Category: Various

I’m a week late with these birthday greetings as it was Thursday 6 February when Chemikal Underground Records turned 30 years of age.  The celebration was low-key, just these few lines via social media.

Thirty years ago today copies of ‘Monica Webster’ started to fly out of a small kitchen on Cartside Street in Glasgow, Scotland. This was the debut single of a fresh-faced new band, The Delgados, and the maiden release of Chemikal Underground, a brand new independent record label. Three decades, many seminal LPs, and a multitude of hangovers later, it seems only right to mark this landmark milestone with a few bits and bobs over the next 12 months. Keep your eyes peeled (sign up to our mailing list) for announcements over the coming weeks…

Those of you who have been following this blog over the years will be well aware that I’m of the view the label is the singular most important thing to have happened to the Scottish music scene in my lifetime.  Things have slowed down a little bit in recent years, but the release of excellent albums from Broken Chanter and Chrysanths during 2024 illustrates their ongoing commitment to working with talented artists.

The recording studio, Chem 19, located on an unassuming industrial estate in Blantyre, a small town some 15 miles south-east of Glasgow, has been the location where some of the best and best-selling music to come out of Scotland in the 21st Century has been and continues to be made.  There are still many chapters to be written in the Chemikal Underground in the years to come.

If you do want to take up the suggestion of signing to the mailing list, the best way would be to head over to the website.  Click here.

In the meantime, I’ve pulled together my own small tribute, with a mix of songs that have been released on the label over the 30 years.  It’s just under an hour long, but if you hang on till exactly the hour mark, you will come across a hidden track.

Enjoy!!!

mp3: Various – Happy 30th Birthday C.U.

Human Don’t Be Angry – H.D.B.A. Theme
Zoey Van Goey – Foxtrot Vandala
De Rosa – All Saints Day
Miaoux Miaoux – It’s The Quick
The Phantom Band – Throwing Bones
Mother and The Addicts – Oh Yeah, You Look Quite Nice
Arab Strap – The Shy Retirer
Emma Pollock – Parks and Recreation
Cha Cha Cohen – A=A
Malcolm Middleton – Loneliness Shines
Lord Cut-Glass – Look After Your Wife
Aidan Moffat and The Best-Ofs – Big Blonde
RM Hubbert – Buckstacy
The Delgados – Everybody Come Down
Bill Wells and Aidan Moffat – The Copper Top
Broken Chanter – So Much For The End Of History (I’m Still Here)

JC

Far too old and unfit these days to hit any nightspots.  But if I close my eyes, I can let my imagination run riot.

mp3: Various – You Have To Know When Something’s Right

Propaganda – P-Machinery
Paul Haig – Heaven Help You Now
New Order – The Perfect Kiss (UK 7″)
Spare Snare – I Have You (Hi-Fi Sean Echoplex Dub)
Yazoo – Don’t Go
Cabaret Voltaire – Sensoria
Chemical Brothers – Hey Boy, Hey Girl (Soulwax Remix Edit)
Simple Minds – Celebrate
Le Tigre – Deceptacon
Bronski Beat & The Knocks (feat. Perfumed Genius) – Smalltown Boy
James – Goldmother (remix)
Leftfield (feat. Toni Halliday) – Original
Soup Dragons – Mother Universe (12″)
Marina Unlimited Orchestra – Wow! (Love Theme From Marina)

Dance away the heartaches…….

JC

A GUEST POSTING by MARTIN ELLIOT

(Our Swedish Correspondent)

Hi Jim,

I almost feel like a broken record, but as tradition now has it – here I am once more with some highlights from the Swedish music year of 2024. Experience telld me I will as usual have overlooked a coupe of great releases, but these are the ones that have shone a bit brighter over at my place. Last year saw me discover a few more electronic acts, and ionnalee/iamamiwhoami had a very active year so I turned this year’s album into an electronic side, and a more “analogue” side.

Let’s start gently with the analogue side of things.

A1. Annika Norlin – Full På Dan

Annika, also known as Hello Saferide when singing in English and Säkert! when in Swedish, released her second album using her real name. She’s becoming more and more quiet for every release and En tid Att Riva Sönder follows the path, lyrics being in the centre. Maybe not so strange as she has now published two books, so writing text has taken up more and more of her interest. This is the album opener, translates to Drunk During Daytime.

A2. Maja Francis – Hello Cowboy

Maja has been here before, a wonderful mixture of Dolly Parton and Kate Bush. Hello Cowboy from the album with the same name is country pop when at its best. Her voice can divide, but man I love it.

A3. Linn Koch-Emmery – Borderline Iconic

Linn released her second full length album, and in interviews she has talked a lot about letting her medication for NPF go and replace them with music. The lyrics on the album are all her own experiences, and opening with the short “A Room Where I Can Scream” you kind of get the picture. The title track Borderline Iconic is a great guitar driven song about (maybe) being bi-polar.

A4. Moto Boy – Satanic Love

From the said to be last album using the Moto Boy moniker, Drown Out The Noise. Unmistakably, Oskar’s falsetto voice over a sweet melody.

A5. Webstrarna – Utomhus (öst)

Webstrarna were originally active in the 90’s with their quirky indie pop. Too pop for the indie kids, too quirky with weird lyrics for the pop audience, they fell somewhat in between. Since a few years back they started to release new music through their YT channel, last year saw them release four songs all called Utomhus (Outside), each with a direction attached – this is east. A slice of post punk funk.

A6. Thåström – Norrut/Söderut

Thåström is in my mind our Nick Cave, a storyteller coming from the late 70’s punk scene and over the years becoming a narrator grounded in blues, a dark and slow form of it. Last year’s album, Somliga Av Oss, is actually a little more hopeful than of late, Thåström singing in a slightly brighter voice and with subjects not always about alienation.

The B-side. Are Swedes Electric?

B1. Video L’Eclipse – Let It Begin (feat. E:Lect)

From the album Begin-Repress-Depart. A band I have not heard of before but came across when reading about the best Swedish synth band of the last 10 years or so – Kite. A bit of dark wave with a synth-riff that almost adds an Italo-disco feel. But it works.

B2. Kite – Losing (feat. Henric de la Cour & Anna von Hausswolff)

Kite has released a number of singles in recent years, 2024 saw the release of Losing / Glassy Eyes and the compilation VII collecting all these singles. As usual, very (melo)dramatic and emotional. I saw Kite play a tiny venue in February where they ended their set with this track, played live for the first time. This year, on February the 1st, they will play a stadium concert in an ice hockey arena, adding ice hockey players, ice skating princesses and ice rink cleaning machines to the show… They never shy away from the extremes!

B3. ionnalee – Keep Me From Dreaming

During December, up to Christmas, ionnalee released a song every second day at her YT channel, totally 12 tracks making up the collection Kronologi 2. Where the original Kronologi was a summary of 10 years as an artist (as iamamiwhoami and ionnalee), Kronologi 2 consists of demos, alternative takes and unreleased songs. This is trademark ionnalee with a instrumental break that goes off a bit…

Saw her play a rather small show with full band in September, she’s surprisingly good live.

B4. iamamiwhoami – Don’t Wait For Me (Daithi remix)

First thing in 2024 under the iamamiwhoami moniker the release of a remix version of the 2022 album Be Here Soon. Same tracks, in the same order, just remixed by different people – and in my eyes a great improvement on the original turning a pretty bleak and slightly boring album into a shimmering piece of dreamy, and partly more clubby, synth-pop.

B5. ionnalee – Innocence Of Sound

In September ionnalee (I told you she was productive!) released the sibling albums Close Your Eyes and Blund, an English and a Swedish version of the same album. If you, as I do, like her music you’ll be pleased with this one too – otherwise I guess your finger is lifting the pick-up by now…

B6. Abu Nein – Wir Leben

From their third album Dark Faith, a pretty dark and slightly gloomy piece of electronic goth (they do a Bauhaus cover, Hollow Hills). Not only the title of the album hints towards The Cure, the last track of the album is 11+ minutes that could potentially have made it onto Disintegration or Songs Of A Lost World, they just do it the other way around – vocals from the start and then a long instrumental ending. Fabulous.

