Skummy does 100 Songs

[Skummy]

I don't need to explain what this is. Everybody and their mother is doing it.

These are 100 of my favourite songs, two at a time, predominantly on a whim, in no particular order, with no underlying theme, just as and when they occur to me. Some you'll know, some you won't. I'm trying to limit myself to one song per artist as best I can, but perhaps I won't. Hopefully you'll enjoy.

1. Marianne Faithfull - "The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan"

It might not be an especially cool opinion, but I bloody love Marianne Faithfull. I could've chosen any number of her songs, but this one's been in fairly constant rotation for the last couple of weeks - I love her world-weary voice, and while I know it's a cover, this will always be Marianne's song to me. Her voice, combined with the melancholy lyrics and the general feeling of wasted opportunity is just utterly sublime.

2. Christopher Lee - "Name Your Poison"

And now for a complete change of pace. This song is taken from a fairly little-known movie called "The Return Of Captain Invincible" - here, the evil Mr. Midnight, portrayed by Christopher Lee, attempts to tempt recovering alcoholic superhero Captain Invincible to drink, through the power of song.

And what a song! It's written by Richard O'Brien and Richard Hartley, the team that created the music for The Rocky Horror Show so, naturally, it's camp, silly and utterly wonderful. It's catchy as hell, Christopher Lee's voice is absolutely magnificent - and he looks like he's having a blast too - and the lyrics are brilliant. I don't think you could fit more amazing booze puns in to one song if you tried.

It's daft, it's camp, but I love it. I could probably listen to this song ten times a day and never get bored of it.

[SRN]

I am going to keep an eye on this based on the fact you have a great taste in music. Also, I need to watch "The Return of Captain Invincible".

Also, you need to bring back your podcast.

[Skummy]

3. Lush - "Ladykillers"

One of my few forays into the world of Britpop. I bloody love Lush, and especially this song. The riff is awesome, the lyrics are biting and hilarious, and it's infinitely more "GIRL POWER~!" than half the consciously feminist Riot Grrrl stuff around at the same time. More than anything, though, this is just a fantastic piece of pop/rock, and it's a whole lot of fun.

4. Bob Dylan - "Idiot Wind"

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

May as well get Dylan out of the way early. I could've picked any number of songs, but I always find him at his best when he's spiteful, and this is an absolute masterpiece of bitterness.

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

Ahhh Lush. Splendid.

[Skummy]

5. Townes Van Zandt - Rake

Grifter isn't the only one with reason to put this guy in his list. I fucking love Townes - there's not another songwriter in the world that's ever tapped into that essential melancholy at the heart of man, that abstract sadness. This is another song of regret, of mistakes made, of a life spent indulging and being forced to repent, or at least to face up to the consequences of the life you've chosen to live...it's absolutely beautiful, and with some of the finest lyrics of any song. A little while ago in the Thread Formerly Known As The Whiny Bitch Relationship Thread, somebody said I was the closest thing EWB has to a "Rake" - and this song has always touched me, in an indefinable way.

6. Morphine - Top Floor, Bottom Buzzer

Honestly, I could have picked almost any Morphine song - and I'm not sure I can do them justice with just one. They're a band I tend to listen to for a prolonged period of time, and just lose myself in their unique sound. Mark Sandman, God rest him, is the greatest bassist of all time, and the only musician to ever single-handedly convince me to buy and attempt to learn to play an instrument, my beaten up old bass guitar (formerly owned by Kip Winger, of Winger fame, incidentally), perpetually having only two strings. There is just no better combination of musicians than Mark Sandman - his two-string, fretless bass - and Dana Colley's baritone sax, it's the greatest sound in the world, and it's criminal that this band have been all but forgotten. One of my favourites.

[METALMAN]

Rake is AMAZING, as is Idiot Wind. And the Marianne Faithfull tune. Don't know the rest but I'll no doubt like them as well. Keep meaning to put the Christopher Lee album on at work but every time it occurs to me I find out someone has bought it meaning I have to order it in again (it's not one we stock by default) and by the time it arrives I've inevitably forgotten.

[SRN]

Seriously, there is way too much good music that I don't know exist. This is what you get for being a secluded metalhead for the most of your life. Great list, man. Also, fun fact, the bassist of danish rock-band D.A.D also plays with only two strings. The more you know, and stuff like that.

[Skummy]

7. Mahmoud Ahmed - Era Mela Mela

I have literally no idea what this song is about, but that intro is sublime. Just incredibly soulful and moving, which in itself earns it a place on the list.

8. The Guild League - Dead Hour

The Guild League are an offshoot of possibly my all-time favourite band, The Lucksmiths. And for a long time, that was the main point of interest for me - and then, I heard this. Genuinely one of the most phenomenal, well-written songs I have ever heard. As with latter day Lucksmiths, Tali seems to proud himself on fantastic wordplay and on the use of words that you just don't expect to hear in songs, but nowadays it almost never sounds forced. Musically, this song is nigh-on perfect, but it's the lyrics that make it; it resonates with me very deeply, but I couldn't put a finger on exactly what it's "about"...it takes in loneliness, despair, and all that fun stuff, but also so much more. A couple of snippets of lyrics that just amaze me;

"There will be no further comment

No defiant fist will lift

These capitulating eyes will lower

Feet will shift and

To the lone thoughtful orator

We will give the shortest shrift

And let the soundbites eat the heart out

Of these lives that are a gift"

"But could you try, when I die

To paint my shadow on the wall

And when these organs are defeated

Give the doctor free-for-all

Oh cut me out, cut me up

Little bits of me live on

In drops of paint upon a wall, in lines of song"

[Skummy]

9. Madness - The Liberty Of Norton Folgate

If you'd told me a year or two ago that a ten minute Madness song even existed, nevermind would make my Top 100, I'd have laughed derisively in your general direction. But this is phenomenal - a musical journey through a quasi-historical old London town, it reminds me of the fantastic, surreal old James Mason documentary "The London Nobody Knows", of The Kinks at their most inspired, and of old pubs, forgotten cobbled streets and of Soho at night. When a music critic describes something as being "quintessentially English", they generally mean that it's vaguely quirky indie pop with a nod to The Smiths - this, though, is the real thing.

Fun Skumfrog Fact #1: A week before I bought this album, at which point I was almost entirely indifferent to Madness, I had a night out with Suggs' mother.

10. The Melvins & Foetus - Mine Is No Disgrace

Probably one of, if not the, heaviest song on the list, and certainly the only to make explicit reference to the raping of a nun. This song is utterly mind-blowing, and shows all these young whippersnappers how you do heavy rock/metal properly - just building gradually to an absolutely gorgeous cacophony of noise.

A fantastic marriage of lyrics and music, too, with the lyrics ranging from moving to disturbed, to confessional, and all the way back, yet always feeling very much like the thoughts of one man, so that the more disturbing elements (the aforementioned nun rape) exist as a fantasy, a manifestation of his desperation and loneliness, rather than the shock factor you'd normally expect such imagery to illicit in a heavy metal song.

Take notes, kids.