- Holes – Mercury Rev
- S.Y.M.M. – Manic Street Preachers
- Help the Aged – Pulp
- (Tonight) Are You Trying to Fall in Love Again – Tindersticks
- Fan Mail – Blondie
- Wild Wild Life – Talking Heads
- Slapstick Girl – The Dylan Rabbit
- High Street Love – The Dylan Rabbit
- Boys Better – The Dandy Warhols
- Folk Jam – Pavement
- Cowboy Raga – Delta
- Get Carter – Stereolab
- Free Arthur Lee – Make Up
- Rama Lama Fa Fa Fa – MC5
- Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem) – Jay-Z
- Murmur One – Add N to (X)
- Jump n’ Shout – Basement Jaxx
- Dusted – Leftfield
- Magnetizing – Handsome Boy Modeling
School
- Grass Skirt and Fruit Hat – Them
- Kontakte – Les Rythmes Digitales
- Come and Play in the Milky Night – Stereolab
My lady friend has secured a job
in Northfields, which lies in the centre of a triangle – like a Masonic eye – that
can be drawn between Hanwell, Ealing and Brentford. We are to move in together
and shall occupy a small flat in a housing block located directly behind
Griffin Park football stadium in Brentford.
Brentford is a strange place,
with a high street marginally less depressing than Hounslow West’s. The only
emporium of note is the furniture store P Goddard & Sons on the corner of
the high street opposite The Beehive pub. Aside from that, there are a few
cafes and restaurants, a pharmacy, a couple of hardware stores and not much
else. There are however many pubs, although the standard varies considerably.
The Griffin, The White Horse and The Waterman’s Arms become semi-regular
haunts, but we avoid The Royal Oak, The New Inn and The Bricklayer’s Arms.
I am working in conference
and banqueting with the friend who passed out in Debenhams, at the hotel I
occasionally worked at while living on Penderel Road. We are employed on zero-hour
contracts, which means we can take Fridays off whenever the fancy takes us. We are
able to justify this because it’s not unusual to accrue 40 hours from Monday to
Thursday. As Christmas nears, we’ll often find ourselves working in excess
of 60 hours a week. Occasionally the system will backfire and there won’t be
enough work to satisfy an eight hour shift. We invariably clock on at 15:00, so
whenever this happens there’s normally enough time for a few drinks before heading home, either in The
Three Magpies across the road or in Delaney’s, the hotel bar.
Plastic Letters
Part 2 of this playlist is a complete fabrication. I
certainly did listen to Mercury Rev, Manic Street Preachers, Pulp, Pavement and Tindersticks (who I saw live at the Hammersmith Palais in November '99) during my time in Brentford, but
not necessarily together on the same tape. The Dylan Rabbit tracks were taken
from their 1999 release Musicali Obskura
1: Das Chimp, but these songs would not have featured on any compendium. Other
components were acquired years earlier. I’d purchased Blondie’s Plastic Letters from the Plymouth’s Pannier
Market in 1995 with the intention of giving it to the girl who was a massive
Blondie fan, but never got around to it. For some reason, it had great appeal in
1999. Similarly, I had access to ...The
Dandy Warhols Come Down on its
release in 1997, but only really took to it during my time in Brentford. The
Talking Heads’ tune was taken from their album True Stories, which was derived from the film of the same name,
written and directed by David Byrne. I'm fairly sure I bought it from a stall
in Spitalfields Market in the company of the guy with the indie tapes, who was
living in Whitechapel, but I couldn’t say exactly when.
The
content thereafter is more rooted in the time this playlist is supposed to
represent. Folk Jam is taken from Pavement’s
last studio album, Terror Twilight, released
in June 1999. It’s not their best work and maybe the band’s subsequent
liquidation shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise, but it's a good record nonetheless. 'Cowboy Raga' was originally on the CD edition of Delta's 1995 single 'Make it Right', although I found it on their excellent compendium, Laughing Mostly, a collection of B-sides, outtakes and various odd and sods. Stereolab’s Aluminum Tunes is a similar sort of collection – the third instalment in a series of three. (Switched On Volume 1 and Refried Ectoplasm [Switched on Volume 2]
are the other two.) 'Get Carter' stood
out by virtue of it being a cover of the Roy Budd penned theme tune to the
film of the same name, and one of my favourites.
Make Up featured
twice in the NME’s 100-strong ‘highest rated albums of 1999’: the album proper Save Yourself and the singles
compilation I Want Some. I figured
that the double LP I Want Some would
serve as a better introduction to this mysterious band, and besides, it contained
a song that pleaded for the release of the incarcerated Arthur Lee. The record proved
to be money well spent. I could not say the same for Teen Age Lust, a live recording by MC5, although the riff throughout 'Rama Lama Fa Fa Fa' almost compensates for the terrible sound quality.
I don’t
know what inspired me to get into Add N to (X) but I do know that Leftfield and Basement Jaxx were getting
airplay on the radio, and that I have a copy of 'Dusted' on 12”. I became acquainted with 'Kontakte' by Les Rythmes Digitales and 'Grass Skirt and Fruit Hat' in the year 2000. The former was introduced to me by my brother when I visited him
in Rotterdam in February, the latter I bought on a whim after I heard it
playing in Beggars Banquet, Kingston. I have included them on this transitional
compilation because I did not include them on the playlist I put together later
that summer, and yet they evoke strongly the memory I have of living in Brentford
and deserve representation.
'Come and Play in the Milky Night' is the final track off of Stereolab's sixth studio album, Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night (which was vastly underrated at the time of its release, and maybe still is). Stereolab didn't play it when I saw them at Heaven in November 1999, but they have done on every one of the three occasions I've seen them since: as a final encore in 2001, and at the start of their set in both 2006 and 2019. I prefer it as an encore.
Rotterdam
Towards the end
of the year 2000, I ditched the tapes and converted to MiniDisc. Thereafter,
every playlist remains largely faithful to its original incarnation (allowing
for the bonus tracks I’ve tacked on retrospectively, freed from the limitations
imposed by MiniDisc’s 74/80 minute format). If you were to go to the effort of
compiling any one of my playlists then I’d hope you wouldn’t start with this
one. For one thing, its artificial nature probably hampers the flow. More importantly,
it is clear to me now looking back that it wasn’t only my circumstances that
were subject to change but my taste also. I was in a state of flux,
disillusioned with indie music and with only a passing interest in electronica.
But who would even know? It has never been my intention to chronicle
music that was being made at the time but to merely collate what I listened to at
various stages of my life. That late 1997 through to early 2000 saw my
enthusiasm for the playlist presumably wane is neither here nor there. Hounslow to Brentford, parts 1 and 2, is a collection of
songs just like any other, and how it works as a playlist is largely a matter
of taste. Nonetheless, as an act of creation it is impaired. I obliged myself
to work with whatever fragmentary memories I have of these three years and took it from there. Moreover, it spans too long a period of time in my life
to be in any way intelligible to my own ears, so I how can I expect it to
cohere to anyone else’s?
[Listen to here.]
