About five years ago when I was back at my Mum’s after splitting with my ex, I went through a prolonged period of insomnia. I was in the box room as my younger brother had moved into my old room and in this tiny, cramped space, full of my earthly possessions which didn’t amount to an awful lot (except for the CD’s) I would lie in bed watching nonsense on cable channels and DVD boxsets until the very wee small hours.
I would also, if the mood took me, listen to podcasts, mostly in the vain hope they would send me to sleep, which in some cases they did. I went through quite a few, Dave Gorman and Frank Skinners Absolute Radio shows, the Guardian Music and Football Weekly downloads, BBC History Magazine podcasts (that worked quite a few times actually, despite it being very interesting, the people they spoke to were by and large, dull academics with incredibly soporific voices) and also Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs. I would generally dip in and out of these when I heard of someone I particularly liked being on it or at least would be interesting, including Rob Brydon, Frank Skinner, Martin Sheen, Terry Gilliam, Roger Waters, Tony Robinson, Russell Brand, Danny Baker and more.
There have been occasions in the past year or so that I have gone back to listen to some people in particular, like Morrissey.
The other day I saw a status on social media about Noel Gallagher being on it. If there is any interview or radio or TV show with Noel on it I will devour it. I could listen to that man talk all day. Not only is he very funny, he is incredibly engaging and fascinating, not least because he is liable to change his mind about something he said years before.
Typically, he was all these things but he also spoke more honestly than I think I’ve ever heard him before. Possibly being grilled by a journalist with no agenda like Kirsty Young, who isn’t necessarily a fan nor critic, allowed him to let his guard down.
Naturally, this got me thinking. In the incredibly unlikely event I will ever be invited to appear on the show, what would my eight tracks be? So, I took it upon myself to compile my Desert Island Discs.
I think I did this before, probably at the time I first listened to the shows, and I have a pretty good idea what they would have been. I did have to make a list of 5 or 6 songs that hinted to my age, so that Robin Ince could guess how old I was, based on my music choices and taste, on Steve Lamacq’s 6Music Show. From what I can recall, some of those appear here. Some don’t.
Listening to Guy Garvey’s from last year, he makes the point that his choices weren’t actually his favourite songs of all time, but those that would sustain him, isolated and alone on a desert island. When thinking of mine I can see what he means. Some of these aren’t necessarily my favourites but they remind me of special people and times. A lot has happened to me over the past five years and a lot has happened to my friends and family.
So here they are:
It’s Live Aid, it’s me and my brother, it’s a silly party piece we do at weddings and birthday parties (the swinging guitar necks) when the DJ puts it on. It’s the opening track on “12 Gold Bars” the first record I owned that my Dad bought me and I played to absolute death. I am an unashamed fan of The Quo. They aren’t a guilty pleasure they are just great and I don’t care.
2) Brown Sugar – The Rolling Stones
Another family wedding, birthday, bar mitzvah disco song, doing the Mick Jagger hands-on-hips and exaggerated clapping. It’s the song I think I most associate with my Mum, although I could equally have chosen Alright Now by Free or All or Nothing by The Small Faces, but it’s also just one of the greatest bits of rock’n’roll music. You can’t sit still listening to it.
3) Some Might Say - Oasis
In Our Price with two of my friends just before my 14th birthday, we used to by each other singles as we were poor teenagers, too young to work and too frivolous to save up pocket money. I chose two: Michelle Gayle – Sweetness and this. For some reason, my head had been filled with chart pap, I’d been buying some awful stuff with my pocket money for years and I didn’t seem to have the friends or influence to via off into the right path, until I heard Some Might Say on the radio. I think possibly the opening bars are quite reminiscent of Status Quo bar chords so that may have turned my head, I’m not sure, but it was a game changer.
4) The Chad who loved me – Mansun
The James Bond Theme that never was (although that was never likely when the name was a complete rip-off), I can vividly remember going and buying this, riding down to town straight from school. It was March ’97 so I was preparing for my GCSE’s and was out the back of the house on the sole computer we had and I think I must have played it a good three times but whenever the strings come in at the beginning it takes me back to then and as the sunset in the patio doors behind me and dark descended I must have pressed play again.
5) You do something to me – Paul Weller
The wife and I’s first dance, played by the band we had, so not this version, but it will forever be our first song and I will be transported back to that weekend in May, two of the best days of my life, where I married the best thing ever to happen to me.
6) Dear Friends – Elbow
If I’m stranded on a desert island with just these eight songs, the bible (good for starting a fire) the complete works of Shakespeare (think I’d get a bit bored after a couple of plays and maybe a sonnet or two) and a luxury item, they will have to be bits of home and things that make me happy to keep me sane and my best friends have definitely done that over the years. The first line “You are angels and drunks, you are magi” pretty much sums them up, and I always think of them when I hear it.
7) Tap at my Window – Laura Marling
“He taps at my window, willing that I let him in…..”
When I first started seeing the girl that is now my wife, she lived in a basement flat below a terraced house. I had recently heard the third record by Laura Marling that summer before and I had fallen under the spell of this amazing voice that invokes and pays homage to the greats, most notably Joni Mitchell. There was a fair amount of record collection comparison those first few months and Laura’s first was a particular favourite of hers and it was played a lot in that flat. This song became to mean a huge amount to us, mainly because when I’d finished a shift and closed the pub I was a duty manager at, I would go back to hers and have to knock at the window at street level for her to let me in.
8) In my life – The Beatles
As Mr G said himself on the programme, you have to have something by the greatest band of all time. A band that have been with me my entire life, from, as my Mum told me, sitting in the pushchair singing a long whilst in the town centre when I was very small, to considering something to be used on the CD we gave to the Registry Office. As it happened we didn’t use anything by them, but my choice was this, In my Life, as it encapsulated everything I wanted that day to mean, not just about my wife, but my family and friends. It isn’t necessarily my favourite Beatles song, but then there are so many to choose from.
These songs could be different in a few years’ time. They were probably different a few years ago.
It all depends where are you now, where you were at the time and where you might be.
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