LINER NOTES: FEELGOOD BY NUMBERS [2004]

1.  Out on the Weekend – Neil Young
2.  Grand Fraud – Weird War
3.  Feelgood by Numbers – The GO! Team
4.  Sister Mamie – Yusef Lateef
5.  Thoughts and Words – The Byrds
6.  Think – The Rolling Stones
7.  Help Me Girl – Eric Burdon & The Animals
8.  All Summer Long – The Beach Boys
9.  Good to Me – Otis Redding
10.  Vonal Declosion – Stereolab
11.  Bag of Jewels – Lou Donaldson
12.  Elfin Orphan – Scene Creamers
13.  New Rose – The Damned
14.  Looking at You – MC5
15.  Wash in the Rain – The Bees
16.  Roadrunner – The Modern Lovers
17.  Marquee Moon – Television
18.  Reptilia – The Strokes
19.  Deeper Into Movies – Yo La Tengo
20.  Ramp of Death – Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks
21.  Goin' Back – The Byrds

2004: A terrible year for music. Debut albums by Razorlight, Kasabian, The Killers, Keane. Snow Patrol are milking last year’s record for all its worth, Bloc Party have come into being, and the release of their sophomore LP seems to have dashed any hope I had that The Libertines might jack it in.

Music is no different to any other art form. Just as bad novels, bad movies and bad paintings find a market, so too do bad songs. And just as it requires a deeper reading to appreciate good literature, good cinema or good art, so it is with music. One more than likely accepts that Vladimir Nabokov is a better novelist than, for instance, John Grisham (no disrespect to John Grisham), or that the movies of Stanley Kubrick are generally superior to those of Steven Spielberg (no disrespect to Steven Spielberg), and that Andy Warhol is a more interesting artist than Damien Hirst… so why feel uncomfortable with the idea that Franz Ferdinand aren't nearly as good as Talking Heads? That’s not say it matters if to your ears The Libertines are the same thing as The Strokes. Just be aware that there’s more to music than the ability to write vaguely catchy tunes coupled with a propensity for taking hard drugs.

The problem with contemporary rock music is that the music itself is often deemed to be less important than a band’s image or a musician’s personality. Rock and roll has never been a purely auditory phenomenon, but there was a time when groups actually put some effort into what they were doing, learnt their craft, paid their dues. When Keith Richards and Mick Jagger appeared before court on drug related charges in 1967, the Rolling Stones had released no less than SEVEN albums. Even if we allow that Richards, Jones and Jagger were probably getting high well before that, they’d existed as a drug free unit long enough to establish themselves as viable artists. With a lot of bands these days you get the feeling they’d rather not bother recording any music at all.

For the mainstream act the situation is different. More often than not they’re in it for the fame and adulation alone, in cahoots with their record company who probably take an even more cynical view about the whole business than they do. Together, they work to divest their product of anything approaching artistic integrity. To ensure that the unsuspecting listener doesn’t call out the cheap pop tune for the superficial drivel it often is, all aural distractions are erased. Everything is invested into the melody, which is typically conveyed via the vocal component of the song. Frequencies are equalised, textures are compressed, rhythm instruments are buried deep within the mix. You may struggle to identify the characteristic sound of any specific instrument whatsoever. The idea is to create something that is completely benign. Why? Because the music industry doesn’t consider that their art should demand anything of its audience other than slavish devotion. As far as they’re concerned, popular music serves much the same purpose as sport.

It’s mid-March. Myself, the guy who used to own a pager, the former Cohabitant from Brighton and his friend Charlie (also from Brighton) are leaving Monterey, California, in a Chrysler Sebring Convertible. We all have monstrous hangovers after an evening spent drinking more than we intended to at the London Bridge Pub down on Fisherman’s Wharf. Checking out of our motel was a mission in itself. No sooner had we managed it, we had to get one of cleaners to let us back into our room after realising we’d left something of value in there. I then had to deal with booking flights from Las Vegas to San Francisco (in person, from a travel agent). Finally, we paused to pick up supplies in a wonderfully spacious and air-conditioned supermarket before pushing on along the Cabrillo Highway to begin the coastal drive south.

What to listen to. How about Harvest by Neil Young? I’ve owned this album for almost a year, but it goes without saying I’ve never listened to in anything resembling my present environment. 'Out on the Weekend' kicks in and it becomes rapidly apparent that Big Sur was designed with country rock specifically in mind.

Big Sur

In the autumn of 2003 the former cohabitant from Brighton informed me of his plan to spend the spring of 2004 travelling around the United States of America. I received his proposition – for I was invited – with a restrained avidity. Although employed (at Nikon, since you ask) I was recovering from the economic damage my own Asian travels had inflicted upon me. At the same time I was itching to hit the road again, if only for a couple of weeks.

I made arrangements to meet the former cohabitant at a specific time and place in San Francisco, invited along the guy who used to own a pager, and then applied for credit. Less than a month prior to our intended departure I booked two return tickets at £240 a head, leaving from Gatwick Airport and only slightly soured by having to change planes in Charlotte, which sounds cheap, and was, but not ridiculously so. The economic conditions as they were, it’s possible that if I’d been more on the ball I could have found a cheaper deal still.

I’m in Haight-Ashbury browsing through records in Amoeba Music with the guy who used to own a pager, who’s off enquiring about lap steel guitars. I’m looking for If You Can't Beat 'Em, Bite 'Em by Weird War because I’ve not been able to find a copy in London. I am successful. Just as 'Out on the Weekend' is the first song off of Harvest, 'Grand Fraud' is the first song (proper) on If You Can't Beat 'Em, Bite 'Em. I find that such incipient energy is often transferable when compiling playlists.

Thunder, Lightning, Strike by The Go! Team hadn’t been released at this juncture, but I didn’t want to overload the front end of my compilation with tunes exclusively related to my two week vacation. My lady friend, the guy who passed out in Debenhams and I went to see The Go! Team play at The Spitz (supported by Field Music) in October. The song 'Feelgood by Numbers' reminds me of something Vincent Guaraldi might have composed for a Charlie Brown TV special. It’s an instrumental track which why is I’ve followed it up with jazz, although the tone of 'Sister Mamie' by Yusef Lateef is very different: a hard-bop groove with eastern textures. 'Sister Mamie' recalls our return to Lynton, North Devon, in the August, but it’s the only tune that does. The dye had been indelibly cast a year earlier and I will forever associate that place with the Rolling Stones' albums Their Satanic Majesties Request and Beggars Banquet.

We’ve not long left San Francisco, by way of an unplanned detour through downtown Oakland, and the guys from Brighton are flicking through their CDs. We are driving to Yosemite National Park on the first leg of a four-day road trip that will take us to Las Vegas (the long way around). After mildly enjoying Donovan’s greatest hits, it materialises that the guys from Brighton have with them Younger than Yesterday by The Byrds. I’ve played this record a lot, but I’m not tired of it. The song 'Thoughts and Words' now replaces 'Have You Seen Her Face' as my favourite – both are Chris Hillman's tunes. We will listen to the album again on the final leg of our journey: the drive from Santa Barbara to Las Vegas through the Mojave Desert.

Turns out I’ve not given Aftermath by the Rolling Stones the attention it deserves. 'Mother’s Little Helper', 'Lady Jane' and 'Under My Thumb' all made it onto my Best of the Rolling Stones MiniDisc compilation, but I’d left it at that. My loss, because there’s at least 'Think' to (re)consider. I’d imagined that a golden age era Stones’ album would be more suited to driving through California, but there’s something about Aftermath that seems to suit the mood – an innocence perhaps, or a particular type of sound. Whatever it is, it sits very nicely alongside Eric Burdon’s 'Help Me Girl', which was released the same year (1966 – although what we're really listening to is The Very Best of Eric Burdon & The Animals).

Coruscations of light bounce upward off the Pacific Ocean blue. Neil Young’s Harvest has drawn to a close. What’s next? The Beach Boys of course; All Summer Long. It may only be March but it looks and feels like July. The guy who used to own pager, who has had to do all of the driving on account of being the only one of us with a driving licence, thinks the song's hilarious.

Having exhausted my parents’ supply of 1960s and '70s rock and roll, as well as my father’s jazz, I’ve made a start on my mother’s limited supply of Atlantic Soul. (I never really understood why my parents decided to abandon their record collection. They only ended up replacing records with CDs, and the sound quality will have only suffered.) It’s The Soul Album by Otis Redding that’s caught my eye. It could well be that I’ve recently watched the film Catholic Boys (a.k.a. Heaven Help Us) for the hundredth time, which features the Otis Redding track 'I’ve Been Loving You Too Long', although that’s not on this record. My favourite track on The Soul Album is 'Good to Me', a similarly slow and plaintive tune. Within a year I will have purchased a copy of Otis Blue.

          Margerine Eclipse [sic] is the first Stereolab album that’s not lived up to my heightened expectations. Let it be known that there was never any question that something from it wouldn’t appear on my annual compendium, and it’s a very good record by anyone else’s standards, but I sense that the premature death of 'groop' member Mary Hansen in late 2002 has, understandably, taken its toll.

The quintet Lou Donaldson brought together to record Midnight Creeper in 1968 is quite something: Blue Mitchell on cornet, Lonnie Smith on the organ, George Benson on guitar, Idris Muhammad on drums, and the man himself playing alto sax. It’s another one of my father’s records, although funkier than most of the jazz he used to own. Jazz-funk is a mysterious genre looked down upon by some, but the calibre of the musicians that have indulged speaks for itself: Donald Byrd, Grant Green, Jimmy Smith, Herbie Hancock, Ramsey Lewis – even Miles Davis to some extent.