I apologise if the sound quality has suffered a bit cramming in this much music on a single LP, value for money! 🙂

Bonus track: ionnalee – Allting Vill Rinna Ut I Sand (Swedish version of Innocence Of Sound, from Blund)

See you in a year!

Martin

JC adds..… As I say every single year, I always look forward to Martin’s end of year round-up as there’s inevitably something in there that is of huge appeal, and this year is no different. These tunes are well worth a listen.

A GUEST POSTING by STEVE McLEAN

mp3: Various – Shakedown 1979

All songs have appeared in the now completed series.  Happy dancing To y’all.

The Specials – Gangsters
The Human League – Empire State Human
The Jam – Strange Town
The Cramps – Human Fly
David Bowie – Boys Keep Swinging
The Selecter – On My Radio
The Fall – Rowche Rumble
The Pretenders – Kid
The Monochrome Set – Eine Symphonie des Grauens
The Undertones – Jimmy Jimmy
Squeeze – Cool For Cats
Magazine – Rhythm Of Cruelty (single version)
Joy Division – Transmission
Blondie – Dreaming
The Police – Roxanne
The B52’s – Planet Claire
Buzzcocks – Promises
Those Naughty Lumps – Iggy Pop’s Jacket
Dead Kennedies – California Über Alles (single version)
Suicide – Dream Baby Dream

Slighty more tunes than the normal mix tape.  And it runs to almost a minute over the usual hour.  But it’s worth it.

JC

JC writes……

I think just about everyone who drops in to this little corner of t’internet knows that I really enjoy and appreciate guest contributions landing in my inbox.  I’m very lucky in having Dirk and The Robster currently contributing regularly, while the quality of the long-running ICA series has long benefitted from the choices offered up from all across the globe.

Today sees another guest contribution, again all the way from Germany.  It’s the first from sk, one of the site’s most frequent visitors and commentators.  I noticed that sk was often complimentary about the monthly mixes, and so I took the opportunity to ask if he’d care to offer up a mix of his own.  I was delighted that he said yes, and even more so when he proposed one which would feature performers who most likely haven’t featured previously on TVV  – I can guarantee that none of their names are included in the index.

He really has done an incredible job.  It’s very different from the sort of predictable rubbish I churn out on a monthly basis. Sixteen tunes extending out slightly over 66 minutes.  I really hope you like it.

sk writes……

I recently wrote to JC asking him to give me a hint if I should be more reserved with my comments. He kindly replied that it wasn’t necessary and asked if I wanted to put together a mix for TVV. This came as a surprise, and I hesitated for a moment before accepting his suggestion.

The beginning wasn’t easy, because since Halloween I’ve mostly been listening to “Alligator Stomp” by the Cramps (and since I saw “Coda” a few days ago, also to “Philosophy of the World” by the Shaggs). Then, just in time before these songs could destroy my brain forever, I came up with the idea of ​​presenting my favourite Algebra Suicide song to the TVV audience. Algebra Suicide is one of the lesser-known bands that means a lot to me. It consisted of Lydia Tomkiw and her husband Don Hedeker. Tomkiw recited her poems to Heideker’s guitar playing, which was probably inspired by the Velvet Underground. There was also a drum machine or synthesizer, which probably led to Algebra Suicide’s music being classified as New Wave. To me, this classification does not seem to be as clear as, for example, Anne Clark, another poet who started her musical career in 1982.

Algebra Suicide has never been featured on TVV before. That gave me the idea to make this a guide. The result was, and this is not at all surprising, a mix with songs from mostly US bands and musicians. They probably rubbed their eyes just as much as I did when they saw the election results recently. I think with Trump and Musk – the real-life equivalent of Sauron and Saruman? – two people who belong together finally found each other. They both have children from three different women, and if you add the number of children of both together, you get a total of 16. Which, oddly enough, is exactly the number of songs I had previously chosen for the mix.

Enjoy the music

mp3: Various – Blame It On Alligator Stomp

Cassandra Jenkins – Hard Drive
Julie Dawson – Silly Little Song
Soccer Mommy – Circle The Drain
Algebra Suicide – Little Dead Bodies
MC 900 feat Jesus – The City Sleeps
Dub Narcotic Sound System – Fuck Shit Up
Arthur Russell – This Is How We Walk On The Moon
Ela Orleans – She Who Could Bin You
Lael Neale – I Am The River
Margaret Glaspy – Female Brain
Lizzy Mercier Descloux – Fire
Kassie Krut – Reckless
Drop Nineteens – My Aquarium (Second Time Around)
Daniel Johnston – Freedom
Meilyr Jones – Strange/Emotional
Karl Blau – Fallin’ Rain

sk

mp3: Various – Kicking Down Your Front Door

The Clash – Guns Of Brixton
Franz Ferdinand – Ulysses
New Order – Dream Attack
Hamish Hawk – Nancy Dearest
Johnny Marr – Easy Money
The Smiths – How Soon Is Now
Pet Shop Boys – Left To My Own Devices
Caribou – Volume
The Wonder Stuff – Don’t Let Me Down, Gently
Stereolab – French Disko
The Cure – Inbetween Days
The Popguns – Indie Rock Goddess
The Sugarcubes – Walkabout
Josef K – Sorry For Laughing
The Fall – Oh! Brother
The Wedding Present – Ringway to Seatac
The Jam – Theme From Batman

I’ve a feeling most of these have featured on previous mixes, but given it’s now the time of year when it’s increasingly cold and dark and we all seek comfort from the things we most love, then I offer no apologies.   The slow and very very very occasional return of Johnny Marr‘s first band continues.   I can assure you that when I listen to them, I don’t sing along nor make any efforts to imagine I’m dancing.

JC

mp3: Various – Oktoberfest 2024

Hifi Sean & David McAlmont :  USB – USC
Barry Adamson – Cut To Black
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Jack The Ripper
The Wannadies – Skin
Ette – Attack of The Glam Soul Cheerleaders
Elvis Costello & The Attractions – Radio Radio
Wire – Practice Makes Perfect
The Twilight Sad – Don’t Move
Joy Division – She’s Lost Control (12″ mix)
The Teardrop Explodes – When I Dream (Peel Session)
Echo & The Bunnymen – All That Jazz
The Ting Tings – Great DJ
Ducks Ltd. – Hollowed Out
Dexy’s Midnight Runners – There There My Dear
Dead Kennedys – Too Drunk To Fuck
Working Men’s Club – A.A.A.A.
Duran Duran – The Chauffeur

A little bit less commercial or obvious this month.  Fingers crossed it meets with your approval.  And no apologies at all for featuring a much loathed band (for many) with the closing song……..

JC

A GUEST POSTING by SWC

Rather fittingly I told JC that I would send him this ICA on (Checks emails) August 14th but like nearly everything I do in life these days, I got delayed. Last week, it took me three hours to nip to the shops to buy a pint of milk. The shop is a fifteen-minute walk away. I wish I was joking about that. Anyway, I’ve hastily added this paragraph at the start as way of a personal apology to JC for my ramshackle tardiness. What follows, is a piece I started writing in June, June! and finished on the first Thursday in September just after San Marino beat Lichtenstein at football.

I love an ICA, I love that sometimes they are of acts that I have never heard of, and I dive into them and bask in some wonderful new music. I also love the fact that sometimes they are of a band that I hate, and I shake my head in amazement that someone has found one song that they think someone might want to listen to, let alone ten. Sometimes I fume for DAYS that some idiot has written an ICA on a band that I love and hasn’t included a track that I would have put at track two on side one, sometimes I agree with the track listing but get angry about the order. About once a month I start an ICA, spend hours listening to music by that act, furiously scribble down notes on them, start to write about it and then leave it unfinished, unloved on the computer. So, in an act of soul cleansing here follows an ICA compiled of ten tracks by ten different acts, each of which I have started an ICA on but never finished.

Side One

1. Venom – Little Simz (2019, Age 101 Music)

I started my ICA on Little Simz in February this year after a four-hour Top Boy binging session. I banged on about getting mugged in a South London by Rotherhithe’s equivalent of the ZT gang and then brought it back to Little Simz (who of course plays Shelley in the series). ‘Venom’ opened that ICA and this is what I wrote about it – “‘Venom’ has lightning fast rapping laced with razor sharp barbs that vent angrily about the patriarchy”. Which I stand by, ‘Venom’ is ace and Little Simz is tremendous and if you don’t listen to her music, you probably should.

