Time for a list!

This couldn't be a 'blokes talking about music' sort of thing if there wasn't a list in it.

Probably several lists. And we haven't had one yet.

So it must be time for My Top Ten Favourite Albums!

Top five would be pretty easy - top ten I'm not sure about. We'll get going and see what happens...

1. Mike Oldfield - Five Miles Out

Simply no contest. My favourite album since I first got it back in 1982. The perfect combination of the side-long 'Taurus II', and the four songs on side 2. Helps that the title track is my favourite song ever.

2. Rush - Power Windows

My favourite album by my favourite band. Only eight songs, but every one of them is top drawer. A lot of Rush fans are a bit sniffy about the 80's 'synths and pushed-up jacket sleeves' phase, but this, for me is superlative stuff. Also contains my second favourite song ever, Marathon.

3. Marillion - Seasons End

Getting a bit tricky now. Three - Six could conceivably be in any order, depending on what day of the week it is. This was a slow grower. Steve Hogarth's first album with Marillion after Fish's departure, and for me, never bettered.

4. Jennifer Warnes - Famous Blue Raincoat

A lot of people like Leonard Cohen - he's in the midst of a bit of a revival at the moment. Other people consider him a miserable old bloke that you shouldn't listen to if you're feeling a bit depressed. Me, I think he's great. This, however, is a collection of nine Cohen songs covered by Jennifer Warnes, (best known for 'Up Where We Belong' with Joe Cocker) and to my mind, everyone of them is better than the original.

And the originals are pretty good.

5. Laurie Anderson - Strange Angels

I remember this as clear as if it were yesterday. I used to work up near Oxford St in central London, and one evening after work in 1989 I was walking down Carnaby St. There was a small, bijou record shop (long gone now), and the first thing that struck me was that it was the only time I'd been in a 'record' shop that only sold CDs. No vinyl, no tapes. (This was 1989, remember.)

The second thing that struck me was that whatever they were playing, I had to have it. I marched straight up to the counter, pointed at the ceiling (as you do when indicating music, wherever it may be emanating from), and said 'Whatever this is, I'll take a copy please.'

It turned out to be 'Hiawatha' from 'Strange Angels'.

To Be Continued...

Schadenfreude...

We'll get to the schadenfreude in a minute. First off, some classic rock.

I don't remember which day this was (at the moment I'm writing this retrospectively - I keep a list of what Shuffleman throws up, but I'm a few weeks behind at the moment), but I can only hope it wasn't an early start.

I like easing into my day, and great though it is, I think I would have had a hard time at 8.00 in the morning, faced with Meat Loaf - Hits Out Of Hell.

Hits... consists of roughly half of the epic 'Bat Out Of Hell', half of 'Dead Ringer', plus a couple of others from later albums. They're written, produced and partly performed by one man - Jim Steinman. Mr Steinman takes a similar view of production to Phil Spector : start with two of everything, turn them up to full volume and then start adding things.

Over the top is just a starting point.

With a couple of exceptions (Modern Girl and Razor's Edge are ok, but they'll never be classics), this album is packed full of the stuff of legend. Bat Out Of Hell, Dead Ringer For Love, Read 'Em And Weep and the baseball-as-sex metaphor that is Paradise By The Dashboard Light.

Assuming that this was sometime after 11.00am, then it would have been great, so gets:

DSP rating - 8

Next up, a bit of an unknown quantity.

Quite often, if I find a good album by a new (to me) artist, I'll go and track down some of their other stuff. And this was the case here. I can't remember what made me buy 'Your Little Secret', maybe a good magazine review, maybe heard it playing in shop, but I bought it. And it was great. So I picked up a couple of earlier albums by the same artist, which was how, courtesy of Mr Holmes, I came to be listening to 'Melissa Etheridge - Yes I Am'.

Whereas I'd played Your Little Secret to death, I'd never really got round to listening to the other two, so this was new(ish) to me.

And just goes to prove what great taste I've got!

It rocked! Ms Etheridge plays a solid, no-nonsense style of music, with a combination of balls-to-the-wall rockers and moody vignettes of small town life.

This is the sort of thing that makes Shuffleman work. I probably wouldn't have deliberately picked this one out of the rack before, but I certainly will now.

