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Though it’s officially springtime, celebrating the sunshine I find myself paradoxically listeing to Paddy Casey’s Ancient Sorrow (rather than the more appropriate Sunnyside of the Street by the Pogues) - a song that, with a brave production that highlights the voices of Casey and the real foundation given by the soulful singing of Terry Sutton. It’s a song that manages to be profound because of the production and performance, rather than because of its banal lyrics.

What’s this got to do with Paul Brady? Well, that ancient sorrow tapped into by Casey and Sutton lives and breathes in Brady’s unmistakable voice. Listen to him sing his pre-Celtic Tiger immigrant songs - in particular Nothing but the same old story, or the majestic (and, once again, banal) Homes of Donegal - and you have a voice that conveys history and all the reasons we choose to sing the blues.

And, though it’s long since been snatched by the supermarket/dinner party moozak brigade thanks to its simple melody, his 1985 hit The Island is one of his finest moments (before you get all hot and bothered, that’s not to dismiss Hard Station, or his work with Andy Irvine).

A songwriter dismissed by many of his contemporaries for the twin sins of a) remaining silent during the Hunger Strikes protests, and b) selling songs for big bucks to stars like Tina Turner and Bonnie Raitt - sins from a small Island where Independence is sanctified but independent spirits are, more often than not,  scorned.

The Island was a two-fingered risposte delivered in a honed, radio-friendly ballad that packs as political a punch as anything ever done by any of his more vocally flag-bearing peers (not looking at anyone in particular, Mr Moore). And it all rests on his voice, and that ancient sorrow we’re talking about. But, in this case it’s not just production and performance, with a set of lyrics that - taut as a tripwire - are anything but banal

Well I guess us plain folks dont see all the story
and I suppose this peace and love is just copping out
and I know that young boys dying in the ditches
is just what being free is all about

And all sung in a time when rebel songs were sung like hymns, but the notion of singing ‘we’ll make love to the sound of the Ocean’ outraged the theo-fascists.

Amongst the many half-baked explanations for Dublin band Something Happens’ inexplicable lack of global success, back in 1990, with the superb Stuck Together With God’s Glue is one that focusses entirely on lead singer Tom Dunne’s paisley shirt collection.

There may be some truth to it (take a look at the video below), but it’s an unfortunate theory, because the paisley shirts actually revealed a deeper truth. Something Happens were one of the bands that, in the ’90s, ushered in the ’60s’ most important conquests to Ireland - Sex and Pop.

The sexual revolution had passed the Republic by back in the ’60s, thanks to a Catholic-minded legislature that made sure that foreign filth like the pill remained foreign. It was only in 1979 that a bill was introduced allowing chemists to sell contraceptives, and even then only on the presentation of a doctor’s prescription certifying that the said items were for bona fide family planning purposes (not, God and Government forbid. for the purpose of pleasure!). A new bill, hotly contested by the hot and bothered, was introduced in 1985 allowing for the sale of condoms, by chemists, to adults. 

In 1990’s economically depressed Dublin condoms were, as they say, a bit thin on the ground. And it’s against that background that the Happens’ second album came out - a potent mix of pop tunes marked by Ray Harman’s ‘electric’ guitar playing and Tom Dunne’s way with words. And while the album will be chiefly remembered for the hits ‘Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello,Hello (petrol)‘ - listed by the NME that year in their top fifty singles - and ‘Parachute‘ - a light hearted love song floating on a wing and a creaky metaphor, the song that keeps me coming back is The Devil in Miss Jones - the song that most aptly sums up this album driven by lust and catholic guilt.

The Happens were the first band to make me realise that having guitars on a track didn’t have to make it ‘heavy’, in fact - as with most of their songs - the opening chords here are giddily light. When the keyboards and lead guitar kick in seconds later it’s like an explosion of colour (back to the paisley shirts then) and the mood is good. You’d be hard put to realise that the song’s title is taken from / shared with a ’70s porn film, as opposed to the 1941 Oscar nominated The Devil and Miss Jones (directed by Sam Wood). But it is, and there’s the rub.

“From the guy at the back with love
to the girl up there
to the devil in miss Jones
even if I only stare”

The greatest things about this song (in no order of preference):

1) It has a melody so brilliant that they didn’t bother to have a sung chorus

2) The lyrics -always under-rated, perhaps because the band were always so tongue in cheek - are stunning. They managed to mix melancholy and frustration with a mischievous glint in the eye. Genius.

3) The song builds up to a rocking frenzy that  Onan would be proud of - the song takes on the subject matter, and runs with it

4) Related to the above - this is the sound of tight band pushing and over-reaching. The rhythm section of Alan Byrne and Eamonn Ryan  up the ante of the song perfectly to its logical conclusion.

Perhaps the best song on what is certainly one of the most under-rated albums ever.

