So whilst I’m stuck in Manchester working/studying I thought I’d add a post with a little recap from 2009 in terms of music. Usually at the end of each year you get playlists and lists in general of favourite albums and songs from the year which are all well and good. But I’ve done a slightly different playlist here. The criteria are that I either had to goto a gig and have the song played, or whilst on my travels this is a song that became ‘cult’ between a bunch of us for one reason or another. So yeah completely contrasting criteria there, but it is what it is. I’ve included both youtube videos, and for those – and like there is anyone, that a) really likes the playlist and b) lives in a country that can use Spotify, I compiled a playlist on there too!
1. Secret Machines – Lightning Blue Eyes
So the first song is from the Secret Machines who I saw live way back in February at the Ruby Lounge in Manchester. They played a quite amazing set produce the most sound out of the amps in the Ruby Lounge I’ve heard before. However I still maintain that the lead guitar was nowhere near loud enough! My song choice is quite predictable really, in the hit from their 2006 album Ten Silver Drops, Lightning Blue Eyes. Unfortunately I didn’t take my camera to this gig so no actual pictures or videos from me, and the Music Video for this song now appears to be blocked in the UK, so this live version from LA in 2008 that I found on youtube shall have to do!
2. AC Newman – Submarines of Stockholm
Gigs wise the start of 2009 was quite slow and it was May before I went to another gig. A.C. Newman is a member of Canadian band The New Pornographers, and in January he released his second solo album entitled ‘Get Guilty’. He came on a short UK tour and Alex, James and myself attended. Somehow he managed to pick the worst venue in the whole of Manchester playing at Retro Bar on the 20th May. The place stank like it had been flooded and was really very vile. However with cheap whisky and coke on offer the venue was just about bareable, and in the end he played a great gig anyway. Now by this time I had already booked tickets to spend the summer travelling in North America, and had also paid for gig tickets to go see Death Cab for Cutie with The New Pornographers supporting them. So after the gig in my slightly drunken state I complemented him on the great gig and asked if there was any chance of any after party etc in the Portland gig later that year. He didn’t even figure I was talking about Oregon USA to begin with! Needless to say he didn’t offer anything – but well if you don’t ask you don’t get! My song choice here is Submarines of Stockholm. Why? Because it’s a nice catchy song and I went to Stockholm in December so it ties in nicely! Once again no camera so video from another gig off youtube shall do!
3. Fox Force Five – Maryland
Okay so when I said I’d only been to one gig in the first few months of 2009 that was a little bit of a lie, my mate, Dom Farrell is a member of a band called Fox Force Five and I must goto something like 10 or 12 of their gigs a year. They played a few really good gigs this year including The Roudhouse in February, two gigs at Dry Bar in May and one in October as well as headlining Academy 3 once again in September. My choice comes from their first gig at Dry Bar at the start of the Hungry Pigeon Festival back at the start of Whit Weekend in May. My choice is a song called Maryland which they debuted this year. Its quite easily the best song they’ve produced yet, there isn’t a video of it anywhere, however you can listen to it and download it for free on their myspace page here
4. Manic Street Preachers – Marlon JD
The Manic Street Preachers returned with one of their best albums in a long time. Entitled, ‘The Daily Mail’… err I mean ‘Journal for Plague Lovers’, it is made up of a collection of lyrics written by Richey Edwards who went missing nearly 15 years ago now. I turned up at a gig Dom was playing in Chorlton back in March and played him a radio rip of the first song of the album ‘Peeled Apples’ which contains quite possibly the badest bass line I’ve ever heard at the start, not sure if it was the radio quality or not but in the album version it’s not quite the same! Anyway on the back of that playing I managed to convince Dom to come with us to Wales to go see them play at the end of May! So Alex, Dom and myself ended up heading down to Wales on the Monday after a heavy weekend with the above mentioned Hungry Pigeon Festival! (Incidently we were meant to go to London for the day on the Saturday of that weekend but that ended up getting cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances…). So we spent a few days in Llandudno doing nothing much more than playing Crazy Golf on the top of the Great Orm and drinking in Llandudno bars, and being slightly amazed at how dead the place was in the evening! The gig itself was brilliant with the crowd well up for it, they played the entire Journal for Plague Lovers in it’s entirety followed by a mini best of set. They were there usual dedicated selves playing for over two hours, and as it turned out Nicky Wire played through some really bad back pains. On the right hand listen to Marlon JD, my favourite song from the new album.
