LINER NOTES: I NEVER HAPPENED [2025]

      1.   Mrs Ladyships and the Cleanerhouse Boys – The Smashing Times

      2.   SuperHwy – Big Supermarket

      3.   Get Found Out – Publicity Department

      4.   Map Like a Leaf – Autocamper

      5.   Ivanhoe’s Twopence – The Fall

      6.   Roman Litter – Felt

      7.   Blue Shadows – Lower Plenty

      8.   Cupid Come – My Bloody Valentine

      9.   Dreamhorse – Workhorse

    10.   Doggerland – Vehicle

    11.   Mariella – Khruangbin featuring Leon Bridges

    12.   Comet 4 – The Soundcarriers

    13.   Listen Here – Eddie Harris

    14.   The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll (Live, Montreal Forum) – Bob Dylan

    15.   On Parade – Electrelane

    16.   Explosions – Devo

    17.   Teen Beat – Automatic

    18.   Year of the Books – The Green Child

    19.   Colour Television – Stereolab

    20.   Spike Island – Pulp

    21.   Baader Meinhof (Das Capital version) – Luke Haines

    22.   I Never Happened – Comet Gain

    23.   Trees – Pictureframes
 

December 2024. The Clientele have not long ago played a double set at the Village Underground, a wonderful music venue in Shoreditch that I've never previously been to. Within days of the event they then announce a gig at the Moth Club – another great venue – in Hackney, as The Butterfly Collectors, which was what the group called themselves before becoming The Clientele. They are to play material from their retrospective anthology It's Art Dad, with a few tracks from Suburban Light thrown in, and shall be accompanied by their original drummer, Daniel Evans. It’s on a Tuesday but to hell with it, I’m there, although my partner, who accompanied me to the Village Underground, will give it a miss.

London’s train network is undependable at the best of times – I reckon about one in three services are disrupted to some extent. Accordingly, when I travel across town I err on the side of caution, which on this occasion meant I arrived in Hackney with plenty of time to spare. I went for a drink at The Cock Tavern, which was part of the plan anyway, but didn’t get on with the beer nor the crowds. With nearly an hour left to kill, I decided to dodge the showers and take refuge in the JD Wetherspoon across the road: Baxter’s Court.

Whatever you might think about JD Wetherspoon and its extravagantly coiffured founder and chairman Tim Martin, a pint there is about half the price it is anywhere else. For a lot of people that's the difference between going out and not being able to afford to. Moreover, their pubs tend to be well run. What they aren't is pretty. Although quite tidy, Wetherspoon's pubs are generally stuck in a 1990s time warp. I say generally because sometimes they occupy grander buildings that were once something else, such as a bank, an old cinema or post office. Baxter's Court is none of these things, it’s purpose built, and so you have wall-to-wall carpet, low ceilings, overly bright lights, fruit machines, and too many bar-high tables and chairs. (The best pubs in the 1990s were the ones that hadn't undergone any significant change since the 1970s, which is as true now as it was back then. See also cafes and motorway service stations.) So I didn’t stay long, dodged more showers on my way to the Moth Club, and readied myself for the support act.

I am guilty of not always paying supporting acts the respect they often deserve. Had the Cock Tavern been less busy and less keen on serving up obscure IPA, or if Baxter’s Court was more like Hamilton Hall in Liverpool Street, I may have missed The Smashing Times, which would have been a shame. ‘Mrs Ladyships and the Cleanerhouse Boys’ was the third of sixteen tracks they managed to squeeze in before the headline act, and the first off of the album of the same name.

Big Supermarket are/were from Melbourne in Australia, and released their only record, 1800, on the Hobbies Galore label in 2018, limited to just 300 copies, re-issued on green vinyl the following year on Tough Love Records, again limited to 300 copies, of which I now own one. That seems to be that. You can’t find a copy anywhere, not even on Discogs. Bizarre to think it was on Spotify that I discovered this band, because Spotify’s algorithms, be it by accident or design, aren’t usually so imaginative. I’m guessing it had to do with The Clean and the other antipodean groups that I’ve been listening to over the last couple of years.

Publicity Department are equally obscure, the solo project of someone by the name of Sean Brook, who’s also in a band called Brunch. You can't buy any records or CDs, but there are cassettes. In some instances there’s no physical artefact at all, and yet it’s all available on Spotify. Quality music readily available from the most high profile audio streaming provider in the market and yet almost impossible to own on any tangible format. It's all there on Bandcamp, and I do use Bandcamp, but I'd rather buy a record, or at least a compact disc.

Autocamper are selling actual records. I know this because Monorail Music said so on their social media. Autocamper are from Manchester and appear to take inspiration from the sort of ‘indie pop’ you used to get a lot of in the ‘80s and early ‘90s. Kind of like The Umbrellas, so perhaps it's making a comeback.

Satisfied that I'd now heard everything by The Fall up to and including the 1994 album Middle Class Revolt (see It's Raining Today) I decided to listen more closely to what they'd recorded since. Aside from compilation that would result – The Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall, Volume 4 –  I was determined to add a track to this playlist, and ended going for 'Ivanhoe's Two Pence' from the 1998 CD single 'Masquerade'. Considering the alternatives, my choice may confound die-hard Fall fans. Steve Pringle describes it as ‘languid’, which is not meant as a criticism. It’s certainly one of Smith’s more laid-back vocal performances, complimenting the sampled film dialogue chuntering away in the background.

For my 50th birthday, The Wilkinsons presented me with a copy of Street-Level Superstar: A Year With Lawrence by Will Hodgkinson. It would be fair to describe Lawrence as something of an eccentric, and this eccentricity can often carry over into his music. Take 'Roman Litter' as an example: the breathy ‘heys’ after every third line of the verse, or the way he stretches out ‘all right’ at the end of the chorus. These are not usual inflections, and yet they’re what makes the song interesting. (Incidentally, in June I found myself standing very near to Lawrence at an Escape-ism gig downstairs at The Dome in Tufnell Park, which makes me think his reputation as a recluse may have been overstated.)

