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 BOYS OF SUMMER [2001]

1.  Speed of Life – David Bowie
2.  Use It Before You Lose It – Bobby Valentin
3.  Phoenix City – The Skatalites
4.  Woman of the Ghetto – Phyllis Dillon
5.  Night and Day – The Maytals
6.  On the Road Again – Canned Heat
7.  I Hate You – The Monks
8.  Paint it Black – The Rolling Stones
9.  The Man Who Sold the World – David Bowie
10.  Household Names – Stereolab
11.  Conquistadors – Chico Hamilton
12.  Mizrab – Gabor Szabo
13.  Viva Tirado – El Chicano
14.  Eye of Danger – Michigan & Smiley
15.  Blackout – David Bowie
16.  Happiness – Teenage Fanclub
17.  I am Pentagon – Make Up
18.  Broasted or Fried – St. Vincent Latinaires
19.  Little Red Rooster – The Rolling Stones

Our flat in Brentford was nice enough, but it was short on space. My fainting friend was holed up in an even more diminutive tenement in deepest Hounslow. We arrived at the conclusion that one-bedroom flats didn’t come cheap and, if the three of us shared, a two bedroom dwelling would afford us all a higher standard of living – which it did.

            Our new lodging – near Osterley but officially designated as Isleworth – was about 10 minutes’ walk away from the residence of the guy who used to own a pager, which was a wonderfully grotty apartment on London Road spread across two floors that some assumed to be a squat. The nearest pub was The Milford Arms, a traditional type of boozer that should have made for a pleasing local. Unfortunately, it was run by a couple of idiots who favoured certain customers over others and treated the place like an extension of their living room. When this began to grate we fell back on old favourites: The Rifleman, The Town Wharf, and The Royal Oak on Worton Road just opposite Mogden Sewage Works. We also knew people who’d recently moved to South Acton, conferring upon us the opportunity to drink in Chiswick; at The George IV, The Duke of Sussex, The Rat and Parrot, and The Crown & Anchor (frequented for a while by ‘Ant and Dec’).

            We were socially more itinerant back then. Wouldn’t think twice about starting off at The Rifleman in Hounslow only to then move on to Baroque in Ealing (Friday, 26th January), or having a few pints in Kingston upon Thames before jumping on a train to Clapham Junction (Saturday, 22nd September). Midweek drinking was also the norm. I don’t mean to suggest that we lived dissolute lifestyles, merely that we were younger then and more carefree. Not that I held my health in complete contempt. I was playing football occasionally with work colleagues, weekly games of badminton with the lady, and a secondhand bike allowed me to cycle to and from work. I was also eating well, making regular trips to Bunny’s Tandoori, The Kyber Pass, Pizza Express and The Coffee Pot.

Great West Road - Osterley or Isleworth?

2000’s The Ladies of Varades and 2001’s The Boys of Summer should be seen as companion pieces. They follow similar musical themes, drawing upon jazz, funk, Latin vibes, reggae, soul, ‘60s rock and contemporary indie. They were also conceived of with the specific intent of being listened to while holidaying in the Loire Valley.

I like to introduce my compendiums with something upbeat – 'Zambezi' by The Fun Company in the case of The Ladies of Varades – but with The Boys of Summer I’ve begun with the oddity that is 'Speed of Life' by David Bowie, a breezy instrumental that also kicks off the album it’s taken from – Low. However, I quickly follow up with 'Use It Before You Lose It' by Bobby Valentin, an exuberant stab of boogaloo. The Latin music of North America and the Caribbean is very different to the bossa nova, samba and Tropicália of Brazil, and this is a good illustration as to how.

I’ll then lay off slightly, to the point of delivering something mellow by about the fourth or fifth track in. In this instance I’ve started with ska, in the shape of 'Phoenix City' by The Skatalites, taken from the Soul Jazz compilation Studio One Rockers. Warming to the theme, I’ve reached for another Soul Jazz compendium – 100% Dynamite – and borrowed 'Woman Of the Ghetto' by Phyllis Dillon and 'Night and Day' by The Maytals. The inspiration in the first instance would have been the guy who used to own a pager, although the Studio One Rockers album was/is my own. This run of ska and rocksteady eases us into the mellifluous blues of Canned Heat’s 'On the Road Again', which my lady friend pejoratively thinks sounds like somebody using an electric razor. (The sound she is referring to is in fact a tambura.)

Now it’s time to wind things back up, and 'I Hate You' by The Monks more than serves this purpose. Taken from their seminal 1966 album Black Monk Time, 'I Hate You' is a spiteful barrage of fuzz-tone distortion and bitter incantation. (The Fall covered this track on their 1990 album Extricate, which is how I initially came to be aware of it, but I bought Black Monk Time after I saw a copy hanging in the window of Intoxica Records on the Portobello Road on a Saturday.) Having released such energy I am committed to drawing it out, and do so with 'Paint it Black' by the Stones. This is what the second phase of a playlist of this length is often about – making a noise, or throwing poppy melodies out there to keep the listener hyped.

We need to talk about David, as in Bowie. Nobody had much to say about him at university, let alone school. It was the guy with the tapes who finally broached the subject. His then girlfriend included 'Queen Bitch' on a mixtape she sent him when we were living together on Hanworth Road. Having already established myself as a fellow Velvet Underground fan – 'Queen Bitch' is Bowie’s homage to them – I took note, but not to the extent that I immediately did anything about it. I’m not sure what prompted me but at some point in the year 2000 I bought a secondhand copy of Hunky Dory. I’m assuming it was after July because nothing features of it on The Ladies of Varades, and I would have surely have included 'Andy Warhol' given the opportunity.

