Friday Night Music Club

Right. Time for an explanation.

Tonight’s mix is not the one I had planned to post.

The one I had prepared was a little too upbeat for such a momentous weekend; whilst I personally won’t be joining in the nation’s mouring, I didn’t want to disrespect those that are.

And so I decided to create a mix “on the fly”; I decided what the first and last track would be, and then started recording as I journeyed from one to the other.

I tell you this instead of offering sleeve notes, as there will doubtless be those who think some of my selections are….disrespectful. That wasn’t the intention. The intention was simply to pick tunes which sounded good next to each other – any which may seem to have been chosen as some sort of comment on any recent high profile passings are entirely coincidental.

Honest.

So let’s crack on, shall we?

(By the way, because this mix is just shy of 2 hours, Google Drive can’t cope and won’t let me upload it, so the link below takes you to my old Soundcloud account. Hope it works ok!)

Friday Night Music Club Vol 18

1. Beastie Boys featuring Miho Hatori – Start
2. Cilla Black – Something Tells Me (Something’s Gonna Happen Tonight)
3. Luther Vandross – Never Too Much
4. Womack & Womack – Teardrops
5. Gary Byrd & The G.B. Experience – The Crown
6. Catatonia – Karaoke Queen
7. Marilyn Monroe – Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend
8. Madonna – Material Girl
9. Annie – I Know UR Girlfriend Hates Me
10. Avril Lavigne – Girlfriend
11. The B-52’s – Wig
12. David Bowie – Queen Bitch
13. Carole King – I Feel The Earth Move
14. Eddy Arnold – I’m Throwing Rice (At The Girl I Love)
15. Half Man Half Biscuit – Paintballs Coming Home (Andy Kershaw Session)
16. The Ukrainians – Koroleva Ne Polerma
17. Status Quo – Gentleman Joe’s Sidewalk Cafe
18. Beyond the Wizard’s Sleeve – Midas Reversed
19. Barry Adamson – Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Pelvis
20. Pulp – Mis-Shapes
21. China Crisis – King in a Catholic Style
22. Doves – Kingdom of Rust
23. Black Grape – Tramazi Parti
24. Beck – E-Pro
25. Nirvana – Lithium
26. PJ Harvey – 50ft Queenie
27. Pixies – Planet of Sound
28. Supergrass – Richard III
29. Gene – We Could Be Kings (Single Edit)
30. The Teardrop Explodes – Treason
31. The Stranglers – Everybody Loves You When You’re Dead
32. ? & The Mysterians – 96 Tears
33. Inspiral Carpets – Dragging Me Down
34. The Jam – Town Called Malice

That should keep you occupied for a while.

More soon.

Sunday Morning Coming Down

When I’m not doing this, or binge-watching shows on Netflix, or, y’know, working, I spend a lot of my time listening to comedy shows on the BBC radio iPlayer, one of my favourite shows being “The Unbelievable Truth”, a panel show hosted by David Mitchell.

The premise of the show is that each panellist delivers a short lecture which is entirely false, save for five pieces of true information, which they must try to smuggle past their opponents, cunningly disguised amongst the lies.

A recently re-broadcast show announced – spoiler alert – the fact that a 1992 US report, entitled “The Effect of Country Music on Suicide”, demonstrated that cities with a higher than average country music radio market share had higher suicide rates, independent of other factors such as poverty, divorce rates or gun availability.

It’s possible that the subject matter is one of the causes of this phenomenon, and the show went on to cite the following country song titles as examples: “If I’d Shot You When I Wanted To, I’d Be Out By Now”, “You’re the Reason Our Kids Are So Ugly”, “My Wife Ran Off With My Best Friend and I Sure Do Miss Him” and “I Still Miss You, Baby, But My Aim’s Getting Better”.

In my search to corroborate that all of those really are titles of country records (they are), I stumbled across a few more which tickled me: “How Can I Miss You If You Won’t Go Away?”, “I’d Rather Have A Bottle In Front Of Me Than A Frontal Lobotomy”, and “I’m So Miserable Without You It’s Like Having You Here”.

If you listened to the Kershaw session version of “Paintball’s Coming Home” by Half Man Half Biscuit that I posted yesterday (and if you didn’t, you really should), you’ll have noticed that it started with a version of a completely different song, which has a great title, if not as great as some of those.

This one, in fact:

Eddy Arnold – I’m Throwing Rice (At The Girl I Love)

More soon.