LINER NOTES: THE LOCKDOWN TAPES [2020]

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Das Boot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Listen to here.]

LINER NOTES: DIFFERENT NOW [2019]

1.     Tell Me – Veronica Falls

2.     If I Needed Someone – The Beatles

3.     Wot  (12" Version) – Captain Sensible

4.     Just Step S’ways – The Fall

5.     Big – Fontaines D.C.

6.     Big Burt – Sleaford Mods

7.     Why Won’t they Talk to Me – Tame Impala

8.     The Same Mistake – Dolly Mixture

9.     I Had to Say This – The Clientele

10.   You Don’t Love Me – Cate le Bon

11.   Time Moves Slow – BADBADNOTGOOD (featuring Sam Herring)

12.   Deep Six Textbook – Let’s Eat Grandma

13.   Alphabet’s Gotta Be Changed – Escape-ism

14.   Primitive London 1 – Basil Kirchin

15.   Equinox – John Coltrane

16.   Colossus – Idles

17.   Misperception – Soft Walls

18.   Our Girl – Our Girl

19.   Different Now – Chastity Belt

20.   Quiet Ferocity – The Jungle Giants

21.   Victor Jara, Finally Found! – Comet Gain

22.   I Work in Retail – The Magic Wizard
23.   Kicking Leaves – The Pastels

When the Scottish footballer Joe Jordan moved to AC Milan from Manchester United in 1981, he was surprised to find that his new work colleagues spent time in museums, galleries, restaurants, cafes. You can probably imagine the sort of thing Joe might have been more used to in Manchester, where footballers would routinely round off an afternoon’s game with an evening out on the lash. This was back when the word ‘student’ was employed as a term of abuse. Such inverted snobbery wasn’t aimed exclusively towards those in higher education and was emblematic of a wider issue. A social conservatism held sway and anyone who stood outside of the mainstream was vulnerable to ridicule, even if you actually didn’t but looked like maybe you did.

It’s different now. A trip to the Tate Modern is a family event. Students are harder to spot and people aren’t so bothered by them anyway. Men wear clothes that could have got your head kicked in back in my day. They may even moisturise. Yet the UK doesn’t feel any more European than it used to (or, rather, didn’t). There are certainly more continental Europeans living in Britain than there were 20-odd years ago, but the reception they receive is mixed. Opinion polls have ascertained that of the 28 member states of the European Union we feel the least kinship with it. There’s still something within the British psyche that’s profoundly suspicious of the idea of culture and of intellect, and thus of Mainland Europe.

Working at The National Archives was supposed to be a temporary measure until such time I found better paid work elsewhere. But I liked working at The National Archives and I also wanted to see how 'Brexit' panned out before making my next move. The girl who used to operate the Bookeye® 4 (an industrial-sized book scanner) got wind of my Liner Notes and recommended a group by the name of Veronica Falls, who to my ears are reminiscent of the some of the bands that were signed to Sarah Records (which I never mean as anything other than a compliment). 'Follow Me' is the first tune off their second album, 2013's Waiting for Something to Happen.

Actually, for a while I wasn't working at The National Archives, I was at Royal Holloway in Egham, digitising a collection of early 20th Century pamphlets and tracts gathered together under the name The War on Poverty (the content of which seemed as relevant now as when it was written). No sooner had I started, I saw advertised a better paid position, working for a different subcontractor, back at The National Archives. I applied for the job and was offered it, but felt bad about the whole thing and asked my prospective employer if I could serve four weeks' notice rather than the contractually obliged two. This would allow enough time to handover to whoever was going to continue the assignment I was working on and also accommodate the five days’ holiday in Croatia I had coming up.

