Boys like lists. Top 5 hot female bass players. Girlfriends from Wales (a very short list). Leeds Utd first team, 1973-74 (a very embarrassing list), Suzi Quatro’s Top 10 singles (another short one). That kind of thing

So when I was asked for a list of my Top 10 songs "of all time", and to come in to a Radio Ulster studio to talk about them, I knew the only problem would be cutting "all time" down to 40. A Top 10 seemed impossible.

Might as well say ‘Top 10 Shakespeare lines’, ‘Top 3 Martin Amis novels’ (OK, that one not so difficult), Top Sister. Top 3 movies where Julia Roberts looks good, Top 10 Dinners Made By Mother, Top Breakfast Cereal available in more than 3 continents.

The other problem was a practical one – the train to Great Victoria Street station left in twenty minutes. All I had was a pencil and the back page of the Irish Times. Well – people have survived in the wilderness on less.

My first decision – I would have to take the Beatles out of the equation.

Not because of the fuss going on about the remastered albums, not because of that video game where if I could only remove the numbers and whizzing plastic guitars I could see what’s going on. 

No, it’s just because there isn’t room for much else in a Top 40 with the Beatles included. Since hearing ‘Revolver’ playing on a Black Box record player at an early birthday party, they’ve always been in a list of their own, for me.

At the height of punk, walls covered in pages torn from the NME, I remember asking a girlfriend if it was still OK to have the White Album photographs stuck above my bedroom window, “Yes. They’re like church,” she gasped, shocked, inserting another safety pin into an artfully-ripped T shirt.

So here it is – Top 40 No Beatles, as scribbled down on the back page of the Irish Times while waiting for the train from Holywood to Belfast. It’s a true list – these songs are the soundtrack of my life so far. Old wave, new wave – any wave is OK.

They are In sort-of chronological order – or at least, this is how they happened to me:

1.         Froggy Went A-Courtin’                  Burl Ives

2.          Chitty Chitty Bang Bang                  Film soundtrack

3.         Metal Guru                                    T. Rex

4.         Life on Mars                                    David Bowie.

5.         Working Class Hero                  John Lennon

6.         My Sweet Lord                           George Harrison

7.         Heartbreaker                           Led Zeppelin

8.         I Know What I Like                           Genesis

9.         Band on the Run                           Macca

10.       Walk on the Wild Side                  Lou Reed

11.       Sheena is a Punk Rocker                  Ramones

12.       Marquee Moon                           Television

13.       Teenage Kicks                           The Undertones

14.       Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick         Ian Dury

15.       Heroes                                    David Bowie

16.        Another Girl Another Planet         The Only Ones

17.        Subterranean Homesick Blues         Bob Dylan

18.        Tangled up in Blue                  Bob Dylan

19.        Rainy Day Women                           Bob Dylan

20.        Beasley Street                           John Cooper Clarke

21.        A Forest                                    The Cure

22.        Almost With You                           The Church

23.        You Can’t Always Get…                  Rolling Stones

24.        The Big Music                           The Waterboys

25.        When Love Breaks Down                  Prefab Sprout

26.        Don’t Give Up                           Peter Gabriel & Kate Bush

27.        Waiting For The Man                  Velvet Underground

28.        Bang on the Ear                           The Waterboys.

29.        Losing My Religion                  REM

30.        Nothing Compares To You         Sinead O’Connor

32.        One                                             U2.

33.        Way Down Now                           World Party

34.        Persuasion                                    Tim Finn

35.        Human Behaviour                           Björk.

36.        Wonderwall                                    Oasis

37.        Crazy World                                    Aslan

38.        This Year’s Love                           David Gray

39.        Chasing Cars                           Snow Patrol

40.        Madame George                           Van Morrison

As we passed George Best international airport I had got the 40 in the right hand margin. On the left, 10 which just missed out:

GPT - Martha Wainwright

Out of Reach – Gabrielle

Big Time – Rudi

Rio – Duran Duran

Enola Gay – OMD

Here Comes The Rain Again – Eurythmics

You Never Can Tell – Chuck Berry

White Riot – Clash

China Girl – Bowie

Bus To Baton Rouge – Lucinda Williams

The train clunked into into Central Station, which meant I had about five minutes until Botanic and then Great Victoria Street the BBC. I still had the front cover of the G2 section of the Guradian to get the Top 10 sorted. The train heaved its way through, under and around the Markets:

Top 10 no Beatles:

1.          Heroes

2.          Tangled Up In Blue

3.         Waiting For The Man

4.          Losing My Religion

5.          Wonderwall

6.          Hey Jude*

7.          A Day In The Life**

8.          Madame George

9.          Subterraean Homesick Blues

10.        Life On Mars

* OK, there had to be one

Times of my life in other peoples songs, you could say. It's not even just the songs, it's where you are, where you remember them playing.

Just made it, passing the Crown I thought for a moment I’d left the ’papers on the train. No worries, these songs are in my head anyway

See you on tour, album's out tomorrow.

Andy

Sept 27

PS I am putting these occasional blogs online at wordpress and our website as well - see which one you gravitate to - maybe you like this one best!