For a brief moment Weird War became Scene Creamers, subsequently reverting to their original name when an obscure French graffiti collective claimed legal ownership. Ironically, the album released under the Scene Creamers name is one of Weird War’s best (and if you google ‘Scene Creamers’ those Gaelic scribblers are nowhere to be seen). Released in January 2003, while I was bumming around in Southeast Asia, I Suck on That Emotion should have more rightly featured on the previous year’s compendium, but I didn’t get hold of it until late in the year and continued to listen to it well into 2004. [Incidentally, Ian Svenonius dedicated their performance of 'Elfin Orphan' at the Highbury Garage to me after I asked that they play it in return for the beer I bought him. (He’d actually wanted Grenadine, but it was off.) I hadn’t meant to hold him to ransom but the barman insisted he pay for his drink, despite the fact that Scene Creamers/Weird War were headlining, and Ian didn’t have any cash on him.]

Yosemite

The origins of punk have been attributed to innumerable sources. Did it begin with the Velvet Underground, MC5, The Stooges, The Sonics, The Seeds, The Monks, Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers, Dr. Feelgood, 'You Really Got Me' by The Kinks, 'Seven and Seven Is' by Love or 'Louie Louie' by The Kingsmen? No, it started with jazz. Or, more specifically, bepop.

The precursor to bepop was swing and big band jazz, which was driven by the individual, a bandleader or arranger: Count Basie, Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman. Early rock and roll was similarly individualistic: Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Bill Haley, Elvis Presley. Bepop was interested in advanced harmonics, rhythmic intricacies, modal chords, with less emphasis on melody. There was no longer any need for a large orchestra and so the role of bandleader was diminished. The beat combos that resulted – quintets and quartets mostly – were therefore more democratic. It was customary for each musical component to contribute not just towards the rhythm but also improvise a solo. The nominal leader of these combos might write a piece with a specific instrument, or even musician, in mind. The song was no longer the sum of its parts but a grouping together of singular strands, recorded live, be it in the studio or in a club or concert hall, where it is left to the individual musician to regulate the volume of their instrument. There was no technical Svengali sat in a control room, twiddling knobs, deciding what sound should predominate, emphasising melody and/or dampening rhythm: all sound was equal.

Despite not being literally recorded live, punk aspires to very much the same thing. The idea is to allow the timbre of each musical constituent to flourish in an attempt replicate a live experience. Less emphasis might be placed on a song’s vocal, and the bass line is as likely to carry the melody as the lead guitar. Traditional hierarchies are disposed of. This is music following the path of least resistance, a communion between the artist and the listener.

'New Rose' by The Damned was purportedly recorded in a day. Released in October 1976, it has the dubious honour of being British punk’s first ever record – dubious because I imagine that sort of thing brings with it a certain amount of pressure. Fortunately, 'New Rose' does not disappoint. I borrowed it from the friend who crashed to the floor in Debenhams, who owned the greatest hits compilation album The Light at the End of the Tunnel.

My first go at MC5 had not been a great success. I purchased Teen Age Lust in 1998/99 only to find the sound quality wanting. The album is a live recording of a gig they played in 1970, which goes some way towards explaining that. I was careful not to make the same mistake twice and opted against buying MC5’s seminal debut, Kick Out the Jams, also recorded live, and instead purchased Back in the USA, which they cut in GM Studios, Detroit. My opinion of MC5 improved immeasurably and I was able to appreciate why some have claimed them to be a progenitor of punk.

I can’t recall how I came by 'Wash in the Rain' by The Bees but it would be a while yet before I picked up their album. It’s possible that I heard it on the radio and then bought it as a 7” single, but I can’t be sure. I’ve acquired a lot of music this way, where I’ve not known enough about a band to chance it on an actual album but I’ve been desirous of owing a particular song. My uncertainty stems from the fact that singles are not really a thing anymore, and all mine are stashed away somewhere. It’s too much bother to manually recalibrate my record player to play at 45 rpm, so I rarely do.

It’s Friday night in San Francisco and we’ve ended up back at Delirium, the same club we went to on Tuesday. That evening they played an eclectic mix of classic rock, garage, new wave, heavy metal, punk and indie – ‘A Rock & Roll Party for the 20th Century’. Tonight they’ll be spinning punk and new wave. I get talking to the DJ and put in a request for 'Terry Waite Sez' by The Fall, which he fulfils. Between that and the Sex Pistols, The Stooges, The Cramps and The Clash, something catches my ear. I consult the DJ to find out what it is: 'Roadrunner' by The Modern Lovers.

Proto-punk – designation after the fact. The Modern Lovers took their cue from The Velvet Underground, so how’s that supposed to work? The Modern Lovers was the first album I bought once I got back to Blighty (although I bought the wrong version: The Original Modern Lovers, produced by Kim Fowley and not John Cale). If this was indeed punk then it was my sort of punk. My problem with a lot of punk is that it’s quite shouty. I can’t listen to the Sex Pistols because of Johnny Rotten’s voice, and when I’ve made forays in other directions I’ve come up against the same problem. I really wanted to like 'Holiday in Cambodia' by The Dead Kennedys but couldn’t get past the vocal. It’s the same with The Ramones, although I must confess to being disappointed with them generally. Towards The Clash I remain ambivalent. And then there’s the clothing. I don’t really go in for all that ripped denim, heavy leather and graphic sloganeering.

