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).
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?
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 formerHüsker 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.
Well done to you all, you completed another level in this game that we call life, and got through the week relatively unscathed (I hope).
Your reward this week is yet another all-new mix courtesy of yours truly. I know, I know, I’m too ruddy kind for my own good.
What have we got for you this week? Well, we kick off with John Lydon taking a break from advertising butter, waxing lyrical about Donald Trump and generally being a living, breathing caricature of himself, by popping by to say “Hello!” (although he practically scowls it, rather than saying it), followed by the second best record I own which samples the late great Bill Hicks, then a track by a guy I once saw about 15 years ago supporting Los Campesinos! (he was incredible, all guitar effects pedal, looped beats and other electronic gizmo-ness I can only explain like this: imagine if Ed Sheeran was entertaining and had something to say), then we’re off on a bit of a vegetable tip with Dan le Sac & Scroobius Pip and Kate Nash, followed by a side-swipe at the vacuous world of celebrity, topped off with a couple of classic old garage rock numbers which have been covered with much more success than they managed, a tune by one of the groups who recorded the more famous version of one of them, then a song responsible for probably my most favourite appearance on Top of the Pops ever, then a bit of Julian Cope and his bendy microphone stand, an overlooked rave-era classic before we’re back safely ensconced in the arms of Mr Lydon again.
There’s a modicum of swears on this one, so best I wheel out the ‘Effing and Jeffing Warning Sign’ for an airing:
Admin time: any skips or jumps are down to the mixing software; any mis-timed mixes are down to me; all record selections are mine, all mine, and you can’t take them away from me, okay?
You can, happily, download or just stream this though:
Delivery Man 1 [poking his head through the door]: Yes, this looks like it.
Delivery Man 1 backs into view, clipboard under arm, guiding a large object covered in a sheet, which is being pushed by Delivery Man 2 with considerably more effort than Delivery Man 1 is expending.
FX: The door slams shut.
Delivery Man 2: Whereabouts does it need to go? What does the order say?
Delivery Man 1 consults the clipboard.
Delivery Man 1: It says “Leave in the middle of the floor, covered, as if it’s been here for ages.”
Delivery Man 2 [with a shrug]: Bit weird, but if that’s what it says.
Job done, they exit, leaving the light on.
FX: the door opens and closes. Pause. Repeat.
An incredibly handsome, if fat and bald, man enters the room. He surveys the object before removing the sheet.
Incredibly handsome, if fat and bald, man: And we’re back in the room!
Hello, and welcome to The Chain. Where’ve you been? I’ve been waiting for you.
Prompted by a question about whether one of this week’s suggestions qualified under the rules, and nothing whatsoever to do with the amount of time since one of these posts appeared, nosireebob, I thought it might be best if I go over them again here, with a brief explanation of what we do here.
So, The Chain is a feature on BBC 6Music’s Radcliffe and Maconie show (and prior to that, their show on BBC Radio 2), where a record is played and they invite suggestions as to what record could be played next, which must link in some way to the one just played.
The difference here is that whilst they choose just one record to play, we try to post all of the suggestions which you submit.
The only rules are:
No suggested record can feature twice (unless it has only featured as part of The Official Chain). If you’re not sure – ask!
The only exception to this rule is “Back on the Chain Gang” by The Pretenders, which has been adopted as our theme tune
When making your suggestion, you must provide an explanation of the link between the two songs
You must already own a copy of it, and be willing to provide it (in case I don’t already own it or am unable to source it)
Suggestions must be more than just naming a different song by the same artist.
You can make as many suggestions as you like, but please, go easy on me, won’t you?
That’s about it. I award points every now and again, for Worst Record of the Week, Cheesiest Record of the Week, Comment Showboat of the Week, and of course, for anyone who happens to guess either the song or act (or both) that is the next record in the Official Chain, which becomes the source record for the following week. Nobody’s keeping score (well, I’m not anyway), the points are just a bit of fun.
