Week 25 - The Final Curtain

I'm going on a long-weekend break in a few days and, as I'm a bit of a poor flyer, my mind has turned to mortality. There's a cheery thought, eh?

As such I've been hastily planning my funeral. Well not really, that's a bit too much (hopefully). However, I have come up with a few songs I think would be great to be played at such an event.

I thought I'd got this sown up years ago with Pearl Jam's Alive, Reef's Come Back Brighter and Harold Melvin's If You Don't Know Me by Now. They are quite comical and would probably be better suited to a TV show or film. I certainly think there is a place for rye humour at funerals.

The humour is evident in my first two choices.

First up is a track from a guy who, I've just found out, spent most of his childhood in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire, despite being from Maryland, USA. Famous for his lo-fi sound, Bill Callahan is Smog. He's responsible for some great tracks, Cold Blooded Old Times and Let's Move to the Country being two. However, it's from his 2000 album, Dongs of Sevotion, that my first track is from.

Dress Sexy at My Funeral by Smog is a hell-raising plea from beyond the grave from Callahan to his wife. The title gives away pretty much all you need to know, but the lyrics are as good as you'd hope. He instructs the widow to dress provocatively and flirt with the minister, and to speak about their love-making. Towards the end he sings: "Also tell them about how I gave to charity, and tried to love my fellow man as best I could. But most of all don't forget about the time on the beach."

I love the idea of the next song being chosen by a supposedly grieving widow/widower. It's quite a cheery song as it is, but if you put it in the context of a funeral, it takes on a really twisted meaning.

I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better by the Byrds is the Californian folk/pop/rockers at their best. It's impossible to listen to this without smiling. The chorus takes the title and adds a couple of key words: I'll probably feel a whole lot better, when you're gone.

Finally, a true funeral song. It's brilliant. What's not to like about folk, cricket and a morbid subject such as death?!

Manchester-born singer-songwriter Roy Harper is something of a one-off. There are few contemporary folk musicians who can claim to have inspired Led Zeppelin - most of their inspiration came from dead American bluesmiths...and Jake Holmes. Harper is also the lead vocalist on Pink Floyd's Have a Cigar. He's also no stranger to humour - Exercising Some Control is a laugh riot about the scrapes a man got up to with his dog, called Some Control.

But his masterpiece is When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease. It's full of cricketing puns about death. It conjures up beautiful imagery of hazy English summer days, with the faint thud of cork on willow. It's also incredibly contemplative and sad, but there's something in the lyrics that, no matter how depressing the underlying message, always leaves me with a slight smile. That's also how funerals should be, I think.