And so it was agreed. On returning from Split I set about training my replacement, who brought with him a portable speaker and access to Spotify. There was no way of telling what music my bearded, cap-wearing millennial friend was into, but he kicked off with The Beatles. A bit of Led Zeppelin, then more Beatles. He really liked The Beatles. My generation was brought up on the Fab Four, yet only certain albums hold any specific connotation. Their early material reminds me of the family home, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Abbey Road recalls my halls of residence, while 1967–1970 (widely known as ‘The Blue Album’) and The Beatles (widely known as ‘The White Album’) bring back memories of living in Hounslow during my third year at university. I’ve almost certainly listened to Abbey Road and Revolver in equal measure but I do not associate these records with any singular period or place. These were two of the Beatles’ albums enjoyed in Egham, and it is for this reason that I feel justified in including a tune that I’m already familiar with – 'If I Needed Someone' – on this compilation. Besides, it complements the song that precedes it.

Whenever I travel somewhere I try and listen out for new sounds so as to establish an aural connection with the place. It rarely happens but in Split it did. Where it happened specifically was in Caffe Bar La Bodega, the type of drinking establishment mainland Europe does very well – all bricolage and dim lighting. When I went there with my partner they were playing poppy, new wave stuff from the early 1980s. The song that left an impression, on the both of us, was 'Wot!' by Captain Sensible. We didn’t know who it was but guessed correctly from the chorus, which goes, ‘He said Captain, I said Wot!’.

Caffe Bar La Bodega

The Fall: the group that keeps on giving. I’ve never bothered with the album Hex Enduction Hour because I already possess most of its tracks in some form or other on various compendiums. Ex-Fall drummer Paul Hanley has written a book about the making of this record, considered to be one of their best. This news was brought to me by way of Brix & The Extricated’s Facebook page, accompanied by a YouTube link to the track 'Just Step S’ways'. I was quite astonished and instantly added it to this playlist. [Edit: I have since acquired both Hex Enduction Hour and Paul's book. The jury's out as to whether Hex is indeed The Fall's best work, but I reckon Have a Bleedin Guess: The Story of Hex Enduction Hour may well be the best thing written about them.]

When its put to me that I might like something, like a band or a film, I’m wary. I think a lot of people usually are, out of fear that they won’t, and what then? In early July we visited No Eyes and Teleport Man at their semi-rural Sussex home, whereupon Teleport Man played me Fontaines D.C.’s debut album, Dogrel. Despite the late hour and the amount of alcohol consumed, I really took to it. Within a week I was watching their videos on YouTube; within two I’d bought the album. 'Big' was the song that had me sold – all 1 minute 46 seconds of it.

I’d buy all my music on vinyl if I could afford it, but CDs are less than half the price of LPs these days. As a consequence I only invest in my preferred format when I’m confident of the quality of the album I’m buying. In February I purchased Eton Alive by Sleaford Mods on vinyl. Musically it’s a smoother, slightly slicker record than their previous works, which is no bad thing. By the time you’ve read this, chances are I’ll have seen them play live again at the Hammersmith Apollo.

In May my partner and I journeyed to Brighton to meet the former cohabitant, and before doing so stopped off in The Quadrant for a quick drink. I recognised what was playing but couldn’t put my finger on it. Then 'Feels Like We Only Go Backwards' came on and soon after that 'Elephant', and I realised it was Tame Impala. The former is more indicative of their sound, while the latter is an anomaly. I know this because I’ve since bought Lonerism, from where 'Why Won’t They Talk to Me?' is taken from.

On establishing that the Captain referenced in 'Wot!' was indeed Captain Sensible I also discovered that the backing vocals were supplied by an all-girl group named Dolly Mixture. Categorised as new wave, they sound more like an indie band, before indie music had been invented. Unfortunately, their records are very difficult to get hold of. They only (self) released one (double) album: 1984’s Demonstration Tapes. Bob Stanley re-released it on his Mint Royal imprint in 1995, and in 2010 the band themselves repackaged the record to include singles, demos and live recordings under the name Everything and More, although I doubt either of these releases are much easier to find. The track I’ve included here – 'The Same Mistake' – didn’t feature on the original album, wasn’t a single, doesn’t sound like it’s recorded live, so could be a demo. 