2. How Was It For You? – James (1991, Fontana Records)

During lockdown, I did a lot of running around the Devon countryside, one Sunday to spice things up I decided to write an ICA on whatever band was playing when I reached the start of the third mile of my run. On this occasion that was James, and it was ‘How Was It For You?’. My ICA of James currently has fourteen tracks and despite writing a really good first paragraph that talked about how much I hated Andy Diagram and his sodding trumpet, I never whittled the ICA down to a final ten. ‘How Was It For You?’ would have made the final ten though regardless.

3. Leave Home – Chemical Brothers (1995, Virgin Records)

This one started with a story about a bloke my dad knew called ‘Eggy’ who my dad once won a chest freezer off playing cards. It went from there to me and my dad getting a chest freezer in the back of a Sierra Sapphire and him not batting an eyelid about the damage it was doing to the suspension, and then went I went to University he moaned about the weight of my record collection. From there I somehow brought it round to the Chemical Brothers. The ten tracks have been decided, but I only wrote about six of them. Track Three is ‘Leave Home’.

4. Analogue Bubblebath – Aphex Twin (1992, Warp Records)

I still mean to finish this one, after all I only started it in 2018, so it’s early doors to be honest. Alongside Spiritualized and Primal Scream (see side two), the Aphex Twin is the act that I have started an ICA on the most only to delete all the words and start it again because I’d forgotten to include something from the ‘Donkey Rhubarb EP’ or because I’d decided that there was too much drill and bass on it and not enough classical piano. Regardless of what that ICA eventually looks like, it will contain ‘Analogue Bubblebath’.

5. Neighbourhood #1 – Arcade Fire (2004, Merge Records)

Sometimes you write an ICA and sit back and review it and think well its very album one heavy. Welcome then to my thoughts on my unfinished ICA on the Arcade Fire, of which six of the first eight tracks were from ‘Funeral’, which prompted me to realise that I love the debut album by Arcade Fire but remain somewhat nonplussed by the rest of their output. Still, an ICA made up of just the tracks from ‘Funeral’ would still be pretty amazing.

Side Two

1. Feel So Sad (Rhapsodies) – Spiritualized (1992, Dedicated Records)

Nine times I have tried to write a Spiritualized ICA and if you check the comments in the VERY FIRST ICA EVER, you will see me saying “Can I do one on Spiritualized?”. So I’ve been trying to write one since the dinosaurs walked the earth. But it’s just so hard to do. I just can’t do it and leave out this track or that track – and yeah I hear you, I could just do a second volume, but volume one has taken me ten years to decide on four maybe five tracks.

2. The Boxer – Simon & Garfunkel (1964, Columbia Records)

My ICA on Simon & Garfunkel starts with me wittering on about ‘The Boxer’ coming on the radio at about three in the morning as I drove to Heathrow Airport to catch a flight and how the bored sounding radio presenter on BBC Three Counties Radio (or whichever it was) ruined it by talking over the last minute or so of it about the fact that there was no traffic on the roads of Berkshire. The ICA currently has seven tracks on it, most of them singles. I doubt I’ll finish it.

3. Swastika Eyes (Chemical Brothers Mix) – Primal Scream (2000, Creation Records)

I began my ICA on Primal Scream in May 2018. The first attempt was too ‘Screamadelica’ heavy (like six tracks or something). The second one had too little from ‘Screamadelica’. The third one had nothing from ‘Vanishing Point’ on it. The fourth one somehow managed to find room for ‘2013’ and was rubbish. The fifth one was also rubbish, and the sixth one was entirely free of tracks from ‘Screamadelica’ because I was in a grump with Bobby Gillespie in the wake of Martin Duffy’s death. Still am.

4. Blockbuster Night Part One – Run The Jewels (2014, RTJ Records)

You can blame Jeremy Corbyn for this one. Well sort of. I started this ICA after Corbyn lost the 2019 election to Boris. My opening line was “If Jeremy Corbyn had ended his speech on the Other Stage at Glastonbury 2017 by saying “Please welcome Run the Motherfucking Jewels” instead of saying “Vote Labour” or whatever it was he said, he would have walked the election”. Which wouldn’t have aged well knowing what we know now.

5. Sing About me, I’m Dying of Thirst – Kendrick Lamar (2012, Interscope Records)

“I’d love you to do an ICA on Kendrick Lamar” said JC in 2021. Ok, said I. Well, three years later I can tell you that my ICA on Kendrick Lamar ends with ‘Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst’, from his second album. I can’t tell you much more about it than that. Other than the fact that ‘Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst’ should end any Kendrick Lamar ICA.

So there we go – that’s volume one of the unfinished ICA collection. Volume Two will follow in December 2036.

Much Love

swc

A GUEST POSTING by STEVE McLEAN

JC writes…..

This particular piece arrived late on Monday evening, with the author being completely unaware that I’d scheduled an Oasis ICA for the following day. 

I’ve never been someone who turns down any offers to contribute to the blog.  And while I might not agree 100% with Steve on this occasion, he does make some highly interesting observations in his usual idiosyncratic fashion as becoming of someone who does a bit of stand-up comedy (at which point I should mention that his Edinburgh Free Fringe show on ‘Hair Metal’ was very energetic, entertaining and funny).

Ladies and Gentlemen, please put your hands together for the one and only, Mr Steve McLean………….

——-

Hello again Onliners! I’m back and this time I’ve got absolutely nothing to promote. A certain Mancunian band reforming have stirred me from my post-Summer slumber.

I get that Oasis mean a lot to a lot of people. Their crossover appeal did a shed load for converting those who were chart kids into guitar music, which ultimately gave so many other bands good careers…. But fucking hell, people (and I’m really addressing the current crop of British media), some of us thought they were just okay (and some of us secretly thought they were actually dull as shit but couldn’t be arsed having the conversation with the fishing-cap-wearing-bellends who had literally never heard another album and thought that the Verve were a bit leftfield because they sampled some violins).

I saw Oasis in 1994. I was with 500 other people at the King Tuts Tent at the first T in Park. They were young and vibrant and getting loads of press. I was 18, it was the first proper British music movement I’d been around for, so I should have been punching the air. The result for me was ‘Meh’

A lot of people will tell you that the King Tuts Tent was packed that afternoon and that the atmosphere was electric. What they won’t tell you is that it was absolutely pissing down outside (Strathclyde in July) and that The Crash Test fuckingDummies were on the only other stage at the same time. Frankly Yoko Ono performing songs of Sepultura would have seemed amazing in comparison to getting piss wet through and listening to “Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm” Actually I’d fucking love a Yoko Plays Sepultura gig.

DISCLAIMER: I might be allowing a low-level PTSD to cloud my judgement here. For about four weeks in 2013 I was the development producer for the Gallagher funded Supersonic documentary. I was massively miss-sold the project. I was galvanised by the promise of a film comparing the rise of Oasis / Britpop to the rise of New Labour and the political change in the country. Now this may or may not be a true comparison but it is an interesting concept. What the film ended up being was ‘Look how cool Oasis were. Isn’t Noel clever?’ I left the role after a month when it became apparent that it was just going to be a very long promo-video, I had to sit through around 30 live versions of Live Forever (although I did rob a load of Post-It notes from the Ignition Management offices…. At least someone involved in the project still understood what rock’n’roll was about).

So I’ve put together an alternative 90s playlist. Don’t worry I’ve not been a wanker (well not about the playlist, but in other aspects of life I definitely have been a wanker) I’ve not filled it with shit like Aqua or Wigfield (Although Dr Jones was a banger). Depending on who you talk to; the end of Britpop is placed at anywhere between 1996 to 2000, certainly the embers had just about gone out by the time the Strokes turned up in 2001. So from ’94 until the year 2000, here’s the 1990s that I enjoyed.

