Time

Blyth Power – Stitching In Time
Most bands don’t have even one song about the Wooden Horse and the fall of Troy. Blyth Power have three. This one is my favourite, to the point where I used a snippet of the lyrics as an epigraph to my dissertation way back when (“The Changing Character Of Odysseus in The Iliad and The Odyssey, and The Homeric Question”, fact fans, available at no good bookshops)

Doghorse – Observations On Time Travel
Every word of this song is true.

Smerin’s Anti-social Club – Doctor Who?
Local Bristol funk act take on Ron Grainier’s finest moment, win on points

Sublime – Doin’ Time
Sublime were a great melting pot of punk, hip hop, reggae and the Grateful Dead. Unfortunately they were also rather keen on heroin, meaning that they only ever made two proper albums before the singer OD’d.

Po’ Girl – I Got Time
Po’ Girl are an offshoot of the Be Good Tanyas, and make some lovely rootsy acoustic Americana. The kind of thing I imagine is on the playlist of every independent coffeshop in Portland.

Gillian Welch – Revelator
Gillian Welch also trades in acoustic Americana, but hers is a harsher, more arid take. Some of the songs on the parent album to this track sound straight from the Dustbowl. Laugh laugh laugh.

Hope Of The States – Seconds
A nice bridge from the quiet last couple of songs to the upcoming noisier stuff…

Parts & Labor – Constant Future
This is the title track of their latest album. P&L produce music with an amazing fizzing effervesence – somehow they’ve stumbled on the trick of making noise anthemic and it pushes my buttons in all the right ways. They’d been going for ten years, I discovered and fell in love them this summer, and about a month later they split up. Bastards.

Daft Punk – One More Time
I once spent hours editing a video so that every cut matched with the beats on a Daft Punk track. Drove me mad, but I still like the band

Ted Leo & The Pharmacists – Counting Down The Hours

Secret Machines – 1,000 Seconds
Prog rock is the Millwall of the music world. No one likes it, it doesn’t care,

The Get Up Kids – Ten Minutes
ah, pop punk like they don’t make anymore – quite literally, in The Get Up Kids’ case, as I loved this album and then hated every subsequent record they made. Sometimes, bands should be mayflies.

Luna – 23 Minutes In Brussels
Dean Wareham was in Galaxie 500 before Luna, and that band’s delicate guitar sound is all over this brooding epic.

Mazzy Star – Rhymes Of An Hour
It’s Mazzy Star. Pretty much every track is identical, but it doesn’t matter because they’re identically gorgeous.

Submotion Orchestra – Finest Hour
Dubstep gone all coffee table and jazzy. Reminds me a bit of Lamb. Lovely lovely deep dub bass all over this album, well worth a listen if you like this track.

Killing Joke – Pandemonium (A Thread Of Steel In The Suspension Bridge Of Space & Time Mix)
Bloody ridiculous title for a remix, but it had a tenuous connection to “time” and that was enough for me. Not the usual KJ rantathon, but a nicely slowed down and dubbed up version.

Gram Parsons – In My Hour Of Darkness
Gram & Emmylou duetting on a sweet country lament, begging for help and salvation in the dark times. A month after recording, Parsons was dead and Phil Kaufman was getting ready to steal his body…

hope you like it,

Dan

 

Rachel’s Back to School Mix

 

Following Scott’s lead I opened up my music folder (I’m too old and too PC oriented to get an i-pod) And searched for everything I used to listen to in the late seventies (excluding classical, for a change, though I did listen to it from a very early age). I also ignored stuff I was hearing on Radio two, so Mungo Jerry, The Beatles and Dusty Springfield were also out. I didn’t listen to Jaz until my twenties, so that was out. I assembled a largish collection to whittle from (Kate Bush, Sex Pistols, Bow Wow Wow, The Police, Lena Lovich, The Stranglers, The Jam,) but found a goodly proportion was ska. I took out the non-ska, searched YouTube for a couple of missing essentials and here you are.

01 Madness – Baggy Trousers

A must for all Ska compilations and one that fit the ‘Back to School’ theme very well.

02 The Specials – Too Much, Too Young

I was sixteen. The fun thing about Ska was that I could dress like the lads and nobody cared. I’m so tempted to go out and buy a white blazer again.

03 The Beat – Mirror in the Bathroom

This was the number one underground song in my very Catholic school.

