Day 30 – The 30 Day Song Challenge – Your favourite song this time last year...

Song 30 – Your favourite song this time last year – ‘Answering Machine’ – The Replacements

The Replacements

The final song, my favourite song a year ago, would probably be my favourite song of now.  That would make for a nicely circular but rather boring finish to this series of blogs so I’ll pick a song that I was listening to an awful lot at this time last year.

'Answering Machine' - The Replacements

This is an album track from the ‘Let It Be’ record by The Replacements.  Once again it’s one man singing and playing a guitar but is very different from the acoustic songs that I already picked.  The vocal is ragged, hoarse and raw.  The guitar is scuzzy and played in a style that you couldn’t get close to on an acoustic instrument and there are even a couple of samples playing away in the background.  The lyric, about the agony of trying to reach someone through something as impersonal as an answering machine, is dated and yet curiously relevant with the array of emails, texts and voicemails that we have now.  They’re all ways of allowing two people to communicate but often prevent them from really reaching each other.  Sometimes you just need to hear that human voice.

Art Brut - The Replacements

The Replacements are an alternative American band, formed in 1979, who released a series of critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful albums in the early to mid 1980s.  I’m afraid to say I’d never heard of them, until I heard a song about them by the band ‘Art Brut’...

 “I can’t believe I’ve only just heard of The Replacements, some of them are old enough to be my parents”

...sings Eddie Argos on the track.  I think Art Brut are great and so I hunted out a copy of ‘Let It Be’ which is reckoned to be their best album (no.15 in the ‘Best Albums of the 1980’s in Rolling Stone’s 1990 poll).  It’s certainly an excellent record and worth having a listen to.

The other song I was playing to death a year ago was ‘The King of Spain’ by ‘The Tallest Man on Earth’.  I’ll pop it on here too as it’s a lot more jolly and so is a nicer way to finish the songs I’ve posted.  It was around a year ago but here he is performing it on 'Later with Jools Holland' a couple of weeks ago.

'King Of Spain' - The Tallest Man On Earth 

Well we made it to the end!  It was a little touch and go on a couple of days but I managed to hit the ‘post’ button before midnight each day, even if it was a little closer to midnight that I would have liked.  I’ll post the full list tomorrow and probably examine it overall next week to see what patterns I can see.

Thanks for reading along.  I hope I reminded you of some old favourites, maybe introduced you to some new ones and at least made you appreciate your own music more!

David Millington

30^th April 2011

Nottingham