I’ve been randomly going through boxes and pulling out my fave records from over the years. So, Nick Hornby can do that book, and he’s a cunt, so I can do this too. The first in a series of 257 entries…
1. Clem Snide – Your Favourite Music
Such a beautiful album. There’s like a hi hat, cello, a double bass, some guitar and Eef’s voice and it’s so wonderful. Their cover of ‘Donna’ is the best version of that song.
I discovered this album through those weird circumstances you discover a fave album. Someone mentioned them to me, two weeks later I see the album at Landspeed and the cover looked cool. Then a month after that, someone I knew was throwing it out. So I saved it.
The strongest memory I have for this album involves lying face down, lights off, on the lving room couch, destroyed and distraught, slinently crying and smoking, and this album washed over me.
“Your beautiful African friend
Next to him I look so white”
You know that stuff you learn about King Kong? The fear of the white man of having their pure white women taken by black savages with huge cocks…well I digress. But the Song “African Friend”, completely summed up how I felt about not being cool enough, or tough enough. Next to people, I look so white.
I don’t know what the hell Eef, the lead songwriter, was going through at the time, but he really managed to make a sad album, but also, one that doesn’t make you sadder by the end. It’s kind of defeatist and accepting.
“The window wont shut
But the breeze does feel nice.”
The album’s title comes from a song, “Your Favourite Music”, another tender lullaby about listening to music to help, to make you feel special, but how that’s a dead end too. And the opening song, “The Dairy Queen”, is a wonderful, sadly sung, light hearted ramble of just beautiful images.
“Knowingly blowing a bubble
As the ginger ale tickled her nose”
It’s very Salinger…the innocence of youth to redeem the sins of the old. Or something.
It all crashes with Donna, anyway. The Richie Valens. You know the song…Ooh Donna, ooh Donna, since you’ve been gone, you left me all alone. And it’s funny, that such a sad album amde me happy, or at least, stopped my plummelling further. And it still sounds great to this day. They’ve released a couple more albums since, including the theme song for the TV show Ed. But Your Favourite Music is it. I keep it on hand to save my life.