WOMAD was amazing. It’s world music festival in the middle of Wiltshire, complete with UK summer weather—this weekend, it’s either the prospect of rain, or (later) continuous showers. Luckily, it doesn’t rain hard enough to make it a mudfest and, as is usual in the UK, the weather is busy starting a thousand conversations. People are shrugging it off and displaying blitz-with-anoraks spirit. I arrive from Australia on the Saturday morning of the festival. Outside Heathrow Terminal 2, sitting on my guitar case looking through the Grauniad I spot a pic of Amy Winehouse walking out of court a free woman on page 3, acquitted of punching one of her dancers. Also on page 3, a fooball player walking out of court a free man, acquitted of punching a man in a Southport bar. All this plus Jeremy Clarkson calling the Prime Minister a "c*nt". Welcome to the UK. Plus ça change. Before long a minibus whisks me to the salubrious confines of the Swindon Hilton. This pearl in Paris’ dad’s empire nestles beside a roundabout and has a beautiful view of Junction 14 of the M4. Jetlag in a wet English summer is a weird feeling—the temperature coming from Australia is the same, but the season has definitely changed. I take a ride onsite with a group whose leader sits beside me pounding txt messages into his phone and telling me about a dangerous tour they went on in the 90s. I’m not listening that carefully until I realise he’s talking about a tour of Iraq, "between the wars". His group were welcomed into Baghdad theatres for shows as the first band to tour Iraq after the Americans invaded from Kuwait. Up at the back of the bus the guys are smoking weed and as the white van careers around leafy green English B roads I can feel myself gearing up for another WOMAD experience by leaning back, taking in his wild story. We enter the site and pass hordes of recyclers, music fans, percussion players. That evening, Peter Gabriel's live set builds and builds towards 'Biko', which is outstanding. It's dedicated to murdered Russian human rights activist Natalia Estemirova who the 'Witness' programme supported in her work. Have a look at their site here. There are photos of her behind him as he sings the song and it’s as powerful and as overtly political as I want things to be at a festival like this. Listening brings me back to sitting in a student room smoking cigarettes, simultaneously trying to play the bass to this song and get through Prospero's really long speech at the start of The Tempest. Tonight there's a fine drizzle, but things are staying dry. I've been up for about 36 hours now, so I catch the bus back to the Swindon Oasis. This time I am sitting with a 14-piece band from Extremadura in Spain. They have not only played, but made paella at the Taste The World stage. This is where you get to cook your favourite meal while being interviewed by Roger the host, act like a TV chef, and play a couple of songs while whatever menu you have dreamed up is cooking, simmering, roasting or baking. I am going to go through this baptism of fire the following evening, and I have not been as nervous about any performance since putting together the WOMAD 2005 Gala Finale which featured such 'piece of cake' collaborations as: - a Russian instrumental group who told me at the first meeting that they didn't collaborate with any other musicians. They had written a special version of 'Summertime' for the occasion and at 4pm they said they would relax this rule if I could find a concert pianist for them to audition before 6.30. Luckily Rad came to the rescue and they debuted the piece, unrecognisable from the original, at the start of the show, as another UK deluge started..... - a segue between two bands made up of different kinds of Muslims. Neither had ever played with the other kind before, and a religious guy was summoned to work out if playing together would be allowed. Cue for prayers and not a lot of rehearsing..... - a Birmingham reggae band whose 9 members were all called Steve, stoned out of their minds and playing so loudly at the Gala that they scared off a gentle Indian tabla group who were waiting backstage. Two minutes before their cue to appear, the Indians had disappeared, only to be discovered crouching in trees with their hands over their ears, reciting from Holy Scripture. Meanwhile, back on stage, the Steves continued the ganja groove—drummer Steve had told me that if I held up 3 fingers meaning “3 minutes left” they would play for 5 more minutes. If I held up one finger they would play for 3, and if I managed to ostentatiously build and light a joint side of stage, they would be off in less than thirty seconds. The next WOMAD morning dawns, with a hangover built in the Belfast shipyards. After a couple of hours of tablets, marmalade and toast, I'm waiting for another minibus to take me to the site. This time I am riding with Africans, CDs by my side. I have a rendez-vous with Jamie Oliver's magazine at 12.30. With any luck the photo session featuring a tube of Vegemite and a Marmite pot will be forever shrouded in mystery—or perhaps you’ll see it in the next issue of ‘Jamie’. At the afternoon performance, rain is threatening, but just about holding off. I play a set made up mostly of songs from the forthcoming album. I’ve practised them for a couple of weeks in a wee studio high on a Melbourne hill, dry and parched trees all around. Now I’m looking out at a thousand friendly faces, we’re surrounded by friendly trees and damp and beautiful countryside. It truly is summertime in England. I turn on all my effects pedals, amp, and play. It’s not just a performance—I’ve been asked to hold a question and answer session about the Summer School as well. Improbably, this works. One guys asks for 'Birds Of Passage' from the third album, which I can't remember all the words of, but love playing. It sets the rest of the set alight, really. For me, anyway. Because someone's handing round a mic in the crowd, I can't pretend not to hear the questions, or the requests if I have forgotten the words. 'Whole Thing', the song I wrote with Peter, is at the heart of my WOMAD experience, and is the highlight of the set for me. However, I realise at the CD signing that all anyone really wants to know about is my appearance at Taste The World this evening. I find the tepee tent, where Roger is surrounded onstage by a bevy of beautiful women wearing aprons. There’s a singer from Louisiana singer at the side of the stage handing out exquisite jambalaya. I later bump into her behind the tepee, she’s breastfeeding her kid and handing out sweet potato pie to everyone. Back onstage, Roger has the air of a man who knows that even though he has been interviewing musicians cooking for the past three days without a break, things could definitely be a lot worse. My menu? I sent it in to the WOMAD office a while ago, and in their typical modus operandi of organics and email, it has well and truly entered the Real World system. Every last ingredient has been rounded up—each spice comandeered from the Orient, each vegetable torn screaming from the brown earth of old England. Every bottle of alcohol purchased from Malmesbury Spar. Although people imagine rock tours as being situated in fancy hotels, and a hotel breakfast an enormous spread of posh food, as you and I know by now, the reality of a 21st Century Troubadour's breakfast is very different. Foraged from a friend's fridge, discovered in a dark corner of a downtown dive, unearthed from the back of an underground cupboard, let me present you, dear reader, with the menu: