(More) Play it LOUD

As promised, my provocative little conversation piece on favourite LOUD songs at the start of the week was only the first instalment. Here are my further nominations in the category. [I subsequently came up with a brief addendum as well.] What do you think?

Whiskey In The Jar - Thin Lizzy

I had to include something from this great Irish band of the '70s, and this wins out narrowly over The Boys Are Back In Town and Jailbreak. A traditional Irish tune - with all of the tragedy and melancholy that entails - given a thrilling rock makeover by Phil Lynott and Gary Moore. I especially love the opening of this, the wailing, echoey guitar sounding as if it is far, far, far away across a windswept moor.

Sunshine Of Your Love - Cream

I hadn't heard this for years until I found a little blues trio playing it in a local bar a few nights ago. I haven't been able to get that riff out of my head since. I definitely used to play this one LOUD a lot back in the early years of my working life. I don't have any Cream with me here - must dig some up somewhere.

Homework - Fleetwood Mac

I love many bits of Fleetwood Mac, from all of their diverse 'periods', but I love best of all their original incarnation under the leadership of Peter Green as one of the leading lights of the British 'blues revival' in the '60s. This is an old blues tune (Elmore James, I think) from a rare double album of studio jam sessions they recorded in Chicago with an awesome roster of the local bluesmasters. I don't recall who the guests are on this, but it's a scorching track.

Bad Moon Rising - Creedence Clearwater Revival

My phenomenal guitarist buddy Daniel nominates Creedence as the greatest of all American bands, and I am tempted to agree (despite the terribly cumbersome name). All their hits are worth playing LOUD, but I think this is probably the one I go back to most often.

One More Time/Is She Really Going Out With Him?/
Happy Loving Couples - Joe Jackson

Joe is my favourite British solo artist: articulate, intelligent, and always exploring new territory in style, arrangements, and production techniques; lyrically and musically he's just in a completely different class to anyone else I can think of. His braying voice gets a bit wearing, but you put up with it because the songs are just so goddamned good (an indulgence Elvis Costello or Billy Bragg rarely win from me; their voices are more irritating, their songs less good). Although there's so much marvellous stuff on the later albums (I have a particular thing for Vinnie Zumo's guitar on Tonight and Forever from Big World - another of those albums that everyone of my generation at college bought), it's the raw energy of his debut Look Sharp! that gets to me most - a great album to play LOUD all the way through. Yes, I know this is a bit of a cheat: the opening track One More Time is my main nomination here, but I do find it impossible to listen to it without the two songs that follow. [It had slipped my mind that the second track here is Sunday Papers - which is not quite as good as these, but still a hell of a song. And then these are followed by Throw It Away, which is also great. And then there's Side 2... God, this is a brilliant album! Really difficult to isolate just one song from it.]

Angel - Belly

Fast, poppy, endlessly catchy, hook-laden songs with intriguingly cracked, dreamscape lyrics and LOTS of guitar. And Tanya Donnelly is hot. What's not to like about Belly? I saw them play at the Astoria on Charing Cross Road in London in the mid-90s, just after they'd brought their second album out; and it was one of the best gigs I've ever been to. This has always been my favourite of their songs - a fantastically atmospheric opening, with a slowly building wall-of-sound of multiple chiming, buzzing guitars (I've often thought it would make great title music for a film). And full of great lines too: "I've had bad dreams/ So bad, I threw my pillow away."

Whole Lotta Rosie - AC/DC

Yes, my original rule for compiling this list was that I was only going to include one song for each performer but..... actually, it's more of a guideline (Spot the quotation, anyone?). I couldn't resist slipping in at least one more from AC/DC. (Also, it's a bit of a test to see if we get the spam-invite from the Bon Scott fan club on Google Groups again!) I remember reading a review of them once that said their music was chiefly characterised by "piledriver riffs - and spaces you could drive a truck through". A pretty fair summary, and nowhere better illustrated than on this blockbuster closing track from Let There Be Rock. For me, this is the archetypal AC/DC number, the archetypal headbanging number - a five-minute song with three minutes of soloing! It also has a particular poignancy for me because it became one of my 'theme songs' with my drinking buddies during the wonderful year I spent training as a teacher at the University of Durham. I was for a while trying to date a lovely young art student in London called Rosie (a very slender girl, I might add, quite unlike Bon Scott's Rosie). So, when I was pining for her from distant Durham, my friends loved to wind me up by putting this song on the jukebox in the student bar we occasionally hung out in (curiously enough, that was the live version from If You Want Blood - though these days I think I prefer the album version).

I Will Survive - Gloria Gaynor

Accept no substitutes! I really can't see why people bother to cover a classic like this - they're never going to come near the original. I mentioned a few times in the first half of this list that I have a great weakness for break-up songs. This is a very rare example of one that's actually empowered and recovering, rather than maudlin and wistful. Definitely one of those where the knob has to go up to '11'. (Also - guilty confession - this song acquired a powerful extra layer of associations for me as a result of a TV documentary I saw in England 15 or 20 years ago about life in one of our leading private girls' schools [I think it might have been Roedean]. Singing this song together was apparently something of a bonding ritual for the senior girls in one of the boarding houses. Seeing a bunch of posh, pretty 17-year-olds bouncing up and down on their beds, belting out this song [while wearing oversized, strangely masculine pyjamas!] is, er, well, somewhat erotic, I have to say.)

