Paz H Top 10
So Long - Aretha Franklin
She is in the 10 because she is the greatest singer that will ever live. This song is from the Soul 69 album. If you do not have it, depart, post-haste, and but it immediately.
Soiree - Bill Evans
This is from hos Left and Right album where he bounces between a Baby Grande and a Fender Rhodes on almost every track.
Everything on this album is phenomenal. It was a toss-up between Bill and Oscar Peterson.
Tinsel Town in the Rain - The Blue Nile
I was 17, still at Our Lady's High School, when I went to Glasgow, on my on, ffffff, with the sole purpose of buying this album. I bought it on the second floor of HMV when it was on Renfield Street, just up from Listen Records.
Head and Heart - John Martyn
From Bless the Weather. My musical hero. I saw a picture of him on the back of the Solid Air album when I heard it for the first time at Adrian Gallagher's house when I was about 15. It was taken from behind him. He was sitting down playing to a large crowd with his guitar case on the floor beside him. It was the only time in my life I said 'That's what I want to be when I grow up.' I did try.
Cantique de Jean Racine - Gabriel Faure
Mozart toured around Europe with his father when he was very young, and while he was in Italy he sang in one of the Vatican choirs, not open to the public at the time, where he learned and sang Faure's Requiem. The Vatican thought Faure's Requiem too 'emotionally charged' for the masses and so it was never performed to the public. Each night though, after practice, young Mozart went home and transcribed the Miserere and that's how it 'got out.' A bit like Prince's Black Album. Also a bit like the same way Gerard recorded The Bunnymen at the Barrowlands. Music can be as powerful as this.
Both Sides Now - Joni Mitchell
Pick a Joni Mitchell song? Ridiculous. This is her more recently recorded version of this famous song with the London Philharmonic. She lives for 6 months of the year on the sunshine coast, about an hour from me. I am considering a new career as a stalker.
Aos Pez Da Cruz - Miles Davis
He talks at the end of this little Latin track from Quiet Nights. The broken glass diet was obviously working. By picking this I get to squeeze my pal Gil Evans in too, who orchestrated this whole masterpiece of an album.
Julia Florida - Augustin Barrios Mangore
I listen to a lot of classical guitar, and always meant to make a wee comp up for D with this stuff on it. This piece gets me square in the solar plexus. I played it before Erika came into the wee chapel when we got married, 6 years ago, to this very day.
I Wish - Stevie Wonder
Pick a Stevie... any Stevie. he has got his funk on this from the almighty Songs in The Key of Life.
Tom Traubert's Blues - Tom Waits
The old Tom cat. Shiver me timbers. Nuf said.
(check him out on YouTube on the David Letterman shows - he's hilarious)