(couldn’t find a video for it, unfortunately - so here’s the video for Hellox5 Petrol instead)

There’s an oldish interview with Glen Hansard (the frames / swell season) in TMO, where he talks about poetry, saying “Poetry stirs the blood. Poetry makes men go to war. If you listen to any of the speeches from Bush or the statements from Al-Qaeda, it’s all poetry, and that’s what makes men kill. ”

I heard the news today, oh  boy, and amidst security council vetoes, schools being bombed, and the inability to do anything, I’ve momentarily lost my appetite for singers singing songs. 

Offering a moment of peace and reflectionis the Italian pianist Giovanni Allevi, with his melancholy and beautiful track Back to Life. Allevi, a shy and akward composer who has touched a chord with a wide and diverse audience in his native Italy, plays music that would be classified by the short-sighted as ‘classical’ but it transcends boundaries and snobbish pigeonholes.

Just what’s needed in these dark days. (if you feel like doing something, how about signing the avaaz petition ‘stop the bloodshed in Gaza‘)

The Rolling Stones have, with a few honourable exceptions (sympathy for the devil, and perhaps Street Fighting Man), had very little of consequence to say over their lengthy career. It’s the skill and swing with which they’ve presented their unbearably light offerings that has made them one of the greatest rock n’roll bands of all time, and of this there is no better example than Waiting on a Friend from 1981’s Stones album Tattoo You.

The song was, in actual fact, first developed during the Goat’s Head Soup sessions ten years earlier, while Mick Taylor was still in the band - and his guitar overdubs, while not directly credited, made it through to the later sessions when Producer Chris Kimsey (who had engineered Sticky Fingers, without doubt the Stones’ finest album - forget the orthodox claptrap that values Exile on Main St above all else) resurrected the song. This song, along with the upbeat Start me up were the saving graces on Tattoo You, a cynically conceived album of out-takes put out to justify a lucrative Stones tour.

Amidst all the great Stones moments from the seventies, this song stands out for two different reasons. The first, a sentimental one. The song was initially shelved in the early seventies because there were no lyrics - Jagger then came through with a lyric dedicated to friendship precisely at a time when relationships within the band had broken down. A genuinely touching lyric, valuing frienship over womanising, coupled with a Michael Lindsay-Hogg video shot in New York’s St.Mark’s Place (with Peter Tosh hanging out, for good measure) made an impression with fans everywhere, perhaps overly worried about the band’s future.

The second reason, though, is purely musical and highlights the band’s overlooked key strength as musical directors (though the more cynical might use the word ‘profiteers’ instead). This song is dominated on the surface by the iconography of the Jaggers/Richards relationship, but the best music is provided by guests who - with the notable exception of Taylor - never made it as ‘official stones’. The first thing you hear on the record, after Taylor’s simple and effective guitar intro, is the gentle and soothing piano of Nicky Hopkins, perhaps the most influential session player ever. Hopkins had a long association with the Stones, first playing with them during the sixties, and contributed to albums by the Beatles, The Who, The Kinks, The Small Faces, and the Jeff Beck group amongst others. His piano sets the tone - which is as close as one can aurally get to an early summer’s evening - for the song, setting up a framework for the other musicians to converse.

The other important voice on the song is the heart-stopping saxophone playing by Theodore Walter “Sonny” Rollins, one of the Jazz world’s finest tenor saxophonists, who had come to prominence in the fifties with Miles Davis in the Modern Jazz Quartet. When his voice breaks in to the song at the one minute fifty six second mark the song has well and truly arrived, as if all this waiting was not about Jagger waiting for Richards, or Richards waiting for a dealer (as has been suggested by morbid fans who presume that patience is a virtue exclusively for the narcotically inclined), au contraire, it’s been between a guitar and piano awaiting the warm arrival of Rollins’ sax to make them complete.

There’s enough space in the song to drive an articulated lorry through, but with characteristic ‘vibe’ the stones manage to keep it all hanging together, to make one of their most over-looked songs ever. The stones have rarely been concerned with beauty, but on this track they prove themselves perfectly able to capture a beautiful and tender moment and preserve it for ever. Genius.

It’s hard to choose just one song from Loudon Wainwright’s skeletal, bruised, shocking - and yes, at times extremely funny - 1979 live album a live one. Wainwright is a far more versaitile songwriter than he’s often given credit for, and this collection, perhaps more than any other, shows off his talent in a raw expose.

I brooded over School Days, a beautiful song, full of melody, passion, and sex - not bad for a pigeon-holed folk song! But it took a step-backwards, admitting a certain po-faced seriousness as its limitation. To choose a song by Wainwright, that fails to provoke even a twitch of laughter, seemed somewhat pervers. I smiled and swayed to Whatever happened to us, with it’s bilious narrative (”you said I came to early, but it was you who came too late”) set to the folk-world’s equivalent to the classic rock riff, simple, repetitive, and unforgettable. It, though, declined the honour, aware that its gurned final line - “it’s a whole-lot of crap about a tender trap, what it is is a suicide snare, all I want to do is to forget you, and our lousy love affair” - while fitting, leaves the song leaning to much on smart-arsed ryhme. One song, more than any, stood out - albeit in a ’sitting in the back of the classroom uncomfortably’ kind of way.

