LINER NOTES: THE LOCKDOWN TAPES [2020]

 

    1.     Side Street Walker – Dolly Mixture
    2.     Splashing Along – Jesse Garon & The Desperadoes
    3.     Bad Night at The Whiskey – The Byrds
    4.     I am So Blue – The Poets
    5.     Four Women – Nina Simone
    6.     George Hamilton’s Dead – The Golden Dawn
    7.     The Helicopter Spies – Swell Maps
    8.     No (Personal) Connection – Soft Walls
    9.     Stepping Stones – Johnny Harris
    10.   A Ra – Joao Donato
    11.   Nonstop Disco Powerpack – Beastie Boys
    12.   McFlurry – Sleaford Mods
    13.   Dry the Rain – The Beta Band
    14.   French Press – Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever
    15.   Televised Mind – Fontaines D.C.
    16.   In Dreams – Peggy Sue
    17.   Black and Brown Blues – Silver Jews
    18.   Plastic Bird – Galaxie 500
    19.   Sand – Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood
    20.   Old World – The Modern Lovers
    21.   Broadway Jungle – The Maytals
    22.   Glue – Bicep
    23.   Leave the Planet – Galaxie 500

 
 
It happened quickly. On Tuesday, the 17th of March, I was advised that my place of work was likely to close within a week, by the afternoon this became a certainty, then on Wednesday it did. At the same time the Government was advocating that the public avoid communal spaces. The pubs around my way were noticeably quieter, although in central London they were reportedly as busy as ever. Come Friday, pubs, bars, restaurants, cafes and gyms were ordered to shut up shop. You could still walk the streets freely, but then that changed too. On the 23rd it was announced that you could only leave the house for the purpose of buying victuals or for daily exercise. In other words, lockdown. Airplanes continued to offload passengers unchecked.

In December, before COVID-19 officially became a thing, Dolly Mixture reissued the album Demonstration Tapes and also put out Other Music, a collection of alternative takes and unreleased demos. By the end of the month these limited pressings had sold out, but not before I got my hands on a pair. They are splendid records and it was hard to choose just one song for inclusion on my annual compilation. 'Side Street Walker' is as good a choice as any and functions well as a lead-off track.

Lockdown coincided with a bout of unseasonably warm weather. This was something of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, being out of doors in the sunshine kept people's spirits up, on the other it meant that parks and greens were mobbed, which defeated the object. The roads, though, were clear and I cycled into town regularly on a single-speed bike I'd purchased in February. I also found myself going to the supermarket on an almost daily basis, savouring the reduced capacity. By night the streets were deserted and the air smelt fresh. In these respects, lockdown was a rather pleasant experience.

There’s only so much cycling and shopping you can do in a day, under any circumstances, so when my partner was summoned back to school in late April, to supervise the children of key-workers and provide online lesson plans for everyone else’s, I had to contrive alternative ways to while away the days. One idea was to re-watch My Secret World: The Story of Sarah Records, which prompted a series of email exchanges between myself and the chap who introduced me to Sarah Records, who then passed on a link to a website screening Teenage Superstars. This documentary focuses on the independent music scene in Glasgow from 1982 to ’92 and features the likes of Teenage Fanclub, The Pastels, The Vaselines, BMX Bandits. A group called The Shop Assistants are mentioned along the way, and I asked the chap who introduced me to Sarah Records whether they were worth bothering with. He thought not, which surprised me, and instead pointed me in the direction of Jesse Garon & The Desperadoes, an Edinburgh band from the same era. I was indifferent to the song he provided as an example but found another that I liked a lot: 'Splashing Along', the group’s debut single, dating back to October 1986.

I uncovered 'Bad Night at the Whiskey' by The Byrds in April. I was trying to track down one of Roger McGuinn’s better haircuts and found it on a programme called Playboy After Dark, hosted by Hugh Hefner. The Byrds play 'You Ain't Goin' Nowhere' and 'This Wheel's On Fire', the latter taken from the 1969 album Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde, a record I had ignored; Chris Hillman and Gram Parsons had recently left The Byrds to form The Flying Burrito Brothers and only McGuinn remained from the original line-up, so I doubted its quality. The band’s performance on Hefner’s show corrected my mistake. Clarence White, who had worked as a session musician on The Byrds’ previous three albums, was by now a fully paid-up member, while John York replaced Hillman on bass and Gene Parsons took over from Kevin Kelly on drums. The Whiskey in question is a club called Whisky a Go Go in West Hollywood, California, where The Byrds once performed badly. We don’t know what was so bad about it because the lyrics pertain to something else entirely.

I’d been furloughed and made the decision to sell some of my lesser played records, effectively so I could purchase others. One of the discs I elected to get shot of was a compilation entitled The Clouds Have Groovy Faces, released via the Bam-Caruso imprint in 1986. As the title suggests, it’s a compendium of 1960s psychedelia, and fairly obscure psychedelia at that, but not the best. 'I Am So Blue' by The Poets is the standout track, so I added it to this playlist for posterity. (Readers of my liner notes might recall that The Poets kicked off my 2005 anthology with 'That’s the Way It’s Got to Be'.)

The Nina Simone tune came later after listening to BBC Radio 6 in the company of my Cornish friend on a Sunday afternoon, drinking cans of lager and a parting shot of Drambuie, which became a kind of (socially distanced) lockdown ritual. I’d always found Nina Simone intriguing but never came across anything by her that especially appealed. In June I did. 'Four Women' is the only song on the 1966 album Wild is the Wind that she wrote herself – a perfectly normal state of affairs within the genre. It’s an emotive tune but delicately rendered, until Nina lets rip with the last line: 'MY NAME IS PEACHES!'

 
Early May, and there is cause for optimism. Despite the Government’s manipulation of the statistics (in which direction remains unclear), reported deaths ‘with’ COVID-19 have been on a downward trend getting on for three weeks. In other news, the gormless article we call our Prime Minister is back at work having spent a week in intensive care, and another two recuperating, after an attack of the covoids.

There are generally two schools of thought concerning the efficacy of lockdown. The first – and it seems to be where most people stand – is that we were a good two weeks late in shutting things down but have managed to contain the virus and less people are now dying. The other is that COVID-19 has been doing the rounds since the turn of the year, many of us have already had it asymptomatically, that the whole thing is a waste of time and we’re going to be worse off for it in the long run; we will be poorer and more people are going to die as an indirect result of lockdown than would’ve otherwise perished from the disease itself.

I’ve just been into Richmond to post Stevie Wonder’s Music of My Mind to someone and to pick up groceries, and it looked like an awful lot of people had the same idea. Yet we’re only in what I’m calling the second phase of lockdown and we’re told there’s still a very real threat lurking out there. Is everybody bored of staying in, or has there been a shift in their thinking?

Placing 'George Hamilton’s Dead' by The Golden Dawn directly after 'Four Woman' works surprisingly well. It’s one of a number of tracks that stood out when re-watching My Secret World: The Story of Sarah Records. I cannot understand why the chap who introduced me to Sarah Records never made me aware of it, for it amuses in a way that satisfies the both of us. The song also dispels the myth that Sarah was all about jangly guitars and heightened sensitivity. (The same goes for 'Dirty Mags' by Blueboy, another new find that I came very close to including on this compilation.)

I’d been meaning to look into Swell Maps for ages, so when Stephen Pastel alluded to them in Teenage Superstars I got on the case. They only recorded two albums, the second being 1980’s …In “Jane from Occupied Europe”, which I’d like to buy on the strength of the title alone. I can’t find a copy on-line, so for now I’ve downloaded 'The Helicopter Spies', the fifth track from its first side. Sounds like Magazine, but better.

In 2020 Soft Walls released Not as Bad as it Seems on vinyl. (You could get it on cassette in 2019.) I pre-ordered the record in December and it arrived late January. This was supposed to tally with seeing them in April but the gig was cancelled outright. Perhaps when all this is over I’ll try and get down to Brighton and see them, because they don’t come to London very often.