1994

Cement: Dancing from the Depths of the Fire

I’ve wanged on about Chuck Mosely on this platform before and I was right to do so as he was fucking brilliant. He’s not for those who like singing in tune or singing with timing or singing words that you can always understand but he was still fucking brilliant. Cement were formed after he’d been kicked out of Faith No More and then kicked out of Bad Brains. In defence to Chuck I imagine it was everyone else fault and not him. This song is probably the stand out track from the weaker second Cement album.

Reason why it’s better than Oasis: You can make a strong argument that Chuck Mosely was the first person to rap over hard rock music (in 1984). He probably created a whole new genre that went on to be popularised in the late 90s. People will say that the annoying bloke from the Chili Peppers did it first but if you listen to their first albums the music is weak af and sounds like a cat having a burning piss. By contrast Oasis where the first band to plagiarise a Coca-Cola advert. Nothing says rock’n’roll mega-global-teeth-rotting-business.

1995

Bjork: Army of Me

Everyone went nuts for Bjork‘s first album, Debut. It was bleepy and bloopy and lovely. High street shops played it to death, you’d always hear it in clothes retailers like Next, Gap and The United Colours of Ben Elton. So when Army of Me came out it was a real fuck you to the coffee table set. To be fair she’s warned us what was coming with Play Dead but we didn’t listen. This song is a proper back alley bundle. The Led Zep sampled drums give a platform for a tirade against wasters and stoners (I think intended to be over-privileged-poverty-tourist grunge kids but it’s easy to choose to interpret it as swipe at the Britpop lads… And I do choose to do that). For an extra slice of ‘holy shit!’ check out the Skunk Anansie duet version.

Reason why it’s better than Oasis: When Oasis acted hard they called George Harrison a nipple and swaggered around like wankers in a Spoonies. When Bjork kicked off she was like Muhammad Ali beating the shit out of Ernie Terrell

1996

Tori Amos – Professional Widow (Van Helden remix)

If you ever wonder what a producer does then check out the original version of this song and compare it to this banging dance floor classic. The song is rumoured to be about Courtney Love, not that you’d know from the 20 words actually sung in the remix version.

Now Tori (unfortunate name) was a songwriter who delved deep into world problems, drew on personal experience and produced work that was both challenging and beautiful. Also she never ever once confused the words ‘Our’ and ‘Are’ in a song title and then pretend it was intentional after everyone pointed it out.

Reason why it’s better than Oasis: Tori’s previous band were called Y Kant Tori Read? Which is a shit name but represents a bold attempt at getting noticed. Oasis previous name was Rain which is terrible name and represents the true nature of the band. Wet and miserable (I can actually enjoy rain if I’m in the right mood, unlike Oasis).

1997

Ben Folds Five – The Battle Of Who Could Care Less

The BFF were referred to as the Indie-Elton-Johns, which isn’t a bad title. Like Army of Me above, this is another swipe at MTV wasters. A brave move given the average American rock fan of the time was literally apathetic to apathy. Ben Folds Five were kicking hipsters in the dick before they were referred to a hipsters. Oasis didn’t kick anyone in the dick because it would have involved getting off the sofa and missing an episode of Hollyoaks.

Reason why it’s better than Oasis: Piano! In a world of torrid trudgy bleh guitars, the BFF said ‘no thank you, sir’ and wrote songs that only musicians could play. You might say ‘that’s elitist’ to which I’d reply ‘So you like those 2am versions of Wonderwall that some tedious fucknugget plays on an out-of-tune guitar at parties then?’ To which you’ll almost certainly answer ‘I don’t know, no one invites me to parties anymore’ and I’ll reply ‘that’s because you always bring your fucking out of tune acoustic guitar. You’re literally the problem, Simon.

1998

Air – Sexy Boy

Frenchpop vs Britpop. Sorry Britain, but I’ve always been a collaborator. Do you remember when this came out? All those guitars that were making your ears bleed suddenly gave way to this calm beauty. It must have been what it was like when electropop stole the thunder from New Wave in the early 1980s. I’d say it was Laurie Anderson meets Kraftwerk with ELO tunes but I’d sound like a tosser so I won’t (note to other tossers – being self aware allows you to continue to be a tosser without any life adjustments, Just ask Noel G). The song just breezes in and doesn’t give a fuck that you like dad-rock. The B-side (like all 1990s French pop B-sides) features Francoise Hardy.

Reason why it’s better than Oasis: Fans of Air had to learn how to read French in order to sing along with the lyric sheets. Fans of Oasis had to learn how to read.

1999

Hefner – The Hymn For the Alcohol

Personally I think 1999 might have been the real year Britpop ended. Suede released Head Music and everyone knew that the game was up (Arse Music would have been more apt). It was also the last of so many hurrahs. The last great David Bowie album came out (Hours), The Slim Shady LP took hip hop into the US suburbs, finally seeing off the Beavis and Butthead culture that didn’t realise they were the joke and Kula Shaker were about to fuck off for the best part of a decade.

Darren Hayman is a world class songwriter. This is where the anger really rises in me because by the late 90s Oasis were shitting out absolute gibberish. Even the hardiest Oasis denier can’t argue that they did have something, but where once was aggressive cock-rock was now replaced by flaccid, floppy air-wanks.

For a short while bands like Hefner and Belle and Sebastian put indie music back in the hands of actual indie music fans, but the damage had been done. Hayman is never generic, he rarely goes for the easy rhyme and all of his subjects come from a place of personal connection and unlike so many songwriters of the time he rarely indulges in tabloid sloganeering.

Reason why it’s better than Oasis: Oasis sang Cigarettes and Alcohol and said absolutely nothing about the subject. Hayman wrote separate songs (Hymn for the Cigarettes and Hymn for the Alcohol). He deep dives into both of them, covering everything for drunken sex to the self loathing of returning to addiction. When it comes to cigarettes and alcohol, Oasis are Heat magazine and Hefner are the New York Times.

2000

Grandaddy – Jed’s Other Poem (Beautiful Ground)

And then just as the Britpop fire was going out, Grandaddy came along in the late 90s and showed the world that you didn’t have to be a tedious-upper-middle-class-art-school-Caspian in order to use analogue synths (I am looking at you here, Radiohead). The Sophtware Slump is officially the seventh best album ever released (it’s my list, I’ll put it where I want). Jed the humanoid is a reoccurring robot character in Grandaddy-verse, functioning with the future-the-1970s-predicted vibe. Falsetto vocals and lush keys mean that Grandaddy offer a bit more to the music lover than that the average 90s band. They have a ‘Prepared-to-fail’ attitude and certainly some of their early releases can be hard work. It is this honesty that allows them get in you head.

Reason why it’s better than Oasis: People often say that Grandaddy songs sound like demos and wonder what could be achieved with state of the art production facilities and millionaire producers…. Jesus, you can really see where I’m going with this, make your own punchline up.

I think that’ll do. I’ve not even included anything by Mercury Rev or Cake or Natalie Merchant or Porno for Pyros who all released their finest records in this period. To be fair I was going to include Cake until I heard about what a nasty piece of work the drummer turned out to in in 2014, but even then I was toying with including them and saying ‘Well at least Cake can get arrested in America, unlike Oasis’ but I thought even more me that’s a touch too far.

If you love Oasis, I’m happy for you. If you’ve paid £500 to see them and you’re happy with that then I’m happy for you. I like it when people are happy and things that make them happy should be celebrated. But I feel we are too often dragged into a Mandela Affect when it comes to nostalgia. There were loads, actually hundreds of great bands (and Northern Uproar) that never get a look in anymore because we allow others to do our remembering for us.

Not everyone had the same 1990s and even those that did were possibly the victim of spin. Helen Love put it best ‘All you boys in Ocean Colour Scene, You’ll never sell more singles than Gina G’

STEVE

The title is stolen from a line in the lyric of a song that’s not on the mix.

mp3: Various – Chasin’ The Clouds Away

The Field Mice – September’s Not So Far Away
The Pipettes – ABC
The Jesus and Mary Chain – Guitar Man
Roots Manuva – Witness (1 Hope)
The Horrors – Who Can Say
X Propaganda – Beauty Is Truth
Sparks – Beat The Clock
Soft Cell – Torch
Soulwax – Push It/No Fun (Bootleg)
Prefab Sprout – The King Of Rock’n’Roll
Human League – Open Your Heart
Teenage Fanclub – Sparky’s Dream
The Style Council – Money Go Round
The Delgados – Under Canvas Under Wraps
The Wedding Present – Kennedy
Beastie Boys – Ask For Janice

I’ve long had a wish to finish one of these things off with that Beastie Boys clip.  It gives it a running time of one second over the hour.

