TVV IN 800 SONGS : CELEBRATING 20 YEARS OF BLOGGING (Part Nineteen)

#100: Bill Wells & Aidan Moffat – Glasgow Jubilee

‘In June 2012, before a packed audience at the Barrowlands in Glasgow, it was announced that the winner of the inaugural Scottish Album of The Year Award was ‘Everything’s Getting Older’ by Bill Wells and Aidan Moffat. It was a hugely deserved and popular win as it is a quite extraordinary record, combining the talents of one of our premier jazz pianists with our modern-day indie bard best known for being half of Arab Strap.’ (9 July 2016)

I don’t think there’s any denying that ‘The Copper Top’, a song featured on many previous occasions on the blog, is by far their crowning moment.  I’ve selected another track from the album for this rundown, one that’s NSFW…..

#99: Iggy Pop – The Passenger

Swiss Adam. ICA #183. 6 September 2018.

‘A killer riff, the perfect punk rock ‘n’ roll riff, written by Ricky Gardiner. Iggy, narrator and punk outsider, riding around Mitteleuropa in David Bowie’s car, seeing the city’s ripped backside, the hollow sky and everything else, through the window of the car. Little touches can make such a difference in recordings- note the bell ringing at the start. I read somewhere that The Passenger is Johnny Marr’s favourite song. A song that is both impossibly exciting and as numb as it can be.’

#98: Squeeze – Up The Junction

‘A soap opera story in just over three minutes. The boy about town gets caught out with his trousers down. He can’t cope with the fact that he has to grow up and take responsibility. The woman of his dreams soon moves on and all he has left are bittersweet memories.’ (5 December 2014)

#97: The Hardy Boys – Wonderful Lie

‘The Hardy Boys passed me completely by back in the day. My first time hearing them would have been at one of the Little League nights that were always so much fun – I wouldn’t have known them while the song was being played (this being the pre-Shazam app era), but the full playlists would be posted a few days later. in 2015, a full twenty-six years after its original release, the Berlin-based Firestation Records reissued the single on 12″ vinyl.  I snapped up a copy.  Thankfully, that was the pre-Brexit era when vinyl could be shipped across Europe without incurring penal charges through postage and customs.’ (21 January 2021)

#96: Super Furry Animals – Golden Retriever

Between March and September 2015, The Robster treated us to a fabulous 30-part series looking at all the 45s ever released by Super Furry Animals.  I’m spoiled for choice in this instance, but here goes:-

“For album #6, Super Furry Animals went back to basics. Initially, the plan was to write songs all based around the same unconventional guitar tuning: D-A-D-D-A-D. And while a batch of songs were written to that concept, it was felt to be too limiting over all, so that plan was abandoned. The public’s first taste of the new album  was one of those songs written by Gruff on his acoustic guitar in the D-A-D-D-A-D tuning and has real echoes of the blues about it, not just in the musical structure, but in Gruff’s lyrics referencing the devil and the crossroads. It certainly has a more basic, raw feel to it than the songs on ‘Rings Around The World’, but those amazing backing vocals at the end of the chorus, that escalating “dryyyyyyyyyy” really sets the whole thing off for me. It’s that tinge of brilliance that runs through nearly everything the Furries ever did. As for those lyrics – they’re about Gruff’s girlfriend’s two golden retrievers……”

(13 July 2025)

#95: Robert Forster – When I Was A Young Man

From one of the ICA’s I penned.  #399 on 2 December 2025.

‘Robert looks back on his own life and the paths that led him to become a musician. It’s a song of celebration, but not made with any sort of boastfulness, while the lyrics and tune clearly pay homage to those heroes of his who helped him on the journey.’ *

* kind of what I’m trying to do through all the references in the rundown to those whose contributions to the blog over the decades have been invaluable.

#94: Malcolm Middleton – Choir

Me, again.  well, given how often I’ve tried and failed many times over the years on TVV to try and persuade you all that Malcolm Middleton is a first-rate singer/songwriter, then there’s no way it could come from any guest contributor.