Red Guitar is one of the shortest songs on offer on the album, or elsewhere for that matter. It clocks in at just 1.58 seconds (including opening applause), and within two lines has Wainwright’s almost-too-smart signature:

“I used to have a red guitar, till I smashed it drunk one night
I smashed it in the classic form, as Peter Townshend might”

It’s a song that hinges on drama. It opens with an action - and a violent one at that. The old dictum that ‘character determines action - action reveals character’ was never truer, and in less than two minutes an arch storyteller manages to create a complex tragedy.The action, smashing the guitar, is initially jokingly underestimated. It’s treated flippantly, but with savage brevity the act is put into a different context.

“I threw it in the fireplace, and left it there awhile
Kate she started crying, when she saw my sorry smile”

No laughing matter, the narrator and the listener are jarred. With that simple line, we’re suddenly thrown into history - without underlining it, it becomes obvious that this is an action that is characteristic, and so lined with tragedy. 

While the two, presumably, lovers contemplate the burning guitar, we have a moment to consider the weight of the word red. Now, it’s perfectly plausible that the song was provoked by an actual incident involving a red guitar. In that context, there’s little to dwell upon. It could also be simply that to sing ‘red guitar’ instead of ‘guitar’ helps the metre and rythm - true. Instead, we’re going to read too much into things - because a sparse and haunting song like this deserves that, at the very least. The color red takes on a different significance, when paired with the word used to describe the replacement guitar that our narrator buys in New York city at the end of the song. The replacement is a ‘blonde guitar’. Now, pause a moment, and recall the last time you heard a guitar described as ‘blonde’. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the last time was, in all likelihood, never. So, suddenly our red and blonde guitars announce themselves as something else - and what do we most often describe as ‘blonde’? People, or, more often than not, given the patriarchy, women. So with this contorted, but substantiated line-of reasoning, our singer’s destruction of one guitar in favour of another, has a much darker resonance. No wonder Kate cries, and tells him ‘you are a fool, you’ve done a foolish thing’ (a line that, perhaps, has been devalued in recent years thanks to forest gumpery).

Thus far, we’ve paid scant attention to the music, but the bare piano that pauses and plays alongside the narrative makes the song. It’s simplicity incarnate, and yet it poses plenty of questions in and of itself. Wainwright plays the majority of his songs (more than ably) on the guitar. The one song about a guitar is played on a piano - go figure. And yet it provides a narrative coherence - as, in the universe of the song at least, he is guitarless by the end (let’s not give away the ending exactly, though, eh - you have to listen to the song, as part of the deal). The simple melody, that moves between major chords, and - dare we say it - the minor falls, is devastatingly appropriate. They’re small steps, that giddily balance the song between positivity and despair.

End the song, and while you think you’ve been told so much, in reality the question that is begged from the opening lines has remained defiantly unanswered. Why did he smash the red guitar? And, after the traumatic journey in the song, has some kind of self-awareness been reached, or are other ‘guitars’ in for the same treatment?

Add in to the mix Wainwright’s voice, which while lacking the multi-range versatility of his son Rufus, makes up for it tenfold by unfussedly allowing the words to speak, as it were, for themselves, and you have a near-perfect song, from a song-writer who, more-often-than-not during his career has sabotaged himself.

Or maybe it’s just a throw-away ditty, about a guy with a Who fixation.

What’s great about the song is, that despite it’s gentle tone, it grabs you straight away -in less than 8 seconds - with its first two lines:

Had a northern lad
Well not exactly had

In less than 8 seconds you’ve got a a full story, one that has questions oozing out of its frame. Why is it important that he’s a northern lad? Is it because she’s implicitly not a northerner, that she never managed to entirely have him? etc. A rarely muscular opening for Amos - compare it with Playboy Mommy, for example, and almost 20 seconds in the piano intro is still setting the scene. 

The other thing I love about the song is that, though it’s muscular and stripped back, that’s not to say it’s lyrically direct. Tori Amos tells a story, but never feels obliged to go from point a to b to do so. Lyrically She’s the queen of the poetic non-sequitur:

“First he loved my accent
How his knees could bend
I thought we’d be ok
Me and my molasses
“

In opposition to the lyrical content, that is elusive and indirect, the music  takes a comfortingly safe route, gently rising and falling without drawing undue attention to itself - something not to be sneezed at, given Amos’s undoubted virtuosity. Just listen to Cruel, or Hotel (which immediately succeeds Northern Lad) and you realise that when she plays it straight, it’s for a reason - as opposed to, say Chris Martin, who plays it straight ’cause that’s what he does…

The final thing that I love about this track is how it manages to have its own character, and at the same time be characteristic of much of her work. There are echoes of themes, in the text and music, that make their presence known through the song - for example, it’s hard not to hear an echo of Tear in your Hand, as she sings:

I feel the west in you
and I feel it falling apart too
Don’t say that you Don’t
And if you could see me now

So in the end the song both reinforces the picture I have of Amos as an artist, while at the same time subtly changing it.

Brilliant.