JC

SWC/Barry Stubbs over at No Badger Required is currently in the middle of a series about the Olympics.  As you might expect, the posts are very well crafted, packed with personal anecdotes that will inevitably crack a smile from even the most stone-faced person on the planet, always accompanied by a selection of interesting tunes taken from all sorts of genres.

His post about swimming got me thinking that I probably had more than enough tunes on the hard drive to come up with some sort of half-decent ICA.  Feel free to dive in and enjoy, while noting some of them did feature on the post over at NBD.

SIDE A

1. Swim – Madder Rose

Madder Rose, from New York City, released four albums of decent enough indie-pop in the 90s and then, like so many of their peers, reformed a few decades later to take advantage of the fact that so many of their original fans had got to a stage in life when their circumstances meant they had a bit mote disposable income to spend on new music and going to see them play live again after such a long hiatus.

Swim, which was also released as a single in 1993, can be found on the debut album Bring It Down.  I am a bit of a sucker for the way Mary Lorson delivers her vocal in such a dreamy and understated way, and is something of a perfect fit for the tune written by the band’s guitarist, Billy Coté

2. The Blue Line – Out of The Swim

A four-piece band from Falkirk, an industrial town located halfway between Glasgow and Edinburgh with an uncanny ability to produce a ridiculous amount of talented musicians, writers and authors.   This is the opening track from the album Rescue Therapy, released on Last Night From Glasgow in 2022.

3. Swim Until You Can’t See Land – Frightened Rabbit

Thought long and hard about this.  Still find it occasionally difficult to listen to some of the Frightened Rabbit songs in the aftermath of singer Scott Hutchison‘s suicide back in 2018, with this one being down to the fact that having last been seen walking towards a road bridge spanning the Firth of Forth, his body was found on the banks of the river. 

But then again, this is not a song about death/suicide.  Scott, in an interview at the time of the release of the album The Winter of Mixed Drinks (2010) said it was inspired by a Ben Kingsley film, The Wackness.

“There’s a scene in it which Kingsley’s character goes down to the sea and starts swimming and swimming. I think he’s trying to kill himself, but he gets so far and realises he’d rather come back.   ‘Swim Until You Can’t See Land’ was the title I had in my mind before I even started writing the album; I was becoming more and more interested in the idea of a rejection of the habits and behaviour most people see as normal, and in turn embracing a certain madness. It’s about losing your mind in order to reset the mind and the body. Forget what’s gone before and wash it out. This is not necessarily a geographical journey, as the ‘swim’ can involve any activity in which you can lose yourself. It’s a good introduction to the record, as the theme unravels therein.”

4. Swimming Pools (Drank) – Kendrick Lamar

From the 2012 album Good Kid, M.A.A.D City.  As someone else has so eloquently said elsewhere on t’internet,  ‘What sounds like a club anthem is actually an introspective take on the social pressure and self-defeating attitudes that drive people to drink.’ 

It’s an immense piece of music.

5. Nightswimming – R.E.M.

The beautiful and haunting piano-led one from the multi-multi-multi million selling Automatic For The People (1992).  

It’s a lovely piece of music.

SIDE B

1. Swimming Pool, Movie Stars – The Wedding Present

I’m fully expecting to hear this played live this coming Friday night when myself and Rachel make our way down to Brighton to get ourselves along to the 2024 edition of ‘At The Edge Of The Sea’, the annual two-day festival curated by David Gedge at which both his bands will be performing.  The Wedding Present live shows this year have been to commemorate the 30th Anniversary of Watusi….thus the levels of expectation!

2. Let’s Go Swimming – Allo Darlin’

Soft-centred indie-pop of the finest type. From the band’s eponymous debut album, released back in 2010.  They’ve been away for along while, but a new album has been recorded and with a bit of luck it’ll see the light of day before the year is out.

3. Sink Or Swim – The Delgados

Universal Audio was the fifth and final studio album to be released by The Delgados.  It’s hard to believe that it was fully 20 years ago.  I had hoped, when they reformed and played the live shows in 2022/23, that it might somehow lead to new material.  But with two members of the band now immersed in making a living in occupations that have nothing to do with music, I have to accept it was always going to be a forlorn hope.

4. Cloudbusting Lovesong – Swimmer One

Swimmer One were an Edinburgh-based group, formed by Hamish Brown and Andrew Eaton-Lewis in 2002, with Laura Cameron Lewis joining the line-up in 2007, with their music really being an electronica take on indie.  There were two albums and a handful of singles before they called it a day in 2013. 

This is a one half of a double-A released in 2006 single – I don’t have said single, only discovering it years later via t’internet.  It’s a very intriguing take on the Kate Bush song, which then segues into one by The Cure.  Dating from 2006 means it was recorded prior to Laura joining the band, and the female vocal on this occasion is courtesy of Cora Bissett, who has been mentioned before, being the lead singer in Darlingheart and whose theatrical show What Girls Are Made Of was reviewed on the blog back in 2019.

5. Swim For Health – Ballboy

Side A of this ICA finished with a beautiful and haunting ballad…..and likewise Side B. If anything, this one is even more beautiful and haunting.

This was originally released on the Girls Are Better Than Boys EP in 2001, and later included on the album Club Anthems, released the same year. 

JC

It’s the first day of a new month.

mp3: Various – Hey Steady Steady

R.E.M – I’m Gonna DJ
The Strokes – Hard To Explain
Shop Assistants – Safety Net
The Lovely Eggs – Nothing/Everything
Tom Tom Club – Genius Of Love
Tindersticks – City Sickness
The Style Council – Boy Who Cried Wolf
Malcolm Middleton – Monday Night Nothing
The Breeders – Drivin’ On 9
Allo’ Darlin – If Loneliness Was Art
Maximo Park – Girls Who Play Guitars
Sprints – I’m In A Band
English Teacher – The World’s Biggest Paving Slab
Yard Act  – Dream Job
Chumbawamba – Give The Anarchist A Cigarette
Josef K – It’s Kinda Funny
The KLF presents The JAMs – Why Did You Throw Your Giro Away?

The last track is a throwaway inconsequential thing, of about 20 seconds, added on to take the whole thing closer to the hour mark.

JC

A guest posting by Fraser Pettigrew

As I mentioned in a comment on your birthday post, I thought a compilation made up entirely of songs whose titles are years would be a bit of a laugh, so here it is. (JC adds….which I’ve decided to post as a 16-song ICA – oh, and it was myself who selected the image above!).

I confess I looked some of them up on Spotify – not many, but frankly I’d never heard of Phoenix or Azealia Banks, but when I listened to them I thought they were ok and would add a bit of variety. I’ll leave you to be the final judge on that. A couple of the others I knew the artists but not the songs, and the obvious ones were… obvious. Shapeshifter are a New Zealand band btw in case you don’t know them. No idea how well known they are beyond these shores.

I’m not writing any guff for this. Especially after getting nae comments at all on my Yello piece. Pfft! I’m in the huff! Wait til I drop the piece on The Residents – hah! Vengeance will be mine!

Anyway, have fun with this as you see fit!

Cheers

Compilation album – A Century In Music

1901 Phoenix

1963 New Order

1963 Candi Staton

1967 The Auteurs

1969 Boards of Canada

1969 The Stooges

1970 The Stooges

1973 James Blunt Nah, fuck that!

1975 Gene Clark

1977 The Clash

1979 Smashing Pumpkins

1981 Public Image Ltd

1984 David Bowie

1991 Azealia Banks

1999 Prince

2000AD The Rezillos

2001 Shapeshifter

Fraser

A GUEST POST by JONNY THE FRIENDLY LAWYER (aka fiktiv)

JC writes…………………..