04 Bad Manners – Just a Feeling

A crossover from my taste in punk, Bad Manners were a symbite of the two. Also, one of the ugliest men in the world.

05 The Selecter – On My Radio

A classic.

06 The Skatalites – Guns of navarone

Yeah. My Dad loved the film. There was a new war film out every week, it felt like. Were were kids. We didn’t care.

07 The Lambrettas – Poison Ivy

A cover. The origininal was on the radio all the time. My dad hated this version..

08 Punk Covers – Pink Panther

Another cover. PP was so popular then.

09 Various – SKA top ten

I pulled this from YouTube. Hope that’s allowed. It’s a good mix.

10 The Bodysnatchers – Do Rock Steady

Fond memories of snogging in a club in Redditch. I forget the name. It was over a newsagents shop by the market and they used to do a twenty minute Ska section.

11 The Selecter – Too Much Pressure

I used to play this while revising for my O levels.

12 – Bad Manners – Lorraine

Remember Lorraine Chase. “Nah, Luton Airport”? Nuff said.

13 – The Beat – Tears of a Clown

One of the more mainstream Ska tracks. I think it was an anti-Bee Gees song.

14 The Specials – Ghost Town

Yeah. This was Redditch on a Saturday night.

15 Madness – (Waiting for the) Ghost Train

This was going home from Redditch on a Saturday night.

 

Scott: Back to School

OK, so basically I went through my iTunes library and hunted out any tracks that I would have been listening to when I was still at school. I was surprised by how much stuff I listened to then that I simply don’t own any more. Not many of them have stood the test of time. So no Gene Loves Jezebel, Bolshoi or The Mission from my not-actually-a-goth-but-like-some-of-the-music phase. No Corey Hart, Huey Lewis or Rick Springfield from my American pop/rock period. No Love & Rockets, must have seen them a dozen times.

Nope, all we have is a small selection of bands and songs that actually represent a reasonable cross section of my early teenage album collection.

Charles Bukowski – Introduction. He was one of the first writers that I discovered for myself, rather than reading from the school library or being given for birthdays or Christmas. I read his poetry and fiction and couldn’t get enough of it. This is just the opening couple of minutes from a CD I have of a reading he gave. Seemed like a good way to start.

Ferris Bueller – Roll Call. When I was 15 I saved up enough money to spend my summer holiday in Canada. It was Expo 86 and I had been invited over by a bunch of Canadian girls I had met on a school trip the year before. I stayed with four families across the six weeks. I had a splendid time. I saw this film while I was out there. Three times.

The Cure – In Between Days. Probably the only band from my not-really-a-Goth phase that were worth sticking with into adult life. Pretty much every album they released up to and including Disintegration has a couple of proper classics on it.

Billy Bragg – Greetings to the New Brunette. This was the first song where I really ‘got’ Bragg. I first heard it being played on the radio on the school coach one morning.

The Wedding Present – Kennedy. Thursday night was Indie Night at the Pink Toothbrush in Rayleigh. A mass of sweaty bodies and girls in DM boots. Many a splendid evening was spent there. This was a floor filler every time. Fast forward over 20 years and I am having tea with David Gedge in Brighton talking about a book project. My teenage self would never have believed it.

Echo and the Bunnymen – Thorn of Crowns. I went to junior school with Jason Morgan. His nan lived next door to the school and would sometimes give us orange squash and biscuits on the way home. He did me a mixtape when we were teenagers and it had this song on it. It is properly mental and my favourite thing they’ve done.

The Jesus & Mary Chain – April Skies. A Top 10 hit, I believe, and I seem to recall buying this on 12″ single from Woolworths in Canvey Island.

Kate Bush – Hounds of Love. Another Woolworths purchase. They had a record counter there. The same woman worked on it every day. New albums and singles came out on Thursdays back then and I would come in each week to see what they had in, a pretty good selection as I recall. She’d know the sort of things I’d be after and make sure to point me in their direction. Looking back now she could only have been in her early or mid 20s but seemed much older to me. I knew nothing about Kate Bush when Hounds of Love came out. It was her first album in some time and I had been too young for her previous stuff to have meant anything to me. There was a huge fuss about this at the time and I think I waited till 3 or 4 singles had come out before buying it. Not a typical purchase for me as a 14yo boy.

