no matter how bad the mood
one song that can always cheer me up and give me that fuzzy-back-of-the-head feeling is E.L.O's Mr. Blue Sky. i always listen to music when i'm doing the housework and that's always the first song i play. it's just an instant pick-me-up.

on a slightly heavier note, i love to listen to Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain during thunderstorms. the music seems to fit the raw power of the storm perfectly.
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Thu 28 Jan 2010, 17:59, 9 replies)

The most frustrating song ever
December 2007. A hospital bed, swimming in and out of consciousness, only occasionally seeing what was there rather than absurd and terrible hallucinations. However one thing that couldn't be blocked out was the radio that was by the head of my bed. Every day my mother came in and changed it to Classic FM or Radio 3 knowing that I liked classical music. Every single day a well meaning nurse changed it to Radio One, saying comfortingly to me that I was too young to want to listen to that boring music. And for what seemed like every day forever the Sugababes blasted 'Change.' Many shit songs graced Radio One, but it's that song that makes me want to strangle anyone who puts it on willingly. What could I possibly have done in a past life to merit being tortured by the Sugababes and the smuggest DJs ever and be unable to move to do something about it?

Edit: and a song from a later time during the same hospital stay from a very very good friend who literally gave me every metal disc he had and a cd player. Lying in bed and listening to Metallica's The Unforgiven II with the line 'The door cracks open, but there's no sun shining through' which makes me simultaneously sad, and grateful
( Amberl was stripey and dominated Europe, Thu 28 Jan 2010, 17:53, 6 replies)

never ask your punky mate to do the tunes at your wedding
I did, and as I and new wifey strolled onto the dancefloor infront of her posh family and assorted friends he played this www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-0c4lgvpb4
difficult to dance to at the best of times
( Dill, Thu 28 Jan 2010, 17:52, 3 replies)

Sort of relevant...
A few years ago I had invited my then partner to come over to my place as I wanted to 'talk'. Obviously that was a thinly-veiled "this isn't working babe" impending meeting.

As I sat at home waiting for him to arrive, I tried to put the thoughts out of my mind and watched a movie. Halfway through, he turned up so I turned the sound down and we sat on the sofa. I told him how I felt it wasn't working, the usual stuff one digs out of nowhere under these circumstances. He got upset. I got upset. During a pause in the talking and emotion, he sat there sobbing silently while I suddenly noticed the DVD had finished and had gone back to the menu and was gently playing the theme tune over and over again.

The title of the movie was emblazoned across the screen: "The Odd Couple"

This music will forever remind me of that horrible evening.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Syt8qQUbzVc
( Richard Shitheels, Thu 28 Jan 2010, 17:42, Reply)

The moment I realised I loved music
Aged 11 or 12, watching my babysitter and her boyfriend stare into each other's eyes with Don't wait that long by James on.

I'm rather embarrassed by it now, but that prompted a three years' long James obsession. I could make a bit of $ by selling my Factory Records vinyl, but wont - I still play it when in the right mood.
(Fancy a weekend on my Raymondo Luxury Yacht?, Thu 28 Jan 2010, 17:42, 3 replies)

Tubthumping
In early 2000 I had an eye operation (detached retina) which left me mentally and physically in a very bad place. Literally overnight I had gone from having perfect vision to painful, blurred double vision. To make matters worse, the "medical profession" seemed not to give a rat's arse about the state I had been left in. The operation had technically been a success, and that was all they wanted to know. Upshot was I was virtually housebound for a month, unable to work, go running or do any of the normal stuff I was used to. My personality changed much for the worse and I became borderline alcoholic.

One of the few things that helped drag me back from this dark place was Chumbawamba's "Tubthumping". I had only got hold of this track as part of a compilation CD and I'm not even sure how I ended up listening to it. Nevertheless, its simple, good-natured but defiant chorus of "I get knocked down, but I get up again, you're never gonna keep me down" repeated over and over was exactly what I needed to hear and that track ended up being played over and over and over - often to the accompaniement of me bawling my eyes (sorry - eye) out.

