I have, however, bothered to come up with an overarching format, or gimmick if you like, to keep things interesting and at least vaguely coherent. I am only equipped to talk about two things, music and myself (and restaurants, I suppose); bearing that in mind, I'm going to talk about myself, but dress it up as being about music.
Each entry will be a ten-song themed mixtape, with accompanying Youtube clips and general rambling. Songs about tea, songs about Mao Zedong, bossanova songs, that sort of thing. Ten songs - no more, no less - because Ian Brown once said that's the best length for an album, and I base all my major life decisions on the words of Ian Brown. The plan is that it may just come across as trenchant, well-structured commentary that way. Stranger things have happened!]
Since this is the first entry, the logical theme is Beginnings, and beginning the mixtape about beginnings is...
1) Begin the Begin - REM
There are literally thousands of contenders for Side 1 Track 1 of this compilation - most bands usually stick their best song there, and a lot of them reference new beginnings, or fresh starts, or going back to the drawing board, because bands are lazy like that. I'm struggling not to immediately start referencing Nick Hornby here (like when I started doing a show on university radio and couldn't help but lapse into Alan Partridge impressions), but I always liked the bit in "High Fidelity" about top ten Side 1 Track 1's.
But that's another mixtape for another day; this one's about songs specifically relating to beginnings, and this one just edges it because the title uses the word twice in quick succession. Plus, it's one of those songs which just feel right in front and centre on an album, or concert - bristling guitar and wild organs, coupled with Michael Stipe suddenly ditching the cryptic mumbling of old to actually SING raucously about Myles Standish and how he has no rhyme for "begin". A worthwhile change, I'm sure you'll agree, as I now know all about Myles Standish, and have also been prompted to seek out the delightful "Begin the Beguine", which presumably inspired the song's title if nothing else.
2) Hello There - Cheap Trick
Big fan of instances where bands have written a song that's clearly designed solely to open their concerts, blow the audience away and make them look cool onstage. These tracks often only consist of one chord, so the guitarist can make devil horns and gurn like a maniac, but rudimentary songwriting can be overlooked if it succeeds in giving the crowd an adrenaline rush, like the Pavlovian dogs they are.
Cheap Trick have provided us with a prime exhibit (basically an extended "Hello [city where concert is taking place!"), as have the Rolling Stones and Spinal Tap, while the title track to Sgt. Pepper's offers a slightly more sophisticated twist on the standard - the Beatles having given up touring at this point, of course, only to bloody-mindedly recreate the live experience on their next record.
3) Genesis - Justice
While "Hello There" had but one humble and fairly realistic aim - to introduce Cheap Trick audiences to the notion of rocking, should they be that way inclined - "Genesis" aims to equate the start of Justice's debut album with the very creation of life, the universe and everything, using just the power of programmed beats and some distorted synths. It pretty much pulls it off too.
One of my fondest memories from Glastonbury was when they started testing out the speakers on the Other Stage one morning by blasting this out at full volume - among the mud-splattered falafel tents and the hordes of hungover unwashed, it genuinely sounded like the end of the world, or the beginning of a new one - a better one, where everyone smoked Gauloises while nonchalantly nodding along to electro.
4) December 4th - Jay Z
A rich and always-rewarding subgenre of our "Beginning" theme is the hip-hop origin story. Now I don't know much about hip-hop - just wait 'til my hip-hop themed mixtape for definitive proof, or visit "Stuff White People Like" now and save yourself the wait - but I'm always fascinated by musician's accounts of how they got started, even/especially if it's mostly made up, like Robert Johnson or Drake. And the lives of hip hop artists tend to be slightly more interesting to listen to than, say, Alex Turner's or Tom Petty's. Kanye West's "Last Call" is a good example; "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air", less so.
"December 4th" is such a detailed account of Jay Z's first steps, literally, that his mum guest-stars in between verses, recounting his birth, his childhood, his first boom box etc., while Hov goes on about his parents conceiving him under a sycamore tree (which, somehow, made him "a more sicker MC"). It's overblown, it's entirely too much information and I think at one point it samples Gladiator. "Swann's Way" to the Black Album's "In Search of Lost Time", if you will.
5) First Watch - King Creosote & Jon Hopkins
A lull in proceedings (I have a coherent, flowing mix to assemble after all, amid all this philosophising and general faffing about), and proof, lest we forget, that beginnings don't have to involve bombast, braggadocio, sturm or indeed drang. In fact, it's only in music (and major sporting events) that beginnings usually equate to gratuitous, over-the-top spectacle and blaring sax solos. In everyday life, most beginnings involve not being altogether sure what's going on, falling out of bed and staggering to the local greasy spoon in search of breakfast. Which is exactly what King Creosote and Jon Hopkins have managed to capture in two and a half minutes of sparse musique concrète, bless them.
