Hand Crafted 'Podlist

Raw Power - Iggy & The Stooges
New Rose - The Damned
Son Of Mustang Ford - Swervedriver
Bad Boy Boogie - AC/DC
She Bangs The Drum - The Stone Roses
Man On The Moon - Sugar
Goodbye Toulouse - Stranglers
Been Caught Stealing - Janes’s Addiction
Seven Days Too Long - Dexy’s Midnight Runners
It Looks Like You - Evan Dando
Older Guys - The Flying Burrito Brothers
No Feelings - Sex Pistols
In Between Tears - Irma Thomas
He made A Woman Out Of Me - Betty Lavette
If You Can Beat Me Rockin’ (you Can Have My Chair) - Laura Lee
Love Man - Otis Redding
Remedy - The Black Crowes
Every Picture Tells a Story - Rod Stewart
Suffragette City - David Bowie
Drive-In Saturday - David Bowie
Seen The Light - Supergrass
Golden Skin - Silversun
Big Boy - Minuteman
Winter - Teenage Fanclub
I've Got Dreams To Remember - Otis Redding

It’s an Iggy to Otis ‘Pod list. It was carefully hand crafted using my own skill and judgement rather than the Shuffle and the songs were chosen on the basis of their intros as well as their tip top quality. The Pistols and Irma Thomas intros both use a similar ascending chord sequence and that’s a good enough reason for me to squeeze them both into the same playlist. If I was ever kidnapped by fundamentalist list compilers, and forced to compile my top 10 favourite intros, then they would both be top 5.

Other things to love from the list….the one note piano on Raw Power (it worked on I Wanna Be Your Dog, so we’ll use it again ), the guitar break on She Bangs The Drum, where it just moves completely away from what went before it. Man In The Moon just sounds immense. Did the band leave the studio looking like cartoon characters flattened by steamrollers? Were they pinned to the studio wall by a rolling wall of sound? It’s a miracle they survived.

Goodbye Toulouse just sounds nasty. The bass is filthy, aggressive and then the guitar is scratchy and unpleasant. It’s a night in a hostel. It’s also one of my favourite tracks from one of my favourite lps by one the world’s least lovable bands. The SilverSun and Minuteman tracks use similar “great riff and Beach Boy vocal” tactics…as do TFC. There is something about the chords of Winter and the strained “Der der der der” backing vocals that just make’s me weep. The song aches of wistful nostalgia. A walking hand in hand lyric alone is not enough though (probably why my playlist is a bit light on the works of Manillow and Sedaka) but the song really does get to me and I’m not really sure why. I’d have it as a funeral song. Though there is a part of me that’s tempted by Banging The Door by Public Image…and that would be the part of me that can’t resist the bad gag.