Okay, that’s the admin done. Last time out, the source record was “The Universal” by Blur; personally, I found this a really tricky one to link to, especially as I have to wait and see what’s left after you guys have nominated all the good ones. Ho hum, such is life.
So, here we go then, and as usual, we’ll bracket them into several fairly broad categories and, as usual, we’ll probably wander off on a couple of tangents along the way.
First out of the traps last time was Charity Chic from Charity Chic Music who wrote:
“It has to be something off ‘Universal Audio’, the final album by The Delgados. I Fought the Angels would do rather nicely I feel”
Of course, CC was not alone in suggesting a link to something of Universal appeal; Dirk from sexyloser proffered thusly:
“…because not enough good German music is being featured on these pages, I’d like to link to Die Sterne – ‘Universal Tellerwäscher’ from 1994 …. which in fact is a mighty record indeed!”
I was going to make a rather unkind joke about the phrase “good German music” being an oxymoron, but then I listened to Dirk’s suggestion and have to agree, it is mighty fine (even if I have not one clue as to what it’s about, although Google Translate, which is never wrong, obviously, tells me that a Tellerwäscher is a dishwasher ):
Time for the first interlude of the day; I stumbled along this clip the other day, which I’m sure you’ll agree contains some quite wizardly rapping:
Anyway, where were we?
Ah yes. Blur’s ‘The Universal’. Take it away Julian of Music from Magazines fame:
“Blur did a song “Beetlebum” The Beatles did a song “Across The Universe” Laibach did a version of “Across The Universe” Laibach nailed “Sympathy For The Devil”
It’s scary how that song is so relevant now, 35 years after it came out. “Times have changed”, some people say. I’d play them that and respectfully disagree.
Anyway, before I start going off on one, more Universal shenanigans. Here’s Alex G from We Will Have Salad:
“A nice easy link from ‘Universal’ to another well-known film studio: Columbia.”
From the Universal links, it’s one small step to the universe, and space in general, and to our second new member of The Chain Gang of the week, abramson60, the 60th from the very noble Abramson family, as Adam Buxton would say:
Anyway, abramson60 has certainly got the hang of how to make sure you get lots of tunes played here: list of a load of songs he’d considered before finally plumping for a completely different one. I, of course, cannot resist:
“Universe would automatically take me down the space road, so you could have….”
“…not forgetting that he went on to become the nation’s favourite spaced out artist.”
But, “…sticking with universe, The Rocky Horror Picture Show had long lasting and profound influence on the somewhat naive 16 year old me who first saw the film at the tail end of the 70’s. So my pick is ‘I’m Going Home’, not quite sure where to but somewhere in the outer reaches of space.” I’m not sure I quite follow the link there, but as it’s your first visit, I’ll let it slide this time:
A couple of you suggested links from lyrics withing ‘The Universal’, which is fair enough and fine by me. For example, Rigid Digit from Stuff & Nonsense suggested:
“‘The Universal’ includes the lines: “And to karaoke songs, We like to sing along, Although the words are wrong”
So .. mondegreens (misheard lyrics) and possibly the most well known: ‘Scuse me while I kiss this guy'”
Next up, Martin from New Amusements, who takes the “list a load of songs then pick a completely different one as their choice” approach adopted by abramson60 and combines it with Rigid Digit’s focus on the song’s lyrics:
“The Universal includes a line about ‘satellites in every home’ so we could go with that, enabling…”
If I could just butt in for a moment, I can’t hear that record without thinking of this record (and vice versa) since I can’t help but think that while it’s not a straight-out sample, the synth melody line, owes more than a little debto the old instrumental Martin suggests:
Martin’s actual choice will follow in a moment, but props where props are due, the category it falls into was first suggested by The Robster from Is This The Life? (well, actually, it was first mentioned by Rigid Digit last week time)
“My link comes in the form of British Gas adverts. The Universal was, as you point out, used in an ad campaign for British Gas. So was ‘More Than A Feeling’ by Boston, which despite ticking all the middle-of-the-road 70s AOR boxes, is a damn fine tune and one I always find myself playing air guitar to. True!”