The Lower Plenty are another Australian band from Melbourne. ‘Blue Shadows’ is taken from their album No Poets, released in 2023, and reminds me of the Irish indie-pop group Catchers, who were active in the 1990s, so perhaps this type of stuff already has made a comeback?

I'm not convinced half the people who own Loveless by My Bloody Valentine ever listen to it, or if they even like it all that much. 'Sometimes' is fairly easy going but the rest of it is a wash of dissonant noise. Which is not say it’s a bad record, just that it requires a bit of effort. The group's first album, Isn't Anything, is more forgiving, at least by comparison. 'Cupid Come' reminds me of a more abrasive version of 'City Girl', a song Kevin Shields wrote for the film Lost in Translation, which I love.

More Australian music, this time from Adelaide. Workhorse are fronted by Harriet Fraser-Barbour, who cites Julee Cruise, Chris Isaak and Mazzy Star as influences, which are not bad influences to have. On 'Dreamhorse' I'm hearing The Handsome Family, so we’ve got that alternative country thing going on too.

Vehicle look to be in the same boat as Publicity Department. I wrote last year about how hard it was finding out anything about Vehicle, on account of their name, but there doesn't seem to be any physical product whatsoever. They even have an album out, entitled Widespread Vehicle, but it’s only available on Spotify or as a download from Bandcamp. I utilised both facilities, and in April I went to see them at the Sebright Arms just south of Hackney, but what I really want is an object I can actually hold. The gig was rather shambolic (technical issues, not the band's fault). They didn't play 'Doggerland' either, although they did finish with 'Uncle Roy Orbison'. I suspect the reason 'Doggerland' didn’t feature is because of its arrangement and Spector-ish production. That's the same reason you find it placed here, approaching the halfway mark, following on from the alternative country of Workhorse and before the laidback tones of ‘Mariella’ by Khruangbin.

I heard ‘Mariella’ down The London Apprentice, drinking with my Cornish friend during Sunday Service earlier in the year, and we then listened to it when I visited him in at his flat in Plymouth a few months later. I’m also fairly certain that The Florist played it in his van on the drive to Alabarracin in 2024. I’m not sure where The Soundcarriers came from. I’ve been aware of them for a while, maybe because they’re often compared to bands like Stereolab and Broadcast. ‘Comet 4’ suited the mood, and I needed something that could work alongside jazz.

As mentioned, 2025 was the year I turned 50. What a diabolical thing to get your head around. Not that I feel particularly old, but I’m starting to look it. To celebrate being closer to death than birth – although this was more than possibly true the day I hit 40, even 30 – I headed down to Brighton and put the word out to anyone who might wish to join me and my partner there (which turned out to be my Cornish friend, the former cohabitant from Brighton, No Eyes and, albeit briefly, Teleport Man). We had a few pints at the Heart in Hand, ate at Cote, drank some more at the White Rabbit and The Prince Albert, my coterie of friends leaving gradually as the evening progressed. My partner and I then finished off with a nightcap on the balcony of the Artist Residence overlooking Regency Square, the seafront just beyond.

The next morning my partner turned on the radio, which happened to be tuned to Jazz FM. That was fine by me, and so I drank my morning coffee to the sound of ‘Listen Here’ by the tenor saxophonist Eddie Harris, while watching a dense fog roll in off of the English Channel.

Harris was known for playing an electric Varitone saxophone, developed by a company called Selmer. The Varitone – essentially an electronic amplifier – allows the user to manipulate the sound in a number of ways. The function that Eddie Harris liked was the ‘octamatic’ setting, which adds a pitch one octave lower to that emitted by the instrument itself. The effect is a full-bodied, humming bass sound. From what I can gather, jazz purists weren't keen on any of this and Harris's reputation suffered as a result, although he is more well regarded nowadays.

Antica Stuzzicheria

Bologna, to watch football with a couple of old friends. On the first night of three we find a nice little Osteria called Antica Stuzzicheria run by a chap named Antonio, who's quite a character. We return there on the second night as well as the third, whereupon he as on The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings by Bob Dylan. It suited the environment, which was traditionally decorated and dimly lit yet lively and welcoming. Dylan's voice can grate at times, but not here, he really belts it out.

Because ‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll’ is recorded live, I was unsure of where it should go on my playlist. As I often do (but not always) I found myself implementing Stanley Kubrick’s theory of non-submersible units. Whereas Kubrick typically split his films into six to eight narrative components, I usually go for four or five, depending on the length of the compilation. With regards to this one, the delineation between the first and second quarter isn’t so distinct – more of a gradual wind down, starting with the Lower Plenty and culminating with Khruangbin. As the year progressed, I’d amassed a number of more upbeat tracks that I realised would have to be grouped together in what would become the third segment. The question then was how to bridge over from the mellower tunes that comprise the second quarter to the upbeat ones that were to form the third. ‘Listen Here’ begins this process and ‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll’ finishes it; while neither track has a particularly high tempo, they’re both more urgent than The Soundcarriers' tune that precedes them, but less so than what comes next.

In truth, I’m not sure if the transition works. ‘On Parade’ by Electrelane is all high energy, comparable to ‘Sisters’ by Cate le Bon, maybe with a bit of Kleenex/Liliput thrown in. The segue into Devo’s ‘Explosions’ isn’t perfect but works better. In any case, we’re now firmly into the playlists’ third non-submersible unit.

‘Explosions’ is from Devo’s fifth album, 1982’s Oh, No! It's Devo, which I wasn’t overly familiar with. That all changed in February, around the same time as that trip to Plymouth I alluded to, after I put together a Devo playlist to listen to on the journey. Which is apt because it was a girl from Plymouth who implored me to listen to Devo in the first instance, even if it did take me several years to heed her advice.

I saw Automatic play at 2022’s Wide Awake festival and liked them. I don’t think their second album, Excess, could have been out yet, because I only remember having listened to their first – Signal. Excess is an improvement on Signal. Their third album, Is it Now?, was released earlier in the year, but I’m still catching up with Excess, from which 'Teenbeat' is taken.

