Friday Night Music Club

Here we are again, this week with the penultimate part of my six-hour mix, divided into six parts for your ‘delectation’.

And this week I think it’s fair to say we’re going full-on Indie Disco, albeit one from circa 1992 (with a few notable exceptions).

It’s also fair to say that once we’ve got past the chanting monks at the start of the first tune (and what better way is there to start a mix than with some chanting monks, right?) we go very LOUD before settling down to a mix of songs you’ll know, some you’ll have forgotten about, and possibly some that you’ve never heard before. Which is exactly how an Indie Disco should be, in my book: entertain and educate.

Many of these tunes remind me of when I used to DJ at college, but two in particular remind me of the first time I DJ’d in around 10 years or so (I’m excluding the time Llŷr and I DJ’d at a friend’s wedding, as all I did that day was hand him records to play).

I was at a party at Hel’s old flat in North London; our friend Ruth, her decks set up on the breakfast bar which looked out on to the living room-cum-dancefloor, has just performed a mammoth set of around 8 hours. People were starting to leave, and I figured she deserved a break. It was around 4am when I sidled up to her: “Do you mind if I have a go?” She nearly bit my hand off, and went and sat on the sofa with Hel.

Since they were practically my entire audience, every one else having left or crashed out, I decided to play some quieter stuff. My first choice caused both of my audience to break off their conversation momentarily, look in my direction, and go “Awwww!” I repeated the trick with my second choice. “Ahhhhhh!”, sighed the two ladies.

“Still got it,” I thought to myself, and played for another hour or so, until it was time to pack the decks away so Ruth could go home too.

I shan’t spoil things by telling you which two tunes I played, but you’ll spot them alright. Partly because, if you know the tunes in question (and I’d be very surprised if you don’t recognise either of them) you’ll probably make similar noises to Hel and Ruth when they start (I’ve put them together here, for maximum effect), but mostly because I couldn’t resist putting a massive sign-post in right before them.

I’ve done mixes, playlists, call them what you will, for years in various guises, from mix-tapes played in the 6th Form common room, in the motorway ‘restaurant’ I worked in during the holidays at 6th Form and at college (and for a year after I graduated), and in the video shop I pretended to work in after I finally graduated, all were sound-tracked by an ever-growing collection of mix-tapes. DJ’ing at college was almost inevitable, really. And then, when I left college – bar a very short, unpleasant stint working for a mobile DJ in Cardiff in the early 90s, which I’ll tell you about some other time (if I haven’t do so already) – nothing.

It was in those moments, standing in Hel’s kitchen, playing to an audience of two awake people and several sleeping ones, that I realised how much I missed DJ’ing, which is why I do these mixes.

So whilst the last of the six parts will be here next week, I’m already adding the final touches to the one for the week after. In short: tough luck, I’m not stopping just yet.

Time for the usual disclaimer: any skips and jumps in the mix are down to the mixing software; any mis-timed mixes are down to me (although on this one, it’s all about the timing rather than the mixing, as the cross-fader literally didn’t move from it’s central position throughout this one).

A cross-fader, yesterday

I’m not sure if that’s something I should be proud of, let alone advertise, to be honest…

There is, as usual, a little bit of potty-mouthed effing and jeffing, only on one song (I think), and as you cast your eye down the track-listing below, you’ll have no problem identifying which one it is. Previous mixes have contained worse (and next week’s mix definitely does), but it would be remiss of me not slap one of these on it for those of a delicate constitution:

Here you go:

Friday Night Music Club Vol 6.5

And here’s your track-listing:

• Eat – Bleed Me White
• Hole – Celebrity Skin
• Senseless Things – Homophobic Asshole
• The Futureheads – The Beginning of the Twist
• Northside – Take 5 (7″)
• The Fatima Mansions – Only Losers Take The Bus
• The Smiths – Jeane
• Billy Bragg – Sexuality
• Elastica – Connection
• Sleeper – Inbetweener
• The Cure – In Between Days
• Super Furry Animals – (Drawing) Rings Around The World
• Teenage Fanclub – Star Sign (Remastered)
• The Soup Dragons – Slow Things Down
• Strawberry Switchblade – Since Yesterday
• Blur – Coffee + TV (Radio Edit)
• Pulp – Something Changed
• One Dove – White Love (Radio Mix)
• Prince – Little Red Corvette

Next week is, then, the final part of this series, where the cross-fader is in full effect as I give you over an hour of dance bangers (as I believe “The” “Kids” say, or used to anyway), which tests my actual mixing skills to the maximum, including as it does what my mate Rob insists is “the hardest tune in the world to mix in or out of.”