‘One of the saddest and most poignant songs I have in my entire collection.  I don’t think I’ve ever read anything about Malcolm directly having struggles with his mental health, although many of his lyrics do cover feelings of despair and do feel like the work of someone who has personal experience of anxiety attacks, depression and fears of self-harm; perhaps it isn’t him and he is/has been very close to someone in such a situation. This is an astonishingly moving number that was the subject of a reverential cover a couple of years later by King Creosote.’  (ICA #188, 14 September 2018.)

#93: Martin Stephenson & The Daintees – Crocodile Cryer

‘It was through an appearance on a BBC-TV music show that I first saw and heard Martin Stephenson. It was love at first sight and sound. He played a great little instrumental on acoustic guitar called ‘A Tribute to The Late Rev Gary Davis’. He then went to change his guitar for a song to be played with his band The Daintees, at which point his guitar strap gave way and he had to fumble around sorting things out. He gave a sheepish look at the camera, said ‘God Bless’ into his microphone and then strummed the opening notes of “the tale of phoney mourners at a funeral just out for what they can get.” ‘

(14 November 2015; the description of the song is lifted from ICA # 92, penned by Rich Cundill on 2 November 2016)

#92: The Undertones – Get Over You

Another from the class of ’79.

‘I remember putting it on the turntable and being really disappointed in the first few seconds as I thought either my needle was damaged or my speaker was broken (it was still an old-fashioned Dansette record player in those days). Thankfully, it was just the opening riff that blasts away in the background before giving way to a short wolf-whistle clearly delivered by someone who had ambitions to get on a building site…..and then the opening riff comes in at full tilt. It’s Status Quo on speed.  At this point in my life, I had yet to have my heartbroken by a member of the opposite sex…..but I instinctively knew, on hearing this record, that when that particular day came, as inevitably it had to, this was a song I would play, again and again and again (even if only in my head) until the pain went away.’ (14 August 2014)

#91: Leftfield/Halliday – Original

Sonically, I’m in control….and enjoying it.  The one time I specifically featured this, back on 3 August 2015, I ended up warbling on about the different mixes on the CD single and not saying enough about the actual tune other than ‘One of the best bits of dance music ever released.’  I’ll stick by that.

#90: Talking Heads – Pyscho Killer

One of the bands not actually mentioned by Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip in ‘Thou Shalt Always Kill’ , but the sentiment he expresses carries through.  Here’s Echorich from ICA #115 on 6 April 2017.

“The bass line of God. Psycho Killer is a song that I hold close to my heart. It was less than a year since the killing spree of the Son of Sam killer, David Berkowitz when Psycho Killer came out. I lived not 4 blocks from the next to last of his killing scenes at local discoteque, Elephas, in Bayside, Queens. The events of that killing changed my neighborhood for years. Psycho Killer was the darkest song I had ever heard. The motorik influence of the song brings out the detached nature of the song. Its darkness is still powerful 40 years on.”

#89: Hinds – The Club

From one of the ICA’s I penned.  #286 on 1 June 2021.  Written when nobody knew the group was tearing itself asunder, with the isolationism and mental health aspects of dealing with COVID taking a grip.

‘Just the three albums in a five-year period, but each of them being quite different in the way that have been worked on, produced and delivered. There are some days when I prefer the lo-fi and noisy approach of ‘Leave Me Alone’, the 2016 debut when the duel vocals from Carlotta and Ana aren’t always in harmony, and indeed on occasions seem to be embarking on their own semi-private duel for supremacy. Then, there are those days when the most recent album, ‘The Prettiest Curse’ (2020) is given a spin as it never fails to put a smile on my face, thanks to its more pop-friendly and sunnier approach, with some of the lyrics being sung in their native Spanish.

And then there’s the middle album – ‘I Don’t Run’ – which was, in 2018, my introduction to the band. While it doesn’t offer anything truly groundbreaking, it is a fabulous listen from start to end, packed with jaunty upbeat sounding songs which provide cover for a set of lyrics dealing, for the most part, with the downside of falling in love – failed relationships, bitterness, misery, loneliness, revenge and relying on your friends to pull you through.’ (‘The Club’ is from the middle album).

#88: Shop Assistants – Safety Net

The last, and best, of the five Edinburgh mid-80s bands in this rundown whose singers and musicians not only shared rehearsal space, but were often happy enough to moonlight.