5. The Beatles – Here Comes the Sun
During the start of 2009 I became a bit disillusioned with work and decided to just change everything. By the end of May I’d handed in my notice in a work and was booked to goto the West Coast of North America for two and a half months travelling! I spent my time on a mixture of organized camping trips and staying in hostels whilst making my own way about. My first trip was the California Dreaming camping trip starting in San Francisco visting LA, San Diego, Grand Canyon, Las Vegas and Yosemite National Park before heading back to San Fran. The trip covered a lot of ground and as such there was a lot of music played in the van with some very long days on the road. I managed to introduce people to the wonderful Frank Turner who went down really well, and Laura managed to have people laughing for a while with Richard Cheese and his covers of famous songs changing a few choice words! However the song that I remember being whistled a lot was Here Comes the Sun by The Beatles. Why? I’m not really sure.
6. The New Pornographers – Go Places
After finishing my California trip I took a week to head upto Portland Oregon. Here I had tickets to go see two gigs on consecutive days. First up was The New Pornographers supporting Death Cab for Cutie. The New Pornographers are one of my favourite bands and I’ve seen them previously in Manchester back in 2008. The gig itself was somewhat out of the way and I was booked into a pretty run down Travel lodge which stank of smoke. However the gigs themselves were pretty great really. Apart from the fact they finished so early! I found myself missing the start of the New Pornographers set who were on by 7pm, and I completely missed Blind Pilot who I quite like! My song choice here is pretty self explanatory, and is off their last album ‘Challengers’. I did take my camera to this gig however didn’t take any videos of the New Ps, however there are a few pictures below!
7. Death Cab for Cutie – I Will Follow You into the Dark
I actually booked tickets for this gig soley on the fact the New Pornographers were playing, and I knew very little about Death Cab, however after listening to them for a while I quite got into there last few albums, and was very pleased to be going to see them. Although I didn’t appreciate the Coldplay comparison that some random person next to me made to me, especially as Coldplay are one of the most bland boring band in the world, a title closely fought out with Snow Patrol! Anyhow they played a pretty good set, although the sound wasn’t really loud enough in my opinion and they were finished by like 9.30pm! Pretty bad restrictions for a Friday night concert really. My song choice is the rather brilliantly acoustically played I Will Follow You into the Dark, from their 2005 album Plans. This time I actually took the video and here are some photos of the gig too. The venue was really very nice place to have a gig, and quite an intimate small outdoor venue, this type of place seems to be quite popular in the USA actually.
8. The Decemberists – The Wanting Comes in Waves
The real reason I was quite happy to goto the gig the previous night was that on the Saturday night The Decemberists were playing at their same venue, in their home town, and their album they released this year, ‘The Hazards of Love’ is my favourite of the year. During the gig they played the entire of ‘The Hazards of Love’ which is kind of a Rock Opera, which sounds bad but is pulled of perfectly from start to finish, before finishing with a set of classics, including songs from their first ever EP. I’m pretty certain the music was louder than the night before and they played later than 9.30pm too! All in all it was an awesome gig, probably my favourite of the year. My song choice is ‘The Wanting Comes in Waves’ with the stunning vocals of Shara Worden really helping to make this song as great as it is!
9. Kings of Leon – Sex on Fire
I found out that the Kings of Leon were playing on my last night in Vancouver back when I was in Portland a few weeks earlier. However when I checked there were only a few seating tickets left, and I didn’t really fancy going sat down on my own, would quite happily jump around at the front on my own mind. When I checked ebay etc there was nothing really there. I thought little of it until I got to Vancouver and met Amanda who was talking about going to the gig on the Sunday as there was still tickets left at Ticketmaster. Saturday had already sold out by this point. Anyway, I said i’d try get tickets for the Saturday and then we could both go if possible – this was on the Wednesday before the gig. I kept a regular eye on craigslist trying to get tickets however by Friday evening I hadn’t had any luck. I had managed to loose my phone on that Thursday – the only method I had of telling the time, and after a great night out on Friday, where they did play Kings of Leon I found myself on Saturday morning waking up in my hostel room, with no one else in the room and it bright sunshine outside. I just presumed that it must be quite late. I got up etc, to find out it was only 9am – I only went to bed at like 3am! Anyway I was to be rewarded when I found out Ticketmaster put ‘limited viewing’ tickets for sale that morning! I slightly debated before grabbing them. They were limited in the sense you could only see side on, but overall we had a great view and it was an awesome gig to top of probably the best week of my travelling that summer I reckon. Where loads of things went wrong, but somehow they just got fixed, I met loads of relatives as well as loads of great people in the hostel and well Vancouver is easily one of the best cities in the world! Anyway here’s my video quite predictably Sex On Fire, which had been played to death in the run up to the gig in various bars etc!
