Friday Night Music Club Vol 41

Well, here we are again. It’s Friday and I’m desperately trying to think of something original to write to introduce this week’s mix.

As it happens, it’s made slightly easier by the fact that I owe you guys an apology.

See, one of the underlying premises of doing these, the rules if you like, is that I don’t feature the same song twice (or, for that matter, more than twice) over all of them, and last week I let you down. Not that anyone complained, but I noticed, and so I’m hanging my head in shame.

Last week I featured the Parental Advisory Version of Girls Aloud’s No Good Advice, and, because I’d included the Non-Parental Advisory Version, I didn’t pick up the duplication. Sorry about that.

Still, at least it wasn’t the same Quo record, eh? Not that anyone would have noticed then either, cos they all sound the same, amIright?

So, moving swiftly on, what do we have for you this week? Well, this week’s mix has been knocking around for a while – I even played it to my brother on the driver to visit my Dad in hospital a month or so ago, he’s probably been wondering what’s happened to it.

Truth be told, there’s a song in it which I had grave reservations about keeping in. It sounded, to these ears, perfect for where it sits in the mix, but the tone and lyrical content bothered me. But, in the end I’ve kept it in, with this huge disclaimer and one of these slapped on it:

The tune after it isn’t particularly tasteful either, mind. Do I need to put that image in twice?

Nah, you’ll cope, I think.

Let’s do this, shall we?

Friday Night Music Club Vol 42

And here’s you track-listing and – yes, again – sleeve-notes:

1. T. Rex – 20th Century Boy

I figured I’d start this week with a crunching intro, and there’s none more crunching than this, is there? Not even Placebo’s cover of it. Although maybe the noise Bolan’s car made when it hit that tree comes close.

2. Muse – Supermassive Black Hole

Obviously I wish to avoid libel litigation about copyright, but there’s something about the start of this one which reminds me of the record which precedes it.

Muse will forever in my mind be the band that, when a friend wanted to go see them headline the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury on the Sunday night back in 2004, caused me to snap, my persona as the mild-mannered janitor father figure of our group (because I was the oldest, and carried a ruck-sack with paracetamol in it, amongst *coughs* other things) briefly exposed, when I told them to “Fuck off and watch Muse then, we’re staying here to watch Orbital” (who were excellent, by the way).

3. Nine Inch Nails – Head Like A Hole

A tune which will forever remind me of Metros, the oft-mentioned indie club in Cardiff that gave out free toast at 3am, because if there was one thing you could guarantee in there (apart from the toast) was that they would drop this at some point.

Also: Nine Inch Nails have only got two decent tunes, haven’t they? This, and Hurt, which most of us only know because of the (far-superior) version by Johnny Cash. (*Sits back and waits for the vitriolic comments telling me Trent Reznor is a genius*)

4. Radiohead – There There. (The Boney King of Nowhere.)

Glastonbury memory time again, and if I recall correctly, they opened their 2003 set with this, and I still get goosebumps whenever I hear it.

5. The Kills – Future Starts Slow

The Kills have more than one one decent tune – who knew? 2-2 with Nine Inch Nails.

6. My Morning Jacket – Holdin’ On to Black Metal

This was out at roughly the same time as The Kills’ tune, and I always thought they’d sound good next to each other, and now I know whether I was right or not (clue: I was).

7. The Soundtrack Of Our Lives – Sister Surround

Speaking of Black Metal, we’re off to Scandinavia, the home of such dark forces, for this one, for one by the vastly underknown and under-rated The Soundtrack Of Our Lives. If you like this, check out the album it’s from, Behind The Music.

8. Broken Social Scene – 7/4 (Shoreline)

A collective from Canada. Canada don’t do ‘bands’, do they? It’s all collectives. Oh, and Bieber, Celine and Bryan, but let’s ignore them.

This is the original source of my oft-used phrase “a great cacophony of glorious noise”, which is still my favourite description of a record ever (by me) (athough, I’d rather substitute ‘great’ for ‘magnificent’, because that’s what this is).

9. The Polyphonic Spree – Lithium

A couple of Nirvana covers for you now. This is just chuffing great. That’s all.

10. Richard Cheese – Rape Me

Ok, so this is the tune I had reservations about including. And here’s why: I think the original is woefully misguided. To be serious for a moment; rape, be it of women or men, is not an easy subject to be addressed in song. Also: you can’t ask to be raped, because that infers complicity, and that’s the polar opposite of what rape is.

That said, I do think Mr Cheese manages to prick the balloon of pomposity here, so it’s in. My apologies to anyone offended.

11. Mojo Nixon & Skip Roper – Debbie Gibson Is Pregnant With My Two Headed Love Child

Speaking of offensive, here’s a side-burned rockabilly type with a long and objectionably titled tune, which I have to admit I have a bit of a soft spot for.

For younger viewers, Debbie Gibson was one of a clutch (along with Tiffany, also name-checked in the song) of teenage pop singers with a schmaltzy, sweeter than sweet, girl next door image. I also thought that, when the pop hits inevitably dried up, she appeared in some porn movies, but this turns out not to be correct, and trust me, I’ve spent many hours searching. Which reminds me, I most clear my browser history.

