Yeh, I know. Bit too close to Birthday Suit, that title, isn’t it?
Anyway, today is my birthday. *Pause* Thank you.
To mark this anniversary of not being dead yet, I’ve knocked together a playlist of, as it stands, at this moment in time, my favourite songs by, as it stands, at this moment in time, my favourite musical acts. Not that anyone asked me to do it this time, but if you asked me to do this next week, same criteria, then the result would doubtless be different.
There are no real surprises in here, I don’t think. Maybe some of the songs, definitely not the acts. Apart from the absence of the mighty Quo, of course:
So here it is, Merry ChristmâĻ oh wait. Sorry. With less than a week to go, weâre remaining resolutely un-Christmassy this week.
What have I lovingly prepared for you instead? I hear about two of you wonder.
Well, feast your mince pies on this little lot, about which I feel no need to expand upon any further other than to say that, on reflection, they pretty much all originate from a period in my life when, unbelievable as this may sound now, I was considered quite cool.
Oh, and this one is screaming out to be played loud and to be danced and sung-a-long to, in true indie-kid fashion.
That’s right lad, open the door, let the light in and praise be: it’s only ruddy Friday night again!
And so we land at Volume 77, which is actually Volume blah blah blah blah. Heard it all before, right? OK, I’ll skip that bit of the intro then.
What’s on the menu tonight then? Why, the usual mixed bag of trick or treats, of course. We have some classic indie from the likes of Gene and Ash; some not-so-classic-but-still-pretty-ace indie from Semisonic and Sports Team; some classic Goth from Sisters of Mercy; some classic disco from Sister Sledge; some electronica – sparse from The Knife, breathy and funky from One Dove; some classic pop from the likes of BeyoncÊ, Betty Boo, Lady Gaga and Sheila E.; a couple of first time appearances not just in this series but on the blog itself from Biig Piig (no, the i key didn’t get stuck when I was typing that) and Car Seat Headrest (or so I thought, until I realised I’d posted them in a non-Friday night capacity back in January 2022), all lobbed into a great big melting post, stirred and seasoned and served with a garnish of a thoroughly appropriate Country tune by Elle King and a swoonsome cover version by The Dream Academy.
And so Friday Night Music Club enters its 70s, and what screams the 70s more than a gif of Cher and The Osmands strutting their stuff? Nothing, that’s what.
But fear not! Tonight’s mix contains no songs from either artist. though there are a couple of 70s gems in there: 1977 Bowie makes an appearance, there’s an absolute belter from Heads Hands & Feet (from 1975) – and yes, that is Chas from Chas’n’Dave you can hear on backing vocals – and we come mighty close with tracks by The Lambrettas, Piranhas (both from 1980), along with (from the same year) The B-52’s sounding, well, exactly like The B-52’s do, and that’s a good thing, in case you weren’t sure.
Elsewhere, two songs by groups I know nothing about, one of which I stumbled upon when I went down a rabbit-hole on YouTube, searching for what exactly I can’t remember, the other which I have on a compilation album called Girls Go Power Pop!, which, you’ll be surprised to learn is actually a load of blokes with wispy half-grown facial hair and dark glasses, drenched in talc and shrouded in dry ice, doing Kylie cover versions in the style of Fields of the Nephilim. (Not really, it features female acts who made pop records, but man alive I’d pay to watch that Kylie/Fields match-up.)
No real need for any effin’ and jeffin’ warnings this week, although the first tune perhaps should have one, and one of the tunes is post-Pogues Shane MacGowan, so lawd only knows what he’s singing about half the time, God Rest his Soul.
Anyway, that’s my word count achieved, fancy a listen?
Give yourself a big pat on the back and have yourself a wee celebratory drinkie, you made it through another week.
And here is you reward: another exclusive mix created especially for you by yours truly.
No sleevenotes this week, in fact, I’ve decided to ditch them altogether going forwards. I figure you’re more likely to be here for the mix rather than whatever I’ve thought to say about each track. Hopefully, this should free me up to write some more; I’ve got rather bored with just three posts per week, as has been the formula for quite a while here.
