My Favourite 350 Songs of All Time. #337

The Shangri-La's - I Can Never Go Home Anymore

In the film of my life, the person who introduced me to this song would be some impossibly Jarvish bohemian, a hermaphroditic dandy with bisexual eyes or perhaps some lovesick Argentine peasant girl.

It certainly wouldn't be my mate Mike, who looked a bit like a Muppet version of Fagin, and dressed like a Moldovan geography teacher. We used to swap compilation tapes and I always came out of the exchange much richer than he did, what with me pilfering him off with obscure electro and Fall B-sides and him swamping me with the golden goodness of Glen Campbell and the vampish hysteria of the Shangri-La's.

We were out once in Dempseys in Cardiff, arguing as usual about music and films, Mike (not the best of drinkers it has to be said) comes back from the loo with his old boy hanging out.

ME: Mike, your cock's hanging out.

MIKE: Nggh, errr.

At this point, he merely dragged his shirt out of his trousers to cover it up and sat back down. It was about half four in the afternoon.

How a man capable of such drunken indecency ever stumbled across the Shangri-La's, I'll never know. Anyway, if there's nothing in this song that touches a part of your soul, then you don't have one. I haven't seen Mike in years, he's gone a bit doolally apparently but I hope he's ok. Or at least hope he's worked out how to put his cock back in his pants.