Ever feel like you just can’t do ANYTHING right? In every single nook and cranny of your life?
Whenever this happens to me—and it happens a lot—I try to step back. I mean, I’m already taking two steps forward and six steps back, right…might as well just take another step back to analyze the situation. Sometimes analyzing isn’t even what it needs. Sometimes you just need to drop the needle down onto the right record. One of my go-to “Save-me-from-my-fucking-fucked-up-life” songs is IF VENICE IS SINKING. This song picks me the fuck up…makes me whole again. There are a few songs out there that do the trick. I wonder if everybody has these songs on standby? Or if I’m just a freak? Don’t answer that question. I’d rather be blissfully unaware.
I’m going to plug my battery pack into The Spirit of the West today. So many lines in that song that just cut me to my soul. “…‘cause beauty’s religion and it christens me with wonder…” TSOTW looked into the pit of my brain and pulled that line up. One of the things that seriously gets me to move forward in life is beauty. The beauty inside. The beauty around. The beauty of words. The beauty of poison (80s reference snuck in for fun!). All of it! It really does christen me with wonder. SO when I need a reminder of this, I just put that song on…and I sail away.
“They come in bent-backed
Creeping ‘cross the floor all dressed in black
Candles, thick as pillars
You can buy one off the floor
And the ceiling’s painted gold
Mary’s hair is red
The old come here to kiss their dead” ~ The Spirit of the West – If Venice is Sinking
So let’s have it. What’s your life-raft song? When you’re down, what gets you up?
KEVIN CRAIG 
Great Big Sea’s When I’m Up I Can’t Get Down, fires me back up again. In fact the whole album is a balm and brings me back to my roots.
Spirit of the West, Home For a Rest is good too.
I wish I had a single song I could turn to, but I don’t. However, an angry Celtic mix of The Pogues, The Dropkick Murphy’s and Flogging Molly usually does it for me.