 

June: the weather has become unsettled, and it seems that lockdown is entering its third phase. Pubs and cafes are still shut, although some are offering take-outs. Non-essential shops have yet to open but are preparing for it. Museums, galleries, cinemas, theatres, hairdressers and sports and leisure facilities remain resolutely closed. On the streets, however, life appears to have returned to how it once was. A number of factors have contributed to this: a declining infection/death rate; a relaxing of the rules regarding meeting up with other households in an external setting; Dominic Cummings showing a disregard for the regulations and the Government sticking by him, the social contract broken.

Richmond Green is proving to be a particularly pleasing environment. Despite the heavy clouds and occasional rain, it is fairly warm and there’s a pent-up energy about the place. The Cricketers is selling takeaway draught, although financially it makes sense to bring your own. Towards the end of the month the heat begins to build again. While I cycle to Parsons Green to meet up with a couple of my bouldering buddies, half a million people travel down to Dorset to hang around on beaches. That’s the price the Conservatives pay for letting their PR man keep his job.

I don’t really get the point of Twitter, but I’m on there nonetheless. If I wasn’t then I may never have found out about the Scottish composer/arranger/producer Johnny Harris. Someone had been playing the album Movements in their car and tweeted a link to Harris’s impressive cover of 'Paint it Black' by the Stones. Further investigation proved another track, the self-penned 'Stepping Stones', to be more so. It's hard to know what to call this sort of music but there are elements of jazz, rock and even funk, all with a psychedelic undertone. You can imagine it appearing on the soundtrack to a film set in the swinging sixties.

The guy who used to own a pager now owns a boat. Prior to lockdown we saw Das Boot on it and the other day we watched Jaws. After watching Jaws we put on music. The guy who used to own a pager was under the impression that he introduced me to Joao Donato around the period we were listening to the Blue Brazil series (Blue Note in a Latin Groove). That was approximately 20 years ago so it’s possible he did, although of the two of us I have the stronger memory. I don’t recall having heard 'A Ra' so it can go on this compilation.

In between watching films documenting obscure indie-pop and hanging out on boats, I’ve been reading the Beastie Boys Book, its hard-backed 570 pages having remained undisturbed on my shelf since December 2018. The parts that reference the trio’s final record, Hot Sauce Committee Part Two, made me realise how little I’ve listened to it, which is something else I’ve put right. The album's concept was to use invented samples that were subsequently credited to fictional songs by imagined artistes. 'Nonstop Disco Powerpack' is the exception, which is a shame because it’s the best track on the album.

It was my birthday the other week so I’ve got the Sleaford Mods’ compilation All That Glue to listen to, personally delivered by one of the chaps from Eel Pie Records. I’m familiar with about half the double-album's content. I know and like 'Fizzy', and contemplate including it on this compendium, but decide that the novelty of either 'Snake It' or 'McFlurry' would be more appropriate, and opt for the latter.
 

Das Boot

Pubs have been permitted to re-open as of the 4th of July. Some will but others won’t, perhaps because they’ve not been given enough notice to sufficiently prepare, or maybe because they want to see if it’s worth the hassle. Many people are against it. Others – myself included – are enjoying drinking in parks, on greens, in gardens, and feel ambivalent. Moreover, this latest liberty comes with terms and conditions: table service, no standing, strict social distancing and prodigious amounts of hand sanitizer.

A few weeks before lockdown, Mr Wilkinson and I were climbing at Urban Ascent near Parsons Green when a song played we both recognised but couldn't name. It came to me later: 'Dry the Rain' by The Beta Band. Smashing tune and the way it starts off allows it to follow on from Sleaford Mods quite freely.

'French Press' by Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever sounds like Shaun Ryder singing over War on Drugs if Shaun Ryder could actually sing a bit. They’re an Australian 5-piece incorporating three guitarists, not counting bass, and 'French Press' is the title track of an EP they issued in 2017. I discovered them at the beginning of April by way of another track of theirs called 'Cars in Space'. I preferred 'French Press' and decided early on that I wanted this tune to appear further down the running order, due to its uplifting nature (musically at least; the lyrics concern estranged siblings).

Since the release of their debut LP a little more than a year ago, Fontaines D.C. have told us they’ve been kicking back to the sounds of the Beach Boys. You wouldn’t know it from the single 'Televised Mind', nor from the two singles that preceded it. 'Televised Mind' is a ridiculously simple ditty, but I kept hearing it on the radio throughout the summer and was slowly won over by its sheer doggedness.

I happened upon 'In Dreams' by Peggy Sue listening to the radio with my Cornish friend just days before lockdown. Peggy Sue are in fact two ladies from Brighton, and their music sounds a bit like Dolly Mixture as if produced by Phil Spector. As with 'French Press', it occurred to me that this tune would be better placed towards the end of this compilation, marking the point at which I begin to wind things down.

The actor and musician John Henry Westhead – best known for playing 'Olaf the Russian Metalhead' in the art-house comedy film Clerks – lives somewhere around my way. I know this because he’s posted songs relating to Isleworth on YouTube, and there’s footage of his band, The Shed Dwellers, paying tribute to the late David Berman down at the Cross Lances in Hounslow. This is how I came by the song 'Black and Brown Blues' by Berman’s old band, Silver Jews.

Dissatisfied with my Levi’s denim jacket I started looking on eBay for another. I searched specifically for the slimmer fitting 70500, identified one that was 'new with tags', made an offer, was counter offered, paid for it and then sold my 72334 to someone in Aberdeen for the same price – a neat piece of business. For some reason I associate denim jackets with a certain type of indie music, and I ended up mulling over the gaps in my knowledge regarding the group Galaxie 500 and then buying their second album, On Fire. An ostensibly dull turn of events, but it's worth pondering how one seemingly innocuous thing can lead to another. Consider also the possibility that anyone reading this might go about acquiring On Fire and be equally affected by the song 'Plastic Bird' as I am, all because I fussed over my wardrobe while on furlough.

Actually, by the time I received the denim jacket I was back at work. This coincided with the Government postponing a number of lockdown-easing measures scheduled to start at the beginning of August and simultaneously introducing this thing called Eat Out to Help Out. I didn’t think anything of it back then, but as the rate of infection slowly began to rise, and quarantine measures were introduced for people returning from selected foreign territories, the absurdity of the scheme became retrospectively apparent.

Apropos of nothing, I decided to put on a CD my partner gave to me some years ago: These Boots Are Made For Walkin' - The Complete MGM Recordings by Lee Hazlewood. The songs therein predate Hazlewood’s partnership with Nancy Sinatra but include some that were later re-recorded with her. 'Sand' is one such tune, appearing first on 1966’s The Very Special World of Lee Hazlewood, featuring the vocal of Suzi Jane Hokum, and in 1968 on Nancy & Lee. The collaboration with Nancy Sinatra edges it, not so much because of her intonation but more the song’s bizarre arrangement and orchestration. Producer and guitarist Billy Strange was responsible for this, and I assume it's his deranged guitar playing backwards during the instrumental breakout.

In August I resolved to sell my copy of The Original Modern Lovers and replace it with The Modern Lovers, the version released in 1976 five years prior to the so-called original. It’s generally accepted that the ’76 iteration is the definitive article, and I wouldn’t disagree with that. 'Someone I Care About', 'Pablo Picasso' and 'Old World' are all missing from the Kim Fowley produced record, although he does give us 'I Wanna Sleep in Your Arms', but it’s John Cale’s superior production that makes the real difference.

Frederick 'Toots' Hibbert passed away on 11 September 2020, the same day as stage 13 of what turned out to be an enthralling edition of the Tour de France. At some point in the stage Stefan Kung, wearing number 54, was out front, which got ITV presenter Gary Imlach thinking: if Kung finished first and Dries Devenyns, sporting number 46, came in second, it would present the perfect opportunity to play out with '54-46 Was My Number'. In the event, Daniel Martinez won the stage and so 'Broadway Jungle' was used instead – or 'Dog War' as it was originally known when The Maytals cut the tune in 1964. Unbeknown to them, the track was leased to Island Records who retitled it 'Broadway Jungle', credited it to The Flames and put it out in the UK. The new name stuck but has been re-attributed to (Toots &) The Maytals whenever it's appeared on any ska and reggae anthology.
 

