Bonus Top Tens - Brendan

Bonus Top Tens - Brendan

One person's treasure is another's trash. For all of you who only click through to my favourite albums in order to feel irate at the eccentricity and wrongheadedness of my choices I thought I would broaden the canvass and ask some music aficionados of my acquaintance to list their Top Tens. The first comes from Brendan, a regular commenter on my posts and someone who was introduced to me by a mutual friend as someone who thought about music as much as I do.  His list shows a taste for adventure (and AC/DC) and an epicure's sensibility (and a taste for AC/DC).

Our Top Tens share one record. Which one?
By the way, if any other reader's want to join the fun and select their own Top Tens, please do. (You can email me at seamus dot duggan at gmail dot com)
Without any more blather, here's Brendan's own preamble, and list.

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I tried to be rigorous and go with my favourite albums rather than pick albums by my favouriite artists so out go Townes, Van, Gene Clark, Faces, The Fall, Drive-by Truckers, Pixies, Leonard Cohen, Richard Thompson, Bob, Neil, Jimi, Nick, Tim Hardin, Creedence, Iggy, Beefheart, Bowie,  Talking Heads, the Band, PJ Harvey, Laura Nyro, Al Green, Sam Cooke, Dr Feelgood, Stones, Led Zep and so on.

So here goes in no particular order apart from Starsailor which would be No .1. I've picked a key song from each album with lines from the song that resonate with me for the lyric and/or the way it is sung:


Tim Buckley - Starsailor - Monterey -" I hurried away my darling/ with a howl in my throat"


Modern Lovers- Modern Lovers - I'm Straight -"I called this number three times already today/But I...I got scared, I put it back in place (I put my phone back in place)"


John Martyn - One World - One World - "Such a cold and lonely, cold and lonely, Cold and lonely world"


Peter Hammill - Sitting Targets - Central Hotel - "I found myself lying on the balcony/ stripling terror, naked to the bone"


Replacements - Let it Be- Androgynous- "Mirror image, see no damage/ See no evil at all/ Kewpie dolls and urine stalls/ Will be laughed at/ The way you're laughed at now "


Tom Waits - Rain Dogs - 9th & Hennepin - "And the moon's teeth marks are on the sky/Like a tarp thrown all over this/And the broken umbrellas like dead birds/And the steam comes out of the grills/Like the whole goddamned town is ready to blow"..And all the rooms they smell like diesel/  And you take on the dreams of the ones who have slept here/ And I'm lost in the window, and I hide in the stairway/ And I hang in the curtain, and I sleep in your hat.....She has that razor sadness that only gets worse/With the clang and the thunder of the Southern Pacific going by/As the clock ticks out like a dripping faucet/Till you're full of rag water and bitters and blue ruin/Any you spill out over the side to anyone who'll listen"


Bonnie Prince Billy - Master and Everyone -The Way- "Let your unloved parts get loved"


AC/DC - Let There Be Rock - Let There Be Rock - "Let there be sound, and there was sound/ Let there be light, and there was light/ Let there be drums, there was drums/ Let there be guitar, there was guitar, ah Let there be rock"


M Ward - Transfiguration of Vincent - Vincent O'Brien - "He only sings when he's sad,/ and he's sad all the time/So he sings the whole night through/ (Yeah, he sings in the daytime too)


Smog - Knock Knock- River Guard - "I'm standing on a cliff with gooseflesh/watching the wind rip the leaves from the trees"

Brendan signs off thus:
"I'm intrigued by your own top 10 Seamus- I reckon The Fall will be there but that's as far as I can say with any confidence!"

Anyone else care to throw any guesses around? Remember my favourite record will be number ZERO, the ground zero of my musical journey, a record which jiggled the tumblers of my heart and left me raw, open and sobbing on the floor. And still does. Don't know how I'm going to blog about it in that state.

Thanks again to Brendan.