AX'S PLAYLIST 
If you've played BOLD AS LOVE, you know the score. There's a playlist that goes with the story, chapter by chapter, sometimes the tracks are classics, some are just obscure, they all mean something crucial to the characters or tell you something vitally important about the plot.
Are you ready... Here we go...
CHAPTER ONE: "Sweetness And Light" The rockstars launch a cultural initiative.
Haydn, string quartets Op.20, nos 2,5&6 The Lindsays, ASV Digital... Or, if you want the hippy dippy version, try 'Ripple' from American Beauty, The Grateful Dead (which is the first track on 'Unmasked', by the way). Would you hear my voice come through the music? Would you hold it close, as it were your own...? Well, would you?
CHAPTER TWO: "Unmasked" This is about making stupid mistakes in love, and glittery nights, and it should have an early eighties sound, Ooh, I should have known better than to cheat a friend, guilty feet have got no ryhthm 'Careless Whispers', George Michael (ah, didn't he used to be a nice, sensitive boy-)
"How strange that
three should be so different from two.
The difference between a line from A to B and the whole world..."
CHAPTER THREE: "Carpark Barbie" Every shining bonnet, makes me think of my back on it..now we're getting somewhere. The Promised Land can be anywhere, they say: you just know it when you find it. Dark and rain, a carpark, dogshit and grit...The elements. There was once a cartoon strip bio of Justine Frischmann and her crew's merry progress in NME that I was very fond of because although Justine bears little relation to Fiorinda, somehow the band looked to me like DARK-. 'Car Song' Elastica, Elastica, 1995
CHAPTER FOUR: "The Grove". 'Stairway To Heaven' Led Zeppelin, 'Untitled' 1971. Is it the Aleister Crowley connection? Is it the inimitable Zep lyrics? No, it's a reality check, to remind you of the sobering truth. Forget Utopian politics. How far from the classic, unchanging core beliefs of rockstar culture, to the truly bad places? Not very far. Hedonism is Utopia on a knife edge. But it beats every other route-
(Oh, okay. I admit. I have time for Led Zep. They're tight, blues based and they started something... Now you can take me out and shoot me.)
CHAPTER FIVE: "Lithium". How to ruin your life, without drugs. You'll be amazed at these results! The song of the same name, Nirvana, 'Nevermind'. Oh I'm so happy, cos today I found my friends. Yes, anoraks, it's the fifth track on Nevermind. Excuse me, I don't want to linger here
CHAPTER SIX: "One Of The Three"
Or, if you find reincarnation too slow, you could take the hi-tech route and seek the Zen Self in a lab, assisted by heavy neurosteroids. The price is as usual in these cases, either way; the song is One Of The Three by James,from 'Laid'. Brixton Academy, one very strange night-
For more about the druidic triads, try this link
CHAPTER SEVEN: "Big In Brazil#2" Someone said Bold As Love is a passionate plea for imagination in politics. Okay, well here's that chapter. About radical solutions in a time of dissolution, about the thrill of a political conference (yes, really), about how people come together in times of crisis, about the rising tide of the great dying, (and that's NOT a fairytale); and it's about how stress can make a person very stupid. But the tune is Teach Your Children, from Crosby Stills Nash and Young, DeJa Vu, released March 11th 1970; and you don't know why, but I do. Hey, musketeers, remember the Paradiso?
How about that Graham Nash, eh? Nice Blackpool lad, ending up with those Californian hippie rockstars?
CHAPTER EIGHT: "The Night Belongs To Fiorinda"
Wandering Star, Portishead, 'Dummy' Thank you, Geoff and Beth and Clive. And no more.
CHAPTER NINE: Love Minus Zero/ No Limit. My love she speaks like silence, without ideals of violence, she doesn't have to say she's faithful, when she's true like ice, like fire. But the tune, believe it or not, has to be 'Not In Nottingham' from the Disney version of Robin Hood, would you believe. Trashed up by a bunch of mean, crazed, Teesside dike-rockers.
CHAPTER TEN: "The Elephant's Child". Finding out what crocodiles have for lunch... When the white knight is talking backwards and the red queen's lost her head, remember what the dormouse said. It's got to be White Rabbit, by Jefferson Airplane, from Surrealistic Pillow.
And fade, to the cheery ska sound of Jackie Opel, push wood on the fire Jackie, good wood on the fire, Jackie.
Castles Made Of Sand
-
Haydn, string quartets Op.20
Ripple, The Grateful Dead - Careless Whispers, George Michael
- Car Song , Elastica
- Stairway To Heaven, Led Zeppelin
- Lithium, Nirvana
- One Of The Three, James
- Teach Your Children, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
- Wandering Star, Portishead
- Love
Minus Zero/ No Limit, Bob Dylan
Not In Nottingham, Walt Disney Productions - White
Rabbit, Jefferson Airplane:
Push Wood, Jackie Opel