12. Billy Bragg – A13, Trunk Road To The Sea

I went to see Billy last night, and he was every bit as brilliant, charming, engaging, polemic and funny as he has been every time I’ve seen him. He didn’t play this, which is a bit disappointing, but then he can’t possibly play every song I love by him or we’d still be there now. Fortuitously, I have a lot of his records, so the past 24 hours (when I haven’t been writing this) have been spent mostly with him blaring away in the background

Anyway, this is a riotous romp and a piss-take of Route 66 and it’s bloody grear, but you already knew that, right?

13. Kirsty MacColl – There’s A Guy Works Down The Chip Shop Swears He’s Elvis

Of course, when Billy did A New England last night – final song, as always – we all sang the extra verse he wrote for her version, as a tribute to Kirsty. But that’s already featured in this series before, and I’ve learned my lesson, so this is one which is just as great, has one of the greatest titles in pop history, and which, crucially, she wrote herself.

14. The Beach Boys – Heroes and Villains

I dunno, it just sounded right next to Kirsty. Also: it’s November, we all need a little sun in our lives right now, right?

Also, it gives me the opportunity to post this (again):

I saw Adam live a few years back, preparing and refreshing material he intended to include on his Old Bits DVD; he did this, the clip went on for much longer, and I was laughing so hard I almost slid off my chair.

15. Sugababes – Push The Button

Shut it. I can throw a random 2000s girl group banger in if I like. S’my blog, I’ll do what I like.

16. The Jam – Man In The Corner Shop

Time for a serious, Red Wedgey ending. I first became aware of this record years after it was released, when I saw The Men They Couldn’t Hang do a (rather fine) cover of it live, introduced by the words: “Paul Weller’s asked us to stop doing this one. He’s not here tonight, is he? Good. Let’s do it.”

17. Redskins – Keep On Keepin’ On!

Right-oh, brothers, sisters and siblings, will do!

And that’s it for another week. More soon!

Late Night Stargazing

Tonight, a song which, when I first heard the album it lives on, was probably my least favourite song by the band in question. And that’s despite it featuring rather a good joke, which I can’t be the only one to have noticed, but which I’ve never seen anyone else mention.

Tonight’s song is by The Smiths, and is lifted from their final studio album, 1987’s Strangeways Here We Come.

Now. I know many people feel conflicted about The Smiths these days, on account of Morrissey turning out to be a a supporter of extreme right wing views. But back in the 80s, he and his lyrics, combined with Johnny Marr’s often juxtaposed guitar work, were the main appeal of The Smiths.

Integral parts of the whole that they were, literally nobody loved The Smiths because of Mike Joyce’s drumming or Andy Rourke’s bass lines. It was all about Morrissey’s tormented words, making a virtue of solitude and outsider-ness, offset against Marr’s chiming, jangly guitar.

How we all laughed, as we earnestly did our Morrissey impressions on the dancefloors of indie clubs, wearing our cardigans, pretending to have either a hearing aid or a fistful of gladioli, wagging a finger and furrowing our brow as we sang-a-long-a-Mozzer.

We suspected, of course, that something was not quite right – the interview where he announced that “all reggae is vile”, for example (he’s just thinking of UB40, surely?) – but these thoughts never encroached or disturbed the lyrical content, which remained steadfastly both left-wing and Northern. But we chose to ignore it.

Until tonight’s record.

I’d like to think that Marr had some degree of creative control, and refused to allow some lyrics through. He doesn’t mention it in his excellent autobiography, Set The Boy Free, but then again he was never the kiss-and-tell type.

And although Death of a Disco Dancer seems to be a pondering of life, death and the afterlife, that title has always bothered me. It seems to at best to witheringly accept, at worst condone, the bludgeoning of someone who likes disco music – a genre usually associated with either gay or ethnic communities – in a manner which didn’t manifest itself again until Morrissey’s solo work – see Bengali in Platforms‘ “Life is hard enough when you belong here”, or all of The National Front Disco, with all it’s orchestrated Union Jack waving, skinhead baiting Finsbury Park rhetoric.

So what to do? Do we deny our experience and love of The Smiths on the basis of what Morrissey patently is, or at best, has become. I know of many people who cannot bring themselves to listen to the band’s records, because of what he now represents. I get that, totally.

Me? Until now, I’ve made a disctinction between him in The Smiths and his solo work. The Smiths stuff has the dust blown of its grooves every now and again, but the solo Morrissey records have obstinantly remained on the racks. Fortuitously, much of the latter has been dull and plodding pub-rock – watch his band try and perform The Smiths’ hits live compared with how Marr handles it, and there’s a world of difference.

My rule has been this: post nothing of his solo work, but if you absolutely must, thenposting The Smiths is fine because everything was (almost) okay back then.

On my commute to and from work on Friday, my trusty iPod kept shuffling Smiths’ tunes into my ears which I’d not listened to in ages because, well….because. And it was lovely to hear I Don’t Owe You Anything, and tonight’s tune, and Rusholme Ruffians. And then it gave me Suedehead, and I began pondering cancel culture.