DSP rating - 7

Now. The aforementioned schadenfreude.

I don't know if you've ever seen the musical 'Avenue Q' (if you haven't I can highly recommend it, it's an adult 'Sesame St', and hilarious to boot - just leave the kids at home), but one of the songs in it is called 'Schadenfreude'. There's some dialogue, mid-song, that goes:

Oh. Schadenfreude, huh? What's that? Some kind of Nazi word?

Yup. It's German for 'happiness at the misfortune of others.'

Happiness at the misfortune of others. That is German!

Now I'm not saying that Matt's a Nazi. But he would have had a choice of five albums. And if I remember rightly, he checked with me to make sure that this was what he thought it was.

And it was.

Brass To The Fore is another one of those boxed sets, like the previously mentioned Irish Folk Collection, where I'd bought it for Hospital Radio so I could play the odd track.

42 songs and two and half hours...

It took a while to get through.

DSP rating - 3

A good day! Mostly...

I like big, serious rock music, made by big, serious artists. Groups of men, often with beards and serious expressions, who spend three weeks in the studio getting just the right bass drum sound. Or more likely, sitting around drinking coffee while an engineer gets just the right bass drum sound. These are people who make albums that need to be listened to properly. I spent many years putting my hi-fi system together, and I would make sure that I was sitting up straight on the sofa, because my head needed to be in exactly the right spot for perfect stereo reproduction.

So what did I start of with when I got I to work on this particular morning?

Kylie Minogue - Greatest Hits

And not even a good Greatest Hits...

This was one of those £3.99-in-a-sale things that contained, for the most part, the sort of stuff that she churned out when she was working with Stock, Aitken & Waterman. If 'Locomotion' popped up at a party, you'd jig around for a couple of minutes. If you were at a wedding and the DJ put 'Step Back In Time' on, you'd probably dance around in an ironic fashion.

But this was an hour and twenty minutes of the same song over and over again. SAW must have gone through about three drum machines a week...

DSP rating - 3

But then things picked up.

Marillion aren't everybody's cup of tea. Prog-rockers with a Genesis fixation. A band who holds three day gigs at off-season holiday camps. A bunch that have funded recent albums by getting the fans to stump up the cash before the band have been anywhere near a studio.

They're an easy target for ridicule.

But I'm in the 'Really quite like them' camp. As Marillion enthusiasts go, this means that I barely register on the fan-o-meter. Marillion fans are dedicated to the cause in a big way.

The other thing that makes Marillion stand out, apart from their extraordinarily zealous fans, is the fact that they survived the loss of their lead singer.

To say that Fish was a larger than life character would have been putting it mildly, and he sang and wrote for the band from their formation in 1979 until he left, after four albums, in 1988.

He was replaced in 1989 by Steve Hogarth, who has been with them for 21 years and eleven albums.

It is a mark of the impact that Fish had, that despite the above statistics, many people, myself included, still think of Steve Hogarth as 'the new guy'.

So what had Matt picked out? Old Marillion or new Marillion?

As it turned out, it was Fish's swansong, 'Clutching At Straws'.

This has always been overshadowed by the album that came before it - Misplaced Childhood. Ask most people to name a Marillion song - and assuming that they're not a fan (who will promptly reel off everything they've ever done), most people will either look at you blankly, or say 'Kayleigh', the huge hit from Misplaced Childhood.

Interesting trivia note : 'Kayleigh' wasn't simply a girl's name that Fish used for a song title - he actually created it. There are a number of 20-something girls out there who have Derek Dick to thank for their name...

Anyway, back to Clutching At Straws.

It's one of those albums that I hadn't listened to much. I was familiar with the single, Incommunicado (which contains one of my favourite Marillion lines "I've got an allergy to Perrier, daylight and responsibility") but not really much else.

Something of a revelation! A good, solid album full of great songs and proper musicianship, and topped off by finishing with an absolute corker - 'The Last Straw : Happy Ending".

Fish clearly went out on a high note!

DSP rating - 8

And we were clearly on a roll on this particularly day! A million miles away from prog, but great all the same...

One-Hit Wonders Vol. 5 (1977-1979)

This was a bargain! An eight CD set of 160 one-hit wonders, stretching from 1960 to 1993 - all originals, and mostly great. I think I paid about £6.00 for it.

