Friday Night Music Club

Having finally polished off the six parts of Volume 6 last week to less than rapturous applause, we move swiftly on to Volume 7, and a return to the Indie disco and *gulps* a ‘theme’.

I would imagine that most of you will spot the theme when the first track drops. If you don’t, then I would suggest you’re probably the sort of person who should be out handing out Covid conspiracy and anti-mask leaflets with Piers Corbyn.

I really enjoyed putting this mix together, and had a good old sing-a-long to it when listening back to it to check for ‘quality’ purposes (feedback and training, y’know the sort of thing).

Not that you should take that as me likening it to telephone hold music, far from it: here you’ve got 22 songs crammed into 70 minutes, only two of which dare to outstay their welcome by venturing past the four-minute mark. There’s the usual mix of songs you may have forgotten about, scattered amongst the ones you’ve never heard before, and maybe some you never want to hear again, there’s pop, there’s balls-out rockers (or whatever the female equivalent is….realises that L7 feature, and they literally showed us when they appeared on The Word), there’s a couple of tremendous cover versions. Something for everyone, in other words.

So without further ado – and look: not even a disclaimer this week! (although their are a couple of skips, but you know why that is by now) – here we go:

Friday Night Music Club Vol 7

And here’s the track listing. Look away if you want to avoid spoilers:

• Maxïmo Park – Girls Who Play Guitars
• The Breeders – Cannonball
• Veruca Salt – Seether
• The Runaways – Cherry Bomb
• L7 – Pretend We’re Dead
• PJ Harvey – Dress
• Girls at Our Best! – Getting Nowhere Fast
• Lush – Ladykillers
• The Long Blondes – Separated By Motorways
• The Flatmates – Happy All The Time
• The Pretenders – Middle of the Road
• The Go-Go’s – Can’t Stop the World
• Vanessa Paradis – Be My Baby
• `Voice Of The Beehive – Don’t Call Me Baby
• Dua Lipa – Levitating
• Stereolab – Wow And Flutter
• Belly – Feed The Tree
• Suzanne Vega – Left Of Centre
• The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart – Young Adult Friction
• Asobi Seksu – Never Understand
• Toquiwa – Kennedy
• Pixies – Gigantic

Hope you like!

More soon.

Same Title, Different Song

Been a while since I posted one of these, so, by way of making up for lost time, not two but three songs cut from the same title cloth. And what very different sounding songs these three are indeed.

First up, from their 1990 debut album, Pod, a record cited by Kurt Cobain as being one of his favourites (“The main reason I like [the Breeders] is for their songs, for the way they structure them, which is totally unique, very atmospheric. I wish Kim was allowed to write more songs for the Pixies, because ‘Gigantic‘ is the best Pixies song, and Kim wrote it.” He has a point…), here’s rock’n’roll’s Kim Deal (her twin sister Kelley had not joined at this point), Tanya Donnelly, Josephine Wiggs and Britt Walford (the latter recording under the pseudonym Shannon Doughton for some reason):

The Breeders – Oh!

Well, that’s got the day off to a cheery start, hasn’t it?

No fear, for the second track with the same name is from one of my favourite albums ever, and by a band who I really should post more of sometime.

See, hailing from Bristol long before hailing from Bristol was cool, The Brilliant Corners were one of the…erm…corner stones of my evolution into a fully-fledged Indie Kid. Literate and erudite, telling desperately sad stories of failed and failing relationships, singer Davey Woodward’s delivery mostly monotone, bordering on flat, set to a background of mostly jingly-jangly guitars, it would be oh-so-easy to make comparisons with a certain other band from Manchester. You know who I mean.

But in 1988, they released an album, Somebody Up There Likes Me, where they did something that ‘other’ band would never dare to do: they introduced a brass section. The result is a wonderful album which I own on vinyl having bought it back in the day and which still gets a spin every now and again, over thirty years later, and I still love it; twelve songs, pretty much all of them sounding upbeat and covered in horns, until you listen a little closer and realise the often mournful content of Woodward’s lyrics.

This, the closing track from Side One, is a case in point:

The Brilliant Corners – Oh!

I sense a post featuring more from that album on the horizon.

And finally, to the third song of your trio, and this is much newer, having only been released in July 2021, so no mp3 links for this one; you should go stream or preferably buy it. Hailing from Los Angeles, these are The Linda Lindas and they need to be played loud:

That’s pretty darn fantastic in my book.

You can stream & download it here.

More soon.

Tuesday Short Song

Following on from last week’s post, a song from ex-Pixies bassist Kim Deal’s off-shoot band.

In between the Pixies first splitting up and then (briefly) reforming with the original line-up, Deal formed The Breeders, and they released a couple of ruddy marvellous albums.

I mentioned a while ago that I picked up Felt’s Bubblegum Perfume in a music shop in Haverfordwest, and I first bought this record in the same town, only this time in their branch of Woolworth’s; it cost me 99p and I can see now why the firm went bust – they had no idea of the value of some of their stock.

Not that The Breeders Pod album is particularly rare or valuable, but it is wonderful and worth more than I paid for it.

I mean, it has Kim Deal singing on it waaaaay more than she was ever allowed to on Pixies records. And that alone is utterly impossible to evaluate in financial terms.

Have a listen and tell me I’m wrong – she practically purrs through this little beauty:

The Breeders – Fortunately Gone

More soon.