The Ultimate Curmudgeonly Jukebox

There have been a number of posts recently in the beer blogosphere about people’s ultimate pub jukebox. Now it has to be said that beer snobbery has nothing on music snobbery, and there is a whole range of acts whose music might be utterly unlistenable and devoid of commercial success but still merits a high place in the “critical canon”. Whereas I make no apology for liking Magnum, and for liking Sam Smith’s Old Brewery Bitter.

I am an unabashed fan of classic rock and AOR. So here are ten tracks, not necessarily my ten favourite tracks, but ones that, if I walked into a pub and heard them playing, I’d say “yeah, alright...”

• AC/DC – Hell’s Bells
  
• Belinda Carlisle – Lay Down Your Arms
  
• Big Country – Wonderland
  
• Boston – More than a Feeling
  
• Dire Straits – Single Handed Sailor
  
• Don Henley – Boys of Summer
  
• Heart – Crazy on You
  
• Mountain – Nantucket Sleighride
  
• Pearl Jam – Alive
  
• Tom Petty/Stevie Nicks – Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around

And I haven't even mentioned Roxette!

If you go in any rock pub, you’ll find a band cranking out covers of Bad Company, AC/DC and Van Halen, and the critically preferred wank will be nowhere to be heard.

Edit: Thanks to Mark Wadsworth for the cartoon.

LOVE AND ALL THAT

It might be quiet around here over the next few days. I'm off to daughter No 1's wedding.

I've got my posh dress, my posh hat, my heels, and flats just in case, and I almost know by heart the piece she has asked me to read.

Shakespeare's Sonnet 116.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O. no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his
Height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and
Cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and
Weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.

Right. That's the practice done - now on to help the other half with his speech.

COALITION CHEATS AND LIARS

I'm so sick of false promises and downright lies from these con artists

A lesson learned rather too late but I hope smokers, drinkers, fatties, free thinkers, libertarians, normal people, and those who really want change don't vote for these cheats and liars again.

We must all vote for one party next time and send them a message. WE FUCKING MATTER! The only power we have is at the ballot box. Please don't waste your vote again on these tossers.