The summer ended abruptly: temperatures pushing 30 degrees one weekend, scraping 15 the next. Nights drawing in, falling leaves, jumpers on. If that wasn't bad enough the Government imposed a ten o'clock curfew on all pubs and restaurants and made it a requirement that customers wear masks until they sat down at their table. Such measures made little sense. If public houses were that dangerous then they shouldn't have been open at all, and the curfew merely encouraged people to head out an hour or so earlier. What's more, because pub owners were overly mindful of the new arrangements, everybody was forced to leave at exactly the same moment, whereupon they loitered in streets and maybe accepted an invitation to continue drinking back at someone's house – the night was young, after all.

On the 24th of September – the date these restrictions came into effect – I tried to have a drink with my partner in the pub over the road. Twenty minutes after our arrival we were still trying, and so departed. As we waited, 'Glue' by Bicep came on. My Cornish friend introduced me to this tune in early March and it took a while to decide how much I really liked it. I understood that this was dance music, but was it too repetitive? In the end it grew on me, and there’s a wistful quality to it that felt pertinent to the situation.

And I was going to leave it at that, but I like odd numbers and fancied more Galaxie 500 – undoubtedly the discovery of the year. A lot of this has to do with the rhythm section: Damon Krukowski’s irregular drum patterns and Naomi Yang’s counter-melodies on bass. I’ve heard On Fire described as an ‘ambient’ rock record, and it’s not a bad way of putting it – certainly more indicative than terms like slowcore or dreampop. 'Leave the Planet' is mellower than 'Plastic Bird', and shorter too, which is a good note to end on before we're all locked down again.

[Listen to here.]

LINER NOTES: THE GOLDEN AGE OF HIP HOP - BONUS BEATS [1986-92]

1. The New Style – Beastie Boys

2. Public Enemy No. 1 – Public Enemy

3. I’m Not Going Out Like That – Run-DMC

4. Doomsday of Rap – Hijack

5. Stylin’ Lyrics – J.V.C.F.O.R.C.E.

6. The Way We Swing – Digital Underground

7. Find a Way – Coldcut featuring Queen Latifah

8. Wonderous Dream – L.A. Star

9. Pollywanacraka – Public Enemy 

10. Youthful Expression – A Tribe Called Quest

11. Doing Our Own Dang (Do It To The JB's Mix) – Jungle Brothers

12. Let the Rhythm Hit ‘Em (45 King Club Mix) – Eric B & Rakim

13. Portrait of a Masterpiece (CJ's Ed-Did-It Mix) – The D.O.C.

14. Just Kickin’ Lyrics – Above the Law

15. No Words (Pump ‘N’ Hip Hop - No Rif Raf Mix) – Three Times Dope

16. Money Mad – London Posse

17. Movin’ On – Masta Ace

18. Wake Up (Reprise in the Sunshine) – Brand Nubian

19. Ebony – Paris

20. Execution of a Chump – Gang Starr

21. Guns of Mind Alone – Silver Bullet

22. Homey Don’t Play Dat – Terminator X (featuring Bonnie ‘N’ Clyde)

23. The Funky Cypress Hill Shit – Cypress Hill

24. The Badman is Robin – Hijack

25. Morals – The UMC’s

26. 3rd Base Theme A.K.A. Portrait Of The Artist As A Hood – 3rd Bass

27. For Pete’s Sake – Pete Rock and CL Smooth

28. No Shame in My Game – Gang Starr

29. Theme from Marxman – Marxman

30. Stand Together – Beastie Boys

In 1987 my father took me and my brother to Thornbury, where I was born, to see his old friend, Andy. Said friend had a son called Richard, who I’d been mates with prior to my family leaving Thornbury and moving to Plymouth in 1982. We’d met sporadically in the intervening years but this was the first time I’d seen him since starting secondary school.

We still got on; played football in the garden until it got too dark, whereupon Richard took me and my brother to his bedroom to listen to music. I would have been into Prince back then, but not much else. I liked music but not to the extent that I’d devote myself to a particular artist, let alone want to look like them – I didn’t want to be Prince. All that changed when Richard put on Licensed to Ill by the Beastie Boys.

I was aware of the Beastie Boys but hadn't liked their singles '(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party!)' and 'No Sleep till Brooklyn'. I didn't like 'Walk this Way' by Run-DMC either, released a year earlier. Loud guitars were not my thing. The minimalism of tracks such as 'Posse in Effect', 'Slow Ride', 'Paul Revere' and 'Slow and Low' evidently were. On returning to Plymouth it materialised that my friend Ed possessed the same album. I cannot say whether he’d owned it since its release or if it had been recently acquired. In any case, he made a copy for me and it wasn’t long before a poster of the Beastie Boys together (forever) with Run-DMC adorned my wall, possibly to my father’s horror. In 1988 I purchased the Run-DMC album Tougher than Leather.

The Beastie Boys and Run-DMC were gateway bands. There were people who liked them who weren’t especially into rap/hip hop and others who got into rap/hip hop precisely through listening to them. With Public Enemy it was different. You couldn't really be into them and ambivalent about hip hop; they were too earnest and musically more complex. (The same might be said of Eric B & Rakim.) I went through all of 1987 oblivious to this and Public Enemy’s debut album, Yo! Bum Rush the Show, escaped my attention, which is why my original four-part anthology begins in 1988 and 'Public Enemy No. 1' appears here. Moreover, the music I played didn’t necessarily direct me towards the people I wanted to hang out with. For illustration, my three closest pals were into Queen (Mike), Level 42 (Neil) and Eurythmics (Dan), and in 1987-88 I wasn’t adverse to any of these three groups either. I remember other people in my class liking INXS, U2 and Bon Jovi. Who knows what else kids were listening to in private.

These Bonus Beats are a collection of tracks that I have gathered together retrospectively, some of which I owned at the time and others I came across later. Because of this, my fifth volume in the Golden Age of Hip Hop series cannot be ascribed to singular phases of my life. Individual tracks can but not the compilation as a whole.

I don’t remember who it was but somebody acquired a very bad copy of J.V.C.F.O.R.C.E.’s album Doin’ Damage. It sounds old school, but 'Stylin’ Lyrics' – as with 'Strong Island' – contains the type of samples that would come to typify hip hop’s golden age: a crescendo of horns and a lilting piano lifted from 'Ike’s Mood 1' by Isaac Hayes. [When I moved to London in 1993, I found a copy of Doin’ Damage on vinyl in Camden Market, and snapped it up.]

I never had a job while at school. This might not seem so unusual now but back then it was. Mike had a paper-round before picking up an evening gig behind the fish counter at his local supermarket. Ed also had a paper-round, and Dan ended up working at Burger King. Neil did not have a job, probably because his parents had a bit more capital than the rest of us and he could afford not to. Really, I did need one but couldn’t be bothered. Time is scarce enough when you’re a teenager without having to give up your Saturdays or get up early to deliver newspapers. I’d get by on birthday money and the fivers slipped to me by various relatives, and preferred to play football above all else, which cost nothing. The downside to this was that I couldn't afford to buy as much music as I would've liked. The only album I remember purchasing throughout the whole of 1989 was Club Classics Vol. One by Soul II Soul. The next cassette I bought was Sex Packets by Digital Underground in 1990. In between I relied heavily on the radio – Jeff Young’s National Fresh – and the generosity of friends. (I say generosity but so long as you provided a blank tape nobody thought twice about recording stuff for each other.) So Sex Packets was probably the fifth actual album I owned and only the second that fell under the umbrella of hip hop/rap, and I'd already turned 15. And it's raunchy stuff, although 'The Way We Swing' is more of a straight-up rap tune. It’s also quite long, so when I was putting together my anthology I went for 'Underwater Rimes' instead (see The Golden Age of Hip Hop Volume 1).