This was meant to appear last month, to commemorate the fact that myself and Rachel were heading to Los Angeles, and in particular to Santa Monica, where we were to be the houseguests of Jonny (JTFL aka fiktiv) and Lisa (aka GTFP) for the best part of 2 weeks.  It was a trip that had been long in the planning – it was supposed to have happened a few years ago but the COVID restrictions put paid to that, and then a few other things prevented it being rearranged until June 2024.

My bout of sudden illness and hospitalisation ended our hopes this time around.  We had looked about trying to head over sometime later this summer or perhaps the autumn, but after a couple of transatlantic FaceTime chats, the decision was taken to leave it till next year.

There is no way I want to sit on this ICA for that amount of time.  Jonny put a lot of time and effort into planning things for our time over there – for example (and I only found out about this afterwards) is that the evening of my birthday would be spent at a gig at the famous and historical Greek Theatre in LA, where Elvis Costello was performing…..and the seats were just about the best in the house.  I’ve no doubt that his and Lisa’s ideas for the rest of our time over there would have seen us pop by a few of the neighbourhoods mentioned in the ICA.

Fingers crossed for third time lucky.  Here’s Jonny…….

The Villains are coming to L.A.!

In anticipation of that historic visit here’s a welcome-to-the-coast ICA.  There are way too many great songs about Los Angeles to choose from—the wonderful weather out here, famous streets (Ventura Highway, Blue Jay Way, Mulholland Drive), the culture (Celluloid Heroes, Nobody Walks in LA, Left My Wallet in El Segundo) and so forth.  There are countless songs simply called “Los Angeles.”  So, as to not get lost in the stars, I’m limiting this compilation to tracks titled after particular neighborhoods in the City of Angels.

1.         Santa Monica –  Everclear

I think of myself as a New Yorker, and I don’t see that ever changing.  But I’ve lived the past 33 years in Santa Monica—twice as long as I lived in New York and more than three times longer than I lived in Manhattan.  And I’m here for good.  As Best Coast sing, “We’ve got the ocean, got the babes, got the sun, we’ve got the waves.   Why would you live anywhere else?”

2.        Pacific Palisades –  Ash

The Palisades is a town on the coast immediately north of Santa Monica.  It’s where GTFP went to high school (classmate: Susanna Hoffs), 10 years after Sparks’ Russell Mael was quarterback of the football team.   Not sure how a Northern Irish outfit came to write about the Palisades–it’s like a band from New Jersey singing about Bellshill or something.

3.        Malibu –  Hole

Let’s continue north to the next town.  Everyone’s heard of Malibu, right?  It’s impossibly beautiful, with the mountains on one side of Pacific Coast Highway and shockingly expensive beach homes on the other side.  I imagine that when out-of-state or foreign folks think of California they’re picturing Malibu.

4.        Redondo Beach – Patti Smith

Now we’ll head the other way south down the coast to Redondo, just on the other side of Venice.  I cycle through it a couple of times a week.  I’m on the lookout for dolphins but my riding buddies are keeping track of the surf.  They have more terms for waves than Inuit folks have for snow.  A reggae-ish number with tragic lyrics by the punk high priestess, from way back in 1975.

5.        Hollywood –  Runaways

Folks have been singing songs about Hollywood forever but this one’s my favorite, belted out by an 18-year-old Joan Jett.  Everyone knows what happened to Jett and the Currie sisters and Lita Ford.  But I like that bassist Jackie Fox, who co-wrote the song and sings the pretty background vocals, ditched the band when she was still a teenager, went to college and eventually to Harvard law school (classmate: Barack Obama). 

6.        North Hollywood – Van Hunt

There are distinct parts of Hollywood: Hollywood proper, East, West and North Hollywood (there’s no South Hollywood).  West Hollywood has the clubs (The Whiskey, Troubadour, The Roxy, Viper Room), East Hollywood is racially diverse, except for the massive Scientology facility there. North Hollywood is where it creeps over the Santa Monica mountains into the San Fernando Valley.  The Valley is to L.A. what Jersey is to NYC.  I like how people out here are dedicated to their discreet little patches.  This song by neo soul merchant Van Hunt was in heavy rotation in the house while my son was getting ready to swap the SaMo sunshine for Chicago winters.

7.        Bel Air – Lana Del Rey

I came late to the LDR party but got there in the end thanks to my daughter.   Jane does her best to make sure I don’t only listen to music recorded in 1979.  Bel Air is a super posh residential neighborhood just west of the UCLA campus.  It’s filled with zillionaires with Beyoncé level money.  Some of GTFP’s parents’ friends live there and they threw us a party when we got engaged.  Cost more than our wedding.

8.        Beverly Hills –  Weezer

You probably already know about Beverly Hills, part of the so-called “Platinum Triangle” (with Bel Air and Holmby Hills, where the Playboy Mansion is).  I worked there for a few years.  I didn’t really like it, but at least it has its own distinctive personality.  Weezer‘s song gets the call because it’s got that fat wah-wah solo halfway through.

9.        Laurel Canyon –  The Church

In the 60’s, Laurel Canyon was LA’s bohemian hideout.  It’s where celebrated hippies and freaks like Zappa, Jim Morrison, Joni Mitchell, the Byrds, Gram Parsons and numerous other suede/denim longhairs lived.  It’s smack in the middle of town, in the hilly part of the city separating West Hollywood from the Valley.  Nepomusician Jakob Dylan did a film about it a couple of years ago.  Not a great flick, but a bit of it was shot at TrueTone Records—the best guitar shop in the city.  No idea why an Australian band wrote a song about it in 2014.

10.  Silverlake – Eagles of Death Metal

Silverlake was hipster central when this song was recorded, and EoDM take aim at that crowd pretty mercilessly.  But it used to have a great scene centered around a club called Spaceland, where bands like the Sugarplastic, The 88, Baby Lemonade, Silversun Pickups, Foster the People, the Wondermints and others reinvented power pop.  Hipster ground zero has since shifted east to more affordable places like Eagle Rock and Highland Park, so Silverlake is fun to go to again.

It’s going to be a great visit.

Bonus Track: Best Coast – The Only Place

Bonus video:  As mentioned, there are countless songs titled Los Angeles but, in the end, there’s really only one that counts.  My cover band got to play it at the notorious Viper Room on the Sunset Strip a little while ago.

fiktiv

……I’ve created a mixtape of songs to be found as Track 7 on albums.

Despite the gimmickry, it flows quite well.

mp3: Various – And For The Seventh Month

The Libertines – Up The Bracket (from Up The Bracket)
R.E.M. – Orange Crush (from Green)
Teenage Fanclub – Metal Baby (from Bandwagonesque)
The Sugracubes – Walkabout (from Stick Around For Joy)
New Order – Sub-Culture (from Lowlife)
The Close Lobsters -Foxheads (from Foxheads Stalk This Land)
Wolf Alice – Play The Greatest Hits (from Blue Weekend)
The La’s – Feelin’ (from The La’s)
We Were Promised Jetpacks – Quiet Little Voices (from These Four Walls)
Bar Italia – Yes I Have Eaten So Many Lemons Yes I Am So Bitte (from Tracey Denim)
Beastie Boys – Intergalactic (from Hello Nasty)
International Teachers of Pop – Age Of The Train (from International Teachers of Pop)
Half Man Half Biscuit – Joy Division Oven Gloves (from Achtung Bono)
PJ Harvey – Down By The Water (from To Bring You My Love)
The Twilight Sad  – And She Would Darken The Memory (from Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters)
Edwyn Collins – Gorgeous George (from Gorgeous George)
The Wedding Present – Shatner (from George Best)
The Lucksmiths – There Is A Boy Who Never Goes Out (from Naturaliste)

JC

A GUEST POSTING by STEVE McLEAN

JC writes…..

As previously mentioned, Steve McLean has been a long time friend of the blog, having contributed a few guest postings over the years, including his take on The Last Temptation of Elvis compilation album,  ICAs on Chuck Mosley and Natalie Merchant/10,000 Maniacs, appreciation of the Marc & Lard radio show, and a tribute to musical theatre.