Tune in next week to see how successful I am.

More soon.

A Traditional Easter

Last one of these, you’ll be relieved to know, before normality is restored, whatever normal is.

Today is Easter Monday, or, as it’s known in my flat “Quick, get down to ASDAs, before the reduced eggs have all gone!” Monday

Eat – Golden Egg

Go on then, you try and think of a song with the word Egg in the title. And no, Radiohead’s Eggs-it Music (For A Film) or any other eggy pun for that matter doesn’t count.

*Sits back and awaits the inevitable list of songs with Egg in the title which will be better than I thought of*

*Wipes egg from face*

Smashing.

More soon.

Indie Daze

So, another busy weekend awaits me.

First, I’ll be going to this: Indie Daze so you’ll forgive me if the next part of 1985 doesn’t happen just yet.

Seven bands, five of which I hope to catch. Sorry The Popinjays, but I vaguely remember your name but none of your records so I won’t be rushing to see you. And as for Back to the Planet well, sorry, but I vaguely remember your records and I won’t be rushing to see you.

As for the rest? Well:

Eat were a band I had a bit of a thing for. I even managed to forgive them for their not-very-good-version of the Lovin’ Spoonful’s great “Summer in the City” as they did give us such forgotten pop jewels as this anti-capitalist yelp:

 Eat – Bleed Me White

And then, The Primitives. Ahh, The Primitives. I won’t say too much more, for they will feature prominently on these pages soon. But Tracey Tracey, oh my how you helped me through my later teenage years. Most people remember The Primitives for this: Crash

But there was so much more to them than that. Well, actually, not that much more. Though their debut album, the aptly named “Lovely” came with a veritable bucketful of shiny pop tunes likes this:

 The Primitives – Spacehead

Then there’s Pop Will Eat Itself, a band that divides me from many of my friends in that I love them and think they were pioneering and ground-breaking and they hate them and think they sound like Sigue Sigue Sputnik (which they don’t). When I was out for my birthday last weekend, I mentioned I was going to see PWEI, half the table turned their lips up, the other half went “What, them that sang Can u Dig It? Ace!”

So, here is that very same, very brilliant “The Warriors” sampling classic:

 Pop Will Eat Itself – Can U Dig It?

Although quite how good they’ll be without Clint Mansell who has gone on to bigger, better, more soundtracky things since remains to be seen…

And then there were two.

Well, now regular readers will know and probably be quite sick of my love of The Wedding Present, so there’s no need for me to bang on about them yet again here. Suffice it to say, they are playing Bizarro, their second album proper, in its entirety and hopefully a few more gems from their back catalogue. I saw them a couple of years ago when they toured this on the anniversary of the album’s release and they were, excuse my language (like I’ve apologised before!!), fucking majestic. So I could just post Kennedy here yet again but I’ll plump for one of the non-single album tracks, this glorious, brooding, sinister tale of stalkers written long before stalking was even a thing:

 The Wedding Present – Bewitched

PS – Stella Creasey, I’ll see you in the mosh-pit.

And so on to joint headliners and popular cockney rhyming slang Miles Hunt and The Wonder Stuff. I’m hoping for a Greatest Hits set rather than any of the stuff they’ve recorded since they reformed, and hopefully Miles will get what the day is all about and rejoice in their back catalogue. Again, this is another band who will feature prominently here soon, so I’ll leave you with this corker:

 The Wonder Stuff – It’s Yer Money I’m After, Baby

More tomorrow depending on how much my head hurts.

Oh and of course, if you like anything you hear, go buy it. You don’t need me to tell you where to find all of these records, now do you?

Oh, and second: having totally failed to buy a coach + festival ticket on Thursday, Sunday morning is Glastonbury tickets day. Wish me luck folks (or I’ll have nothing to write about here come August 2016)