Even now, ten years later, it sends a shiver down my spine to listen to.
(ThermoMan Waiting for convergence, Thu 28 Jan 2010, 17:40, 4 replies)

June last year..
My two best mates and I went to a little local festival known as Gocstock, run by one of my friends friends.
Bearing in mind the last thing I usually want to do is sleep in a tent and piss under a wigwam, I had one of the best times I'd ever had.
The soundtrack to this is one such local band (Bathroom Sally)'s song they wrote for the festival - Teddy Bears Picnic.
A nicely menacing version of the kiddiwinks song and it became *the* soundtrack to that weekend - and now whenever I hear it I think of laughing gas, wigwams, Rob snoring and fitting a custom drum kit and amps into Lili's small white car.
(pinkpunkpython is skinning up, Thu 28 Jan 2010, 17:32, Reply)

The song I wish I had walked down the aisle to
I got married in 1998 and decided to walk down the aisle to a certain song - I won't mention it by name as I'm deeply, deeply ashamed. However at the time it was important to me. So I arrived at the church, in a rather fetching white number, to find a bit of a kerfuffle. It emerged that one of my closest friends had removed my chosen CD from its case and replaced it with the single version of The Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up", assuming I would see it when I went to the church to sort everything out the day before and have a laugh before rectifying the situation. It was only on the morning of the wedding she had realised I hadn't mentioned it. So, I had to circle the church for 10 minutes while a replacement CD was found.

Divorced now - I almost wish that nobody had realised as it turned out to be a strangely accurate prediction.
(Penguins_Made_Me_Do_It is a dolt ... and she don't care, Thu 28 Jan 2010, 17:32, 8 replies)

On my bike, chilling through Epping Forest after a ride, on the way back home for beer and sex, and then to the pub to meet friends, on the first warm afternoon of summer
Afro Celt Sound System, "Amber".

Oh yeah.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Thu 28 Jan 2010, 17:27, Reply)

Guillemots made up love song #43
came on the radio when I was making a fruitcake to woo a boy*.
I don't know whether it was because I was feeling all loved up thinking about him or i had eaten too much raw mix but it struck me as the most perfect love song ever. I stuck a copy of the Album in with the cake package, posted them to him, he liked both and four years later we are nearly married :-)

*note to anybody flirting with someone who lives far away- fruitcakes are very heavy and expensive to post, other lighter baked goods would be just as appreciated
(bryo, Thu 28 Jan 2010, 17:26, 3 replies)

De-Loused in the Comatorium
This doesn't really go anywhere in particular, but what the hey.

My last year of uni was something of a let down. A protracted and painful split from my first 'proper' girlfriend, making a balls-up of finding somewhere to live - which resulted in nine months of inhabiting a cupboard with one plug socket - and the ever growing realisation that three years of revelry with a new found bunch of fantastic mates was fizzling out to an anti-climatic end.

I had a weekend job in the local HMV at the time, which essentially acted as a premises for laundering my wages - money gets paid; money gets spent; money doesn't leave the building.

Anywho, on a regular spending splurge, I picked up a copy of the first Mars Volta album on the strength of the press cuttings stuck on the front cover, and headed home for the night. Perched on my bedroom window sil with a bottle of Jim Beam and a carefully rolled selection of spliffs, I must have listened to this entire album (apart from the instrumental bit at the end - the piss in an otherwise fantastic plate of chips) on repeat at least 3-4 times before retiring to bed. The lasting thought I can remember having is "this is the music that I've been waiting to hear" (even though I obviously didn't know it until then).

Concentrating on the majesty of all that's in that recording gave me a focus and a distraction all at once and I believe genuinely helped improve my mindset and get me through that final push to get my degree.

Apologies for length. That's just the size it is.
(i.charlius *Two Ronnies Theme*, Thu 28 Jan 2010, 17:21, Reply)

The best days of our lives...
No, I don't mean the horrible school disco song, guaranteed to instantly take us all back to darkened school hall discos and trying to make out with Tina 'Big Jugs' McClure in the darkness without the teachers noticing. I mean of course, the musical geniuses more commonly known as Blur.

