The Chills - This Is the Way (from Kaleidoscope World)

Silence. Some notes on a guitar. Keyboard washes. Martin Phillips giving away the title with that Kiwi accent which reminds me of Irish accents. Where way almost sounds like why. That ringing guitar going higher and higher. It's one of the simplest tunes imaginable. Not as sophisticated as Pink Frost. Not as deep lyric wise. Who cares if you can create music as beautiful with so few elements. One of those magic songs I could listen to endlessly.

Buffalo Springfield - For What It's Worth

This was released in January 1967 and I guess it got a lot of airplay in the summer of love as it was Buffalo Springfield's biggest hit charting on #7 in the US. A song by Stephen Stills which anticipates the retreat of the super power from Vietnam. It was supposed to be about young draftees being burned in the Far East but in the end it was about the police overreacting to protests against the war in LA. Something which is probably bound to happen soon again. Stills pleasant baritone makes the message clearer than clear.

My Bloody Valentine - We Have All the Time in the World

I was just about to delete the MBV folder on my mp3 jukebox when this last tune came on. A cover of John Barry's theme song for Her Majesty's Secret Service, a James Bond film from 1969. The original was performed by Louis Armstrong. It turned out to be Armstrong's last recording session. What a weird twist of fate concerning the title.

MBV released this in 1993 and Kevin Shields on the other hand must have taken the title rather literal regarding MBV's post Loveless output.

It's a song that reconciles the listener with the world, a heart-warming exuberant melody made even more ethereal by the dreamy vocals of the female singer (it's not Bilinda Butcher, is it?). You can't think of anything but "everything is gonna be alright" when you hear this. And there even is a kind of little practical advice for making something work we all strive for:

Chan Marshall has one of those voices I fell in love with at first listen. Although I love all her previous albums I am looking even more forward to the new one, The Greatest which will come out in January of next year. She seems to be heading towards a place where I want to go too. In the past her music had an introspective, sometimes painful aura around it. Of all female songwriters I know she came closest to Nick Drake. Judging from the two songs I have heard of the new album (the other one being the title track available on the site of her label) she has chosen a different path of life. Living Proof is exactly what it pretends to be. Chan is opening up to the world like a rose in full blossom. There are still thorns but the fragrancy is evolving to a point where the sweetness overshadows the bitterness. Sadness bye-bye. There is a life after death.

Not really surprising but there were a couple of punk songs in his box of seven inches. When rearranging the singles in chronological order this is when it gets interesting if you ask me. The Negatives (never heard of them before, Google seems to be pretty useless as well) are featured with their 1979 release Love Is Not Real. Straight and to the point. If it was real it wouldn't be love, no? Unbelievable how this kind of direct, primitive music by people who didn't care about virtuosity still sounds totally enthralling. It takes you by the guts, the balls if you are male. No bullshitting, no fucking around, just a "we are there, fuck you all". Punk was the late musical execution of the liberation the late 60s paved the way for. The LSD-drenched music of the times (is there anything more awful than a jam of the Grateful Dead?) was a blind alley of self-obsession. Punk will never age. A fountain of youth.

Lyrics:

Winter has arrived in Frankfurt. Tonight I went out with two friends. We had some nice dark Czech beer and goose with a very tasty crust. When we left the pub everything was covered in white. It was snowing like crazy. The wind was blowing the snowflakes into my ears. We trudged through the snow to the station, I took the train and trudged through even more snow the fifteen minutes home.

The music which warmed my heart at home was Coronation St by Izzy Royal. A reggae/ska instrumental from 1983. What a great lyrical trumpet line. Making a glorious sun rise in our little kitchen. Excuse the surface noise. I guess this has been played a couple of times already before it found its way into the digital age.

I have to get up early tomorrow. There will be some snow shovelling to do.

A song off Greendale, the second last Neil Young album from 2003. With Crazy Horse, supposedly the worst band in the world but the only band Neil can make the music with he wants to make. You remember Cortez the Killer? This is like an extended version of it. Without a chorus, just building up without building up to anything. Never delivering. Just holding the intense level from start to finish. Genius.

Sit back and relax. And let yourself be transported to the place Where the Wind Turns the Skin into Leather. You don't have to go there. But you know you would like to.

As I have no idea how to go on without a theme and the mp3 jukebox is full, I came up with a kind of game to gain space on the jukebox. I'll play ten songs on shuffle, decide for each song if I want to delete it, skip it or listen to all of it. At the end I choose my favourite of the ten, post an mp3 link and write two or three sentences. Here we go:

1 a slow rip - certainly 2 david byrne - my fair lady -> DELETED 3 devendra banhart - little monkey ... -> SKIPPED 4 royksopp - poor leno -> SKIPPED 5 the raincoats - no side to fall in 6 blonde redhead - missile 7 the five americans - i see the light 8 dido - i'm no angel -> SKIPPED 9 serge gainsbourg - aux armes remixed -> SKIPPED 10 understand - big green eyes

Blonde Redhead, a band I wrote about before, have got an amazing, distinctive female singer with a rather shrill and exuberant voice, stressing the words in an unconventional way but sounding to me extremely musical. Forgot her name, she is Japanese, I think. The male singer is totally the opposite, very cool and controlled, almost a sedative in comparison to her thrilling delivery. The song is dominated by a repetitive keyboard/synth figure. No clue what they sing about on Missile. With her voice it doesn't really matter. Everything which comes out of her mouth is a revelation.

my fave of all tracks which have yet been posted of the peel box is the b-side of aquarius, it's called chinook, a dark monster of fuzzy electro beats. the internet is a wonderful thing, you ask an innocuous question and you get 154 songs john peel loved. thanks to cristian and everyone else who is participating. it's still going. will we have all singles in the end? i guess so. i love you all.