The Green Child are yet another band from Melbourne, Australia. Boomkat product review: ‘Originally the recording project of Raven Mahon (member of Grass Widow, Rocky) and Mikey Young (Total Control, Eddy Current Suppression Ring, Shutdown 66), The Green Child now boasts Shaun Gionis (Boomgates) on drums and Alex Macfarlane (who runs the label Hobbies Galore) on guitar and synth.’ You can begin to see how Spotify goes about its business. At 5 minutes and 58 seconds, and falling apart towards the end, this is the compilation’s climax, rounding off the third non-submersible unit.

Different Stereolab records evoke different times and different places. Mars Audiac Quintet reminds me of the summer of 1994, specifically the walk from my parents’ old house into Plymouth city centre. Emperor Tomato Ketchup recalls Hounslow, as does Refried Ectoplasm. Dots and Loops, the dive I lived in off Hanworth Road in 1996-7, Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night and Aluminum Tunes, the poky flat my partner and I rented in Brentford. Will their most recent album, Instant Holograms on Metal Film, ever prompt me to think about St. Margarets and the apartment I’ve resided in for the last 20 years? I doubt it. My circumstances don’t fluctuate as much as they once did, and nothing’s really gone on this year to distinguish it from the last. Not even turning 50.

What may end being more firmly entrenched is the memory of seeing Stereolab playing at the Electric Brixton. Prior to the event I had a couple of drinks in the Trinity Arms and The Prince Albert – pubs I’d not been to before. I had been to the Electric Brixton, but only in its previous incarnation as the Brixton Fridge (to see The Fall in 1994) and it looked nothing then like it does now. Unfortunately, Stereolab didn’t see fit to play ‘Colour Television’ but they did ‘Household Names’, which they hadn't done on any of the previous five occasions I saw them.

Another Britpop affiliated band with a new record out were Pulp. Pulp have fared better than many of their contemporaries, and it’s hard to imagine any of them producing an album that sounds so much like themselves without crossing over into pastiche or parody. If we overlook Jarvis's waning powers as a vocalist (which is understandable, given his age) 'Spike Island' could have been recorded 25 years ago. This is not to say that it sounds dated, just that Pulp's music hasn't dated much, if at all.

Pinakothek der Moderne

Munich isn’t as ‘German’ as I thought it would be. I’ve been to Berlin, Cologne and Hamburg, and I was expecting Munich to feel more ‘German’ than any of them. Sure, there’s plenty of lederhosen and Bavarian iconography knocking about, but it feels like an international place, probably on account of the city’s prestigious universities and research centres, the art galleries and museums. Munich is also home to the Olympiastadion, which Luke Haines once stood outside of to promote his side-project, Baader Meinhof. What you find here isn’t the iteration of the title track off of the self-titled album but an orchestral reworking that appeared on Das Capital – The Songwriting Genius of Luke Haines and The Auteurs in 2003, seven years after the original.

Comet Gain had a new record out: Letters to Ordinary Outsiders. It’s a grower, but the songs themselves are tied together by way of a series of spoken-word vignettes and sampled dialogue and don’t lend themselves to being put on miscellaneous compilations. No bother, because in the Comet Gain binge that followed I came across ‘I Never Happened’: 'a Rock and Roll Hymn to all the failed aspirations and the nobody feelings as we scream helplessly into the void in the busy streets where we disappear [sic].'

That was supposed to be the final track, but then a band called Pictureframes released an EP entitled Event on the Downs. Again, there’s no physical product, just a platform on Bandcamp. ‘Trees’ sounds a bit like the mellower end of Yo La Tengo, but what really interested me was the instrumental coda that kicks in after about three minutes, reminiscent of Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac – maybe ‘Dragonfly’. Let’s hope they, and Vehicle and Publicity Department, can get the support they need to press some actual records.

[Listen to here.]

LINER NOTES: TAKE A RIDE [2013]

1.    Swim and Sleep (Like a Shark) – Unknown Mortal Orchestra

2.    Let England Shake – PJ Harvey

3.    Over the Ice – The Field

4.    Tugboat – Galaxie 500

5.    You Made Me Realise – My Bloody Valentine

6.    Who Do You Think You Are Kidding Mr. Hitler – Wild Billy Childish & The Blackhands

7.    Take a Ride – The Questions

8.    Damaged Goods – Gang of Four

9.    Stardust – Billy Ward and His Dominoes

10.  El Toro – Chico Hamilton

11.  I Put a Spell on You – Screamin’ Jay Hawkins

12.  Tramp – Lowell Fulson

13.  Come on In – The Music Machine

14.  Como El Agua – Camaron de la Isla y Paco de Lucia

15.  National Shite Day – Half Man Half Biscuit

16.  Ingenue – Atoms for Peace

17.  FFunny FFriends – Unknown Mortal Orchestra

18.  Flowers – Galaxie 500

19.  Swing Easy – The Soul Vendors

20.  Late in the Evening – Paul Simon

21.  Every Picture Tells a Story – Rod Stewart

Bouldering is indoor climbing utilising plastic holds, without ropes; you’re never so high off the ground that a deep crash mat won’t do should you fall. I bouldered at The Arch before they were kicked out of their premises by British Rail. They then moved to a warehouse in Bermondsey called The Biscuit Factory. This was a great shame, but London Bridge station was to be expanded, and now has been.

Contrary to the music the kids at Vauxhall Climbing Centre like to subject their clientele to, at The Biscuit Factory they normally do all right, and it was there that I came across Unknown Mortal Orchestra. They had released two albums at this point: an eponymously titled work and II. Both are represented here. 'Swim and Sleep (Like a Shark)' is taken from their second record. It works well as an opening track, although it isn’t used as such on the album. The music has been deliberately recorded to sound like the psychedelic records it takes inspiration from. That is to say, it sounds like you’re listening to it through an old Dansette record player, even though you’re more than likely not.

