LINER NOTES: HARMONY IN MY HEAD [2007-08]

1.     No Pussy Blues – Grinderman

2.     Big in Japan – Tom Waits

3.     The Decision – The Young Knives

4.     Evergreen – The Brian Jonestown Massacre

5.     What Have I Said Now? – The Wedding Present

6.     Wings – The Fall

7.     House of Cards – Radiohead

8.     The Rip – Portishead

9.     Sugar Mountain – Neil Young

10.   Brides of Jesus – Little Feat

11.   The Pink Room – Angelo Badalamenti / David Lynch

12.   Pânico – Mercenarios

13.   Give It Lose It Take It – Field Music

14.   Bennie and the Jets – Elton John

15.   Contact – Bridget Bardot

16.   Lucky Number – Lene Lovich

17.   Harmony in my Head – Buzzcocks

18.   On My Radio – The Selector

19.   Gangsters – The Specials

20.   Pull Up to the Bumper – Grace Jones

21.   Let’s Dance – David Bowie

Bonus Tracks:

22.   L.E.S. Artistes – Santigold

23.   Black Magic – Jarvis Cocker

24.   Prodigal Son – The Rolling Stones

25.   Bird of Beauty – Stevie Wonder

26.   Cracked Actor – David Bowie

27.   Wordy Rappinghood – Tom Tom Club

28.   The Hungry Saw – Tindersticks

In his book A New Time for Mexico, Carlos Fuentes affirms that, 'Religious temperament without religious conviction has branded some of the greatest works of the twentieth century.' He offers up Luis Buñuel, Albert Camus, Ingmar Bergman and Graham Greene as examples of artistes who have attempted to make sense of suffering in the absence of Christ, to comprehend that which might be deemed sacred when divested of doctrine. Theism is antediluvian – predates the profits – and contemporary morality is derived, consciously or otherwise, from scripture, vouchsafed by the supernatural. In other words, you can’t get shot of God all that easily.

Fuentes might also have cited Nick Cave, who is not a man of proclaimed faith but nonetheless likes to make reference to Judeo-Christian subjects in his work. But not so with Grinderman. The album Grinderman is the sound of midlife crisis conveyed with such humour that you probably shouldn’t assume that the midlife crisis in question is necessarily Cave’s – or if it is then viewed from a distance. According to Cave, the song 'No Pussy Blues' was inspired by the negative reactions his Zapata moustache received. Cookie dusters are divisive at the best of times, so the result in and of itself is no firm indicator of middle aged angst, but the fact that Nicholas grew such a thing in his late 40s/early 50s maybe is.

I hadn’t made the connection when I put this compilation together – both tracks were provided by the lad who lent me The Sound of the Suburbs, so I might have expected to – but Tom Waits was also 50 years’ old when he recorded 'Big in Japan' and also appears to be railing against his advancing years. Whereas Cave just isn’t getting any, Waits can at least console himself with the fact that he’s doing business in Asia. Despite Tom’s gruff incantations that form the spine of the song, 'Big In Japan' is a far more buoyant tune than 'No Pussy Blues' but still rough enough to perpetuate a sense of anxiety.

'The Decision' by The Young Knives ensues, a continuation of the millennial post-punk revival, which was by now on the slide. Credit to them that their album Voices of Animals and Men was nominated for the 2007 Mercury Prize in the face of this. 'The Decision' contains the lines, 'I'm your monarch, your supreme monarch. That decision was mine,' which I take to be a comment on the illusory nature of monarchy: as if to say, 'I am the Queen's subject, but might I not make the same claim for myself: that actually the Queen is in fact my subject.'

Have you seen the documentary Dig!? If you haven’t, and if you like music, which you doubtlessly do if you’re reading this, then I recommend you watch it. Its subject is the trials and tribulations of bands The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols from the mid ‘90s through to the early 2000s. I was done with The Dandy Warhols but had heard nothing by The Brian Jonestown Massacre, so I bought the double compilation album Tepid Peppermint Wonderland: A Retrospective which gathers together 38 tracks spanning a period of nine years. The Brian Jonestown’ sound is various but can be categorised roughly into three parts: melodic folk rock numbers, like 'Servo', 'Prozac v Heroin', 'Nevertheless'; tripped out psychedelia of the kind you hear on 'Anemone' or 'Whoever You Are'; and, especially early on, a kind of lo-fi take on shoegaze. 'Evergreen' is from the band’s first album, Methodrone, and sounds like Slowdive jamming with Yo La Tengo. The common thread running through their work is lead singer and multi-instrumentalist Anton Newcombe, who comes across as a sort of malevolent genius and wears his heart and influences on his sleeve. His obsession with the 1960s is not parodic; making use of 12 string guitars, tablas and sitars does not exempt ingenuity. 'The Beatles were for sale. I give it away,' Newcombe tells us 20 minutes into Dig!. You can be cynical towards that, but it’s not the sentiment of someone interested in pastiche.

