Music: March show playlist

With March 7th 2010 being International Women's Day eve and celebrations in the Phoenix scheduled for the afternoon and evening, I focused my selection on female artists. Naturally, this drew complaints from our listener, who especially objected to the 'warbling' of Joan Baez. I have sympathy - I can't listen to an entire Baez album without yowling back like a tom cat - but Baez also provided one of the finest nights in my concert going life at the Paradiso in Amsterdam and the recent documentary film of her life and work is well worth a viewing. Onto the playlist, or what I can remember of it...

1. 'Redemption Day' by Johnny Cash

We began our first show with a late Johnny Cash cut and with the release of his posthumous album 'American VI: Ain't No Grave' there was no better way in which to start this one - written by Sheryl Crow, this is now a Johnny Cash song, just like all the other American recordings he made his own during the last prolific phase of his career. I own all eleven CDs recorded during the last decade of his life and suggest you should too.

2. 'Sensual World' by Kate Bush

Our introduction to the sensual world of Ann Gray's poetry - one of Devon's great female eccentrics. That's Kate Bush who lives in the South Hams near Start Point - Ann Gray is one of Cornwall's great female eccentrics.

3. 'Lady Midnight' by Leonard Cohen

Ann was concerned her first choice might be too miserable. In Furniss Towers, we consider early Cohen party music.

4. 'Clothes Line Saga' by Suzy and Maggie Roche

It being Women's Day eve and all, I forgot to play any Bob Dylan. This is especially uncharacteristic as Dylan's European tour plans are just coming through and with his only UK date being the Hop Farm Festival in Kent, men of a certain age and disposition are considering another jaunt to the continent. Ann's choice was  a Dylan cover by the Roche sisters  which I thought I hadn't heard before  until I checked the archive and found it amongst my hoard of covers. It ain't on youtube though, so I've linked to the Genuine Basement Tapes version.

5. 'Brown Eyed Handsome Man' by Buddy Holly

Apparently not inspired by her genial host but her own father telling her she'd never marry a brown eyed boy, this was Ann's next selection. Who was at Buddy Holly's Duluth concert three days before he died on February 3rd 1959? Bob Dylan.

6. 'To Ohio' by The Low Anthem

Ann and I share the view that The Low Anthem's debut was the best album of last year. But Ann goes one better - she has seen them live. They are playing The End of the Road Festival at Larmer Tree Gardens in September. See you there?

7. 'Hasta Siempre' by Sexteto Kamaraco

That Che Guevara song I've played before in a different version. I saw this band on the roof terrace of the Hotel Inglaterra. The link is to the Buena Vista Social Club version. Postings of this song tend to attract those more interesting in the 'Che Guevara, murderer or martyr?' debate. Neither and both, if you must know.

8. 'To Be Lonely' by Joan As Police Woman'

One of those who aspire to wear Kate Bush's red shoes. I prefer he in quiet melancholia mode, naturally.

9. 'Silent All These Years' by Tori Amos

I was a fan of Tori Amos, but lost track of her around the time she started suckling piglets. The version linked to incorporates a Leonard Cohen recital.

10. 'Diamonds and Rust' by Joan Baez

It must irritate Joany no end that not only did Bob write the songs she's best known for, he also inspired the only song she wrote that has a life beyond her.

If you object to the Baez warble, try the Judas Priest version...


11. 'Madame George' by Marianne Faithfull

The Marianne Faithfull version is nowhere to be found - I played the single version released off the Van Morrison tribute album 'No Prima Donna' produced by Van Morrison... I've linked to the Brian Kennedy version instead. Not only does he sound like a girl, the B-sides on the single feature his versions of 'Queen of the Slipstream' and 'Irish Heartbeat.'

Cinema: Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll

'Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll'

Ian Dury was the bastard offspring of a three-way between Richard III, Max Wall and Edward Lear. His act was pure music hall with a musical backing that owed more to funk than punk and yet he was the clown prince of the punk movement, had the look and attitude before either were safety-pinned onto the various pub rock combos that followed in the wake of the Sex Pistols. They revered him and his original band, Kilburn and the High Roads, set the scene, along with the likes of Dr Feelgood, and were also a major influence on the London ska revival led by Madness.

At the risk of packing the Undead Poets' Society with lyricists and performers, however talented, Dury deserves induction because, he like John Cooper Clarke, was a funny man but had something of the night about him. More importantly, he had a dextrous and daring aptitude for rhyme and was demented in his disruption of syntax to get syllables to dance to his rhythm four-to-the-floor funk rather than garage band punk, giving his words far more space to work in than most lyricists of the movement.

In the guise of Andy Serkis, previously best known for his turns as Gollum and King Kong, the just-interred look is more apparent in the actor's whey-faced weaselyness than in the bucket-headed Dury but the impersonation goes much deeper than clock and clobber. Serkis inhabits his character physically such that the transformation in his voice seems to come from something more life-rupturing than mere manipulation of the vocal chords. Sure ,you get the charming loser and battling boozer who becomes a combination of Lear and his fool on stage, but if Dury had a tribute act - and some might say that the modern-day Blockheads with a revolving cast of celebrities in the lead role is just that - you'd expect and get nothing less. The key to the success of the film is unlocking the heart of the man on stage to see the shadow-plays staged there and how they informed the art and craft we are already familiar with through his archive of vinyl and celluloid.

Many biopics have no arc and no dynamic and rock biopics are generally those that struggle hardest to least effect. In part, that's because we are still too close to the practitioners of the now fading era of rock'n'roll to get perspective, to see the story in the pile of clippings and clips too easily amassed as research. Sight does not necessarily give insight. Dury was a student of Peter Blake at the RCA and taught at art colleges himself after graduation but didn't pursue that route, saying "I got good enough at art to realise I wasn't going to be very good." Not all film directors are able to undertake such self-criticism and the now usual route to the clapperboard of an apprenticeship commercials and pop videos is rarely the best preparation for the two hour treatment.

