2. Move On UP - Curtis Mayfield, from Curtis (1970)

2.       Move On Up – Curtis Mayfield, from Curtis, 1970

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFJtfdYjhFI

You really need the long, original album version. You can’t miss it, the one with the false finish less than halfway through, and the long, funky percussion-heavy horn work-out rounding it all off. The link is to a live at Ronnie Scott’s video.

Ronnie Scott would wonder onto the stage and introduce the acts himself. I was in an audience that copped this…“you’re not the liveliest bunch, are you? Why don’t you all join hands…and see if you can make contact with the living?” A bit unfair, how animated can you get on a night of pretty avant garde jazz from an obscure three-piece band led by an alto sax player?

Just when you think you can’t like a song any more (it’s wonderful to start with, the Jam covered it, it’s about as uplifting a slice of funky soul as it’s possible to put together…etc.) the Arsenal decide to play it. So you can now listen to it and picture the players getting their 2014 FA Cup winners medals and lifting the trophy with Curtis playing over the Wembley PA system.

All the live versions have (poor) substitute keyboards playing the horn parts from the studio original. Cash-strapped Curtis trying to make ends meet with the touring band, I suppose.

The thing with Curtis Mayfield is the effortless cool. Beautiful Brother. The life and soul. Just step up to the mic and let it go.

My favourite Curtis album is There’s No Place Like America Today, seven long songs, almost all of them slow-burning, slow-tempo, downbeat, but the album works (only works) as a whole. You can’t cherrypick tracks from this one, it’s all or nothing.

It’s almost impossible…actually, strike the ‘almost’ there, it’s absolutely impossible to narrow things down to eight songs. So I’ve made up some of my own rules to help. No jazz, no hip hop, no classical, nothing too difficult. Using BLISS’ idea of having the choices playing in the background over the course of the day, I’ve tried to pick those sort of songs. They all stand up (or I think they do, anyway) to being listened to, again and again, on the strength of being just that: great songs. I’d have to have some Roots, something off Illmatic, Horace Silver’s Song for my Father, at least one Miles Davis, something by Steve Reich and a Robert Wyatt, given free reign, and an Elvis Costello, and, and, and…

…DLL won’t tell me her picks, teasingly keeping them to herself (for now, at least) so I’ll have to introduce some drama and uncertainty, and what better way than to list ten, or even twelve, and the secret to be revealed will be which eight of those ten or twelve have made the cut.

That’s win, win, win: more choices, more posts, and I’m level with DLL in the keeping people guessing competition.

Oh, and the book, and the luxury, and the holy book? There’s going to be blood on the Fallok debating chamber floor, have no doubt. Good luck, MM, in the role of sole arbiter, Dredd-like judge, jury and law.