Halloween Night Music Club

So much for my “no more themed mixes” rule – you didn’t really expect I’d be able to resist doing one for Halloween, did you?

See, there’s so many Halloweur/scary/monsters linked songs (and there’s a clue right there as to the identity o)f one that features this week), I could have made this one at least three times as long, had I been so inclined. But I managed to resist temptaion, and kept it to (just over) an hour – the trimmed ones can make their appearances next year. Or the year after. Or the year after that.

Truth be told, I’m not really a fan of Halloween. The only good thing about it, as far as I can see, is that I can legitimately keep my curtains closed and refuse to answer the door all weekend.

Anyway, here we go with what I hope is not an entirely predictable mix for you all to enjoy whilst stuffing your faces full of the candy you decided not to give to Trick or Treaters, or whilst you’re cleaning the smashed eggs off your front door having ignored them.

I’d recommend turning the lights off, drawing the curtains, lighting some candles and turning it up loud:

Halloween Night Music Club

And here’s your track-listing and sleeve notes. Look away now if you like surprises!

1. John Murphy – In The House – In A Heartbeat

Or, the super spooky music from one of the best British horror movies from the last 20 years: Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later. It beautifully encaspulates the peace and silence which pre-empts all the blood and gore and zombies in a loudQUIETloud kinda way. I don’t profess to be an expert of either band, but it does make me think of Mogwai and Godspeed You! Black Emperor.

In case you’ve never seen it, a) what on earth have you been doing? and b) here’s the trailer, which includes some of those iconic deserted London scenes which were breath-taking at the time (and still are):

The thing I love most about 28 Days Later is that for the first 2/3 of the film, you think it’s just another zombie movie, albeit majesticaly and creatively filmed. But when the last 1/3 kicks in, you realise that’s not what the film is about at all,,,

2. Bauhaus – Bela Lugosi’s Dead

From John to Pete Murphy. I could have filled this mix with goth classics, but in the end plumped for just the one. And if I’m lucky, I’ll have squeezed this in just before SWC completes his wonderfully entertaining countdown of the Top 20 Goth records over at No Badger Required and, since it hasn’t featured yet, I assume crowns this as #1.

This is as intense and moody as hell, slowly building from the intricate drum patterns which sound like flapping bats’ wings, through to the booming darkness of the lyrics: it’s one heck of a record.

Mr Lugosi was unavailable for comment. Because he’s dead.

3. David Bowie – Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)

From the album with the same name, the first after his notoriously influential, but commercially unsuccesful, Berlin trilogy. Apparently, this return to a more commerical sound (!) was inspired by his loathing of Gary Numan, who was viewed as a Bowie rip-off.

4. The Automatic – Monster

A remix of this almost appeared in a recent Friday Night mix, but got dropped at the last minute. Which is lucky, because it’s ideal for this one.

I’ve never actually read an interview with this Cardiff based band to confirm it – Wiki says the lyrics were “…a metaphor for the monster that comes out when people are intoxicated…” – but I definitely heard that it was about when all the boys from the Valleys would descend on the capital city of a Saturday night and cause absolute mayhem.

5. Peaches – Trick or Treat

Extraordinarily for a record by Peaches, I don’t think this contains any actual swears. Sure, there’s innuendo a-plenty – at least that’s what I assume her mention of never going to bed without a piece of raw meat is, anyway. Probably best I slap one of these on it anyway, to be on the safe side:

6. Radiohead – Bodysnatchers

Included for two reasons: i) when I was a kid, the movie Invasion of the Bodysnatchers (the remake, with Donald Sutherland) absolutely scared the crap out of me, and ii) because it’s one of the many tunes where Thom Yorke sounds in tortured pain, which seems appropriate somehow.

7. Miley Cyrus – I Get So Scared

If you’ve not yet succumbed to the charms of Miss Cyrus, then may I direct you to the album this is lifted from, Мiley Cyrus And Her Dead Petz, described in various quarters as experimental, psychedelic, psychedelic pop and space pop, which will come as less of a surprise when you learn that Wayne Coyne and the boys from The Flaming Lips were massive influences on the creative process and feature on the record too. Seriously: check it out. It absolutely changed my perception of her.

Anyway, there’s no need to be scared, Miley; here’s….

8. Bobby ”Boris” Picket & The Crypt Kickers – Monster Mash

Predictable? You betcha. It’s still great though, 50 years since it was first released.