I used to listen to a taped copy of The Wedding Present's Bizarro during my second year at university. I’d got rid of all my old cassettes by now and didn’t have anything to play them on anyway. Cue Bizarro, completely remastered and repackaged with seven bonus tracks and extensive sleevenotes, on compact disc. This time around it was the tune 'What Have I said Now?' that stood out – specifically the moment when, after chugging along in F (with transient forays into A#, A and C), it crashes into E after the second verse.

Cologne

It took a while to compile this compilation. The reasons might be: my continued indifference to current music; a temperamental MiniDisc player and my decision to switch over to MP3; the difficulty of converting vinyl to the MP3 format; training for the Fuller's Thames Towpath Ten (mile) run; vacations to Cologne, Istanbul, Lisbon and New York; handing in my notice in July 2008; a five week sojourn in Southeast Asia and the period of unemployment that followed; apathy. I’d also taken to making ‘best of ‘ playlists of individual artists: Best of… Stereolab, Best of… Talking Heads, Best of… The Fall, and so forth. Putting together the best of The Fall was especially rewarding for I had added the records Perverted by Language and Grotesque (After the Gramme) to my collection, as well as acquiring digital copies of The Wonderful and Frightening World of…, The Frenz Experiment, Extricate, Code: Selfish and Shift-Work to supplement what I already possessed on vinyl. Such was the weight of material that I felt it necessary to divide my anthology into two parts. (The only other artist that has bid the same approach of me is David Bowie.) I took five tracks from the album Perverted by Language alone, although two of these – 'The Man Whose Head Expanded' and 'Wings' – were singles tacked on the end of the re-issued CD in the form of bonus tracks. For the sake of this compilation, I went with 'Wings', whose tempo and monotonous groove is consistent with the tunes I’ve placed before and after. In this respect, this playlist is more calculated than many of my others, which is the benefit of working with MP3. Although MiniDisc certainly provides for a cut-and-paste approach to recording, with MP3 it's almost compulsory, and so one pays more attention to the order of things. 'House of Cards' by Radiohead does a good job of following on from 'Wings' but works even better as a precursor to 'The Rip' by Portishead. (Footage of Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead playing an acoustic version of 'The Rip' appeared on the internet shortly after.)

I received my copy of Decade by Neil Young at the end of 2006, so by rights 'Sugar Mountain' should have kicked off this compendium. It wouldn’t have worked. 'Sugar Mountain' is a lament for lost youth (written when Neil Young had freshly turned 21) and nearly six minutes’ long, and it’s not going to get any party started.

Atheism, as it is currently understood, may one day prove to have been a passing fad, if only because its antithesis – theism – might itself lapse. Such a narrow view of things is problematic, not least because the subject is rooted firmly in semantics. The scientific and the religious – and I refer to the religious in the theological sense rather than the dogmatic, which is merely the realpolitik of organised religion – are interested in the same thing and destined to converge upon ontological grounds. Whether this terrain will be defined as Cartesian or monistic remains to be seen.

Jesus has a firm hold on our collective consciousness and his presence looms large within the realm of contemporary music, through gospel, blues, country, soul, and thus rock and roll. 'You don't want to walk and talk about Jesus, you just want to see his face,' incants Mick Jagger on 'I Just Want to See His Face', and he’s not alone: The Byrds, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Big Star, The Velvet Underground, The Doors, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Manassas, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, Felt, Spaceman 3, The Vaselines, Teenage Fanclub, The Verve, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Half Man Half Biscuit… The Nazarene turns up in the most unlikely places.

Not a moment too soon, I discovered Minus Zero/Stand Out Records off Portobello Road. What’s this they’re playing? 