So anyway, following on from yesterday’s post, this one starts off with a spacey-theme (by which I most definitely do not mean Kevin), before we go a little bit 70s, a little bit goth, and then a string of top indie-disco bangers, finishing off with one of my favourite ever records, the title track from a film I’ve never seen (because I remember it getting absolutely slated when it came out, but which seems to have had a bit of a critical reappraisal recently, so maybe one day I’ll give it a go).
Long time readers may recall that when I first started preparing and posting these mixes, they were considerably longer than the round-about-an-hour ones I do now.
The change to shorter mixes came about after Swiss Adam of Bagging Area fame diplomatically suggested the mixes were too long, people don’t have time to engage for five or six hours at a time, and I think he was absolutely spot-on.
So, you’ll recall I revisited the previous mixes split them down and spiced them up a bit, making them shorter and closer to the requisite 60 minute mark. The only exception was Volume 3, which was posted on Christmas Day 2020, the covid Christmas that never was; I resolutely refused to include any Christmas songs at all in it, hence it being titled “Friday Night No Christmas Music Club”. I’ve never returned to split this one down, as it doesn’t really represent where we are today. Also, I don’t think any of us, particularly those who lost loved ones due to covid, want to be reminded of those days. I’ll never revisit that one, and have deleted the mix from my hard drive so that I can’t. In fact, unless anyone downloaded it from Soundcloud, it doesn’t exist anymore.
Anyway, whilst I was on hiatus, I was tidying up my iTunes and realised that I hadn’t revisted and broken down Vol 5. And so that’s what I’ll be posting for the next four weeks: Vol 5 split into 4 hour-long mixes, the running orders tweaked, some tunes dropped, and a whole load more added to make each one into a round-a-bout 60 minute mix.
So, this time around, 15 songs, one cover version, it’s a little bit 80s, a little bit rock, a little bit 90s and – brace yourself – at least three that were released after the year 2000.
Strap yourselves in for another trip down memory lane, and off we go:
Here’s the tracklisting (which I didn’t include first time around) and, if I can think of anything interesting or amusing to say about them between now (Monday) and Friday, sleevenotes too:
R.E.M. – Daysleeper
David Bowie – Oh! You Pretty Things
Johnny Cash – The Man Comes Around
Madonna – Like A Prayer (Remix)
Beats International – Dub Be Good To Me
Chaka Khan – I Feel For You
Black Grape – Reverend Black Grape
The Chemical Brothers – The Darkness That You Fear
The Darkness – One Way Ticket
AC/DC – It’ s A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock’ N’ Roll)
Kiss – I Was Made for Lovin’ You
Puffy AmiYumi – Call Me What You Like
Ash – Does Your Mother Know?
The Vaccines – If You Wanna
Arctic Monkeys – Teddy Picker
(Nope. Couldnât think of anything interesting or amusing. Yellow cards to anyone who makes any “nothing new there” type comments.)
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 formerHÃŧsker DÃŧÂ 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 Jâs. (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.
By which I mean, a Friday Night Music Club mix for Good Friday, as opposed to “At last! A good Friday Night Music Club!”
I’ve “ummed & ahhed” about posting this one to be honest; whilst I am not in the least bit religious – I’m firmly in the “religion is the opium of the people” camp – I do think it’s important to respect those who do have faith, no matter in which God, and I didn’t want this to come across as me taking the mick.
Besides, if I’m going to happily accept some extra days off work at Christmas and Easter, it would be rude to bite The Hand that feeds me.
That said, when you’re trying to find pop songs which in some way relate to the biggest Christian festival of the year, of which there are few, and whilst also trying to stay away from obviously religious songs, of which there are many, one does worry that what I’ve prepared may see disrespectful. Genuinely, it’s not meant to be, and I hope it isn’t.
See, I think I’ve dodged that particular pitfall by trying to make this mix so that it roughly follows the events of Easter weekend (as far as I can remember from junior school), starting a little earlier with Judas’s betrayal of Jesus, through Peter’s repeated denials, the crucifixion and resurrection, with some stuff about chocolate and bunnies thrown in to cover the Saturday, when nothing much happened. Apologies if I have misremembered the ‘true’ sequence. If only someone had written it down in some kind of, I dunno, good book that I could have referred to…
I also wanted to avoid including anything from obvious film or theatre portrayals, so there’s nothing fromAndrew Lloyd-Webber and Tim Rice’s Jesus Christ Superstar or from Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Oh ok, there is a teensy bit of Life of Brian in there, but don’t fret, it’s not Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.
