LINER NOTES: HOUNSLOW TO BRENTFORD, PART 2 [1998-99]

1.  Holes – Mercury Rev
2.  S.Y.M.M. – Manic Street Preachers
3.  Help the Aged – Pulp
4.  (Tonight) Are You Trying to Fall in Love Again – Tindersticks
5.  Fan Mail – Blondie
6.  Wild Wild Life – Talking Heads
7.  Slapstick Girl – The Dylan Rabbit
8.  High Street Love – The Dylan Rabbit
9.  Boys Better – The Dandy Warhols
10.  Folk Jam – Pavement
11.  Cowboy Raga – Delta
12.  Get Carter – Stereolab
13.  Free Arthur Lee – Make Up
14.  Rama Lama Fa Fa Fa – MC5
15.  Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem) – Jay-Z
16.  Murmur One – Add N to (X)
17.  Jump n’ Shout – Basement Jaxx
18.  Dusted – Leftfield
19.  Magnetizing – Handsome Boy Modeling School 
20.  Grass Skirt and Fruit Hat – Them
21.  Kontakte – Les Rythmes Digitales
22.  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.]