A reminder that he makes a living (in part) from stand-up comedy, and, with the month of August coming around, he and many others will be making his way to Edinburgh in search of an audience.  I’ve been to a couple of Steve’s previous shows and been thoroughly entertained, and, as becoming tradition, I’m giving the blog over to him for a day so that he can plus his new show…… so without further ado, I’ll pass the mic to him.

——-

Hello Internet-ians (that’s people of the internet, not people of the internet only called Ian). It’s that time of the year when I suddenly remember I like writing about music, you know when the Edinburgh fringe is coming up, and I have a show to plug? Seriously though, that whole Fringe thing is just a framing device, so I can spam you with my thoughts on songs I like.

This year I am doing a fucking great show (or it will be great when it’s written, at the moment it’s just a really good idea and even then the word ‘good’ is subjective). I’m presenting the A to Z of 80’s hair rock (not the crap loser stuff like Jane’s Addiction or The Cult but the uber-cool stuff like Warrant and Faster Pussycat).

I grew up in a small, insular place, I was spotty, not very well liked and I absolutely repelled women. BUT! Then I discovered the majestic genius that was Joe Perry and all of that changed. I wore make up, a bandana and ripped jeans. I didn’t repel women anymore! I repelled everyone.

While the dorks were sat on their beds in the dark listening to The Smiths or The Wedding Present, I was rocking out with my headphones on, pretending to be C.C. Deville of Poison. Fucking cool, right?

I’ve often thought that indie music and hair metal have more in common than people realise. Both genres seem to me to be mainly songs about unattainable women sang by people with bad hair that you’d cross the street to avoid. Don’t believe me? Go get your guitar and change the badly played chuggy riffs to badly played feeble strums. QED.

So in the name of building bridges and uniting music communities that probably don’t exist anymore, I present to you an Indie-ish guide to hair metal and pomp rock.

(CONTRACTUAL SMALL PRINT I’m being pretty broadwith my definition of the term Indie. Don’t send me messages saying ‘actuallllly they were on a major label’ or “Aztec Camera were a pop band, not an indie band’ because I’ll just print them out, hang them in the toilet next to the Cease and Desist order I’ve got from Morrissey and laugh when I’m having a dump).

mp3: Luna – Sweet Child Of Mine (Guns’n’Fuck’n’Roses)

Ian Watson of the seminal indie club How Does It Feel To Be Loved introduced me to this. It’s corking, right? I don’t know much about Luna but everything about this song tells me they spent a lot of time at school being relieved of their dinner money during the morning break.

Guns’n’Fuck’n’Roses were once proclaimed to be the most dangerous band in the world, which is weird because their backstage rider contained fresh cottage cheese, organic honey and the catering tables had to be dressed with linen table cloths, NOT PAPER! Nothing says danger like soft cheese and soft cotton. Just like Satan himself would demand.

mp3: Manic Street Preachers – Under My Wheels (Alice Cooper)

Early Manics got lumped in with a lot of late 80’s hair metal. They got a lot of press in RAW and Kerrang! magazines. It was the eyeliner and the Johnny Thunders’ look. They pissed on those chips pretty soon though, going down an NME road that ultimately led to Britpop. Fucking losers.

This is a great Alice Cooper song. Two facts about Alice Cooper that might surprise you – He’s a Republican voter. Imagine the guy who sang a song called Cold Ethyl which is about fucking a dead body, then voting for the so called family values of the GOP. Although the more we find out about Rudy Giullani, that’s probably always been on brand. In the name of political balance I should point out that Jill Biden also has sex with a lifeless body.

Second Alice Cooper Fact (and thanks to swc for the prompt!). He was best friends with Ronnie Corbett.

mp3: Dandy Warhols – Hell’s Bells (ACDC)

This is an ACDC classic (and much loved by Ally McCoist) that’s been given the slacker once-over. The Dandy’s were the kings of art rock cool for about 20 minutes in the late 90s until The Strokes turned up and stole their thunder. You bastards, how could you do that to them? To be fair, they didn’t help themselves with the Vodafone advert.

They also covered Ted Nugent’s Free For All which is a great song lost to history because, well, it’s by Ted Nugent and no one who isn’t regularly molesting farm animals will ever listen to him again. If you’re ever thinking ‘Sure, Ted’s a shitty racist with creepy sex pest overtones but c’mon, he’s a hippy from the 60s and 70s, so his mind is probably strung out on smack, acid and Jack Daniels’ ….Well let me tell, he’s been sober since 1967. So there’s no twisted mind-altering substance that made him who he is, he’s just a cunt.

mp3: Aztec Camera – Jump (Van Halen)

This is fucking amazing song. You know how I know it’s an amazing song? It’s a hair rock pomp tune being played by melodic pop act and it still sounds cracking. Did you know that it has also been covered by Mary Lou Lord and Paul Anka? The reason why it works so well is that it’s not played for laughs, Roddy Frame entirely commits to and it’s lush as fuck.

Van Halen have had an interesting revolving door of singers. Eddie Van Halen fell out with David Lee Roth so hired Sammy Hagar. He than fell out with Hagar so hired Gary Cherone of Extreme (Cherone was just pleased to be there since he now didn’t have to sing More Than Fucking Words every night) He then re-hired Roth, then re-hired Hagar, then re-hired Roth again and fired the bass player Michael Anthony. Basically what I’m saying is ‘Imagine being in a band with David Lee Roth and David Lee Roth turns out not to be the biggest bell-end’.

mp3: The Breeders – Lord Of The Thighs (Aerosmith)

I couldn’t decide between this and REM’s cover of Toys in the Attic to represent America’s Greatest Ever Rock Band (TM), I chose this, really because the more that comes out about Steve Tyler’s frankly fucking awful behavior, the more teenage me wants the songs to be rescued. The uncomfortable-1970s-lyrics-when-listened-through-2024-ears are given a 90s feminist kick in the dick, The song is saved as it becomes a queer sex anthem and everyone forgets about Steven Tyler what he did, and I don’t have to get rid of my Aerosmith records.

There’s a storming live version here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9pqiWjC2Yc

There’s a couple of others that didn’t make the final list including the Lemonheads covering Kiss and another Manics shout (It’s So Easy by Guns’N’Fuck’N’Roses). You know I’m really surprised that the Wedding Present haven’t done a cover of I Don’t Want To Miss a Thing, it feels right up their B-Side / Session street. If you’re reading this, Gedge, buck up.

Belle and Sebastian should have made this list too with something like Legs by ZZ Top. What can I say? I’m an ideas man. Although, a hair metal tribute to C86 seems the next logical step in this.

If you’re at the Edinburgh Fringe then please come to my show. It’s every day (except Tuesdays) at 2.45pm at the Slow Progress cafe (it’s free, although I’ll ask you for a donation at the end. It’s basically indoor busking.

STEVE

JC adds….

As I mentioned earlier, Steve’s shows are always good fun, albeit you better be on your guard for audience participation.  As he says above, it’s part of the Free Fringe and so there’s no stupidly priced admission (+ booking fee!!), and in typical tradition of the buskers, you can just put some money into a hat at the end of the show.

The Slow Progress Cafe is on Blackfriars Street, very handily located just off the Royal Mile in the very centre of the city.  If you’re in Edinburgh during August, you don’t have any excuses to miss out…

It’s the first non-weekend day of a new month.  So, without further ado….

mp3: Various – June’s Tunes

Arab Strap – Allatonceness
Electronic – Feel Every Beat (7″ mix)
Barry Adamson – The Last Words of Sam Cooke
Massive Attack ft. Tracey Thorn – Protection (single version)
The Wedding Present – Dare
Bikini Kill – Reject All American
Ducks Ltd – Hollowed Out
Talking Heads- Crosseyed and Painless
The Streets – Has It Come To This?
Sugababes – Overload
PJ Harvey – Big Exit
Johnny Cash – The Man Comes Around
The Go-Betweens – Bye Bye Pride
Les Negresses Vertes  – I Love Paris
The Clash – Police & Thieves

This is the sound of the summer……

JC

A guest posting by Fraser Pettigrew

For me, one of the most wonderful things about vinyl records is that they constitute a current technology that in essence hasn’t changed in nearly 150 years. Apart from the migration from a wax cylinder onto a flat disc and advances in electronic amplification, the reproduction of sound by means of a needle transmitting vibrations from the physical rotation of an etched groove is the same technology that Thomas Edison patented in 1877. That’s pretty remarkable when you consider how radical our technological evolution has been in most other respects over the same period.

