It’s Friday, and what’s more for many of us it’s the best kind of Friday – pay day Friday!
Is there a better feeling than having some money in your bank account on a Friday, knowing the world’s your oyster, you can do anything you like (within certain legal parameters) and – and this will come as no surprise – I’m going to suggest that the best thing you can do with your new-found wealth is get some booze, kick back and listen to the latest in our Fridat Night mixes.
So what have we got for you this week? Well we kick of with Bryan Ferry covering Dylan (and, I should hasten to add that I prepared this mix about three days before Jim over at The (new) Vinyl Villain posted this exact song. Call it synchronicity, call it serendipity, call me an out-and-out fibber and a copycat, I don’t care), followed by the holy union of Sparks and Franz Ferdinand aka FFS, Jake Bugg (remember him??), a bit of jingly-jangly late 80s twee indie, some downbeat (but still magnificent) Parklife-era Blur, a bit of Camera Obscura, then we get a bit loud with the likes of Wheatus, Vampire Weekend, Kenickie, The Wedding Present (surprising, eh?) and Faith No More, before we gear-change and go a bit dancey with Kosheen and Hot Cip covering Springsteen and LCD Soundsystem (with a song a very dear Springsteen fan and friend of mine described as “fucking shite” when I flagged it to him – he was wrong, of course) before we round things off, mellowing out a tad with Olympian-era Gene and High Land Hard Rain-period Aztec Camera.
Seriously, what’s not to like?
So let’s crack on, shall we?
Oh, but first, one of these – you can probably guess which tune it relates to:
Off we go then: 17 songs, 61 minutes and 25 seconds of fun for (almost) all the family!
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.
Regular visitors to my Friday night slot (stop it….!) will probably have noticed a few things that I like to do with the mixes I put together and post here (I’m talking the self-contained, meant-to-be-listened-to-as-a-whole mixes, not one of the ones I’ve recently split down into hour-long mixes).
Firstly, I like the first tune to be a definite opener; not necessarily one which sets the tone and style for the rest of the mix, but one which can easily be recognised as a curtain-raiser. See Tonight You Belong To Me by Patience and Prudence from Vol 1; I Dig Rock’n’Roll Music by Peter, Paul & Mary from Vol 2; Rudy, A Message To You by The Specials from Vol 3; Serious Drugs by BMX Bandits from Vol 4; R.E.M.’s Daysleeper from Vol 5…you get the idea.
Secondly, I love placing songs next to each other which shouldn’t really be there, songs which you would never have thought to play alongside each other but which somehow work (I think/hope).
Thirdly, I do love to slip in a tune which makes the listener think: ‘Blimey, I’ve not heard this for ages’ or ‘Cor, I’d forgotten all about this!’ (Not that anyone really says ‘Cor’ or ‘Blimey’ outside of a Carry On film anymore.)
Fourthly, end on something magnificent, just like you would want any gig or DJ set you went to in real life to do. Go out on a high, always leave ’em wanting more etc etc.
You’ll find examples of all four of these character traits on tonight’s brand new shiny mix, so let’s get the admin out of the way and crack right on, shall we?
Admin Part 1: any skips or jumps are down to the mixing software (I counted two when I listened back to this one); any mis-timed mixes are down to me (there’s one that’s a bit clunky here, I’m afraid; all record selections are mine (you’d better believe it, baby).
Admin Part 2: two of the tunes featuring this week contain some effin’ and jeffin’. One of those two contains a lot. Therefore this warning is most definitely required this week:
One of the highlights of the night was, of course, the almost total wipe-out of UKIP as a political presence.
They claim to be a party of traditionalists, so it was nice to see they stuck with their traditions of a) winning absolutely no seats whatsoever, and b) having their leader step down before the final result was in.
Rumour has it that after his press conference announcing his resignation, Nuttall tried to leave incognito via the back door with a blanket over his head, but then realised he might suffer from a vitamin D deficiency as a result.
So farewell to Paul Natalie Nuttall, who will doubtless return to his normal occupation of Poet Laureate, the Premiership’s leading goal-scorer ever, or whatever other bollocks he’s claiming on his CV these days.
Two for the price of one again today at the Alternative Alternative Disco, where often overlooked or just plain forgotten records by Indie acts past and present are dusted down and given an airing.
I’ve mentioned before that I’ve always had a bit of a thing for female fronted Indie bands; if I thought about it, I’d probably say this can be generally be traced back to my childhood love of Blondie and then The Pretenders.
But if I wanted to look specifically at Indie bands, then there’s no doubt we’re talking about The Primitives.
Hailing from Coventry, The Primitives success flared briefly. I first stumbled across them – no surprises here – when listening to John Peel, although truth be told they had already crossed my radar, for I’d seen a photo of Morrissey wearing a t-shirt for their excellent “Stop Killing Me” single (I know have this as a painting, hanging on my living room wall). But it was courtesy of Peel that I first heard one of their records – “Thru The Flowers”, the first record I bought by them.
A few months later, their debut album, the appropriately titled “Lovely” was released, and my love of them was further strengthened when I bought a copy of their album from the local Our Price store, where the chap on the till commended me on my choice. I don’t think that ever happened again, or if it did, I don’t remember it. It’s never as good as the first time.
As well as containing the aforementioned singles and a whole host of other equally, erm, lovely jangly guitar pop jewels, there was the smash hit “Crash”, which peaked at #5 in the UK Chart. It was the first time a band I had championed prior to them having some chart success had a hit, and I felt vindicated.
Their fame was short-lived; they soon usurped (equally briefly) by Transvision Vamp as the peroxide blonde fronted band of choice. The follow-up album, “Pure” had less memorable songs and although a couple of them – today’s choice included – were minor hits, their moment in the sun had gone.
