{"id":129,"date":"2021-08-07T12:16:14","date_gmt":"2021-08-07T12:16:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/singularlydisinterested.com\/blog\/?p=129"},"modified":"2021-08-07T20:45:56","modified_gmt":"2021-08-07T20:45:56","slug":"the-finest-music-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/singularlydisinterested.com\/blog\/2021\/08\/07\/the-finest-music-10\/","title":{"rendered":"the finest music 10…"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

\u2026well, tfm7 at the moment but I\u2019m working on that.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Back to the post: in the interest of keeping a blog \u2018relevant\u2019, I\u2019ve read that one should include \u2018pillar posts\u2019. PPs are posts (obviously) which, among other things, can be easily shared, and not specific to time, incidents or people. So, I reckon a selection of \u2019Top 10 \u2018 somethings, along with some delicious food recipes and reviews, along with articles (published, hey) on the trials and tribulations of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club should help. This \u2018Top 10\u2019 has little in the way of comment but simply links to my absolute favourite tunes. Well, maybe some comment\u2026<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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  1. Smokey Robinson & The Miracles – Tears Of A Clown<\/strong>
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    Early Guantanamo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\nI Second That Emotion, Shop Around, The Tracks Of My Tears and Going To A Go-Go all have claim to be up here. However, from the very first beat this tune, and vocals rise above almost everything and remain at the highest level until the tunes ends. The magnificent vocals from the main man – one of the great male voices of all time, and the fantastic instrumental support Robinson receives make this unmovable from my top three. The tune never drops a beat. It\u2019s been my ringtone for years and I see no need to ever change that, irrespective of my mood. Until my mood changes, natch.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

    Apple Music link: \u200eThe Tears of a Clown by Smokey Robinson & The Miracles on Apple\u00a0Music<\/a><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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    1. INXS – Beautiful Girl<\/strong>
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      All wrong<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\nAny song that opens with the line \u2018Big Ears in the corner\u2026\u2019 gets my attention. And it\u2019s about the only lyric by Michael Hutchence I ever did get. The white James Brown, if you will. As with Mr Robinson and his chums listed above, any number of INXS tunes would not be out of place in this list: Disappear, Never Tear Us Apart, New Sensation<\/em> are all fabulous in their own way but none quite reach the class and beauty here. Anyway, enough of that. Beautiful Girl<\/em> really is the most beautiful, if unintelligible, song, for the most Beautiful Girl.<\/em> Hey ho.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

      Footnote: the grapes are a) the wrong colour and b) probably not from New Zealand. Someone, somewhere understands the significance of these facts.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

      Apple Music link: \u200eBeautiful Girl by INXS on Apple\u00a0Music<\/a><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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      1. Kevin Ayers – Shouting In A Bucket Blues<\/strong>
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        Schlong<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\nUntil I watched a rerun of the OGWT (one for the teenagers), I had never heard of Kevin Ayers, or any of his not inconsiderable associated musical history – the 1970s psychedelic, folky, hedgemonkey thing was not really _my_thing – admission to liking the genre would have seriously hampered my bony-black-arse Inner London street cred of the time. Subsequently, I know only two things about Kevin: 1) he\u2019s dead, and 2) and I have this on very trusted friend authority, he was really<\/em> well endowed. Putting that to one side, although quite frankly I wouldn\u2019t, it seems that Kevin was also a hopeless romantic, and went through various ups and downs in his rock star life, as you do, and that he could only write songs when he was \u2018in love\u2019. In the event of being barren in the writing department, I know where I would have looked for solace. I don\u2019t know whether the bloke who told the bloke who told me about KA\u2019s appendage was overly-endowed himself but boy, he had some story: a married man for a number of years, and to all that knew the couple all seemed as well. However, TBWTTBWTM like to \u2018put it about\u2019, apparently. That in itself is what it is and is his dog, so to speak but not content enough with doing what he did, he took it upon himself to document everything<\/em> about his conquests. Everything<\/em>. Age, size, quality, things-they-enjoyed, things-he-enjoyed, ratings, names, addresses. Everything.<\/em> And, one day, he left the notepad in the marital bedroom ready for his wife to critique, apparently. Back to the song: KA\u2019s baritone voice is mellifluous and sexy yet carries a degree of melancholy at the same time. The blues guitar and clever lyrics just make this a simple yet lovely number which, from I\u2019ve read about KA, sums him up quite nicely.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

        Footnote: this may come as no real surprise but Mr & Mrs TBWTTBWTM are no longer an item.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

        Apple Music link: \u200eShouting In a Bucket Blues (2003 Remastered Version) by Kevin Ayers on Apple\u00a0Music<\/a><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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        1. Talisk – Echo<\/strong>
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          Fish bowl<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\nSo close to being perfect. So close. If you have been paying attention, you would know that the folk genre wasn\u2019t really ever my thing – street cred and all that – but the older I get the less street cred I have, so more music genre are now allowed in my life. Echo<\/em> gradually builds and moves up levels as it progresses, into a marvellous folky, fast-paced melange of Celtic fiddle, concertina & guitar. Both me and the person who introduced me to the tune couldn\u2019t work out whether the song was called \u2018Talisk by Echo\u2019, or vice versa. Safe to say the regular cocktails of vodka, ginger beer, (fresh) lime juice, all topped up with ice, contributed to that. Plus the fact the vodka was measured out from an egg cup the size of a fish bowl in multiples of three (at least). Still, a fantastic tune. But then anything would sound good after that amount of alcohol. Except the ending.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

