Incidentally, the reason I discovered this page is because of a discussion in uk.legal.moderated about easyJet’s telephone number. On one of their websites, they present it as +44 871 244 2377, which, while technically the correct full international format, is somewhat confusing to UK-based customers who aren’t familiar with that format and try dialling it as presented, without the leading 0 necessary for national calls. As a result, many calls are going to a residential telephone line that happens to consist of the first six digits of easyJet’s number.

Obviously, that’s primarily the fault of the numpties who can’t understand a telephone number in international format, but, given that easyJet seem to want to make it hard to find (it doesn’t seem to be visible anywhere from a link on their main website, which may possibly be a reason why they don’t want people linking to it directly from the outside!), I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they’ve deliberately used that format alone in the hope that it will deter their less-intelligent customers from calling them. After all, it’s not as if they don’t have the space on the website to display the number in both national and international formats.

Incidentally, the number above is, of course, for easyJet Holidays, not the airline. The number for the airline is 0871 244 2366 – and please don’t forget that leading 0!.

Mark

I do think that Prince is a bit of a plonker in many respects, not least his rather bizarre attitude to the Internet, but I also think that distributing his music this way is genuinely innovative and worth taking seriously. What it does, of course, is cut out the big record companies who whine incessantly about piracy while lining their own pockets at the expense of both artists and consumers. Prince is almost certainly earning more from this deal than he would by going through the usual channels, and we can buy the album for the cost of a daily newspaper. That’s good news for him, good news for us (and, I presume, good news for the Mirror, who stand to benefit from the publicity and extra sales). And what’s even better news is that it makes the antediluvian attitudes of the record labels look even more unsustainable.

I’m not convinced that releasing music via newspapers will ever be the most common form of distribution, and it’s clearly not going to work for everyone. But it will work for some, just as Radiohead’s equally innovative “pay what you think it’s worth” digital release of In Rainbows worked for them. There are artists out there who are prepared to think outside the box when it comes to making a living from their art without screwing over the consumer, and the more successful they are the more obvious it becomes that the record companies are getting it wrong. For a business sector which relies on creativity for its product, the music industry is more often notable for an extremely unimaginative and narrow-minded approach to marketing and financing. Experiments like this one by Prince are, therefore, to be applauded – even if, as I do, you think that the Mirror is a naff newspaper.

So, what was I listening to this time last year? Being back in an office where we listen to music communally, on the radio, rather than sitting is silence or with headphones on, meant that this time last year I was hearing plenty of new stuff. Some I liked, some I didn’t, and some I really loved. This song fell into the final category.

I could leave it there and just play the song, but as it happens I’d never seen the video to it until I looked it up for the sake of this article. And, oh gosh, what a load of pretentious nonsense! OK, so the song itself is a bit pretentious as far as the words are concerned – I presume the main lyrical question is supposed to be rhetorical, but I still have no idea what it means. But the video takes pretentious guff to an entirely new level – it’s almost as if it’s a deliberate parody of the kind of “meaningful” videos that were popular in the
80s. Then again, maybe that really is the intention. Who knows? And what is Brandon Flowers wearing on his shoulders? Are we human, or are we dancer?

The Killers – Human

Incidentally, for a wonderfully subversive version of this song, Robbie Williams’ Live Lounge cover is worth a look!

Having said that, I do have one very vivid musical memory from my early childhood. In fact, it’s the earliest memory that I can put a precise date on. My mum used to listen to the radio in the kitchen while she did the housework and, though I don’t remember much of it, this song somehow managed to implant itself in my memory. Actually, my memory is playing tricks with me a bit, since I was convinced before starting to write this article that I heard it announced on air by Jimmy Young – he seemed to be ubiquitous on the radio when I was a child. But, in fact, that’s not possible, at least not if my other memory is correct, and I’m more certain of that side of it.

What I actually remember hearing is the announcer (not the DJ – this would have been pre-Radio 1) telling us that he was going to play the new record by The Beatles. And this is the song he played:

Yellow Submarine

Footnote: This is a story that I’ve told several times, since “what’s your earliest memory?” is a fairly common question and hence I’ve had plenty of opportunities to give the answer. And when I do, people younger than me always seem to respond with “oooh, you remember The Beatles!” as if being old enough to hear their music while they were still making it is some kind of badge of musical honour. But the truth is, I barely remember any of it. In fact, other than this song, the only other Beatles track that I can definitely recall from my childhood is Octopus’s Garden, which is hardly one to be proud of remembering. I certainly had no idea, at the time, that they were the biggest band in the world. And, if I’m perfectly honest, I don’t really think I missed all that much.

Ralph McTell – Streets of London

I blame John Terry. No, really. Hear me out.

England breezed through qualification. They didn’t become a bad team, and Fabio Capello didn’t become a bad manager, overnight. So what changed?

What changed was Terry sticking his dick where it didn’t belong. That cost him his authority in the team, and cost him the captaincy. Then Rio Ferdinand got injured, and the armband ended up with Steven Gerrard.

But Gerrard isn’t an England captain. He can’t lift a team when it’s down, and he needs someone else on the field to tell him to play for the team instead of himself. He needs a captain to lift him out of himself when he’s playing badly. With the armband, he drags everyone down to his level when he’s not playing well.

And he didn’t play well. Maybe the weight of the captaincy itself contributed to that. But, whatever the reason, the team also played badly as a result. And that’s why they’re on the way home.

