![]() Very few songs pull that off as well as this one does. It’s like stepping into a movie or a really good book and watching the hero right in front of you. When he’s describing blows raining down on his friend and his reaction, it’s like you’re there with him. The words aren’t just believable, but completely empathetic. It’s really powerful sonically, too - Dennis Bovell’s production is astonishing and the record just really kicks. With Linton Kwesi Johnson though, you have the opposite, a genuine poet who is putting his words to music. “One of the biggest clichés that I despise is when guys who write lyrics for their band describe themselves as poets - it’s usually the most absurd affectation. It’s so articulate and compelling it’s one of the most powerful pieces of lyricism to have come out of the twentieth century. I don’t know what the impact was at the time, because I was too young - I would’ve been about seven years old. “I believe this track had a lot of political resonance in the late ‘70s. When you’re a generation removed it’s tougher to stay in touch with your national identity, you have to put a little bit more effort in to appreciate your history and your heritage, but it’s worth it.” I joined the rest of the musicians to sing with them at the end of the show and it was a great moment for me. A few years ago I was involved in this performance at the Barbican where various musicians got together to perform the music and tell the story of another Greek composer, Markos Vamvakaris, and I was the narrator. “Greek music is still a big part of my life. It’s stuck with me and I can still put it on and get chills from it - partly because it’s a very powerful piece of music anyway, and partly because it has that incredible memory attached for me as well. It’s incredibly hypnotic and repetitive and I remember this amazing sensation of the first time I had that feeling of music moving me beyond the state of resting existence. My dad used to put it on when I was two or three years old and he’d put me on his shoulders and spin me around. “This particular song has a real resonance for me, because it’s probably the first piece of music I can remember the experience of listening to. He’s from Crete and he sort of interpolates melodies and rhythms in a way that’s thousands of years old really. Like a lot of people, he used music to maintain his identity and when I was a kid, he used to play a lot of the stuff that he brought with him - everything from contemporary rock to older folk and then Yannis Markopoulos as well. “My dad’s Greek and he came to Britain when he was nine or ten. The reason I love these songs is because they make me feel a particular way. I could talk about the stories behind them, what they meant to me at particular points in my life, the history of the musicians or the technique in their writing, but to be honest, it's all incidental. "I have tingles running through my veins just thinking about these songs and the way that they make me feel. "For me, the holy grail of songwriting is to create a genuine melancholia, but one that's simultaneously completely uplifting," he explains. Others meanwhile, are separated from him by time and place, but no less emotionally resonant. Some of the choices fall close to home for Kapranos, from a very early incarnation of old friends and fellow Glaswegians Belle and Sebastian to Edinburgh miserabilists Country Teasers. Similarly, only one of the nine tracks he's selected here was a single the rest are plucked from albums, radio sessions and - in one case - an old demo tape. ![]() "Passing listeners to the band might not expect that from us," he says, "but people with a deeper knowledge of what we write would recognise it instantly." He reels off a list of deep cuts from across his group's catalogue to prove his point, including '40', 'Fade Together', 'Katherine Kiss Me', 'Little Guy from the Suburbs' and 'Slow Don't Kill Me Slow'. Particularly, Alex Kapranos was looking to cultivate a feeling of melancholy with these songs, a mindset he readily admits might not be one that casual fans of Franz Ferdinand would associate with him.
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