- Adeus Maria Fulo – Os Mutantes
- Turn! Turn! Turn! – The Byrds
- In Another Land – The Rolling Stones
- Heart Failed (In the Back of a Taxi) – Saint Etienne
- Femme Fatale – The Velvet Underground
- Harmonic Generator – The Datsuns
- Incense and Peppermints – Strawberry Alarm Clock
- Good Fortune – PJ Harvey
- Willow’s Song – Magnet
- A Man Needs to be Told – The Charlatans
- Old Man – Neil Young
- Everything Flows – Teenage Fanclub
- For You – Big Star
- Hanging Around the Day – The Polyphonic Spree
- Journey to the Center of the Mind – The Amboy Dukes
- Freddie’s Dead – Curtis Mayfield
- Sing This All Together – The Rolling Stones
- Citadel – The Rolling Stones
- Lonesome Tears – Beck
- LA Women – The Doors
- The Girl I Knew Somewhere – The Monkees
- Let’s Make this Precious – Dexy’s Midnight Runners
- The Trees – Pulp
On arriving in Bangkok, November 2002, I purchased a
pair of small, cheap speakers for my old Sony Walkman, which I deemed to be expendable (unlike my MiniDisc player). I brought along only a couple of tapes, including an extended copy of Come On Let's Go. I utilised this apparatus
just once, in Haad Yao on the Island of Koh Phangan, before deciding that carrying these trashy amplifiers around in my undersized backpack wasn't
worth the bother and leaving them behind in the next hotel room I vacated. In any
case, it became increasingly clear that a soundtrack of sorts was writing
itself and I would need to compile something from scratch once I returned home.
There were four artistes that seemed to prevail during my
travels: Red Hot Chili Peppers, Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix, and The Doors. I
can't stand the Red Hot Chili Peppers, can take or leave Bob Marley, don't mind
a bit of Hendrix, quite like The Doors. Beyond that, what you heard
predominantly was dance or chill-out music. Very occasionally something else would break on through,
maybe via a television in an internet cafe or in a bar off the beaten track. I
started taking notes, but when it came to collating this material I found
I hadn’t accumulated nearly enough to compile a playlist of the requisite length.
I was thus obliged to source tunes from elsewhere; my compilation would have to
represent the whole of the year, and not just the part of it that was given
over to travelling.
The friend who passed out in Debenhams ended his travels
prematurely, returning in early January. My lady friend and I came home in April as planned. By the end
of May we’d located to a flat on Gibson Close off of Bridge Road on the border
of Hounslow and Isleworth. Natural light was in short supply, as was furniture,
but Douglas Bader House was a clean and decent sized dwelling. The Royal Oak was our new local,
a pub that I’d frequented often during my first year at university
and sporadically since. With its low ceiling festooned in rugby memorabilia, it used to be one of the cosiest boozers in the whole of West London.
Having exhausted the supply at Hounslow's library I decided to defect to Richmond's. One of my first withdrawals was the Brazilian Tropicalia of Os Mutantes by Os Mutantes. I‘d read
about them in a magazine – more than likely Mojo – and they sounded right up
my strasse, offering up ‘tropical psychedelic rock’. Looking back I'm surprised I chose to begin my compilation with a tune with no direct link to my long
holiday (although an erroneous association has formed retrospectively), but once it
finally kicks in 'Adeus Maria Fulo' comes across like a statement of intent.
The inclusion of 'Turn!
Turn! Turn!' by The Byrds was inspired by the five weeks we spent in New
Zealand. I heard it there on numerous occasions, nearly always on a nearby
radio. It's not my favourite Byrds' tune, but I can picture
myself listening to it in a hostel in Taupo to this very day. Moreover, it
inspired me, on my return home, to give the album Mr. Tambourine Man a proper listen and to acquire other albums by
The Byrds thereafter.
A common friend who owned a flat in Lynton, North Devon, offered
the property for a shared holiday: to myself, my lady friend, the guy who used
to own a pager and Roz Childs. As well as evenings in The Crown,
games of crazy-golf in Lynmouth, night walks to the Beggars Roost and hikes
across Exmoor, we spanned time listening to music and playing table football in
the flat itself. I can’t recall which tunes I brought along, but the guy with
the pager came up trumps, providing the Rolling Stones' albums Their Satanic Majesties Request and Beggars Banquet. So taken was I with Satanic Majesties that no less than
three songs made it onto Journey to the
Center of the Mind, which is unprecedented. 'In Another Land' was written by Bill Wyman, and hats off to him, not
just for the quality of the track but for managing to get it approved by Jagger and Richards.
Exmoor
White Sands Beach on Koh Chang. At the shore’s
southern point there is a restaurant called Thor's with a splendid view over
the Gulf Of Thailand. We dined there thrice, and on each occasion the same
ambient/chill-out compilation played out in the background. Catching the dulcet
tones of Sarah Cracknell, I asked ‘Thor’ if he/she/they could provide me with the
track listing, which he/she/they did, and 'Heart
Failed (in the Back of a Taxi)' was duly noted. The Saint Etienne album it’s
taken from (Sound of Water) has a
more ambient feel than their earlier work, but 'Heart Failed...' could have sat quite comfortably on 1993's So Tough.