(Crikey! I've just checked it on Amazon - it's out of print and used copies are going for £40!)

Vol 5 had some gems. 'Dancing In The City' by Marshall Hain? Cheesy? Hell yes, but great pop. 'My Sharona' by the Knack! Slightly dodgy sentiment, but a classic tune. 'Baker Street' by Gerry Rafferty, with one of the greatest sax breaks ever.

But the pick of the bunch? Not the most well known song, but one of my all time favourites...

'Substitute' by Clout.

If you don't know it, go and get yourself a copy, now!

DSP rating - 8

And the last album of the day...

I'm not sure whether this would make it into my top 10 favourite albums of all time, but it would certainly be in with a shout.

A bunch of West Coast session musicians who decided to put a band together. One of my (and indeed most drummers) favourite drummers - the late, lamented Jeff Porcaro.

Basically a bunch of guys who have sold millions of records, but could walk past you on the street unrecognised.

Figured it out yet?

Toto - Toto IV

Plenty of people would write them off as middle-of-the-road and bland. People who know music though, know just how good they were. And IV was probably their finest moment.

There were two big hit singles - 'Africa', and the song that a thousand drummers listened to, to try and work out just how that shuffle went - 'Rosanna'.

Truth be told, there isn't a duff track on here. I had this album on vinyl when it first came out in 1982, I've bought another copy on CD, and when I moved in with Katie, it was one of the few albums that we both had a copy of.

I can listen to this album at any time - it's great driving music, it's great party music, it's just great music.

Good way to finish the day.

DSP rating - 10

Blues, Rock 'n' Reggae...

Another day, another few pickles out of the jar.

Sometimes, when Matt and I pick an album, we'll see something popular and avoid it, in favour of something more obscure. This doesn't always work out as desired, as what's obscure to him isn't necessarily obscure to me, and vice-versa.

But occasionally you see a title pop up and think 'Yes! You're not missing out on that.' And (if memory serves correctly), that's how I ended up with the soundtrack to 'Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead'. A great film, with a dirty blues soundtrack.

Which reminds me...

When Katie & I started seeing each other, one of the things that we had in common was a love of music, and a track that we both liked was 'One Foot On The Path' by Kenny Wayne Shepherd, a sickeningly talented young blues guitarist from the States. Katie asked me to make her up a CD of 'stuff like that', which I did. And one of the tracks I put on the CD was from this soundtrack. It was 'Get Out Of Denver' by Blues Traveler (yes, they do spell it with just one 'l').

She hated it.

Well, that track anyway. No accounting for taste...

But as a soundtrack, it's great. Anything with Tom Waits on is going to be pretty good, but other highlights are 'Thrill Is Gone' by Dishwalla, the lazy riff of Jimmy Reed's 'Take Some Insurance Out On Me Baby' and the title track by the late, great and sorely underrated Warren Zevon.

It also has 'Folsom Prison Blues' by Johnny Cash. I need say no more.

DSP rating - 8

Well that was a good rocking start to the day! What's next?

Oh yes!

I introduced Matt to this lot a while back and he recognised class when he saw it. 'Mouthful Of Love' by Young Heart Attack.

YHA hail from Austin, Texas, were formed in 2001 and clearly have never heard any records made after 1975. This is old-school, screaming, guitar-thrashing rock. Short and sweet, the whole album clocks in at just over half an hour.

And you get knackered just listening to it.

It rocks!

DSP rating - 9

There's a line from the late-lamented Douglas Adams in one of the Hitch Hikers Guide books that seems quite appropriate at this point. It goes something like...

'You're driving along, feeling pretty good about yourself. You pass a few hard-driving cars when suddenly you change down from fourth to first instead of third and the engine leaps out of the bonnet in an ugly manner.'

This was that sort of abrupt.

As previously mentioned, I've got some... odd stuff on the iPod. Ages ago, one December, I heard Jonathan Ross playing a reggae version of a Christmas song - I don't remember which. But I did note that it was from 'The Trojan Christmas Box Set'.

And I found it. And it was a bargain. And so I bought it.

Matt seems drawn to this stuff. It's like 'that sounds bizarre / odd / awful - I'm going to make you listen to it'.