Dad first introduced me to them in the early 90s- just about the time Parklife came out. And I loved them ever since. I would prance about like a mad thing to Parklife, and sit and be reflective like only a spotty teenager can be when listening to This is a Low. Hell, they even helped me form a few fleeting friendships, now since consigned to the dustbin of history due to the ever present problems of distance, time and laziness. Blur then took me through my teenage years, when the Best Of came out whilst I was at university, and became the soundtrack to me getting to know who I was. Well, apart from still liking Blur, I'm still trying to figure that out. And as time went on, my musical tastes broadened and deepened, and in some cases were cut off, as I realised I wasn't really cut out for the metal head life style. Always too much of a hippie I guess. But, as times and tastes changed, and bands broke up, reformed and broke up again, my love of Blur still remained.

And then, a couple of years ago, when I found out they Blur were reforming for a tour in England, I jumped at the chance of tickets. And missed out. Spectacularly. To say I was gutted is to say that Beth Ditto is merely porky. And then, thanks to the wonders of eBay, I managed to get tickets. At about half the price they should have been. With my mood improved, I eagerly counted the days to the gig in Hyde Park, and then on that magical day I rocked up to the gig, tickets in hand and had one of the most fantastic experiences of my life. The day was warm, long and the beer flowing all too freely. I was muntered, well and truly. But it didn't seem to have that much of an effect on me. Some much adrenaline running round my system, I guess. Not that I was complaining, I was having a whale of a time. And it could only get better. As the gig ended, we all piled into the local tube station. And I was in a very good mood- and as such, I started to sing, as I am wont to do on such occasions. And then other people joined in, and soon enough the whole underground station was filled with the sound of people singing.

Every time I hear any Blur song it takes me back to that singular moment in time when I was at peace in one of the busiest parts of the world.
( jim_bob can herd cats., Thu 28 Jan 2010, 17:18, Reply)

For me, it's anything by 'Tin Machine'.
Because every pathetic pseudo drum'n'bass beat and and flaccid bassline instantly captures the moment that, even for the hordes of witless cretins who had hung on every pretentious word that dropped from the cultural vampire and shit drag act's mouth for fucking decades, it was simply one band-wagon too far for old David Bowie.

The fucking spanner.
( Monty Boyce, My cheese game is strong, Thu 28 Jan 2010, 17:18, 14 replies)

An ex of mine....
Total prude, was a major project to get her to give up the goodies. Anyway, we were not completely inactive in the physical department and one afternoon I was politely giving her a bit of oral pleasure. I was a young wannabe punk rocker and had blink 182 playing, the album ended and instead of break off to change the CD I just left it, only for the hidden track to come on. 'I wanna fuck a dog in the ass' just isn't the soundtrack she was hoping for apparently. That knocked the project back a couple of steps and, no, it wasn't worth it in the end.
(el perro grande, Thu 28 Jan 2010, 17:12, 1 reply)

Everybody Here Wants You - Jeff Buckley
on a tape cassette it took me ages to line up on time before my recently ex'd girlfriends' Mother came to pick her up and take her away forever. I wasn't being ironic or hypocritical or cruel. I meant it with all my heart. We were just incompatible.

rafter
baz
(bazmorningstar efil4nat3b, Thu 28 Jan 2010, 17:10, 2 replies)

to set the scene
it was a funeral.
the body was been comited. (oven baked)
the song they were playing, slade with merry christmass.
(radial head fracture, Thu 28 Jan 2010, 17:05, Reply)

Interloper
Interloper were good mates of mine from about 2001 to 2007. They were pretty average really, but good live, and besides were more important to me as mates. I was the "fifth Interloper", enjoying helping them out with gigs, promotional stuff and tagging along to the after-parties. It was always fun getting the train to Sutton Coldfield where they were based and hanging out in the rythm guitarist's big house, a favorite party spot known for wild happenings. However I slowly ruined relations over the years until finally they stopped speaking to me altogether.