Speaking of Bob, inspiration for the next song came via a compilation entitled Tim Burgess & Bob Stanley Present TIM PEAKS - Songs For A Late-Night Diner. After reading through the track listing on the Ace Records’ website, I noticed it incorporated a tune I’d already decided would appear on my compendium. Furthermore, the third side of this double album starts off with 'Flowers' by Galaxie 500, which I’d included on Take a Ride in 2013. I sampled some of other tracks and liked 'I Had to Say' This by The Clientele. It’s a very pretty tune, especially to begin with, but with a discomforting undercurrent: a background drone, stuttering drums, a sense of moving backwards.

Sport, by its very nature, is competitive. Artistic endeavour isn’t, so why the need for awards and prizes? The Mercury Prize looks down its nose at the Brit Awards. The Ivor Novello Awards looks down on them both, yet all three are engaged in the same bogus racket. Gold and Platinum discs are all right because they’re based purely on sales, which is unequivocal. But who are these arbiters of taste who get to decide what the best records of the year are, and why do they even bother?

Three of the acts included on this playlist were also nominated for the 2019 Mercury Prize: Idles, Fontaines D.C. and Cate le Bon. (I don’t care that Sleaford Mods weren’t put forward, and I hope they don’t either, but it seems odd given the comprehensively positive reviews Eton Alive received.) Cate le Bon’s album Reward certainly deserves recognition, which is the best I can say for the whole charade. I encountered it playing in Eel Pie Records as 'Magnificent Gestures' kicked in, which is a strange song. 'You Don't Love Me' followed, which I preferred.

'Time Moves Slow' is by instrumental jazz-improv group BADBADNOTGOOD (all caps artist’s own). I heard it playing in The St. Margaret’s Tavern on a Sunday evening while reading Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell over a pint. I wouldn’t describe 'Time Moves Slow' as jazz and it’s certainly not an instrumental – Sam Herring of synth-pop band Future Islands provides vocals. It’s more accurately soul music, possibly of the Memphis variety, like something William Bell or Bill Withers would do. I am also reminded of Stuart Staples from Tindersticks.

'Deep Six Textbook' was another provision from the girl who used to operate the Bookeye® 4. There's a trip-hop vibe to this strangely moving song, which is incredible considering that Let's Eat Grandma – two teenage girls from Norwich – were something like 15 when they wrote it. Apparently it's about playing truant, but to my ears it sounds like heartbreak. Not to disparage them but their other songs don’t.

I wonder whether Ian Svenonius is done with Chain & the Gang? They’ve not released a record since Experimental Music in 2017 and haven’t toured since 2018. Meanwhile, Ian Svenonius has been busy promoting the ‘found-sound-dream-drama’ he calls Escape-ism. When I saw them play at The Islington in 2017 it was just Ian with a microphone, guitar and drum machine. In 2018 he brought along his muse/partner/photographer Alexandra Cabral, on keys, to the Moth Club in Hackney. They toured again in 2019 in support of the same album – The Lost Record – playing at the same venue, so regretfully I passed. 'Alphabet’s Gotta be Changed' is a strange tune, even by Ian’s standards, and I’ve deployed it as a kind of bizarre intermission, to arrest the descending mood that was fast encroaching.

I chanced upon 'Primitive London 1' Basil Kirchin while listening to Vic Pratt (of Dylan Rabbit fame) and William Fowler discussing their jointly written book The Bodies Beneath on BBC Sounds. Made in 1965, Primitive London is actually a documentary, directed by Arnold Miller and produced by Stanley Long (the producer and director of low-budget sexploitation movies). Iain Sinclair posits that the film can be seen as, ‘nothing more than a location-hunting expedition for Blow-Up.’ I’ve not seen it, but it is clear that Sinclair thinks there’s more to it than that: something stranger, darker, more revealing. The music itself could be described as lounge-music, in the best possible sense. Brian Eno, among others, has acknowledged Kirchin’s influence.