When I first began to take an interest in so-called indie music, PJ Harvey was one of the artists introduced to me. She was, compared to now, relatively unknown – this was around the time of her second album, Rid of Me – and the approaching juggernaut that was Britpop suggested it might remain that way. Instead, as Britpop was nearing its critical mass – early 1995 – she released To Bring You My Love, which was a success critically and to some degree commercially. And while bands like Suede, Radiohead and The Verve would be conveniently co-opted into the Britpop movement, once it had established itself, PJ Harvey stood apart. She was succeeding on her own terms, and Britpop’s sustainability was not her concern.

I took note of all this but PJ Harvey’s next album, Is This Desire, released in 1998, eluded me. Her fifth, Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, made more of an impact but not enough for me to go out and buy a copy. 2004’s Uh Huh Her barely even registered. White Chalk, forget it. I guess I had my ears pressed against other things: Latin jazz, funk, soul, ska, psychedelia, garage rock, new wave.

It was my partner who broke the embargo. In 2012, she bought for me Let England Shake, reinvigorating my appreciation of PJ Harvey’s oeuvre as whole. I especially appreciated the use of the autoharp and zither on many of the tracks. This is Polly Harvey’s great strength: an ear for euphonic textures, off-beat rhythms, sound collages.

Living alone and left to his own devices, my Cornish friend was listening to electronic music, such as From Here We Go Sublime by The Field. Billed as techno, it’s closer to trance, although not of the Goa kind. Perhaps it’s neither for it leans heavily on sampling, inhabiting a wistful sort of groove. That said, 'Over the' Ice is fairly upbeat, even if the tune it borrows from – Kate Bush’s 'Under Ice' – isn’t.

My nostalgia for late old school indie music, which had started with Sebadoh, led me back to Galaxie 500 (although it was Dean Wareham’s other band, Luna, that I was more familiar with). It seemed to me that Galaxie 500 held more in common with the more sixties’ influenced groups on Sarah Records or Creation than they did alternative indie American rock. Wareham’s ostensibly simple guitar work is reminiscent of The Velvet Underground after John Cale was kicked out and their music became prettier. Except Wareham’s voice is far thinner than Lou Reed’s, and everything's slower.

Up pops My Bloody Valentine on a second, consecutive compilation. This time around it’s one of their more conservative numbers, 'You Made Me Realise'. Conservative in the sense that it possesses a verse and a chorus, what passes for a riff, vaguely melodic harmonies, and an instrumental breakout about halfway through. It then descends into a mess of feedback, which has been known to last, in a live setting, for over half an hour.

Adolf Hitler. There’s a certain attitude towards this monomaniacal piece of work that’s distinctly British. In the lead up to the Second World War and during it, the Fuhrer was perceived as a figure of fun, a caricature to be ridiculed and laughed at. This attitude is manifest in Allied propaganda: in posters (American placards were very much more aggressive than their British equivalents), songs ('Hitler Has Only Got One Ball'), films (The Great Dictator), plays (The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui), even cartoons (the Bugs Bunny short 'Herr Meets Hare'). Charlie Chaplin said that had he been cognizant of the holocaust he would never have made The Great Dictator. After 1945, once the strange terror of the Third Reich had been revealed to all, portrayals of Hitler became more considered and generally light on laughs, which in itself became a source of amusement: 'Just don’t mention the war'. (I say strange because so inimical to the German war effort was the holocaust that early reports of it were dismissed as preposterous. Knowing that it did indeed take place does not render it any less so.)

But we do mention the war. I mentioned the war, albeit obliquely, on a friend’s stag-do in Berlin that I’d been called upon to organise. Somebody had got wind of this thing called the Berlin Beer Bike Tour, and I took it on board. A 'beer bike' is no such thing. Although it is pedal-powered, it has four wheels and can accommodate up to 16 persons. It also incorporates a sound system, and so I prepared a CD especially for the occasion. As well as some old Acid Jazz numbers to bring back memories of the Quay Club in Plymouth, and few Britpop favourites to evoke Saturday nights down at JFKs, I included Wild Billy Childish & The Blackhands’ cover of the Dad’s Army theme tune. Billy Childish’s tribute is recorded in the ska tradition, and recorded live. It’s actually quite difficult to catch the words, all the more so in an open-air, urban setting. Nonetheless, a song was played that asks of Mr Hitler who he thinks he might be kidding, in the very heart of the German capital. To add another layer of subversion, I was done up like a member of the Red Army Faction: khaki field jacket, black cords, burgundy cable-knit pullover, brown shoes. As Luke Haines opines in his book, Bad Vibes, 'Terrorist chic, you’ve gotta love it,' although I doubt anybody made the connection.

Berlin

The Questions were (Les) Lou’s by another name. In their incarnation as The Questions, they appeared briefly in the obscure French punk flick La Brune et Moi, performing 'Take a Ride'. This track can be found on a hard-to-find compilation entitled My Girlfriend Was A Punk! Rare Early Female Punkrockers. I suspect The Questions were formed for the purpose of the film, because I can find no trace of anything else recorded by them. Not that Lou’s were prolific either, but they did at least support The Clash on their 1977 ‘Get Out of Control Tour’.

With their choppy guitar parts and slinky bass lines, Gang of Four are sort of like England’s answer to Talking Heads. Their debut album, Entertainment! might be the best album released under the auspices of post-punk (unless of course you think The Fall were post-punk, which I don’t). Footage of Gang of Four playing 'To Hell with Poverty' on the Old Grey Whistle Test drew my curiosity. The song, taken from the EP Another Day/Another Dollar, is available as a bonus track on the re-issue of their second album, Solid Gold. If I hadn’t quickly followed up with Gang of Four’s first LP, Entertainment! then it might have been that track, rather than 'Damaged Goods', that ended up on this compilation.

Sometimes a shift in style can be so pronounced that it somehow works. From post-punk to R&B with a doo-wop slant; you may be familiar with 'Stardust' from its inclusion in Martin Scorsese’s film Goodfellas. The tune itself dates back to 1927 but the Dominoes version was released in 1957, and it was a big hit. The lead vocal is sung by Eugene Mumford, who died in 1977, a month shy of his 52nd birthday.

I made the mistake of assuming that 'Conquistadors' was representative of Chico Hamilton’s output. The associated LP – El Chico – is an exercise in Latin influenced jazz that takes full advantage of Gábor Szabó’s underrated ability on guitar. The Dealer is not, although it is an interesting record in its own right. But a strange thing: reading up on where I went wrong, I discovered that the reissued CD of the album included another collaboration with Gábor Szabó, entitled 'El Toro', recorded four years earlier for the album Passin’ Thru. It’s not as full-on bossa nova as 'Conquistadors' but there’s enough exoticism going on to fulfil my remit – a sort of North African, hard bop vibe.

In 1993 I became fascinated with a Levi’s advert that depicted an inevitably handsome man dazzling in a pair of pristine indigo 501s, laying to rest the jeans he’d just replaced. This all plays out to Screamin’ Jay Hawkins singing 'Heartattack and Vine', which its author Tom Waits objected to. I’d been mesmerised by both the song and the jeans themselves, the iconic Red Tab looking almost violet beneath the colour-balancing filter. (If Levi Strauss had produced a limited edition 501 jean with a purple tab, I’d have bought them.) Anyway, I must have needed a new pair of jeans or something, because I looked up the commercial on YouTube and reacquainted myself with ‘Procession’. (Did you even know Levi’s gave their adverts actual names?) This in turn prompted an investigation into Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. The rest is history. I was familiar with Nina Simone’s recording of 'I Put a Spell on You' but not Screamin’ Jay’s. I prefer Screamin’ Jay’s.

In April, before the stag-do in Berlin, I completed a three-month tenure working for an independent tour operator in Kingston, for peanuts, during what was a cold and protracted winter. In some ways this was a blessing, because I needed to get fit for the London to Brighton Bike Ride in June. I'd started getting into cycling the previous year, and I was already on my third bike, but I'd never ridden any farther than 30 miles. And it was a good thing. Aside from the trip to Berlin, and a jaunt to Paris with my partner in August, 2013 was a dispiriting and financially challenging period of my life. Riding around London, and to Brighton itself, gave me respite and also provided a fascinating insight into how the city is geographically arranged.

I can pinpoint the precise moment I finally ‘got’ road cycling. It was during Stage 5 of the 2012 Vuelta a Espana, when Javier Chacón, racing for Team Andalucia, broke away from the rest of the field, built up a 12 minute lead before being chased down by the peloton approximately 30 km from the finish (in what was a 168 km stage). He was rewarded with the stage’s Combativity Award for his efforts, and deservedly so. Without anyone supporting him, Chacón had little chance of pulling off this audacious stab for victory, but he gave it a go anyway. What really left an impression was the instant he must have known it was all over, when Javier glanced back over his shoulder and saw the pack gradually bearing down on him. It was a singular spectacle that invoked both dread and excitement, like watching an explosion in slow-motion. Would he make it, or was the peloton going to swallow him up?

I have previously alluded to my quest to replace all my old hip hop cassettes with their vinyl counterpart – original pressings if at all possible – as and when I come across them. I was lucky enough to chance upon an immaculate copy of Cypress Hill’s first album for a very reasonable price, either in the Music & Video Exchange in Greenwich or Reckless Records on Berwick Street in Soho. (Whichever one it wasn’t may have been where I picked up an equally immaculate copy of Bazerk, Bazerk, Bazerk by Son Of Bazerk.) Released in the summer of 1991, 'How I Could Just Kill Man' was Cypress Hill’s first single. The eponymously titled record that followed teems with samples in the way It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold us Back does: ambient noise and people talking buried in deep among horns and percussion to create a mise-en-scène that evokes the sounds of 1960s/70s Los Angeles. 'How I Could Just Kill Man' is built around a guitar riff employed by West Coast bluesman Lowell Fulson in his song 'Tramp', although Lowell regulates its intensity to create a very different effect.

Another song sampled in 'How I Could Just Kill Man' – and there are at least five – is less congruous. The Music Machine were a sort of psychedelic proto-punk outfit in keeping with the sort you’ll find on the Nuggets and Rubble anthologies I’d been buying ten years earlier. 'Come On In' represents one of their more delicate moments, almost worthy of The Left Banke. The Music Machine were visually ahead of their time. Dressed in black and wearing pudding bowl haircuts, the singer and guitarist sporting single black gloves, they surely inspired the way bands like The Jesus and Mary Chain, The Telescopes or My Bloody Valentine would later present themselves.

A bit of a jolt but I didn’t know where else to put it. 'Como El Agua' is sung by Camarón de la Isla, the definitive singer of the flamenco revival that occurred in Spain in the latter third of the 20th Century. Likewise, Paco de Lucia, with whom Camarón often collaborated, was a virtuoso flamenco guitarist at the forefront of the same movement. 'Como El Agua' was used to play out an edition of the 2013 Vuelta a Espana highlights, and I was onto it. Camarón de la Isla was revered in Spain as a sort of gypsy Mick Jagger, although his recreational habits were apparently more in keeping with Keith Richards – hence is premature death at the age of 41 from lung cancer.

Paris

Come June, I'd found temporary, part-time employment with a medical publishing company in Holborn – the sort of place that liked to jazz up their weekly meetings with hypothetical questions pulled out of a hat. For the first month it seemed to rain constantly (although a heat wave was just around the corner) while prospective full-time employers rebuffed my solicitations. Half Man Half Biscuit captured the mood:

Down in the High Street somebody careered out of Boots without due care or attention.

I suggest that they learn some pedestrian etiquette:

i.e. sidle out of the store gingerly;

Embrace the margin.

The song 'National Shite Day' recounts a set of circumstances so infuriating that its protagonist is left to conclude that the day in question has been contrived to annoy. Really, it’s a frustrated rant offering up the sort of banal irritancies that afflict contemporary living. I could feel Nigel Blackwell’s pain.

Aside from Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Thom Yorke’s Atoms for Peace is really the only current music on this playlist. 'Ingenue' is mere filler, albeit of a pleasing kind, and not markedly different to anything Radiohead had been up to lately (2011’s The King of Limbs). 'FFunny FFriends' is the older of the two Unknown Mortal Orchestra tracks found here, although there’s no way of telling. 'Flowers' is off of 1988's Today, the same Galaxie 500 album that 'Tugboat' was taken from.

'Swing Easy' by The Soul Vendors is an instrumental rocksteady track, a hangover from my ska binge the previous year. The Soul Vendors were a band Clement ‘Coxsone’ Dodd threw together to tour England, comprised mostly of Studio One’s studio backing-band The Soul Brothers, who were in turn cobbled together after the dissolution of The Skatalites. Keyboard player Jackie Mittoo seems to be the guy who wrote most of the songs, and would continue to do so once The Soul Vendors mutated into Sound Dimension.

'Late in the Evening' by Paul Simon is pure whimsy on my part. It's a decent song but I have no idea why I suddenly decided to add it to one of my compilations. Not so with Rod Stewart. I turned to my copy of Reason to Believe, a bizarre LP put together in 1978 to be sold exclusively through the retailer Marks & Spencer, inherited from my parents. The last track on side 1 is 'Every Picture Tells a Story', co-written with Ronnie Wood and originally the title track of Stewart's third solo album released in 1971 (with 'vocal abrasives' credited to Mateus Rose). The lyrical content is contemptible by today's standards, but what a tune!

[Listen to here.]

LINER NOTES: THE WORLD'LL BE OK [2011-12]

1.    Licence to Confuse – Sebadoh

2.    Bad as Me – Tom Waits

3.    It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue [Version 1] – The Byrds

4.    Al Capone – Prince Buster

5.    The Vampire – The Upsetters

6.    Concorde – The Prophets

7.    Typical Girls – The Slits

8.    52 Girls – The B-52's

9.    Boredom – Buzzcocks

10.  Neat Neat Neat – The Damned

11.  Leave the Capitol – The Fall

12.  This Night Has Opened my Eyes – The Smiths

13.  Whoever You Are – The Brian Jonestown Massacre

14.  Sometimes – My Bloody Valentine

15.  Dead and Gone – TOY

16.  Any Day Now – Elbow

17.  The World’ll Be OK – Teenage Fanclub

18.  My God – Bombay Bicycle Club

19.  Lorelai – Fleet Foxes

20.  The Look – Metronomy

21.  Rock Lobster – The B-52's

Sound is analogue, consisting of continuous waveforms. The music derived from a phonograph record is also analogue and therefore a reproduction of the original sonority. Compact discs are not: they are the result of analogue-to-digital conversion, whose values are derived from a discrete set. Digital signals are snapshots of information that are converted back into an analogue waveform by way of an amplifier. By definition, the digital recording can only ever be a simulacrum of that which it purports to represent. That all said, a hi-fi system is only as good as its weakest link, regardless of the format, and there are many external factors that must be taken into consideration: the quality of the vinyl, the placement of the speakers, the acoustics of the room, the cables, and so on.

A photographic negative is the result of a chemical reaction arising from light being projected upon a plastic film coated with microscopic, light-sensitive halide crystals. The photograph itself is also born of a chemical reaction on a molecular scale: from the projection of the negative upon paper covered with a light-sensitive emulsion. As such, its optical texture is random. Digital photography does not capture light on photosensitive film but by means of an image sensor (usually a charge-coupled device, or CCD) which converts the variable attenuation of light-waves into electronic signals to convey the information that comprises the image. Thereafter, the image is printed directly onto paper using a peripheral device, such as a laser or inkjet printer. This method of printing lacks the continuity of tone associated with traditional photographic processing techniques, whereby the image is developed.

Digital music and digital imaging are analogous, then. Yet whereas vinyl is undoubtedly superior to its digital alternative, with photography it’s not so clear-cut. For one, the ear is more discerning than the eye. Or is permitted to be. You could in theory record digitally with such a high sampling rate to be almost indistinguishable from vinyl, but this would be both expensive and impractical. With digital imaging the extra level of detail doesn’t impact much on the size of the equipment or its relative cost. There’s certainly a difference between the photograph and the digital print, but it’s not – or at least not any more – much of a hierarchical discrepancy. (A bias towards saturating the colour green, to reflect the physiology of the human eye, backfires in verdant landscapes, but it’s nothing that can’t be remedied either in-camera or post-production.)

No, the catch with digital photography is that it’s ephemeral. Those of us who used to shoot on film will recall sending our rolls off to the developers or taking them into high-street chemists to get them printed. It was not an instantaneous process, and I think we paid more attention to the results because of this. Moreover, film limited the amount of shots that were available – typically 24 or 36 – and so I think we took more care and consideration over the composition of each frame. Those of us who could be bothered would also collate our prints into albums. At the very least, you’d keep them in the paper wallet they came in, along with the negatives should any of the human subjects want reprints.

Digital images live a more precarious existence. They’re lucky if they even make it onto a computer, and those that do may well end up in the recycle bin. The chances these days of an individual photograph being appreciated are about as likely as surviving an encounter with the Ebola virus. And when an image is deemed worthy of sharing, where is it normally displayed? On Flickr, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or some other on-line vanity showcase I’m not aware of.

The practical purpose of (amateur) photography – to record specific events in one’s life, or to make something aesthetic out of it – has become secondary. The picture is no longer a representation of time and space but a symbol of time and space. It has become freelance, to be viewed when browsing through 'My Documents' whenever you’re retrospectively tagged or commented upon in somebody’s else’s on-line posts, or as an avatar, a personal logo. The idea that images should live side-by-side in an album – even a virtual album – and form part of a narrative is nearing redundancy. Photography’s primary purpose has become that of a marketing tool for the individual, a precession of simulacra intended as a primary source of self-identification.

Resistance is of course futile. I persisted with film for longer than most but it soon became clear that the industry was now calibrating their machines primarily to cater for digital imaging (this would have been around 2008, although Boots was making a mess of it as early as 2001.) There were independent businesses that still utilised traditional wet-lab technology but they’d become very expensive. So I went digital and bought a Ricoh R8.

Digital images don’t make for very good 6 x 4 inch prints. For one, the default aspect ratio for most compact cameras is different to film. This shouldn’t be a problem but service providers adhere to the standard 3:2 ratio, and so your prints are either cropped or a boarder is imposed to accommodate the whole image. For two, colours are often overly saturated and skin tones can appear unnatural. My advice would be to do away with prints altogether and instead compile A4 sized photobooks, which are more forgiving. The dilemma presented is this: holiday snaps aside, is it really worth incorporating all those random pictures of buildings, cloud formations spotted on the way home from work, abstract close-ups of road markings and street signage, shadows streaming through windows at oblique angles, and meals, into any sort of album? And if it is, would you get anything out of looking back over it?

Marrakesh

Sebadoh’s 'Licence to Confuse' reminds me hanging out with the guy with the indie tapes during my first year at university, early 1994. It does not remind me of a weekend I spent in Lyon with my partner in August 2011. 'Licence to Confuse' is taken from the album Bakesale, which was released on Sub Pop in August 1994. Ergo, I couldn’t have listened to it with the guy with the indie tapes in our halls of residence. However, I could have listened to 4 Song CD with him, which I bought on vinyl in or around June 1994. The four (proper) songs that feature on 4 Song CD all appear on Bakesale. I’ve only just worked this out, which means back in 2010, when I bought a copy of Bakesale on CD, I associated its content with something it couldn’t feasibly be associated with. The Sebadoh album that I did actually listen to with the guy with the indie tapes in our halls of residence must have in fact been Bubble and Scrape, which is a markedly different album. I’d been getting a bit misty-eyed over the alternative music scene as it was before Britpop got out of hand, and if I had to explain to somebody what this all sounded like I might play them Bakesale.

Neither does 'Bad as Me' by Tom Waits recall being in Lyon, but it does evoke the period. It might have been recorded off the lad who lent me The Sounds of the Suburbs, although it could just have easily been downloaded from iTunes. Either way, the lad is a big fan. 'Bad as Me' is as barmy as 'Big in Japan'. If you crave something milder, check out the deliciously paranoid 'What’s He Building?' off of Mule Variations.

'It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue' reminds me of the Heart & Hand in Brighton, one of my favourite pubs. It does not remind me of drinking in the hotel lobby of the Grand Hotel Tazi in Marrakesh, October 2011, one of the few places around the old town where you can buy wallop. The Byrds first recorded this Bob Dylan tune during the sessions for Turn! Turn! Turn! but it never made the cut. A slower, country-inflected iteration later materialised on the Ballad of Easy Rider in 1969, but I wanted the faster, rougher version they recorded in 1965. The Heart & Hand had it on their jukebox – still do – so I assumed that it had seen life as an early B-side. It hadn’t. It was re-released in 2004 as part of a collection of 7” singles entitled Cancelled Flytes, which is how the Heart & Hand must have got hold of it. (If you’re interested, it’s also available as a bonus track on the extended CD version of Turn! Turn! Turn! as well as the 1987 compilation Never Before.) This is not the first rendition of 'It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue' to have featured on one of my compilations. I included the 13th Floor Elevators’ much slower interpretation on 2002’s Come on Let’s Go, which lasts 5 minutes and 17 seconds. Bob Dylan’s original recording comes in at 4 minutes and 12 seconds, whereas The Byrds complete ‘Version 1’ in a little over 3 minutes, which should give you some idea of the relative cadences.

I wasn’t keen on my new job but it paid fairly well and my manager would regale me with stories about surviving avalanches, the efficiency of French town councils, and what London pubs had been like in the 1960s. This place of work was located in Brentford, which hadn’t changed much since I’d lived there ten years before. I was able to cycle there and did so most of the time. On Wednesday nights I began bouldering with Mr Wilkinson, one of the guys who used to live at The Grosvenor and a couple of their acquaintances. I was fit and working again.

Despite the two year time frame and the confused associations, I consider The World’ll Be OK to be one of my most accomplished works. This is due in part to my renewed interest in ska and rocksteady: 'Al Capone' by Prince Buster, 'The Vampire' by The Upsetters, and 'Concorde' by The Prophets. These three instrumental tracks allow the listener to rest their ear after the earlier onslaught of guitars, as well gearing up for what follows. 'Al Capone' by Prince Buster isn’t completely instrumental. He asks that we don’t call him Scarface because his name is not that, it’s Capone: 'C. A. P. O. N. E. – Capone!' The Upsetters were the house band for Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s record label, Upsetter Records, which he established in 1968. I don’t know much about The Prophets other than they were signed to Big Shot, a subsidiary of Island Records that was later taken over by Trojan. 'Al Capone' is certainly ska but 'The Vampire' and 'Concorde' would be described as rocksteady, which came after ska and before reggae. I don’t feel qualified to fully explain the differences between these genres, except to say that the shifts between them represented a slowing down in tempo, a diminished interest in brass and a greater focus on bass. (Legend has it that the slowing down of rocksteady occurred during a prolonged spell of hot weather unconducive to dancing.)

All this leads neatly into 'Typical Girls' by The Slits. The Slits were a punk band with an appetite for dub. In a nutshell, dub is reggae with the drum and bass turned up and the vocals taken off. Just as ska informed two-tone, dub and reggae had an effect on post-punk: The Clash, The Ruts, PIL and, dare I say it, The Police. The Slits debut album, Cut, is probably more experimental than any of that lot, its intricate rhythms reaching far beyond reggae. But, a bit like The Fall, if you can’t get on with Ari Up’s vocal inflections, it might not be for you.

The 30th birthday of the girl who was going out with the former cohabitant from Brighton was to be celebrated at Fitzherberts in Brighton, and I was invited. Such is the fallibility of memory, as has been proven, I hesitate to say whether I heard the B-52’s that night or not, but something of that type was certainly played. I cannot be sure either if it was before or after this party that I purchased their eponymous debut album. I do know, however, that the record had been on my mental to buy list ever since I’d heard 'Planet Claire' on BBC Radio 6 while working at Nikon between 2003 and 2008. In any case, I was looking for something to follow on from 'Typical Girls' by the Slits, and '52 Girls' seemed appropriate: both songs are strong rhythmically, both contain female lead vocals and harmonies, both incorporate ‘girls’ into their title. Despite The B-52’s reputation for kitsch, they could certainly rock – this is a band that cut their chops at CBGBs. Ricky Wilson’s guitar forms the backbone to many of their best songs, a guitar tuned to taste, often shorn of a string or two.

Buzzcocks Spiral Scratch EP was purchased from Really Good Records in Plymouth a few years earlier (possibly on the same visit that yielded Tom Tom Club by Tom Tom Club) in a sleeve that had seen better days. The hassle of recording vinyl onto my laptop had precluded its inclusion on any previous playlist so I decided, finally, to download it. Spiral Scratch was the third punk record ever released by a British band, the first and second being 'New Rose' by The Damned and 'Anarchy in the UK' by the Sex Pistols respectively. 'Boredom' is its lead track, as fast and frantic as 'Neat Neat Neat' by The Damned, which comes next. Both records came out in early 1977, within less than a month of each other, implying that 'Neat Neat Neat' can’t be far off being the fourth punk record ever released by a British band.

The Fall’s body of work can be categorised into four parts. The first phase spreads from the group’s first album Live at the Witch Trials, published in 1979, through to Perverted by Language, recorded in 1983. Thereafter Brix Smith joined the group, whose tenure embodies The Fall’s second phase. She departed in 1989, after the release of I Am Kurious Oranj, and the third phase then begins, probably ending around the time of 1997’s Levitate following the sacking of guitarist Craig Scanlon and the resignation a little after of bassist Stephen Hanley. (Those more familiar with their later work may wish to break the canon down even further.) I embarked on my relationship with The Fall in 1993, between The Infotainment Scan and Middle Class Revolt, after hearing Extricate – so during their third phase – and continued to work more of less backwards, reverse-chronologically. Live at the Witch Trials exempted, this fervid exploration of The Fall’s back catalogue ran out of steam after I’d reached 1984’s The Wonderful and Frightening World Of... (although I did also own Hip Priest And Kamerads, a compilation that gathers tracks from some of their earlier records). It wasn’t until The Wilkinsons gave me The Complete Peel Sessions 1978–2004 in 2005 that I was inspired to carry on where I left off.

Neither a single nor an album, 1981's Slates is an EP highly regarded among Fall followers. It’s far more upbeat (by Fall standards) than the work that proceeded it – the LP Hex Enduction Hour – and 'Leave the Capitol' in particular. In May 2012 I saw The Fall play at The Coronet in Elephant and Castle.

And never seen again.

I wandered into The Vintage Showroom on Earlham Street off Seven Dials, as is my want. Never bought anything from there but I like the feel and smell of the place. 'This Night Has Opened my Eyes' by The Smiths was playing on this occasion, and I was entranced. Why had it not resonated with me before? Maybe because it only appears on Hatful of Hollow, a motley collection of Peel Session tracks, singles and B-sides that I'd not listened to in a long while.

The Brian Jonestown Massacre double compilation album Tepid Peppermint Wonderland does not include the song 'Whoever You Are'. This surprises me as it’s among their best work. (Could be to do with copyright.) No matter, I simply bought Give It Back! which also features Anton Newcombe wrestling with the sitar on a number of tracks.

My nostalgia for old-school indie music pushed me in the direction of shoegaze, and My Bloody Valentine in particular. The group's early records aren’t really shoegaze at all and have more in common with the alternative American indie rock. Loveless is the where the association comes from, and it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, although 'Sometimes' is probably the most accessible song on it.

I would have thought TOY like My Bloody Valentine. They display the hallmarks of shoegaze – although the noise pop of Split-era Lush might be a more accurate point of reference – and they don’t look too dissimilar to how MBV did at the start of their career: long hair, drainpipe jeans, leather jackets, not a beard in sight. After watching the video to 'Left Myself Behind' and a live performance of 'Dead and Gone' on YouTube, I bought their album. The band appear to be still active, although it looks like a case of diminishing returns.

If you’ve read my liner notes to the 2002 compilation Come On Let’s Go then you’ll know that I purchased the single 'Powder Blue' by Elbow expecting it to be their album track 'Any Day Now'. I soon realised my error but settled for 'Powder Blue' in that instance, which is also very good. Elbow had since hit pay dirt with their albums The Seldom Seen Kid in 2008 and Build a Rocket Boys! in 2011, neither of which impressed me much but may have provided the impetus to finally get hold of 'Any Day Now'.

I left my job in June 2012. It doesn't matter why, except to say that my manager was very stuck in his ways and had a bad temper (although he never directed it towards me). So I was unemployed again. Perhaps to reassure myself, I fixated on the 'The World’ll Be OK' by Teenage Fanclub, recorded especially for their greatest hits album Four Thousand Seven Hundred And Sixty-Six Seconds - A Short Cut To Teenage Fanclub. I also needed a song to jolt my compilation out the reverie of its third-quarter, which is very welcome reverie but an unsustainable one.

Bombay Bicycle Club’s album Flaws had endured, and this time I reached out for one of its moodier moments. Mumford & Sons aside, I quite like the indie-folk sound, despite lacking the chin follicles to embrace the look. Fleet Foxes suffer no such impediment. The band bring a fuller sound to bear than Bombay Bicycle Club, a wider repertoire of instruments, grander gestures, production values more akin to those of Phil Spector, and beards.

'The Look' by Metronomy reminds me of revisiting the likes of Uniqlo in Richmond. It does not remind me hobbling around Porto, having turned my ankle while bouldering three weeks prior. I suppose Metronomy was born out of that electro-pop scene that flourished in the mid-2000s, although it was their third album, 2011’s The English Riviera, that brought them to the fore. I didn’t buy it – 'The Look' was downloaded – but the song is more than a mere novelty, despite the quirkiness of the accompanying video, and I made a mental note to keep an ear out for them.

Porto

The more I think about it the surer I am that The B-52’s was played down at Fitzherberts in Brighton. But I don't think it was '52 Girls' I heard. It was more than likely 'Rock Lobster', the band's first single, and a fitting end to one my favourite playlists.

[Listen to here.]