5 tunes to hum while running a half-marathon

Since Miz Billings Montana tagged us I’ve been racking me brains to figure out what the five purely mintest albums are. It’s a birruva shan like cause I cannot decide among me top 300. Trouble is there’s no album that I like all the way through. There’s always at least one track that’s fallen out of a loose sphincter. So I’ve decided to go for me top 5 SONGS. No bugger buys whole albums nowadays anyway. they download fucking TRACKS off the fucking internet. Sometimes we even pay for them.

So - presuming I’m not allowed to include anything I’ve recorded meself, my most favouritest choons are:

Way down in the hole - Tom Waits. I loved The Wire. I fucking loved the way that you couldn’t instantly classify it into "white TV" or "black TV" like you can with so many American TV shows. And I loved the fact that its got no fucking SCORE. If you hear some music it’s because its part of the scene itself, playing on the radio or on the jukebox in a bar, and the mood has to be created by the actors and the script, not hyped by some fucking orchestra hidden under the floorboards. The only out-of-context music you get is the intro and the outro. I also REALLY FUCKING love the way they’ve done a different take on this same Tom Waits song for every series. I find it hard to choose between the 5 different versions so I got to go with the original. I can only imagine that Waits has been giving head to an overendowed mule to explain the sound that his ravaged vocal cords come up with. It’s like Satchmo gargling ready-mix.

Bliss - Muse. This was the one that made me want to become a musician when I saw Muse doing it on Top of the Pops (yes I know top of the pops was 90% shite but me influences were a bit limited at that age). Matt Bellamy had the volume turned up on the guitar and the mic so it was all distorted and then tried to smash the amp and kick over the drumkit at the end of the set before staggering out and I were well impressed. I resolved there and then to disrespect volume knobs wherever they raised their nasty knurled little heads. And here’s the album version just for good measure.

Foxy Lady - Jimi Hendrix. One for you classical music buffs. Me mam used to play this when Father were down at the pub, and since Father were down at the pub 24/7 I got to know Hendrix pretty well. The opening bit with the high-tension feedback before it resolves into that crunching F-sharp chord-riff always makes me want to lowp on the couch and start jumping up and down.

Agaetis byrjun - Sigur Ros. It’s a lie that I hate all slow music. It just puts me to sleep. But I’d walk across the road to hear Sigur Ros play this one. It reminds me of an interesting time in my life. There’s nowt like a bit of Icelandic to get the juices flowing. And I like the agressive fret-squeaks, just to remind you that they’re playing real instruments and not pissing around with a sequencer and a bunch of samples.

Colony of Birchmen - Mastodon. Aw fuck it wouldn’t be me if I didn’t throw in at least one Mastodon track, would it? Why do I like Mastodon? They fill me with awe, is all.

Alicia Billings is probably wondering where the Genesis is. Well it didn’t make my top 5 by a long chalk but me Mam reckons she used to play Foxtrot a lot while she was groaning under the burden of carrying me around for 9 months like the parasite in "Alien" (she says), and this one rings a few bells.