The Coldcut tune, featuring Queen Latifah, is indicative of the tacit relationship between hip hop and house music. 'Hip house' as a genre never really took off, but it left its mark. The Jungle Brothers had a hit with the Tod Terry produced 'I'll House You' in 1988, while the likes The 45 King and CJ Mackintosh would remix rap tracks to make them more dance friendly. Jeff Young, who was himself a club DJ, loved all this, and he would always play the remixed versions of 'Let the Rhythm Hit ‘Em' by Eric B & Rakim and 'Portrait of a Masterpiece' by The D.O.C. rather than their originals.

A Tribe Called Quest had other ideas, steering hip hop in a jazzier, more laid back direction, and in doing so pathed the way for the likes of Main Source, Gang Starr, Brand Nubian and Black Sheep (as De la Soul had before them). Alongside all that was the harder stuff, much of it coming out of the West Coast. Three Times Dope (who, incidentally, were from Philadelphia) and Masta Ace didn't really fit into any of these approximate categories, which goes to show how diverse hip hop was as a genre, before gangster rap began to predominate in the early-to-mid nineties. (If you need further evidence, I present 'Pollywanacraka' by Public Enemy.)

'No Words (Pump ‘N’ Hip Hop)' by Three Times Dope is actually a fairly recent discovery of mine. In trying to establish some sort of chronology, I uncovered a few of Jeff Young’s National Fresh sessions on the internet that inadvertently led me to archive recordings of Tim Westwood’s show on Capital, which is where I discovered this specific mix of 'No Words'.

I recorded Paris's debut single 'The Devil Made Me Do It' off of radio and included it on a mixtape I entitled National Fresh Volume 4. When Ed bought the album of the same name I then added the tune 'Ebony' onto Hip Hop Volume 5. The Golden Age of Hip Hop Volume 3 is cobbled together from the fragmented memories I have of these original compilations, but I couldn't include both so opted for the former. The same goes for Brand Nubian. 'Wake Up' was the first single from their pending album, followed by 'Slow Down'. 'All for One' was the third, and is more well-known. One way or another, I've incorporated them all.

'Execution of a Chump' is from Gang Starr’s second album, Step in the Arena, but I don’t recall ever hearing it on the radio. Gang Starr, who contribute two tracks to this anthology of odds and sods, would end as one of the genre's preeminent acts, and one of my favourites.

In my liner notes to The Golden Age of Hip Hop Vol. 3, I write that Silver Bullet’s album Bring Down the Walls No Limit Squad Returns is a highly sophisticated piece of work and that any one of 'Raw Deal', 'Attitude Academy', 'Undercover Anarchist', 'Guns Of Mind Alone' and 'Legions Of The Damned' could have made it onto my compilation. 'Legions of the Damned' did and so here you’ll find 'Guns of Mind Alone'.

Cypress Hill is a very different proposition to the group’s second album, the bass-heavy and overrated Black Sunday. The first 10 seconds of 'The Funky Cypress Hill Shit' is a case in point. It’s as if they’ve sought to use the most poorly recorded sounds – or to re-record them poorly – to create a mise-en-scène that evokes the sounds of 1960s/70s Los Angeles. The samples flow thick and fast before settling on the funk of 'Fencewalk' by Mandrill and the Latin-jazz of 'Hector' by The Village Callers. Cypress Hill were part of a surge in the genre’s popularity that would establish itself in 1992, by way of Ice Cube, Dr Dre, Eazy-E, Da Lench Mob, Redman, Naughty by Nature, The Goats. In other words, the signs were there that hip hop was getting harder, rougher and, ironically, more popular.

I have found an old diary from 1992, and it shows me buying an album by Ice Cube on 16 January – presumably Death Certificate – and then returning it on the 21st. I recall doing this sort of thing when an album didn’t quite live up to my expectation. I’d make a copy in between, and would then normally receive a credit note – I wasn’t claiming that the goods were faulty in any way, just that I’d changed my mind. The next entry in my diary (it wasn’t a ‘dear diary’ sort of diary, just full of random notes and essay deadlines) tells me I’d acquired something by the Ruthless Rap Assassins, which must have been their second album, Think, It Ain't Illegal Yet. I wasn’t overly enamoured with this record either but the whole buying and returning scam was by no means guaranteed to work, so I kept hold of it.

The diary offers up other intriguing vignettes: a trip to Torquay; pitch-and-put in Central Park; haircut appointments; the Conservatives winning yet another general election; items of clothing bought in Bristol; scores from the European Championships in Sweden; the opening of Virgin Records in Plymouth Centre and going there on the first day with Mike; seeing Ecuadorian folk group Huellas play at Plymouth Arts Centre with Neil; the Olympic Games in Barcelona; turning out for Moses, a 5-a-side team some guys at school put together and for whom I provided the name; going to watch Plymouth Argyle; numerous visits to some club called Fliks, as well as Ritzy and Expose. Clubbing at this point was nothing more than a rites of passage. The music these places played didn't interest me, which was generally house. The situation would improve significantly in 1993 when I discovered 'Jelly Jazz' at the Quay Club, but in the meantime I’d have to go along with it and do my best to avoid getting punched by anyone looking for a fight, which seemed to me almost everyone male outside of my extended social circle.

Cobi welcomes you to Barcelona.

I can remember reading about the Beastie Boys’ new album, Check Your Head, in Hip Hop Connection. This would have been early 1992, but I didn’t then buy the album and nor did anyone else I knew. It wasn’t until 1994 that I finally got hold of it, off the back of Ill Communication, which the lead-single 'Sabotage' had propelled to the fore. An exploration of Paul’s Boutique ensued.

Brother J from X Clan once said he could stand the Beastie Boys muscling in on hip hop because they never posed as black men and behaved as who they really were: white guys getting drunk. The Beastie Boys dropped the getting drunk thing very quickly, but they never adopted a persona that was outside of their own, which might explain their longevity. It’s a shame that I didn’t return to them sooner, but I’ve kept up with them ever since, conscious that it was the Beastie Boys who introduced me to rap music, even if it was Public Enemy that sealed the deal.

[Listen to here.]

LINER NOTES: THE GOLDEN AGE OF HIP HOP, VOL. 1 [1988-89]

1.     Strong Island – J.V.C.F.O.R.C.E.

2.     Freedom of Speech ’88 – Just-Ice

3.     See More – Kool Rock Brothers

4.     Strictly Business – EPMD

5.     Beats to the Rhyme – Run-DMC

6.     Something Fresh to Swing To – Levi 167

7.     Bullet From a Gun – Derek B

8.     Talkin' All That Jazz – Stetsasonic

9.     It Takes Two – Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock

10.   Terminator X to the Edge of Panic – Public Enemy
11.   Follow the Leader – Eric B & Rakim

12.   Give it a Rest – She Rockers

13.   D.C. Jail – DJ Daddy

14.   Free – MC Duke

15.   Northside – Demon Boyz

16.   Style Wars – Hijack

17.   Express Yourself (Extended Mix) – N.W.A.

18.   Bring Forth the Guillotine (Darkside Mix) – Silver Bullet

19.   Eye Know – De La Soul

20.   What U Waitin’ 4 (Jungle Fever Mix) – Jungle Brothers

21.   We Rock the Mic Right (12" Mix) – Redhead Kingpin and the FBI

22.   You Played Yourself – Ice-T

23.   The Formula – The D.O.C.

24.   Underwater Rimes – Digital Underground

25.   I Come Off (Southern Comfort Mix) – Young MC

My early forays into musical archiving consisted almost exclusively of hip hop, in particular ‘golden age’ hip hop running from the late 1980s through to the early ‘90s. This span was a prolific and innovative period for the genre but not so successful commercially. Although some acts undoubtedly prospered – Run-DMC, LL Cool J, Public Enemy, Beastie Boys, De La Soul – hip hop was generally a minority interest. My fandom had been initially based on the fact that a lot of this stuff was actually fairly popular among my peer group, but prevailed merrily once the cool kids dropped hip hop for house, leaving me perplexed that a liking for a particular kind of music could be repudiated on an apparent whim. (Later, some of these same lads, who maintained a lesser interest in parallel, would end up borrowing from my collection, as opposed to the other way around, which had previously been the case.)