9. Bloc Party – Hunting for Witches

I don’t have much to say about this one, other than it’s obvious why it’s here and it sounds like…well, like Bloc Party.

Actually, I would say that hunting for witches sounds like a very bad idea indeed. I mean, what are you going to do if you catch one? End up in a disappointing sitcom?

Yes, you.

10. Queens Of The Stone Age – Burn The Witch

Ah yes, that’s always an option, I guess.

11. Spinnerette – All Babes Are Wolves

The placing of this, by the former Mrs Josh Homme, is entirely coincidental. Honest. It does provide a rather nice segue into tunes about wolves, mind. Plus, it’s a terrific record, in a quite-a-bit-like-Hole kinda way; a record which was largely and unjustly mostly overlooked when it was released in 2009 and deserves to be revisited.

12. TV On The Radio – Wolf Like Me

Neil! Neil! I remembered it all by myself!

13. Ozzy Osbourne – Bark At The Moon

Another from the ‘entirely predictable/I couldn’t resist’ pile.

Included for two reasons: i) I don’t think, and I’m open to correction, any other single to make the UK chart has the word spewing in it; I’m certain no others have He finds his heaven spewing from the mouth of hell, and ii) these are preceded by perhaps the most ludicrously misplaced Ooh yeah baby! ever committed to vinyl.

Genius, in a bat-biting, ant-snorting kind of way.

14. Super Furry Animals – Let the Wolves Howl at the Moon

Time for a breather before the glorious finale, and it seemed appropriate to follow up a record where the lead singer dressed up as a werewolf (a furry animal, no less) on the cover of Bark at the Moon, with a song by the Super Furry Animals, who aren’t adverse to dressing up as big furry animals themselves, singing about how we should just let Ozzy get on with it. Sort of.

15. Echo & The Bunnymen – The Killing Moon

Not just the last record from the ‘entirely predictable/I couldn’t resist’ pile, but the last record in this mix.

And I need say no more about it than this: magnificent.

Oh, and: more soon.

Question!

When is a holiday, not a holiday?

Answer:

Going away on a four-night break sure sounds like a holiday to me, even if it is with the current holder of the much contested title ‘Mrs Johnson’ and at least one of your kids. I mean, he’s hardly going to try to rustle them all up, now is he?

With the Afghan situation stubbornly refusing to follow Government policy and just sort itself out, and with Taliban leaders surprisingly turning out to not exactly be men-of-their-word, and with Covid cases on the rise and the discovery of a new strain, and with food supply chains crumbling away in front of our very eyes, this would, of course, be a ludicrous time for the Prime Minister to decide to go on holiday.

So, we can all agree: it ain’t no holiday (but it always turns out that way):

Pixies – The Holiday Song

This seems to be a new variant of the standard Government line of defence from criticism: ‘I may not be in work, but I’m not on holiday’, as opposed to ‘I was on holiday but that didn’t stop me working’, which is a fairly close summary of the explanation Foreign Secretary Dominic Raaaaaab for his inaction whilst he was off sunning himself. That and something inexplibably weird about the the sea being “closed”.

Raaaaaaaaaaaab was hauled in front of a foreign affairs select committee where he managed not to answer a single question in almost two hours, as far as I could see. At times, it was almost like he was trying to recreate this old classic:

That said, my favourite moment, which I have been desperately searching for a clip of to no avail, came in an exchange between Raab and Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat. You’ll probably have seen Tugendhat give this emotive speech in the recalled House of Commons last week, after the House was recalled from…erm…holiday:

Anyway, this is how the exchange went on Wednesday:

Tugendhat [reading from the Foreign Office’s principal risk report assessment from 22 July, in a question on why Raab had not acted on it]: ““Peace talks are stalled and US Nato withdrawal is resulting in rapid Taliban advances. This could lead to: fall of cities, collapse of security forces, Taliban return to power, mass displacement and significant humanitarian need. The embassy may need to close if security deteriorates.”

Raab: “I’m sorry, the source of that is….?”

Tugendhat: “It’s your principal risk report.”

Raab: [scrabbling for a document]: Oh…

Working really hard, but not actually bothering to read a month old risk assessment which could have prevented or at least lessened the harm done, the lives lost.

