Friday Night Music Club

It’s only Friday again, and, even though it’s not actually a Bank Holiday weekend, there’s plenty to celebrate, with the Tories taking an absolute shoeing at yesterday’s local election results, losing hundreds of seats across the country.

Sure, these were local elections rather than a General one, so many of these can probably be seen as ‘protest votes’, a fact that did not escape the attention of Conservative candidates in some regions, who resorted to having their party name listed as “Local Conservatives” on the ballot paper, in an effort to distance themselves from the bunch of crooks, wasters and philanderers currently in Government…

…but there’s been so little to be happy rather than angry about for a good while now, tonight’s mix – entirely non-political, in case you were concerned – lands at just the right time.

For tonight sees the posting of the second and final part of the previously-available-as-one-long-mix which I only made available via Soundcloud (an experiment I soon got bored of), and it’s a beauty. There have been some tweaks in the running order since it’s last incarnation, as well as some changes in the songs included, but it gives y’all the chance to shake your booty to some top-notch pop records.

If I may pinch a title from Drew at the much missed Across the Kitchen Table blog: “It’s Friday….Let’s Dance”! (And if dancing on a Friday night is good enough for Drew and The Dude, then it’s good enough for you too):

Here comes the disclaimer: any skips or jumps are down to the mixing software (and there are a few, sorry!); any mis-timed mixes are down to me; all record selections are mine (and this last bit is especially relevant, for when I say “some top-notch pop records” I mean there’s some cheesy-but-great 70s and 80s stuff in this one…I stand by their inclusion, 100%. You trust me by now, right? Right…..???)

Good. Off we go then:

Friday Night Music Club Vol 2.2

And here’s your track-listing (look away now if you want to avoid spoilers):

• Beck – New Pollution
• Lizzo – Juice
• Basement Jaxx – Oh My Gosh
• Lily Allen – Knock ‘Em Out
• Björk – There’s More To Life Than This
• Cansei De Ser Sexy – Alala
• The Nolans – Attention To Me
• Laura Branigan – Self Control
• Phillip Bailey & Phil Collins – Easy Lover
• The Dooleys – Wanted
• Paris Angels – Perfume (All On You)
• Rihanna Feat. Calvin Harris – We Found Love
• Lene – Paper Bag
• Robyn – Dancing On My Own
• All Saints – Pure Shores
• Guys ‘n’ Dolls – There’s A Whole Lot of Loving

Next week: an entirely new, never been heard before mix, you lucky people.

Or, to put it another way: 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

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

Janet Jackson – What Have You Done For Me Lately

Marvin Gaye – Got To Give lt Up

Prince & The Revolution – Girls & Boys

Mary Mary – Shackles (Praise You)

50 Cent – In Da Club

Jungle – Busy Earnin’

Belle & Sebastian – Your Cover’s Blown

Micachu – Golden Phone

Friends – I’m His Girl

Le Tigre – Hot Topic

The B-52’s – 52 Girls

Beck- The New Pollution

Lizzo – Juice

Basement Jaxx – Oh My Gosh

The Nolans – Attention To Me

Cansei De Ser Sexy – Alala

Laura Branigan – Self Control

Phillip Bailey & Phil Collins – Easy Lover

The Dooleys – Wanted

Pulp – Mile End

Paris Angels – Perfume (All On You)

The Juan Maclean – Feel So Good

Rihanna feat. Calvin Harris – We Found Love

Robyn – Dancing On My Own

All Saints – Pure Shores

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.

Get Out of My Head!!

Comedian Frank Skinner tells quite a funny story about a practical joke he used to play on people before he got famous. Frank had found an industrial size bolt; he kept it and when the funfair next came to town, he queued up to go on the Ferris Wheel, bolt in pocket, as Chrissie Hynde almost once said.

As you’ll know if you’ve ever been on one of these, it can take quite a time for the ride to get started, as they have to let the people from the last ride off before allowing the next lot to get on. Consequently, if you’re among the first on, you find yourself slowly moving round, stopping to let the next set of folks on, before moving round one position again. Eventually, you find yourself stationary at the top of the wheel for a time, and it’s at this point that he would implement his joke.

Having smuggled the bolt on, he would surreptitiously drop it onto the floor of the cab so that it made a loud “Clunk”. He’d then bend down, pick it up, look quizzically at it, then up at the mechanics of the machine, keeping one eye on his now terrified co-riders.

He tells it a lot better than I do, admittedly.

I’ve never really been very good at coming up with, or implementing practical jokes. (I may have already told this story, forgive me if I have, I can’t be bothered with trawling through all my old posts to check). The closest I came was at Secondary School when I orchestrated all of the bells throughout the school being hidden during one break-time, the logic being that if the bells couldn’t ring then break couldn’t end. I thought I’d be a hero; instead, we missed one bell which rang to signal it was time to return to lessons, which we then found ourselves trapped in when the bell didn’t go to signify home time. I had to sneak out of the classroom with a bag full of clunking bell-ends to rectify the situation.

A friend of mine in Cardiff told me that he had one which he used to do a lot. I’m not really sure that it qualifies as a practical joke, but it would sure weird me out if he’d done it to me (and I didn’t know him).

He would get into a lift, and when there was just him and one other person in there, he would suddenly start pounding the sides of his head with fists clenched, shouting “Get out of my head!!!”

I mention this just so that I don’t have to mention the word “earworm”, as I don’t want you to think that I only steal ideas from features on BBC 6 Music. However, for the past week or so I’ve had a song stuck in my head that I can’t shift, and which there is no logical reason for it being there.

So I thought I’d pass it on to you lot.

This one:

The Dooleys – Wanted

No need to thank me!

More soon.