'The Factory, Lowell George’s first band – you know, the guy from Little Feat.' 

I didn’t. After releasing but two singles, Lowell George joined Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention as rhythm guitarist and co-vocalist. His tenure was short lived and after contributing to Hot Rats, Burnt Weeny Sandwich and Weasels Ripped my Flesh he left to form his own band, called Little Feat. Not long after clarifying this chronology, I returned to Minus Zero / Stand Out Records and purchased the Little Feat and Dixie Chicken albums, paired together as part of WEA’s slightly weird ‘2 Originals’ series, which repackaged two albums by the same artist in a gatefold format. The music is reminiscent of that I heard playing in the Eiffel Bar in Copenhagen more than a year earlier, although persons I’ve played it too have tentatively asked if it might be the Rolling Stones – songs like 'Strawberry Flats' can give that impression.

The title and the lyrics to 'The Brides of Jesus' suggest the Parable of the Ten Virgins [Gospel of Matthew 25:1-13], yet the reference in the final line to ‘entertaining angels unawares’ is attributable to Hebrews [13:2]. It could be that Lowell is playing one proverb off against the other, saying that the ‘five foolish virgins’ who did not bring surplus oil for their lamps, and were denied entrance to the ‘wedding’ as punishment for being ill-prepared, should have been treated better, for they may have been actual angels. Lowell Gorge died of a heart attack in 1979, and I can find no evidence that he ever expatiated upon the song’s subject.

'The Pink Room' is from the soundtrack to the David Lynch film, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. According to the credits, this swampy, instrumental dirge was written by Lynch himself, rather than Angelo Badalamenti who composed the film’s score. I once listened to 'The Pink Room' in a static caravan on a campsite in the New Forest, with The Wilkinsons, the guy who used to own a pager and Roz Childs, surrounded by conifers and pines.

The Sexual Life of the Savages is a compilation of São Paulo post-punk that I requisitioned from my Cornish friend. I must have kept hold of it for a while because it made more of an impact on the anthology I put together over 2009/2010. In the meantime, I recorded 'Pânico' by Mercenárias, which sounds a bit like very early The Fall fronted by The Slits, only sung in Portuguese. I wouldn’t ordinarily have followed on from something like this with anything by Field Music, but 'Give It Lose It Take It' is one of their livelier numbers. 

New Forest

Like a lot of people, I’m not too bothered about New Year’s Eve. Ideally, I’d attend someone’s house party, preferably not mine, but for three years running I spent New Year’s Eve at the Hawley Arms in Camden. It was all down to the girl who used to live with my partner on the Isle of Dogs who’d met the proprietors on a beach in Southeast Asia, kept in touch, and extended a repeated invitation to see in New Year’s at their fashionable establishment. In 2004, rolling into 2005, there had been enough room to spray a celebratory bottle of champagne around without getting in anyone's way. By the time 2007 was imminent, there was barely enough room to raise a glass. I don’t remember much else about that night but I do remember enjoying Elton John’s 'Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting' playing. Mr Wilkinson advised I buy the 1974 album Greatest Hits, which I subsequently did. Rather than go through the laborious process of recording 'Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting' from vinyl onto our laptop, in real time, I picked up a copy of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road on CD from a charity shop for a couple of quid, introducing me to the delights of 'Bennie and the Jets' in the process. 'Bennie and the Jets' is a strange song in that it’s made to sound like it was recorded live, which makes me wonder whether it sounds much different when it is played live.

I wandered into Beyond Retro in Soho and found something I hadn’t bargained for: not an item of clothing but a sound. A lot of people would have asked what was playing, but I’m not one for talking to people unnecessarily so instead memorised key components of the song and looked them up on the internet when I got home. I didn’t have much to go on: it was sung in French, sounded like it was more than likely recorded in the 1960s, and exhibited a one-word chorus that exclaimed ‘Contact!’. It was French chanteuse Brigitte Bardot, with a little help from Serge Gainsbourg.

