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Well, there's no better way to kick of my
50 books in 2006 campaign than to read an entire book on New Year's Day. Yesterday I read
Nick Hornby's Songbook (aka 31 Songs when originally published in the UK). As I stated earlier in this blog, Hornby is one of my favorite writers and his obsessions with both football (aka soccer) and music allow me to really relate to what he writes.
Songbook is a collection of essays about 31 songs (duh!) that are memorable to Hornby for one reason or another. I was amazed at both the intersections of our musical tastes as well as the vast ranges of music that I have yet to explore that is tangentially related to the songs in this book.
One of my favorite essays in the book is about
Badly Drawn Boy's A Minor Incident (
read excerpt here). Before
the movie for Hornby's About a Boy came out in 2002, I'd never heard of Badly Drawn Boy but was immediately drawn to
the incredible soundtrack (done completely by BDB).
The edition of Songbook that I read also includes 5 extra essays (not in the original 31 Songs). My favorite one gives mad props to the incredible revival in
Steve Earle's career as well as a few of the bands on his E-Squared label.
The only band that had two songs in Hornby's 31 Songs list is
Teenage Fanclub. I discovered TF when they had a few MTV hits off their album
Bandwagonesque. I even saw them live circa 1992 at the
Masquerade in Atlanta. Whlie my brother has been a long time fan of TF, I promptly forgot about them until I saw they were playing at
Cat's Cradle in Chapel Hill a few months back. My brother drove up and we went to the see the first show of their North American tour supporting their new album
Man-Made, which made it into my Top 10 of 2005 album list (well, I never actually made a list, but if I had, it would have been there). Both songs that Hornby taps are from the
Songs From Northern Britain CD.
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I've had a copy of Songs From Northern Britain for a while now as my brother gave me a copies of a large range of Teenage Fanclub's back catalog but I had yet to truly explore that album. Given
my resolution to
intently listen to 50 albums in 2006 (By the way, I'm planning to up that to 200 just to make it challenging), I figured I'd pull this one out and give it a spin. So yesterday while
riding the half-metric, I listened to both this album and
The Beginning Stages Of... by the
Polyphonic Spree.
Teenage Fanclub is guitar-driven power-pop at it's sweetest. Hornby compares this album with
The Beatles'
Rubber Soul and I'm not going to argue. This exactly the kind of album that you want to drop in the CD player as you head to the beach or to sing along to at the top of your lungs cruising down the freeway. My favorite tracks after a couple of listens are
Your Love is the Place That I Come From and
I Don't Care.
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The Polyphonic Spree is one of those bands where I completely fell in love with the concept of the band, if not necessarily the music itself. The Spree is a 23-member band from Dallas that looks like the love child of a church choir crossed with a marching band. I picked up this album after reading a review of their opening up for
David Bowie's last North American tour in
Spin. The songs on this album are hugely instrumented, massively produced, epic rock songs reminiscent of something you might hear on
Pink Floyd's The Wall. I had been wanting to pull this album back out since I heard
Reach for the Sun on the soundtrack of the incredible documentary
Murderball. I enjoy this album but's it not the kind of thing that I'm going to find myself humming as I drive down the road. My favorite tracks here are the opening track
Section 1 (Have A Day/Celebratory),
Section 8 (Soldier Girl), and
Section 9 (Light & Day/Reach for the Sun).
Section 10 (A Long Day) is a bizarre wall of sound which I eventually just skipped ahead...it would be a long day if this track was all you had to listen to.
So after 1 day, I've already marked 2 albums and 1 book off my 2006 Project list.