Let everyone debate the true reality

Deus by the Sugarcubes (and not Coldsweat because that video contains bacon).

While we were on holiday, Andy and I got to thinking about our Desert Island Discs, which is a pointless but intriguing exercise. It is difficult to cut down the many songs you love to a mere eight. I could easily have eight songs by The Beatles or Kate Bush or Aimee Mann or Paula Frazer/Tarnation, never mind just one.

I would definitely include Goin’ Back by Dusty Springfield (because you get Dusty and Goffin & King in a oner) and Simple Game by the Four Tops and most likely Save Me by Aimee Mann (the lyrics aren’t really relevant to me now but I have hardly forgotten what those 24 years were like) but otherwise it’s tough.

On the way home, we were listening to the Great Crossover Potential and I realised that Coldsweat or Deus had to be a DI disc because it was the Sugarcubes in 1988 that make me realise that I could like and did like alternative/different music (The Dreaming by Kate Bush was as radical as I got). Alison had bought Life’s Too Good because of Birthday but like its effect on so many others the overwhelming Einar factor put her off and I appropriated the album. I remember listening to a tape of it in the dark in my room (on a knackered old machine that needed a wedge of cardboard to keep the heads engaged on the tape properly or it sounded faint) and being amazed by the outlandish noise of astonishing vocals, rude lyrics, and mesmerising music; it was like nothing I had ever heard.

It didn’t completely change my life because I still like pop and my favourite record that year was Circle in the Sand by Belinda Carlisle.