out of the darkness, into the light: Hot Dog! That Made Him Mad.

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"Should anyone ask you,
'who composed this song?'
Should anyone ask you,
'who composed this song?'
Say, 'It was I! and
I sing it all day long.'"

Nice verse summing up the idea of folk music/all popular music from Worried Man Blues. You are the author of these thoughts, whether you know it or not.

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Interesting joke from John Lennon here. He mockingly refers to this song as being from 1822, deriding its old fashioned sound. But Johnny Burnette recorded the original in 1957, and I think this session is 1963 at the latest. Did the early 60s change the musical landscape THAT much? I can't imagine someone joking about a Girls Aloud song from 6 years ago like that.

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Here's a selection of songs which are the only songs that I like by the artist that made them, if you get me. This actually means I have an unusually strong attachment to them; isolation increases passion.

I've talked about this one before and will continue to for a while. Easily in my top five videos ever. It was around the time of myspaces and full of myspace photo poses, which for a song about a fat girl being insecure is so great.

I feel like I should be ashamed of this one but that's not the way I do things like this.

I think the sentiment in this song is confused and poorly expressed, but the voice redeems it spectacularly.

I of course like Jay-Z, but this is the only time I like MOP's style of butch, macho cunt-rap. And it's all cos of that female vocal sample, which is spectacular. MOP rap clumsily and violently over the top, whilst the feminine quivers and squirms underneath the overbearing masculine, trying to seep up between the cracks of this charmless veneer with the faltering 'oh no' and 'do you believe' prayers which are offered not up to MOP, but higher still: to the listener.

"I don't claim to be no philosopher,
but I sure know, this isn't life."

A brief snippet of beauty at the start then MOP obliterate and ruin it, ignorant of the fragile distress underneath them.

Jay-Z is also on it and he is ok I guess.

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"I'll take my chances,
for romance is,
so important to me."

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Let's look at Wanda Jackson.

So that was amazing. And then:

"We think this is one of the most beautiful love songs that's ever been written"!!!!!

So, we're clearly in the presence of greatness. Wanda Jackson is exceptional for a number of reasons not least because she's absolutely fine about being completely removed of sex appeal (this will be a theme of this blog, btw nice article in the guardian recently about Polly Styrene's deliberate removal of herself from feminine sexuality) and female romantic platitude.

So:

To sing about love in a voice like that! I have two theories about it. It's either:

1) Meant to be a chain-smoker's voice; the sound of 3am end-of-a-twenty-deck heartbroken calls to no one.

or

2) Just deliberately ugly to remove oneself from emotional cliché.

They're of course not mutually exclusive, but I'm more tempted towards the second because of this:

25 seconds in, Wanda lets slip that plaintive, tender 'I love you' at the end of her shoegazings mumblings before a brutal sandpapered 'YEAHHH' comes in to affirm it. Wanda has moments of romantic normalcy bubbling underneath the surface, but covers it up with this anti-sexual voice. Which is great!

It's also assured by the fact that all her plain-singing songs about love are pretty much unexceptional and dull:

You can tell she'd rather be singing her voice in funnel of love here. The voice of battery acid, wasps and vinegar.

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'I Bid You Goodnight' by Any Old Time String Band (find it on spotify or buy it for 79p on amazon, I did both) is my favourite song right now. Here are the lyrics:

Lay down my dear sister
Won't you lay and take your rest
Won't you lay your head upon your saviours breast
And I love you but Jesus loves you the best
And I bid you goodnight, goodnight, goodnight,
And I bid you goodnight, goodnight, goodnight.
One of these mornings bright and early and fine.
Goodnight, goodnight
Not a cricket not a spirit going to shout me on
Goodnight, goodnight
I go walking in the valley of the shadow of death
Goodnight, goodnight
And his rod and his staff shall comfort me
Goodnight, goodnight
Oh John the wine he saw the sign
Goodnight, goodnight
Oh John say I seen a number of signs
Goodnight, goodnight
Tell A for the ark that wonderful boat
Goodnight, goodnight
You know they built it on the land getting water to float
Goodnight, goodnight
Tell B for the beast at the ending of the wood
Goodnight, goodnight
You know it ate all the children when they wouldn't be good
Goodnight, goodnight
I remember quite well, I remember quite well
Goodnight, goodnight
I was walking in Jerusalem just like John
Goodnight, goodnight, goodnight.

Ain't nothing I like more than Christianity for my pseudo-profundity (at a philosophy conference in Edinburgh recently I said that profundity and pseudo-profundity are the same thing when put to music and I could feel the collective intake of breath across the room).

I like it because it's about removing yourself from romantic and possibly sexual love in the aim of a higher cause (the jesus loves you the best couplet is one of my favs), which is nice. Then it's just a set of abstract, barely connected phrases which as we all know I'm very fond of as they're ripe for misinterpretation, which is where I come alive.

These aren't the exact lyrics on the original and I do recommend you seek it out but I got them from here which has some excellent poetry either end of them, which is mysterious but great.
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Gavin chastised me for liking Waugh, saying that he idealised the aristocracy that he claimed to lampoon. Martin Amis said something similar, saying Brideshead Revisited set egalitarianism as its target and unrelentingly gunned it down for 400 pages.

But I think they both miss the point and one of the reasons I really like Brideshead is it's about the idea that if you really want something, you to some extent already have/are that thing. Charles wants to be Sebastian, and when he gets his chance, he is better at being Sebastian than Sebastian ever can be. Some people, both in and out of the novel, accuse Charles of being cool and soulless, but in reality he is just calm and methodical in his acting out a life he's internally rehearsed thousands of times. Charles can seem ruthless but in reality is endeavouring to close the gulf between our private and public persona.

This song expresses a similar thing. A sexy song from the least sexy band ever. It reminds me of the Knife at points in its astonishing level of self-assurance. Fox knows what she is. Inside, we're all exactly what we want. Fox in this song is Charles around the time of his divorce: things are beginning to come apart in his plan, the world is not perfect and instead of getting upset he transcends himself to a yet higher realm, marrying Julia, and going for a more perfect union.

You know what, it comes back to I Bid You Goodnight, as everything in my life does at this moment. You spend an evening drinking and the whole world as you want it is laid out before your eyes, and you pull back and out, cos internal wranglings of the mind are better than anything he has to offer.

Internal sexual superiority and general, non-sexual romantic fantasy remains pure and intact when it's not put into use or practice.