I am rather obsessed by music and have strong ideas on how it should be done. Interloper were a bunch of pretty average blokes with oasis fixations whose ideas about music mainly came from Noel Gallagher. I'd get drunk with them and clash over my weird indie ideas vs their macho swagger. We were all arrogant in different ways, enough for a fight to break out one memorable time over musical differences. If you look at their website you can see that the message board has been taken down. This is after I found it and took the piss massively in true b3tan style. I thought I was being funny but it turns out I massively offended quite a few people.

Towards the end of their career the founding members had sacked half the band, got the singer's dad to pay for mega-expensive pop-production and decided they needed to move to london, with no jobs to go to. They were unsigned and rarely played to more than 20 people, but they thought they were serious stuff and were determined to get success at any cost. In short, they disappeared up their own arse, and foolishly I let them know this.

All attempts at contacting them now fail. I feel really stupid - I fucked up some really good friendships through getting arsey about music. At the end of the day, it's only music.

I know they sound like twats, and they were a bit, but they were fun to hang out with and I miss them, and still play their old demos to myself.
(Fancy a weekend on my Raymondo Luxury Yacht?, Thu 28 Jan 2010, 17:04, Reply)

Driving
Back in 2002, I went travelling to Australia with 3 of my friends. As there were four of us, we pooled our money and bought a car, with a view to driving our whole trip. Our first stop would be Ayers Rock (or Uluru, as the local aborigines would prefer you call it). We were on a tight schedule, as we had to get up there from Adelaide, then back down to Melbourne to meet another friend who was arriving in five days time.

So after a short first day, we drove... and drove and drove and drove. Then drove a bit more, aiming to hit Ayers Rock for sunrise. I was pulling the very early shift, must've been about 2am...

Lots of music had soundtracked our journey so far, through our crappy car stereo with one working speaker; Aerosmith, Faith No More, Sheryl Crow (?), Shakira (?!) and whatever other pikey tapes we'd picked up in our previous stopover in Bali. But there's nothing that can quite freak you out more at 2 in the morning – while it's pitch black outside, all your friends are asleep, you're dodging suicidal kangaroos and hallucinating giant walls on each side of the road – than Jim Morrison singing in a tinny voice on your left...



'This is the end'.

I had to wake someone up after that.
(beanojam isn't really Ricardo Flange, Thu 28 Jan 2010, 17:04, Reply)

Going to University
I wasn't exactly nervous about going to university, but I did have mixed feelings; everyone else seemed to be enjoying freshers' week more than I was, and I was wondering to myself, "Is this it?".

The song that seemed to be on the radio every time I switched it on was "Sick, Tired and Sleepless" by The Cardigans. It summed up my mood perfectly. But it didn't really improve it.

Even now, whenever I hear it, I can feel the warm autumn sun of a northern town, and a sense of the huge, empty void that, somehow, I would have to fill with the rest of my life. I didn't have the first idea how to begin.

HERE: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8paAUN6lC3I
(Gravity's Raincoat, Thu 28 Jan 2010, 17:03, 1 reply)

The dirty dancing sound track
just makes me think of a 12 hour coach journey through Germany with only cold red tea and tinned fish to eat.

...I've...had..the time of my liiiiife...
( Citizen Cavy Admires your passion for conformity, Thu 28 Jan 2010, 16:59, Reply)

The Strokes....
....This is it album on repeat, for the long journey home to move back in with folks following a split with gf of 4 years.

Smiles all the way :)
(Corbo, Thu 28 Jan 2010, 16:47, 3 replies)

Yay! My question - suppose I'd better do an answer (cheers Mods)
[This is actually the follow-up to the top story on my profile, but feel free to read this first]

Let me take you back to 1985. Ronald Reagan was President of the USA, the very first Live Aid concert took place, mobile phones and the internet didn't exist and Che and Xena took to the road.

We'd met in the summer, fallen heavily in love and I'd said that I'd "take her away from all this". I had about £500 saved up in my Post Office account and another £250 limit on a Barclaycard - so I was rich. She had no money at all, had cut herself off from her family and ditched her love-rat married lover (though I didn't know that bit at the time). She did have a portable TV that was hired from Rumbelows but she hadn't told them that she'd left her bedsit in Cricklewood for my folks house, where we were both living while we got our travel plans sorted. This took us about two days - we bought train-boat-train tickets to Paris and packed some clothes and stuff.