          Apple Music link: \u200eEcho by Talisk on Apple\u00a0Music<\/a><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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          1. Propaganda – Duel<\/strong>
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            Wubble Yoo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\nTo me, there is no more sexier female accent than that of the English-speaking-but-American-tinted central European voice. Enter the \u00fcber sexy-voiced Claudia Br\u00fccken, and Propaganda. The band are Germanic sounding, which is no real surprise given the outfit are from D\u00fcsseldorf, although they sound cool enough to be from Berlin, (see other blogs for my Berlin thoughts). The synthesised-led intro starts as it means to go on, and go on it does for some two minutes until Claudia burst in, takes over, desperately trying to pronounce Ws correctly (won\u2019t, wonder, etc) which only adds to the voice sexiness – Claudia, you can say it how you damn vell vant to. The instrumental intro and ending is the high quality artisan bread that sandwiches the delicious vocal filling, and unlike most other songs in this list, I simply can never, ever get bored of this tune.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

            Footnote: the song has been covered by Mandy Smith (among others). Just fuck right off.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

            Apple Music link: \u200eDuel by Propaganda on Apple\u00a0Music<\/a><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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            1. Freeez – Mariposa<\/strong>
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              \u0641\u0631\u0627\u0634\u0629<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\nIt\u2019s weird what songs can make you remember. For no real reason (I have no idea where Freeez are from) but this gorgeous, sophisticated tune always takes me back to north London evenings, no matter where I am. Unexplainable, if that\u2019s a word. Criminally, I have nothing else to add other than it\u2019s a fantastic piece of music, and quite frankly the tune deserves a far better write-up than this. Mariposa<\/em> is on EP (kids, go and ask someone old) with the almost-equally fabulous semi-famous Southern Freeez<\/em> and not-at-all famous\u00a0Flying High<\/em>. After that the band went commercial and lost any credibility but probably made loads of money.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

              Footnote: mariposa<\/em> is the Spanish word for butterfly, and a beautiful word it is. It\u2019s a lovely word in French too: papillon<\/em>, and even sounds acceptable in throat-rasping Dutch: vlinder<\/em>. The Arabic translation is \u0641\u0631\u0627\u0634\u0629, which I have no problem with but in German: Schmetterling.<\/em> At least the beer is good.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

              Apple Music link: \u200eMariposa by Freeez on Apple\u00a0Music<\/a><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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              1. Incognito – Summer\u2019s Ended<\/strong>
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                Nonce<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\nA simply magical, haunting and dreamy instrumental \u2018old skool\u2019 jazz funk tune from a band who I knew way back then. The tune gradually builds, slows and again builds, again slows, and then keeps on building, with the constant slapping of bass, background percussion, and absolutely magical flute arrangement which lifts the tune to greatness, to the final combined drum, bass and flute crescendo, all of which is utterly mesmerising. This is a tune which demands<\/em> to be heard through headphones or earbuds. Whilst my link is Apple Music, there is a youtube<\/strong> user by the magnificently monikered \u2019Sir Groovington\u2019<\/strong>, who has this on his public playlist. SG<\/strong>, understand that s|d<\/strong> would salute you from the highest but your profile tells me you are from Gillingham (and not the nice one). Be thankful I have given you time. Now jog on with your pitfall and skank girlfriend, nonce, as you would (possibly) say.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

                Footnote: Ian Cognito (AKA Paul Barbieri) was a very<\/em> funny stand-up comedian who sadly passed away in April 2019. Sadly yes, but as with the greatest of live performers, IC died whilst playing live on stage (\u00e0 la<\/em> Tommy Cooper, of course). It is reported that one of Cognito\u2019s last jokes before the absolute final act was: \u201cImagine having a stroke and waking up speaking Welsh\u201d<\/em>. Now, that<\/em> is how to exit this world. Simply magnificent.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

                Apple Music link: \u200eSummer\u2019s Ended by Incognito on Apple\u00a0Music<\/a>
                Special treat, SG YouTube<\/strong> link:                 YouTube<\/a><\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

                \u2026well, tfm7 at the moment but I\u2019m working on that. Back to the post: in the interest of keeping a…<\/p>\n

                read on…the finest music 10…<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":222,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":2,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","excerpt","zoom","full-without-featured","even","excerpt-0"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/singularlydisinterested.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/singularlydisinterested.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/singularlydisinterested.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/singularlydisinterested.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/singularlydisinterested.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/singularlydisinterested.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":227,"href":"https:\/\/singularlydisinterested.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions\/227"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/singularlydisinterested.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/singularlydisinterested.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/singularlydisinterested.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/singularlydisinterested.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}