Yup, it’s Friday again, and what a relief it is to get here.
Tonight’s post is going to be brief, for reasons which will become clear if not by the end of this post, then certainly with the posts I’ll be writing for the weekend and next week.
This week sees the usual rag-tag of tunes, some of which were culled from last weeks’s sort-of-travelly theme. You’ll spot which ones, you’re smart cookies. Oh and a remix of a tune widely regarded to have one of the worst lyrics ever comitted to vinyl.
If I’m honest, had I had a little more time then I probably would have jiggled about with the running order at the end a little, but ho hum and hey ho, let’s go:
Toto – Africa (Nikko Full Vocal White Label Club Mix)
Afrika Bambaataa & The Soulsonic Force – Planet Rock
Run-DMC – It’s Tricky
Tone Loc – Funky Cold Medina
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – Whatever Happened To My Rock’n’Roll (Punk Song)
Sex Pistols – C’mon Everybody
Pixies – Planet of Sound
Ramones – Sheena is a Punk Rocker
Tenpole Tudor – Swords of a Thousand Men
And that’s it for another week. Actually, for another two weeks; there won’t be a new mix next Friday. I’ll be travelling to Leeds to attend a funeral, and although I will doubtless need cheeering up on the journey home, I don’t really think it’s appropriate for me to be posting a mix celebrating the event of Friday when my day will be spent in mourning with my family.
I’m cheating this week. And making no attempt to hide it.
Tonight’s mix has never featured on these pages before, but has appeared elsewhere on t’internet: over at JC’s ever magnificent The Vinyl Villain blog.
But this week I’m even more pressed for time than usual. I’m in the middle of composing a Christmasy mix for next week (you’ve been warned…) so I figured I may as well share this, in the unlikely event that anyone who comes here doesn’t also regularly frequent JC’s place and may have missed it. If that’s you, then have a word with yourself.
And since I’m using the same mix (actually, I have redone it to get rid of some of the skips which cropped up in the original mix – no need for the disclaimer that The Robster referred to in his post which reappeared over at No Badger Required a week or so ago), I may as well use the same words I did back then:
“Hello. My name is Jez and I am addicted to making playlists.
It has been three days since I put together my last playlist.
I’ve done mixes – compilation tapes, CD-mixes, playlists – for years now, always managing to find spaces where they could be heard: when I was younger, there were compilation tapes in the 6th Form common room, or in the motorway ‘restaurant’ I worked in during the holidays at 6th Form and at college (and for a year after I graduated). I would craft a new tape every other evening to take in the following day with which to wow my friends and work colleagues. Like snowflakes (the old usage of the term), no two were ever the same.
Becoming a DJ at college was almost inevitable and my plans for world domination moved on at pace: I started off by taking over the fortnightly Indie Night, before also becoming the regular DJ at the retro-80s night (which, incredibly, started in 1990), occasionally hosting the retro-60s & 70s night, playing between and after the bands on live music night, and eventually even the coveted Saturday night “Chartbuster” gig. (The fact that I was the Social Secretary and decided who got paid to DJ which nights was *coughs* entirely coincidental.)
After I graduated, I worked in a video shop for a few years, which only had a cassette player to play music through, so the compilation tapes kept coming. But as technology progressed I willingly followed, creating CD-mixes and then iPod playlists to soundtrack a Friday night with my flatmates, when we were too skint to go out, but between us could afford the ingredients to make several pints of White Russians all night until one of us inevitably fell asleep in the bathroom. This was the birth of the Friday Night Music Club which I’ve recently resurrected over at my place, A History of Dubious Taste (a link for which you can find over in the sidebar should you care to investigate further).
And of course, there was the far-more-frequent-than-I-care-to-admit compilation tape or CD-mix lovingly prepared for a young lady I was trying to impress. If you’ve ever read Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, (and if you’re reading this, then I would be extremely surprised if you haven’t) then you’ll know, if you didn’t already, that there are rules one has to observe when making one.
For example (and I’m paraphrasing here):
• Thou shalt not include the same artiste more than once in the same mix; and
• If there is a particular song which you want the recipient to hear thou shalt bury it somewhere towards the end of the mix (but not within the last three songs, and definitely not the final track) – mid-way through the second “side” of a C90 compilation tape should be about right
As you’ve probably guessed, it’s my love of putting together playlists which brings me here today. For last week, whilst laid up with a touch of the Covids and trying to decide what could feature in this week’s mix at my place (which is now last week’s mix, do try to keep up), the latest missive from our host dropped. It included a playlist, which, as one would expect from such an eminent source, was rather fine, featuring a load of songs with the word love in the title.
And there, at the end of the post, JC had written these words: if anyone out there wants to have a go, I’ll willingly make space for a guest posting.
Now, one of the things I love about doing a mix is trying to make a theme of it, but drunken flatmates would inevitably roll their eyes when I started to grill them as to what the theme might be each week, so I try to shy away from them these days (themes, that is: I got rid of all the flatmates years ago). But here was an invitation to create just such a thing, so I knocked this mix together and sent it to JC:
(Love is…also not caring that neither of you appear to have genitals…unless it’s just cold there….)
Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, I used to write a series here called Friday Night Music Club.
Here is what I wrote way back in March 2015 to explain:
“Friends of mine will tell you I love a themed mix tape or CD.
In my old flat, we used to have what we (ok, I) liked to call The Friday Night Music Club. This would involve us a) getting very drunk b) me shaving my head at some point c) listening to the latest CD mix I’d made (later, when I bought a sound system that allowed me to just plug my iPod in (other mp3 playing devices are available) these mixes got waaaay longer, and probably waaaaay more tedious for the listener) and d) ideally having a bit of a dance.
I’ve done mix tapes and CDs for friends and family all my life (but you already knew that, right?) but the idea here was to make a series of mix CDs which, when played in sequence, you could play at a house party and which would keep the night bubbling along nicely.
Actually, this is something I’d already tried a few years earlier. Friends of mine used to have the most excellent parties at their flat on Hilldrop Road, usually with a DJ playing, but on one occasion the DJ – and for that matter, their decks – couldn’t make it. In their absence I prepared a set of 11 CDs – about 15 hours – which, when played in sequence, took you from aperitifs and welcomers, to “go on have a bit of a dance”, through to off your nut party anthems, and then back down to sitting round talking nonsense about radishes until 6am.
Anyway, back to the Friday Night Music Club. Occasionally I’d make a theme out of the whole thing (hey, if Bob Dylan can do a radio show using the same format, I can do a mix CD, okay?) or do more than one CD and spread the theme out (there was once a 4 CD opus to a former flat mate which deserves a mention in passing) but more often than not the theme would occur to me in the middle of preparing it, and that’d be it…I’d be off….“
As an aside, I appear to have missed some fairly significant landmarks in the history of this place: my first ever post was in September 2013, and if you think my posts are sporadic now, bear in mind that my second post didn’t happen until a year later in 2014. Whatever, a belated 5th anniversary to me!
Anyway, it was when I became rather fixated on the theme rather than with just posting some songs which sound good when played together that I knocked the Friday Night Music Club series on the head.
Since there are now more of us are spending our Friday Nights at home, many of us getting drunk, I figured I would bring the series back for at least a one-off for you to use as your sountrack to your Zoom/Houseparty chats. There might be more, I’ve not decided yet.
Also, this, right here what you’re reading now, is my 1500th post, so I’d like to mark at least one of my landmark posts in a timely manner.
Ahem.
That’s better.
I figured we’d go back to where it all began, to the first few episodes of Friday Night Music Club, but now with fewer attempts to be clever/funny and just more songs to rock your end of the working (from home) week/kids are in bed celebrations.
Actually, I’d hoped to bring this to you last weekend, in time for the Bank Holiday, but time simply caught up with me, the bastard.
The initial intention was simply to repost those early “mixes”, with a few new songs thrown in here and there (and some brutally culled). But as I was working on it, it metemporphasised into something different, perhaps better described as a completely new mix of tunes, very loosely hung on the framework of the old ones, in an effort to reinvigorate them, poncey as that may sound.
If you’d prefer to just listen to this on Spotify, you can do here:
…although a word of warning: Spotify doesn’t have all of the songs in the playlist, so the only real way to enjoy this in it’s full…erm…glory is by ploughing through the links below.
Oh, and a second word of warning: there’s a fair bit of effin’ and jeffin’ on some of these, so perhaps not for those with young ears.
Hopefully, there will be something for everyone in here (there’s seventy tunes in just over five hours, so I bloody hope so!), so push back the sofa, get yourself a pint of White Russian (or whatever your weapon of choice is), dim the lights and turn up the volume. Let there be grooves. Let there be guitars. Let there be cheese. Let there be some surprises, some forgotten tunes and some old favourites. Let there be singing. Let there be dancing.
Tell you what: I’ll play a song or two by way of a little intro whilst you’re getting yourself sorted:
Evening all. Welcome back to this week’s selections.
For once, I’ve got a fairly busy social life this weekend, starting with a night out with some old friends on Friday Night, so this week’s choices feel a little strange to me, since I’m actually writing this in the middle of the week, and not on Friday as I normally do. This shouldn’t have much of an impact, or so you’d think, but I wonder…
For a start, I don’t have that Friday night, no work for a couple of days, vibe. More importantly, I have a strict “no drinking on a school night” rule, so this is being written stone cold sober. Let’s see how it pans out shall we?
So, much the same as when we went loud at the start of the year to shake off those post-Christmas blues, I thought I’d do much the same after last week’s Country choices, if for no other reason than to prove I haven’t forgotten that this series is supposed to be, well, fun.
The lead single from what sadly turned out to be their last album, 2011’s “Hot Sauce Committee Part Two”, I was surprised when writing this to find out that this didn’t even chart in the UK. In fact, none of the singles from the album did. I was of the opinion that the Beasties were a little more popular on this side of the pond, but I guess I was wrong about that.
Released in April 2011, it was soon over-shadowed by the death of Adam “MCA” Yauch in May 2012. The world is a poorer place with no new records by the Beastie Boys, in my book.
Anyway, this is supposed to be cheering us up and straight away I seem to be back talking about dead musicians. That’s the last one for this week, I promise.
*Scans the rest of the week’s selections*
Okay, maybe not quite the last one.
This lot, for example, may only have made one decent record (that I know of anyway) but they’re thankfully all still on this mortal coil. I think. Haven’t checked, if I’m honest.
This record has a special memory for me. Before I moved to London eight or so years ago, I came up for New Year’s Eve one year, a night which started out with a few drinks, then moved to The Garage, an indie club and venue in Highbury where two of our friends, Spencer and Ruth, had managed to bag themselves a DJ slot (if my memory serves, the prestigious “over midnight” one, although I’m open to correction on that).
This was the first record they played, and the two of them bounced all over the stage like two excited Tiggers throughout.
After their set, they came and joined us on the dancefloor, and I interrupted Ruth to give her a big hug, planted a kiss on her cheek and told her how ace I thought they’d been, how much fun I’d had and how proud I was of them. Ruth gave me what I can only describe as a look of happiness, a little embarrassment, more than a little confusion, and no small amount of terror.
It was only afterwards that I realised that when I referred to them earlier as being “our friends”, that wasn’t entirely accurate; they were friends of my friends, and I’d never actually met either of them before. I had managed to forget this teensy bit of information. Yes, I was that battered.
Anyway, I managed to explain, and eventually she told security that they didn’t need to pin me to the floor and sit on my head anymore, and we all saw the funny side.
This next song was also in their set that night, and is a staple of the very occasional DJ’ing gigs I get these days:
Ever wondered what the “W.K.” stands for? Well I have it on good authority that it stands for “Wildebeest King”. Apparently, as a young man Andrew became a bit obsessed with wildebeest, after he read that they are noisy creatures; bulls have an array of loud vocalizations, from moans to explosive snorts, not unlike Andrew’s own repertoire.
So obsessed is Andrew, that every May he travels to the mineral-rich grasses of the southern Serengeti (you know, where Kilimanjaro rises up like Mount Olympus) to witness the wildebeest mating season, and to feast his eyes on their annual displays of showmanship, cavorting, standoffs, and the odd head to head tussle. Often he will don a set of curved plastic horns, smear his face with mud, and roll around in wildebeest dung so that he becomes infused with their odour, their very essence. Then, from as close but as safe a distance as he dare get, he will mimic their actions, ideally from behind a bush, until he has them as accurate as possible. He then tries to incorporate these movements into his energetic stage performances.
(above: Andrew Wildebeest King, The Serengeti, May 2012)
Okay, I made all that up. In reality, his full name is Andrew Fetterly Wilkes-Krier, but since that’s the least rock’n’roll name in the history of rock’n’roll names, you can’t really blame him for changing it. Or me for trying.
“Party Hard” has had a new lease of life recently, after it featured in the ad campaign for Google and Android. According to The Wildebeest King’s Mr W.K.’s website: “The song highlights the individuality yet collective spirit of play and fun and partying featured in the ad.” which sounds like a load of old PR-bollocks to me.
Ordinarily, I wouldn’t post a link to an advert on here, but I think on this occasion I’ll make an exception. Watch this and then tell me if you think the ad demonstrates “the individuality yet collective spirit of play and fun and partying” or if it’s actually just a collection of clips of people pretending to be normal and who wouldn’t know an Andrew W.K. record if it walked up to them and introduced itself to them with the words “Hello. I am an Andrew W. K. record. Apparently you like to play and have fun with me”.
Far more entertaining, is the fact that “Party Hard” is used as the walk-on music for professional darts player Steve Hine. Not heard of him? Well, his track record of impressive appearances at the PDC World Championship speaks for itself. Look:
In 2006, he got knocked out in the 1st Round by Chris “Mace the Ace” Mason
In 2007, he didn’t qualify
In 2008, he got knocked out in the 1st Round by Mark “Flash” Dudbridge
In 2009, he didn’t qualify
In 2010, he got to the 2nd Round, where he got beaten 4-0 by Phil “The Power” Taylor
Normality was restored in 2011, though, when he got knocked out in the first round by Raymond “Barney” van Barneveld
Now. I don’t profess to be either a darts fan or expert (I do know that both Phil “The Power” Taylor and Raymond “Barney” van Barneveld are a bit good at darts – by which I mean I’ve heard of them – so maybe I shouldn’t take the piss), but I think I know what Steve’s problem is.
You’ll have noticed that all of the above have Darts Player Nicknames. Steve Hine has one too. His is Steve “The Muffin Man” Hine, and he is well known for bringing muffins and tossing them to the crowd during his walk-on.
I imagine that doesn’t exactly strike fear into the hearts of his opponents.
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club were originally called The Elements, until they realised that a) that’s not a very good name for a band, and, more pertinently, b) there already was a band called The Elements, so they changed it, naming themselves after Marlon Brando’s motorcycle gang in the 1953 movie “The Wild One” which, needless to say, is a waaay cooler name.
Although, had they kept their original science-y nerdo name, it would have made it a lot easier for me to link it to the next record:
According to Wikipedia, Placebo are a “British alternative rock band”. I always thought they were American, but it turns our that they formed after lead singer Brian Molko met bassist/guitarist Stefan Olsdal by chance outside South Kensington tube station.
Molko, however, was born in Brussels to a Scottish Catholic mother and an American father of French-Italian descent, and lived at various points in his youth in Dundee (which, admittedly, he refers to as “where I grew up”), Liberia, Lebanon and Belgium. He attended The European School of Luxembourg and the International School of Luxembourg. You don’t get much more British than that, right?
I suspect the band were worried about losing some of their more UKIP-y fans if they announced their true roots.
In the words of Stewart Lee: “If you’ve not seen me before, I don’t think that. I think the opposite of that.” (I’m not Morrissey, for fuck’s sake) He delivers it may better than me though:
Please do not watch that if you are easily offended. Or if you’re American (although the pay-off might pleasantly surprise you). Plenty of swears, and as you will gather from the title of it, it’s not exactly Light Entertainment.
Sacrilege time. I don’t really like Pearl Jam much. Friends of mine border on being obsessed by them, but I’ve always found Eddie Vedder’s voice a little grating, and have always thought the band were one of many far less talented groups who hung onto the plaid shirt-tails of Nirvana. I appreciate this is not a common opinion. Each to their own, eh?
That said, “Do The Evolution” has a groove about it that I’ve never noticed in any other records by them, and is well worth a listen if you don’t know it, or even if you do.
Another band who seemed to arrive on our shores at around the same time are the next lot, although they do have a lot more tunes that I love. This is from their 1991 debut album “Gish”, and I don’t think they’ve ever bettered it:
Ah well, since I mentioned Nirvana in passing, I’d be rude, bordering on ignorant, not to post something by them, right? Here then is the first record I ever heard by them. It is 1990, my buddy Keith and I are in Cardiff Student Union’s Hanging Gardens club. Fuelled by Snakebite, we had ventured on to the dancefloor as they were playing R.E.M.’s rather wonderful version of The Clique’s “Superman”, which the DJ followed up with this:
The place went mental, Keith and I were blown away and desperate to know what they hell had just been played, but did not want to get negative cool points equity by actually asking anyone, so we shuffled towards the DJ booth (which was in a kind of shed at the side of the dancefloor) and tried to look inconspicuously through the open window to try and catch a glimpse of the sleeve which, as you can see from the above, offered little in the way of clues.
Kurt Cobain happily (well, as happy as he ever was, anyway) conceded that the next band were a massive influence on him, and you can’t help but thinking that they must have had a similar effect on The Smashing Pumpkins’ main man Billy Corgan too, so effectively does “Siva” fit the loud-QUIET-loud template that they if didn’t invent then they certainly reinvigorated.
I speak of course of Pixies. Here’s a bit of a rarity for you, their appearance on The Word to promote their 1990 “Bossanova” album:
“Bossanova” often gets a bad rap, but then anything they released after the holy trinity of “Come On Pilgrim”, “Surfer Rosa” and “Doolittle” was always going to struggle in comparison. Personally, I think it’s a massively under-rated album; for example neither of those tracks were released as singles, probably due to their brevity.
Next, another album track, but another belter. This band first came to my attention back in 1994 when they appeared on Episode 4, Series 3 (I had to look that up, I admit it) of Later…with Jools Holland performing their single “Low” which is on their 1993 album “Kerosene Hat” which I rushed out to buy. “Low” is a fine record, similar in tone and angst to Buffalo Tom’s masterpiece “Taillights Fade”, but since we’re trying to be cheery, here’s the more up-tempo second track on the album, a charming ditty about a female actor who crashes her car and gets decapitated. It’s better than I’ve just made that sound, honest:
I love that tune, especially when the guitar crunches back in for the chorus, and I love the video even more. I could have sworn I had already posted it somewhere on here, but it seems not, or rather if I did it was before I embedded video clips so I probably didn’t tag it. So, here it is, gently poking fun at the cult of celebrity in general and internet sensations in particular (all of whom seem to join in a self-deprecating way):
Fucking joyous, that.
So to the final tune of the night, and this is just, well, dumb. Glorious, but dumb. And it’s another tune which reminds me of Ruth and Spencer, although I can’t quite rememberwhy (both are glorious, neither are dumb, before you say it):
A History of Dubious Taste 