This song reminds me of Perth more than any other song I know, and it really should for a song from an album titled A House on a Street in a Town I’m From. I still enjoy listening to a lot of music from my home city, and I have fond memories of the few years I was able to really enjoy being in that scene before I moved to Sydney. It really was a fun time for Perth music, but a lot of the music from then I now associate with different times and places in my life.

There really was no ‘Perth sound’ – a term that journalists were throwing around to describe the output from the influx of Perth bands into the Australian and international landscape. The Panics is really the only band from this time that I think were making music that really sounded like the place it was coming from. This song is a great example – laid back, warm, heartfelt a bit breezy but confident. It makes me think of everything I love and miss about Perth.

I actually didn’t see this video until a few years later, after I had already left Perth, and I remember it making me a bit emotional when I first saw it. It still does. Family home videos and shots of houses that very much look like the ones around the places I grew up? This video really is something very nice.

The Panics relocated to Melbourne around the same time I moved to Sydney, and their next two albums Sleeps Like a Curse (2005) and Cruel Guards (2007) feel like a band growing and changing in a new environment, a nice parallel to my own life. They are still one of the most unique talents this country has produced, and I am happy that I have something so perfectly in tune with my life and experiences of my youth.

If you are interested in finding out a bit more about the Perth bands of this time, there is a pretty good documentary about the period called Something in The Water.

I used to work in a local supermarket in Newtown, a suburb in Sydney’s Inner West. It was the first main job I was able to find after I moved here from Perth five years ago, and I quite enjoyed my time there. Sure it was pretty basic work, but I made pretty good money, they were flexible and I worked with some cool people, and I am still good friends with one of them today.

I was there for a few years while at university and moved around the store quite a bit, taking on different roles and doing a variety of tasks. My favourite department to work in was the dairy department – working in the chillers. Although I think I started to develop arthritis in my knuckles due to the cold, it was fun working in the fridges and freezers. You know what sounds really lame but is actually a little bit cool? Playing with barcode scanner ordering devices in a freezer with the lights off. Sending laser beams everywhere! Looking back on it, I guess it was kind of boring. But hey, still fun times!

When I was working in the chiller section it was basically just me and my manager, Mina, who was always enjoyable to be around, so we had lengthy chats and got to know each other quite well. He liked to sing along to the music on our in-store radio… well he wouldn’t sing that much, but there were moments when you would just hear him quietly sing a few lines of a song here and there… but always the same songs each day. The music system we had was on a loop that would start over a few times a day, and after a few weeks of the same thing, you could anticipate the next song every time. I suspect the same loop is still playing in the store now, three years later.

When Don’t Let The Sun Go Down was about to start, I would always try and make my way to wherever Mina was working. If you listen up until 2.55 it’s just George Michael singing… which is great enough, I know, but there is a break in the song and Michael says “ladies and gentlemen, Mr Elton John!” and the crowd goes crazy. It’s at this point, after being silent the entire song, Mina would quietly, almost under his breath, make the sound of a crowd roaring.

Think of a mix between ‘yyeeeaaahhhhhh’ and ‘aaaahhhhhh’ and ‘rrrroooooaaaarrrrr’ but real quiet and kind of sounding like a crowd roaring. The best example I can think of is the part in the Family Guy movie where Stewie says “Yeah, well, who comes out a winner? Me. (Makes cheering sound) Griffin once again. (More cheering) Undefeated champion of the world (More cheering)” and makes the exact same sound. A video of this does not seem to be on the internet. I hoped it would be as it would make this whole post make sense, but I guess now you will be unenlightened by my manager’s greatness. Sucks to be you! I guess you do get to listen to a mediocre song by George Michael and Elton John, so it’s not all bad, right?

Number four is difficult! Songs that make me sad are few and far between – I don’t tend to listen to much music that makes me feel that way. I understand why people do though, and there are times where I have found sad music to help me through tough times, to have someone word things better than my brain can and show me that I’m not the only one being a sad panda.

Sad music has this strange way of clearing out every thought in your head and leaving you feeling simultaneously empty and full. Beck’s incredible album Sea Change has this affect on me. On no other record does he sound this real, this intimate – he has no electronics or loud guitars to hide behind – and it is intense. This is my favourite album of his, and I think this is primarily because it is his only album that I can really connect with, that he can make me feel something.

The first track on Sea Change, The Golden Age, opens up an album of heartbreak as Beck deals with the aftermath of a messy breakup. This song is about forgetting the weight he is carrying, trying to get away from the depression he is feeling but realising that it’s going to be a long trip. Sea Change is this journey, and The Golden Age sets the mood perfectly as we drift into Beck’s world.