A good captain could have made a difference. But the best captain in the team had thrown it away through his own stupid behaviour, and the second-best captain got injured through no fault of his own. Ferdinand’s injury wouldn’t have mattered in that respect if Terry had kept his libido under control. But it did matter, and the team paid the price. I only hope that Terry realises that he did to England’s chances in the World Cup exactly what he did to Vanessa Perroncel.

In particular, I’d love to be able to play this song. I’d love to be able to sing this song. Although it’s a classic stadium-rock anthem with some great guitar chops, the lyrics carry a darker side about love lost, ambition failed and nostalgia for a time that’s better seen through the eyes of hindsight than it probably was when it happened. While it doesn’t have the same heartbreaking intensity as the song I chose for day 4, there’s still a bittersweet taste here which means this isn’t an undiluted celebration song. And it’s all the better for it.

Bryan Adams – Summer of 69

But there’s a difference between playing a song and playing on a song, if you get what I mean. I’m a keyboard player, and, contrary to what a fair number of non-musicians think, that’s not the same as either a pianist or an organist. Other than when I’m at home on my own, I rarely play solo – 99% of my “performance” music is as a member of a band. In a band, I can play pretty much any song, because all I have to do is provide the keyboard part – which, for the stuff I generally play, just means the bog-standard chords, phrases, pads and stabs. Occasionally I find myself called on to provide more of a piano-style lead, but that’s not really my scene (although if I get the chance to indulge in a bit of Hammond-organ style improvisation, I’ll take it!).

What that means, though, is that although in a band I can play almost any song, as a solo musician there aren’t all that many songs I can play in a way that would be instantly recognisable as the song in question! It doesn’t help that I find it quite difficult to play and sing at the same time – I can manage backing vocals when necessary, at least on songs I know well, but you won’t find me giving an impromptu performance on a pub piano, for example.

However, there are a few songs that I’d say I can play. Mostly, they’re the songs that inspired me to take up keyboards in the first place, rather than any other instrument. I’ve mentioned before in this series that I was very much into 80s electronica and synth-pop, so as soon as I could afford it I bought myself an analogue synth and taught myself to play it. This was one of the first songs I managed to pick apart:

Depeche Mode – Just Can’t Get Enough

Smells Like Teen Spirit

The really funny thing about this is that now, when I hear the Nirvana version, I can’t help thinking of this.

Tim Hughes – Happy Day

Direct link: Breathe

So there are far too many candidates for today’s topic for it to be an obvious or simple choice. But sometimes, sadness isn’t just about me and what I need, it’s about what those I love need. This song exemplifies that, to me. This is Coldplay, with Fix You.

We’re at Dailymotion again for the video (Youtube seems to get suckier by the minute). And, in this case, the DM version seems to be better quality as well, so here’s the link: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1g0tu_fix-you-coldplay_music

The embedded video is from Dailymotion, because of YouTube’s embedding restrictions. But, for those who prefer to see it at YouTube (or don’t get the embedded version anyway), the direct link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa2nLEhUcZ0

Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbNuIqiVPbU

It comes from one of those rare albums which doesn’t seem to have any weak songs on it, and showcases Mike Scott’s extraordinary lyric-writing ability – this is the only song I’ve ever hear where the bridge consists of nothing more than a bullet point list set to music, and does so utterly brilliantly (Facebook users will see this as one of my favourite quotes if you check my profile). From the album This is the Sea, this is The Waterboys with The Whole of the Moon:

Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4NoZtmxf6o

That said, I think this should have got airplay when it was in the charts :-)

Delirious – Deeper

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=886AQqcM8Tk

Some songs, though, drop out of favour not because my tastes have changed, but because the song itself becomes tainted by negative associations. And that’s the case with this one.

It would be stretching it to call this a song that I used to love, because even then it wasn’t a favourite. But it was a tolerable enough pop song from a singer that I quite like, so I was happy enough to hear it. Until, through a purely coincidental set of circumstances, it became associated with an episode in my life that I still cringe to think about. I still can’t hear this song without having flashbacks.

This is Amy Grant, with her sole UK chart hit Baby Baby. I’ve used the TOTP performance as, yet again, the official video has embedding disabled so they lose out on the benefit of having it shared. Feel free to enjoy this, I’ll wait outside until it’s finished…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYH83KeuRYE

Having said that, this is probably the hardest to pick so far. I really don’t tend to associate songs with myself, and finding one that genuinely describes me – as opposed to merely having a title which suits me – is almost impossible.

To try to solve the problem of what song to pick, I asked Emma what song she thought described me. Her answer was that I should make a mixtape of various clips of my favourite songs and use that, which is a great idea but – apart from being too much effort – it’s probably not in keeping with the spirit of the series.

So, after much thought, I’ve gone with this classic from the late 90s. Not because the song describes me as such, but because I can hear myself in the voice of the narrator. I’ve come to the conclusion that as I get older I’m turning into the kind of grumpy old man who’s never short of advice for the younger generation. But, in the end, advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTJ7AzBIJoI

So, is anyone going to be surprised by this choice or not? I don’t know, you tell me. Given that I’m not normally into power-pop girl singers, and I’m a bit old for the usual Radio 1 demographic (I blame my co-workers for the fact that I’ve even heard this), I suppose it is a bit of an unpredictable choice. But what the heck – I like this.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nX07z6ho_F4

(That’s another unofficial link, because the official version can’t be embedded. Does that suck, or what?)