I suppose this is why I’ve always erred towards new wave. Whether Television qualifies as new wave is debatable – post-punk at least, which almost amounts to the same thing. I knew 'Marquee Moon' was a great tune and took myself to Richmond Library to follow up on my interest. Unfortunately, the album Marquee Moon left me slightly cold. As with Big Star’s Third (aka Sister Lovers) its reputation may have adversely preceded it.

A guy I worked with complained that the first single off of The Strokes’ second album sounded like the theme tune to the children’s television show Rainbow. I could see where he was coming from. The second single, 'Reptilia', was an improvement, but I still had no intention of buying The Strokes’ new LP. In the end it was my lady friend who decided that Room on Fire was worth a punt, and so 'Reptilia' made it onto this compilation.

'Delirium'

In June our landlord decided he wanted to sell up. Putting aside the rigmarole of having to find a new place to live – as well the loss of the Royal Oak as our local – it wasn’t such a bad thing. Douglas Bader House had always been a dark and isolated tenement with too little furniture. We found a top-floor flat in Isleworth with an iron staircase leading up to it, which lent a certain frisson. Down the road was St. John’s Stores, around the corner Isleworth Train Station, and The Red Lion a few minutes’ walk away. We were better off.

Yo La Tengo released the album I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One as far back as 1997, which was before I had even heard of them. I’ve long since forgotten what it was that brought them to my attention, but theirs is another album loaned from Richmond library. It’s a great record encompassing a variety of styles; I found the noise-pop of 'Deeper into Movies' to be of particular interest. On end of the same MiniDisc I recorded this CD onto, I added a couple of tunes from Pig Lib by Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks, his second album since disbanding Pavement. 'Ramp of Death' is included here.

The last record I purchased before our move was The Notorious Byrd Brothers, also the last Byrds’ album to involve David Crosby (discounting 1973's eponymously titled Byrds, which brought the original line-up back together one last time). He'd fallen for the whole trippy hippy thing in a big way, much to Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman’s chagrin, who were by now exploring more traditional forms of American music: bluegrass, country and western, Appalachian folk. They also wanted to record the Goffin-King composition 'Goin’ Back', which Crosby thought was somehow beneath him. He had this smutty song called 'Triad' knocking about and wanted to cut that instead, so McGuinn and Hillman booted him out of the band.

Intended as a celebration of my trip to The States, these last three tracks were not present on the original MiniDisc. I appended them after making the transition to MP3, partly because they were discovered too early for inclusion on the following year’s compendium but also because they raise the overall quality of this one. I hope that you concur.

[Listen to here. To find out more about the 'American Adventure' go here.]

LINER NOTES: HOUNSLOW TO BRENTFORD, PART 1 [1997-98]

1.     Me and the Black and White Dream – The Orchids

2.     The Stars of Track and Field – Belle and Sebastian

3.     On the Way – The Pastels

4.     Miss Modular – Stereolab

5.     Spanish Harlem – Aretha Franklin

6.     Thin Line Between Love and Hate – The Persuaders

7.     Down Down Down – The Chiffons

8.     Give Away None of My Love – Otis Redding

9.     Slipped, Tripped and Fell in Love – Clarence Carter

10.   Funky Nassau Part 1 – The Beginning of the End

11.   I Want You – Bob Dylan

12.   See Emily Play – Pink Floyd

13.   Coz I Luv You – Slade

14.   There, There, My Dear – Dexys Midnight Runners

15.   A Wave Crashed on Rocks – Felt

16.   Songs for Children – Belle and Sebastian

17.   A Living Ken and Barbie – The Orchids
18.   Sensitive – The Field Mice
19.   Over – Portishead

20.   Sexy Boy – Air

21.   Revolution 909 – Daft Punk

22.   Body Movin’ (Album Version) – Beastie Boys

11 Penderel Road, Hounslow, my fifth residence in as many years, not too dissimilar in size, shape and general state to 23 Carrington Avenue, an untidy and slightly squalid abode. After a fruitless search for a two-bedroom flat, my Cornish friend and I have moved in with two undomesticated first-year students. It’s a regression of sorts, and I will spend too much of my time playing Super Mario Kart on the SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System) with our new acquaintances. Glenryck Pilchards in Tomato Sauce replaces Heinz Baked Beans with Pork Sausages as my go-to brunch, which is no bad thing.

The nearest pub is The Warren on Hanworth Road (now a Tesco Express), which is a bit grim. It’s worth making the longer walk to the Pickled Newt on Staines Road (also deceased) if only because they have a free jukebox stacked with half-decent tunes. The Chariot has closed but will re-open as Shannon’s, which as the name suggests will be an ‘Irish’ pub. The Noble Half is also suffering a period of transition. To compensate, and buoyed by our younger housemates’ enthusiasm, we drink more often in Isleworth (The Town Wharf), Twickenham (The Cabbage Patch, The George), and Richmond (The Prince's Head, The Bull & Bush).

Although I am still in touch with both the guy with the indie tapes and the chap who introduced me to Sarah Records, actual contact is sporadic. We don’t possess email addresses and nor do we own mobile phones: they exist but are perceived as an extravagance, a luxury item. I know someone who owns a pager, but for most of us the landline is our only means of communication. (Pager guy will actually prove to be a positive source of musical inspiration – but not yet.)