Like Os
Mutantes, The Velvet Underground
& Nico was another post-travel acquisition loaned from Richmond
Library. When I'd borrowed the same cassette during my
first year at university, from the guy with the indie tapes, it had been mainly
because I wanted a copy of 'Venus in Furs',
and so I never gave the record the attention it deserved. The album is a fairly
even split between experimental and discordant songs, such as 'Venus in Furs' and 'All Tomorrow's Parties', and more mainstream moments, like 'I'll be Your Mirror' and 'Femme Fatale'. I would have preferred to
have included 'All Tomorrow's Parties'
on this compilation but at 6 minutes it was just too long. 'Femme Fatale', on the other hand, lasts a mere 2 minutes 38 seconds.
The Datsuns emerged out of the post-punk
thing that The Strokes kicked off (although credit should perhaps also go to
Swedish band The Hives who'd nailed their colours to the mast a whole year
before The Strokes did). Deprived of my record player, I bought 'Harmonic Generator' as a CD single.
Before embarking on my travels, I left most of my possessions with my brother
and told him that if he was pushed for space he could ditch the hi-fi but should
keep hold of my speakers. In the intervening period he moved from Acton to
Wandsworth and was indeed pushed for space. The garage rock revival of The
Datsuns compliments the authentic garage rock of Strawberry Alarm Clock,
courtesy of the ex-cohabitant from Brighton. Neither track was heard on my
travels.
I noticed when Polly Harvey adopted a more
glamorous image to accompany her new single, 'Good Fortune', in late 2000. I should have more than noticed, I should have
bought the album Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea.
If you’re not aware of it, the video for 'Good Fortune' sees PJ Harvey nocturnally
flitting around London in a black dress. The cover of the album saw her
in a similar get-up, this time swanning around what looks to be New York. One
only notices because PJ Harvey didn’t ordinarily wear stuff like this. She’d
previously presented either an austere image or a very garish one: black
leather with no makeup; luminous dresses and jumpsuits with lots of makeup. I allude to
all this because while drinking in an ‘Irish pub’ in Koh Samui the video for 'Good
Fortune' appeared, courtesy of MTV, on the modest television hanging off of the
wall. I allude to this because at the time I was feeling slightly out of
sorts, stuck in Lamai, surrounded by expats and sex tourists, drinking pints of
imported draught lager with my fainting friend. PJ Harvey came to me as some sort of vision, not so much of loveliness but of a kind
of sophistication totally lacking within the present milieu.
I
noticed when Tim Burgess adopted a falsetto vocal style on The
Charlatans' new single, 'A Man Needs to Be Told', in late 2001.
I allude to this because while having lunch at Anong Villas in Mae Nam the
video appeared, courtesy of MTV, on the modest television hanging off of the wall.
My lady friend could also hear it from her position of the beach directly
behind me, as could my fainting friend from the balcony of his bungalow straight
in front. It was a wonderful shared moment between the three of us.
In between is 'Willow’s Song' from The Wicker Man soundtrack. While working for the audio-visual wholesaler in Brentford, who sold plasma screens and LCD/DLP projectors to high-end retailers and private customers, the friend who
used to own a pager availed himself of the opportunity to purchase through me an ex-demo
projector on the cheap. One of the first films we watched on it was The
Wicker Man, which inspired the guy who bought the projector to buy The Wicker Man
soundtrack. It consists of folk music mainly, much of it amusing, and some of it sinister.
The folksy ambiance of Willow’s Song complements the country feel of 'A Man Needs to Be Told'.
Tim Burgess’s vocal may take its lead from Curtis Mayfield but the steel guitar
is pure country rock, which is why I've followed on with Neil Young. I first heard 'Old Man' in the car of our friends from Acton, driving down to the
New Forest to watch Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me on our other friend's projector. Alas, the generator we hired to facilitate this scheme
ran out of petrol not even half way through. It was still worth the effort of
digging a shallow trench for the generator and breaking our backs
lugging the thing through the woods to find an appropriately remote clearing to
set the whole thing up, if only because I can barely believe we attempted such
a thing.
On returning to England I discovered that our fainting, Cornish friend had purchased Four Thousand Seven Hundred and Sixty-Six Seconds - a Short Cut to
Teenage Fanclub, which introduced me to 'Everything Flows', one of their earlier
records – their first, in fact – and not so typical of the sound they would
become more associated with. Teenage Fanclub are big fans of Big Star, whose song 'For You', which I have
included here, is neither particularly representative of their sound. Nor have
either group’s musical aberrations strayed in the same direction: 'Everything Flows' is more abrasive than
the work that followed, whereas 'For You'
is gentler than what preceded it. I was coming
at Big Star from the wrong angle, but their third LP, entitled Third (aka Sister Lovers), was all that Richmond Library had. 'For You' aside, I recall feeling a little
underwhelmed by the album, and I haven’t listened to it since.