Toshiba KT-4127

My first personal cassette player was the size of 500 page novel. I can’t remember the make but I loved the thing. I was about eleven years’ old when it was given to me and used it mainly on car journeys. When I moved on to secondary school I quickly decided that something more portable was in order and opted for the smaller Toshiba KT-4127. This lasted until I was about sixteen, whereafter I acquired an actual Sony Walkman that was slim enough to fit inside my blazer pocket.

But all personal cassette players were walkmen regardless of who made them, just as all vacuum cleaners are Hoovers. Sony were right, though, to call it that because music played through headphones is best listened to when walking, as opposed to in a car or on a train or even running. When you walk to music, rather than cutting you off from your environment it connects you to it. I guess it has to do with movement and being more or less in time with the beat.

Walworth doesn’t have a train station of its own. The nearest tube stop is Kennington on the Northern Line, while Elephant and Castle is the closest rail link. Neither are very convenient if you are travelling in from St Margarets in West London, as I was in early August. I could have gone as far as Waterloo, changed onto the Northern Line and gone south to Kennington, but figured I might as well disembark at Vauxhall and walk from there – about one and half miles.

The journey presented the opportunity to test this compendium, which at this point was a work in progress consisting of approximately 12 tracks. Somewhere around Oval, 'Equinox' by John Coltrane came on and continued to play as I turned down St John Ruskin Street, complimenting the post-war modernism of Aberfeldy House. Still on St John Ruskin Street, 'Equinox' ended. I became impatient and skipped to 'Colossus' by Idles, a tune I’d only recently added to my playlist. The jump from jazz to the opening rimshots that introduce 'Colossus' worked very well and I at once resolved to alter the running order.

I'm not sure how I came by either track, which means it was probably the work of the internet – YouTube making suggestions on the basis of what I'd been listening to or looking for. 'Equinox' was recorded in 1964, and it’s easier going than much of Coltrane’s later work. By contrast, 'Colossus' is a tense, harrowing experience, very different to the Idles’ song that The Florist played to me in Fontainebleau with lines about Mary Berry liking reggae and having a degree.

Dan Reeves is the Soft Walls. I’d not heard anything out of him since 2014. Then in August, online music and pop culture magazine The Quietus reviewed his latest offering, Not as Bad as it Seems, with a link to the lead-off track, 'Misperception', which I very quickly appended to this playlist. Although downloadable, the album itself was only made available on cassette, which is indicative of Soft Walls’ delightfully lo-fi sound, but hardly convenient. I may look back on tapes with a degree of nostalgia but they were in truth cumbersome and temperamental devices with a tendency to literally unravel. That said, the format did install a sort of discipline, in that you were unable to skip tracks at the press of a button and so were more inclined to listen to a tape in its entirety.

'Our Girl' by Our Girl is taken from the 2018 album Stranger Today. There is evidence here of the ‘loud-quiet’ dynamic commonly found in indie music during the late ‘80s and early ‘90s – groups like The Breeders, The Pixies, Madder Rose. It would be interesting to know if such influences are directly felt or have been filtered down through other artists that maybe I’m not aware of. (It might not be typical of the group’s broader sound in any case.)

'Different Now' by Chastity Belt is the song Bob Stanley and Tim Burgess chose for their compilation that I’d already decided would feature on mine. I encountered it in Palermo when pausing for an afternoon beer in Chimica 40 Drinks & Records, a wonderful bar-come-record shop on the corner of a cobbled square in the district of La Kalsa. It is a subtly uplifting tune with neat harmonies that befitted the moment: the stillness and the warmth of Piazza Cattolica, and the fact that we were the only people drinking there.

'Different Now' dates back to 2017, as does 'Quiet Ferocity' by Brisbane act The Jungle Giants. They sound a bit like Hot Chip or LCD Soundsystem – alternative dance, electropop, or whatever you want to call it. The tune itself doesn’t really get going until 3 minutes and 45 seconds in, but the groove that ensues is quite something. I like putting stuff like this towards the end of my playlists, as a buffer against waning concentration spans.