I had never really thought much about the development of different record formats until relatively recently when I spent a year and a half working at New Zealand’s film, TV and radio archive. Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision doesn’t really cover music records in its collection, but I was interested to discover that the origins of the 33 1/3 rpm vinyl LP – as distinct from the 78 rpm disc – actually lie in the development of sound in the movies, and in radio, not in the music industry.

But first, some early history.

It was about ten years after Edison’s patent that the lateral disc first emerged, and a few more years until the end of the century before it evolved as a viable commercial sound format. The 78 rpm disc did not become standard until around the start of WW1 – early discs varied in diameter and rotation speed, from 7 to 12 ½ inches and from 60 to 130 rpm. The Gramophone Company settled on 78 rpm in 1912 simply because it was the average speed of most of the records it had been releasing up to then. It wasn’t until the mid-1920s that 78 rpm became the industry standard.

Even then, electrically powered gramophone players would vary according to the rating of the local power supply. So, in a city with a 50hz AC supply your 78rpm disc would play slower than in a city with a 60hz supply. If you were still using a hand-cranked spring driven gramophone you were at the mercy of all sorts of mechanical malfunction.

Electricity didn’t play a part in the recording process until the mid-1920s. Louis Armstrong’s second wife famously recalled a recording session in 1923 where the young Armstrong and band leader King Oliver played side by side into the large horn that acoustically channelled the sound to the lathe cutting the master disc. King Oliver couldn’t be heard at all in the resultant recording, so Satchmo was made to stand about fifteen feet away for the next take.

mp3: King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band – Dippermouth Blues (1923)

When electricity began to play a part in both recording and amplifying the contents of discs, it was the film industry that took the technology and initiated a development that was the first step towards the vinyl LP that we know and love.

Films had long been accompanied by live musicians, sometimes a single pianist or organist, but also whole ensembles. Filmmakers began commissioning arrangers and composers to create suites of music, scored to complement the action on screen, including sound effects. Clever-clogs Charlie Chaplin composed his own musical accompaniments. Where musicians were too difficult or costly to provide at screenings, the obvious alternative was recorded discs, but the 78rpm disc has one significant drawback here – each 10-inch side can hold barely three minutes of music. The sound man would need to do more flipping than a McDonald’s burger chef.

mp3: Charlie Chaplin (composer) – Afternoon (from ‘City Lights, 1931)

Some short films had used synchronised 78rpm discs to provide sound as early as 1902, but it wasn’t until the development of the Vitaphone system in 1926 that the technique matured to provide sound for full-length features. Vitaphone used 16-inch discs that ran at the slower speed of 331/3 rpm, enabling the sound man to relax and enjoy a fag or two between side changes. Vitaphone was used for numerous films up until 1931, by which time the use of optical soundtrack technology had been perfected.

This proto-talkie history helps to explain how the art of sound mixing and soundtrack direction seemed to emerge almost fully-formed in the earliest years of sound cinema. The way, for example, that Hitchcock was able to use sound in ‘Blackmail’, a film that began production as a silent feature, seems miraculously advanced, but then you can see how filmmakers had been thinking about, if not actually using sound for several years already.

Despite its obvious advantages, it’s strange that the 33 1/3 rpm disc did not immediately find favour in the music industry even as it fell out of favour in the cinema. It continued in use for radio transcription, still often using 16-inch discs, right through until after WW2 when magnetic tape began to displace the large and fragile lacquer discs. Meanwhile the 78 still reigned in the world of music, and was still in use at the beginning of the rock’n’roll era. Early Elvis Presley and Bill Haley 78s will fetch a pretty sum these days.

mp3: Elvis Presley – Heartbreak Hotel (78rpm)

In part, the slow advent of the vinyl 33 can be attributed to the simple barrier of having to replace one universal standard format with another. The 78 rpm gramophone players to be found in consumers’ homes couldn’t play any other sort of record. It’s akin to the change from vinyl to CD that occurred in the late 1980s and 1990s. To play the new format disc you needed to buy an entirely new hi-fi component.

This explains why most of the first CD releases were classical rather than pop. Classical enthusiasts tended to belong to a wealthier stratum of society who were in a position to invest in the new technology. A large chunk of my own classical vinyl collection was picked up for buttons in the late 1980s at Edinburgh’s Record Shak boutique on Clerk Street, where some well-heeled collector had deposited all his unwanted records after replacing the whole lot at a stroke with new CDs!

Throughout the 1930s and 40s the development of the 33 crept forwards in relative obscurity. As mentioned, radio continued to make recordings for broadcast (or from broadcasts) onto the long-playing format, on 10, 12, 14 or 16-inch discs. These were mostly on incredibly fragile ‘acetate’ discs – aluminium platters covered in a lacquer onto which the sound lathe could cut directly, prone to cracking with age or if temperature changes caused the metal base to expand and contract.

Typically these discs were one-off recordings and did not need to be reproduced, but increasingly they would be pressed in multiple copies so that they could be sent to numerous radio stations simultaneously. Advertisers for radio exploited this possibility too. Polyvinyl chloride (‘vinyl’) as a medium for reproducing these discs was developed and proliferated during the late 1930s and 40s owing to its ability to be transported and even posted without risking breakage like acetates or heavy, brittle shellac.

RCA Victor had attempted to launch vinyl 33s as early as 1931. Their timing was off, however. The Great Depression ensured that there were not enough buyers prepared to invest in new equipment for many years. It wasn’t until after the war that the record companies came back to the idea for another try. This time the conditions were right as the legacy of the New Deal and post-war recovery put money in ordinary people’s pockets.

Interestingly, Columbia’s first 12-inch 33 1/3 RPM ‘long-players’ released in 1948 were classical, perhaps prefiguring the same economic dynamic of the CD era. The following year, RCA Victor re-entered the vinyl market with the first 45 RPM 7-inch discs, in seven different colours of vinyl according to music genre! Green (country), yellow (children’s), red (classical), orange (R&B and gospel), blue vinyl/blue label (semi-classical instrumental) and blue vinyl/black label (international).

mp3: Eddy Arnold – Texakarna  Baby (RCA Victor Green Vinyl & Label, 1949)

At first the 33 and the 45 were seen by the two companies as competing formats, but within two years each had also adopted the other’s innovation, and the familiar ‘single’ and ‘LP’ distinction quickly formed across the whole industry.

That then, in a very large nutshell, is the story of the vinyl record. Before I finish, here’s a couple of further random bits of record info:

It might be thought that the music album is a commodity born from the emergence of the 33 1/3 long-player in the 1950s. However, the first so-called ‘albums’ of music date back to the first decade of the 20th century. While a single 78 only held three or four minutes of sound per side, longer pieces of music (such as classical compositions) were recorded onto several discs and then packaged together into a book-like format, where the pages were the individual record sleeves. Because of their resemblance to large format photographic albums, already common to many families, the name was borrowed for the collection of discs. The first such music albums were classical collections (funnily enough) produced in 1908 and 1909. You could soon buy empty albums in which to store your own collection of 78s, rather like those portable CD cases you can possibly still get. When the 33 1/3 LP format became established with the ability to hold a dozen or more songs on one disc it became the natural inheritor of the ‘album’ label.

Finally, there is another iconic technology invented at almost the same time as Edison’s phonograph that has similarly survived almost unchanged into the current era – the bicycle. Aside from the advancement in materials and adaptations for different terrain, the bike that Bradley Wiggins toured France on or Danny MacAskill rides down mountains is in its fundamentals identical to the ‘safety bicycle’ of the late 1870s that quickly consigned the penny farthing to history.

All of which must make my vinyl copy of Kraftwerk’s Tour de France Soundtracks the ultimate retro-modernist artefact, most especially when it’s played on this: https://peewee.com/2015/10/16/tgif-a-bicycle-that-plays-vinyl-records-on-its-wheels/

mp3: Kraftwerk – Tour de France

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