If not French psychedelic pop then what had I expected to find in Beyond Retro? Not sure but it won’t have been jeans, because fashion had finally caught up with itself. That is to say that the slimmer profile appropriated by purveyors of the post-punk and garage rock revival had begun to permeate the mainstream. Enter the Levi’s 504/514, a comparatively slim-fitting jean with a tapered leg offering a welcome alternative to the bootcut 507/517/527. The 504 would probably be considered fairly loose by today’s standards but in the mid-to-late 2000s was about as skinny as you could get. In 2007 I purchased a light blue pair of Levi 504s, which my partner ridiculed, and then a darker pair. In 2008, we flew to New York City and I picked up a black pair of corduroy 514s for a little more than $20, on sale in Urban Outfitters, which worked out at around £12. The 514s were slightly less tapered than the 504s and I had them altered to match.

Slimmer fitting knitwear was also now easier to come by. I’d been merrily buying my jumpers from Marks and Spencer since 2005 – specifically their Collezione range – and I was fine with that, but now I could find things in any high street store I’d be comfortable wearing: Fred Perry, Farah, Uniqlo, even Gap. Peacoats were all the rage too, whereas a few years earlier I’d been sifting through army surplus stock to find them. But it wasn’t as simple as that. Men’s mainstream fashion may finally have been shedding the boyish, post-Britpop baggy-isms that had preoccupied it for the last ten years but in its place was something almost schizophrenic. Whereas American groups such as Arcade Fire, Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, and even Kings of Leon, were moving towards a leaner, more rugged sort of look, British groups like Hot Chip, Mystery Jets and Klaxons dressed like an explosion in American Apparel – tight jeans and baggy T-shirts in dayglo colours, with crazy hair. Ultimately, the boots, brogues and beards of our American cousins would win the war, but there was a very confused period in between where some of the worst offences of the 1980s threatened to take hold.

I got wind of 'Lucky Number' by Lene Lovich somehow – in another shop maybe. It was the brevity of the chorus that caught my ear: four dissonant chords sung in rapid succession and the ostinato that comes after. I found a copy of Singles Going Steady by Buzzcocks on CD for £3 – the same album the chap who got me into Sarah Records had lent to me in 1994/95 – and so reacquainted myself with that. The guy who used to own a pager was now playing guitar in a ska/two-tone covers band. Among other things, they’d play 'On My Radio' by The Selector and 'Gangsters' by The Specials, and so I downloaded them (from iTunes). These four songs were all released in the year 1979.

NYC

The laptop I was working from was not my own: it was my partner's and a mere repository for my music which I would then transfer across to my newly acquired MP3 player. The problem with interfacing directly with a mobile device is that you have direct access to everything stored upon it. You don’t even need to make playlists: just ‘play all’ or select ‘shuffle’ and let the hits keep on coming. The shuffle function is particularly pernicious. You find yourself continuously skipping tracks until something shows up worthy of your immediate attention. Furthermore, there’s nothing random about the algorithm that drives the shuffle function. Certain groups will make remarkably frequent appearances, whereas others will be conspicuous by way of their absence.

So I stopped using the shuffle function and set about putting together a compilation. I’d have normally done this with a certain amount of pre-planning, but found it simpler to make it up as I went along: Add to > playlist, notionally entitled ‘2007’, to be renamed at a later date when I felt suitably inspired. I listened to my incomplete playlist as I was compiling it, changing the running order here and there and re-transferring it across to my MP3 player as and when I added new songs. The problem was this mutable approach did not foment the urgency required to finish it. By the time 'Pull up to the Bumper' by Grace Jones and 'Let’s Dance' by David Bowie had been appended to the running order, I’d reached what would under usual circumstances have been my limit – the 80 minutes of time available on a MiniDisc. I had no problem adding to this duration, but where would I draw the line? At what stage would I stop subsuming music gathered in 2008 to a compilation intended to reflect 2007?

As it was, I felt the playlist worked well, so I decided to defer the tracks I had left over until the year after. It was not to be. The recording of vinyl continued to be an issue: the stupid device I had bought necessitated I record in real time and use software to isolate the individual tracks that then had to be saved as individual files of questionable quality. iTunes wasn’t as comprehensive as I’d been led to believe either, so I couldn’t source as much material as I would have liked. It’s conceivable that the reason why I included 'Pull Up to the Bumper' and 'Let’s Dance' is a direct result of this – as filler.

I have identified a number of tracks that might have originally featured on Harmony in my Head in less troubled circumstances, or could have gone towards a playlist for 2008.

American singer Santigold's second single 'L.E.S. Artistes' had been getting airplay, culminating in an appearance on Jools Holland. Her album, Santogold, was voted 2008's 7th best by the NME, while Rolling Stone deemed 'L.E.S. Artistes' to be the second best single. (MGMT and Beyonce topped the magazines' respective polls.)

'Black Magic' is off of Jarvis Cocker’s debut solo album Jarvis, which I have on vinyl. I was disappointed with it, if I'm honest, but the artwork's good and the price of vinyl had yet to go through the roof.

'Prodigal Son' is taken from Beggars Banquet, the record that kicked off the Rolling Stones’ golden age. The guy who used to own a pager brought it to Exmoor with us in 2003, but it had been overshadowed by Their Satanic Majesties Request. This seems odd because I’m now of the opinion that Beggars Banquet is second only to Exile on Main Street in the Rolling Stones’ canon.

In 2008 I bought, in fairly quick succession, the Stevie Wonder albums Music of My Mind and Fulfillingness' First Finale, and was more satisfied with the latter. I recall being enamoured with 'Boogie On Reggae Woman', but nowadays I err towards 'Bird of Beauty'.

In September 2007, I went to see a David Bowie tribute band, at the Grey Horse in Kingston, called The Thin White Duke. The keyboard player resembled the actor Ian Smith, who played Harold Bishop in the Australian soap opera Neighbours. They were actually quite good and their rendition of 'Cracked Actor' motivated me to add Aladdin Sane to my collection.

Back in April 2007, I picked up a vinyl copy of Tom Tom Club by Tom Tom Club on a visit down to Plymouth (from Really Good Records?). It’s a cool record to have and a good album to put on if you have people around. The Tindersticks tune, meanwhile, was another offering from the lad lent me The Sound of the Suburbs, taken from the album of the same name – their best since Curtains and one I don't think they've bettered since.

There were other purchases, most notably records by Black Sheep, Main Source and Public Enemy (all that stuff's already covered in my 'Golden Age of Hip Hop' tetralogy). Maybe that’s why I never got around to creating a separate playlist for 2008. Not because I was unemployed, spent five weeks in Asia or couldn't be bothered, but as a result of rediscovering a taste for the music I listened to in my youth after wandering into a bar in Cologne playing old-school hip hop.

[Listen to here.]

LINER NOTES: COME ON LET'S GO [2002]

1.    Five Years – David Bowie

2.    Captain Easychord – Stereolab

3.    Jo Jo's Jacket – Stephen Malkmus

4.    Hard to Explain – The Strokes

5.    Idioteque – Radiohead

6.    Fell in Love with a Girl – The White Stripes

7.    Walking With Thee – Clinic

8.    The Modern Age – The Strokes

9.    Have You Seen Her Face – The Byrds

10.  Late Night – Syd Barrett

11.  Sunshine Superman – Donovan

12.  It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue – The 13th Floor Elevators

13.  Too Real – Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

14.  Powder Blue – Elbow

15.  Let it Run – Beachwood Sparks

16.  Come on Let’s Go – Broadcast

17.  Baby It’s the Best – Weird War

18.  Dancing Days – Led Zeppelin

19.  Can't You Hear Me Knocking – The Rolling Stones

20.  I Forgot – The Moldy Peaches

21.  Redfuchsiatamborine&gravel – David Candy

August 2001, in the beer garden of The Milford Arms. The Former Cohabitant from Brighton is regaling us with tales of his recent adventures in the Orient. He tells of Dionysian revelry on Thai beaches, of sharing rooms with rats and lizards and oversized insects, and the expediency of travelling light. It sounds exciting and terrifying in equal measure. The former cohabitant from Brighton is not the first of our friends to engage in activities of this kind. No Eyes has done a bit of it, as has the girl who used to live with my lady friend on the Isle of Dogs, and the brother of the guy who used to own a pager is constantly at it. Now, in our mid-twenties, there’s a sense that if any of the rest of us fancy travelling about the planet then we’d better get a move on.

Initially, I’m not very receptive to the idea but am gradually persuaded by my lady friend - as is the guy who passed out in Debenhams. The logistics of the whole operation are a mystery to me, and it’s something to get my head around. In the meantime I will need to rein in my spending. My lifestyle is by no means extravagant but I earn a mediocre wage and will require enough money to cover my airfare to wherever it is we end up going, living costs while away, and a reasonable amount of cash to tide me over on my return. Right now this doesn’t bear thinking about.

 My disposable income broadly goes towards four things: drinking in pubs, eating out, buying records, and holidays (I buy most of my clothes from charity shops). I am not prepared to forgo a social life for the next 12 months but am open to negotiation on the other points. I will sacrifice visiting curry houses and the procurement of full-priced vinyl and satisfy myself with the occasional fry-up and buying secondhand records of limited value. A third gite camp is regrettably out of the question, although I will scape enough together for a short weekend away in Amsterdam with the guy who fell over in Debenhams, my lady friend, the girl she lived with on the Isle of Dogs, the guy who used to own a pager, and Roz Childs.

Trip to Amsterdam

Come on Let’s Go is different to the compilations that immediately precede it: The Ladies of Varades and The Boys of Summer. Consider the chronology. My previous two compendiums were compiled with consecutive French holidays in mind – they were to be symbolic of them – and consequently adhere to an academic calendar. This means that Come on Let’s Go effectively begins in September 2001. Furthermore, it attempts to collate fragments of music deemed unsuitable for inclusion on the preceding playlist, for I hadn’t wanted to subject my fellow tourists to much indie music. As a result, there’s very little on Come on Let’s Go that was released in the year it purports to celebrate; only Weird War and Clinic fulfil this criterion.

There had already been signs that my enthusiasm for indie music was undergoing something of a revival. Perennial favourites Stereolab had pointed me in the direction of Broadcast, Make Up ensured I’d buy into whatever Weird War had to offer, and the ongoing renaissance of the band Delta awakened me to alternative-country bands like Beachwood Sparks and The Tyde. (One of my favourite musical memories is seeing Delta – in support of Beachwood Sparks at the 100 Club – paying homage to the then recently deceased George Harrison with a sublime rendition of what’s probably my favourite Beatles’ tune, 'If I Needed Someone'.) Finally, Radiohead were beginning to justify the praise lavished upon them with the release, in a very short space of time, of Kid A (October 2000) and Amnesiac (June 2001). The two albums resulted from the same recording sessions, in fact.

Many people are of the opinion that The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars is David Bowie’s finest work. I purchased a copy, for next to nothing, to find out. I had decided in advance that 'Five Years' would feature on Come on Let’s Go after seeing footage of Bowie and his band performing it on The Old Grey Whistle Test. I concluded that although Ziggy Stardust might be Bowie’s most consistent work, it wasn’t his strongest. 'Five Years' isn’t even my favourite song on the album – 'Moonage Daydream' is – but it does make for a good opening number, so I went with it.

Readers of my previous liner notes will have observed a preponderance of tracks by ‘the groop’ Stereolab. I think I was introduced to them by the guy who used to own many tapes, but I can’t be sure. I do know that my first Stereolab purchase was the 10” EP Ping Pong, bought in July 1994. I’m by no means a completist when it comes to such things, but I own most of their studio albums, as well as one EP, a mini-LP and a couple of compilations. Sound-Dust is Stereolab’s seventh album. I purchased it on vinyl, one of only 1,800 copies pressed. Where I place a Stereolab tune on any playlist will depend on the tempo of the tune I want to place. 'Captain Easychord' is quite an upbeat number, a perfect antidote to the funereal tenor of 'Five Years', and so it becomes the second track of the compilation.

Pavement’s dissolution was sudden, although their final album, Terror Twilight, felt laboured at times. Stephen Malkmus didn’t hang about getting himself back in the proverbial saddle. Just two years passed before he released Stephen Malkmus, the same amount of time that separated the last three Pavement albums. It wasn’t a radical departure from his former band’s sound, but Malkmus seemed reinvigorated. 'Jo Jo’s Jacket', wherein Malkmus imagines himself as Yul Brynner, was the fourth single from aforementioned album, which seems excessive even if it might be the best of the lot.

One cannot underestimate the impact The Strokes debut album Is This It had on the musical landscape, capturing the hearts and minds of indie kids everywhere. It wasn’t just about the tunes but also the band’s image. At the time, indie music was going through one of its sartorially safe phases. The difference between this and what The Strokes wore is rather subtle. Boot-cut jeans were eschewed in favour of straight-legged slacks, stout Nike trainers were swapped for svelte Converse All Stars, T-shirts became tight and open necked, shirts were bought second-hand and sometimes worn with a tie, leather jackets were pure vintage, hair was all over the place. Basically, they looked like Blondie. It was almost a return to the early-to-mid 1990s and the way Britpop was before Oasis came along and made it all baggy. Bands like Travis, Stereophonics and Coldplay must have been all at sea.