The tapes did not survive the migration to MiniDisc. Did they ever exist? I certainly recall listening to Stereolab within the context of a broader compilation – on the train down to Plymouth precisely – but my memory of what else was on that cassette is patchy.

Contemporary music was in a bad state. The Britpop scene had given way to a whole host of average-at-best guitar bands, including, but not limited to: Mansun, Marion, Placebo, Texas, Kula Shaker, Embrace, Hurricane #1, Heavy Stereo, Catatonia, Dodgy, 60 Ft. Dolls, Space, Symposium, The Seahorses, Theaudience, and many of the bands that featured at some time or another on Chris Evans’s despicable vanity project TFI Friday. Groups like the Stereophonics and Travis were the next big thing. All The Verve’s latest singles incorporated strings. The kids were going mad for the novelty dance act that was Fatboy Slim. OK Computer was being held up as a work of genius. Tony Blair had recently taken office.

Stereolab’s Dots and Loops and Illumination by The Pastels – both released in September 1997 – offered succour. So did Belle and Sebastian’s If You’re Feeling Sinister, released in November 1996, which the guy with the indie tapes recommended to me. Dots and Loops was Stereolab’s most successful album to date, both commercially (sitting at no. 19 in the album charts for a whole week!) and critically. As is the story of their life, The Pastels’ album passed by almost unnoticed. Yet Belle and Sebastian had managed a breakthrough of sorts. The sports student I was now living with was strangely taken with them, perhaps on account of their song 'The Stars of Track and Field', which concerned itself with the physical prowess of athletes. In July and October of the same year, Belle and Sebastian released two EPs: Lazy Line Painter Jane and 3.. 6.. 9 Seconds of Light. I acquired both, the latter being the source of the unlisted 'Songs for Children'.

I’d been contemplating soul music and 1960s girl groups: Otis Redding, The Ronettes, The Shangri-Las, stuff like that. My lady friend picked up on this and for Christmas presented me with That’s Soul Volume 2 – an Atlantic Soul compilation – and Sweet Talkin’ Guy by The Chiffons. I played these records a lot, and whatever tape I put together back then would be bound to reflect this. Tracks 5 through to 10 are the most likely to have appeared on such a compilation.

Star of Track & Field

On leaving Penderel Road I entered what I refer to as my nomadic phase. I spent much of this period at my lady friend’s house in Isle of Dogs. Besides that, I stayed for a week with my parents in Plymouth, slept on the couch from time to time at Bulstrode Avenue, and spent nights here and there at the new house of the Cornish friend who stacked it in Debenhams and guy who liked The Stars of Track and Field, which they shared with the fellow who owned the SNES. I also visited the former cohabitant from Brighton, who had moved back there after a rough time of it in Tottenham. It was here that I made an association with the Bob Dylan tune 'I Want You', either by way of the album Blonde on Blonde or a greatest hits compendium.

At some juncture I purchased a tatty copy of Relics by Pink Floyd, but I couldn’t swear when it was. It could have been before, during, or shortly after my residence at Penderel Road, but it was no earlier than 1997 and no later than 1999. I’m not much of a Pink Floyd fan but I am of Syd Barrett, and 'See Emily Play' and 'Arnold Layne' were missing from my collection.

I’m not a fan of Slade either but there’s something quite rousing about 'Coz I Luv You'. Oasis’s cover of 'Cum on Feel the Noize' a few years earlier had made it perfectly acceptable to like Slade, despite their preposterous appearance. Judging by the age of the clientele who drank in The Pickled Newt, this would have had no bearing on its inclusion on their jukebox. Actually, in 1971, before 'Coz I Luv You' was released, Slade looked vaguely presentable and were still relatively unknown. The tune went straight to number 1 and a lucrative career in glam rock beckoned.

It was the guy who introduced me to Sarah Records who introduced me to Dexys Midnight Runners. I’d heard of them, of course, but it hadn’t occurred to me that they were worth listening to – too many bad memories of 'Come On Eileen' being played down Ritzy’s nightclub. I think it was the album Too-Rye-Ay he initially pushed my way – he’d rant on about this amazing tune called 'Plan B'. I preferred 'Let’s Make this Precious', but he was right about Dexys being something special. Ultimately, it was their first album, Searching for the Young Soul Rebels, I listened to more, so in reconstructing the past I’ve opted for 'There, There, My Dear'.

Belle and Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch has expressed publicly an admiration for the band Felt. If asked, I would expect he would say similarly nice things about Sarah Records’ bands The Orchids and The Field Mice. I bought two of The Orchids’ albums – Unholy Soul and Striving for the Lazy Perfection – second-hand, on vinyl, in relatively quick succession. It’s possible that I actually purchased Unholy Soul when I lived on Bulstrode Avenue. What’s more, indie tapes guy had it on cassette and we used to listen to it at Hanworth Road. As such, it is 'Striving for the Lazy Perfection' that aligns itself in my mind with Penderel Road, the song 'A Living Ken and Barbie' in particular. The Field Mice, meanwhile, released a career retrospective entitled Where'd You Learn to Kiss That Way? which is the opening line from 'So Said Kay'. I knew of 'Sensitive' from a Sarah Records mixtape the guy who introduced me to Sarah Records made for me and subsequently borrowed back, to never return. I knew a fair few of The Field Mice's songs by now, but it was handy having the bulk of them collected together on two CDs.