Lone Justice – Shelter. I think I first heard Lone Justice on Entertainment USA (Jonathan King might have fiddled with boys but he did a hell of a lot to bring new music to the UK) and kinda fell in love with Maria McKee. Still am, a little bit.

The Pursuit of Happiness – She’s So Young. Odd Canadian band that almost became a big MTV success but never quite made it. Their Love Junk album is still a great listen.

Cocteau Twins – Lorelei. Once a month I would go into Woolworths and buy something I had never heard before, a complete gamble. This album was one such purchase. I had heard about the band, knew the critics loved them, but had no idea what they sounded like. It was a complete punt. I had no idea what to expect but I certainly didn’t expect this. Did the same thing with 10,000 Maniacs and Edie Brickell. Pretty good strike rate.

REM – King of Birds. Document was the first REM album I bought. I was 14 (that must have been the year I really started to discover music) and they were a couple of albums away from conquering the world.

Shawn Colvin – Steady On. Colvin worked with Suzanne Vega, who I loved and sings backing vocals on this song. Production on this album is a bit too slick but there are some great songs on here, this is one.

Hall & Oates – Dance on Your Knees. Hall & Oates were the band that introduced me to the idea of a back catalogue. Up till then I just bought new albums and singles. That Woolworths I’ve told you about didn’t have space for anything other than new stuff really, I had to go to Southend for anything more. I had a cassette of their greatest hits, Rock n Soul: Part 1, and that prompted me to check out their earlier stuff which is very different to the pop songs I had heard so far. I rarely listen to them now but I still have a soft spot for them. This was a weird intro track from their Big Bam Boom album.

Talking Heads – And She Was. I saw Stop Making Sense on the telly. It didn’t quite change everything, but it changed a lot for me.

The The – Infected. Matt Johnson did a video for every track on this album. Channel 4 showed them as a mini-movie type thing. Loved it. One of my first jobs after leaving school was in a video editing company and his girlfriend worked there, she had designed their logo. He’d call for her sometimes. I was suitably impressed.

Suzanne Vega – Small Blue Thing. And here is the aforementioned NY songstress. This is the first album I remember actively seeking out on release day. Bought it from Parrot Records in Southend.

They Might Be Giants – She’s An Angel. My kids love this lot now. That makes me very happy.

Throwing Muses – Not Too Soon. My teenage self would also never have believed that I would one day publish a book by Kristin Hersh and have her house-sit for me when I went on holiday. My adult self can’t quite believe it either.

Ferris Bueller -Isms. My kids love this movie now. That also make me very happy.

Dream Academy – Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want. You’ve seen Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, I presume? This plays during the art gallery scene. There was never a soundtrack released and this was my most sought after song for years. Finally managed to download it illegally last year. I will happily pay the band some money for it.

So there you go, a number of blasts from the past. Hope you enjoy some of them.

 

Dan’s The Opposite Of Love

Will You Still Care – The Crocketts. Let’s not kid ourselves, this is only here because it has some spectacular swearing in it, and is therefore BIG and CLEVER

It’s My Own Cheating Heart That Makes Me Cry – Glasvegas. I never quite bought into the Glasvegas hype a couple of years back, but this is a great tune.

Brassneck – The Wedding Present I justify atom truss uni moor?

Creep – TLC Near perfect mid-90s R&B from a group who took the “opposite of love” theme so far one of them burnt down her boyfriend’s house.

Caroline Says II – Lou Reed Laughin’ Lou with a sorry tale of domestic violence. This is not even the most depressing track on its parent album (Berlin)

I Hope You’re Unhappy – Farside. Does what it says on the tin. Ronseal rock.

Crowds – Bauhaus It’s Matt’s fault. You ask an old goth to make a mix about the opposite of love and this is the sort of thing you’re going to end up with, I’m afraid

Valentine’s Day Is Over – Billy Bragg Thought I’d be clever and put the June Tabor / Oysterband cover of this one on the mix, but played it for the first time in ages and remembered it wasn’t very good, so Billy it is.

Ain’t No Love – Dan Penn and No Love – Erykah Badu I think both these artists were on my first lovesongs mix from last year. I do have other records, promise.

Sadness – Radical Dance Faction RDF were a festy crusty act from the early 90s, who played some marvellous dub reggae, and are well worth investigating. If you can even begin to surmount the herculean task of ignoring the lead singer.

