£0.79 for such a fabulous track? Yes please.

And as for this mad Welsh student, with his penchant for booting in doors and bringing ‘proper’ society to its knees, all I can say is I’m pleased he no longer seems to be around. I don’t think the fabric of space and time could bear his unruly, rule-breaking weight.

Tony, I hope you do become a Fall fan – but don’t give up the accordian music (I’m looking forward to your accordian workshop at Odyssey, a must-listen…)

And there’s a time travel element to this song, and its tone, and its mood. (Over and above the content, which is explicitly about time travel.) I have to be honest, my own passion for punk didn’t last much beyond the heyday of the Clash and the Stranglers and Stiff Little Fingers, and is totally associated in my mind with my years at University when we really didn’t do a lot apart from listen to music and drink. So though this was never ‘my song’, the hardcore punk (strictly speaking post punk) vibe of it it takes me back to my student years before I fell in love, ahem, with Cole Porter and Frank Loesser and Stephen Sondheim.

Does that make me not cool? Did everyone out there realise I’m not cool? I guess you did. Moving swiftly on:

This SFF Song of the Week feature is taking on an interesting life of its own, and I’ve got an amazingly varied selection of songs lined up every Wednesday for months to come. And the choice by widescreen SF author Mike Cobley especially delighted me, because it’s also a time travel piece; in other words, it’s the song HE associates with being at University. Mike was at Strathclyde, where he, shall we say, clearly enjoyed himself.

I won’t pre-empt Mike’s brilliant and hilarious intro to his song choice; all I will say is that his words took me back to the days before earning a living was a priority, and socialising began at 6pm at the bar. I studied English at a little college in Oxford and mixed with a small gang of friends who included a Music Guru – the guy who was always the first to discover the hot new band, and wore stupidly patched jeans – and the Rebel – in our case, a guy who spent all his time devising ironical stunts to ridicule and taunt the rugger buggers, who loudly dominated the life of the college.

I do have memories of walking on the rooftops, accidentally breaking windows, and being accused of starting a riot in the college laundry. I also recall a drunken Welshman who one night lost his keys and, instead of calling the caretaker, kicked his door in and slept all night in a door-less room (on three separate occasions.) (Look, it was a Welsh college – what makes you think that was ME?)

My point is that music and nostalgia are virtually welded together. Tony Ballantyne’s choice last week (Kate Bush’s Experiment IV) is for me, and I think for all of you, rich with resonant memories from the times we’ve heard it before. And my own choice, a Deep Purple Track, has MY TEEN YEARS written all over it.

As I say, time travel…

I can’t reveal what others songs can be heard on this slot in future weeks…(if I did, I’d have to self-destruct.) But expect choices from Brian Ruckley, Paul Raven, Lilith Saintcrow, Mike Carey, Mike Cobley, Adrian Reynolds, Nicole Peeler, Stuart McGregor, Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Stephen Hunt, Jesse Bullington, Archie Tait, and many others, once I get around to asking them. Some of these songs are quite new to me – eye-openingly so – some are blasts from the past.

I love them all, equally….not just because they’re great songs but because each song is a self-revealing passion for the person choosing it….

Stuart – my copy of Wings (which I don’t think is the same as this version) is on the Backdrop compilation, a pirate release from 1994 but which was subsequently reissued as an official Fall release under the Voiceprint label.

You want Fall anorak trivia, you’ve come to the right man.

This morning was the first time I’d heard Wings, thanks to this great post, and I’ve seen been trying, maddened and inspired, to grab my own mp3 copy.

Wikipedia tells me it appears on a 1998 reissue of ‘Perverted By Language’, but I’m having no luck sourcing it.

Anyway, a fabulous and evocative piece of music. I love the way Smith looks in the promo, a mixture of arrogance and hopelessness on his face – like a bloke fallen to earth, with his own scabby wings tucked beneath his jacket.

Thanks, Al!

I see what you mean about the dry humour. I like the line “A small alteration of the past. can turn time into space” is spoken off camera.

Good choice, Al!