Regarding Felt, the chap who introduced me to Sarah Records loaned me the compilation Bubblegum Perfume and the LP The Pictorial Jackson Review. Over time, these records have merged in my mind and it took a lot of digging around to establish the name of the tune I wanted to include on this compendium. All I had in to go on was a rough memory of the line, 'I'm not your Jesus, so will you get off my cross.' It was enough, but very few Felt albums are available commercially and are rare and expensive bought secondhand, so I had to download 'A Wave Crashed on Rocks' off the internet.

I can't remember listening to Portishead's second album while living on Penderel Road, but I have a copy so I must have done. (It was a Christmas present, I know that much.) The last three tracks, however, are all evocative of the house my lady friend shared on the Isle of Dogs with a girl with whom she used to go to school. Daft Punk even reminds me of helping to paint their living room, which is appropriate because the album in question is called Homework. I had to rely on my lady friend for all of this – these were some of my poorest times – and I think she also paid for me to watch the Beastie Boys play at the Brixton Academy in June 1998, accompanied by our friend No Eyes, which is something that would have bowled over my 13 year old self.

[Listen to here.]

LINER NOTES: BULLY FOR BULSTRODE [1996-97]

1.    Airbag – Radiohead

2.    One of These Things First – Nick Drake

3.    God Only Knows – Beach Boys

4.    Cotton Dress – Catchers

5.    Gentle Tuesday – Primal Scream

6.    ABBA on the Jukebox [Album Version] – Trembling Blue Stars

7.    Come to Me – Bjork

8.    Picnic by the Motorway – Suede

9.    Travelling Light – Tindersticks

10.  Mile End – Pulp

11.  Father to a Sister of Thought – Pavement

12.  I Stopped Dancing – Marion

13.  Afrodisiac – Powder

14.  Storm Injector – Tiger

15.  Richard III – Supergrass

16.  That’s All You Need – Faces

17.  Movin’ On – Blur

18.  Bitter Sweet Symphony – The Verve

19.  She’s a Rainbow – The Rolling Stones

20.  Ooh La La – Faces

21.  Still Cold – Mazzy Star

22.  Happiness is a Warm Gun – The Beatles

23.  The Passenger – Iggy Pop

24.  Bad Behaviour – Super Furry Animals

25.  Piku – Chemical Brothers

26.  No Awareness – Dr Octagon

27.  Revenge of the Prophet (Part 5) – Jeru the Damaja

28.  Napalm Brain/Scatter Brain – DJ Shadow

Chronology does not determine the order, the tenor of the individual tracks does. Radiohead’s OK Computer was released in June 1997 yet its opening track is also Bully for Bulstrode’s, a compilation intended to reflect what I was listening to from August 1996 through to August 1997. Blur’s 'Movin' On' is taken from their eponymously titled album, released in February 1997, but I’ve included it as track 17. Tiger’s massively underrated album We are Puppets went on sale in November 1996. Suede’s Coming Up was issued in September of the same year. I’m not even sure when it was I committed this itinerary to tape but it could feasibly have been as late as 1998.

        These are the tunes I was listening to while living at 215 Bulstrode Avenue, the longest residential road I’ve ever lived on. Ours was the house second along from its western approach. It took nearly 10 minutes to walk the street’s length, towards Hounslow Central tube station. In the other direction Hounslow West, which was pretty bleak, its meagre high street populated with fast food establishments and betting shops. In among them could be found a Morrison’s supermarket, Boots Chemist, Iceland, Blockbuster Video, maybe a carpet shop, and the Earl Haig (a flat-roofed pub best avoided). There was also an off-license that I can only assume offered some sort of deal on a four-pack of lager, because I’d happily walk the extra hundred-odd metres rather than buy my beer from the newsagent opposite the Windsor Castle. Our house backed onto the Piccadilly Line that in turn abutted onto Lampton Park, which was bigger than Inwood Park but with a similar sort of feel; not unpleasant in itself but displaying signs of licentious activity.

Post-university tension. I was still a student, having changed courses at the end of my second year, but the people I now lived with weren't: a feller who worked at HMV in Heathrow Airport, a girl we used to refer to as No Eyes because when she laughed you couldn’t really see her eyes (both had previously shared a house with 'the pretty girl across the road' who I was now seeing), and the guy who passed out in Debenhams. We watched a lot of television. For breakfast/lunch, the fried egg sandwiches I’d formerly relied upon were replaced with Heinz Baked Beans with Pork Sausages on toast. A slightly more tempered lifestyle came to pass, a cleaner, tidier living environment and a garden worth spending time in. The Windsor Castle was our local – not a bad pub – but we’d still venture into Hounslow, to The Chariot, The Noble Half or The Rifleman. The Bulstrode (Pub) was just at the end of the road but it was never much of an evening boozer, more a quick pint on a Saturday afternoon type of place.

