Count John McCormack and those hedonistic, psychedelic indie rockers.

(From Irish Independent)

A question for a future pub quiz: What have John McCormack and the Velvet Underground got in common? On the face of it, a big fat zero. Zilch with a capital 'Z'. Rien. Nowt.

After all, what could possibly unite the Westmeath tenor who sang Il Mio Tesoro and the New York gouger who rhapsodised about hisVenus In Furs? One is an aria from a Mozart opera, sung with perfect diction by an Irish Count; the other a sleazy paean to sado-masochistic sex sung by a drug-addled scuzzball.

McCormack sangPanis Angelicus in front of thousands of devout Catholics at the Eucharistic Congress in the Phoenix Park; Lou Reed sang theBlack Angel's Death Song to a rabble of strung-out junkies in a dark and dingy New York club. The former's educational background was Marist; the latter's hedonist.

One was held in particularly high esteem by bishops and men of the cloth and John McCormack had his following too.

Just tell us the connection, I hear you sigh. Well, both pieces of music have been chosen by the American Library of Congress to be preserved by posterity in the United State's national archive. The list of 25 significant audio works are startling for their range and diversity.

Nothing appears to link them other than the fact that they made it onto vinyl or tape or some other format capable of recording sound. That and the fact that the people who compile these odd little music capsules thought they had stood the test of time particularly well.