But also, as with our discussion of poets in the movies, a creative life is not necessarily the best source material for creativity, and in bad hands can just be an excuse for the sort of cut-and-paste treatment that all-too-often masquerades as rock biography or the thinly disguised adaptation of source materials that lazy dramatists claim as plays - they may have a willing audience and guarantee sales but don't merit serious attention beyond the fan base who'll fork out the ticket price for anything with the right name on the package. If I had the time and inclination, I'd digress into a few paragraphs denigrating the missed opportunities of past efforts and speculate on what future projects might best fit the movie format, but you can spare me that effort by doing the job yourself with a few mates down the pub.

In Dury's case, the writer Paul Viragh had more than most to work with. Central to the script is the son-of-the-father who becomes the father-to-the-son with all the complications of the paternal dynamic that tend to come with absence. Baxter Dury is now a musician himself, but in the film is portrayed as a boy old before his time who never grows up -  literally, as Bil Milner is asked to act out almost a decade of his young life without aging more than a few weeks. But the bass drum beat of this kit is the mother rather than father figure. Dury's own features little in the movie but was the one constant of his childhood, the upper-middle class daughter of a doctor and Celtic bohemian Betty who raised him as much in Cornwall and Essex and whose role in his life is replicated by both his wife and girlfriend who are expected to shift gears from carer through creative foil to lover on Ian's whim.

Not that any disabled kid in fifties Britain grew up spoilt. Dury's education in the Chailey Heritage Craft School and Hospital really was one of hard knocks and always getting back up for more. Returning to the institution in the eighties to mark the Year of the Disabled, Dury wanted to give the pupils some of his spirit of rebellion but by then they had less to rebel against and his cripple pride anthem 'Spasticus Autisticus' seemed to many derogatory rather than celebratory, too twisted to ever become the 'I am Spartacus' of the raspberry ripple kind. Dury took his dark and bitter anger into Grammar school where, smaller but older than his classmates, he took out his rage on any that got in his way, a habit he perpetuated as band leader where even working partnerships with talents such as Chaz Jankel were riven with more tensions than creativity itself demanded.

The movie ends a decade before Lord Upminster's early death, sparing us the worst of his alcoholism, the degradations of liver cancer, the decline in his artistic abilities and output, and the pirate and villain film roles he took on to keep the money coming in - Dury is the only actor I can name who made films with both Bob Dylan and Tom Waits, and he turned down the 'opportunity' to work with Andrew Lloyd Webber on the libretto to 'Cats', missing out on Richard Stilgoe's millions - all hinted at, but not overdone in the closing scenes of the movie. Its faults are mainly stylistic. There is more pop art frippery than is strictly necessary to deliver the story and the framing device of Dury's narration from a stage beyond the grave only fills the gaps the script should have covered integrally. But it seems unlikely that rock music will deliver us another Dury and 'Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll' does a good job of telling us why.

Poetry, Theatre, Music - 'Village' with Josephine Larsen, Alice Oswald, Martin Holland and Peter Oswald

For those of you who aren't regular readers - or listeners - we had Alice and Peter Oswald on The Blah Blah Blah Show in January to promote this pamphlet and its Exeter launch organised by my co-presenter Rachel McCarthy, accompanied by a well designed poster and programme that may prove to be as collectible as the signed chapbook many in the audience left clutching.

Alice Oswald's poetry will need no introduction to those who keep in touch with the contemporary scene. She had two collections - one a commission, the other a collaboration - published by Faber in 2009, adding to her previous three collections and the two anthologies which she has edited.

Her poem for several voices 'Mrs Eaves phones her sister' closes the pamphlet and closed last night's performance, but on this occasion she was one of a company of four, each making significant contributions to a performance that combined theatre, music and verse - sometimes in combination. That piece brought the four of them together and in its weaving of character and tongue, we were left with the strangeness of an English village in winter, its people as unpredictable as the weather.

Her husband Peter Oswald is best known as a dramatist - his plays have been performed at the Globe, the National Theatre and on Broadway - but the pamphlet 'Village' features seven of his poems, three read to us on during the evening. His work reminds me most of Weldon Kees - a compliment in my book. Given most of his drama is written in verse, it is no surprise he has a facility for rhyme and metre, but so subtle you hardly register it on first reading. His style is conversational - natural words in a natural order - but  the tone is often dark - as dark as nature itself. 'Early morning hald asleep' reminded me of Kees' 'For My Daughter'. 'Cat' has an unassuming title but begins 'I'm walking through the rooms of my dead body...' a line as bleak as any Weldon came up with, and also has something of Kafka about it - the old officials on the landing, the almost empty statue room - that defies the merely domestic. 'Moonflight' is a sparser piece, aligning the trajectory of earth's satellite with man's journeys to it so effectively, I've found myself returning to it several times in the night/day/night since I first heard it.

Jospehine Larsen has a compelling presence and the ability to make each of the three short plays she starred in - alone in 'Pram', with Peter, their author, in 'Greenviolet' and 'Miss Bratty', stand alone in the memory of what was a compendium performance of fifteen parts.  The latter provided light relief that shaded and shadowed what came before and after it and was both the lynch pin of the evening and the piece that seemed to owe least to those around it. Peter Oswald the ventriloquist, Josephine Larsen his dummy - the double act combined to speak to us of relationships, their breakdown, and being alone whilst being together in a way that was more Beckett than end-of-pier show but had more laughs than most variety acts.

