Friends – A History of Dubious Taste

Friday Night Music Club

It’s another Bank Holiday weekend here in the UK, so another long weekend which I will doubtless spend putting off doing all the odd jobs – like finish unpacking, or finally construct my bed (it’s only been seven months…) around the house which I’ll be cursing myself for not having done come Tuesday morning.

To soundtrack that, and whatever you’re up to, here’s another of the old mixes split down into manageable one hour chunks. I was surprised when I revisited this one to find that it the original mix was only two hours long, so we’ll have rattled past this one and on to anew one in no time.

I shan’t waste anymore time (except for the usual disclaimer which you all probably know off by heart by now: any skips or jumps are down to the mixing software; any mis-timed mixes are down to me; all record selections are mine) so here’s the link:

Friday Night Music Club Vol 2.1

…and here’s your track-listing:

Peter, Paul & Mary – I Dig Rock And Roll Music
Pixies – Weird at My School
The Walkmen – The Rat
Interpol – Evil
Lene Lovich – Lucky Number
The Jags – Back Of My Hand
The Vapors – Turning Japanese
Generation X – Dancing With Myself
Marvin Gaye – Got To Give lt Up
Prince & The Revolution – Girls & Boys
Mary Mary – Shackles (Praise You)
Jungle – Busy Earnin’
Belle & Sebastian – Your Cover’s Blown
Friends – I’m His Girl
Micachu – Golden Phone
Le Tigre – Hot Topic
The B-52’s – 52 Girls

Enjoy!

More soon.

Friday Night Music Club

Yes, I know the titles implies this should be getting posted later today, but let me explain.

Today it’s Children in Need night in the UK, and that can mean only one thing: nothing to watch on TV, unless newsreaders performing poorly choreographed dance routines floats your boat.

It’s a worthy cause, don’t get me wrong, but once you’ve dipped your hand in your pocket, as I’m sure you undoubtedly will, there’s really no need to carry on watching.

Personally, I think they would make loads more money if, once you’d contributed, your TV programmes went back to the normal schedules. The whole thing could be over and done with in half an hour or so.

Anyway, I thought I’d help out with your evening entertainment after you’ve done your charitable duty, by giving you a top mix of tunes to while away a couple of hours. So here you go, just shy of 140 minutes of tunes to bop around your kitchen to and suffice it to say, it’s a real mixed bag, covering the contemporary to the antiquated, the oft-impersonated to the never-bettered, the cherished to the forgotten, the much loved to the…erm…not loved so much. You’ll see.

But – and I mean this most sincerely folks – I love every record included in this mix. Yes, even that one. And that one. And definitely that one. Yes! This mix includes (at least) three acts generally considered to be among the naffest of if not the late 1970s, then ever. But I’d invite you to give them a go with a fresh pair of ears: kitsch, maybe, but loosen up, you might find you quite like them too (NB: I would recommend having a few drinks to truly accomplish this turnaround in opinion. Also, there’s a fair bit of effin’ & jeffin’ on some of these, so if you have kids a) hard luck, and b) put them to bed before playing this, or you’ll have to explain to them exactly what Fiddy is getting up to in “da” club, or worse, just what is going on on the Cansei de Ser Sexy record).

And when I say “mix”, I don’t mean anything has been beat-matched, or scratched, or whatever the cool name for mixing is these days: we’re in purely fade-in/fade-out territory here.

(There are, of course, a couple of technical glitches, by the way. Sorry, but I didn’t have time to go back and re-record the whole mix to get rid of them. I would have done, had the mixing software I have not crashed when I was on the penultimate tune the first time around, forcing me to go back and start all over again. Hope they don’t spoil things – look on the positive side: they will, at the very least, give you that real club feeling as you spin round to face the DJ/your sound system and call him/it whatever rude name you plump for.)

Last time I did one of these, I put the songs on Spotify, only to find they didn’t have many of the songs anyway, so I’ve not renewed my free trial subscription with them (until next time they offer it to me); instead you should (if I’ve done it right…) be able to stream it via Soundcloud here, or you can just download or stream it from the Dubious Taste vaults here (as a WAV file), which should play just fine on iTunes or Windows Media Player.

To make it as close to a “going out” experience as you can, I’d recommend playing it from one of those two sources, rather than scrolling down here to see what I’ve included. You wouldn’t approach a DJ in a club and ask him what he intended to play for the next couple of hours, now would you? No.

But if you must, here you go, 34 songs, in the same running order as on the mix, and without any of my usual snarky comments. As with most of my mixes, its starts innocuously enough….

Enjoy!

Peter, Paul & Mary – I Dig Rock And Roll Music

Janet Jackson – What Have You Done For Me Lately

Phillip Bailey & Phil Collins – Easy Lover

Rihanna feat. Calvin Harris – We Found Love

Guys ‘n’ Dolls – There’s A Whole Lot of Loving

Oh and one more thing, you can donate to Children in Need here. Do it quickly, before the dancing newsreaders come on.

Too late.

More soon.

Friday Night Music Club

It’s Children in Need night in the UK, a night when almost the entire BBC1 content is given over to a fund raising live event, usually hosted by Terry Wogan, but I see that tonight Dermot O’Leary has stepped in at the nth hour as Terry is unwell. (Wig malfunction, perhaps..?)

That decision not to host The X Factor this year is looking smarter by the second, isn’t it, Dermot?

Ok, I’ve mentioned Terry Wogan, so I cannot resist sharing this, the most defiantly, knowingly awkward appearance on Top of the Pops ever. And this, just in case you want to hear/download the studio recorded version of the same.

Terry used to host the Radio 2 Breakfast show, and after he quit Chris Evans, who I think it’s fair to say is a very different kind of DJ, took over. I listened once, and heard him play this, proclaiming it an excellent record to wake up to (which it is). But the cynic in me can’t help but wonder if he was taking the piss a little given that he’d just replaced Sir Terry.

Anyhoo, I have a lot of time for Dermot (and for Sir Terry, of course. Evans? Not so much…have you seen the reboot of TFI Friday…?), probably from his days of hosting Big Brother’s Little Brother, but his Saturday afternoon show on Radio 2 is often worth a listen, even if he does every now and then give the impression of someone who doesn’t really know much about music. I swear I once heard him announce that he had never heard of The Velvet Underground.

Anyway, you know what Children in Need is all about: various BBC related personalities perform an amusing skit on their usual personas, generally culminating in the BBC newsreaders dressing up and doing a song, in an effort to raise funds for a very worthy cause.

Here’s some examples of their awfulness: BBC Newsreaders do “Weapon of Choice”

And just so there’s some semblance of order round these parts, the video they were taking off. Yeh, you totally nailed it guys.

And here, perhaps the very nadir of this kind of thing: The Time Warp.

They could’ve saved a few quid on suspenders and high heels if Frank Bough had still been a newsreader then.

The only thing worse than watching that was witnessing my parents trying to do The Time Warp at a wedding a few years ago. I’m so mentally scarred as a result, I have no idea whose wedding it was.

(NB. Is it just me, or is it ironic that the BBC should have a “Children in Need” night every year, when they housed so many of our now discredited/imprisoned/dead and discredited TV celebrities in the 1970s…? I’ll ask Alanis. Or Ed.)

If you’re anything like me, at some point while watching Children in Need, you will undoubtedly feel a rush of shame as you reach for the remote and search for something a little less…well, shit.

Fear not, for the next five songs in the Friday Night Music Club are here to save you.

(NB. There seems to be an issue with my usual download provider, so I’ve switched to a new one for now. Let me know if there are any issues…? Or if you prefer one over the other? Or just don’t give a flying shit?)

Tomcraft – Loneliness