A Little Bit Lonesome – Kasey Chambers Proper old fashioned honkytonk. From Australia.

Romeo’s Distress – Christian Death. GOFF GOFF GOFF

Don’t Want To Know If You Are Lonely – Husker Du Did you know the only straight member of Husker Du was also the only one with a flamboyant handlebar moustache? It’s the indie rock version of the ZZ Top beard thing.

Circular Blues – Rev Hammer Oooh, this one is bitter and nasty alright. Get in.

By The Time I Get To Phoenix – Isaac Hayes A great great “woman done me wrong” song. I can imagine it would have been absolutely captivating live.

goodnight

 

Dan’s Free Swim

Hope you all enjoyed this one. I did try to come up with my own theme, but when the best I could do was “songs with lots of swearing in” (I am thirty eight), I decided just to bung down a load of tracks I like instead.

Nile Delta Disco – Transglobal Underground Make the drums come in strong!

Halftime – Nas From “Illmatic”, the best hip hop album ever, simple as that.

Conrad – Jets To Brazil I love the storytelling in this song, and the way you’re left to work out the details. Compassion isn’t a word often used in rock, but this song is drenched in it.

A More Perfect Union – Titus Andronicus Just listening to this makes me feel incredibly patriotic, and I’m not even American. The first track from “The Monitor”, which is my album of the year, no question. An heroically sloppy and epically deranged record which maps growing up in New Jersey and falling out with girls onto an American Civil War metaphor.

Charlie – The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing Victorian music hall punk rock and an account of the evolution debate. What’s not to like?

Peg – Steely Dan Lordy, I must be getting old. I’m listening to Steely Dan. And worse than that, Steely Dan – The Jazz Years. As any fule kno, this was sampled by De La Soul, but it’s surprising just how much of the bright breezy charm of Eye Know is present here

Hoja En Blanco – Amparo Sanchez She’s done a lot of singing with Calexico, but as far as I know this is her debut solo record. In my top ten of the year, easily.

Japan – Plastician Smashing piece of dubstep inspired by my favourite country. OH GOD I WANT TO GO BACK.

Take The Long Way – Po’Girl A Be Good Tanyas offshoot, this is the sort of thing I think of when Americans talk about “downhome”

Boy, You Need The Road – Joolz. You do.

Auditorium – Mos Def In which Slick Rick solves the problem of US – Iraqi relations and addresses the imbalances inherent in any interaction between an occupying power and those being occupied by the simple expedient of doing some rapping. Imagine the money and lives that could have been saved.

Alaoui – Orchestre National de Barbes. Displaced North Africans living in Paris, their live album (En Concert) is great fun. Don’t suppose they’re playing Bristol anytime soon, though.

American Wheeze – 16 Horsepower. If some bloke with a painting hadn’t got to it first, this would have perfectly fitted the American Gothic tag

Good Taste (live) – The Cramps Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Lux Interior. Rest In Peace.

Le Plus Beau – Zebda Left wing French rebel music. With accordions.

Handcuffed To A Fence in Mississippi – Jim White. We’ve all been there, haven’t we?

Omerta / The Vampire Lanois – The Afghan Whigs. One of my favourite tracks by one of my favourite bands. The way this dissolves from slinky and sleazy into a skronking free jazz wigout gets me every time

 

Scott: Free Swim

I sort of made this one up as I went along but really enjoyed it. I hope, as they say, you did too!

Agnes Obel – Falling, Catching. A recent discovery and absolutely delightful. She is Danish but lives and records in Germany. Easily one of my albums of the year and that’s why there are two songs on here.

Amiina – Over and Over Again. I recently saw them play at XOYO in London. They were great but the venue is shit, unspeakably shit. Do not go there. Amiina are Sigur Ros’s string quartet who play all sorts of weird and wonderful instruments.

The Besnard Lakes – Skyscraper Girls. Having lulled you into a false sense of Scandinavian security I hit you with 9 minutes of white noise. I find this band great to write or read to.

Band of Horses – Factory. I love the opening line to this song. Proper poetry like.

The Cardigans – You’re the Storm. This comes from the album Long Gone Before Daylight which is, in my opinion, one of the greatest and darkest pop albums of the past decade. Hugely under-rated and far more to them than that Lovefool song.

