Of All The Video Games We've Made

Welcome to the latest instalment of the badly titled Everyone Has Got one Good Song blog thing. Day 55!

I was thinking of building the ultimate playlist with one simple rule. One artist. One song. Each day will feature a song by an artist whose birthday is that day and then nine other songs by nine different artists just because people like things to be in tens.

The playlist is here - https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4exU9MUJMWaouOgnu7zmSl?si=I5fqk7VpQX6aDGec7xvqsQ&pi=e-IfIWXc5GT56R

 

So, the idea was that you might want to follow and share and either have the playlist yourself or do your own or chat about it with me, you could use the hashtag #EHGOGS.

I’m on Twitter X thing as @fourfoot

Today’s selection is dedicated to birthday boy Paul Humphreys. This blog is impressionistic and fucking vague. It’s all about the playlist.

Of All The Things We’ve Made – Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. Odd lot, the old OMD. Pretty much can’t stand anything they did after about 1982 but those first few years contain so many great moments you forgive them. Thought about choosing Electricity or Souvenir but this features so many of the things I love, the most basic drumbeat, childlike keyboards and jangly Cocteau guitars, not to mention a portentous, pretentious looking song title, that I couldn’t overlook it.

Staring at the Sun – TV on the Radio. So many things going on in this record. An insistent menace, multi-layered electronics, glitches, vocals and handclaps.

Dancing Drums – Ananda Shankar. ITS FUSION BAYBEEEAHHH!

Somebody Made For Me – Emitt Rhodes What people usually say is this is like the best Beatles record McCartney never wrote. And there’s a reason for that.

Panis Et Circenses – Os Mutantes. More ideas in every 30 seconds that most bands manage in a career. Gruff Rhys knows this record, you just know it. Starts off sounding like Nico at a military parade, becomes increasingly deranged, psychedelic and ends up in an organ-chasing-the trumpets cacophony of pop magic.

Shot By Both Sides - Magazine Very few people get to have been so influential in the history of music as Howard Devoto. Puts on THAT Pistols gig in Manchester, forms two further bands of his own that shaped the way for “alternative” music in this country and wrote this anthem of unsettling strangeness. Good work fella, as they used to say in that lad mag.

Love in the Cemetery – Lord Kitchener. There just aren’t enough calypso songs about shagging in graveyards.

The Lost Ones – Ted Hawkins. Few sadder back stories than Ted’s in the annals of history and this song contains it all.

The Night – Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. The best bassline intro ever? Got to be in the discussion. A proper stompah etc.

Video Games – Lana Del Rey I love Lana. It’s the law for middle aged men I think. Anyway, this is still for me her finest moment. Who cares if it’s contrived? What isn’t?

As ever, your love is taken as read. Thanks for putting up with this shite. Tomorrow, we celebrate birthday boy Jake Bugg.