kasperobscene

"the songs that saved your life". "But don't forget the songs
That made you cry
And the songs that saved your life
Yes, you're older now
And you're a clever swine
But they were the only ones who ever stood by you"- The Smiths, "Rubber Ring". So I'm the kind of loser geekface who cares far too much about popular music. it is my lifeblood, my reason for living, the fire in my heart and the love of my life. So i thought I'd make a list of sorts of a few of the songs and bands that have meant a lot to me over the past decade or so. Some of these are songs that at one point summed up how i felt, some of them are by bands that meant the world to me. This is not a definitive list at all, but it's a start; an introduction to the Kasperian heart, if you will.

Blur - Country house

Laugh all you want, but this is the song that started it all. It was 1995, I was ten going on eleven, i saw this video on TV and IT. CHANGED. MY. LIFE.

No, really. It did. Not because it was a mindblowing work of musical genius, but because it was the song that introduced me to Blur, and once I got into Blur, that was it. Suddenly, over the following few months, it became clear both to myself and to my surroundings, from parents and relatives to fellow school kids and my teachers, what kind of kid I was: I was That Weird Kid, the one who listens to "different" music and doesn't care about much else. The weird obsessed fankid, the pop music obsessive. That was who I became that autumn day in 1995, and that is who I have remained since then.

Manic Street Preachers - Faster
If you know me at all, you will know that I am a huge fan of Manic Street Preachers. The album this song is from, "The Holy Bible", is my favourite album of all time. There are quite a few songs I could choose to represent the Manics, but I chose this because it encompasses so well so many of the things I loved about this band back when they were the most important band in my life - actually, scratch that, they were the single most important thing in my life. I defined myself by this band, they influenced me in far too many ways for me to list. They introduced me to more books, bands, films, and ideas than I can name, they gave me something to believe in when I had little else, and they made my shitty, lonely, unhappy adolescence just a little bit more bearable.

The Smiths - Half A Person
Ah, The Smiths. How did people get through their teens before this band existed? I know, of course, that people did somehow manage - my own parents were both well into their adulthood before this band even formed, and they turned out fine. But on some level, I just can't imagine getting through the trauma of adolescence without having this band in your headphones to tell you that, though it might seem like it, you are not alone. Someone out there understands, someone knows exactly how you feel and is able to articulate it much better than you ever can. That person's name is Morrissey, and he has been singing the story of my life since before I was even born. There is such great comfort in this. Simply put, The Smiths epitomise everything I love about pop music - they were the greatest example of how life-affirming and life-changing music can be. They are the sad, hurtful, confusing parts of your life spat out on vinyl and distorted into something beautiful.

Belle & Sebastian - Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying
I met my best friend through our shared love of this band. That's reason enough for them to be included here, but there are many other reasons why i consider them one of the most important bands of my life. When I was nineteen, after years of loving this band, I finally got to see them live. After the show I met their singer and chief songwriter, Stuart Murdoch, and had a complete fanboy attack, gushing about how they're my favourite band since The Smiths, and all kinds of things that I should probably be embarrassed by. But you know what? I'm not embarrassed by that in the slightest. Because this band summed up my awkward, lonely teenage years better than almost anyone I can think of. They made me realise that hey, it is OK to be fifteen and kind of bookish and geeky and lonely, and I don't have to be cool and overly confident and loud and brash or any of those things. They steered me onto the path to finally accepting myself, standing up and confidently declaring: I don't need your sex & drugs & rock&roll; I'm into snogging, tea, and indiepop.

The Libertines - Time For Heroes
Sometimes a band comes along just when you need it to and sum up a part of your life, or your feelings, or what you want your life to be like, that you desperately needed someone to articulate and put to music for you. The Libertines were that band for so many people. They were not the most original or innovative of bands, but they had something special that countless bands that came after them tried to emulate, something none of them succeeded in. This song is not my ultimate favourite Libertines song, but it goes a long way towards summing up what so many of us loved about the band: it's in the jangle of the tune, the youthful optimism of the lyrics, and the feeling that,  shit, this actually means something. I met a lot of the people i now consider some of my best friends through my love for this band, and they'll always have a tiny piece of my heart.

The Others - This Is For The Poor
I got a lot of shit for being into this band - probably more than I've ever got from being into any other band. They were not, musically or lyrically speaking, a fantastic band on record - though their gigs were, at their best, utterly fantastic. They were not particularly innovative or groundbreaking. But they had something that I and certain other people considered to be special - something we needed at that particular point in our lives. And that's what it's all about, ultimately - latching onto something that makes something in your life make a little bit more sense for a while. I met a ton of fantastic people through our shared love of this band and grew closer to people I already knew because of them, I had some of the best times of my life at their gigs, and I have a tattoo on my arm of a lyric from one of their songs that serves as a reminder that there are always things worth living for, even when things are shit, when it all seems pointless, there will always be something that makes you want to say "fuck it, i'm not giving up" and keep going.

Hefner - The Sweetness Lies Within
Sometimes you love someone so much that trying to put it into words becomes completely futile because nothing you say, no words in any language you know, can adequately convey exactly how you feel. And then there are times when loving someone hurts you to the point where you start to think that maybe, just maybe, alcoholics have got the right idea. And that's when you listen to Hefner: their songs alternate between joyous declarations of everlasting love, and miserable, depressing whine fests designed to make you want to down an entire bottle of your preferred brand of hard alcohol while slitting your wrists and screaming "WHY, WHY, GOD, WHYYYYYY" into the great, big, bleak nothingness. This song is somewhere in the middle, leaning towards the former category; it remains one of my favourite songs of theirs, and it is guaranteed to make me go a bit mushy inside.

The Times - I Helped Patrick McGoohan Escape
The Times are Edward Ball's sometimes-a-band-sometimes-a-solo-project. Edward Ball is my Number One Ultimate Hero Of Music. This is not my favourite song of his, but it's certainly in the top ten. And it gets bonus points for introducing me to the 1960s genius british TV drama The Prisoner.
The Times are one of the most underrated, underappreciated, underexposed bands of the past 30 years, and i do not use such terms lightly. It would be completely impossible to sum up the talent, diversity, and - yes - genius of Edward Ball in a single paragraph, and certainly just by pointing out one song or even one album. So I will state quite simply that he is my  favourite and that there are many very good reasons why he is.