“These days I barely get by… I don’t even try”

The majority of music I listen to is music that makes me happy, so it is quite difficult to pick a song to put here. I needed to find a song that makes me happy for a bigger reason than just it being a fun, happy song. What makes me happy more than anything else? This lovely lady! (awwwww) So what song makes me happier than any other? The one that most reminds me of her and us!

Most couples have their ‘song’ – the one they have their first dance to at their wedding, the one they play to each other when they aren’t doing too well. This concept is kinda lame but kinda cute at the same time, and I guess Your Magic is Working by Of Montreal could be ‘our song’ and that is why it makes me happy. It’s about not knowing how great love can be until you find it.

Plus, it is just a great tune, fun and bouncy and cute, and I do not want to meet the person who doesn’t smile when listening to it. Of Montreal have been a go-to band for happy times for me the last few years but this song is the one that means the most to me. I was lucky enough to see the band play on the last night I was in London in 2009, and it was one of the most interesting, crazy and fun shows I’ve ever been to.

I am completely aware of how sappy and gross this post was and I do not apologise.

There are many songs out there that are terrible, unlistenable, offensive, boring – especially from the last few years – but including them as part of this list would validate them as actually being a song, something which should not be thrown around freely. It would be too easy to put something by the Black Eyed Peas or Creed up here, and I don’t want to do that. I wanted to find something truly awful. Something I truly hated. Something that offends me so much that it makes me physically ill.

Those close to me know there is one instrument that I hate the more than the instruments used by a dentist. The saxophone. I am completely aware that it is the most irrational hatred to have… but there is something about this instrument that seriously irks me. Those sounds should never ever, ever be made. Ever.

The song I have chosen as my least favourite song is seen as a masterpiece of the late 70s sax-ballad-pop genre, of which it may be the only song. Now I don’t admit to knowing much about Gerry Rafferty at all, but I’m almost certain that he was not a very nice man and that he really hated most people. I’m sure he had some friends that he was nice to and would share scones with, but you really need to have some sort of vendetta against the world to record and release this piece of music.

One day he was having tea with a friend, Raphael Ravenscroft, who also happened to hate the world. I’m not sure why Gerry hated the world, but Raphael had a great reason – in the most inspired form of punishment a parent could ever think up, he was forced to learn the saxophone throughout his childhood. He probably only said ‘hell’ in front of grandma, but that one mistake would cost us big.

“You know what that song of yours needs, Gerry?”
“It is missing something, isn’t it? It’s quite a nice song as is, but I intended it to be truly awful”
“I really think it needs some sax. I think the chorus should be a sax solo… EVERYONE would hate that.”

Turns out they were wrong. For some reason, Australians decided that they really enjoyed being punished by sax, and sent this song to number 1 on the ARIA charts. Around the world this song has been performed OVER FIVE MILLION TIMES. There is no way to escape. NO WAY TO ESCAPE.

AND YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE?! This song once had words. Earlier this evening, while googling ‘awful instrumental sax song’ trying to find a youtube video, I happened across the original, non-instrumental version. As if this wasn’t bad enough, they decided to lay one more blow on the world. Someone around the office one day said “you know what, this song needs less vocal and more sax” and instead of that person being sent to gaol THEY DECIDED TO RELEASE IT.

I am sorry. I am so sorry to have linked you to this video.

I have been introduced to people as “the guy who loves Blur” before, and although I wouldn’t want that to define me, for a large part of my life it did, and in some ways still does. 2009 was a big year in my life where I spent 6 months overseas and was fortunate enough to see Blur, my favourite band throughout the last decade, 5 times across Europe. I saw them play in front of the smallest and the largest crowds I’d ever been a part of, but there was one thing missing from the experience – I was never able to see them play Battery in your Leg live.

I’m not ashamed to say that Think Tank was the album that made me fall in love with this band… I definitely missed the boat during the britpop era, and it will forever be my favourite Blur album. This album changed what music could be for me and altered my musical path.

Think Tank closes with Battery in your Leg, a song written during a time when the band was falling apart and searching for a way out, and you can feel this – in the music, in the vocal, in the lyrics. Damon sounds on the edge of breaking down the entire song, the piano and guitars are full of desperation. It makes me sad, it makes me feel hopeful. The song is about longing for better times, remembering what you used to have. It’s about rebuilding – it’s sad but not hopeless, and there is no getting around these feelings while listening to the song.

Simple but perfect. Sad but not.

I listen to Think Tank quite a lot, and after listening to this song I can’t help but sit in silence for a long time afterwards. I can understand why this song was only played a couple of times in 2009, and I’m sure they stopped me from a tearful breakdown by not playing it at any of the shows I saw. It has helped me through some tough times, and I am thankful.

And that is my favourite song.