Very well.
Shoot. Misfire on my part!
I wish you’d all stop posting songs I know and like that I didn’t think of. I’ve moved on.
Fine if we’re playing the shoulda went with game, I shoulda went with
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Or
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One for pyat to kick himself to.
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Holy hell. I had a slight emergency and had to step away for a bit (the emergency being a small emotional breakdown at the IA results) and I come back to find out I won?!
I can’t handle this day! I feel on top of the motherfucking world!
I was going to submit Virginia Plain, actually, but then I thought Jal would think I was pandering…
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One mans meat is another mans pandering.
Actually that should be One mans Pete is another mans pandering.
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Reminds me of the kinks
Got diverted from listening to the final round, so I’ll do that tomorrow and plan to do the final reveal Friday, usual time.
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Welcome to the final round in this walrus.
Category 5, A track by an artist/band strongly connected with London (birth or relocation at a young age)
I found this round very hard to judge, mainly because there were only a couple of tracks that I really like, a few decent ones and several that just didn’t do much for me, I’m afraid.
The mid table tracks in particular could easily be ordered differently another time, but the winner is superb.
Let’s start.
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Good to get the low-scoring tracks out of the way before people turn up. 
In 11th place for 1 point, skydiver8 with “Splinter” by Gary Numan
Having gazed into her pre-walrus crystal ball and seen that first place in this round might win this for her, sky appears to have gone all in with a Marmite selection, a brave but correct play given that only first place pays out and that she really loves it and says “this entire album is fucking fantastic”.
After a promising intro the song soon devolves into some kind of quasi-mystical musing on human evil that sums up the basic problem I have with Mr Numan: when he intones things like
“I don’t believe in the goodness of people like me
I believe everything bleeds from the fear of man”
he’s overreaching himself and I even start missing the sheer banal daftness of his early songs like Cars with its
“Here in my car
I feel safest of all
I can lock all my doors”.
Sorry sky, I know you took a few gambles in this walrus and respect to you for not playing it safe, but this one didn’t come off because, as you might possibly have surmised, you just happen to have picked an artist here who’s one of my all-time pet hates.
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10th spot and 2 points goes to smrk4 with “The Man’s Too Strong” by Dire Straits
A live version of this song, from 1985.
smrk notes this is a test of how severe I’m going to be on obviousness, but is overestimating my familiarity with mid to late period Dire Straits (their first album was very underrated with some great moments though) so has nothing to be concerned about on that score.
Knopfler’s talent as a musician is unquestionable - no one gets to play with some of the names he’s worked with (Dylan, Clapton, Van Morrison, Steely Dan etc) without being a top technician - but I find his songwriting often less than stellar and that’s where I sit with this track.
It’s slick and inoffensive but I find the verses forgettable as though they exist mainly as a prelude to the big three chord motif. Credit to smak for liking stadium rock as well as more experimental stuff too.
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In 9th place for 3 points, pyatnitski and “Rain” by Flame 2
Not a cover of the Beatles song but an experimental atmospheric instrumental by Kevin Martin and William Bevan aka The Bug and Burial, who went under the moniker Flame 1 on their previous outing.
I bet this sounds great on a good record player (mine hasn’t been unpacked from our last house move yet), but the lack of a voice or voice substitute (eg brass, strings) is often a problem for me: the synth didn’t do enough to fill that gap and I found my mind wandering a bit.
On the other hand it’s probably the kind of vinyl I might enjoy late at night when I’m happy for my mind to wander a bit, so it has its merits. 
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