I hadn't heard Martin Holland play before but will seek him out again. More than an accompanist, he was both the first and last on stage, whether in combination - his call-and-response with Alice on 'Interview with the Wind' could give jazz-poetry a good name - or solo, if that is the word for a musician with the talent, timing and facility to layer guitar and trumpet into compelling duets with himself, as in the opening 'Bossa Grrove Improvised' or the experimental 'Minor Loops'.

The drama studio at the Phoenix Arts Centre is an intimate space of forty seats - sold out in advance - that would benefit from more sympathetic lighting. What the evening gave practitioners - and aficionados - of all the genres featured was an example of how they can be combined to the enrichment of each other. Although featuring two poets, promoted as an evening of poetry, and launching a pamphlet of verse, it was perhaps that of the three art forms that was least dominant on the night, made-up for by subsequent reading on the page. Poetry is a quieter art form and while I'm the first to criticise extended commentary on poems in performance and admire brevity of both contextual and biographical introduction, something was needed to give them the prominence the writing deserved when up against the more immediate dramatic and musical forms. 

That said, 'The Attention Seekers' have devised a format with legs - eight of them - that deserves wider exposure and a larger audience. With little refinement, they have a show that could tour arts centres and, with the right promotion, attract a paying crowd without diluting artistic intent. Considerable effort clearly went into preparing this performance and I hope it is one of many, a memory to repeat and not just cherish. For those organising literature festivals, it would make a fine revue to breakup the procession of talking heads with an hour or so that manages to be both entertaining and accomplished, its heterogeneity a welcome antidote to more homogeneous formats, but its content consistently of the highest quality.

I am also pleased to note that Alice and Peter intend 'Village' to be the first of several pamphlets in the Chiquita Books of Dartington imprint that will range across written art forms. The chapbook format lends itself to experiment, but in this instance it is far from disposable. Let's hope they maintain the quality, while delivering on their promise of diversity.

The songs that defined a decade... The seventies

1. 'Paranoid' by Black Sabbath (1970)

If Led Zeppelin had been a singles group, they'd get my vote, but the ultimate metal band were Black Sabbath, and they had a chart-topping single all over the world with their debut 'Paranoid'. Harder and louder than anything before it - or anything since - Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler set the mood of a new decade, channelled through the voice of Ozzy Osbourne, a lyric so bleak it's brilliant.

2. 'Brown Sugar' by the Rolling Stones (1971)

Any number of Rolling Stones tracks stake a claim on great single status, but 'Brown Sugar' is their best riff of all, coupled with a lascivious Mick Jagger vocal and lyric that is truly nasty. This appears on one of their greatest albums - 'Sticky Fingers' - and a mesmerising movie - 'Gimme Shelter' - and is the epitome of what they are best at - hard blues-based rock you can shake your maracas to. Its live debut was at Altamont which ended the previous decade on a sour note, but this single kicked off the new one as the greatest rock'n'roll band meant to go on - and did, for a few more years at least.

3. 'Maggie May' by Rod Stewart (1971)

The biggest pratt in showbusiness - check the video - sure could write a song when he put his little mind to it. This number is based on the traditional Liverpudlian song of the same name, and was originally the B-side of the equally fine 'Reason to Believe' but became the A-side by default of airplay. According to Rod, it tells the true story of his first sexual experience with an older woman at the Beaulieu Jazz festival. Since then, Rod has concentrated on younger chicks, as he no doubt calls them. But for all his idiocy, this launched the solo career of what at the dawn of the decade was a singer-songwriter who could rock the house, not just the bedsit. Hence my failure to make space for a minstrel in the Carole King / James Taylor / Joni Mitchell, although most were album rather than singles artists. 'Heart of Gold' by Neil Young was in the reckoning as his only top ten hit but I like him too much to have him represented by such an unrepresentatively whiny dirge.

4. 'Walk on the Wild Side' by Lou Reed (1972)

I'd liked to have included a Velvet Underground song in my sixties selection but if they released a single, it sonly sold to their friends and relatives. That said, if based on the 'influential' criterion alone, The Velvets were a seminal sixties band, and can claim to be more influential now than The Beatles and Stones combined. The album 'Transformer' was produced by David Bowie - not the last time he'll appear in this list - and made Lou Reed a radio star, despite the distinctly un-radio-friendly lyrics that deal with transexuality, rent boys, oral sex and hard drugs. In doing so, it harked back to the Factory scene of the sixties, Andy Warhol always ahead of his time.

5. 'All the Young Dudes' by Mott the Hoople (1972)

David Bowie was the most significant artist of the seventies, reviving the careers of Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, defining the glam rock look and sound, before leaving it behind, ending the decade with Eno in Berlin having reinvented himself several times in between. If there is one song that encapsulates the early seventies, it is this one - written on the hoof to save Mott the Hoople from going under, it is a hymn not to youth but youthful self-destruction, a dark anthem if ever there was one.

6. 'Autobahn' by Kraftwerk (1974)

So far ahead of their time, it took the rest of the world 15 years to catch-up, Kraftwerk have had as much influence over the music of the last two decades as The Beatles while retaining the anonymity of machines. Listen to any of the early house or hip-hop records and you'll hear a Kraftwerk sample in there somewhere. Tune into the electropop sounds of the post-punk era and it's just Kraftwerk with the bpm turned up. Not content with creating a wholly new music, they matched it with a new aesthetic, while their stageshow broke all of the conventions of the time, then and now.

7. 'No Woman, No Cry' by Bob Marley (1975)

Reggae was the first 'world music' to become chart music internationally and Bob Marley, promoted by Chris Blackwell of Island Records, was largely responsible for it. He'd spent a decade with The Wailers in Jamaica developing not just his music but its message such that by the time he arrived on the world scene, he did so with the presence of an icon, not an ingenu. In reality, Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer had long been exploring how their music could be evolved for a wider market and by what means they could broadcast it beyond the Caribbean. 'No Woman, No Cry' was Bob Marley's first hit as a solo artist in 1975; re-released in its 'Live 1975' version after his premature death, it propelled the 'Legend' compilation to the top of the charts; it has now sold over twenty million copies.