For those of you pondering Dylan’s inclusion, he’s in there for two reasons: firstly, the song title seemed pretty apt, and secondly, because of the infamous moment when someone shouted “Judas” at him at a gig after he dared to start playing an electric guitar. This of course only makes him the third worst Judas that I’m aware of: there’s the obvious Iscariot chap at #1, and of course Sol Campbell at #2, for leaving Tottenham on a free transfer to go to play for Arsenal. (See, if I was religious, I’d have forgiven him by now.)
Anyway, as I say, I’m honestly not trying to offend with this mix (so there’s no need for an ‘effing and jeffing’ warning this week), rather the idea is to offer up a way that non-Christians can enjoy the weekend’s activities from a musical perspective, and who knows, perhaps even engage in a way they haven’t done for a long time.
The Undertones – More Songs About Chocolate and Girls
The White Stripes – The Denial Twist
Mott the Hoople – Roll Away the Stone
Status Quo – Resurrection
Gabrielle – Rise
The Cardigans – Rise And Shine
Here comes the disclaimer: any skips or jumps are down to the mixing software; any mis-timed mixes are down to me; all record selections are mine.
Oh, and for those of you rolling your eyes at the inclusion of yet another Quo tune, you’d best avoid BBC4 tonight, for it’s Quo night, making today not just a Good Friday but a great one!
A couple of weeks ago, I had the dubious distinction of co-hosting this year’s Christmas Party at work.
This involved me and three others planning and then hosting the event, which got moved to an online virtual party a little more than a week before it was scheduled for, due to the latest Covid strain and the advice to avoid face-to-face meetings unless they were absolutely necessary. This meant a lot of frantic rewriting, but it all went well in the end, with remarkably few technical issues. I’ll maybe write some more about this later.
You won’t be surprised to learn that my main contribution with regards to content was a pop quiz, in the form of a Spot the Intro round. The organisers last year had done one about Christmas Number Ones, so I had planned to do one about Christmas Number Twos, mostly so that I could make a particularly lavatorial joke.
However, you’d be surprised how many records which were #2 in the UK charts on Christmas Day are not particularly Christmassy at all, so it got changed to The NotThe Christmas Number One Quiz, which isn’t a particularly snappy title, I must confess.
I prepared 20 intros of Christmas records and invited the attendees to name the song, the artist, the year it was originally a hit, and what was actually #1 that Christmas.
This allowed we to slip in a few gags when delivering the answers: “That was Coldplay with Christmas Lights, setting the template for the soundtrack to every M&S advert since” and, my favourite, “From 2008, that’s It’s Christmas Time by Status Quo, which was kept off the #1 slot by Alexandra Burke’s Hallelujah. That, and 38 other records.”
Anyway, that put me in the mood for doing a Christmas mix, remembering that this time last year Christmas was cancelled and I posted a very long and defiantly un-Christmassy mix.
My brother is picking me up to go to be with our parents later today, so this mix is intended to be played on the journey over there (you’ve been warned, bruv!), and then when we arrive too. As such it’s geared towards Christmas Eve, travelling home, Santa visiting (and what the randy old dog gets up to when he does) and the hope that this Christmas is better than last year. It’s full of slightly obscure tunes and the occasional cover of a Christmas favourite. And you’ll be relieved to hear that, unlike most of my mixes, it’s only about an hour and a quarter long. There’s only so many jingling bells one can take.
The length doesn’t seem to have effected the occasional skip or jump (my usual disclaimer) but having listened to it through that shouldn’t spoil your enjoyment too much.
And yes, of course The Wedding Present and Status Quo (R.I.P. Rick) make appearances.
I’m having fun guessing at which song my father will try to work out how to turn the volume down a little, and when exactly my mother will ask just what on earth we’re listening to. I reckon if it’s not when Helen Love is covering Merry Christmas (I Don’t Wanna Fight) then it will certainly be when Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo makes his annual appearance. And so we’re back to Christmas #2s.