As we all know, Brexit was supposed to be done and dusted by 29 March 2019. As that date approached it became clear the UK needed more time. On the 20th March, then Prime Minister Theresa May requested an extension until 30 June 2019, was rebuffed and offered 12 April 2019 instead (or 22 May 2019 should a withdrawal agreement be worked out in advance). Neither deadline was met and so Theresa May again asked if the UK could work towards 30 June 2019. The EU still said no and gave the UK until 31 October 2019 to sort its mess out. Frustrated, May jacked it in and Boris Johnson was elected in her place. Johnson, who is a reprobate, was determined that the UK would meet this revised target date and not defer for a third time. Fortunately, something called the European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 2) Act 2019 (or the ‘Benn Act’) was passed in September preventing this from happening in the event that a withdrawal agreement hadn’t been ratified in the intervening period, which it wasn’t. As such, Johnson was obliged to request a further extension, giving the UK until 31 January 2020 to get its house in order, pending the result of a general election on 12 December 2019.

None of this has escaped the attention of Comet Gain. Their excellent album Fireraisers, Forever! opens with 'We Are All Fucking Morons', a punk tirade pointing a finger at those who fomented this situation, as well as the rest of us who stood by and watched: ‘Bystanders of disaster, liberal spectators, box-set inhalers.’ The track I’ve added to my compilation – 'Victor Jara, Finally Found!' – does not concern Brexit, but it's clearly political. Victor Jara was a Chilean singer-songwriter, poet, teacher, and a communist, who ended up being tortured and executed in the aftermath of the Chilean coup d'état of 1973, by General Pinochet's mob.

The Magic Wizard's gripe is more quotidian. He works in retail, ‘with Martine and Michelle,' which, 'isn’t very nice.’ The Magic Wizard is in fact Dan Laidler, formerly of the group Tiger whose 1996 album We Are Puppets offset the monotony of Britpop very nicely. Mr Laidler has posted 'I Work in Retail' on YouTube. I found this out on Twitter, contacted him to ask where I could get hold of a copy, and he simply emailed me one. What a guy.

Park Hill Estate

In April, my bouldering chums and I travelled to Sheffield to climb up rocks in the Peak District. I was taken with the city and so returned with my partner in late October. On both occasions I found myself contemplating the band Pulp and their relationship with the place. I wondered if Jarvis Cocker ever drank in The Brothers Arms, The Rutland Arms, The Fat Cat and The Shakespeare, or whether those pubs were different then and he steered well clear. And what did he think about what’s being done to Park Hill Estate? I considered resurrecting an old Pulp tune for inclusion on my compilation but decided against it. Too many connotations already exist: Plymouth in the summer, Hounslow in winter, National Express coaches in between. But I did find myself listening to Pulp in the wake of these trips and to reading interviews to see if I could gain any insight into how Sheffield informed their music. In the process, I came across an anecdote regarding the The Pastels.

The Pastels is another band that reminds me of Hounslow, principally the period in 1995-96 when I resided in a terraced house around the back of the High Street, listening to Mobile Safari, Truckload of Trouble and Up for a Bit with The Pastels. Illumination followed in 1997 – still in Hounslow, occupying a semi-detached dump off of Hanworth Road. By the time they’d released their fifth studio album, Slow Summits, I’d moved to St. Margarets, but 2013 was a shaky year for me financially and I didn’t buy many records.

So yeah, I’ve discovered 'Kicking Leaves', it’s autumn, and I’m in the throes of a Pastels’ revival.

[Listen to here.]

