Friday Night Music Club

Without wishing to bang on about my tech issues yet again, were it not for the heat preventing me from sleeping, there may well have not been a shiny new playlist for you tonight.

I know, how ever would you have coped, right?

So my laptop continues to play tricks on me, seemingly picking a random program to banjax. This week, it was my mixing software program, which decided to crash every time it got to a certain song. Every one’s a critic.

And then, when I’d finally sorted that out, I managed to make an absolute hash of one the mixes, which really annoyed me as I thought I’d got all of the rest spot on.

So I practiced the one I messed up, got it right (Hoorah!) then got one of the later ones wrong (Hurroo!). And so it went on and on.

If I told you that I have listened to the opening song of tonight’s mix 19 times before something went tits-up later down the line, you’ll understand what I mean when I say that this mix, above any I’ve done, was a test of my patience, my will-power and my determination.

I hope you think it was worth it, and that by the end you’ll be dancing like nobody’s watching. Or, if you prefer, like the lady in the gif up top: dancing like everybody else is facing in the opposite direction, with good reason.

Disclaimer time (having listened to this mix as I was writing this and spotted a couple of blips that were nowt to do with me): any skips or jumps are down to the mixing software or the uploading process; any shonky mixes are down to me; all song choices are mine.

So let’s crack on, shall we?

Friday Night Music Club Vol 15

And here’s your tracklisting and sleeve notes:

Since I mentioned the song which got into a spot of bother by sampling tonight’s opening tune last week, it seemed only logical to post it:

1. The Andrew Oldham Orchestra – The Last Time

With the sad passing this week of Lamont Dozier, it seemed only right to include something from the mighty body of work that is that of Holland/Dozier/Holland. Following on from the opening track, this seemed a natural follow up:

2. The Supremes – I Hear a Symphony

Not long after I moved to London, my mate Ferg (hello!) persuaded me to go to The Horatia, a pub on Holloway Road in North London, to see Greg Wilson DJing. Whilst I have to admit to not having particularly high expectations – “I play bars in North London, and I’m not very good – why should I pay to see this bloke I’ve never heard of?” I said. “Because you’ll love him,” replied Ferg, and my God he was right.

Here he is adding some extra oomph – not that any is needed – to The Third Degree’s cover of Duffy’s Mercy, a cover so good, so authentic, that many, including my good self, assumed that Duffy’s version must be the cover, which must have delighted her once she had escaped from her kidnappers:

3. The Third Degree – Mercy (Greg Wilson Re-Edit)

Keeping the groove going, another cover, this time by Sharon Jones, seemingly minus her Dap-Kings, although I suspect they are just uncredited, because this sure sounds like them:

4. Sharon Jones – I Just Dropped In To See What Condition My Condition Was In

And since we’re on cover versions by dead soul singers, here’s one by a much-missed performer who utilised the skills of the aforementioned Dap-Kings on her Back to Black album and then as her touring band:

5. Mark Ronson feat. Amy Winehouse- Valerie

Next up, one of a clutch of my favourite singles by an often-derided band, although the lead singer is a much beloved presenter on 6Music these days. I thought I’d go for one which doesn’t get an airing as much as the others. Cos that’s what I do:

6. Fun Lovin’ Criminals – Korean Bodega

Something new-ish next (by which I mean, released in 2020), by one of those bands who seem to have such a dull name, they’ll never show up on an internet search. Indeed, when I typed their name into Google, I got taken to a forum discussing the current manager of Brighton & Hove Albion Football Club:

7. Pottery – Texas Drums Pt I & II

The mix of the next song is not the one that I wanted to post. Somewhere on some mix CD buried in a box I have a really great version with a female vocal on it. But can I locate it, or find the version in question online? No. So, you’ll have to make do with Tom Middleton, who adds his trademark spacey whooshing and swirling noises to this classic that the Orbital boys released under a nom de plume:

8. Golden Girls – Kinetic (Tom Middleton 2008 Remix)

Time for an old skool banger, or, as they were known round our way back in Cardiff, a City Hall Classic:

9. K-Klass – Rhythm Is A Mystery

Kate Bush is very en vogue again at the moment, thanks to the inclusion of her 1985 hit, Running Up That Hill, in Netflix’s nostalgic sci-fi hit Stranger Things. Here, then, is the Utah Saints sampling and snipping La Lady Bush:

10. Utah Saints – Something Good (Van She Tec Mix)

I need to wean myself off Soulwax, for they seem to appear in the majority of the mixes I do in one way or another. True to form, here they are again:

11. MGMT – Kids (Soulwax Remix)

I’ve gone remix-crazy this week; next up is Superchumbo making the bassline on an already quite dirty Basement Jaxx tune utterly filthy:

12. Basement Jaxx – Get Me Off (Superchumbo Supergetoff Remix)

And somehow, this song seemed a fine and natural way to round things off for another week, and so imagine my delight when I found it could be mixed into the Basement Jaxx tune, despite it being in no way a club banger:

13. The Cure – Let’s Go To Bed

Footnote: I’ve only realised as I wrote this that if one were to read the last three titles alone, without the mention of any remix, it doesn’t paint a great picture of yours truly.

Kids. Get Me Off. Let’s Go To Bed.

Please don’t put me on a sex pest register.

More soon.

Meaty, Beaty, Dead and Buried

So, for the second week running, I find myself having to write about the passing of a legend. Last week I dodged the sadness of Ronnie Spector’s death by passing it to a fellow blogger who had already written a beautiful piece which said all that I wanted to say, but I suspect the love from the blogging community at the news that Michael Lee Aday aka Meat Loaf has died may be a little thinner on the ground.

So here’s the first thing I want to say: Bat Out of Hell is a great record. Just because it’s one of the most commercially successful records ever does not make it a bad record. You know that phrase: 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong? Well, yes they can, but in the case of Bat Out of Hell (and, fair dues, Elvis too) they’re not.

I’ve written about my love for that album before, here, should you wish to check it out.

Although he hasn’t made a record I liked for 40 years or so, and anything he did release which didn’t involve Jim Steinman should really be avoided, I loved Meat Loaf for he was the soundtrack to a part of my youth.

There was a really good documentary on BBC4 last night about him, called Meat Loaf: In and Out of Hell which I can thoroughly recommend. If you’re in the UK it’s currently available to stream on the BBC iPlayer.

But I’ve noticed a worrying trend starting with these two most recent celebrity deaths. Is there a link? Or is this just a way for me to shoehorn a loads of great songs into one post?

Well, the latter, obviously.

I speak of course of the By My Baby drums.

Listen to this:

The Ronettes – Be My Baby

That there drum fill at the start of the record, echoed throughout, is an iconic pop sound, often lifted, appropriated, referenced, stolen, call it what you will by acts that followed.

For example, here’s a song by Meat Loaf which has it all the way through:

Meat Loaf – You Took The Word Right Out Of My Mouth

So if the curse of the Be My Baby drums is true (which it isn’t) then this lot need to start worrying:

Bat For Lashes – What’s a Girl To Do

and:

The Jesus & Mary Chain – Just Like Honey

and:

Manic Street Preachers – Everything Must Go

and:

Camera Obscura – Eighties Fan

and:

Car Seat Headrest – My Boy (Twin Fantasy)

and:

Lana Del Ray (feat. The Weeknd) – Lust for Life

(Tempting fate a bit with that title, Lana…)

and finally:

Amy Winehouse – Back to Black

Ah. Fair point. Bit late to warn her, I suppose.

Still, this just proves my point (which I’m obviously not seriously making).

Anyway…

More soon.

Amy

It probably hasn’t escaped your attention that yesterday was the 10th anniversary of the death of Amy Winehouse at the age of just 27.

I say that it probably hasn’t escaped your attention, as it was all over the media, all falling over themselves, to praise her, her voice and her work, just as they did when she died, without ever taking a good hard look at themselves and considering how much they may have contributed to her death. At least the paps had the decency to make it obvious by physically chasing Diana to her death.

Last night’s TV here in the UK was – rightly – full of documentaries and concerts, marking the anniversary, but I haven’t watched any of them, yet. And that’s because on Thursday night, with the (failed) goal of writing this post afterwards to appear yesterday, I watched Asif Kapadia’s brilliant documentary, Amy, which is currently streaming on All4.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before, but if you’ve never watched it, then I urge you to do so. For if you’re one of those people who think of Amy as just another pop star junkie, who got what was coming to her when she died, then Amy will utterly change your mind.

Here’s the trailer:

Kapadia’s CV as a director is impressive, including the excellent Senna, which made me interested in F1 racing for the duration of the film and no longer, and the not-as-good-but-still-not-bad Diego Maradona which almost made me forgive the cocaine snorting short-arse for the Hand of God incident. Almost, but not quite.

Amy is his masterpiece so far, though. Given seemingly unprecedented access to family, friends and colleagues, they give interviews and offer up previously unseen home video footage, so we see her as a young girl singing for her friends, to her taking the first tentative steps to becoming a recording artist to…well, what happened to her next.

The early parts of Amy are just lovely for they capture Amy as an excited young woman embarking on an expedition into fame, incredulous that she might be able to make a living out of her incredible voice and talent. And her lovable gobbiness is nowhere better illustrated than an interview where the interviewer unwisely compares her to Dido, not a comparison which Amy took kindly to.

As I say, I’ve not watched the shows that aired last night (but I will), and in particular the one called Reclaiming Amy (so if I’m off the mark here, that’s why) because it seemed like a damage limitation exercise by those who did not exactly come off well in Amy, and by that I mean her mother, Janis, to some extent, but mostly her father Mitch, who appears in the trailer for Reclaiming Amy saying “People say to me: you killed your daughter”).

Her mother, because in one interview in Amy she remembers how Amy once told her about a fantastic diet she had discovered. “I can eat as much as I like,” she recalls Amy telling her, “and then just go and bring it back up again”. “

And,” Janis continues, “that’s like bulimia.”

It’s not like bulimia, it is bulimia.

“I thought it was just a phase she’d grow out of,” Janis opines at one point. “Mitch knew, and he agreed.”

It transpires that Janis and Mitch, Amy’s father, had separated, when Mitch had a very long extra-marital affair before finally leaving his wife for his new love. Amy can be heard reflecting on this: “Even when he was at home, he was never really at home.” There are then tales of how, with no father figure in her life, Amy became uncontrollable.

Mitch doesn’t seem to to reappear into Amy’s life until she is getting famous; in fact he seems to reappear just in time to decide that she didn’t need to go to rehab for her addiction issues. This, of course, proved to be the lyrical inspiration of her big breakout tune:

Amy Winehouse – Rehab

I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of another record as great as Rehab which I find such a tough listen. It’s the “Daddy thinks I’m fine” bit, it just makes me angry, knowing how the story ends, and how it could have been nipped in the bud right there.

And that’s the irony of her brilliant Back to Black album; all of the songs are about the sadness in her life, and in particular about the break-up from Blake Fielder.

For if ever there was a film which contained an obvious “The Bad Guy Enters” scene, it’s Amy and the appearance of Fielder. The couple were both in relationships when they met, but embarked on an affair which ended when Fielder went back to his girlfriend.

Ironically, that break-up was the inspiration behind much of the lyrics on the Back to Black album, not least the title track:

Amy Winehouse – Back to Black

And then, predictably rather than ironically, as Amy became a superstar, Fielder is back on the scene, boasting in an interview about how he gave Amy her first hits of crack cocaine and heroin on the same night.

The two marry, and there is footage of them in a bar on the big day, where Fielder pretends not to know what had happened that day, before pronouncing himself skint and asking “Who’s paying for this?” “Amy is,” says someone, and he orders a bottle of champagne.

What a guy.

She’s caught in a perfect storm at this point, her fame spiralling out of control, chased down the streets by the paps, her only refuge time with her new husband, whose drink and drug intake she tries to keep up with.

It’s evident that she was utterly unprepared for life as a star, and it seems nobody was willing to help her.

There’s a sequence where Amy and Fielder attend an initial rehab counselling session, but the expert (in his off the camera interview) reveals that whilst he thought Amy was open to the idea of getting clean, Fielder seemed more interested in keeping her addicted so that the gravy train he was riding didn’t leave town.

It’s just so saddening that so many opportunities to save her were missed, particularly when the final devastating moment arrives. Having got herself away from Fielder and clean of drugs, to a point where she felt able to reach out to her old friends to apologise and try to make good, despite the warnings she had, one drink too many made her heart stop. For good, this time.

I’d not long moved to London when she died, and I remember Hel and I watching the news reports of her death coming in. We’d heard that she had gotten clean, and were looking forward to what might come next. That said, neither of us was really surprised, but we were saddened that nobody had been able to, or wanted to enough, help her.

No matter who you may think is culpable for her death, one thing is clear: this was a vulnerable young woman, thrust into the spotlight of fame, unable to cope with it, and with a supporting network more interested in making money than in making her well. I’d like to think times have changed and we’d do better now, but I’m not so sure, when I think about the likes of Caroline Flack, who took her own life because she couldn’t deal with the press attention anymore.

Here’s what I’m saying: I’d love to think that lessons have been learned about harassing and hassling those in the public eye, but nothing was learned by the media after the death of Diana, nothing was learned from the death of Amy, and when you see the attempt at taking down Marcus Rashford this week by certain right-wing sectors of the press, you wonder whether anything will ever be learned in the battle for sales figures.

Probably not by them. But, I’d like to think, a lot by those who have a vote.

*****

This is the birth of a song which went on to become a favourite; invited into the BBC Radio 1 studio to record an acoustic version of one of her own songs, along with a cover version, she gave this, later transformed into an absolute smash hit:

Amy Winehouse – Valerie (Live At BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge)

She only gave us two incredible albums; just think how amazing the third…and fourth…might have been.

More soon.

Late Night Stargazing

Last weekend, Channel 4 showed Amy, the documentary about the rise and fall of the wonderfully talented Amy Winehouse.

It’s an incredibly moving piece, charting the troubles with drink and drugs that she faced as she fell in with the wrong crowd, at the same time as she suddenly found herself thrust into the limelight.

It’s made all the sadder by the fact that we all know how the story ends, even more so because her untimely demise is immediately preceded by the news that she was finally sorting herself out and had got herself clean.

If you haven’t seen it, it’s still on All 4 for another ten days.

Here’s one of hers:

Amy Winehouse – Love is a Losing Game

More soon.

Friday Night Music Club

Evening all. Lots to get through tonight, so we’ll get straight down to it if that’s okay with you?

First up, and kinda carrying on from where we left off last week, more one-hit wonderness in a cod-white sauce:

50. Snow – Informer

It seemed apt that as we entered the countdown to Christmas that I should post at least one tune with a wintry-weather connection.

But what’s this I see coming over the horizon? Only a bloody theme starting, that’s what:

51. Kid Creole & The Coconuts – Stool Pigeon

This is not as uncool a record as you might think it is; anyone owning a copy of The Avalanches seminal “Since I Left You” album will know that a sample from this crops up, and anyone who had the pleasure of attending DJ Felix (from The Avalanches) sets will vouch for the fact that he would usually drop it live too.

Plus, Kid Creole’s real name was August Darnell, which is a pretty darn cool name too. And I didn’t even have to look that up (thanks Smash Hits!) which makes me pretty darn…erm…well, you get the idea.

52. The Specials – Gangsters

There’s a few reasons why I’ve posted this: firstly, because it’s ace; secondly, because it continues the theme; thirdly, because I found the above gif which is worthy of sharing, and fourthly because it nicely leads me to where I want to go next, which is a lil ska section:

53. Bad Manners – Lip Up Fatty

I’ve deliberately avoided posting their most famous single, The Can Can, as I don’t think that there was much more disconcerting a sight in my youth than that of Buster Bloodvessel, in a dress, bounding round the Top of The Pops stage, waggling his tongue and attempting to recreate that iconic dance. Don’t believe me? Have a look for yourself:

Actually, scrub that: the most disconcerting sight in my youth was the Hairy Cornflake himself, DLT.

Let’s move on. Here’s Camden’s favourite deceased wobbly bee-hive wearing warbler:

54. Amy Winehouse – Monkey Man

It’s a bouncier version than the original by Toots and The Maytals, which is the only reason it’s here and not the original.

And just in case anyone was expecting me to do some terrible Winehouse gags..

55. The Beat – Hands Off…She’s Mine

I’m not arguing with anyone called Ranking Roger. She’s yours.

56. Madness – The Prince

No ska section would be complete without a contribution from The Nutty Boys, and this, a very early single, was a homage to this guy:

57. Prince Buster – Madness

(See what I did there…?)

Greatest Hits albums designs have really come on, haven’t they?

Now, what’s that I see coming over the horizon? Only a neat segue into another bloody theme, that’s what:

58.Prince & The Revolution – Let’s Go Crazy

…and probably my next DMCA take-down notice, that’s what.

Ah well. Tonight is the last Friday before Christmas, a night which when I lived in Cardiff, was known as Black Friday, the night that the city went mental, with every office, shop and dental practice spewing it’s staff on to the streets of Cardiff for a night of drunken debauchery, which would undoubtedly culminate in them spewing up on Chip Alley at 3am, having attempted to either consume a tray of chicken curry half and half, or having just noshed off Terry from Accounts in a bus stop. Not sure which would be the tastier, to be honest.

Retailers of the world take note: THAT is the true meaning of Black Friday.

So, partly to honour my brothers and sisters (not my actual brothers and sisters, you understand…) who are right now taking deep breaths, insisting they’ll be okay, but asking Suze from Admin is she’d mind just staying with them for a few more minutes, and maybe rub their back a little and hold their hair out of their face a bit longer, but mostly to continue the theme, two more songs to round things off:

59. The Peth – Let’s Go Fucking Mental

and

60. The Cramps – Let’s Get Fucked Up

Happy hangovers!

More soon.