The day we left we waved goodbye to my Mum standing at the door and headed up the street towards the tube station, marching boldly, head up, smile fixed. Hang on, I turned round and saw Xena about ten yards behind me, struggling under the weight of her rucksack and we were only half way to the high street. Still, what would be the point in having a true-love that was as fit and strong as you? It reminded me that she was gentle and soft and gorgeous and, and...

Thus started the most amazing honeymoon you could imagine - well, unless your idea of perfection is drinking cocktails out of pineapples on a Caribbean beach while servants tend to your every need - that's never been my bag, nor Xena's. We took the other route to bliss - staying on the floor at my mate Nass's flat in Paris, then hitch-hiking south and west to La Rochelle, staying in the cheapest hotel in town, cooking 'food' in an army mess tin over a gaz burner, hiring bikes and taking them on the ferry over to Isle de Re, sunbathing naked on the wide empty beach, making love in the sea then cycling back to the ferry with the setting sun shining through her dark hair then making love long into the night before doing it all again the next day.

Our plan was to head towards Bordeaux for the grape harvest and pick up a bit of work to fund us for longer. I'd done it in Rousillon the previous year but hadn't really done any deep research into this bit. But, after a week or so, we headed back onto the road, getting lifts easily - one night a lovely couple invited us back to their house to stay the night, otherwise, we headed to the train station where you could always find a cheap place to stay.

The sound-track to this whole trip was supplied via my Sony Walkman Sport - the black one, not the bright yellow version - and a selection of tapes I had. Our favourite tracks though were on a mix tape we had and the songs were Iggy Pop's 'The Passenger' and Talking Heads' 'Road to Nowhere'. We'd stand at the roadside, holding a rectangle of cardboard with a sign on it saying "Bordeaux s.v.p." and when there weren't any cars, or they weren't stopping, we'd sing and dance to the The Passenger and Road to Nowhere.

When we got to Bordeaux, we went out of town to look for grape picking work, ended up in St.Emillion and met up with a bunch of Irish lads. They had found an old deserted house and were living in it and they invited us to stay too. It was a real derelict place - the stairs had gone in the middle and I had to boost myself up and then reach down, pull up the bags and then pull up Xena. Still, it was home, and there was a campsite nearby and we could sneak in and use the toilets and showers. The Irish lads showed us where to get free food too - the nuns would hand out food at six every evening outside their nunnery. We looked for work but there wasn't any really.

One evening, one of the Irish lads told us we ought to go to the Algarve - it was cheap and it was lovely. Sounded alright to us, so we went. First to Lisbon, then on to Salema on the south coast. We haven't been back since, but at that time it was pretty unspoilt there - just one street of little shops, restaurants, b&bs and bars leading from the amazing beach, past the fishing boats, up the hill. We rented a room from a lovely old couple and stayed there for about four weeks, from the middle of September to the middle of October. The weather was perfect, there were little coves we could only get to by wading round the rocks and which were just ours for the whole day. In the evenings we drank and danced and ate fresh fish and chicken. One night, we took our sleeping bag down to a private little beach and slept under the stars after making wild love to the sound of the waves crashing.

By the end of the four weeks we'd explored each others bodies from every possible angle and direction and had hardly been out of sight of each other for a couple of months. But everything has to end, and the money had just about run out when we bought train tickets home. By November, we were living in a one room bedsit in Chiswick, claiming housing benefit and looking for jobs.

I won't pretend that it's all been sweetness and light from then til now, but we're still together, our daughter has grown up and moved away and we still stick Iggy or Talking Heads on the iPod dock after a bottle or two of wine, and if we're less energetic than 25 years ago, and perhaps the frequency has lessened a little over the years, she still knows how to push my buttons, and I know how to wiggle hers. We're planning to go back to Portugal this year to mark the quarter century. The music will come with.

Strange to think that many of you weren't even born back then, and 'Road to Nowhere' will have the same resonance for you as, say, 'Ticket to Ride' does for me.