Since then, Raaaaaaaaab has stated that the UK “will not recognise” the Taliban; come on Dim Dom, they’re not hard to recognise: they’re the ones butchering the women who dared to try and better themselves, the children (girls) who dared to go to school, the colleagues who assisted us during the occupation. Much of which could have been avoided if only you had acted.

Truly we are led by donkeys.

Radiohead – Idioteque

TV on the Radio – Happy Idiot

Still, for balance: Tony Blair’s been pretty quiet recently, hasn’t he?

More soon.

Claps, Clicks & Whistles #15

I’ve been umming and ahhing for a while about whether to post this tune here or in my even more infrequent series on how to do a cover version.

See, as I’ve mentioned before, I think if you’re going to do a cover version, you may as well try and do something interesting with it, and that certainly applies to this cover version, so maybe it belongs over there.

But then, it’s so hot dang finger clicking good, it belongs here too.

Aww, who cares? Here it is:

TV On The Radio – Mr Grieves

For the uninitiated, that’s a cover of a Pixies song. Not just any old song, mind. The song which contains the lyric which gave them the title of their simply massive album “Doolittle”:

Pixies – Mr Grieves

More soon.

Late Night Stargazing

Bands names are a minefield.

Some claim their name means nothing, just a couple of words thrown together. Such was the defence of The Soup Dragons. (Oh yeh? And you just happened to throw together two words which just happened to be a character from 1970s animated and shown just before the news series “The Clangers” did you…?)

Some name themselves after literary works. Generally, this seems to be either “A Clockwork Orange” (Heaven 17, Moloko) or “The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy” (Level 42…er…and I’m sure lots of others that I can’t think of right now. Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android”. There is, I kid you not, an estate agent in North London called Hotblack Desiato. I hate estate agents, but props for the name).

Then there’s the bands who place some intellectual worth on their name. Prime amongst these must be The Smiths, apparently chosen as a reaction against all bands who chose complicated named to emphasise their music (are you watching, Orchestral Maneouvres In The Dark? That’s you, that is)

And then there’s TV On The Radio.

Think about those words for a moment.

TV.

On.

The.

Radio.

That’s a hell of a mission statement.

Our music, they are saying, is so good, when you hear our songs on the radio (i.e. rarely), it’ll be like you have pictures shown in front of you.

A hell of a claim, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Last night, I went to see TV On The Radio at The Roundhouse in London. Their claim is not at all misplaced.

But first, a lil back story here that you won’t get in any of the other posts in this section.

Until about 18 months ago, I knew the name TV On The Radio, but knew nothing of them. Then one night round at my friend Neil’s flat, he played this: Wolf Like Me. My ears pricked up. What the fuck was this, and how have I managed to avoid hearing it until now??

This became a recurring joke. Whenever I was at Neil’s, we would drink some and listen to tunes, and he would pop that record on, and at first I would have forgotten who it was, and then ultimately I’d remember who it was, but would play along and ask the same question anyway.

“Who’s this?”

But then, around the turn of the year, there was a tragic loss in Neil’s family: his niece Jasmine died suddenly, inexplicably, unfairly. She was just six years old.

Now Neil is one of the bubbliest, happiest blokes I know, and for a while, as you would expect, that wasn’t the case. The wind was understandably knocked from his sails.

But.

Shortly after that, I saw him being utterly inspirational by picking himself up and doing what he could to raise funds for this charity.

I am genuinely in awe of the man. He makes me proud that I can call him my friend.

And I can count the number of my friends that I feel that way about on one finger.

I would urge you to make me feel a little less insignificant by donating whatever you can afford via that link.

Around the same time, I saw that TV on The Radio were coming to town, and I wanted to do something to make him happy again. So I bought me and Neil tickets.

That gig got cancelled, and rearranged for last night.

In the intervening 8 months, I could quite easily have cribbed up on their back catalogue, but I chose not to. I had a suspicion that seeing them live would be all the more incredible if I knew none of the songs.

This proved to be a well founded suspicion.

Last night I spent 90 minutes pinned to my chair, held in by how fucking brilliant TV On The Radio were. I wish I could be more articulate than that, but fucking brilliant is what they were, so let’s just call it what it was. Fucking Brilliant.

Neil, it seemed and I hope, loved it.

Here’s the song they opened with. This very much sums up what this thread Is about: music you can close your eyes to and just be transported away.

Mission accomplished.

 TV On The Radio – Young Liars