8. 'Anarchy in the UK' by The Sex Pistols (1976)

If punk is to be represented by one song, this is it - spat from the TV into our living rooms, it feels like an assault now; three decades ago, it was a declaration of war. No single before or since has had its visceral power. Forget your Claptons and Becks, Steve Jones is the greatest rock guitarist of all time. Hearing Johnny Rotten's vocal is like being shouted at by a lunatic and finding yourself agreeing with him, whatever it is he's trying to say. As well as being the man behind the melody line, this is the only Pistols record Glen Matlock lent his bass to while Paul Cook had an unerring knack for maintaining the beat amidst the chaos that invariably surrounded the band live. If rock music produces another record of this power, intensity and impact I'll eat my grandmother.

9. 'I Feel Love' by Donna Summer (1977)

Most of disco hasn't dated well, sounding limp compared with the electronic dance music that followed. Giorgio Moroder's all-synthesised backing tracks still sounds like the future, not some idea of the future from the past. When Brian Eno heard it in Berlin working with David Bowie, he declared it would define the future of dance music for the next fifteen years. Thirty, more like.

10. 'Wuthering Heights' by Kate Bush (1978)

One of those rare songs that seems to come out of nowhere, sounds like a classic but is like nothing else you'd heard before. If there is a girl out there who has the talent to write and perform such a work before her teenage years are over, let her step forward now. Written in a few hours after seeing the film of the Emily Bronte novel, Kate Bush confirmed her special genius already established five years earlier when she wrote 'The Man With the Child in His Eyes' as a thirteen year old; it became her second single, and would sit just as prettily on this list. I've failed to make a Devon connection in my seventies selection, but Kate lives out near Start Point; she likes to be left alone, and so do I.

The songs that defined a decade... The noughties

Okay, this might go a bit dad at the disco, but I've set myself a task, so I'm going to see it through...

1. 'Yellow' by Coldplay (2000)

No, I don't like it either, despite Devon being centre of the musical universe in the noughties, Coldplay and Muse being the UK's bona fide international stadium filling acts, and Will Young being the reality show star it's almost okay to like - but not quite. However, it's hard to deny that this record did define the sound of mainstream - it is hardly Indie in label or inclination - lite rock for the decade, and many imitators followed, posh lads with pianos crooning yearningly vague lyrics like this one.

2. 'I Can't Get You Out of My Head' by Kylie Minogue (2001)

Being a child of the eighties, I really didn't think I'd be proclaiming a Kylie track as not just one of the defining songs of the decade more than twenty years after her debut, but a dance-pop classic to be enjoyed on its own terms, preferably on a crowded dancefloor. Written by Cathy Dennis (a solo star of the early nineties) and Rob Davis (formerly guitarist with Mud, and composer of 'Groovejet (If This Ain't Love)' which was another contender in this genre, as were The Scissor Sisters, who have their own Kylie connections), the single went to number one in forty countries, and has soundtrack'd many a great night out at the discotheque. Oh, and 'Spinning Around' deserves a mention too, if only for those gold hot pants.

3. 'Lose Yourself' by Eminem (2002)

With hip-hop and r'n'b becoming the commercial mainstream of the decade, my list might seem a little light on rap, but this track broke all records (number one in twenty-four countries, the most successful rap song of all time) crossed all boundaries (it's been used as a motivational piece in primary schools and is a perennial at sporting events) won both an Oscar and a Grammy and deservedly so. It is also the lead single off the soundtrack to 8 Mile, that rare thing - a movie about music that works for the non-fan.

4. 'Hey Ya!' by Outkast (2003)

Outkast became a pair of solo acts joined at the hip only by a shared moniker, so this could equally be described as an Andre 3000 solo track, and although the duo were born in hip-hop, this is closer to funk, but what it is first and foremost is POP, leaping out of the speakers and asking you to dance. For the visually inclined, the video is also a masterpiece of its kind, featuring a cast of Andres dressed as jockeys and golf caddies mimicking The Beatles' 1964 debut performance on The Ed Sullivan Show.

5. 'White Flag' by Dido (2003)

Again, not a track that would ever trouble my stereo, but at the time it provided the musical accompaniment to many a yuppie dinner party. It must have a secret place in more CD collections than I care to contemplate, 'Life for Rent' (the album it was the lead single off) selling over ten million copies worldwide and being in the top ten selling titles of the decade. I blame Eminem's 'Stan' for making her famous, and almost regret not including it in place of 'Lose Yourself' to do Dildo without having to give her a slot of her own. Others in the 'boring music for boring people' slot include the comeback of Take That - if your Granny likes it, it's probably not very good but 'Patience' is a consummate pop song - and James Blunt, may he be stuck in Sesame Street hell forever.

6. 'Crazy in Love' by Beyonce featuring Jay-Z (2003)

R'n'B has been the dominant sound of the decade and few would deny that Beyonce is the queen of the genre, while Jay-Z is not only her husband but hip-hop's premier artist-entrepreneur; between them, their record sales are well into nine figures; together, they are black America's second couple, next to the Obamas. As for the record, it really is an arse-shaker and take it from me, that really is a compliment.

7. 'I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor' by The Arctic Monkeys (2005)

There's only space for one indie anthem of the noughties, but this one earns its right to decade defining status on several counts. For a start, it demonstrated the power of the internet to hype a band from nowhere to chart topping status, barely touching the sides of the mainstream media in the process. More importantly, it was our first listen to Alex Turner, the best British lyricist since Morrissey. An honourable mention to The Strokes for 'Last Nite' without this, the careers of the likes of The Arctic Monkeys, The Kaiser Chiefs ('I Predict a Riot') and The Libertines ('Can't Stand Me Now') and Franz Ferdinand ('Take Me Out') - not to mention the American contingent such as The Killers ('Mr Brightside') and Kings of Leon ('Sex on Fire') - might never have happened.

