Bill Withers - Lovely Day

On December 6th, 2008, Enza and I got married. This is the first song we heard as a married couple. It was. It continues to be.

Number one on my birthday in 1977:ABBA - Name of the Game Next year is better. Honestly.

Click here for the playlist so far.

Joan Armatrading - Love and Affection

1976 had a very hot summer. It was also the year that punk really sprung onto the scene. I, however, was five years old for most of the year, and so found punk an affront to my sensitive young ears. (Funnily enough, when you listen back to it now, it all mostly sounds so terribly refined).

The choice of the Joan Armatrading track is for two reasons - first of all because it's blissful, and is a song that has stuck in my mind for all these years; and secondly, because (albeit in a cover version by Courtney Pine) it illustrates one of the amazing things of early 21st century music consumption - of being made aware of a track that you've never really heard before through random shuffle.

The cover version of the song is probably a little "smoother" than the original, and whilst I love the sound of the bass clarinet, I think the bass vocal on the Armatrading original is better.

Number one on my birthday in 1976: Chicago - If you leave me now (Seventies schmaltz at extremis)

Click here for the playlist so far.

Bob Marley & the Wailers - No Woman, No Cry (Live)

Ok. So, at last, we get to years where I can actually remember stuff. I have a few sketchy memories from before 1975, but concrete reminiscences begin for me in the summer of 1975. Not surprising really, because we spent much of that summer in the southern African country Zambia, visiting my paternal grandparents.

My dad's dad was a physicist. In the 1930s, he did work that was early investigation into microwaves. During the war he worked on top secret stuff that I've heard was either related to radar or guidance systems, but we'll never really know. After the war, he moved into telecommunications, and was involved in designing circuits at Goonhilly Downs that carried the first couple of decades-worth of transatlantic television transmission. In the 1970s, he went out to Zambia to project manage the build of their first satellite earth station at Mwembeshi.

It was a big family trip that we took in 1975 - I was four years old, and just about to start school. My sister just one a a bit. We saw lions, elephants, banana trees and all sorts of unimaginable exotica. Those memories have stuck with me.

My dad's dad had dark hair, that never really greyed even into his very later years. My mum's dad, by contrast, had platinum hair by the time we came around. As a small kid, this was the easy distinction between the two of them. I'm not sure that my credibility ever recovered when, starting school in the September of 1975, I went around telling all who would listen that I'd just got back from Africa where we'd stayed with Black Granddad.

Although I have many, many memories from 1975, I don't really remember much of the music. Which, if you look at what was released that year, isn't that surprising... it's no wonder that punk came along the following year. The Bob Marley track was an exception to prove the rule.

Number one on my birthday in 1975: Billy Connolly - D I V O R C E (which hasn't even made it into Spotify. By the way, you've got to wait until 1978 until there's a half-decent number 1 on my birthday...)

Click here for the playlist so far.

Elton John - Bennie and the Jets

For those of us who grew up in the commuter town of Watford in the 1970s and 1980s, Elton John has a significance in our lives far removed from the usual associations of tantrums and tiaras. In 1973 he became the President of Watford FC, and then in 1976 the Chairman of the club. Recruiting a young Graham Taylor into the role of manager, a heady decade of success for the club followed, with top flight football (finishing runners up to Liverpool in 1982/3), an FA Cup final and a run in the UEFA Cup.

Quite frankly, it scarred me with an optimism about possibilities in football that will never again be fulfilled as the sporting world has moved on quite dramatically. To think that for most of the period Elton was high as a kite says something. Although I'm still to this day not sure what...

Number one on my birthday in 1974: David Essex - Gonna Make You a Star

Click here for the playlist so far.

John Martyn - Solid Air

One of many tracks that I was introduced to by the marvellous DJ Gilles Peterson. I've a stack of Peterson compilation albums, the first of which was from way back in 1985 - Street Sounds Jazz Juice. This John Martyn track is hauntingly beautiful.

Number one on my birthday in 1973: Gary Glitter - I love you love me love (from Chuck Berry singing about playing with himself to Gary Glitter, erm...)

Click here for the playlist so far.

Steely Dan - Do it again

For me, Steely Dan are a band whose songs evoke strong memories of childhood in the 1970s. Summer days spent driving to grandparents - the hot sun through the windscreen, windows open (no aircon in those days), and sticky, scorching vinyl seats, listening to the Radio One Roadshow broadcasting from exotic locations like Newquay or Llandudno.

Number one on my birthday in 1972: Chuck Berry - My Ding-a-Ling (a song, it appears, which mostly appears to be a extending joke about, erm, playing with oneself).

Click here for the playlist so far.

Isaac Hayes - Theme from Shaft

For about 20 years I've had the idea of a Blacksploitation cop show with two characters - Rufus Stone and Barrington Mead. Rufus Stone is a place in the New Forest, and Barrington Mead the road on which my Great Aunt lives.

Other than their names, sadly I've never got any further into the exploits of Rufus and Barrington. However, the soundtrack would sound like Isaac Hayes' Theme from Shaft.

Number one on my birthday in 1971: Slade - Coz I Love You

Click here for the playlist so far.

Minnie Riperton - Les Fleurs

I don’t remember 1970. I was, at most, a month old. Looking at the history books, however, and it does appear to have been a bit of a grotty year. I kind of imagine that it felt like one long woozy hangover from the 1960s.

The end of November in conflict-torn Belfast can’t have been too much of a giggle either. My parents were living in Ulster whilst my dad completed his (mature-ish) degree. Tales of British soldiers pointing guns at my push chair are often repeated.

There was some pretty great music, though. Even if The Beatles splitting meant Ringo Starr released a solo album.

The Minnie Ripperton track, Les Fleurs, was one that came to mean more to me when it was covered (in an identikit kind of fashion) by Drum n’ Bassers 4hero in 2001. A beautiful combination of soul and orchestration, with Riperton’s amazing vocal range (which just got that bit too corny in her most famous track Lovin’ You). Riperton sadly died in 1979 at the age of just 31.

Number one on my birthday in 1970: Dave Edmunds I Hear You Knocking

Click here for the playlist so far.

At the end of November I am going to be reaching the decimally-significant age of 40. Rather than having a rather public mid-life crisis, I seem to be dealing with my departure from the ranks of thirty-somethings by embarking on a series of miniature personal projects which have no particular significance and are significantly cheaper than a sports car.

#summerlookup is the first, and I've another photography-based initiative for the Autumn, but I'm also about to embark on a musical adventure that is much more closely related to my impending birthday. Over the next few months I'm going to be compiling a mixtape (or, at least, its Spotified 21st century equivalent), comprising a track from each of the 41 calendar years I've been around.

The first few years are likely to be songs that I got to know later in life, but a level of research is going to be required throughout. With the madness of Wikipedia I've already just found out that my birthday marked the day in which Hendrix's Voodoo Child was toppled from the top of the charts by Dave Edmunds' I Hear You Knocking. How upsetting...

I'm dreading the mid-80s through to the early 1990s as these were my formative teenage and student days and the choice is going to be overwhelming. And also 2004, because I can't think of anything from that year that sticks in the mind. But I'm sure that there will be something.

The rules (because this sort of thing obviously needs some rules) are that there will be one song each from 1970 through until 2010, the song needed to be released in the year in question, and finally that this needs to be a compilation that makes some sort of musical sense when listened to from start to end...

I'll kick off with 1970 very soon. You can follow the sonic adventures here.