Talking Heads – Love-Building on Fire. A golden oldie.

Stina Nordestam – 125. How her songs can be so bleak and so darn catchy at the same time is beyond me.

Soko – Shitty Day. She’s French and was nominated for a Cesar for some movie she was in last year.

Smashing Pumpkins – Mayonaise. Billy Corgan is an odious little shit but his bad did make some wonderful music before they vanished up their collective arsehole.

Shannon McNally and Neal Casal – Pale Moon. I recently saw a photo of McNally and she is stunning. I like this even more now.

Ane Brun – Big in Japan. I could take or leave the original but am quite charmed by this cover version.

Robert Forster – Alone. Ditto.

Rickie Lee Jones – Altar Boy. Another wonderful opening line.

Red House Painters – Shock Me. Another album I like to play while writing.

Oscar Danielson & Emma Nordenstam – En Ganska Lyckard Kvall. She is Stina’s sister. I love the woompwoompwoomp in this song.

Agnes Obel – Brother Sparrow. More from the great Dane.

OP8 – Sand. Howe Gelb and Lisa Germano side-project from some years back. There’s a real Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwook vibe to the whole thing.

No Tomorrow’s Party – The Well. Some bloke created an album of sounscapes inspired by Haruki Murakami novels. Reminds me of David Sylvian. I think you can get the whole thing for free online.

The National – Conversation 16. Almost certainly my album of the year. Stunning stuff.

 

Seasongs

Not sure how successful this one was to be honest. I was going for a mood thing, all glacial and majestic, but suspect I may have ended up simply being repetitive. I would like to apologise to Ocean Rain by Echo & The Bunnymen, which I can only have omitted for reasons of temporary insanity, Cooltide by John Martyn (because if there was one thing this mix needed, it was another twelve minute track), and all the uptempo tracks on my inital trawl through iTunes that got kicked out. Maybe next time, kids.

Six Days At The Bottom Of The Ocean – Explosions In The Sky Remember how my last mix ended with a song from beyond the grave by cancer victim Warren Zevon? This one starts with a number inspired by the sinking of the Kursk and the slow death of the sailors trapped on the seabed. It’s always a right laugh round my house, I can tell you.

Water From The Same Source – Rachel’s I don’t actually know a terrific amount about this group. If I had to assemble a mental checklist, it would go: from Chicago, arty, er, that’s it. Great piece of music, though, from the “systems/layers” album (told you they were arty)

Where Water Flows – Calexico Oh I love Calexico. Their country-mariachi schtick is right up my street and they might just be the best band I’ve ever seen live

Twilight Home – Justin Sullivan The singer with New Model Army (of whom more later). Disregarding his band’s “shirts off, let’s hit each other” image, a few years ago he put out a lovely mellow solo record. This song is a bit like I imagine a bath of warm honey might be (on a similar tip, the latest Ian McDonald novel put me onto the Mellified Man legend, which is just really cool).

Kalypso – Sweet Billy Pilgrim Took me a long time to click with this album (Twice Born Men), but when I did, I really fell for it. They were in The IT Crowd this series as well, but don’t hold it against them.

A Song For Starlit Beaches – Yndi Halda another band I don’t know much about. Picked up their CD from a listening post in HMV Shibuya and really enjoyed it. It’s more epic post rock though isn’t it? By this stage in the mix you must be getting really bored with that stuff.

Watermark – Our Broken Garden Scott – SCANDO ALERT! Ish – they’re from Denmark, and the second act on this mix to be signed to Bella Union….

Restless Water – Tortoise See the comment on Rachel’s. It all applies.

Burial At Sea – Mono Even more epic post rock. Wow, those guys must really like water, hey?

Ocean Rising – New Model Army Justin Sullivan from earlier’s main band. Usually traduced by the music press, when their existence is acknowledged at all, they are celebrating their 30th anniversary this year – or as the t-shirt says, “bringing fury and redemption since 1980″

Neptune City – Death In Vegas Up and on and out. Goodnight

 

Dan’s Lovesongs mix

evening all,

as a break from the onerous task of deciding on a theme for September, I’ll do a breakdown of my last mix…no real unifying theme I’m afraid. You should have seen it round my house when I twigged that Rachel’s mix was chronological. It was like the scene in High Fidelity when John Cusack explains his new LP filing system to Todd Louiso, and Todd’s mouth just drops open as he breathes “no fuckin’ way!”. Anyway, on with the show

Chillout Tent – The Hold Steady – Sex, drugs and rock n roll , all in one song. Just say no, kids.