Mix-tapes have since been superseded by the digital playlists, and my old compilations need re-compiling, for posterity and to collate lost fragments. The original cassettes went missing a long time ago. I’m no hoarder but nor do I ruthlessly dispose of things as poignant as mix-tapes, so I’ve no idea where they went. (It’s possible that I still have them somewhere, buried deep beneath less interesting detritus.) Because of this, I’ve had to work from memory, but I've done my best to arrange the songs in the order I came across them. The Golden Age of Hip Hop – Volume 1 covers a period beginning in early 1988 that runs through to late 1989, whereupon I discovered Jeff Young’s 'National Fresh' on BBC Radio 1 and began to put some effort into making my compilations.

Licensed to Ill by the Beastie Boys was the first rap album I possessed, but there was never a question of me nailing colours to any mast; I didn’t identify it as being part of a scene. I recall liking 'The Show' by Doug E Fresh & the Get Fresh Crew, released in August 1985, and Run-DMC’s mash up of 'Walk This Way', but both were perceived as novelties, by myself and probably the general British public. As was '(Nothing Serious) Just Buggin'' by Whistle and 'Wipeout' by The Fat Boys – rap tunes enjoyed by people who didn’t really like rap music. This might apply to Salt-n-Pepa. ('I Need Love' by LL Cool J had the capacity to be taken seriously, but not by me.) The point being that hip hop wasn’t respected in the same way other musical forms were. It was nothing more than a passing fad, and often derided (see Morris Minor and the Majors).

Public Enemy changed all this. Their first album, Yo! Bum Rush the Show, passed me by, but their second, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back changed my life, awakening me to the genre’s wider, more serious potential. One of the cool back-row boys recorded it for me onto a TDK 90 that I would later pad out with tracks recorded off the radio. In the meantime, I began scouring the local record shops for complementary material.

Plymouth's 'Graffiti Hall of Fame'.

Whenever I hear the opening bars to 'Unhooked' by Freda Payne I automatically expect 'Strong Island' by J.V.C.F.O.R.C.E to kick in. I came to know this tune by way of a Street Sounds compilation prosaically entitled Hip Hop 20, purchased from a small record shop in Plymouth’s old Drake Circus. This tape also included 'It Takes Two' by Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock, which will be well known to anyone around at the time and many more who weren’t. The kid who lived across the road from me then invested in Hip Hop 22 (didn’t either of us fancy Hip Hop 21?), from whence 'Strictly Business' by EPMD, 'Freedom of Speech ’88' by Just-Ice and 'See More' by the Kool Rock Brothers came from. The former is a bona fide hip hop classic built around Eric Clapton’s cover of 'I Shot the Sheriff' by Bob Marley. Just-Ice had connections with KRS-One, as well as an aggressive delivery – ahead of the curve in that respect – and a moderately successful musical career. The Kool Rock Brothers are more obscure and don’t seem to have released much else beyond the track I’ve included on the first volume of my anthology.

I was mesmerised by the graffiti clad covers of these compilations, for it wasn’t just the music that appealed but the clothes and the accompanying subculture. This was early 1988, during my third year at secondary school. It was quite normal to try your hand at a bit of graffiti on paper, and a few of us even gave it a go on actual walls (at the dilapidated former zoo around the back of Plymouth Argyle’s football ground where the council dumped wood-chippings, compost and suchlike, which was I suppose still technically illegal). Trainers were coveted, especially Fila and Troop, although most of us wore Adidas, Nike or Reebok. Silky tracksuit tops were worn, or hooded sweatshirts. Again, Nike and Adidas were standard issue, and later Champion, Stussy and Russell Athletic (aside from a myriad of obscurely labelled clobber bought from places like JC Conway on Cornwall Street). In winter, Capri ski jackets, for school children only ever wear coats in the most inclement of conditions.

As with sport, such enthusiasms can cut across classroom hierarchies, making you less vulnerable to being picked on. I was probably immune to this anyway due to the fact that I liked football and was prone to a bit of mischief (although everyone gets beset upon on at school at some point or other). For myself and the disparate crowd of inbetweeners I hung out with, a typical lunchtime might include: water-fights in D-Block toilets; collecting jars and bottles from around the place, taking them down to Stonehouse Creek and throwing stones at them; depositing empty deodorant cans on the fire lit weekly around the back of the school canteen and waiting for them to explode, which they did; heading down to the rarely used weight-lifting room in E-Block, lining barbells up against the wall, spinning the weights on their axis, knocking down said barbells to create a hellish racket, and then running for our life; chucking fruit through open windows, preferably two or three storeys up.

The water fights in D-Block toilets were a particularly common occurrence. About six or seven of us would enter tentatively, probably because one of our number actually needed to utilise the antiquated facilities (our school – Devonport High School for Boys – was a former military hospital built in 1797 and moved into after World War II). Generally, whoever it was that needed to would be allowed to relieve himself before battle commenced. Rough paper towels would then be cupped under a tap, filled with water, tied off to form a sort of grenade, and then thrown at one another. Someone might pick up the permanently plumbed-in hose and twirl it around their head to release the water that trickled steadily along its serpentine length. If someone happened to be sitting in one of the cubicles then our missiles would instead be lobbed over the top onto the unsuspecting, helpless student.

I look back upon such waggery with both fondness and approval. Despite its benefits, formal education is not the natural state of things. A child (because adolescents are still pretty much children) is not designed to keep still and concentrate for hours at a time; attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is a reasonable condition. The best teachers were those that recognised this and said things along the lines of, 'I know you’d rather be doing something else, but we’ve got to get through this,' as opposed to censuring the apathetic individual as some sort of miscreant and an affront to authority.

Yet I never viewed my liking of hip hop as an act of defiance or rebellion, even though it obviously was from the point of view of many of those who were making it. I saw it as an art form, and an ingenious one at that. Take Public Enemy's 'Terminator X to the Edge of Panic': a strange, minimal fusion of staccato horn samples, sparse beats and ambient noise; a collage of sounds that seems increasingly abstract the more you listen to it. Nothing in the charts sounding anywhere near as sophisticated or as odd.

Run-DMC’s Tougher than Leather, released in May 1988, was the first rap album I actually owned, as opposed to being taped off of someone else. The general consensus among the cool/hard kids in my class (it’s hard to know exactly how they wanted to be perceived) was that Run-DMC were passed it, that it was all about Public Enemy and NWA. Chuck D of Public Enemy begged to differ and rated Run-DMC’s fourth album very highly. I wasn’t so impressionable that I'd take everybody else’s word for it, and the guy I caught the school bus with – one my closest friends – was as impressed with the record as I was.

'Something Fresh to Swing To' by Levi 167 was made available on Street Sounds' Hip Hop 20 in 1988 but released as a single a year earlier. Levi 167 had been a member of the short-lived Scott La Rock and the Celebrity Three along with KRS-One, and his career as a solo artist appears to have been equally brief. Unlike that of Eric B & Rakim, who Chuck D, no less, credits with changing hip hop. 'Follow the Leader' was certainly ahead of its time.

Tracks 11 to 15 were taken from the same Music of Life compilation, entitled Hard as Hell Volume 2. Music of Life was a British record label run by DJ, producer and remixer Simon Harris and provided an outlet for British rap which it probably wouldn’t have otherwise had. For me, Hijack’s 'Style Wars' was the stand-out track. It sounded weirder than other tunes included on the compilation, but musically they weren’t doing anything that PE hadn’t done already. Style Wars even mines the same sample as 'Public Enemy No. 1' – Fred Wesley and The J.B.'s' 'Blow Your Head'.

