It’s that time of the week again, so here we go with, some of you will be relieved to hear, the final part of my revisit and butchering of the first five-hour long mixed playlist.
For those who listened to it the first time around: I’ve jiggled about with the running order a little, and squeezed in an additional tune, y’know just to make it a bit more interesting (for me, if nobody else).
Primal Scream – Come Together (Terry Farley Remix)
The Charlatans – The Only One I Know
Inspiral Carpets – Find Out Why
The Doors – Touch Me
divinyls – I Touch Myself
Yazoo – Don’t Go
New Order – Bizarre Love Triangle
Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip – Thou Shalt Always Kill
Echo & The Bunnymen – Lips Like Sugar (Way Out West Remix Edit)
Big Sound Authority – This House (Is Where Your Love Stands)
The Bluetones – If…
Which just leaves me to add the usual disclaimer: any skips or jumps are down to the mixing software (which seems to have behaved, pretty much this time); any mis-timed mixes are down to me; all record selections are mine.
Next week: a brand new mix. As it’s Easter weekend, this may well be an Easter-themed mix, although, as I’ve commented before, Easter-related songs are rather thin on the ground so may also be it won’t be. I think I’ve got enough songs together, I think – some more tenuously linked than others – so much will depend on how it sounds once I’ve put it together. If it sounds rubbish, I’ll bin it off and give you one I prepared earlier.
Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, I used to write a series here called Friday Night Music Club.
Here is what I wrote way back in March 2015 to explain:
“Friends of mine will tell you I love a themed mix tape or CD.
In my old flat, we used to have what we (ok, I) liked to call The Friday Night Music Club. This would involve us a) getting very drunk b) me shaving my head at some point c) listening to the latest CD mix I’d made (later, when I bought a sound system that allowed me to just plug my iPod in (other mp3 playing devices are available) these mixes got waaaay longer, and probably waaaaay more tedious for the listener) and d) ideally having a bit of a dance.
I’ve done mix tapes and CDs for friends and family all my life (but you already knew that, right?) but the idea here was to make a series of mix CDs which, when played in sequence, you could play at a house party and which would keep the night bubbling along nicely.
Actually, this is something I’d already tried a few years earlier. Friends of mine used to have the most excellent parties at their flat on Hilldrop Road, usually with a DJ playing, but on one occasion the DJ – and for that matter, their decks – couldn’t make it. In their absence I prepared a set of 11 CDs – about 15 hours – which, when played in sequence, took you from aperitifs and welcomers, to “go on have a bit of a dance”, through to off your nut party anthems, and then back down to sitting round talking nonsense about radishes until 6am.
Anyway, back to the Friday Night Music Club. Occasionally I’d make a theme out of the whole thing (hey, if Bob Dylan can do a radio show using the same format, I can do a mix CD, okay?) or do more than one CD and spread the theme out (there was once a 4 CD opus to a former flat mate which deserves a mention in passing) but more often than not the theme would occur to me in the middle of preparing it, and that’d be it…I’d be off….“
As an aside, I appear to have missed some fairly significant landmarks in the history of this place: my first ever post was in September 2013, and if you think my posts are sporadic now, bear in mind that my second post didn’t happen until a year later in 2014. Whatever, a belated 5th anniversary to me!
Anyway, it was when I became rather fixated on the theme rather than with just posting some songs which sound good when played together that I knocked the Friday Night Music Club series on the head.
Since there are now more of us are spending our Friday Nights at home, many of us getting drunk, I figured I would bring the series back for at least a one-off for you to use as your sountrack to your Zoom/Houseparty chats. There might be more, I’ve not decided yet.
Also, this, right here what you’re reading now, is my 1500th post, so I’d like to mark at least one of my landmark posts in a timely manner.
Ahem.
That’s better.
I figured we’d go back to where it all began, to the first few episodes of Friday Night Music Club, but now with fewer attempts to be clever/funny and just more songs to rock your end of the working (from home) week/kids are in bed celebrations.
Actually, I’d hoped to bring this to you last weekend, in time for the Bank Holiday, but time simply caught up with me, the bastard.
The initial intention was simply to repost those early “mixes”, with a few new songs thrown in here and there (and some brutally culled). But as I was working on it, it metemporphasised into something different, perhaps better described as a completely new mix of tunes, very loosely hung on the framework of the old ones, in an effort to reinvigorate them, poncey as that may sound.
If you’d prefer to just listen to this on Spotify, you can do here:
…although a word of warning: Spotify doesn’t have all of the songs in the playlist, so the only real way to enjoy this in it’s full…erm…glory is by ploughing through the links below.
Oh, and a second word of warning: there’s a fair bit of effin’ and jeffin’ on some of these, so perhaps not for those with young ears.