Suedehead is a magificent record which holds many memories for me; am I to deny myself the pleasure of ever listening to it, of reliving those memories, simply because I disagree with the singer’s political views? Am I heck.

Have I stopped posting Ian Brown’s records because he was a vocal anti-vaxxer? No. I rarely post anything from his solo canon because it’s not very good (bar F.E.A.R.).

Do I refuse to post anything by Gary Numan just because he does more than dress to the right? No (but again, get passed Are Friends Electric? and Cars and there’s little I’d be likely to mention.

Why do radio stations continue to play Micahel Jackson, but not Gary Glitter? Does it make a difference that one was convicted whilst the other paid off his accusers victims?

The list goes on. And the thing with being cancelled is that rarely has the person moaning about having been excluded actually been so – if they had, then we wouldn’t hear them complaining about it.

So I refuse to deny myself the pleasure of listening to or featuring records by artist swith whom I disagree. But when I do, I’ll be mentioning why I feel conflicted. And I think I’ve covered that tonight.

So here’s Death of a Disco Dancer in all it’s possibly racist and homophobic, sounds-a-bit-like Dear Prudence grandeur:

The Smiths – Death Of A Disco Dancer

And here’s Morrissey wearing a For Britain badge on The Jimmy Fallon Show in May 2019:

And here’s a close-up, just in case you weren’t sure:

And as for that joke I mentioned earlier? Well, the pawing at the piano described as being keyboards on that is none other than Morrissey himself, and this after him singing on The Queen is Dead : “She says ‘I know you and you cannot sing’; I said ‘That’s nothing you should hear me play piano!'”.

That joke isn’t funny anymore.

But this is: Jools Holland playing piano with The Beach Boys after Adam Buxton has “just tweaked the sound ever so slightly”:

More soon.

(The (Brief) Return of) Friday Night Music Club

What, I hear you ask, has caused this sudden splurge of posts on a Friday?

Well, it’s like this.

Last night I went to the British Film Institute (cool kids call it the BFI, like it’s a Roald Dahl character) to see Adam Buxton perform a tenth anniversary of his Bug shows.

I’ve mentioned Adam here before, referencing and linking to his excellent podcasts, and I also went to see him perform at the start of the year, a gig which was one of the funniest nights out I’ve ever been to. To quote Blackadder: “I am glad I wore my corset, for I fear my sides have split.”

The Bug shows are a slightly different beast, and those who subscribe to the Murdoch channels may have caught the Bug shows getting an airing on there.

Here’s the deal: Adam plays some ground-breaking music videos, and says some funny stuff about them, the funny stuff often being about comments that have been left under the video clip on YouTube.

There’s more to it than that, and I’m doing Dr Buckles a grave disservice by describing it thusly, but in essence what you get at a Bug show is some incredible videos, some amazing songs, and a lot of “have I actually wet myself this time?” laughs.

Last night’s show was beset by technical issues, and whilst that may have caused others to flounce off in a huff, Adam simply sat, sorted them out every time they arose, and gave us an hilarious running commentary of what had gone wrong and what he was doing about it, as it all played out on the big screen in front of us. I don’t think there was one person in the audience who was annoyed by the tech problems, in fact quite the opposite: we all felt we were seeing an utterly unique show and watching Adam nonchalantly deal with it merely added to the love in the room for him.

Anyway, watching that gave me itchy fingers, and so here we are. And I figured I’d post the videos he showed last night, along with an mp3 of the tune, but without the jokes, because frankly I would not be able to do them justice.

Even if you don’t like the tunes, each of these videos is incredible in its own sweet way, some funny, more just mind-boggling, so I would heartily recommend you give them a look.

Here we go:

Battles – Atlas

Wiley feat. Daniel Merriweaher – Cash in My Pocket

Bonobo – Cirrus

And, by the same director (Cyriak):

Adam Buxton – Counting Song

I can’t actually embed the next one, and it needs some explanation, so here’s what it said on the hand-out we were given on attending last night’s performance:

“…a groundbreaking exercise in interactive music video making from 2010, that is arguably still the best example there is: created by Chris Milk, The Johnny Cash Project allows viewers to create/illustrate over frames of a guide video, and add them to the viewer. It not only continues to change but is effectively never the same thing twice.”

So, here’s the link to the song:

Johnny Cash – Ain’t No Grave

And here’s the link to The Johnny Cash Project. Enjoy your unique, never to be repeated viewing.

Next up:

Radiohead – Weird Fishes/Arpeggi

Flying Lotus – Until The Quiet Comes

(NB – the mp3 there is a rip of the video, not the track)

M.I.A. – Bad Girls

Great as all the videos featured today are, I think this next one might actually deserve the term “genius” being applied to it:

Swede Mason – Masterchef Synesthesia

Roots Manuva – Witness (The Fitness)

The next one was made specifically for the Bug show, and features the host in the leading role:

Guitar Wolf – Summertime Blues

Etienne de Crecy – No Brain

Manchester Orchestra – Simple Math

Is it wrong of me to want to add an ‘s’ to that title…?

And finally:

Grimes – Oblivion

Oh, and you can visit Adam’s website here and listen to his consistently brilliant podcasts here.

That’ll do you.

More soon.