Acid House, rave, the second summer of love. It escaped us, we were too young – 13 going on 14. Nor do I recall anyone being into The Stone Roses or Happy Mondays. The tunes doing the rounds were things like 'Beat Dis' by Bomb the Bass, 'Good Life' by Inner City, 'Keep on Movin'' by Soul II Soul, 'Pump up the Jam' by Technotronic – early signs that hip hop was on the way out, to be displaced by various forms of dance music.

But not just yet. The guy I caught the school bus with returned the favour and bought the album 3 Feet High and Rising. De La Soul, alongside the Jungle Brothers, represented an emerging strain of rap that would assert itself towards the end of 1989 and into 1990, paving the way for groups like A Tribe Called Quest and a whole sub-genre of hip hop offhandedly referred to as jazz rap. This was the sort of hip hop almost anybody could get on with.

It was about now that I discovered National Fresh. I assume one of the cool/hard kids let me in on it, although it was unclear as to whether anybody else in my class – or even school – was tuning in as religiously as I was about to. I knew of Silver Bullet because he’d managed to make the Top 40, and because '20 Seconds to Comply' contained a sample from RoboCop, and I loved the film RoboCop. I didn’t like 'Bring Forth the Guillotine' at first but the Darkside Mix that Jeff Young played was a big improvement. So too was the Jungle Fever Mix of 'What U Waitin’ 4' by the Jungle Brothers, although I didn’t know this because I hadn’t heard the original.

Redhead Kingpin and the FBI were part of that 'new jack swing' scene, where hip hop and R&B coalesced. It wasn't my thing, but the 12" remix of 'We Rock the Mic Right' errs towards the side of hip hop. Ice-T's song 'New Jack Hustler', written for the film New Jack City, has nothing to do with this sub-genre, although they probably share an etymology. 'You Played Yourself' is from Ice T's third studio album, entitled The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech... Just Watch What You Say! and is indicative of the man's style.

The D.O.C. was an original member of Dallas act the Fila Fresh Crew. This credential brought him recognition and he was soon penning tracks for N.W.A. before going it alone and releasing No One Can Do It Better in the summer of 1989. (Although not initially released as a single, the album track 'Portrait of a Masterpiece' was later remixed by the London-based house DJ CJ Mackintosh, acquiring the status of 'hip-house’ classic in the process.)

What on earth were Digital Underground all about? Ostensibly they were a substantial collective. However, Shock G, the group’s de facto leader, would adopt a miscellany of personas, Humpty Hump being the most readily identifiable (due to the comedy Groucho nose-and-glasses set and his nasal delivery). 'Underwater Rimes' features another Shock G alter-ego, the underutilised MC Blowfish. The group were mired in a different sort of funk to Public Enemy – P-funk, which means anything associated with George Clinton and his twin acts, Parliament and Funkadelic, although Public Enemy certainly borrowed from this genre too.

Young MC’s original version of 'I Come Off' was nothing special but CJ Mackintosh and Dave Dorrell’s Southern Comfort Remix was, utilising the bass-line from 'Hercules' by Aaron Neville. Despite the house music connection, this is pure hip hop, anticipating the trend for jazz rap that was just around the corner. 

[Listen to here or here.]

LINER NOTES: AKA DEVIL IN DISGUISE [2005]

1.  That’s the Way It’s Got to Be – The Poets
2.  Entry of the Gladiators – Nero & the Gladiators
3.  Pretty Ballerina – The Left Banke
4.  Song for Jeffrey – Jethro Tull
5.  Christine’s Tune (aka Devil in Disguise) – The Flying Burrito Brothers
6.  Rhyme the Rhyme Well – Beastie Boys
7.  Outdoor Miner [album version] – Wire
8.  Sunny Sunny Cold Cold Day – Herman Dune
9.  Warning Sign – Talking Heads
10.  Insight – Joy Division
11.  (Intro/Tokyo) City Girl – Kevin Shields
12.  Cruiser’s Creek [Peel Session] – The Fall
13.  Record Collection – Comet Gain
14.  Come Back Jonee – Devo
15.  King of the Rodeo – Kings of Leon
16.  Mod Lang – Big Star
17.  Road to Nowhere – Hearts and Flowers
18.  Angel – Rod Stewart
19.  Tell Me Why – Neil Young
20.  It Kills – Stephen Malkmus
21.  Mental Poisoning – Weird War
22.  Silly Girl – Television Personalities

Record stores come and go. Growing up in Plymouth, I used to shop at HMV and Our Price on New George Street, Rival Records on Royal Parade, and Virgin Megastore on the corner of Cornwall Street and Armada Way. I say ‘shop’ but I’d mostly go just to look, often on my way home from school after taking an unnecessary detour via the city centre, thus postponing the laborious task of tackling the homework set that day. Later, once I found a use for secondhand material, I’d frequent Purple Haze at Drake Circus, the Music and Video Exchange in the Pannier Market, Different Class on Frankfurt Gate (not so much), and Really Good Records back when it occupied one of a row of Victorian tenements next to Plymouth Library.

The only one of these businesses still doing business is Really Good Records. After occupying a plot in the now defunct Bretonside Bus Station, it can now be found on Exeter Street just above. A guy called Mike runs the place and he won’t open up before 10:30 – or at all if it’s a Monday. He is very persuasive. If money was tight I’d think twice about paying a visit knowing that I might leave with more than I literally bargained for. In 2005, I dropped by to look for a specific Jethro Tull album and left with two (This Was and Aqualung), as well as a psychedelic/garage rock compilation entitled Illusions from the Crackling Void, and only narrowly avoided adding something by The Seeds to my collection. When I returned some months later for Devo’s first album I also came away with Real Life by Magazine.

This sort of thing could happen on any one of my tri-annual sojourns to Plymouth to see family and catch up with friends. These apportioned visitations would reveal sudden physical changes to my hometown’s landscape, often to my dismay, occasionally my pleasure. Some were more substantial than others. When the council finally gave permission for the old Drake Circus to be redeveloped it came down very quickly, as most buildings do once the wrecking ball moves in, radically changing the terrain in and around. The planning process had been so drawn out that by the time the new Drake Circus Shopping Centre opened in 2006, it was immediately considered démodé. Not that I imagine the shopping obsessed hordes particularly cared; only those of us who remembered fondly Arcadia, Olympus Sport, Purple Haze or The Unity were in any way bothered by it.

Illusions from the Crackling Void turned out to be a satisfying purchase. It is a collection of late 1960s psychedelic rock released on the Bam-Caruso imprint, the same people who put together the Rubble anthology comprising the same sort of thing, which was in turn inspired by the Nuggets series begun by Elektra and continued by Rhino Records. Most of it is fairly obscure, although The Poets, who were from Scotland, were probably one of the better known groups of the freakbeat scene, which was really just a British term for psychedelia with a mod-ish slant.

'What the hell is this?' quoth my lady friend; 'It sounds like clowns on acid!' The song, written by Czech composer Julius Fučík, had indeed found fame as a circus march, but why the allusion to hallucinogens? Nero & the Gladiators belong to that tame strain of instrumental rock & roll that was popular for a time in the early 1960s, as exemplified by groups like The Shadows, The Tornados, The Ventures. The source in this case was a long player entitled Decade of Instrumentals: 1959~1967, which was one of a number of the records the former cohabitant from Brighton brought over for me to listen to when I was living at 27 Hanworth Road. A man who moved house often, his records had since become an encumbrance and so he decided to pass them on to me. 'Entry of the Gladiators' starts with applause, then the spoken words, 'Hey, say there Brutus man, like, here come the gladiators,' before a woozy, reverb-drenched guitar kicks off the tune’s chromatic scale, making some sense of my partner’s startled appraisal. In retrospect, I’m surprised it never made it onto The Heroes of Hanworth.