Fortunately it was December, and I'm a bit partial to Christmas music.

But even so.

50 songs...

Three hours, eight minutes...

It did get a bit much by the end.

DSP rating - 5

Into every life a little rain must fall...

Some days are better than others. The last time we looked, I'd just had a day full of corking albums. But as rain follows sun, Ying follows Yang and dogs follow you if you have a biscuit, then there was probably going to be some less than great tunes on the horizon.

This was that day.

So we spin the wheel, and what do we kick off with?

Dixie Chicks - Wide Open Spaces

I think I've mentioned this, but both Matt and I have stuff on our iPod that belongs to our better halves. And this was one of mine. Or rather, not one of mine. One of Katie's.

Country music. There's an old joke about it that goes:

What do you get if you play Country music backwards?

You get your house back, your wife back, you sober up and your dog returns from the dead.

For years, country music was the sole preserve of chaps who dressed like cowboys, strummed acoustc guitars and sang with a particular nasal twang. But a few years back a new trend emerged.

Young women.

I blame Shania Twain myself.

Suddenly there's lots of young girls playing fiddles, (or is it violins? What is the difference between a fiddle and a violin?), guitars and so on, singing about whatever it is that country singers bang on about.

It was ok. A bit overproduced, but some half decent tunes. All of which doesn't go down particularly well in Nashville apparently - not proper, but there you go.

DSP rating - 6

Surely things would look up after this? Well sort of...

Leftfield - Rhythm & Stealth

It's serious dance music, as opposed to, say, something like D.I.S.C.O. by Ottowan.

I bought it because it had Phat Planet on it. Well that and the fact that I'd bought their first album and quite liked it.

You'll know Phat Planet, even if you don't recognise the title.

Remember that Guinness advert? The one with the grizzled old surfer?

Something about sitting and waiting, because that's what he does? And then he finally goes out into the breakers, and there's all these CGI horses out there too?

And all the time, there's these heavily processed drums, going Dum de da dum de da da. Dum de da dum de da da.

Well that's Phat Planet.

I don't think I'd heard the rest of the album for ages. On reflection, I think I was pleasantly surprised.

DSP rating - 7

Ok, so maybe things are actually looking up!

Or maybe not.

Another of my beloved's CD's. And it made the Dixie Chicks look like Beethoven.

Let Loose - Let Loose

Oh dear...

Matt chose this because, apparently, they played a gig in his home town of Lowestoft and about eight people turned up. I may have got this wrong - I'm sure he'll correct me if he ever turns up.

Now to be fair, I quite liked the single, Crazy For You. It was catchy, in a disposable pop kind of way. Sadly the rest of the album was just disposable. I sat through it, because that's how Shuffleman works.

But I didn't enjoy it.

DSP rating - 4

Right. Time for one more today - let's make it a corker!

Hmmm.

William Orbit - Pieces In A Modern Style

William Orbit, or William Wainwright as they probably still call him at home, has been around for a while, but probably came to most people's attention when he worked with Madonna on her Ray Of Light album. You may remember the single 'Frozen'. It had a very distinctive style - a sort of electronica / strings mash up type of affair.

This was Mr Orbit's doing, and appears to be his signature style. This particular album is a collection of fairly faithful renditions of classical pieces, done with electronics. I have a String Quartet doing the entire 'Back In Black' album by AC/DC.

This is nothing like that.

I have to say I quite like it in small doses, particularly as it has two of my favourite classical pieces on it - Barber's Adagio For Strings, and Mascagni's 'Cavalleria Rusticana'.

As an hour's worth of music though? It would be great as something on in the background, or something to shut your eyes to if you'd just come in after a hard day, but it's not really something that you'd want to listen to, from end to end.

Even so, I give it a DSP rating - 7

Meanwhile, on an iPod in another part of town...

If you read the introduction to this blog (it's up there on right, go on, have a look), you will know that the Shuffleman project is a two-man operation. Indeed, if roles were being awarded then I would be 'Goose' to Matt's 'Maverick', being as this whole thing was his idea.

So you may be wondering why it is that this has all been a bit one-sided so far, with me describing the soundtracks to my days, and Matt being rather silent on the whole thing.

