that's it for the music recommendations. I promise. Well, for another month or two, at least.....