8. 'Crazy' by Gnarls Barkley (2006)

One of those songs that came from nowhere and stayed around forever, Crazy was the first song to top the charts by download sales alone, a good couple of years before the MP3 was the dominant medium for the purchase of music. Gnarls Barkley is a collaboration between Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo. Nothing in their previous careers prepared them for success on this scale and they've failed to repeat it, but if this is all they're remembered for, remembered they will be - after nine weeks at number one, they deleted it from the catalogue to save us from the unlikely event of getting bored by it.

9. 'Rehab' by Amy Winehouse (2007)

Somewhere around the middle of the decade, a bunch of girls were doing retro soul, jazz and ska and as good as 'Frank' was, Amy Winehouse seemed like just another chip off that block. Then came 'Back to Black' and for all its musical reference points, you realised you were dealing with a true original with a talent for words, tunes and their delivery. The title track itself could have taken this spot and both 'Tears Dry on Their Own' and 'Love is a Losing Game' will be torch song standards if they're not already. But it's 'Rehab' that both transcends celebrity culture and subverts it, truly a song for our times.

10. 'Pokerface' by Lady Gaga (2009)

I had a moment of conscience here - how can you represent the noughties without a single act born out of a reality TV show? Then I remembered the rules and forgave myself. These songs aren't just meant to define the decade now, but forty years from now. When we look back, I suspect most of the Simon Cowell acts will have thankfully faded from memory, may he be buggered with a ten-foot barge pole. Girls Aloud with 'Biology' came into serious consideration, but more for the Xenomania songwriting and production than what the girls made of it. Girls are very now, of course - Florence and the Machine, Bat for Lashes, Lily Allen, Duffy etc - but the true original among them to my eyes and ears is Lady Gaga and it's no coincidence she's also the one with international reach who goes across genres and defines not just a sound but a look, the Madonna of our times. She wears rubber, scares your parents and if she doesn't have a cock, she probably wears one on a regular basis. Dishonourable mentions in the minx category also go to 'Hit Me Baby (One More Time)' by Britney Spears and 'Umbrella' by Rhianna, both top pop videos, even without the sound turned down. Respect to Dizzee Rascal for this year's most fun single 'Bonkers' but until he breaks America, he doesn't count as decade defining.

The songs that defined a decade... The sixties.

1. 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' by The Beatles (1964)

This isn't a list of the best songs of the decade, remember, but the singles that defined it. This number was not only The Beatles' biggest selling single, but also the one that broke the American market, the number one of that infamous top five that accompanied their first transatlantic trip. It's also the number in which Bob Dylan heard the refrain as 'I get high...' inspiring him to our boys their first joint. They were quick learners, those Liverpudlians.

2. 'Like a Rolling Stone' by Bob Dylan (1965)

Talking of Dylan, even his most vehement detractors find it difficult to argue against his being one of the defining personalities of the decade. There's an argument for choosing one of his earlier protest songs - 'The Times They Are A-Changin', say or 'Blowin' in the Wind' - but they were never chart hits and besides, as a pop phenomenon this was his pinnacle. At over six minutes in length, it broke all the rules of radio play, its impressionistic and yet accusing language was hardly typical pop fodder, and yet yet it hit the top ten all over the world. More importantly, that opening snare shot kicked open the doors of the minds of a generation to a different way of being, described in sound by Mike Bloomfield's spiky guitar and Al Kooper's swirling organ riff. It regularly, and rightly, tops lists of the best singles of all time.

3. 'Make it Easy on Yourself' by 'The Walker Brothers' (1965)

Many would argue for 'The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore', an equally great song from the following year, but this was their first hit single and had teenage girls pursuing Scott Walker and his supposed brothers wherever they went. It was composed by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, probably the best non-performing writing team of the era, for Dionne Warwick and has been recorded by many other artists since, but this is the defining rendition. Scott now spends his time hanging out in betting shops and backstreet boozers or beating lumps of meat in his avant-garde recordings, released in album form once a decade or so, but for all the qualities of his later solo albums, this was his great pop moment.

4. 'I Got You (I Feel Good)' by James Brown (1965)

The Godfather defined the black music of the era - funk, soul and rhythm 'n' blues - and still seems somehow more current than his contemporaries. With 99 charting hits, there's plenty to choose from, but this was both his biggest smash and signature tune, concise in single form but lending itself to extended workouts on stage.The screams, hollers, drum beat and horn riff have all been sampled numerous times. If there's one artist of the sixties who is truly still setting the agenda for the mainstream of today - dominated by r'n'b and hip-hop - then it's James Brown.

5. 'Good Vibrations' by The Beach Boys (1966)

If we're keeping it simple with our Beatles choice, we've got to go for one of Brian Wilson's mini pop symphonies by The Beach Boys to show how musically complex pop was to get within a couple of years of the puppy love songs typical of the early decade. I'm not saying this is my favourite of their songs - that would be 'God Only Knows' - or even my favourite track of theirs of this type - 'Heroes and Villains' - but while many would advocate going with one of their earlier surf sound classics, but this sums up the ambition of the times when the best composers aspired to out-do each other with every release, create a pure pop masterpiece and top the charts both sides of the Atlantic.