Epic walks to catch the tube into London, keeping in touch with the Hounslow diaspora. The former cohabitant from Brighton was now living in Tottenham, endlessly watching Apocalypse Now, listening to The Doors and trying to make movies. The guy with the tapes was residing in Islington with a trendier set (in his eyes, at least). The lad who used to beat me at snooker had moved back up to Batley, from whence he came. The chap who introduced me to Sarah Records was dossing in Hounslow somewhere with the girl who was a massive Blondie fan.

215 Bulstrode Avenue

OK Computer is an overrated record. It is not as good as Radiohead’s second album – The Bends, which is also overrated in some quarters – but it is still a good album. Radiohead make good albums and sometimes great songs, but I don’t think they have recorded a record that could be described as great in the way that Forever Changes or Pet Sounds are, or even the way The Verve’s A Northern Soul almost is. Never mind, very few albums are genuinely great, but everything about 'Airbag' is just wonderful: the bass line, the off-the-beat drums, the shrill guitars, the vocals, the lyrics, the sentiment.

A dumped crate of vinyl outside of 129 Bulstrode Avenue, an implicit invitation to  help yourself. I was on my way into to London to meet my lady friend, probably to drink In The Crown on Brewer Street, but paused to take a look at what was there. I came away with Bryter Layter by Nick Drake, who was supposed to be rather good, prepared to stand the inconvenience of carrying the album around with me for the rest of the evening. It is rather good, and a Nick Drake revival of sorts was just around the corner.

People talk of Pet Sounds’ legacy, but how many albums really sound anything like it? And is not an insult to Brian Wilson’s talent to suggest that a record like Pet Sounds is so easily imitated? I’m not convinced that a lot of people appreciate it as much as they say they do, for it is quite an odd album. Only the brevity of the individual tracks makes it in any way palatable to the mainstream, otherwise why aren’t we all listening to Surf’s Up? But 'God Only Knows' is sublime. Unfortunately, after a session down the pub, the residents of 215 Bulstrode Avenue identified a similarity between its non-lexical vocables to those harmonised on the theme tune to Jim'll Fix It, and started singing them, loudly.

'Cotton Dress' by Catchers, 'Gentle Tuesday' by Primal Scream and 'ABBA on the Jukebox' by Trembling Blue Stars – all the work of the chap who got me into Sarah Records and The Pastels and Love. Trembling Blue Stars was Bobby Wratten’s latest project (after splitting up The Field Mice and then Northern Picture Library). A tour de force of nostalgia and longing, 'ABBA on the Jukebox' might be his finest moment. Has to be the album version, though.

Bjork almost passed me by. I liked her first and second singles very much – 'Human Behaviour' and 'Venus as a Boy' – but I’d never bothered with the affiliated album, Debut. The drummer who worked at HMV had a copy and so lent it to me.

I'd always been ambivalent towards Suede, but I liked their third album, Coming Up. It struck me as less histrionic and more concise than their previous efforts. I also began to find humour in singer Brett Anderson’s lyrics, and new keyboardist Neil Codling had good hair. They were also resisting any temptation to soften their look with trainers and baggy jeans, as other Britpop practitioners were doing, which I respected. But then Suede were never really a Britpop band, despite what the people who write about it like to tell you.

Tindersticks’ eponymously titled second album isn’t as good as their eponymously titled first but wasn’t as far off as the chap who got me into Sarah Records liked to make out. My brother bought it for me in 1995, and yet it somehow bypassed that year's compendium and instead made it onto this one. Save for the odd track, the first two Tindersticks' albums possess a quality that detaches them in my mind from any specific time and place. My Cornish friend who passed out in Debenhams alighted upon the song 'Travelling Light' after we'd moved to Bulstrode Avenue, and so a connection was made, just as it had been with 'Marbles' three years earlier.

'Mile End' was on the soundtrack to Trainspotting, a movie synonymous with Britpop, and was as good as anything off of Pulp’s last LP. Pulp were anomalous. Their music owed nothing to the mod-rock revivalism or new-wave pop of their peers, yet visually they were the most ardently retrospective and distinctive group of the whole movement. They had more in common with a band like Saint Etienne, or even Suede, but Pulp’s success staked them as bedfellows to Oasis and Blur. Jarvis Cocker was that strange thing: a plebeian aesthete who appealed to the both the arty crowd and the man on the street.

As with The Fall, The Sounds of Baden Pearce could very well have included many songs by the band Pavement, with three albums to pick from: Slanted and Enchanted; Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain; and the compilation of EP tracks and singles Westing (By Musket and Sextant). Pavement’s third album proper, Wowee Zowee, was released in April 1995 but had again passed me by. The drummer employed at HMV had a recording of it, which he again lent to me.

 'I Stopped Dancing' by Marion and 'Afrodisiac' by Powder are included because I now had access to a video player and could watch my recorded copy of the slightly cringey BBC 2 showcase Britpop Now (first broadcast in August 1995) at will. Somebody had a copy of the Marion album, but it would be a number of years before I was able to download the Powder tune (probably from Soulseek). They are very good tunes by very average bands who none the less exuded a darker aesthetic than many of their Britpop-by-numbers contemporaries.