He'll probably show up at some point, with some nonsense about trying to move house, and being busy and so on.

Yeah, right.

Obviously all the time Matt's picking albums for me, I'm picking one for him. Not one for one obviously - he must have had four or five while I was ploughing through that Irish Folk thing - but he's had plenty.

And that gives me a little window into his world. A couple of times a day, he gives me five albums to choose from. Now I don't know about you, but when I visit someone's house, if I get the opportunty to trawl through their record collection then I do.

It gives you an insight into their personality in a way that few other things do, as music's a very individual thing. If you find half a dozen 'Now That's What I Call Music...' CD's and a Jamie Cullum album, then you can be fairly sure that they don't like music at all - they just want some background noise at dinner parties.

So gradually I've been building up a picture of Matt's iPod.

And it's not good...

I'd estimate that it consists of:

30% Chillout

25% Indie/Pop from 1985 - 2005

15% Rap / R&B

15% Urban

15% Mr Scruff

The Indie pop is largely ok. The Rap/R&B/Urban is not to my taste, but it seems to be good quality examples of the genre. I can't knock the Chillout - courtesy of my wife, I have a handful of Chillout albums on the little white box, and now and again it's good to have some relaxing

background 'choons', but he seems to have tons of the stuff!

But Mr Scruff...

I've never heard of Mr Scruff. The first time (and indeed, for comedy value, every subsequent time) he came up, I had to ask 'Who the hell is Mr Scruff?' Matt pointed me to his wiki, which you can find here. He seems to be one of these DJ people who seems to want some sort of credit for playing other people's music!

Let's get something straight. I own a CD player and a pile of CD's. That does NOT make me a musician, any more than being able to walk into a supermarket and buy a cake makes me Mr Kipling!

This is a quote from Mr Scruff, or as his mother calls him, Andy Carthy.

"It’s about putting a lot of effort in and paying attention to detail. I get annoyed if I don’t take risks. I’m very hard on myself."

You. Buy. CDs. And. You. Play. Them. To. People.

Effort? Attention to detail? Taking Risks?

F&%$ Off!

Sorry. I don't have much time for DJ's, even if they do try to set themselves apart from the crowd by brewing and selling tea at his shows, as Mr Scruff does.

Watch out! He's ker-azy!

Reading that back, maybe it was a little harsh. After all, if a proper musician gets a sale because somebody heard one of their songs at a Mr Scruff 'gig', then I guess it's a good thing.

But why Matt has a pile of CDs of some bloke playing other people's music is beyond me. Although it maybe that it's actually Mr Scruff remixes of other songs.*

In any event - Holmes! Sort your record collection out!

Hilariously, he said the other day that he has some new music coming.

Including James Blunt.

Oh I can't wait for that to turn up...

* Remix : To take a perfectly good song and make it worse. Indeed, in some cases making it completely unidentifiable as the original tune. I don't think I've ever heard a remix that improved on the original.

That'll do, pig.

Another day, another selection.

Sometimes I get into work buzzing, and I think 'Let's have a bit of rock, or something that's really motoring.' Other times, to borrow a phrase from my wife, 'I'm not quite ready for my day.' And this was one of those days.

Music can really jar if you're not in the mood for it. Something slow and quiet when you're fired up can be as irritating as loud music when you've got a headache.

Interestingly (well, to me anyway), I remember reading something about this ages ago. If you want to use music to change your (or somebody else's) mood, the trick is to match the mood, then slowly alter it.

So if you're furious about something, putting on some relaxing Cowboy Junkies or similar is likely to exacerbate the problem.

But put something shouty like Iron Maiden on and you'll probably enjoy shouting along for a track or two. Then take it down a notch - maybe some Bon Jovi or Bryan Adams (the rocky stuff, not the ballads) - then a few tracks later, take it down again.

In half an hour you can go from hopping mad to chilled out.

Trust me! It works.

Anyway, like Ronnie Corbett in that bit of the Two Ronnies where he sits in the chair and tells a long, rambling story, I digress.

I'd come in, and I could have done with something easy on the ears. But it wasn't my choice.

I threw the five over to Matt and waited to see what he'd pick. And as luck would have it, he picked a good 'un!

I like film soundtracks. Sometimes I buy them specifically because I like the music, other times I'll buy them as they're a great reminder of a good film. This was a bit of both.