6. 'I'm a Believer' by The Monkees (1966)

The first - and best - of the manufactured boy bands were put together as an American rival to The Beatles, and made a clutch of classic singles, written by some of the best songwriters of the day, before claiming their independence and drifting towards the psychedelic obscurity of 'Head'. All four members had musical talent and creative ambition, qualities no longer priorities to those assembling X-factor style pop acts. The Monkees TV series is a repository of sixties fashion, humour and music and still bears watching today. This number, the biggest selling hit of 1967, was written by Neil Diamond, one of the several Brill Building writers who developed successful recording careers in their own right, and demonstrates that even teeniebop pop can be great.

7. 'River Deep, Mountain High' by Ike and Tina Turner (1966)

Phil Spector has claims on being the producer of the decade and many consider this to be his best work, himself included. Ike Turner might be credited on the label, and ran his revue like Spector governed the studio - but was paid to stay away during recording. It's flop Stateside caused Spector to withdraw from the music industry and lose himself in paranoia and conspiracy. In the UK, it reached number three, justifying its inclusion as a bona fide hit. Many other Spector productions were contenders, but this was his peak, despite some contending that backing black voices with a white pop sound had passed its sell-by date by 1966, the height of the civil rights era.

8. 'Purple Haze' by Jimi Hendrix (1967)

With only one slot available for some riff-driven rock'n'roll there are some tough choices to be made. 'Satisfaction' by The Rolling Stones and 'My Generation' by The Who are each contenders. Both bands certainly had a hand in defining the decade, although arguably didn't hit the heights of their creativity or international fame until the seventies. As well as being the greatest guitarist of his generation - indeed, of all time - Hendrix is the bridge between English and American psychedelia and defines the Summer of Love.

9. 'Waterloo Sunset' by The Kinks (1967)

It's been called the most beautiful song of the rock'n'roll era and the greatest ever written about London but even though it is born of urban loneliness, which has never sounded more romantic, its tone is more that of an English pastoral. Almost thirty years later it became the lodestone of the Britpop movement ,but although some came close, none managed to match its perfection and although he kept up his run of classsic singles into the early seventies, Ray Davies didn't either.

10. 'I Heard it Through the Grapevine' by Marvin Gaye (1968)

If Phil Spector epitomised the master-slave model of pop hit production, Tamla Motown established a new business model, run and staffed by black musicians, collectively making records for a burgeoning multi-racial market that broke the traditionally segregated audiences of both radio station and concert hall. Again, there are many contenders from the Motown repertoire, but this one stands out. It was also recorded by The Miracles, The Pips and the Isley Brothers before finally becoming a hit for Marvin Gaye. Berry Gordy hated the track and it might never have been a hit if it weren't for only relenting unprecedented demand from DJs and the public for it to be released off the 'In the Groove' album which was later renamed to bear its title.

Cinema: Michael Jackson's 'This Is It'

Not everyone gets eighties pop, just like not everyone gets Andy Warhol. Used to judging the heirs to Picasso on the production of paintings or the new Bob Dylan on the degree to which they write songs like the old Bob Dylan, naysayers declare the likes of Michael Jackson to be unworthy of their attention and return to their personal canon of the great artists, the classic songs.

The pop process is all about the creation of the pop persona. What the pop persona creates as saleable products are of secondary consequence: records, films, fashions, books and tours for the masses; collectible relics for the connoisseur. The pop artist should aspire to be Midas: in his or her imperial period, everything they touch will turn to gold, and they will seem golden to us.

That is the triumph. It is now a familiar story. Then comes the tragedy. When the lustre fades, the pop artist is stuck forever in the guise of his own creation, forgets his origins as the creator, and in so doing Frankenstein becomes his own monster. Enter Michael Jackson, king of the pop artists and the most fascinating icon of the last quarter of the twentieth century who dragged his bones into this one before giving up the ghost.

I had not previously bought into Michael Jackson - none of his diminishing fortune was filched from my pockets - but I have long been fascinated by both him as his own creation and how we view that creation through that hall of mirrors that is our 24-7 media. If I had plotted his end, would you have bought my book? It was almost too perfect - that final image of the man stripped of his gilded uniform, denuded of his wig, wiped clean of makeup, swimming with pharmaceuticals and prickled with needle holes. He overdosed not on the some Jesus juice that made him feel more alive, but that mother's milk that gave him the perfect sleep of death.

Admiring the chutzpah of his corporate masters - who churned new product of all kinds so soon after his death, before he was even buried, and called each a tribute - I went along to bear witness in the chapel of the cinema, that place where heretics go to play. Just as Roman Catholics dismember the bodies of their saints over time - sending a head here, an arm there - so the pop artist is destined to become more productive in death than he was in life as his acts of self-creation acquire the power of immortality.

But 'This Is It' is not a typical post-death product: to realise anything on their investment in a show that was rehearsed but never performed, their only option was to release a performance compiled from rehearsals. In doing so, they leave a door ajar on how Michael Jackson the pop artist worked - how he went about creating his pop persona.

The rehearsal footage is intimate by necessity: it's primary purpose was to assist Michael Jackson and his creative team in realising their vision for a show that was to be played out fifty times in the O2 Arena in London. The Millennium Dome was the perfect choice, as it came to symbolise the failures of the previous era, rather than becoming an inspiration to the new century. When the HIStory album was released, a giant statue of the pop king was floated past its future construction site.

Now the same footage is put to alternate use as the primary product: the putting together of the show becomes the show itself. The camera is just too in his face for the conspiracy theory of body doubles to be plausible. Old audio may have been dropped into the mix, but there is no mistaking the body that sometimes sketches out a performance with moves and vocal ticks, sometimes responds to even the smallest audience by letting himself go, taking us with him into Neverland.

Would the show have gone on? They seem ready for the crowd. Is Michael a dead man walking? At times he looks flimsy as an x-ray but when he dances he is never frail and when he sings his voice seems to have lost none of its range or power to project. Is it drugs that get him up onto the stage and drugs that put him down again? Anyone who saw the bizarre 'press conference' that launched the enterprise on TV would feel safe in concluding so, and there are moments when his enthusiasm appears enhanced, but he is sound of mind and absolutely focused on every element of the production.