Today’s choices come from the 12″ single released in the wake of “Lovely” and as a precursor to “Pure”; the single itself could easily feature in my fledgling “Clap, Clicks & Whistles” thread (and probably will, in a few months, when hopefully you’ve all forgotten about me posting it here), and the other song was the second track on the B-side of the 12″, and was the song I was thinking of when I got distracted and posted the Inspiral Carpets instead a couple of weeks ago. It’s an absolute belter, despite the decision to alleviate the lovely Tracey Tracey of lead vocals and allow lead guitarist PJ Court have a go instead.
The Primitives reformed back in 2009, and have received some pretty warm reviews for their new material; I was lucky enough to catch them live (for the first time) when they supported The Wedding Present at Koko in Camden in 2010 as part of their tour to celebrate the 21st anniversary of the “Bizarro” album.
I’d heard a few live recordings by them back when they were in their pomp and found them to be a little disappointing, so I approached the gig with more than a little trepidation. I need not have worried, they were great, dashing out much of the “Lovely” album along with others from their not so large back catalogue.
To my eternal shame though, as one late 80s classic ended, just as Tracey announced “We’re going to do one of our new songs now”, I turned to my mate Gary and, in a voice in a lot louder than I had intended, asked “Pint?”
Oh come one, we’ve all thought that at sometime or another when a reformed band makes that mid-gig announcement, haven’t we?
First, I’ll be going to this: Indie Daze so you’ll forgive me if the next part of 1985 doesn’t happen just yet.
Seven bands, five of which I hope to catch. Sorry The Popinjays, but I vaguely remember your name but none of your records so I won’t be rushing to see you. And as for Back to the Planet well, sorry, but I vaguely remember your records and I won’t be rushing to see you.
As for the rest? Well:
Eat were a band I had a bit of a thing for. I even managed to forgive them for their not-very-good-version of the Lovin’ Spoonful’s great “Summer in the City” as they did give us such forgotten pop jewels as this anti-capitalist yelp:
And then, The Primitives. Ahh, The Primitives. I won’t say too much more, for they will feature prominently on these pages soon. But Tracey Tracey, oh my how you helped me through my later teenage years. Most people remember The Primitives for this: Crash
But there was so much more to them than that. Well, actually, not that much more. Though their debut album, the aptly named “Lovely” came with a veritable bucketful of shiny pop tunes likes this:
Then there’s Pop Will Eat Itself, a band that divides me from many of my friends in that I love them and think they were pioneering and ground-breaking and they hate them and think they sound like Sigue Sigue Sputnik (which they don’t). When I was out for my birthday last weekend, I mentioned I was going to see PWEI, half the table turned their lips up, the other half went “What, them that sang Can u Dig It? Ace!”
So, here is that very same, very brilliant “The Warriors” sampling classic:
Although quite how good they’ll be without Clint Mansell who has gone on to bigger, better, more soundtracky things since remains to be seen…
And then there were two.
Well, now regular readers will know and probably be quite sick of my love of The Wedding Present, so there’s no need for me to bang on about them yet again here. Suffice it to say, they are playing Bizarro, their second album proper, in its entirety and hopefully a few more gems from their back catalogue. I saw them a couple of years ago when they toured this on the anniversary of the album’s release and they were, excuse my language (like I’ve apologised before!!), fucking majestic. So I could just post Kennedy here yet again but I’ll plump for one of the non-single album tracks, this glorious, brooding, sinister tale of stalkers written long before stalking was even a thing:
PS – Stella Creasey, I’ll see you in the mosh-pit.
And so on to joint headliners and popular cockney rhyming slang Miles Hunt and The Wonder Stuff. I’m hoping for a Greatest Hits set rather than any of the stuff they’ve recorded since they reformed, and hopefully Miles will get what the day is all about and rejoice in their back catalogue. Again, this is another band who will feature prominently here soon, so I’ll leave you with this corker:
More tomorrow depending on how much my head hurts.
Oh and of course, if you like anything you hear, go buy it. You don’t need me to tell you where to find all of these records, now do you?
Oh, and second: having totally failed to buy a coach + festival ticket on Thursday, Sunday morning is Glastonbury tickets day. Wish me luck folks (or I’ll have nothing to write about here come August 2016)
Ok, so it’s 10 years today since John Peel died. I don’t think I can let that pass without comment.
It’s rare when I hear about someone famous passing on that I feel anything other than indifference. But when Peelie shuffled off this mortal coil, I felt cold. A veritable shiver. The light that would never go out, had.
I’d love to be able to relate some story now about how I met the Great Man and how it changed my life, but I don’t have one, because I never did. But here’s two things:
Once, not long before he died, he asked on his show who it was that did a song that mentioned Brian Rix’s trousers. In his usual slightly befuddled manner, he’d forgotten, and when you have as many tunes rattling around in your head as he did, one’s bound to fall out every now and then. I emailed him (as did many others) and he thanked me (and many others) on air for doing so. This is the song:
Ok so that’s not a great claim to fame. I don’t have anything better than that. But in 1989 I went to the Reading Festival, and on the Saturday John was acting as compere. I remember him reading the football scores out, but insisting on starting with the Scottish results, because they usually get left till the end and nobody really pays attention to them. And this strikes me as being a metaphor for his life’s work: bringing the previously unheard to the attention of the masses.
Yes he played a lot of tosh I wasn’t interested in (I’m looking at you, Bhundu Boys) but for every 10 songs he played, you got at least 2 or 3 that you’d never heard before and wanted to hear some more of.
I could make a really long list of the bands I first heard via Mr Peel. I won’t, but here’s some of them. My life is richer for having them, and the stuff I consequently checked out, in there. Cheers, John!
A History of Dubious Taste 