10. Johnny Cash – Ring of Fire
After the Kings of Leon gig, I ended up at a nightclub to meet my Mum’s Cousin. As a result I didn’t gett to bed till like 3am, and the next morning I had an 8am my second camping trip, that would bring to a close my travelling that summer. It was a 3 week trip around the Rockies and out onto Vancouver Island. Which meant even more time in the car listening to songs! There were a few bands getting particular attention, including Kings of Leon, The Beatles, Oasis the day after they broke up. My attempts to get others to listen to Frank Turner didn’t seem to go down quite as well as in the other the other group, although looking at the differences in the groups that really wasn’t a great surprise. However the most popular choice of music for me and a few others was undoubtedly Johnny Cash. The Ring of Fire being the particular song most played – or well sung or hummed by those in the van the most and you can find a video on the right hand side. And whoever it was that said Hurt is horrible was just plain wrong.
11. Slow Club – Christmas TV
One of the first gigs I went to after arriving back in Manchester was Slow Club’s gig at Moho Live in early October. They played a brilliant set and they are one of my favourite new bands from 2009. After finishing the set they decided to continue the gig, in the car park playing an acoustic version of Christmas TV. Thanks go to James for recording this one, as I had just grabbed all my bags from the cloakroom on the way out and was struggling to get them all sorted!
12. Frank Turner – The Road
This year Frank Turner released his third album, ‘Poetry of the Deed’. After two stunning albums expectations were high for a brilliant album, and whilst it wasn’t quite that great, it was still very very very good. During my travels I’m quite pleased I managed to get a few people into Frank. There’s a few songs in contention to be shown here, ‘Journey of the Magi’ is probably my favourite song of his new album and when we went to see him play a packed crowd at Academy 2 in October that was one of his best performances of the night, where as usual the entire crowd was bouncing along. However my song choice simply has to be The Road, a song which whenever I hear it I only wish I was still travelling.
13. Brendan Benson – Garbage Day
Brendan Benson who has worked with Jack White in the Raconteurs, and often referred to as ‘the guy from the raconteurs’, which I’m sure he really loves, is someone I’ve wanted to see live for a long time. This year he came out with his fourth solo album, those four albums have taken some 13 years to be released! The album is quite good in places but at the same time has some lacklustre songs unfortunately though. However when the opportunity to see him live came up I snapped up the chance and Alex, Dom, Ryan and myself ended up seeing him play a quite stunning set at Academy 3 in October. Song choice? Well there’s quite a few choices to use, Folk Singer from his second album ‘Lapalco’ was played brilliantly, as was his set ending ‘I Feel Like Taking You Home’, however after seeing this acoustic version of Garbage Day on youtube there could only be one winner really. Side note, you can see Robert Kubica playing the drums in his band in the pictures! 
14. Alberta Cross – ATX
So now we’re up to my penultimate song choice. And it goes to Swedish come American rockers Alberta Cross, who released the debut album, ‘The Broken Side of Time’ this year. I quite liked them before I went to see them play the Ruby Lounge in November, however after seeing them live I like them so much more. They played a storming set, with only two minor flaws, it wasn’t as loud as the Secret Machines back in May and they finished for an encore with ATX… ATX is probably their best song and well there was just simply no way they could follow that up after that! I would definitely go see them next time they tour, however it would be nice if he stopped dressing like Kurt Cobain!
15. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart – Young Adult Friction
The final gig of the year came at the start of December when I went to see ‘The Pains of Being Pure at Heart’ at Manchester Academy 2. I’m not too keen on the name of the band but they make bloody good pop rock music. We headed upto the gig, and managed to catch the end of a support act, and then were a little unsure if the next band was The Pains of Being Pure or not, it’s a good job they weren’t cause they were terrible. Although it later emerged that they share a common guitarist amongst the group. When they did start their set the whole place went mad. I wasn’t expecting to be moshing about but I bloody well ended up doing so! An absolutely brilliant gig! My song choice in ‘Young Adult Friction’, but in truth it could be anyone of about 10 songs there’s not much to choose between them.
Well that pretty much wraps up my playlist. I have to give honourable shouts out to both Becca Williams and Gideon Conn who played great gigs through out the year in Manchester. You can listen to the playlist on spotify if you are from one of the countries that it is supported by clicking on this link. I had to swap out a few songs which weren’t available though. I swapped out AC Newman and Fox Force Five for alternate songs and The Beatles don’t allow their songs anywhere online, so you’ll have to make do with a live cover from Belle and Sebastian, which is in no way a bad thing anyhow.