Babe. The one about the pig that's brought up as a sheepdog.

It's got a great mix of 'proper soundtrack music', and songs. Although many of the songs were sung by the farmyard animals, the mice being particular stars - "If I Had Words" sounds like a UB40 song being sung by Pinky & Perky on helium.

Which isn't as bad as it sounds.

Anyway - good start to the day.

DSP rating - 7

And I stayed on a film theme for the next album, 'Simply The Best Movie Album, Ever'.

Modesty clearly has no place in a music marketing department...

This was a mixed bag of songs from recent-ish films. The entertainment industry has become a very incestuous affair in the last 30 years or so, with songs promoting films and the films being used as videos for the songs (which almost certainly come from artists who just happen to have a new album coming out).

Some are huge - I suspect there are more people who own the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack than have seen the film.

And Top Gun, which ought to carry a health warning, given the amount of cheese it contains, is fantastic. This was soundtrack-put-out-to-tender. The film was almost complete and a good way through the editing suite when the studio touted scenes from the film and asked artists to turn up and 'audition' songs. Kenny Loggins did very well out of it. Not only did he sing the main theme - 'Danger Zone', which was written with Giorgio Moroder, but he also had 'Playing With The Boys', for the volleyball scene. He said he chose that particular one because he thought that not many other people would.

Takes all the romance out of the movies, doesn't it?

Anyway - good CD.

DSP rating - 7

Now we're talking...

The greatest band in the world - and this is not my opinion, this is FACT! - is Rush.

If you've not heard of them, they're a Canadian prog-rock power trio, and they're the greatest band in the world. Nip over to Amazon and buy their entire back catalogue (it's quite big, they've been going since 1974) - I can wait.

Back?

Rush vary between very, very good and excellent, although as I am completely unbiased, I can see that not all of their output is stellar. A few years ago they put out an album called Vapor Trails, and it was heavy on the riffs and light on the tunes. Not one of my favourites.

Though if you read up on what had happened to the band in the prevous five years, it was a small miracle that we got an album at all.

Anyway. Since then, they have most certainly got back in the groove, and the last album, Snakes & Arrows, from 2007 is the best thing they've done in years.

It's safe to say that the three of them are getting on a bit. I went to see them live in 1988, and again in 1992. And then it all went a bit quiet. Their European follwing isn't huge compared to the States, and for a while it wasn't commercially viable for them to tour over here.

But then, in 2005, they rolled the R30 Thirtieth Anniversary Tour into Europe, and more interestingly for me, to Wembley Arena.

For two nights.

One of which was my wife Katie's birthday.

Katie was going to have lots more birthdays... these guys might announce their retirement at the end of the tour!

So we went.

Both nights.

And then as luck would have it, two years later - they were back.

At Wembley.

For two nights.

Over Katie's birthday...

Clearly the likelihood of this being their last tour of the UK had increased.

So we went again.

Both nights.*

And this time the album they were promoting was Snakes & Arrows. Some time later, they put out 'Snakes & Arrows - Live', and some time after that, Matt picked it as my next Shuffleman album.

It's great. Really great. Really, really... well you get the idea.

Fantastic music, staggering musicianship, great lyrics.

And a drum solo.

DSP rating - 10 (like it was going to be anything else)

Well, well, well. Matt was clearly on a roll today! He was flying blind as he had, by his own admission, got no idea who this lot were or what the album was like, but it was another top pick.

Interestingly, fact fans, I had no idea what this album was like when I bought it, in HMV in Enfield. It's one of only two albums that I've bought solely on the strength of the cover, knowing nothing at all about the artists at all.

It was... Magnum - On A Storytellers Night.

Another slice of prog, though from Birmingham rather than Toronto this time. This is probably (though I'm willing to be corrected), Magnum's finest hour. It has a Swords & sorcery / faires & goblins feel to it, though that's probably more down to the cover than anything else. A good slab of tunes, from hard rock to some lighter-waving ballads.

DSP rating - 8

(The other album I picked up on the cover alone, if you were wondering, was Warren Zevon's 'Transverse City')

* For those who think that I've been incredibly mean to my beloved, Katie does actually like Rush.

A bit.