150 songs...

...for my 30th Birthday. (Part One)

Once upon a time I wrote a post about music. Then I wrote a small follow-up to it.

I found those 18th Birthday Tapes the other day (they so deserve capitals) and was reading through the track listings and smiling at the memories that appeared.

So I decided to create my own playlist for my 30th. One hundred songs that represented the thirty years that I'd been around. Then I hit a few snags...mainly the fact that I couldn't narrow it down to 100. So I upped it a little. The list is now 150 songs, split up into 0-10, 10-20 and 20-30 sections so that each decade gets a fair shot. Not every song is in the decade it was released in, they fit in where I remember them within my life.

It's been very good fun - although Anthony is a little scared by some of the choices, and is very scared by some of the songs he didn't know that I then played him.

As I suspected in that first post, there are a few songs that have carried across to the 150. There are also a few that haven't due to not conjuring up a moment in my head. The Beatles are a casualty for this very reason, as are The Rolling Stones. I know. Shocking isn't it. They summon up a general time (sixth form and uni respectively) but no specific memories so I've had to be ruthless and chop them out.

While I'm working on the 150for30, here are my 100for18 - the result of three days choosing and locating the songs (as I had to find all the LP's/tapes with them on) and three weeks or so of Dad arranging them, copying them onto the reel-to-reel and then making the cassettes.

Queen - Headlong

Del Amitri - Driving With the Brakes On

CSN - Just a Song Before I Go

Eagles - Take it to the Limit

Livingstone Taylor - House at Pooh Corner (which I want on the 150for30 list, but this version isn't on iTunes so I've had to go for the version by Loggins & Messina - meh)

Neil Young - Pocahontas

Beatles - Revolution 9

CSN - Long Time Gone

CSN - Cowboy of Dreams

Billy Joel - Only the Good Die Young

Chicago - A Hard Habit to Break

Don McLean - American Pie

Jim Croce - Have to Say I Love You in a Song

Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody

Manfred Mann's Earth Band - Blinded by the Light

Oasis - Morning Glory/The Swamp Song/Champagne Supernova (since they all just flow into each other on the album)

Four Seasons - December '63

Beatles - The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill

Jim Croce - Photographs and Memories

Eagles - Hotel California

Billy Joel - Piano Man

Elton John - Candle in the Wind

Neil Young - Rockin' in the Free World

Beatles - Yesterday

CSNY - Deja Vu

Jim Croce - New York's not my Home

Queen - Crazy Little Thing Called Love

Ash - Oh Yeah

Boyzone - Key to my Life

Levellers - Hope Street

Commodores - Easy Like Sunday Morning

Jim Croce - Operator

CSN - Suite: Judy Blue-Eyes

Beatles - Hey Jude

Neil Young - Like a Hurricane

Beatles - Ticket to Ride

Doors - Strange Days

Madness - Our House

CSNY - Our House (two very different songs with the same title - I always loved the fact Dad put them together)

Billy Joel - Always a Woman to Me

Stills-Young Band - Long May You Run

Beatles - Strawberry Fields Forever

Queen - Radio Ga-Ga

Chris De Burgh - Lady in Red (on the tape track listing as by Chris Rea for some reason)

Dodgy - Making the Most of

Aerosmith - Cryin'

Ash - Girl From Mars

Who - My Generation

Bonzos - I'm the Urban Spaceman (Produced by Apollo C. Vermouth, otherwise known as Paul McCartney)

Fleetwood Mac - The Chain

Oasis - Wonderwall

Al Stewart - Song on the Radio

Mama's & Papa's - California Dreamin'

Byrds - Mr Tambourine Man

Beatles - Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

CSN - Military Madness

Chicago - If You Leave me Now

CSN - Teach Your Children

CSNY - Ohio (These two songs are forever linked in my mind)

Eagles - Best of My Love

Bluetones - Carnt Be Trusted (When I wrote this on the list Dad asked if I needed spelling lessons, then he said the band needed them!)

Queen - We Will Rock You

Ruth - Fear of Flying

Neil Young - Round and Round (It Won't be Long)

CSN - Simple Man

Billy Joel - Uptown Girl

Huey Lewis - The Power of Love

CSNY - Helpless

Beatles - All You Need is Love

Mungo Jerry - In the Summertime

Bluetones - Putting Out Fires

CSN - Horses Through a Rainstorm

Billy Joel - Christie Lee

Doors - When You're Strange (With the voice of my friend David at the beginning saying "These really are strange days, and they're full of strange people too")

Beatles - Birthday

Bluetones - Bluetonic

Queen - Killer Queen

Dodgy - Grassman

Alanis Morrisette - You Learn

Bryan Adams - Run to You

Doors - Light My Fire

Neil Young - Unknown Legend

CSN - Blackbird

Billy Joel - The Ballad of Billy the Kid

Beatles - Good Day Sunshine

Crosby & Nash - Cathedral

Beatles - Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

Jim Croce - Time in a Bottle

CSN - Chicago/We Can Change The World

Alanis Morrisette - Ironic

Crosby & Nash - Carry Me

Blur - Charmless Man

Queen - Don't Stop Me Now

Al Stewart - Year of the Cat

Billy Joel - Famous Last Words

Anyone still here?

So lets see... at 18 I was in a phase of listening to a whole lot of my Dad's music, with occasional bursts of Billy Joel and Queen (courtesy of Mum), and a few dribs of current tunes.

One of the reasons I split the 150for30 into three sections...