Ah well.
(Che Grimsdale Best before:, Thu 28 Jan 2010, 16:43, 8 replies)

I wanked
to "You're my favourite waste of time" by Owen Paul.

7" vinyl too.

mint.
(nappy rash, Thu 28 Jan 2010, 16:43, 4 replies)

THE TUNE! - Soundclash (champion sound) by the Kicksquad.
Takes me back to my first ever proper nightclub visit.

Congleton 1989 or so. Armed with a fake home address in Congleton because 'This club doesn't let people from Macclesfield in' we negotiated our way past the bouncers (Who did indeed ask where we were from).

Ascendeding the gloomy steps into Rafaels (Oddly still referred to as Raffs by the yoof even though it's been called the Snooty Fox for the past god knows how long) we are assaulted by the awesomeness of the tunes and the stickiness of the carpets.

After sinking a few cooking lagers THE TUNE came on. It was so awesomely awesome that my then timid self just HAD to go ask the DJ what it was called 'Saaahhlaahdlash ba thh kaaaaaaaaaakkkkkkksssssd.' was all I was able to glean due to the combination of booze and the awesomeness of the wall of sound.

"Thanks mate. I'll remember that." I still recall saying as I walked away back to me mates grinning confidently.

Of course I couldn't remember THE TUNE and as it was some dance/rave track the chance of it appearing in any charts at the time was next to zero. In addition there were next to no lyrics other than a few samples so there was no chance of describing it to anyone else. This along with the absence of the internet or any useful Music TV channel meant I'd resigned myself to never hearing the awesomeness of THE TUNE again.

Move on a year and I've got me hands on 'Deep Heat 9' compilation CD as it's got some great tunes on it. Plonking it into the CD tray on my fancy new 800 quid Philips Stacking stereo system and pressing play I was greeted by recognisable tune after splendid tune as advertised on the back cover.

I can still remember lying on my bed with the latest copy of Personal Computer World when on came THE TUNE!
Cranking the volume up to ear shattering levels for that was what 800 quid got you back then I was taken back to my first ever visit to a nightclub and was gleeful that THE TUNE was indeed as awesome as I remember.

After it'd finished I was so gleeful I bounded down stairs to triumphantly tell my parents of the discovery. Fortunately as a DJ himself my dad was very tolerant of the occasional volume at 11 outburst from my bedroom above.

Move on nearly 20 more years. I'd forgotten about THE TUNE until I stumbled across it on someones Youtube playlist. And it took me right back to those carefree times. And THE TUNE was as AWESOME as it was back then.

I'm sure most of you philistines would berate THE TUNE if you could be arsed to look it up but I don't care.
( Airman Gabber Living life like a 70's BBC presenter, Thu 28 Jan 2010, 16:40, 7 replies)

This Day and Age - Always Leave the Ground..
was the first album the (now) Mr Cakelady lent me, when we were but friends. We swapped other CDs, including stuff by The Counting Crows, Regina Spektor, and Agalloch, but it was TDAG that I loved the most. I was borderline obsessed with it, I listened to it non-stop.

For my birthday, a few months after we'd gotten together, he gave me my own copy. I think he was worried he'd never get his back!

I haven't got it on repeat all the time now, but listening to it still makes me think of him, and the awkward-and-confusing-but-exciting getting-together time, and then I grin stupidly. :D
( cakelady, Thu 28 Jan 2010, 16:38, Reply)

Good Memories
My best album of all time ever:


(Psymon_Spark Jesus Saves! The rest of you take 4d6 damage, Thu 28 Jan 2010, 16:32, 3 replies)

I proposed...
... on one knee, to my good lady, in a gay club, in Brighton, to the tune of Ah-Ha's "Take On Me".

It didn't last.
(UXB you said it man. Nobody fucks with the Jesus, Thu 28 Jan 2010, 16:29, Reply)

MARRS - Pump Up The Volume
www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGPhUr-T6UM
( mr.dogshit The world's premier anthropomorphic canine faeces, Thu 28 Jan 2010, 16:29, Reply)