A year earlier and Radiohead might have been too. Fortunately for them they’d already managed to disassociate themselves from the dreariness of the post-Britpop scene and could therefore coexist alongside whatever the latest thing might be. They deserved to. 'Idioteque' is an example of indie music transcending indie music and just being music – their best tune since 'Airbag' – and I put together a Best of Radiohead playlist off the back of it.

The White Stripes released their third album, White Blood Cells, at almost precisely the same time as The Stokes did their first (summer, 2001). Hence, both groups were seen as the vanguard of the post-punk revival. The White Stripes were in actual fact as rooted in the blues as they were garage rock – it was their image and pared down sound that associated them – but it was obvious that both bands were offering an alternative to current trends.

I think I came by 'Walking With Thee' by Clinic after hearing it on the radio (this was pre-internet). Under normal circumstances I probably would have proceeded to buy Clinic’s album, but I was saving my pennies. I bought 'Walking With Thee' as a 7” single, so they got something out of me. It’s an abrasive little number and far more interesting than most of the music made by their peers (The Coral, The Zutons, etc.). The Strokes second contribution to my playlist, 'The Modern Age', was also purchased as a single, albeit on CD very cheaply.

Trip to Plymouth

When I plundered my dad’s record collection for Stones records in 2001 I’d also grabbed a couple of Byrds’ albums: Mr. Tambourine Man and Younger than Yesterday. Aside from the contemporary groups bothering my turntable, I was slowly entering my second ‘60s phase, the first having occurred in and around 1995 (comprising the Rolling Stones, Love, The Beatles, Small Faces, the Blow-Up soundtrack). While I’d leant previously towards the Mod-ish face of that decade I gravitated now towards its more psychedelic and rockier elements: golden-age era Stones, Jefferson Aeroplane, Syd Barrett, Donovan, The Monks, The 13th Floor Elevators. Despite David Crosby’s best efforts, which would eventually see him kicked out of the band, The Byrds probably fell somewhere in between (as did Love really). Ostensibly, Younger than Yesterday takes it lead from The Beatles’ albums Rubber Soul and Revolver. There are touches, though, that are very much The Byrds’ own: the Tijuana brass on 'So You Want to be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star', the country and western inflections of 'Time Between', Roger McGuinn’s atonal guitar riffs throughout. I considered kicking off this compendium with 'So You Want to Be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star' but settled for the Chris Hillman penned 'Have You Seen Her Face'.

Syd Barrett presented another dilemma. I borrowed a copy of his debut solo album, The Madcap Laughs, from Hounslow Library, and my instinct was to represent it with the penultimate song, 'If It’s in You'. It’s a weirdly amusing ditty but Barrett’s strident vocal is indicative of his mental state. I’d recently watched The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story, a BBC documentary, and read his biography, Lost in the Woods, and formed the opinion that Syd wasn’t quite as ‘mad’ as is often made out. 'If It’s in You' suggests otherwise and so 'Late Night' made the cut.

Presumably Barrett wasn’t in town when Donn Pennebaker was shooting Bob Dylan’s peregrinations for the film Dont [sic] Look Back, but can you imagine? Instead, we get Donovan doing his best to impress with an acoustic performance of 'To Sing for You'. That’s no criticism or I wouldn’t have included 'Sunshine Superman' here (although lyrically it's all over the place). Coincidentally, Dylan responds with a rendition of 'It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue' which is the song that follows on this compilation, except this time it’s The 13th Floor Elevators doing the honours. Tommy Hall’s signature electric jug is conspicuous by way of its absence, but it’s no worse off for that.

'Too Real' (4 minutes and 55 seconds long) by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club calls to my mind maybe Spiritualized or Northern Soul era Verve, initiating a run of tunes that are fairly long, slow of pace and lugubrious in mood; I’ve built an anti climax as opposed to an anticlimax. I got quite into BRMC, as they were often known, and Peter Hayes in particular, who had good hair. 