It may well be, but unfortunately that’s featured in The Chain before, so, as per the rules above, I can’t allow it this week. Sorry!
Tell you what, have another go:
“Another gem from the British Gas archive is the wonderful ‘Rescue Me’ by Fontella Bass which cannot fail to give everyone a lift on a Monday morning.”
Back to Martin again: “…let’s go down the route of the Blur track’s British Gas-based ubiquity, all the excuse we need to have ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ by The Rolling Stones, since that tells us ‘it’s a gas, gas, gas.'”
“But I’d rather suggest a song I really like, so the gas connection allows me to pitch the much-less-played ‘It’s A Gas’ by The Wedding Present. Any excuse to get the Gedge out, after all.”
After those words from our sponsors, back to The Great Gog:
“‘The Great Escape album’ from which The Universal is taken also includes a song called ‘Top Man’. When I was younger (and a little less Great) I used to venture into Manchester and frequent a store of that name, and occasionally even buy something. Having done this, my then-significant other would drag me to where she wanted to buy stuff – Chelsea Girl. Obviously the title of a song by Simple Minds…”
He continues: “Suggestion that leads a little more explanation: Blur used to be called Seymour. I’m sure someone will link to the obvious song from that (the one about a record company boss…”
“…so,” Rol continues, “I’ll point us towards the character of Seymour in the movie ‘The Little Shop of Horrors’ and suggest the song ‘Feed Me, Seymour’ as sung by the killer plant Audrey II (aka Levi Stubbs from The Four Tops).”
You can all count yourself lucky that I decided not to post the version with Gazza on it. Actually, that might have been quite appropriate, since writing and indeed reading The Chain often has the air of a hostage situation about it, so maybe we should expect him to rock up with a bucket of fried chicken and a fishing rod.
I’ve got Snuff covering that too somewhere, but let’s not overdo it, eh? That would take us over the 2 minutes of Snuff records mark, which would never do.
Any more, abramson60?
“Having said all of that I would much prefer to offer up Dr Phibes and the House of Wax Equations (any brownie points for extra long band names?) [Nope – Ed] and Hazy Lazy Hologram, link being obvious and in hazy, and everyone loves drug induced music, don’t they?”
And what of the individual members of Blur, there must be some links there, right?
Guess what, here’s abramson60. Again.
“Blur’s singer is Damon Albarn who is the son of Keith Albarn, who once managed Soft Machine, whose drummer Robert Wyatt went onto have a solo career, recording ‘Shipbuilding’ which as we all know was written by Elvis Costello, who took part in the Red Wedge tours along side Billy Bragg. So my suggestion has to be ‘Valentine’s Day Is Over’.”
I have two things to say about this. Firstly, I had no idea of the Albarn connection to Soft Machine, and secondly, abramson60 did suggest this back on February 15th, which makes his choice of Billy track a little more understandable.
“Damon Albarn was the boyfriend of Justine Frischmann of Elastica. So let’s have ‘Stutter’ from them.”
The first record I ever bought by Elastica this, albeit on an NME compilation album of their Singles of the Week from 1993, and without doubt one of the finest ever songs about erectile disfunction.
Speaking of George, he’s been rather quiet so far this week, so here’s the first of his suggestions:
“Damon Albarn was/is also in a band called Gorillaz, and gorillas are in a branch of primates, as are monkeys, leading to ‘Monkey On My Back’ by The Triffids (from the Field of Glass EP). I think the song is not actually about monkeys.”
(My apologies, by the way: I realised I’ve misnamed the mp3 as Toots and The Maytals, rather than just The Maytals, but I really can’t be arsed with changing it.)
The Great Gog’s back again:
“I did have one more up my sleeve, but left it in case anyone else came up with it – they haven’t , so here goes. Blur’s lead singer is D. Albarn. Shuffling one of those letters to the left a bit allows me to type Dr. Alban, the early 90’s hitmaker who made such a lasting impression on me that I can only recall one of his tunes…”
Hands down winner of the “Worst Record of the Week” award, there.