‘The musicians who made up what is regarded as ‘classic’ Shop Assistants released just one album and thre singles/EPs in 85/86 before imploding.  Their best song is a tremendous piece of pop which may well be of its time complete with an inexpensive, fuzzbox production,  but it still sounds great. It would be voted into the Peel Festive Fifty at #8 at the end of 1986 and it spent more than four months in the indie charts.’ (5 July 2015)

#87: The Only Ones – Another Girl, Another Planet

‘The Only Ones released their debut 45 in June 1977. They disbanded in March 1981 after a career that had seen six singles and three albums. None of the singles charted while the first two albums reached #56 and #42 respectively in May 78 and March 79. It wouldn’t normally be the sort of stats that get you noticed far less fondly remembered. Except for the fact that one of the flop singles would, in alter years, be acknowledged as a post-punk classic.’ (21 September 2016).

#86: Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five – The Message

‘From 1982. Aptly named, as it is reckoned to be the first hip-hop/rap song that was used to offer a social commentary. Only two of the furious five contributed a vocal – Melle Mel and Duke Bootee.  The entire lyric was posted as part of the ‘Some Songs Are Great Short Stories’  –  the fifth verse, ‘A child is born with no state of mind…..’ is one of the finest bits of songwriting of any kind.’ (24 October 2019).

#85: Happy Mondays – Kinky Afro

‘Tony Wilson once made the claim that Shaun Ryder was a better poet than William Butler Yeats, and that in the fullness of time, he’d come to be regarded every much as talented a genius as Mozart. I do suspect Tony’s tongue, and not for the first time, was parked right into his cheek. But having said that, the opening four lines to ‘Kinky Afro’, in which a dad directly addresses his young offspring, are as good as any representation of a misogynist and unreconstructed man I’ve ever read in my life.’(July 2008)

#84: De La Soul – Eye Know (The Know It All Mix)

One of the signs that I was growing increasingly confident that the blog was doing OK came four months in when, in January 2007, I wrote about De La Soul, beginning to feature music beyond the jingly-jangly stuff that was utlised as a security blanket.  I mentioned previously in the rundown that the whistling from ‘(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay’ would appear in a sample later on in the rundown……

#83: April Showers – Abandon Ship

;April Showers were a short-lived Glaswegian pop duo comprised of Jonathan Bernstein and Beatrice Colin. Releasing their only known single ‘Abandon Ship’ on Big Star, a subsidiary of Chrysalis, in 1984 it quickly gained a cult following due to its sparkling production from Anne Dudley (Art of Noise) and string-heavy arrangements. This quality was echoed on B-side ‘Everytime We Say Goodbye’ with the 12-inch featuring the instrumental ‘Abandon Ship Sing-A-Long-A-Wonder Mix’. Both records are now highly collectible. (£50 As much as £900 nowadays for the 12″!!!)’  *.  (15 October 2011)

* now regretting that I didn’t shell out £50 back in 2011…..

#82: The Chemical Brothers – Asleep From Day

Twenty ‘Twenty-seven years ago, we were on the cusp of a new millennium. It’s a period which already feels like a lifetime ago but, when you turn to the music, seems to have been just the day before yesterday. It’s a year when I enjoyed albums by Fatboy Slim, Underworld and Basement Jaxx as well spending money on a couple of compilations on the basis of having, via finally at the age of 36 going on a boys-only golf holiday to southern Spain and visiting night clubs.

It was a time when Primal Scream had gone full-on with the hard hitting beats and even The Fall, with ‘Touch Sensitive’, were making dance music of sorts. But my age meant I needed the much comedown music as much as the higher energy stuff, and so what The Chemical Brothers with their masterpiece Surrender offered with their masterpiece ‘Surrender’, seemed perfect.’ (21 January 2019).

#81: Adam Stafford – Shot-down You Summer Wannabees

‘I’ll never tire of shouting out very loudly that Adam Stafford is a musical genius. It’s his misfortune (as such) to have been born in Sunderland and to spend most of his life in Falkirk, instead of one of the great and innovative cities of the world where his talents would have been more readily acknowledged. His music defies any conventional description, with a thin white duke playing his guitar, beat-boxing, crooning and using effect pedals to make sounds unlike anything else that sits here in Villain Towers. In saying that, I’ll quickly add that the live experience always outshines what comes across on vinyl. ‘ (5 April 2023)

 

 

JC