Before they were semi-famous Elbow made pretty interesting music. I’d heard a particular song of theirs at a party, which turned out to be 'Any Day Now'. This was before they’d released their debut album, Asleep in the Back. I assumed that what I’d heard was their new single, 'Powder Blue', and so bought that and quickly realised it wasn’t. It would be many years later before I finally established the true identity of the song I heard at that party, but either track would have done in the circumstance.

 'Let it Run' by Beachwood Sparks lasts an epic 6 minutes 38 seconds, although its coda drags on for more than a minute and a half of that. By the time it’s over, at a mere 3 minutes and 17 seconds, the punchy 'Come on Let’s Go' comes as something of a relief. You’d think it might jar but the late Trish Keenan’s soft vocals connect satisfyingly with the gentle harmonies of Beachwood Sparks. [The acquisition of Broadcast's second long player, The Noise Made by People, came off the back of finding their compilation Work and Non Work in the library. If minidiscs had been longer in duration, I'd have probably also included something from that: 'The Books Lovers', say, or 'Lights Out'.]

The first Weird War album is not their best. I don’t think Ian Svenonius had fully defined his vision for his new band, or maybe I was just upset about finding out about Make Up too late to see them play live. According to the sleeve notes, 'By following the "Texas Instruments Calculator" theory of minimal circuitry and isolated components, Weird War has circumvented the transmission of responsible knowledge and the provocation to enact revision amid the delusion of representation.' How this relates to 'Baby It’s the Best' is anyone’s guess, but I liked their style.

Led Zeppelin: file alongside Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd. Acts of this ilk weren’t considered especially cool among the lo-fi loving indie aficionados of the late ‘80/early ‘90s (Syd Barrett-era Floyd excepted). Not that this would have bothered me much, it just meant I didn’t come across them. The guy who used to own a pager, on the other hand, had been exposed to Led Zeppelin from an early age and was aware there was much more to them than 'Stairway to Heaven', which is manna to the muso. It was Led Zeppelin III that I feasted on initially, courtesy of Hounslow Library. Thereafter I found a cheap copy of Houses of the Holy on vinyl, which to this day is my favourite Led Zeppelin album. I still can’t stand 'Stairway to Heaven' though.

In the latter of half of 2001 – too late to make an impression on The Boys of Summer – I purchased copies of the Rolling Stones' Let It Bleed (a re-issue) and Sticky Fingers (an original copy). 'Gimme Shelter' originally featured here, but the song I really wanted to use was 'Can’t You Hear Me Knocking' off of Sticky Fingers. At over seven minutes long there wasn't room and so 'Gimme Shelter' got the nod. Since freeing myself from the temporal constraints imposed by MiniDisc, I've reverted to my original preference.

Opting for 'Gimme Shelter' left me with just under three minutes to play with, which was enough to accommodate any number of tracks from the eponymous debut album by anti-folk band The Moldy Peaches. The Moldy Peaches were associated with The Strokes and The White Stripes. It was all about the timing; their sound wasn’t remotely similar to either. My lady friend bought me their album for my birthday. If I’m honest, I wasn’t overly impressed, but 'I Forgot' holds a certain charm.

My mild disappointment with the Weird War album was ameliorated by the discovery of the record Play Power by Svenonius’s alter-ego David Candy. 'The best art attracts the best people, so I like to go see Supremacist artists like Kazimir Malevich or Vladimir Mayakovsky,' proclaims David Candy over the flamenco guitar of 'Redfuchsiatamborine&gravel'. Again, this track didn’t fit on my original compilation, but it was listened to more often than many of the tracks that did, so I’ve retrospectively tacked it on at the end. [I later discovered that the guy who played the guitar on this track - Matt Hulse - also directed the video for Broadcast's 'Come On Let's Go', which is an amazing coincidence.]

Trip to Brighton

There turned out to be many more curries, as well as afternoons spent drinking in the Portobello Star, evenings at the Dive Bar and the 100 Club, the occasional gig (The Darkness, Delta, The Dylan Rabbit, Arthur Lee), long weekends in Brighton and Plymouth and Nottinghamshire, camping trips, and excursions to various football grounds in support of Plymouth Argyle’s successful push for promotion into the Second Division. How I ever afforded my five months of travelling must be a testament to a healthier economy, a stronger pound and a more reasonable cost of living. I can barely conceive of it now but am glad I took the opportunity when it presented itself.

[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.]