“Used in a Tampax advert at some point in the nineties too,” pipes up The Beard. Now, let’s not lower ourselves by making any jokes about that particualr subject. That’s it. None. End of. Period.
Instead, let’s move onto the other members of Blur, and focus for a moment on bass player Alex James. Over to you, George:
“Another Alex is Alex Harvey, so the song is from the first Sensational Alex Harvey Band album ‘Framed’, and ‘The Hammer Song’.”
“When he is not doing that [being in Blur] he schmoozes up to his famous neighbours David Cameron and Jeremy Clarkson. He also pretends to make cheese which gives us a lovely link to ‘Gorgonzola’ by Leslie Sarony.”
Mention any of the old music hall acts such as Leslie, and I’m afraid I can’t help thinking of this chap:
Back over to Rol, who might just see this post before his birthday’s finished:
“All this talk of Alex James’s cheese behooves me to suggest Copy Cats by The Humdrum Express, which features the lines…
“I read a Jamie Oliver’s Feastival review Where ex-Top Gear presenters jumped the queue To a sign publicising ageing sleaze But it was Alex James’s aptly named new cheese”
(It also features the line “More Betty Than Swervedriver”, which I’m half thinking of stealing to rename my blog.)”
I may aswell chuck one in to the Alex-mix. When he isn’t making cheese, or being in Blur, he’s also popped up in some questionable novelty acts, most famously with Fat Les, but also in Wig Wam, a truly awful project that I’m not going to offend your ears by playing. His partner-in-crime there, though, was one Alison Clarkson aka Betty Boo:
Two band members left, and absolutely nobody suggested anything Graham Coxon-related so I had a quick shufty round and found that according to wikipedia, he appeared on Blue Peter twice as a child.
But since all the rest of the band are getting at least two songs, we may as well have one of his singles. Friends of mine will attest that every time we’ve heard thisplayed out, I always point out that the intro sounds a lot like “Into the Valley” by Skids (Since nobody has ever agreed with me on this point, I’d post it so you could compare, but as it’s already featured on The Chain once before, I can’t. Who made these stupid rules up anyway??):
Which just leaves drummer Dave Rowntree, and a suggestion by The Beard:
“He shares his surname with the confectioners Rowntree. They are based in York and created the KitKat. York City’s Bootham Crescent ground was for a period renamed KitKat Crescent. ‘Crystal Crescent’ is a track by Primal Scream amd nothing to do with chocolate or the city of York.”
Which just leaves us to reveal what the next record in the Official Chain is, and many of you will have noticed the absence of one particular song from the start of this post, when we looked at songs with the word “Universal” in the title. Many people wanted to suggest this, but Swiss Adam from baggingarea was the first out of the traps so the kudos and points are his this week:
“The Small Faces have their own ‘Universal’ which is a lovely song.”
So, all that laves me to do is to ask for your suggestions, please, for songs which link to “The Universal” by Small Faces, along with a brief description of the link, via the Comments Section down below, in time for the next edition.
Let’s say that will be next week, and see what happens, eh?
It must be nearly Christmas. The stores are laying all their Christmas stock out for us to pick through in the hope of inspiration. I’ve yet to hear “Merry Xmas Everybody”, but it’s only a matter of time.
When I was a kid, I used to look forwards to some of the TV Christmas adverts, most notably Woolworths, which seemed to have a different cast list of stars each year (most of whom are now either dead or in prison), or maybe Brut 33, to see if there was a new “‘Enry’s Hammer” soap-on-a-rope to add to my list to leave out for Santa.
Nowadays, it seems the most fuss is over whatever schmaltz the ad-men who have the John Lewis account have conjured up this year. I understand from Twitter that it’s been shown – I haven’t seen it, but then it’s only November 12th so there’s plenty of time – and I’m led to believe (again, from Twitter, so you know…large pinch of salt, and all that) that it involves a dog on a trampoline.
If they haven’t got a piano based rework, by an unknown winsome female singer, of this as the soundtrack, then they’ve missed a trick:
A History of Dubious Taste 