The 30 Day Song Challenge

Honestly, I don't know - I thought you yoof were meant to be at the cutting edge!

So did I.

This is something like my eighth choice tonight. Has there been a recent purge of music on Youtube?

There's something very powerful about those moments Springsteen when he gives up. There's this great performer with so much hope and enthusiasm and love and with the capacity to effortlessly energise a crowd with those emotions... so when he makes it clear that there a guys that have all the power will keep it that way, it's crushing.

My first choice would have been Phil Och's white-flag-raised-to-life No More Songs. "Once I knew a sage, who sang upon a stage/ he told of the world, his lover/ a ghost without a name, stands ragged in the rain/ And it seems that there are no more songs." Part of that is knowing that there were no more songs - he didn't release a song in the six years before his suicide.

Day 4: Song That Makes Me Cry
The Beatles - The Long and Winding Road
This is top of the list of songs that always make me feel melancholy. The Phil Spectre overkill mix makes me dissolve into weeping blob of jelly. Even this this stereo remix of the original recording has my eyes filling up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nC9Vt1xQ5Kw

Day 5.

Day 5

This one reminds me of a lot of people to be honest

I think I had a brain-melt. Tom Joad as a song that makes me sad? Perhaps when I think about it a bit, but Springsteen prescence can't be anything but that of an enthusiastic (but depressingly sensible) elder brother with his hand round your shoulder. I blame 13-hour shifts. Alright, 13-hour shifts in which I get to save Sylvester McCoy stories on Outpost Wrinkly, but 13-hour shifts nonethe less...

This is more appopriate for day four...

Day 7

A song to remind me of Mrs. more. She'd leave me tomorrow for this man if she could.

I'm getting confused as to what I have, or haven't, posted! So I think I'm at...

Day 6.

Day 6



Reminds me of home because it was written in the same town...

Day 5: A Song that Reminds you of Someone:
Dire Straits - Love Over Gold

This song reminds me of the woman I love more than any other woman. But I have hurt her more than I have ever hurt any other woman, and I would not be surprised if I never see her again.

Day 6 - A song that reminds me of somewhere



Taking me back twenty years and a hundred and fifty miles north east or so, to childhood days as a passenger being driven around in the back of my brother's Lada...

Better late than never, here's my catch-up post:

day 01 - your favorite song

It changes every day, but this or something else by the Manics comes up pretty frequently:


day 02 - your least favorite song

I despised Morrissey long before it was fashionable to despise Morrissey, and here's one of the many reasons why. It starts off well, then he begins singing droning on in that tuneless dirge of a voice.


day 03 - a song that makes you happy

Everybody's happy's now we're bulletproof!


day 04 - a song that makes you sad

A song for anyone who's gone:


day 05 - a song that reminds you of someone

Always inextricably linked in my head with a girl I fell hard for in the early 90s. She didn't reciprocate, of course.


day 06 - a song that reminds you of somewhere

The Last Broadcast was the soundtrack to my trip around the US in 2002, and this always takes me back to the epic open spaces of the West:

Day 7.


This wonderful song featured heavily at our wedding!

Day 6: A Song that Reminds You of Somewhere:
New Order - True Faith

True Faith has reminded me of Coventry Polytechnic in the 1980's before it became Coventry University in the 1990's. The bat-s**t crazy video reminds me of a bar-s**t crazy time of my life.

The reason being:
My strongest memory of Coventry was that in the very early hours of a Spring morning in 1987, I was evacuated from my room in Priory Hall, the halls of residence on campus at Coventry Polytechnic. A van delivering bread to the refectory kitchens had reversed into a gas meter, and gas was rapidly filling the building. The students were evacuated to the Students Union, a building that shares the same foundations as Priory Hall, so would probably have collapsed if the Halls had exploded. The following morning, whilst eating my breakfast in the Mandela Bar of SU, a man with a pile of 45rpm singles changed what had been my favourite choice on the SU juke box Black Sabath's Die Young with this record.
This was also the day I met Sally, my first girlfriend, who is another big memory from Coventry.

Day 7



This may actually count as 2 songs but I don't care. I was singing to this very loudly and very drunk at a party on my A Level exam results day.

Day 7 - A song that reminds you of a certain event

I can recall sitting in the Union bar at Swansea watching the TV reporting John Smith's death while this was playing over the speakers in the background.

This is a tough one for me. I don't really tie events to songs. If I like a song, it will then follow me around forever and if I'm enjoying an event, I don't concentrate on the music. So this is just a memory of being young; boozy garden parties and geeing up for the outside world. Is This It? came out just before I started college. I remember them being part of the feeling of excitement as I wondered exactly how exciting college and adult-life was going to be . The Strokes have spent the last ten years being massively disappointing. Coincidentally...

Day 8 - A song you know all the words to

I was tempted to go for Bulletproof again here, but instead here's a song where a lot of the irony in it gets missed by people who don't know the lyrics:

Day 8

It's a toughie this one as I know the words to loads of songs. This is probably the one I've picked up most recently (either this or 'Junk' by the same band, unfortunately that doesn't seem to be on youtube).

Day 8.

Like Johnstone says, so many to choose from. But I'll pick this from the back pocket.

Day 8 - A Song You Know All The Words To



I don't remember all the lyrics to that many songs (more phrases from lots of songs), but this one it mostly went in. I have a tendency to translate this song into English. So when the female character in the song has asked the man come, let's sit, talk politics and whilst we're out tell her one of his biggest fears I always think the reply is going to be "crumbs" rather than "lose my penis to a whore with disease."

Day 9 - A Song You Can Dance To



My dancing is a ugly rhythmless swirl of flailing arms. It works better with 60s music than other eras...

Day 9

The song that consistently gets played on a night out that gets the best reaction from me at any rate...

Day 10

Some people have this down as one of the best songs ever. I think it's just boring and repetitive.