Lorelei - The Pogues

A somewhat untypical Pogues' song - one of Philip Chevron's compositions, I believe (as was Thousands Are Sailing, which would be my No. 2 choice for a Play LOUD track of theirs). There's plenty of their more traditional folk-influenced, Shane MacGowan-composed stuff I like to play LOUD too, but this is in a class of its own because it has a - wonderfully simple but hugely powerful - electric guitar line front-and-centre of the mix.

Common People - Pulp

I tend to find Jarvis a little too irritatingly up-himself most of the time, but Pulp were certainly more worthy of attention than just about any of the other 'Brit Poppers' of the time; and the Different Class album was exactly that, one of the standouts of the decade. This track has plenty of the usual deadpan wit, but it's also unusually profound - and coruscatingly angry.

All Things Bright And Beautiful - The Goodies

I already nominated this fabulous English comedy trio in the first half of the list for their surprisingly rocky, growly version of Wild Thing. They once gave a rather similar - superbly incongruous! - treatment to this traditional hymn. A silly choice perhaps - but that's me.

Just - Radiohead

In their early days, there was a grungy simplicity, a violent energy to Radiohead's sound. Their first two albums, Pablo Honey and The Bends, are Play LOUD classics. And if I have to choose only one track, it has to be this. Great video, too.

It's Only A Paper Moon - Ella Fitzgerald

A slight change of pace and mood here - yes, it is possible to get a little bit of a 'headbang' on to jazz standards as well. There's a wonderful, swinging, full-orchestra version of this I have (a Nelson Riddle arrangement, I fancy, circa late-40s), which has long been one of my top pick-me-up tracks. It was a great favourite also of my pal The Arts Entrepreneur: the theme of optimistic fantasy ("It wouldn't be make-believe/ If you believed in me...") struck a poignant chord with us when when we were both trapped in the wilds of south-west England, clinging forlornly to our dreams of a more fulfilled and exciting life elsewhere.

Voodoo Chile - Jimi Hendrix

What? Did you think we could get through a list like this without including some Hendrix? Of course not! The greatest electric guitar track ever.

Come A Long Way - Michelle Shocked

I'm a huge fan of Michelle, and there are many songs of hers I like to listen to LOUD; but for some reason this 'road song' about riding a motorcycle around LA has always been way out in front as my pick for a quick pep-me-up.

Rebel Yell - Billy Idol

Another artist who merits a second entry in the 'Headbanging Hall of Fame' - and might well have had a few more besides. Great guitar work on this from Steve Stevens.

I Scare Myself - Thomas Dolby

Dolby gets a second entry as well, though very different from his first, Close But No Cigar. This is an old jazz tune and given a fairly traditional treatment - with piano and trumpet dominating - but it's beautifully produced, and the bass line is so damned deep it hits you in the pit of the stomach.

I Want Your Love - Transvision Vamp

Infectious pop-punk tunes belted out by a stunningly sexy, dangerously intelligent blonde who could also actually sing - yes, Transvision Vamp had the makings of one the great bands; but sadly, it all fell apart within a few years. Some of us, however, will always remember with fondness - and, yes, a certain degree of arousal - their brief heyday at the end of the '80s. They had quite a few decent songs, but this, their breakthrough hit, was the best of the lot. I still enjoy a little jump around to this once in a while.

Comfortably Numb - Pink Floyd

Another entry also for The Floyd: the highlight - or low point - of the magnificently depressing The Wall album, with just exquisite guitar from Dave Gilmour (I really wish they would let the final solo go on forever without fading it out).

Skokiaan - Louis Armstrong

The song is pretty piss-poor, but the extended instrumental opening - fully half of the 5-minute track - is possibly the most perfect piece of music I have ever heard. Jaunty African rhythms and soaring clarinet lines - it's just wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, irresistible; and then Louis comes in. Bliss. [Hmm, I hope I 'm not confusing clarinet with alto sax there. I suspect there are both, actually. There's a lot going on in this track. And it is a little while since I last listened to it.]

All The Way To Memphis - Mott The Hoople

Mott were a 'local' band for me as a kid (born in Hereford, grew up in Monmouth), and a big favourite of my elder brother's. Therefore it was more or less obligatory for me to hate them. However, through incessant exposure, I did find myself gradually coming to like some of their stuff despite myself. (The bro was also responsible for turning me on to Queen and Pink Floyd, despite my strong initial scepticism and disdain.) They are probably little remembered now, but were - briefly - quite 'big' in the early '70s (when Queen first toured the States, they were opening for Mott - amazing but true!). This is the best of those grudgingly-adopted favourites: a rather dull anecdote of life on the road somehow elevated into something amazing by a rollicking chorus and an infectiously bouncy honky-tonk piano.

I Don't Like Mondays - The Boomtown Rats

I think this was the most intelligent, the most unusual, and the most ragingly rebellious song I can ever remember getting to No. 1 (I really stopped paying any attention to the charts round about 1981, though; but it seems unlikely that there's been anything else quite like this since), and it was a landmark moment in my childhood. Another of the great, great openings, too (there haven't been too many rock bands who've bothered to include a pianist in their regular line-up). The fact that this was inspired by an early high school shooting incident occasionally makes me feel a little uncomfortable; but this context is swept aside by the fact that the song is so overwhelmingly anthemic. "What reasons do you need?"

And so, there we have it - the conclusion of my definitive list of the best songs for Playing LOUD. Now, this was supposed to be a Top 40 - but if you count up carefully, I think you will find that I've ended up with 42. Oh well, what the hell. It is a well-starred, highly significant number, after all.

Feel free to quibble and disagree (that's what the 'comments' section is for). But hey, give them a go first!