Bob Dylan - "You've Been Hiding Too Long"

Dylan has always attacked hypocrites, racists, conservatives, establishment toadies and the like. In the "protest" era, except when discussing specific incidents (often racially-motivated murders and/or miscarriages of justice) he generally did this through humour and mockery, or by veiled references. (The song When The Ship Comes In is said to be inspired by an incident when he was refused a room in a posh hotel because his slightly bohemian appearance made the desk clerk doubt that he could pay for it, no matter how much proof he could offer of how rich he was.)

This song, though, is a direct, vicious, bitter and undisguised attack on the misappropriation of patriotism: the people who've been "hiding" are hiding behind the American flag. It was too much for his record company, who supposedly abandoned a planned live album because Dylan wouldn't agree to withdraw it from the tracklist. It has still not been released, or acknowledged in the list of songs on his official website, and the lyrics have not been published.

Mind you there was more than one plan for a Dylan live album in the early days - Columbia used to release lots of them by its folk-based artists - and the story goes that the one commonly regarded as "the" unreleased official live album was shelved because of a different track: Last Thoughts On Woodie Guthrie is an 8 minute poem/talk that most would regard as a waste of some vinyl that could have accommodated two or three extra songs; and again, reputedly Dylan refused to withdraw it. As a result some of his greatest songs, that weren't included on studio albums, remained unreleased for over 20 years because these versions stayed in the vaults. (Percy's Song and Lay Down Your Weary Tune, to name but two.)

NB the song contains racist language.  

Little Feat - "Brides Of Jesus"

Little Feat's self-titled 1971 debut is a little overlooked. It's darker and starker than their other albums but all the elements that made them great later are in place, in particular the two key songwriters Lowell George and Bill Payne, who co-wrote this one.

This typically mournful song sounds to me like it's got Payne's fingerprints all over it (the skittering piano cadences are a giveaway) and I'm pretty sure it's him singing, not Lowell George. But don't quote me. Little Feat worked with Van Dyke Parks a lot but the beautiful strings on this were arranged by Kirby Johnson. The overall effect sounds a lot like The Band - never a bad thing.

Jeff Buckley - I Know It's Over (Live - on the compilation "So Real")

Harry Nilsson - "Subterranean Homesick Blues"

Sentences You Don't Hear Very Often #4: Life isn't everything

Song For Guy is very unusual for Elton John by virtue of the fact he wrote it on his own, and by being - I stand to be corrected - the only song he wrote the words for. It's nearly an instrumental: there are no words till about 3:40, after many of his singles would have finished, and then it's just the same line repeated for 90 seconds till the end: "Life isn't everything."

It's often said that he wrote this as a tribute to a messenger at his record company [17yo Guy Burchett] who was killed in a motorcycle accident. In fact he states he wrote it on the day Guy died, but only found out about the accident later.

Was (Not Was) - Tell Me That I'm Dreaming

Key lines "One man likes milk / now he owns a million cows / Can you imagine all that milk?!?"

Kirsty MacColl - "Still Life"