LINER NOTES: THE BIG NOD [2014]

1.    Montparnasse – Floating Points

2.    People of the Sticks – The Besnard Lakes

3.    Junebouvier – Whirr

4.    The Big Nod – Soft Walls

5.    Sand Dance – Temples

6.    Stoned and Starving – Parquet Courts

7.    Mum’s the Word – Chain & The Gang

8.    I Miss Your Bones – Hospitality

9.    No Need for a Leader – Unknown Mortal Orchestra

10.  Fat Lady of Limbourg – Dirt Dress

11.  Won’t Remember my Name – Soft Walls

12.  The Upsetter – Metronomy

13.  Passing Out Pieces – Mac Demarco

14.  Pretty Machines – Parkay Quarts

15.  John Brown – Papercuts

16.  Far from Any Road – The Handsome Family

17.  Pulling on a Line – Great Lake Swimmers

18.  Would That Not be Nice – Divine Fits

19.  Fever Boy – Femme

20.  Pseudologia Fantastica – Foster the People

21.  What a Pleasure – Beach Fossils

22.  Talking Backwards – Real Estate

23.  Re. Stacks – Bon Iver

24.  Rocky Mountain High – John Denver

25.  Hellhole Ratrace – Girls

26.  Winter Sundays – Your Headlights are On

Fed up with working peripatetically, I accepted a full-time position with an engineering firm in Kennington. I only bother to mention this because of the impact it had upon my listening habits. It was all to do with Spotify and this associated thing called Discover Weekly, which we listened to while we worked. It’s basically a playlist derived from an algorithm that tries to predict what you might like to listen to based on what you’ve previously searched for, and it is surprisingly astute. What I used to do was write down in a draft email the names of songs that I quite liked and then send them to my personal email address to listen to more carefully back home. Not all tracks stood up to closer inspection, but judging by the length of this playlist many did.

Floating Points is the name that neuroscientist Sam Shepherd records under, and he can count snooker legend Steve Davis as a fan. 'Montparnasse' is 11 minutes’ worth of down-tempo electronica, and not the sort of thing I’d usually use to kick off any compilation. It is one of the few tracks here that recalls a specific memory outside of environment in which it was discovered: waiting for the train at Putney after bouldering at Urban Ascent (now The Climbing Hangar) in Parsons Green. At around 8 minutes and 45 seconds in, the shuffling deep-house of 'Montparnasse' sabotages itself. The drumbeat vanishes, the track plays out to an ambient, Orbital-esque kind of refrain, and then just stops. This is how I can get away with following it up with 'People of the Sticks' by Canadian band The Besnard Lakes. It all plays out like the beginning of a James Bond film. 'Montparnasse' scores the opening action sequence and 'People of the Sticks' is the official theme, whence the credits role. That’s not how I intended it; the analogy suggested itself after the fact.

The Besnard Lakes could be described as post-rock with a touch of shoegaze, and so too could 'Junebouvier' by Whirr, who hail from the San Francisco Bay Area. Their contribution to my playlist is more urgent, with the bass guitar playing a more integral part. Is this what the kids had been listening to since I’d been away? Were those in the know also digging the Soft Walls? Information was scarce. I wanted to buy their LP but couldn’t find it anywhere (No Time, released July 2014). The Soft Walls sound like what might have happened if the John Cale-era Velvet Underground had decamped to Marrakech with Brian Eno, although a simile like that can lead your imagination almost anywhere. There’s also a North-West African vibe going on in 'Sand Dance' by Temples, a band that could be more generally described as psychedelic. Listening to it now, the shift between these two songs is too abrupt for my liking. Parquet Courts’ 'Stoned and Starving' imagines what the Velvet Underground might have sounded like if they’d invited John Cale to contribute towards Loaded.

I’d not heard of any of these bands before, let alone the individual tracks, and was pleasantly surprised that music like this was being made. Not that I had my ear to the ground, but artists such as Alt-J, The War on Drugs and Warpaint were getting airplay, so why not Soft Walls?