Contrary to everything that's come before, I have a lot of time for songs - and album openers in particular - that take their time to establish a mood without really doing much, before building to a heart-stopping crescendo without you noticing (like "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart"), or not, and leaving the dynamics shift to the next track (like Guillemots' "Little Bear"). I also like songs based around samples of Scottish people being lovely to each other, although only this one springs to mind really (the Proclaimers don't count).
6) Afraid of Nothing - Sharon van Etten
Beginnings can be fairly scary too; fear of the unknown and all that. Sharon van Etten knows what I'm talking about; kicking off her latest, and typically wonderful new album with a stately torch song about facing up to harsh realities ("I can't wait 'til we're afraid of nothing / I can't wait 'til we hide from nothing"), or at least getting someone else to do it for you ("I need you to be afraid of nothing").
The music follows suit, switching things up when the drums come in, revealing a hitherto unsuspected time signature and tempo when you least expect it. The pendulum swings, the veils keep falling away, the tension ratchets up and dissipates into a fine mist or fog. And ain't that just like real life? (No, really, is it? I'm genuinely asking).
7) Start Again - Freddy Powys
This is one of my songs, but don't worry, I'm not going to be bombarding you with these on a regular basis (unless they prove to be really popular, in which case, who am I to deny the public what they want?). This one just happens to fit the bill for this mix, what with being about starting again - my "Just Like Starting Over", if you like, only definitely not written about Yoko Ono.
I'd like to say I wrote this when leaving university for the real world, as it would fit the theme and lyrics quite neatly, but I don't remember when it actually was, to be honest. My lyrics tend to just be a hodgepodge of phrases from various sources anyway, strung together just coherently enough to write a song around. But it does make for quite a handy set-opener (the old one-chord trick again, you see. No devil horns though), and I used to have a rather grand version of it kicking off Disc 2 of my debut double-album, following a particularly apocalyptic closer on Disc 1. Even if I had to pad the rest of Disc 2 with utter filler just to back up this conceptual gimmick.
8) New Day Rising - Husker Du
In which Husker Du posit that the best reaction to beginnings, with all their uncertainties, doubts and tricky track-sequencing issues, is to simply yell the same stock phrase over and over again, backed by buzzsaw guitars and sugar-rush drums, until you don't know who you are or what you're doing anymore. Listening to this glorious blast, opening the album of the same name, who would dare doubt them? They sound like they would kill you if you did, for a start.
Maybe the only way to confront new situations is to confront them head on, with unwavering singularity of purpose and conviction, and worry about the fall-out later. At least I think that's what Bob mould is trying to say, even though to the untrained eye he's just shouting "NEW DAY RISING" until his head explodes.
9) Stormy Clouds - The Verve
But then doubt creeps in; as is doubt's wont. "Stormy clouds / and new horizons" sings Richard Ashcroft, summing up the hesitancy of human nature in the face of unfamiliarity, or maybe just singing half-arsed platitudes over Richard McCabe's undulating guitar lines, depending on how generous you're feeling. "A Storm In Heaven"'s opener, "A New Decade" (perhaps the more obvious choice here) always sounded like "And you decayed" to me for years before the penny dropped. What does this mean? Does it matter?
Why am I asking you?
10) A New Career In A New Town - David Bowie
So what have we learned? Beginnings can be terrifying, exhilarating, confusing, low-key, high-key, medium-key, or other. Sometimes they're not even beginnings - this instrumental (possibly my favourite instrumental? That's a big call and I'd have to get back to you on that) appears somewhere on Side 2 of "Low" and doesn't even have any words beyond the title to suggest its subject matter. But you can sense Bowie's first hesitant steps in the seedy underbelly of Berlin from the keening harmonica and awkward bassline alone, before things go really off the deep end with "Warszawa"and its ilk. The title is a bit of a giveaway too.
Not to get all meta on you, but this blog is now in a similar position - a new beginning filled with hopes and dreams and uncertainty. If it were an animal, it would be one of those newborn foals you see sometimes, covered in afterbirth and trying to get the hang of its own legs. I don't really know where I'm going with it, or whether the theme thing will stick around, or what my next entry could possibly be about. I just fancied having a bit of a write. But if this blog had a theme song, I'd like to think it would be "A New Career in a New Town", harmonicas and all.
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