I purchased my copy of Low in Penzance, which dates it to the end of the August bank holiday of that same year. I’d liked Hunky Dory but wasn’t dazzled by it. Low – the first side at least – really grabbed me. I was aware that Bowie had written Low on returning to Europe, in an effort to escape the ruinous, psychotic lifestyle that taken him over in Los Angeles, but wasn’t alive to what this had actually entailed. I was taken with the simplicity and strangeness of some of the lyrics, the fragmentary nature of the songs’ structures and the general mood of the thing. Bowie’s vocal delivery is measured; the timbre boarders on the melancholy. Conventional arrangements are dispensed with. In 'Sound and Vision' the nearest thing approximating a chorus is heard just twice: once at the beginning of the song and again at the end, bookending what passes for a verse. 'Breaking Glass' consists of two verses and a single chorus, if it can be called that. In parallel to all of this, Bowie had ditched many or his sartorial eccentricities and taken to wearing sensible shirts, blue jeans and V-neck jumpers. His hair was still orange though.

By the time I’d begun compiling a playlist in readiness for a second gite-based holiday I’d added “Heroes” to my collection. The B-sides of both Low and “Heroes” are comprised largely of ambient instrumentals but, despite both albums forming part of Bowie’s ‘Berlin Trilogy’, their A-sides aren’t remotely similar. “Heroes” is louder, more aggressive, the tracks are longer and the lyrical content more verbose. Robert Fripp’s guitar is let loose all over it while Eno’s noodlings take a back seat. I’m not sure which album I prefer. I definitely find the second side of “Heroes” more stimulating than side two of Low but it is the first sides of both that hold all the aces. In this respect, side one of Low just about edges it on account of there being seven of them – aces, that is – to “Heroes”’ five.

The first version of this compilation had Bowie's 'Breaking Glass' following on from 'Paint it Black', but I decided to replace it with 'The Man Who Sold the World' after everybody got quite into it on our trip to France (courtesy of the guy who used to own a pager). It was a simple exercise to delete 'Breaking Glass', record 'The Man Who Sold the World' and then rearrange the running order on my MiniDisc.

Hunky Dory

We’re at a crucial stage of my anthology now – the third quarter – and in this instance I’ve turned to jazz to sustain the listener’s interest. Jazz has an epic quality that I think sets a compilation up nicely for the final run in. You can’t just drop it in willy-nilly, so I’ve used a Stereolab tune, with their complex arrangements and fondness for vintage keys, to pave the way. Stereolab had a new album due out at the end of August, but our French holiday couldn’t wait that long and so I reached for the EP they released in May 2000, The First of the Microbe Hunters. Thereafter, Chico Hamilton’s 'Conquistadors' segues into the jazz-raga of Hungarian guitarist Gábor Szabó’s 'Mizrab'. It’s a natural progression as Gábor plays guitar on both.

I’ve got nothing against The Beatles but consider this: August 1965 and the Fab Four have just recorded Help!, their fifth studio album. The same year Chico Hamilton releases El Chico, his 23rd. I’m not going to argue that El Chico is a better album than Help! but it’s hard to make a case for, say, 'Ticket to Ride' being anywhere near as sophisticated as 'Conquistadors'. Gábor Szabó’s guitar playing is far more accomplished than either Lennon’s or Harrison’s, not because he’s more talented necessarily but because jazz simply offers more room for manoeuvre. It’s not so much a case of which music is better but what’s more interesting. (Ironically, one of Gábor’s first releases as a band leader was a cover of the Paul McCartney schmaltz-fest 'Yesterday'.)

It was Earl Gateshead who introduced me to El Chicano’s take on the jazz standard 'Viva Tirado', which they make their own. The slice of Hammond driven Chicano rock serves to ramp things up before 'Eye of Danger' kicks in, a menacing slab of late 1970’s dancehall that needs to be kept apart from the more delicate intricacies displayed by Gábor.

'Blackout' off of “Heroes” succeeds Michigan & Smiley’s 'Eye of Danger' because it is frantic and noisy enough to cope with the responsibility. It also signals the beginning of the end – the last quarter.

While one needn't save the best until last, it is advisable that your compilation builds toward a climax of sorts. 'Happiness' by Teenage Fanclub could fairly be described as an uplifting track. It has proper singing on it, rather than shouting, screaming, grunting or whimpering. The same cannot be said of 'I am Pentagon' by Make Up. I’ve already noted that the Make Up and the Stones shared a sort of muscular licentiousness – or at least their frontmen did – but this is only partly true. It is correct that Mick Jagger and Ian Svenonius, as well as having big hair, commit completely to their physical performance. However, where Jagger seeks to convey primitive urges, Svenonius brings humour. His shtick is tongue-in-cheek but played with enough conviction to make you think twice. It's almost as if a young Jonathan Meades had joined the Weather Underground and been possessed simultaneously by the spirits of James Brown and Prince.

The penultimate track, 'Broasted or Fried', is taken from the same record as the second: a miscellany of 'Latin breakbeats, basslines & boogaloo' to which it lends its name. 'Broasted or Fried' is a monster of a tune, driving forward with a ferocity that feels conclusive.

Considering the effect Exile on Main Street had on me, you would have thought I'd have hastily hunted down copies of Beggars Banquet, Let it Bleed and/or Sticky Fingers. Instead, I mined my father’s record collection and came away with both The Rolling Stones’ eponymously titled debut album and the compilation LP Big Hits (High Tide and Green Grass) – hence 'Paint it Black' and hence 'Little Red Rooster'. 'Little Red Rooster' was almost new to me, whereas 'Paint it Black' already held associations with my second year at university drinking in The Chariot. I should have tried harder, but it is a good tune and does work well in this context

Why ‘The Boys of Summer’? It had been my intention to include the Don Henley song of the same name but I couldn't get hold of it. In hindsight, it was probably for the best.

[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.]