Yes, Michael is the man in charge. This is no doubt the image the editors wished to create, but nevertheless had to have raw material to create it from. He was able to communicate every musician's part with his voice as if he had long ago mastered each of their instruments. He instructs dancers half his age at how to move with more poise and use their energy to greater effect. The details of costume and visuals are clearly important to him. In this way - his way - he shows himself to have been perhaps the greatest showman of our times - even in rehearsal, your eyes can't leave him alone.

Playlist: December 2009

I don't recall all that Rachel McCarthy - my co-presenter - and our guest - Emma Bishop of The Paragon Gallery, Gandy Street, Exeter - played on the show, but these are the tracks I chose and reasons why:

1. 'Must Be Santa' by Bob Dylan from 'Christmas In The Heart'

I'm still coming to terms with the concept of a Bob Dylan Christmas Album, let alone its execution, but this seasonal polka, driven by the accordion of David Hidalgo of Los Lobos, is my highlight. Check out youtube for the video featuring a good-time-was-had-by-all house party with our beloved grouch in a blonde wig and eccentric selection of hats dancing the night away while reeling off a list of American Presidents in place of a roll call of Santa's reindeer. What's not to like?

2. 'For Emma' by 'Bon Iver' off 'For Emma, Forever Ago'

I'm introducing all of our guests with an apt tune, whether they realise it or not. Legend has it Bon - Justin to his mum - recorded this in his Dad's log cabin, living off roots, berries and cuts of moose meat. True or not, the record has backwoods atmosphere and a lovelorn lilt that plaid shirt boys and buckskin girls love. I saw him at 'The End of the Road' festival in 2008 and he was still coming to terms with an audience that knew every word.

3. 'Rise' by Public Image Limited off 'Album'

PiL are back on the road; whether their latest incarnation is to my liking I'm as yet unsure; Johnny can still do his cockney Richard III Act for the Sex Pistols Reunion tours but whether his Country Life Butter persona can handle the emotion of his post-punk incarnation is yet to be seen; his appearance on 'The Culture Show' left me unconvinced. This was arguably his last great moment, although 'Open Up', his collaboration with Leftfield, still gets me on my feet.

4. 'Wolf Kidult Man' by The Fall from 'Imperial Wax Solvent'

The Fall played The Phoenix, home of Phonic FM, last month and I'm still recovering from the after show party, an intimate soirée Chez Smith and Poulou in the company of Anthony Frost, cover artist and future guest on The Blah Blah Blah Show.

5. 'I Don't Wanna Be Nice' by John Cooper Clarke off 'The Very Best Of'

To celebrate our induction of JCC into The Undead Poets Society, we span this platter. More on him elsewhere in the blog.

6. 'Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow' by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds from 'And No More Shall We Part'

'Dark, funny and yet strangely moving' is my modus operandi for writing poetry and this track comes out of the same box.

7. 'What's He Building In There' by Tom Waits off 'Mule Variations'

Never seen Tom Waits live, never likely to given he plays rarely and sells out in thirty seconds but he has a live album out from his 'Glitter and Doom' tour featuring a bonus disc of his between song spoken word shaggy dog stories. This isn't one of those, but it's the closest he gets to a poem, albeit with musical backing.

8. 'The Outdoor Type' by The Lemonheads from 'The Very Best Of'

I saw Evan Dando at The Port Eliot Festival this year. He's the kind of guy posh girls want to mother. Proof was in the front row, offering him their world. Apparently he's married an heiress, so has a world of his own. I also saw him bottled off the Acoustic Stage of the Glastonbury Festival in 1995. Portishead were on after and they were late. Great song for a campfire and easier to strum than a Portishead tune.

Music: Angusband as Theatre

Rock'n'roll is dead. When it died is open to debate. Let's say, for argument's sake, that it was buried with Kurt Cobain. There's only so much you can do with guitar, bass, drums and the human voice. It's surprising it took four decades to occupy all available territory, given it's many practitioners. Jazz has far more permutations and ceased to evolve as both a popular and creative art form circa 'Bitches Brew'. Electronica fared no better. It had two decades of development ending in the mid-nineties. By then, its parameters were defined.

Which isn't to say good rock'n'roll won't be made again. It is being made every day. It's just that it is unlikely to be doing anything new while appealing to a mass audience; what it needs to be a social force as against an act of mere consumption. Any innovator that finds an empty niche is unlikely to set the charts alight. Instead, we'll get diminishing returns on karaoke. Which isn't a bad thing, because rock'n'roll is best enjoyed in a drunken crowd anyway. A listen or two and you've got all that is new from even the best of it. After that, the listening experience is mainly an exercise in nostalgia.

Yes, I know there are new bands. There are even new genres, although they're generally fusions of, variants on or revivals of what's gone before. Most of the young bands that have come to prominence in the last decade sound like music to wet your bed to to me, but then my incontinence years aren't far away. ACDC never made music to wet your bed to, although they are piss yourself funny on occasions, and best enjoyed pissed, the more pissed the better. They make back-to-basics riff-driven rock and that is all they've ever made.

The phenomenon of the tribute band is a relatively recent one. As a mass phenomenon, I suspect their emergence began around the time rock'n'roll as a creative force was on it's last legs. Bjorn Again bounced out of Australia in 1988. The Australian Pink Floyd Show, ditto. Infact, Australia is the home of the tribute band, probably because most world tours never get that far, and although Antipodeans have their own place in rock history, most of them had to relocate to England to make it, ACDC an honourable exception.