Baroque pop is music that utilises classical instruments, such as strings or harpsichords, and may employ strategies more usually associated with classical music. The Beatles were arguably the genre’s most accomplished exponents – 'In my Life', 'Eleanor Rigby', 'Fixing a Hole', etc. (it seems to be more McCartney’s thing) – but the Stones contributed too, probably at Brian Jones’s behest – 'Play with Fire', 'Lady Jane', 'She’s a Rainbow'. It wasn’t by any means purely a British phenomenon. Love dabbled, and The Beach Boys too, but it was perhaps New York band The Left Banke who came the closest to being defined as an actual baroque act. 'Pretty Ballerina' is the last track on Illusions from the Crackling Void. In the 1967 television documentary Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution, Leonard Bernstein cheerfully observed that it incorporated, 'a combination of the Lydian and Mixolydian modes,' although he does then add that we should, 'never forget that this music [as in popular music] employs a highly limited musical vocabulary.' But he was right to single out 'Pretty Ballerina', even if I don’t understand his reasoning.

I purchased the Jethro Tull album This Was specifically for 'Song for Jeffrey' after seeing it performed on The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus (which funnily enough opens to the sound of 'Entry of the Gladiators'). As I have said, I was also cajoled into buying Aqualung, but This Was is a nicer object. The cover depicts Jethro Tull dressed up as old men surrounded by dogs, as if in a forest or wood. On the reverse the band as they are, laughing, not in colour as on the front but in a monochrome, yellowish green with their name and the album title writ large in red. It’s gatefold and so on the inside we get a picture of the group playing live on stage. The outer sleeve has a pleasing lustre. Aqualung's presentation is drab by comparison but is probably the better record.

1968 was transitional phase for The Byrds. Having removed David Crosby from the fold, they were struggling to perform The Notorious Byrd Brothers in a live setting to a satisfactory standard. Enter Gram Parsons, initially on keys and then guitar. Gram had already cultivated a country-rock sound with his group The International Submarine Band, so it was a willing combination. By August, The Byrds had recorded and released their next album, Sweetheart of the Rodeo, regarded by some to be the first pure country-rock record. I bypassed this album – for now – and went straight for The Flying Burrito Brothers, the band Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman formed shortly after the release of Sweetheart of the Rodeo. Whereas The Byrds had become Roger McGuinn’s band, The Flying Burrito Brothers was certainly Gram’s. I can only assume Chris Hillman enjoyed playing a supporting role, which is not to undermine his contribution or even how his contribution was perceived: just as Hillman is given credit commensurate with McGuinn on The Notorious Byrd Brothers, so he is with Parsons on The Gilded Palace of Sin. (Sweetheart of the Rodeo consists mostly of covers.) Band politics aside, the movement of staff doesn’t impact much on the music. Both Sweetheart of the Rodeo and The Gilded Palace of Sin are sincere exercises in fusing rock and roll with country and western, demonstrating a complete disregard for the psychedelia or R & B that was more fashionable at the time. One wonders why 'Christine's Tune' wasn’t released as a single, just as 'Marrakesh Express' was, which featured David Crosby on backing vocals.

It had been six years since the release of the Beastie Boys’ last album, Hello Nasty, and I hadn’t listened to much hip hop in the intervening period. My youngest brother burned me a copy of To the 5 Boroughs, with some Jurassic 5 tacked on the end of it, which I took back to London, along with all the stuff I’d purchased from Really Good Records. The album is a lot sparser than Hello Nasty, as 'Rhyme the Rhyme Well' shows. Save for the sampling of Chuck D’s opening salvo on 'Public Enemy No. 1', the track is built around nothing much more than a strong thumping beat and a weird descending keyboard effect. Country rock and hip hop aren’t the most complimentary of styles but the pared down sound of 'Rhyme the Rhyme Well' allows it to follow on from 'Christine's Tune' without too much bother.

To supplement my modest income I’d been attending focus groups on a fairly regular basis. They typically paid in the region of £50 for a couple hours of your time, give or take, and there might also be free food and drink. Since the last June, I’d offered my thoughts on Anadin paracetamol, Burger King, Twix, Foster’s lager, Threshers off-license, Right Guard, the BBC website, iced tea, Budweiser, and cigars. I didn’t even smoke cigars.

The day after expatiating on the subject of cigars, for which I was awarded £60, I was back in London to see Herman Dune at the 100 Club with the chap who introduced me to Sarah Records. This means that he would have already made me the compilation that included Herman Dune’s 'Sunny Sunny Cold Cold Day' as well as 'Outdoor Miner' by Wire (the album version). Wire had the same look that a lot of those early British post-punk bands had: Gang of Four, Magazine, Joy Division, Buzzcocks. It’s a simple, understated look made up of plain shirts, suit jackets, sensible shoes, slacks, all in muted colours. I’ve often wondered where it derived from. Was this a deliberate attempt to eschew the showier visage of early punk: the torn fabric, piercings and sculpted hair of bands like the Sex Pistols, The Clash and The Damned? Or was it a nod to the drab functionalism of Dr Feelgood and the pub rock scene? Television, Blondie and Talking Heads manifested it too – all of them American – so maybe not. That aside, 'Outdoor Miner' by Wire doesn’t sound much like Wire – they’re not normally so melodic – but how is this for an opening stanza:

No blind spots in the leopard's eyes,

Can only help to jeopardize,

The lives of lambs, the shepherd cries.

Talking Heads: I’d owned the live album Stop Making Sense since my first year at university (on tape). In 1998, I bought True Stories on a hungover Sunday morning with the guy who used to own many indie tapes, who by now owned as many CDs. I purchased More Songs About Buildings and Food on a whim in 2005 after finding it in the ‘£5 or less section’ of HMV in Hounslow. The front cover intrigued me – a group portrait made up of 529 individual Polaroids. Its date – 1978: the same year of Plastic Letters by Blondie and Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! by Devo – inferred the album might exhibit the sort of new wave qualities that appealed to me: keyboards, rhythmic guitars, slightly odd vocal inflections. On playing the CD this was found to be true.

'Warning Sign' is a very highly strung tune. It starts with Chris Frantz knocking out a few bars on drums, Tania Weymouth then embarks on a wandering groove, David Byrne’s guitar gradually chimes in before Jerry Harrison on second guitar. After 1 minute and 7 seconds, the whole thing then shifts: Byrne mutates his instrument into a discordant siren and starts ranting on about how he’s got money now and that we should look at his hair because he likes its design. It could be a comment on how wealth corrupts the individual, but I can’t be sure.

What Brian Eno brings to More Songs About Buildings and Food is comparable to that which Martin Hannett lends to Unknown Pleasures. Both producers subject their musical constituents to echo and delay, with a particular emphasis on drum and bass, to create a sort of industrial sonority. However, the prevailing mood on Joy Division’s record is different. 'Insight' begins with a distant drone, then a faint whir and the sound of a door being opened and shut – a prison cell is inferred. Cymbals and guitars gradually fade in, then Peter Hook’s bass in a register diametrically opposite to Tina Weymouth’s. The variance between the respective vocals is even more pronounced. Where David Byrne offers abstruse verbalism, Ian Curtis’s tone seems to be one of resignation. His inflection is more nuanced than he’s given credit for, and nowhere is this more true than on 'Insight', his bass-baritone sounding at moments almost fragile.

I used to watch more movies in those pre-internet days, like Lost in Translation. If I had been connected to the internet then I would have downloaded 'City Girl', but I had to buy the film’s soundtrack, and did so for this song alone. When it came to including it on Aka ‘Devil in Disguise’ I was unable to physically dissociate it from 'Intro/Tokyo', a segment of ambient sound that wouldn’t feel out of place on the second side of David Bowie's “Heroes”. This turned out not to be a bad thing, providing a dissonant bridge across from the relative clarity of 'Insight' to the melodic oddness and distorted guitar of 'City Girl'. It’s a song that doesn’t really resolve itself. The same chord cycle repeats itself four times, without any real regard for what might be a verse or a chorus, except each time the tempo is increased slightly. I could listen to it all day.