If Love Was Money – Dan Penn – Brilliant piece of blue eyed soul that I found on a compilation, paid a decent sum for the parent album on eBay and pretty much immediately realised this was far and away the best track  anyway

A Fine Romance – Ella Fitzgerald – ooh, look at me throwing in a bit of jazz early on to prove my credentials….could have picked almost any Ella, but I went for this one as at one stage it was going to bookend the mix with the Arctic Monkeys song of the same name. That idea got dropped, but the song stayed.

(This Is Not A) Love Song – Nouvelle Vague – 80s alternative classics done bossa nova style! Smart idea, but three albums in you can’t help but feel they’re milking it a bit. They do a great version of the Sisters’ “Marian” though

Sweet Avenue – Jets To Brazil – just for the line “this could someday be an anniversary”. Lovely song about the morning after that’s about hope and the future instead of shame and recrimination. I love this band a lot, and if the monthly theme is ever “depressed stroke victim checks into a motel to kill herself” they have a doozy of a song for it

Post To Wire – Richmond Fontaine – PTW is a term used in betting on horseraces. Willy Vlautin, the singer and lyricist, has also written a couple of highly recommended novels set in this milieu of gamblers, downmarket casinos and rundown motels. Plus it’s country music, which I am enjoying more and more as I slide downhill into forty. It’s like cancer – you get to a certain age and it’s just there, waiting.

Blackhawk – Emmylou Harris - see above

Love Knows No Borders – Howe Gelb – and again

No-one’s Gonna Love You – Band Of Horses – Scott likes this as well. Also see above re country / age. I would have hated this when I was nineteen. It was all Fields of the Nephilim round my way then.

Planetary Sit In – Julian Cope – he’s the ArchDrude, you can’t not love him.

Next Lifetime – Erykah Badu – yeah, I can do classy R&B as well. A regular hipster, I am

Lovesick – Gang Starr – and old school too! Never mind the quality, feel the width

Trippin’ On Your Love – The Staple Singers – despite not really being religious I always feel I should like gospel more than I do. I don’t know why, but The Staples are the exception. Wonderful uplifting stuff that I can really get into, despite not having the same invisible friend as them

The Look Of Love – Isaac Hayes – if you weren’t pregnant by the end of this I’m going to be disappointed. And I’m talking to the blokes here

White Love – One Dove – look, it’s got “love” in the title, which qualifies it, right? That, and it being a ten minute swoonathon that is just like great E back in the early 90s. So I’m told.

Keep Me In Your Heart – Warren Zevon – sad one, this. Written after a diagnosis of terminal cancer and featured on a posthumous album. Still, always end on a high note, that’s what I say.

cheers then, see you next month.

 

McLoveSongs – Matt

Love, eh? Fucking, fucking love. It’s all confusion, uncertainty, fear, disappointment, lies, betrayal, bitterness, festering malevolence and ultimately, a murderous desire for recompense. The Scots seem to get this better than anyone. Is it the weather, the diet, the endless rolling miles of heather? I don’t know much about Scots, but I do know they bake exceedingly good love songs.

Fuck It, I Love You – Malcolm Middleton: see? Love is an admission of defeat from the very off!

Pure For – The Beta Band

Working in a Goldmine – Aztec Camera

Did I Say? – Teenage Fanclub: the sun breaks through the clouds and we have a sweet moment of optimism. It can’t last; this is Scotland and the weather’s shite.

I Wear Your Ring – Cocteau Twins: ‘Men are so nice, Men are so useful, He pleases me fine,’ sings Liz. I think. You can never be sure.

Rainbow – Lone Pigeon: the music of a pale and fragile ghost.

Sometimes Always – The Jesus and Mary Chain: the stroppy druggy scruffbags scrubbed up when Hope called by the studio, and they produced this shimmering diamond.

Weightlifting – The Trash Can Sinatras

Bad Boyfriend – Garbage: you can take the girl out of Jockland, but you can’t take Jockland out of the girl.

I Love You, I’m Going to Blow Up Your School – Mogwai: honestly, who needs lyrics with a title this good?