The tribute band is distinct from the covers band: groups who entertain club and pub audiences by playing the hits of the day. Many groups of note started out that way, The Beatles included. The history of Beatles tribute bands predates all others, going back to the birth of The Bootleg Beatles in Tiverton, Devon in 1980 but until 1990 the UK was disinterested, still considering the concept somewhat naff, and they earned their crust in Eastern Europe and Asia, also omitted from most tour schedules. Now they play the Royal Albert Hall. Tribute bands don't just play the odd song by an artist, they attempt to recreate the experience of that artist in their prime. In some cases, they endeavour to exceed it, wanting to live up to our fantasy of the true innovators of rock'n'roll live. The Beatles retired from touring before their most ground-breaking years in the recording studio. The Bootleg Beatles can draw from their entire oeuvre, wardrobes as well as tunes, complete with a vanity case of false moustaches.

Let me state it now: I have no problem with tribute bands. I have no problem with a contemporary theatre company putting on a Shakespeare play without the author playing the role of Banquo's ghost. I take no issue with hearing a Mozart symphony without Wolfgang Amadeus on the podium in his powdered periwig either, although I do think conductor and orchestra should be attired in period dress for my visual pleasure. And I see tribute bands as playing to a classical score in a different genre. Only rock'n'roll is not limited to notes being played in the sequence in which they were composed. The experience is multi-sensory. Ideally, a tribute band should ape the original in every aspect; their only creative input should be that of skilled mimics.

Angusband is a tribute band. At least, they are twenty percent of a tribute band. Their Angus Young hasn't just been playing along to ACDC CDs, he's been studying the videos. If I were him, I'd spend a bit more on my shorts - red velvet would be nice - and the nose ring is inauthentic - but he's got the hair - which is more than the original has now - he's got the riffs and he's got the moves. I missed the cannons and I missed the wrecking ball, but loved the spotlit solo from the balcony at the back of the hall. The lead singer fits both Bon Scott and Brian Johnson into his manly frame and does a good job on the vocals of both, although he looks like neither. The rest of the lineup are sidesmen: heads down, crunching riff replication. When they played the Phoenix on November 21st - all proceeds to Phonic FM, thanks lads - all they lacked was an audience ready to play their part. There was insufficient leather, denim and ACDC t-shirts on show for my liking; not enough long hair on the men or poodle perms on the women. Come on people - a tribute band is nothing without a tribute crowd.

Playlist: November 2009

My memories of the November Show are already hazy and our audio recording is sans music - for copyright reasons you understand - but these are some of the tracks we played:

1. 'When the Man Comes Around' by Johnny Cash off 'American IV: The Man Comes Around'

What better way to kick off than with Johnny Cash singing his last great composition. The chugga-lugga rhythm of his early work on Sun records and Colombia isn't for everyone - it is for me - but few discerning ears can resist the five albums - and one boxed set, 'Unearthed' - he made with Rick Rubin and released on American Recordings.

2. 'The Man With the Child in His Eyes' by Kate Bush off 'The Kick Inside'

Maybe not the most apt way to introduce a school teacher, but even Phil Bowen knows this is a great Sunday morning record. Kate Bush was in her early teens when she wrote it. Most artists spend a career never getting close.

3. 'Wonderful Land' by The Shadows off just about any Shadows compilation you care to name.

Phil still hasn't forgiven Rachel for playing 'FBI' instead. And I haven't forgiven Phil for insisting we play this as well, two Hank Marvin instrumentals on one show...

4. 'She Loves You' by The Beatles - their second single

'Please Please Me' came first but this was their first number one, their best seller to this day, and the record with which they conqueured the UK, America and the world. Phil Bowen comes from Liverpool too, you know.

5. 'I Want You' by Bob Dylan off 'Blonde on Blonde'

One of Bob's more melodious and romantic numbers off possibly the greatest album of all time, purportedly written about Anita Pallenburg, then girlfriend of Brian Jones, one time member of The Rolling Stones and wearer of Chinese suits.

6. 'Suzanne' by Leonard Cohen off 'Songs of Leonard Cohen'

Rare proof that a good poem can become a great song, 'Suzanne Takes You Down' was first published in 'Parasites of Heaven' then recorded by Judy Collins who introduced a nervous Leonard Cohen to the world of music. Mr Cohen is 75 and back on the road.

7. 'Downtown Train' by Tom Waits off 'Rain Dogs'

Still probably Tom Waits most recognisable - and most covered - song, Phil used this as an excuse to reminisce about his publican years, sharing early morning snifters with Keith Floyd in Clifton, Bristol.

8. 'I'll Give You Anything But Love' by Ella Fitzgerald

Phil Bowen's play 'Anything But Love' - a fictitious meeting between Dorothy Parker and Dorothy Fields - was opening at The New End Theatre, Hampstead the Sunday we interviewed him. Ella turns this Dorothy Fields lyric into a slow burning smooch.

9. 'Human Nature' by Miles Davis off 'You're Under Arrest'

Some find the Miles' late work a little too close to elevator music for their liking - we had complaints that said as much - but whatever you think of the eighties synthesized setting, the trumpet playing on this John Bettis/Steve Porcaro written number locks into the melody and never lets it go.

10. 'Human Nature' by Michael Jackson off 'Thriller'

And the complaints continued as we segued into The King of Pop's take on the song which we used to introduce my review of 'Michael Jackson's This Is It'. Not that we cared. The sweet Jacko vocal and limbic Quincy Jones production still move the eighties child inside the noughties man. They use a Michael Jackson CD as a doorstop in the Phonic FM studio, you know.

11. 'Psycho Killer' by Talking Heads off 'Stop Making Sense'

The link was corny - leading into my 'Maestros of the Movies: Alfred Hitchcock' feature - but there's nothing corny about the music, off one of the greatest concert films and live albums ever released.