In 2005 I turned 30. We gathered at The Endurance in Soho to celebrate: myself, my partner, the guy who keeled over in Debenhams, the former cohabitant from Brighton, the guy who used to own a pager and Roz Childs, The Wilkinsons, the boys who lived at The Grosvenor, No Eyes and her husband, Queen of Tin (an old university associate we became reacquainted with during our Brentford years), and my brother (the one who recorded Orbital for me, not the Beastie Boys). A few days later I was in Tuscany for the wedding of an old school friend. A city-break to Barcelona in July, camping in Wales at the end of August, and an excursion to Berlin with The Wilkinsons in late October. Badminton had died a death but I was now playing 5-a-side with the guys at work. I cycled to work. My brother (Orbital) challenged me to run the Brighton 10K with him in mid-November, to which I acceded.

For my birthday, The Wilkinsons very kindly gifted me The Fall: The Complete Peel Sessions 1978–2004. The Fall was known to be 'my' group. In truth, I hadn’t listened to them much over the last five or so years and hadn’t bought any of their records for longer than that, but I welcomed the prospect of reacquainting myself with the world of Mark E Smith. These Peel Session tracks would proceed to form the backbone of a ‘Best of The Fall’ playlist I subsequently compiled and prompted me to purchase a few of the earlier albums that had previously escaped my attention. 'Cruiser’s Creek' features here.

Comet Gain are another by-product of the compilation the chap who introduced me to Sarah Records put together. The song 'Record Collection' tells of not being able to listen to certain records because they remind the protagonist of his ex. Sarah Records guy and I have a shared appreciation of many such moments: the sudden shift from Gbm to D in 'Marbles' by the Tindersticks; the strained harmonies in 'Solace' by The Sea Urchins; Arthur Lee pleading that, 'we’re all normal and we want our freedom,' towards the end of Love’s 'The Red Telephone'. On the other hand, whereas I’m interested in rhythm, Sarah Records guy is all about melody. If there’s a space where we meet in the middle, Comet Gain occupy it. He took me to see them at The Water Rats in King’s Cross at the beginning of the year, and I understood perfectly.

I doubt very much the chap who introduced me to Sarah Records has much time for Devo. This is because he would perceive them to be a comedy band, and if there’s one thing he can’t stand it’s that. But he wouldn’t be quite right. There’s certainly a humorous element to Devo’s act, but it’s equally kitsch, subversive and satirical. Not that that would impress Sarah Records guy either – as far as I know, he has no time for Weird War. Myself, I have no problem mixing music with mirth. How I laugh to myself every time I catch a glimpse of the back cover of Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! depicting various band members with stockings pulled over their heads (actually a stilled image from the band’s extended music video The Truth About De-Evolution).

It might appear that I was still avoiding contemporary music but this is only partly true. In September I saw Stephen Malkmus touring his latest album, Face the Truth, supported by a band called Clor. My friend who passed out in Debenhams pointed me in the direction of Tom Vek. Field Music, who had impressed in support of The Go! Team the previous year, released their debut album. Weird War had a new record out. They even played twice in support of it: at the Camden Underworld in May and again at the Highbury Garage in November. Aside from Illuminated by the Light by Weird War, bought within days of its release, it took me a while to absorb the rest, but ultimately I did.

In the meantime I purchased Aha Shake Heartbreak by Kings of Leon on double 10” vinyl. It is a nice object and an all right album. I like the interplay between the guitars, and Caleb’s vocal incoherence amuses me. My only complaint is that, when you can understand what’s being sung, the lyrics are neither very interesting nor pleasant.

Barcelona

Early in the year I thought I’d have another stab at Big Star. I took a chance on #1 Record and liked it so much that within a matter of weeks I’d bought Radio City.

It can be hard to discern from my playlists what sort of thing I might have been into at the time I compiled them. Generally speaking there’s no particular strain of music that predominates, but sometimes there is. I’m alluding to music in the wider sense, encompassing its broader aesthetics. For example, the collective presence of Blur, The Jam, the Small Faces, early Rolling Stones, Love, The Beatles, Herbie Hancock, The Yardbirds, and Saint Etienne on Carrington Classics and The Heroes of Hanworth is indicative of the Britpop scene and its many cultural accoutrements: Fred Perry polo shirts, V-neck jumpers, desert boots, anoraks; films like Blow-Up and The Ipcress File; cafes; a sense of irony; whatever Graham Coxon was into. By the time I’d made Bully for Bulstrode these inclinations had dissipated. After the eclecticism of the French Gite compilations my view began to narrow once more. The artistes this time around were The Byrds, Gram Parsons, Neil Young, Syd Barrett, The Amboy Dukes, Led Zeppelin, Big Star, golden era Rolling Stones, and, as we have seen, a miscellany of psychedelia, garage and country rock. It was something approaching Americana and found its representation in: pale-blue denim, checked shirts, Cuban heels and black leather bomber jackets; films like Zabriskie Point and Buffalo 66; the works of Hunter S Thompson; the tattered reputation of Richard Nixon; my American road trip of the 2004, which was basically the enactment of some sort of fantasy; Keith Richards sat outside the burnt hulk of his Redlands estate in cut-off denim shorts and a tight-fitting shirt with the sleeves rolled up. These are trivial matters, but when I look back over certain periods of my life, to the clothes I wore, the places I ventured, the music I listened to, the films I watched, then suddenly there’s meaning where there didn’t appear to be in the moment.

Anyway, Big Star. I’d explored power pop without having to resort to Cheap Trick or The Knack. 

Let’s all give Mike at Really Good Records a big round of applause. The third and final track taken from Illusions from the Crackling Void – and there could easily have been more – is 'Road to Nowhere' by Hearts and Flowers. A Goffin/King composition, you might call it country rock, and it could be seen as the climax to the compilation.

As much as Rod Stewart’s personality can be slightly nauseating, he’s undoubtedly a great singer. There’s a folksy feel to 'Angel' that follows on from 'Road to Nowhere' nicely, although it was Jimi Hendrix’s tune originally, concernng his mother. Ronnie Wood’s guitar playing is loose, sometimes behind, sometimes ahead of the beat. The verse builds to a crescendo and at the moment of release there are congas.

A lot of country, folk and psychedelic rock is fairly interchangeable (excepting the strain of British folk rock that developed into the Canterbury Scene, but that’s not relevant here). Take Neil Young’s work with Buffalo Springfield. At the time it could conceivably have been characterised as folk rock with a psychedelic edge. When Young went solo he jettisoned the psychedelic and rockier elements in favour of a more country inflected sound, and yet you’d be hard pushed to call it country rock in the vein of The Byrds or The Flying Burrito Brothers. Nor could you call it southern rock, a derivative of the genre that was gathering pace. What you might call it is country folk. Pedantic taxonomy aside, I added After the Gold Rush to my collection and sought to include a track on this compilation. Still beholden to MiniDisc, I was going to go with 'Cripple Creep Ferry' but found I had almost three minutes to spare after opting for 'Silly Girl' by Television Personalities, at 2 minutes 45 seconds, ahead of 'Cross-Eyed Merry' by Jethro Tull, which comes in at 4 minutes and 6 seconds, and so settled for 'Tell Me Why', which lasts 2 minutes and 54 seconds.

I was initially a bit disappointed with Weird War’s Illuminated by the Light. It lacks the urgency, the mania and the effect pedals of its predecessors. However, its lethargic funk grew on me and the material worked well live. But Svenonius was done with Weird War. He would take a break and return four years later with a new outfit, called Chain & the Gang.

Berlin

In October my partner and I moved to the more salubrious environs of St Margarets, Twickenham. I didn’t want to but circumstances dictated that we did. I had liked living in Isleworth, having the Red Lion as my local and St John’s stores at the end of my road.

'Silly Girl' by the Television Personalities, courtesy of the chap who introduced me to Sarah Records. I’ve only got two Television Personalities songs to go on: this and a track called 'Back to Vietnam' which the chap played to me around the time he introduced me to Sarah Records, and did so with a smirk.

 [Listen to here.]