Friday Night Music Club

Welcome back to third instalment of my mammoth six-part cut-out-and-keep series of mixes.

This one starts off a little political, which, since I’ve not had a Rant on a Saturday morning for a while, I hope you’ll let slide. I’ve tried to puncture the serious tone by chucking in a seemingly out-of-place indie tune (which only seems out of place in respect of the musical jump, not the theme), and then by a late 70s/early 80s children’s TV theme, which I’ve deliberately not named in the track-listing (partly because I want it to be a surprise, mostly because I have no idea who to credit it to), but will make sense in the running order. It’s nicely juxtaposed, I think, with some Rage Against the Machine. Look, it made me smile when I thought of including it, and these days that’s enough reason.

After that, we take brief trip through some late 80s/early 90s rap and hip-hop (I’ll be honest, I’m still not entirely sure what the difference is) including a track by House of Pain. Not that track, no; instead I’ve selected their final UK Top 40 hit, It Ain’t a Crime (which, were it not for the bad boy lyrics probably would have appeared in one of my Saturday morning Rants with reference to our ‘Crime’ Minister – see what I did there?) partly because it’s the only single of theirs that I ever actually bought back in the day, but mostly for the very reason that I bought it back then: it has some of the most cringe-worthy lyrics ever committed to vinyl (or in the case of the format I bought it on: to cassingle!).

Telling the story of Johnny (I bet it took them ages to come up with that name) who “…was a bad boy, he was a juvenile delinquent/He had his picture on the wall of every precinct…” it contains these gloriously bad lines:

He hit the backdoor like his name was Carl Lewis
Dipped to the payphone to find out where his crew is
He called up his homeboy Jose, “What up!”
“Can I come over my man?”, he said, “No way
A cop was here he was looking all over for ya
But I told the pig I didn’t know ya”
He said, “Cool meet me up at the school
I need a ride cause I’m wanted for homicide

..which I’m sure you’ll agree are a bit special, but not in a good way.

A History of Dubious Taste in no way condones the actions of Johnny, by the way, who sounds like a very naughty young man indeed.

I wish I could say it was planned to drop this mix on the day after the anniversary of his passing, but in all honesty it’s a complete coincidence. See, Llŷr was a massive hip-hop fan (and tried many times to explain the difference between it and rap to me, with no success), but also of the genre which makes up the last few tracks (as was I): electro-clash, a short-lived bubble of dance music from the early 2000s.

In fact, for a even shorter time, I was dating a woman who was also into electro-clash, so I got Llŷr to knock me up a mix CD of some of his favourite moments to give to her, which he happily did. All of the tracks featured today were on it, I think. Certainly Tiga & Zyntherius’ brilliant cover of Corey Hart’s Sunglasses at Night, which Llŷr proudly owned on vinyl, did.

She split from me about two weeks later, by the way. I’m pretty sure the two facts weren’t linked. Her boyfriend before me was, coincidentally, also called Jez and, having dated probably the only two Jez’s in Cardiff, she decided to move on to a different name and work through them instead. Good luck, Ji – I hope you’re very happy.

Often, mates would came back to ours after we’d all been out clubbing (they usually didn’t want to go home and face/wake up their partners, so, since Llŷr and I had no such concerns, our flat would generally end up being their place of refuge for a few hours) and I would slip on Vitalic’s wonderful OK Cowboy album, a noisy and gloriously beaty but odd record, and watch our guests either get right into it or sit terrified. Included in this section is a single from said album.

The mix ends with the archetypal electro-clash tune, Emerge by Fischerspooner. Released in 2001, right at the start of the electro-clash, it always felt to me that it would never be bettered, and so it proved.

Anyway, to the tunes, by way of my usual disclaimer: any skips and jumps in the mix are down to the mixing software; any mis-timed mixes are down to me (although I think I’ve done pretty well on this one, I think); all record choices are 100% mine.

Oh and one more thing: there’s a fair bit of effing and jeffing on this one, so I’d probably better slap this on it:

Friday Night Music Club Vol 6.3

  • Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy – Television, The Drug Of The Nation
  • Gil Scott-Heron – The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
  • Ned’s Atomic Dustbin – Kill Your Television
  • Surprise Track!
  • Rage Against the Machine – Bullet in the Head
  • Public Enemy – You’re Gonna Get Yours
  • Cypress Hill – When the Shit Goes Down
  • House Of Pain – It Ain’t a Crime (Madhouse remix)
  • Credit To The Nation – Call It What You Want
  • Andrea Doria – Bucci Bag
  • Vitalic – La Rock 01
  • Tomcraft – Loneliness
  • Tiga & Zyntherius – Sunglasses At Night [Radio Edit]
  • Golden Boy With Miss Kittin – Rippin Kittin
  • Fischerspooner – Emerge

See you next week (or before that if you fancy swinging by).

More soon, in other words.