Tiger was a marvellous band, possibly ahead of the curve, maybe behind it, depending on your perspective. Unfortunately for them enthusiasm for Oasis was at an all-time high; they’d just played Knebworth that August dressed up as the Happy Mondays, and the record buying public was in no mood for a band that appeared to take sartorial inspiration from 1980s comedy-drama Auf Wiedersehen, Pet.

Supergrass had effected an about face. Despite the inclusion of the catchy 'She’s so Loose' on Carrington Classics, I’d written them off as just another Britpop also-ran. Their second album, In It for the Money, was far heavier than their first. They’d also managed to reconstruct their image without resorting to either the laddish baggyisms of Oasis or the skateboarder chic of Blur. Nothing fancy: shirts, leather boots, simple T-shirts, straight-legged chords, all in muted shades. Kind of like Suede but without the stigma of wearing too much black.

The chap who introduced me to Sarah Records didn’t tend to like anything approximating heavy rock, but somehow the Faces avoided this charge. I expect it might have had something to do with the notion that the Faces didn't take themselves too seriously, as opposed to the impression conveyed via the earnest posturing of groups like Led Zeppelin or the camp theatricality of the Rolling Stones. On one of his rare Bulstrode visits, the chap brought around his copy of the double-album Best of the Faces, although the first disc was missing, which might be why he never asked for it back. The Faces evoked a certain melancholy congruent to the environment I was living in – the feeling we were living on the periphery of things, in limbo between Hounslows East and West. This might not make much sense if you're listening to 'That's All You Need' but may well do if it’s 'Ooh La La'.

Blur’s fifth LP was supposedly a reaction to their fourth, a conscious rejection of the populism they had embraced and an attempt to reclaim the noisier ground of their youth, when they were called Seymour. Blur has aged well but to claim it’s some sort of homage to American lo-fi indie music – as was proclaimed by the music press, and to some extent by the band itself – is complete nonsense. 'Look Inside America' carries on where 'End of the Century' left off. 'Beetlebum' sounds like Let it Be era Beatles. 'Strange News from Another Star' is 'Starman' meets 'The Bewlay Brothers' by David Bowie; 'Movin' On' is 'Queen Bitch'. Often, Damon Albarn plays his Hammond organ like he’s working the end of a pier. In short, it's all about as British as Blur ever get.

You couldn’t help but be taken with The Verve’s 'Bitter Sweet Symphony'. Unfortunately, the album that followed was effectively a dry run for Richard Ashcroft's career as a solo artiste. Turned out ‘Mad Richard’ wasn’t so mad after all, as the jittery, ragged character that inhabited both A Storm in Heaven and A Northern Soul was jettisoned and some blokeish balladeer materialised in its place. Nick McCabe’s guitar must have gently wept.

I wasn’t done with the sixties, hadn’t even scratched much past the surface. I picked up the Rolling Stones compilation Through the Past, Darkly (Big Hits Vol.2) on one of my excursions to Plymouth. I bought it for the tracks '2000 Light Years from Home' and 'Jumpin’ Jack Flash' because I wanted them on vinyl. I didn’t actually own any Stones’ records at this point and had been getting by on a taped copy of Hot Rocks 1964–1971 since my first year of university. I was still listening to The Beatles but not so much. The former cohabitant from Brighton dropped by and I put on 'The White Album' at his request. It can't have been the first time we'd listened to this record together, but 'Happiness Is a Warm Gun' had us in hysterics. I think it was McCartney and Harrison's doo-wop backing vocals during the final section that did it.

A few years before the film Trainspotting came along to remind people of Iggy Pop’s existence, there was Passengers, a ‘youth TV’ show on Channel 4 which used Iggy Pop’s 'The Passenger' as its theme tune. I never saw it but imagine it made for pretty bad television, as these things often do. At the time, I was only vaguely aware of Iggy Pop’s place in punk and alternative music’s canon – his band The Stooges and the close musical partnership with David Bowie during the late 1970s. After Trainspotting, and the re-release of 'Lust for Life' off the back of it, Pop’s contribution came to the fore and people like me started putting his songs on their mixtapes.

Super Furry Animals because my partner liked them and they made a loud noise, The Chemical Brothers because some of this big beat stuff was all right really, and Fatboy Slim left me cold.

The Rifleman

1996 was the year that I reacquainted myself with the Beastie Boys, by way of the albums Ill Communication, Check Your Head and Paul's Boutique. I had also been exposed to Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), which seemed to me an improvement upon the product offered by Snoop Doggy Dog, Dr. Dre, Notorious B.I.G. and the like. At any rate, my fondness for the genre was stirred, and by the end of the year I’d acquired Wrath of the Math by Jeru the Damaja, Dr. Octagon’s debut album (the Mo’ Wax edition), and Entroducing by DJ Shadow, which I'd been introduced to in the Embassy Rooms in Islington drinking with the guy with the tapes on a random Sunday afternoon.

[Listen to here.]