30 Day Song Challenge - Part Four

day 14 - a song that makes you fall asleep

I first heard this song in 1995. I was living at Kings College in London and attending the University of Western Ontario. Through an administrative cock-up I found myself living not on the main campus with my classmates but instead down the road in an all-female residence at a Catholic college. I hated just about everything about the place – I had a couple of good friends, but I felt ferociously out of place there. I used to sleep through far too many lectures by staying up all night in the torturous company of someone who I thought was the bees-freakin’-knees, who barely noticed I was there, irrespective of the frequency and intensity of all the twirl-hairing and joke-laughing, gloss-lipping and reveal-cleavaging I could muster. One morning, my clock radio alarm woke me up and the University radio station had just started playing this song.

I lay there – paralysed by that swooping and swirling slide guitar. Frightened to even bloody breathe lest I miss any part of it. Fell back into a peaceful sleep once it had finished, but not before I managed to scribble down “swoopy swirly guitarey song at 7.53am” or something. Later, I rang the radio station to find out what it was – and lo, my love of Afghan Whigs was born.

day 15 - a song that you listen to when you’re angry 

I would have liked this song to have been around a decade earlier than it was actually released. I call to mind one or two occasions that the listening of this track at full volume on repeat would have been particularly appropriate. Jason won’t let me listen to this in the car if the kids are with us, on account of the sweariness. Ha ha.

day 16 - a song that you wish you heard on the radio

English radio leaves a lot to be desired compared to the great selection of genre-specific stations I grew up with in Canada.  I’ve been in the UK now since September 1999 (12 years is a long time to be away from such a great home-grown music scene) so this is a song I wished I could here on the radio here, instead of having to listen to Canadian radio online!  UK readers – listen up, this is one of my favourite tracks from a cracking Canadian band out of London, Ontario (town of my alma mater).

day 17 - a song that makes you laugh

When I was little, we had a taped copy of a record we’d borrowed from some friends of ours called BBC Children’s Favourites.  It was a mad compilation of wacky songs (mostly released in the 60’s and 70’s in England) and whenever we went on a road trip or holiday, it was the first tape we looked for to make up our in-car entertainment.  These three were our favourites on that tape, and coupled with our ridiculous attempts at singing along (accents and all) they always had the four of us in stitches.  Which, incidentally, was a useful diversionary tactic to prevent us from going bonkers while my Dad scrambled about the countryside looking for motels which still had vacancy in the wee hours of the morning.  

Stay tuned -- Part 5 is coming soon!

30 Day Song Challenge - Part One

30 Day Song Challenge - Part Two

30 Day Song Challenge - Part Three

30 Day Song Challenge - Part Three

day 10 - a song that you want to play at your wedding
One of my hugest regrets was that the DJ at our wedding totally stank.  I always said that my wedding playlist would be carefully chosen, to make sure that there’d be no annoying pop fluff and Top 40 annoyances.  And in the end, we were so busy trying to sort out everything else that we went to the Yellow Pages and hired the first person who fit our budget.

So, 9 years late, please accept my sincere apologies (those of you who may have attended my wedding) for the totally shit music.  Sure, we danced our first dance to the below song (the only one we could agree on at the time; another hasty decision) but I violently opposed the rest of the DJ’s playlist, it was wrong wrong wrong.  If we’d been married 5 years later, we’d have had a computer by then and we’d have snobbishly arranged a series of mix CD’s and hired our own PA.  

If I could go back in time to August 2002 (in addition to making sure that my arse was considerably smaller at the time, of course) I would ensure that the following soppy little gems were included in the setlist:

day 11 - a song that you wish you could play

When I was about 11, I begged my Mum and Dad to let me have piano lessons.  I really enjoyed them, and did reasonably well.  But when I reached university I stopped playing.  Not good enough to enter the BMus programme at Western, I opted for the Comparative Literature course and, hoping to find a kindred spirit while I was away from home, I chose an “idiot-version” music appreciation/performance course from the prospectus.  I didn’t find a single friend there; the lecture was filled with people who out-played, out-smarted and out-performed me at every turn – you know the type… those child prodigies whose strict parents forced them to spend 4 hours at the piano every day, who were “persuaded” into the school of dentistry, or law, who wanted a “fun” course to take?  I had this piano tutor – ugh, she was a shrew – and (no doubt fuelled by my obvious disinterestedness and lack of commitment) one day told me, “Your hands are wrong.”  Apparently, according to her, I hold my fingers wrong at the keyboard.  Something about the tips of my fingers and the pads of my fingers.  Funny how the alleged deficiency escaped the notice of the examiners at the Royal Conservatory, but she was resolute in her insistence that I try it her way and bellyached about it c0nstantly.  It knocked my aptitude two grades lower and took my confidence with it, and I dropped the course shortly after.  So the song I wish I could play?  Anything along these lines:

day 12 - a song from your childhood

My propensity toward music-snobbery isn’t accidental, as those who know me well would surely bear witness.  It was genetically bestowed upon me through my Dad.  Along with his green eyes and short temper, I inherited from him an obsessive music fanatic chromosome.  I lost count of the amount of times my brother and I were plonked on the middle cushion of the sofa (that precise location of course being equal distance between the two speakers) while my Dad waxed lyrical/melodic/rhythmical/harmonious (delete as appropriate) trying to get us to hear the same thing that he heard.  It could have been a line of melody, it could have been a phrase with a particularly pretty harmony, a lyric, or a riff or a chord progression, whatever.  Much to his perpetual dismay, we never heard it – of course, our Dad’s music was Dad Music – but I get it now.  My friend Lindsay and I affectionately dub these “Rewinder Moments” – you know what I mean… when you find a part of a song that you think is so amazing that you can’t even get to the end of the song before you have to rewind back to the beginning and hear it again.  Anyway – what a long winded way of arriving to the point – the songs from my childhood I would choose:













And I’ve already linked to The Swimming Song by Loudon Wainwright here; but that song would be amongst these as well.

day 13 - your favourite song at this time last year

Well, that’s easy.  I just looked at my blog archives for the day closer to this date… turns out it was my post on Adam and the Ants that I was listening to this time last year.  

Stay tuned -- more later.

30 Day Song Challenge - Part Two

day 04 - a song that makes you sad
Well, this was easy. I spent a great deal of my formative years collecting songs that made me sad, so that I’d have a soundtrack to accompany all that bad poetry I was writing.

For a lot of years, I couldn’t listen to this first one. Let me give you a bit of context: if you check my Gig List, you’ll see that on 21 September 1996 I saw Pearl Jam in Toronto. That was the night my brother Jonathan died... and I link this song to that every single time I hear it. I’m okay with it now – sometimes I can listen, but sometimes I know when I have to switch it off.



Here’s another – Jason wants this playing at his funeral.



This one doesn’t exactly make me sad – but it certainly isn’t going to cheer me up if I’m feeling maudlin. It fits in with the other two.



day 05 - a song that reminds you of someone
I’m going to cheat with this one and refer you to this post about songs that remind me of girls, and this post about songs that remind me of boys.


day 06 - a song that reminds you of somewhere
Hmmmm.... lots of songs remind me of somewhere. Usually linked to what I was doing at the time and what songs I was listening to at the time. The whole of Swell’s “Too Many Days Without Thinking” reminds me of a trip to England I took in 1997. I rented this tiny little car, and had this album on a tape for those long drives.

If you don’t have this record – WHY NOT?! Go and download it at once. It’s one of my favourites ever, ever, ever. You know those records that you can’t choose just one song? That the whole thing, from start to finish, is bloody brilliant? Like The Stone Roses first album, and Radiohead’s “OK Computer”? This Swell CD is like that. Here’s a song from it:

day 07 - a song that reminds you of a certain event

Can you class an episiotomy as an event? Because I can feel my stitches when I hear this song. Just kidding – sorry to be gross... but it does remind me of when we brought Ben home from the hospital. We had been in hospital for about a week, and we finally were allowed to bring him home. We carried him into the flat, put his carseat on the floor of the living room and sat on the sofa, staring at him. Then I promptly burst into tears, and had a bit of a WHAT-THE-CRAP-DO-WE-DO-WITH-HIM-NOW type of outburst... and then Jason settled me down with this song and a cuddle. And then we ate Subway sandwiches.

day 08 - a song that you know all the words to

I know a lot of words to a lot of songs... but I am quite proud to say that I know all the words to this song, as there are so many of them.

LENN! ERD! BERN! STEIN!

day 09 - a song that you can dance to

If you happened to stray into Kitchener’s Club Abstract any Thursday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday night between oh... let’s say 1994 and 1998, and any of the following songs were playing, you’d find me on the dance floor.











Stay tuned -- more later.

30 Day Song Challenge - Part 1

Someone sent me a link to Facebook's "30 Day Song Challenge"... I thought I'd bring it over here, instead.  I'll do it over a few days.  It has been harder than I thought! 

day 01 - your favourite song
Tricky, tricky, tricky. No, I don’t mean this guy. I mean – how the crap do I choose? Impossible. In the immortal words of that nun chick from that movie with the nuns, “How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?” Here are a few that will always be right up there:













day 02 - your least favourite song
Well...it’s true what they say; there is a thin line between love and hate, right? So just as I struggle to choose a favourite song, I will likewise with my least favourite. So I’ll let you choose, if you like: log on to BBC Radio1 and whatever is playing now? I’ll choose that.

I’m very good at working out whether or not I don’t like something. What is slightly trickier is working out whether or not I do. Strangely enough, sometimes when I first hear something that I immediately like, it will wind up being one of those things I will eventually grow tired of, and be irritated by. And yet, some records towards which I felt an initial ambivalence will wind up being those you’ll find stuffed in my coffin around my cold, dead body. Weird, I know.

Here’s one that I definitely hate, and am definitely NOT going to change my mind about:



day 03 - a song that makes you happy
Here’s a couple – impossible to be pissed off if these are within listening distance:





I think that's enough for now... stay tuned