I hadn’t purchased a Chain & The Gang record since 2009’s Down With Liberty… Up With Chains!. I’m not sure why but I only found out about 2011’s Music’s Not For Everyone a year or so after its release, whereas 2012’s In Cool Blood completely passed me by. Then in May 2014, Chain & The Gang played at The Dome in Tufnell Park (supported by Comet Gain) to promote the release of their latest album, Minimum Rock N Roll, which I subsequently purchased after the gig.

More Spotify. 'I Miss Your Bones' by New York band Hospitality sounds a bit like The Breeders, which is all you need to know. At work, once we’d had enough of Discover Weekly, members of staff would take it in turns playing their personal preferences. I took the opportunity to explore further the Unknown Mortal Orchestra and selected their track 'No Need for a Leader' for inclusion on this compilation.

'The Fat Lady of Limbourg' by Dirt Dress is a cover of a Brian Eno tune. I only became aware of this just now, literally before writing that last sentence, after rummaging around on the internet looking for something to say about Dirt Dress. There’s not much information out there, which suggests they’re no longer active, but their raucous take on 'The Fat Lady of Limbourg' is certainly equal to Eno’s slower, slightly sinister original.

Another contribution from the Soft Walls, and probably the better of the two, 'Won’t Remember My Name' sounds like The Jesus and Mary Chain reinterpreting 'All Tomorrow’s Parties' by the Velvet Underground, maybe off the back of a particularly heavy session.

Metronomy are on a bit of a downer too, but of a different kind. 'Why you giving me a hard time tonight?' asks the protagonist in 'The Upsetter', presumably to the object of his affection. I’m not sure of the song’s precise meaning but hearts have obviously been broken, as the wistful guitar solo that plays the song out attests.

'Passing Out Pieces' by Mac DeMarco is a weird tune. A discordant keyboard hammers out a discomfiting melody while Mac ponders the price of following his chosen profession. The video is even weirder. Mr Wilkinson and one our bouldering buddies (let's call him The Florist on account of his profession) went to see him play live, and they rated the experience very highly.

Parquet Courts again, except this time they’re referring to themselves as Parkay Quarts. Due to a combination of familial and scholarly commitments, the rhythm section didn’t contribute much to the album Content Nausea, which explains the nomenclatural reconfiguration. 'Pretty Machines' harks back to The Strokes at the start of their career, while again sounding a lot like Loaded-era Velvet Underground.

'John Brown' by Papercuts was released in 2007, which goes to show how Spotify’s Discover Weekly isn’t all to do with pushing new music onto the listener. I could have done with something like this in 2007 – indie-folk before it went mainstream. This also applies to 'Far from Any Road' by The Handsome Family, which dates back even further to 2003. I didn’t realise at the time, but the reason this song was probably doing the rounds was because it was being used as the theme song for HBO’s Gothic crime drama True Detective. It exhibits more of an alternative-country sound than the Papercuts’ track, but the terms ‘country’ and ‘folk’ are often interchangeable. 'Pulling on a Line' (2009) by Canadian folk rock band the Great Lake Swimmers occupies the same ballpark. You can see from this how Spotify does its business.

My enthusiasm for my place of work was already beginning to wane. The managing director, although a nice man, worried too much about things he needn’t have worried about, which meant I was kept on a tight leash. This is a common affliction among managers. They are control freaks by nature, and probably need to be. I also hadn’t taken a holiday in a long while, which was put right when I flew to Valencia with my partner for a long weekend towards the end of the summer, providing the perfect antidote to what would be the coolest August in 21 years, as well as one of the wettest.

This paled into insignificance when set against the grave illness of our friend from North Yorkshire. It didn’t end well – life is a seedy business at times. What can you do, other than manage one’s own sense of terror. Maybe that’s why I’m bothering to write any of this: to deny my mortality, or to overcome it – my own memento mori.

Divine Fits was the result of a collaboration between Britt Daniel from Spoon and Dan Boeckner from Wolf Parade that spawned 2012’s A Thing Called Divine Fits. 'Would That Not Be Nice' is a piece of slightly polished, slightly jagged alternative rock with a strong melody.

