Skip to main content

Alphabet soup, continued: L-Z.

It took a while, but here's the second half of the music I like to cook to.

L. La's, The. One day I woke up and it wasn't the eighties any more. It was the nineties and suddenly there were no more tuneless new wave angst-ridden songs, no more square suits and weird makeup, no more drum machines and no more synths. Instead, there were lovely melodies and sweet harmonies and sunshine and butterflies and happy, jangly guitar music was heard across the land and everybody was happy again.

M. Matt Monro. My favourite crooner. Listen - or even just read the lyrics to - For Mama and if you don't cry you're not alive.

N. Neil Young. His acoustic work is nice but when he gets together with Crazy Horse it's more like a shipbuilding yard at full capacity than actual music. Crank it up. You wouldn't want the neighbours to miss out, would you?

O. Only Now by Ride, obscure but brilliant British band of the mid-nineties. From Carnival of Light, probably my most-played CD.

P. Pretenders, The. Back on the Chain Gang takes me back to 1982 when my two older children were five and two and we drove along the Great Ocean Road to the beach at Lorne and on the way home they slept, tousle-haired and sandy-toed, and this song was on the radio every ten minutes and I never tired of it and I still haven't. 'I found a picture of you/oh oh oh oh/those were the happiest days of my life'

Q. Blank again. Can only think of Queen. I couldn't stand them. Still the most overplayed band on '70s/'80s radio, except for maybe that short bald drummer, what was his band's name? No, don't remind me.

R. Ramones, The. Nice and loud, but don't chop potatoes to this, you'll lose fingers.

S. Sergei Rachmaninoff. We Praise Thee from his setting of The Liturgy of St John Chrysostom sounds like you've died and gone to heaven.

T. The Red Hot Chili Peppers. What do this band, Pearl Jam and R.E.M. have in common for me? I like a few of their songs and the rest of their work drives me nuts. That's what.

U. Underground Lovers. Melbourne band of the mid-nineties with the kind of lush, hypnotic and haunting sound that is often absurdly labelled 'alternative'. Also, they named one of their albums after my railway station. How cool is that?

V. Van Morrison. Of course. What did you expect, Vivaldi?

W. Williams, John. Melbourne-born classical guitarist. Relax to this.

Y. Yehudi Menuhin, who said: "The violinist seems to live and move in the empty spaces between notes ... ".

Z. Zombies, The. Put this on and suddenly it's a hazy afternoon in the spring of 1967.

Comments

  1. "Midnight Special" by Creedence Clearwater played while I was driving today.

    Scrambled eggs?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Indeed, Ms Gore. I bought my very first vinyl LP record in 1971 - CCR's Cosmo's Factory - but I preferred my older brother's copy of Willy and the Poor Boys.

    Incidentally, John Fogerty toured here late last year. Seemed a little bitter in the interviews he did.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Something to do with an apparently acrimonious split with former members of the band. I enjoy trying to read between the lines about these things but you can never be sure.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Van Morrison--yes! Brown-Eyed Girl.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment