Friday Night Music Club Vol 26

….And we’re back in the room.

Whilst I’ve been off, I’ve had time to put together a whole load of these mixes, some of which need a bit of tweaking, all of which need to be written up. But I think there’s enough to keep you entertained on a weekly basis for a couple of months or so.

And so, with no futher ado, let’s crack on, shall we? Here comes a little over an hour of mostly indie geetar-based tuneage, with the occasional 60s, 70s & 80s banger thrown in for good measure, complete with sleeve notes of varying quality, to kick off your bank holiday weekend (if you’re in the UK, that is).

Friday Night Music Club Vol 26

So, as this is the first edition of the Music Club for a couple of months, I figured it would be nice to kick things off with a nice welcoming tune and what more could be more welcoming than a song with five welcomes in the title?

1. Something Happens – Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello (Petrol)

This reached it’s highest position in the UK Charts on this day back in 1990. Unfortunately, that position was a not-exactly-lofty #82, which means that the band’s name should be considered somewhat ironic, given that pretty much nothing happened for them. Perhaps if they didn’t stick random fuel types at the end of their song titles for no apparent reason they may have tasted more success. I don’t know, but what I do know is that this is an absolute belter.

2. The Rolling Stones – Start Me Up

Another get-up-and-go rock’n’roll classic, lifted from the craggy faced rock gods’ 1981 Tattoo You album, and is, let’s be honest, probably one of their last really great records.

3. Ash – Jesus Says

Ash’s debut album, 1977, released in 1996, is so packed-full of glorious riffs and catchy choruses, the follow-up was always going to suffer by comparison and struggle to better it. And such was the case with 1998’s Nu-Clear Sounds, but it did include two riotous singles, this being the first of them. Well worth a revisit.

4. The Primitives – Everything Shining Bright

*Sighs* Oh, Tracy. This is from the 12″ of Thru The Flowers, the first record I ever bought by the Coventry band, and, apart from the numerous compilations released to cover the first phase of their career, didn’t appear on any of their original material albums. It’s a frenetic glam rollicky ride and no mistake.

5. Blur – On Your Own

No need for any explanation here, I think. This is the third of four singles lifted from Blur’s reinvention album, 1997’s inspirationally titled Blur.

6. Morrissey – The Last Of The Famous International Racists Playboys

For quite a while now, I’ve stated on these pages that on the rare occasion that I decided to post something by Morrissey, I would only do so if combined with at the very least a passing comment on his unpleasant shift to the political extreme right. I think I’ve achieved that here. The annoying thing is that despite my distate at the man now, I do still really like a couple of his singles, such as this one, which it seems (and hopefully) is the closest we’ll ever get to a reunion of The Smiths, featuring as it does all of them bar Johnny Marr, who knew better than to ally himself to the bequiffed goose-stepper again.

7. Julian Cope – Spacehopper

He’s off his nut, isn’t he?

8. Bob Mould – See A Little Light

Happy memories of this tune from the former Hüsker Dü man with the unattractive surname. Back in my days DJ’ing the indie night at college, I would drop this one early doors, as I would often do with records I didn’t think were all that well known yet. The idea was to see if they gained any sort of reaction, and if they did, bump them up the playlist next time. One night, I was approached by two blokes, David and Nick, each of whom I subsequently house-shared with over the next few years.

“We heard you played Bob Mould last week…?” one of them said.

I confirmed this to be the case.

“Are you playing it again this week?” the other one (probably) asked.

“Can do, but nobody danced to it last week, so….”

They took the hint, and danced to it when I dropped it a couple of tunes later. They were the only two who did, mind. And so it remained a staple of the early section of the night for at least another couple of weeks, until David and Nick didn’t turn up and the dancing total dropped back to zero again.

Ho hum. It’s still a great record though.

9. Ian McCulloch – Proud to Fall

At the end of the 1990/91 academic year, when I was coming to the end of my tenure as Social Secretary at the Students’ Union, we put on the End of Year ball, hiring in a marquee, roulette wheels (and loads of other activities I can’t remember now) to make it the biggest event we had done to date. The big question was: what musical act should we book? We narrowed it down to two options: Pop Will Eat Itself or Echo & the Bunnymen. Whilst I thought the Poppies would be much more entertaining, they were also much more expensive, and we also figured more people would know more of the Bunnymen’s tunes, so it was them that we plumped for.

Unfortunately, we had forgotten that front Bunnyman Ian McCulloch was at this point, former front Bunnyman having jumped ship – temporarily, it later transpired – a couple of years earlier. The current Bunnymen incarnation were promoting their first (and only) album which didn’t feature McCulloch, a thoroughly dull and forgettable affair, and on the night of their gig, as the rain lashed down outside, they steadfastly refused to play any crowd pleasers from the band’s back catalogue, presumably because none of them could sing them like McCulloch could.

McCulloch, meanwhile, had embarked on a solo career, which kicked off with this little pearl. A long-forgotten gem.

10. James – What For?

I’ll not bang on too much about this one, but will merely direct you to SWC’s marvellous No Badger Required blog, where James finished in a respectable fifth place in his recent rundown of Rocks Greatest J’s. (Not that it matters, of course, but I swear I had completed this mix before SWC had reached #5 in his countdown and included this song in the post. And I couldn’t be arsed with redoing the whole thing just to include a different James tune. Besides, What For is truly great and deserves to be listened to more than just once every 15 years or so.)

11. Propaganda – Duel

I love this tune, and find it hard to believe that it only got to #21 in the UK charts back in 1995. A travesty. That is all.

12. P.P. Arnold – The First Cut Is The Deepest

An oft-covered classic (see Stewart, Crow, et al) but nobody comes close to P.P.’s version.

13. Eels – Novocaine For The Soul

Breakthrough hit for the consistently eclectic and brilliant E. A band that nobody needs to be directed to a particular album as an entry point into their back catalogue: they’re all either really good or really great. Go on, dive in. The water’s lovely.

14. Alanis Morissette – Head Over Feet

1995’s Jagged Little Pill was a huge record. You know this already. You also know that one of the other singles from the same album inspired this stand-up routine which is so famous it’s impossible to hear the song without being reminded of it:

Head Over Feet did not inspire a stand-up routine, as far as I know. It is a pretty great song though, and sits nicely in my sitting-down-to-have-a-bit-of-a-breather-and-a-sing-a-long section.

15. Space – Me and You Versus The World

I was reminded of this beauty when watching the recent – and suprisingly good, considering which channel it aired on – series about the Britpop-era on Channel 5, which I can heartily recommend you give a go if the weather is typically Bank Holiday-ish this weekend. Except you can’t, as they seem to have already removed it from the My 5 streaming service. Ah well, you’ll just have to take my word for it.

16. Ian Dury & The Blockheads – Reasons To Be Cheerful (Part 3)

Another tune that needs to introduction, so isn’t going to get one, other than this: RIP Wee Willie Harris, Britain’s “wild man of rock ‘n’ roll”, who passed away earlier today.

More soon.