Hopefully, there will be something for everyone in here (there’s seventy tunes in just over five hours, so I bloody hope so!), so push back the sofa, get yourself a pint of White Russian (or whatever your weapon of choice is), dim the lights and turn up the volume. Let there be grooves. Let there be guitars. Let there be cheese. Let there be some surprises, some forgotten tunes and some old favourites. Let there be singing. Let there be dancing.
Tell you what: I’ll play a song or two by way of a little intro whilst you’re getting yourself sorted:
I’ve always loved New Year’s Eve more than I loved Christmas.
For me, the two events are very different beasts: Christmas is a time for family, New Year is a time for friends.
Over the past few years, going out on New Year’s Eve has happened less and less frequently, to the point where I know that tonight I will be home alone, having a wee drink or seven, and trying to avoid watching the bloody Hootenanny (which I’m sure is very entertaining, but – recorded in October – it’s the last bastion for lonely folks as the year ends, not something I care to admit to: I’m alone but not lonely, thanks very much).
I’m perfectly happy with this, by the way. I’m in my 50s now, but for much of my 40s I really couldn’t be arsed with going out on New Year’s Eve anymore anyway: it’s too expensive, you have to wait an age to get served at the bar, and generally there’s nowhere to sit (fellow over 40s will appreciate this more than anything else), all the good seats having been snaffled up hours ago by those annoyingly young people and their seemingly unlimited disposable income.
Since I moved to That London just over eleven years ago now, my NYE nights have been predominantly spent alone – one night out in Camden in my ‘Freshers’ year (really enjoyable, but bloody rammed), a couple of nights at friend’s house parties, a house party that Hel and I threw which I wrote about here and indeed here (which, Hel tells me, was ten years ago tonight, which it must be, as Hel is wrong even less frequently than me, if such a thing is possible).
Being at home alone on New Year’s Eve means there’s no peer pressure: I can go to bed whenever I want, drink as much or as little (yeah, right) as I want, and I don’t have to pretend to be impressed or excited by fireworks. Tonight, for example, I will be continuing to unpack following my recent decanting from my flat. (Yes, I have been back almost a month. No, I haven’t finished yet. I’ve had a bad back. And a cold. Not forgetting I am, essentially, a lazy sod.)
What I’m trying to say is that I quite like being at home on New Year’s Eve, and if you are too, then welcome. You’re really not alone.
Of course things were different when I was younger, and I would often be met with bemused looks from friends when I announced that I preferred going out on New Year’s Eve to going out at Christmas.
There’s a few reasons for that; firstly, New Year’s Eve is unburdened by any religious connotations. Secondly, many will have been lounging arojnd at home for a few days, and will emerge, batteries recharged, and frankly desperate to get away from their families. And thirdly, back then there was the promise of a midnight snog.
The occasions where I didn’t get lucky far outweighed those when I did, of course.
I hope this doesn’t come across as creepy or spark a #MeToo movement against my blog, for I was (I hope) always a perfect gentleman – but this song pretty much sums things up:
In case you were wondering, there won’t be an edition of The Chain this week.
When I decided to revive it and moved it back to Wednesdays, I had over-looked one thing: Champions League football.
My team, the mighty Tottenham Hotspur, are back in the competition again this year, so tonight I’ll be chewing my nails watching the game, and will again every time they play until – just to save any of you making the joke – they get knocked out at the end of the group stage again, like they did last year.
Anyway, in the meantime, a tune! I imagine that many people were delighted when they heard that LCD Soundsystem had decided to return from their enforced retirement and start recording and touring again. I’ve listened to the new album and it’s okay, but nothing on it has really leapt out and grabbed me just yet.
So instead, this, from their “Sound of Silver” album, a track I think is probably their finest moment, which given some of the wonderful songs in their back catalogue, is saying something:
Ordinarily, I’m very wary of a band announcing that they’re quitting, and then a couple of years later making another announcement that they’re reforming again.
But when the band in question is LCD Soundsystem, I’m more than happy to cut them some slack.
Here’s the first track I ever heard from their second album, Sound of Silver, a bleepy, throbbing, downbeat classic:
And whilst we’re at resurrecting threads I previously dropped, how about this one?
Anyone who has caught Hot Chip live in the last couple of years (an elite group amongst which I am unable to count myself, but I saw the Glastonbury footage when I got home…from Glastonbury. There was a clash, ok?? Super Furries or Hot Chip – you know which way I’m gonna swing) will have borne witness to the genius that is their version of Broooce’s “Dancing in the Dark”. And now, here it is:
I believe it is obligatory in blogland, having mentioned “Dancing in the Dark” to post the video, which features a pre-Friends Courtney Cox being dragged on stage to dance (badly) with Broooce (also dancing badly). What are the odds of that happening, huh? Here it is: obligation filled.
But wait! What’s that at the end of the Hot Chip version? Isn’t that the sound of one James Murphy and his LCD Soundsystem collective’s finest moments? Why yes, it is, and here’s all 7:37 of the glorious original:
A History of Dubious Taste 