Helen Love – Merry Christmas (I Don’t Wanna Fight)
The Housemartins – Caravan of Love
Cocteau Twins – Frosty The Snowman
South Park – Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo
The Wedding Present – Step into Christmas
Fountains Of Wayne – I Want An Alien For Christmas
Shonen Knife – Space Christmas
Ash – I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday
Julian Casablancas – I Wish It Was Christmas Today
Status Quo – It’s Christmas Time
Darlene Love – Marshmallow World
Weezer – We Wish You A Merry Christmas
I haven’t had time to prepare anything else to post over the Christmas weekend, but I’ll probably be back before the New Year, so for now I’ll just wish you all a very Merry Christmas.
For quite some time now, I’ve been pondering what it is that is preventing me from posting with the same regularity as I was last year.
I’ve worked it out.
Regular readers will know that I generally sit on a Friday night, have a few drinks and write posts for the next week. But for a while now, I’ve become preoccupied on doing a new mix.
Warning: artist at work excuse incoming.
See, whilst they seem remarkably unpopular, I really enjoy piecing together a long playlist/mix/call it what you will, and that inevitably means a few drafts which don’t quite, to quote Echo & The Bunnymen, cut the mustard.
So, I’ve been working on this mix for some time now, but somehow something always seemed to prevent me from finishing it, be it me tinkering with the running order, or thinking of new tunes to toss in, or some kind of technical calamity, or (more often) listening to it and realising I’ve utterly messed up a mix and I simply can’t bear to have anyone else listen to it.
I’m not going to pretend all of the mixes between tunes here are perfect – there’s at least one which I know isn’t – but I’ve reached the point where it’s close enough to let it go and move on to something else, before I drive myself mad searching for perfection.
So here’s my latest mix, imperfect though it may be; frustrating as it has been, I really like this one, which starts off in the usual way – slowly – before getting into a groove which includes Kings of Leon from before they went stadium and knew how to use a cowbell, a new(ish) track by The Chemical Brothers, an obligatory Soulwax remix, two of the finest female pop stars going: Miley Cyrus & Dua Lipa (not on the same tune, sadly), the occasional hidden ‘joke’ (by which I mean it seemed funny when I first put the songs together, less so now), via Madonna having a short chat with Johnny Cash.
It’s the usual mix of songs you love, songs you’ve forgotten about, and songs which make you think “What the hell has he put this on here for??”. Some might say eclectic, but I couldn’t possibly comment. Think mainly Indie guitar stuff, with a few dance tunes, 80s pop songs and a couple of timeless classics – at least one of which you probably won’t have heard before – thrown in.
As always, no track-listing – I like to imagine your faces when the next song kicks in – but there’s a list of featured artists on the right hand side in case you want to see what you’re letting yourself in for. Which is a treat, obviously. If you desperately need to know what a track is, either Shazam it or, if you’d like to feed my ego, ask me via the Comments at the bottom of this post.
Usual disclaimer: any skips and jumps are down to the mixing software; any mis-timed mixes (and, as I say, there is at least one) is down to me. Either way: Sorry!
One more thing: you may recall that last time out I mentioned that my brother had said he managed to predict what I was going to play next, which annoyed me greatly. No such criticism of the last mix, although he told me he listened to it whilst out on his morning run, so some of the sudden gear changes weren’t helpful. I’ve tried to rectify that this time, with a relatively steady beat and tempo maintained throughout (after you’ve got past the traditional slow start) for those of you who listen to this whilst doing your exercises (not that I really understand what that means). The danger was that it would denigrate into either a Ministry of Sound pumping dance mix or a Top Gear/Best Driving Songs…in the World…Ever! playlist, but I think the song choices just about keep us on the right side of that happening.
Let’s say it starts slowly, gets into a groove, and then has more false endings than a Status Quo single.
I’m a bit annoyed that since I first decided to include it, at least on song here has popped up in an advert – and you know how I feel about them – for burgers, of all things. Rest assured, the advert in question was not the inspiration for the song’s inclusion. You’ll know it when you hear it, I think.
Oh and there are several songs which feature effing and jeffings – “sexual swear words” as Simon Bates used to say at the start of videos – so please avoid if you are easily offended by unfettered vulgarity and sauciness. Look, there’s a Goldie Lookin’ Chain tune which is probably the rudest and most inappropriate (but funny) thing I’ll ever post, so beware.
For a limited time (until I do another one, so y’know, could be months), you can stream or download it via Soundcloud here.
A History of Dubious Taste