The nascent Acton and Chiswick scene of 2001 really started
to take off in 2003. It was to do with a friend of my lady friend and her
boyfriend moving to Acton (let’s call them by their now married name: ‘The
Wilkinsons’) and friends of theirs subsequently moving to Chiswick. Two of
these other friends shared a house, known to us as The Grosvenor, just west of
Turnham Green. Its position brought us into contact with other drinking
establishments: The (World Famous) John Bull, The Pilot, The Bell &
Crown down by the river in Strand-on-the-Green, as well as The Raven up the
road in Stamford Brook. Parties at The Grosvenor became a thing of legend. When
I think of that house now I am reminded of The Flaming Lips and The
Polyphonic Spree. I never got around to recording a copy of Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots by The Flaming
Lips, but I did The Beginning Stages of... by The Polyphonic
Spree. Within the context of this compilation, 'Hanging Around the Day' provides a bridge across from 'For You' by Big Star to...
The sixth episode of the first season of the television series Six Feet Under –
entitled The Room – sees Nate finding
out that his late father used to occasionally trade funeral services for
favours, among them the supply of marijuana and the use of an apartment above
an Indian restaurant. Having been completely oblivious to any of this when his father was alive, Nate visits the room in question and has a look around
before placing the needle onto what was presumably the last record his old man ever
listened to, which turns out to be 'Journey to the Center of the Mind' by The Amboy Dukes. Diegesis fades into
non-diegesis as Nate imagines what his father might have got up to there:
getting stoned with a group of hell’s angels, being pleasured by a hooker, firing a high powered rifle from the window at passers-by below. The song
itself is comprised of a poppy melody backed by 60s garage-rock guitars and
frantic drum work.
The Grosvenor
Vang Vieng, Laos. While having lunch in Xoyoh Cafe I’m privy
to the music playing in the restaurant across the road, which will include the Beastie Boys, Curtis Mayfield, all
of Rubber Soul by The Beatles, and 'Wild Horses' by
the Stones. I am already familiar with much of this music but not so much Curtis Mayfield, although my Cornish friend does own a
compilation of his, which I assume is from where I obtained 'Freddie’s Dead'.
Back to North Devon. I couldn’t decide which I liked more: 'Sing This All Together' or 'Citadel'. The fact that a split-second separates them on the album gave me a mandate to include them both. They
are very different tunes. The former is indicative of the experimental
psychedelia that was fashionable at the time, the latter points towards the
rock that would occupy the Stones for the foreseeable future.
I am mostly indifferent to Beck, but I think Sea Change
is good record. My lady friend bought a copy on the Khao San Road in
Bangkok. It wasn’t long before this cheap forgery started jumping and
twitching, but not before I’d recorded 'Lonesome
Tears' onto my MiniDisc, preserved for posterity. (This was also how 'The Trees' ended up here, off of a dodgy copy of Hits rather than the original We Love Life.)
As I’ve said,
I like The Doors, but I didn’t own any of their records prior to
travelling. This was probably a good thing because they might otherwise have
been deprived of any previous association. Instead, The Doors recall bars in
Bangkok and beaches on Koh Phangan and driving around New Zealand’s North
Island, which are nice connotations to have. Indeed, there was an actual ‘Doors
Bar’ in Haad Rin, which offered welcome sanctuary from the relentless dance
music that played in the surrounding establishments. Furthermore, the song 'LA Women' is in keeping with the strain
of Americana that features throughout this compilation: Neil Young, Big Star,
The Byrd’s and The Amboy Dukes, as well as Beck and The Charlatans doing country and
western. And then there’s The Monkees, although I’m not sure they’re imbued
with so much Americana, given the band’s conceptual nature. A toss-up between 'For Pete's Sake' and 'The Girl I Knew Somewhere', derived from some greatest hits collection, possibly borrowed off of my de facto in-laws.
After wandering around
Southeast Asia for just shy of four months (encompassing two weeks in Laos, almost three in
Cambodia, and the rest in Thailand) my lady friend and I flew to New Zealand,
which was a culture shock in reverse. The first week in
Auckland was all well and good: the America’s Cup was wrapping up, the sun was
shining and there was a buzz about the place. The girl who used to live with
my lady friend on the Isle of Dogs flew in from the UK to embark on her latest
round of travelling, and after a few days of mild revelry we hired a car together and headed south.
By the time we got to Rotorua it was teeming it down.
Everything seemed very bleak all of a sudden. I began to suffer a mild
depression, not to mention alcohol withdrawal; it was too expensive to drink
like I’d done in Southeast Asia, which was excessively. I was tired of living out of a very small rucksack, always wearing the same
shabby clothes – attire geared towards a sunnier climate. At the same time the
idea of returning home wasn’t very appealing either, to find a job and to live
nine-to-five and endure the British weather and all the rest of it. I wanted to be back in Hua Hin, sat out on a jetty late in the evening, watching electrical storms creeping along the horizon.
We were sat in an Irish bar in Rotorua, me nursing a solitary
pint, when 'Let’s Make this Precious'
by Dexys Midnight Runners began to play. It meant something, although I’m not
sure what. Let’s make this precious. New Zealand is a beautiful place and I
enjoyed my time there, just as I would eventually go on to enjoy the
company of friends, and maybe even the British weather, once I returned home
and settled down to it.
Rotorua
