Life Swap CD Pt2.
After thinking about it for a while, I don't believe I did my life swap CD justice. Not because I disagree with any of the tracks, but because there was more tracks that should have been included. So I have decided that my life swap cd is a double album!

CD 2
Life On Mars, David Bowie
Although I've been a Bowie fan dating back to high school (my best friend then, David Green, had all his albums, including the rare double album with The Laughing Gnome on it). However, I saw Bowie about five years ago as part of Moby's Area festival. He walked out on stage and belted this out. It was too beautiful for words.

Yellow, Coldplay (from the album Parachutes
My best friend's brother was stuck in Thailand and fading away from some combination of bad diseases and bad habits. She sent him this song to try to make him understood she loved him and wanted him to live (which he did). Later we sat in my house, played the track over and over and drank way too much port.

Wish You Were Here, Pink Floyd (from the album Wish You Were Here)
We're just two lost souls, swimming in a fish bowl, year after year
Floyd are just one of those bands that feel like a comfortable pair of shoes that you keep for years and wear occaisionally just to remember. First song I learnt to play on the guitar!

Come Together, The Beloved (from the album Conscience)
There are some songs that you listen too because they just make you feel good. This is one of those.

She's The One, World Party (from the album Egyptology)
A nine hour drive across the west Texas desert. Dry thunderstorms. Laughing at the lot lizards. Happiness beyond belief. Yeah I cry every goddamn time I hear it, you got a problem with that?

Purple Rain, Prince (from the album Purple Rain)
If you look past the hyperbole and the high heels, you find one of the most talented song writers. Look past that and you see an amazing guitarist. I hope you got to see his stage show last time he toured because it could be your last opportunity.

The One I Love, REM (from the album Document)
They wrote some of the most intelligent three minute pop songs. Its nice to see a return to form with their new stuff.

Biko, Pater Gabriel (from the album Peter Gabriel IV)
Everybody has some artist that they love that nobody they now cares about. For a long time that was Gabriel for me. Biko used to be the way he ended his stage show, usually combined with falling into the audience and been transported around the crowd on their hands. PG has always had a tremendous sense of theater and also of the world outside of western borders - he formed WOMAD long before people knew what world music was.

Tainted Love, Soft Cell.
My first year of college this was EVERYWHERE. It was derigeur at student parties and the juke box in the student union had to have the single replaced roughly every two months because it kept get warped from the heat of the mechanism playing it over and over again. I hated it then but find myself osmewhat nostalgic when it comes on now.

Someday Soon, Journey (from the album Deperature)
The dark if before the dawn
open your eyes
Someday soon
There will be a better day
I remember talking to this old guy who used to go to my local pub in England. He was really cool and he told me how he used to be really into Jazz until he went to a club in London one night on a whim to see a young american guy called Hendrix. He sadi within weeks of that gig how he had changed, listening to different music, dressing differently etc. In my middle years of high school there was one brand of music and it was called heavy metal, it was the only thing that my friends and I listened too. Then my two closest mates, Pete and Jim, started listening to this obscure US band called Journey (obscure in England anyway). At first I ignored them but Pete, who was perceptive, forced me to listen to the album because ("its a big world Bozz"). Within weeks my musical tastes widened considerably and I never looked back.

Solid Air, John Martyn (from the album Solid Air)
When I first left college I went to live in the south of England. I rented a room in a house owned by a guy called Kipper (there is a whole blog in the stories from that period alone). Kipper had a brother, who's nickname was Mankey, who played John Martyn incessantly and, more by osmosis than design, I started to listen to him to. A couple of years later, I am hanging out with friends up in London at the Mean Fiddler and we are waiting fro JM to play a gig. Its a smallish club, the crowd is rocking and as the night goes on, it only gets more electric. JM is late ("flight delays" apparently) which only adds to the expectation. JM finally comes on stage two hours late, launches in to the first number and it is obvious that both him and the badn are going to be on fire. Obvious that is, right up until the second chorus, when JM vomits on stage and the rest of the gig is cancelled! He played a make-up gig at the Town and Country but it wasn't the same.

Are Friends Electric? Gary Numan (from the album Down In The Park)
Now the light fades out
And I wonder what I'm doing
In a room like this
There's a knock on the door
And just for a second I thought
I remembered you
Early middle school years. All night parties. Amateur fumblings in the dark. Embaressment. Ecstasy. Excitement. Early morning trains home.

Something's Got Me, Lori Carson (from the album Everything I Touch Runs Wild)
Something's got me, and its got me good
I used to be known as the king of obscure goodness when I lived in England. I had a knack for discovering tracks and bands that nobody had heard of but that a lot of my friends turned on to. It wasn't that I really had a talent just that I had more disposable income and no girlfriend so something had to fill up the time! :)

I decided to load Rhapsody today and, while typing email at work, just randomally try stuff I hadn't heard before. This is an amazing track and stands out on the album although Snow Come Down has a beautifully wistful quality (Every time I see your face, I can hardly breathe).

I Want You, Elvis Costello (from the album Blood And Chocolate)
We happened to be in Reno at a basketball tournament having missed EC in San Francisco two nights earlier. Although it wsn't a great concert (casino halls are not the best venues) the room lit up when he did this.