Femme (real name Laura Bettinson) released the single 'Fever Boy' in late 2013. I can’t understand why it wasn’t a massive hit. You might call it ‘alternative dance’, comparable to music made by people like M.I.A. and Santigold.

When Foster the People broke through with the single 'Pumped Up Kicks' in 2010-2011 I wasn’t impressed. I couldn’t stand the overly jolly bass line, nor the treatment of the lead vocal which had been synthesized in some way. For a while, I mistakenly thought the song was called Pumped Up Kids and that it related to children who were into bodybuilding. After realising my error I then assumed it to be about trainers. It kind of is, but not in a celebratory sense: it’s about kids wearing kicks having to run for their life from a psychotic adolescent carrying a gun. All this aside, 'Pseudologia Fantastica' is from the group’s second album, Supermodel, released in 2014, and has been described by one critic as ‘psychedelic dance-pop’ and by another as a ‘psychedelic, shoe-gazey wig-out’. You decide.

Beach Fossils were a band that I always intended to follow up on, but I never got around to it. Maybe I will now. The reason for this is that their song 'What a Pleasure' (taken from their 2011 EP What a Pleasure) reminded me of some of the bands signed to Sarah Records – The Springfields perhaps.

Released as a single in January 2014, 'Talking Backwards' by Real Estate also evokes the spirit of Sarah, but this time it’s the Field Mice that comes to mind. The Florist likes this song, and it makes me think of driving in his van back from Bermondsey after a session at the Biscuit Factory, or even down to Fontainebleau for a climbing holiday in 2015.

Valencia

Now for something altogether gloomier: 'Re. Stacks' by Bon Iver. All I knew regarding Bon Iver was that their principle songwriter, Justin Vernon, had a beard. That’s still pretty much all I know about them, which doesn’t in any way diminish my enthusiasm for 'Re. Stacks'. It concerns Vernon’s gambling habits, although the bigger picture is that he was also in the process of surmounting a number of personal obstacles. 'Re. Stacks' is a folkish sort of tune and so opens the door for 'Rocky Mountain High' by John Denver, even if it does come from a different mental place.

Did you know that in the USA there’s such a thing as state songs? Moreover, sometimes a state may have more than one, as is the case with Colorado, whose state songs are 'Where the Columbines Grow' by A J Fynn, and – you’ve guessed it – 'Rocky Mountain High' by John Denver. Under normal circumstances I might have drawn a line here and finished on a (Rocky Mountain) high, but Discover Weekly had other ideas.

'Hellhole Ratrace' by Girls would have made for a great climax. It’s a slow burner lasting all of 6 minutes and 56 seconds. The sucker punch comes at 3 minutes 45, where an electric guitar kicks in and singer Christopher Owens proceeds to plead the following lines four times over:

But I don't want to cry my whole life through,

Yeah I wanna do some laughing too,

So come on, come on, come on, come on and laugh with me.

And I don't want to die without shaking up a leg or two,

Yeah I wanna do some dancing too,

So come on, come on, come on, come on and dance with me.

It pains me to hear people say that they don’t like this or that song because they find it depressing. This sentiment will often be lazily directed towards artistes like The Smiths, R.E.M. or Leonard Cohen. What they really mean is that such music demands too much of their attention and that they can’t be bothered to listen to the actual words. All they’re reacting to are minor chords, a slower tempo, or a lugubrious vocal – the lyrical content could veritably be triumphalist.

I don’t know whether 'Winter Sundays' by Norwegian band Your Headlights are On is supposed to be sad or not, although you’d think so given the title. Whatever the sentiment, it is not depressing but a thing of beauty, and it's where I draw my line.

[Edit: Turns out that the lyrics to 'Winter Sundays' are based upon the poem Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden, which is indeed rather sad. It follows that the song is sad too, although by meddling with the final line the poem's actual meaning has been diminished.]

[Listen to here.]