The Buildings Aren’t Going Anywhere – The Zephyrs: about a brief and heartbreaking reunion with a flame who’s moved on in every sense.

All Over the World, Girls Are Dreaming – Jock Scot: sweet, drunken delusion.

Love Detective – Arab Strap: the Strap knows that a lasting relationship can only be built on a solid foundation of mistrust.

Evelyn – De Rosa

I’ve Tried Everything – Eurythmics: but have you tried running him through the neck with a sharpened knitting needle, Annie? No? Works for me.

Regret – The Blue Nile

I Don’t Want to See You – Camera Obscura

And She Would Darken the Memory – The Twilight Sad: listening to The Twilight Sad is like reading social services case notes set to music.

Tomorrow Forever – Angelfish: Shirley’s band before Garbage, kind of rock-star practice, and evidence that she was always a proper miserabilist.

Fuck You, It’s Over – Glasvegas: John Higgs chose this one as his closer as well. It is the perfect full stop.

PS: Gotta say I’m loving this club. I’ve never been much of a joiner, but this is fun. I enjoy making compilations, but the best bit is getting the jiffy bags in the post, wondering what’s inside… Kind of like a birthday, except better because music is always what I want, even when it’s music I don’t much like. Thanks for letting me belong.

 

Lost & Found from Matt

I had fun making this compilation, so thanks for the theme, Scott. I enjoyed recalling songs bought long ago as singles and that are now sealed up in cartons in the attic. Some of them have been hard to find as downloads, and when I have tracked them down, quite a few didn’t live up to the memory. But to me, the ones here sound almost as fresh and glorious today as they did… oh, whenever.

Start by reliving my eighties, which if you squint to minimise the sequin glare, climb over the aircraft-carrier shoulder pads and machete your way through the Big Hair, was a solid and sometimes brilliant decade for music:

I Know Very Well How I Got My Name – Morrissey
Eighties – Killing Joke
Pray for Rain – The Comsat Angels
Pipeline – Johnny Thunders
Asbestos Lead Asbestos – World Domination Enterprises

Days – Television: if Television’s second album had been any other band’s first, it would have been hailed as a masterpiece, but because it followed Marquee Moon it was panned. Days is a fantastic song from a good record.

No Russians in Russia – The Radio Stars: after I’d heard this song – their debut single – on the radio and then seen them blow Eddy and The Hot Rods off the stage at Newcastle City Hall, I was convinced they were going to save my life. They didn’t, but No Russians still gleams.

Police Car – Larry Wallis: John Higgs chose a Pink Fairies song for his compilation. Larry was a Fairy. Police Car made me smile at roughly the same time as No Russians did.

Green Eyes – Hüsker Dü: released in 1985, the same year as Wild Boys. Hüsker Dü had the good grace to call it a day a couple of years later, but Duran Duran just never know when to fuck off, do they?

Coming Right Along – The Posies: back in 1993, this one got buried by the shit storm of Britpop. It has re-emerged intact, and more solid and soulful than an entire album’s worth of Oasis songs.

Tugboat – Galaxie 500: I thought Galaxie 500 were really special – warm, fuzzy, sometimes weird and usually hard to pin down. Then they faded away and kind of reappeared as Luna and the distinctiveness was gone.

Sea Diver – Mott the Hoople: someone peering over my shoulder as I type (nosey twat) tells me Morrissey picked this song as a Desert Island Disc. Morrissey is on this ccmpilation. Twice. Small(ish) world.

Theme from Boat Weirdos – Joe Walsh: an edited version of this was the B-side to Life’s Been Good, his one big chart hit. I spent the summer of 1978 playing it far more than the A-side and then I forgot it… until 2008. When I downloaded it, I was thrilled to discover it was over two minutes longer.

Much of my early teens were spent listening to my big brother’s record collection and pretending to enjoy it, or even just to get it. A lot of listening through gritted teeth, then. But it wasn’t all bad, and these next four left a wonderful and enduring impression:

Miss Shapiro – Phil Manzanera
Watermelon in Easter Hay – Frank Zappa
‘Cause We Ended as Lovers – Jeff Beck
You Know You Know – Mahavishnu Orchestra

And a reprise of the opener, an outtake where we get to HEAR MORRISSEY LAUGH: I Know Very Well How I Got My Note Wrong – Morrissey