LINER NOTES: I NEVER HAPPENED [2025]

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

      2.   SuperHwy – Big Supermarket

      3.   Get Found Out – Publicity Department

      4.   Map Like a Leaf – Autocamper

      5.   Ivanhoe’s Twopence – The Fall

      6.   Roman Litter – Felt

      7.   Blue Shadows – Lower Plenty

      8.   Cupid Come – My Bloody Valentine

      9.   Dreamhorse – Workhorse

    10.   Doggerland – Vehicle

    11.   Mariella – Khruangbin featuring Leon Bridges

    12.   Comet 4 – The Soundcarriers

    13.   Listen Here – Eddie Harris

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

    15.   On Parade – Electrelane

    16.   Explosions – Devo

    17.   Teen Beat – Automatic

    18.   Year of the Books – The Green Child

    19.   Colour Television – Stereolab

    20.   Spike Island – Pulp

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

    22.   I Never Happened – Comet Gain

    23.   Trees – Pictureframes
 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Antica Stuzzicheria

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pinakothek der Moderne

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

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

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

[Listen to here.]

LINER NOTES: IT'S RAINING TODAY [2023]

 

       1.   Elm Grove Window – The Clientele

       2.   Lovefingers – Silver Apples

       3.   It’s Raining Today – Scott Walker

       4.   Do Rainbows Have Ends – The Brian Jonestown Massacre

       5.   Templeroy – Felt

       6.   Along – Ghost Woman

       7.   Lose The Game – Holiday Ghosts

       8.   What I’m Missing - GracieHorse

       9.   Bell of Silence – Color Green

     10.   Child of the Moon – The Rolling Stones

     11.   Solicitor in Studio – The Fall

     12.   Dead Pool – Mission of Burma

     13.   When You Say - FACS

     14.   2 Lines – The Big Moon

     15.   Desert Nights – Lonnie Liston Smith & The Cosmic Echoes

     16.   Lwonesome Tonight – PJ Harvey

     17.   The Fool – Nighttime

     18.   Good Living Is Coming For You – Sweeping Promises

     19.   Mine Forever – Lord Huron

     20.   Strange Overtones – David Byrne & Brian Eno

     21.   Stars – Angel Olsen

     22.   Ballad of a Vision Pure – Cinema Red and Blue

     23.   Point That Thing Somewhere Else – The Clean

     24.   Chained to a Cloud – Slowdive

‘I Had to Say This’ by The Clientele was one of my favourite discoveries of 2019. Found on its own, as part of a compilation entitled Tim Peaks (Songs For A Late-Night Diner), I intended to follow up on my interest, but never did. In the end, it has taken a playlist on Spotify, compiled by the chap who introduced me to Sarah Records, for me to finally get around to it.

The methodology the chap employs when putting together such things appears to be unsound (or rather, I see no method at all). Yet the song that kicks off his anthology is the same that I’ve used to start mine. ‘Elm Grove Window’ is from The Clientele’s fourth album, It’s Art Dad, a collection of the band’s earliest recordings. On hearing it I immediately abandoned the chap’s playlist and proceeded to work my way chronologically through The Clientele’s entire back catalogue. Then I went back to the beginning and did it all over again. For a couple of weeks I listened to nothing else. When it was announced that the group were releasing a new album – their first in six years – I pre-ordered a copy, along with a ticket to see them play live at Rough Trade (East) in July.

‘Lovefingers’ by Silver Apples reminds me of trying to book a holiday in April, poring over google maps, searching for a suitable destination. The reason I was listening to them in the first place had to do with somebody on Twitter comparing them to Stereolab. I don’t think they sound much like Stereolab, but what they do share is a fondness of electronic oscillators and pulsating rhythms. Silver Apples got there first, and were probably the first to get there. Released in 1968, their eponymously named debut album was considerably ahead of the game – only the vocals in any way date it. Indeed, Simeon and Taylor’s voices are the group’s weakest link, displaying a naivete at odds with the music. (Their second album, 1969’s Contact, addresses this issue somewhat.)

‘It’s Raining Today’ by Scott Walker doesn’t remind me of anything specific. Either Mark Radcliffe or Stuart Maconie played it on their weekend show in January, telling us that it was a favourite of Thom Yorke’s. You can see why, although Walker’s baritone is in a different league to Yorke’s mumbled whine. ‘It’s Raining Today’ is taken from Scott 3, which was Walker’s third solo album. Upon further investigation I decided I preferred Scott 4, his fifth, but ‘It’s Raining Today’ hit a chord.

There is a connection in my mind between The Brian Jonestown Massacre and Brighton. This might be because the first record of theirs I bought – Tepid Peppermint Wonderland: A Retrospective – was from Rounder Records on Brighton Square, back in 2007. So it seemed fitting to go and see them play at the Concorde 2, rather than the Kentish Town Forum, especially considering my Brightonian friend (the former cohabitant) is also a fan.

Whether you thought it was a good gig would depend on whether or not you find the antics of temperamental artists entertaining or irritating. I've been lucky enough to witness Mark E Smith throwing microphones at sound engineers, but as amusing as it initially was it got boring pretty quickly. And so it was with Anton Newcombe, who aborted one of his songs less than a minute in to berate his band for their supposed lack of enthusiasm, which I doubt anybody in the audience had noticed. A few others were then dropped from the setlist entirely. But it was a good a gig, and we made a good day of it. The latest BJM album was released a few weeks later, and I was able to identify some of the new songs we’d heard. 'Do Rainbows Have Ends?' was one of them and sits nicely between Scott Walker and Felt.

‘Templeroy’ is the second track off of Felt’s first album to feature on one of my annual compilations, the other being ‘Cathedral’ in 2018. Why it took me that long to listen to the whole thing I’ve no idea, but it rounds off what amounts to a rather sombre introduction to this year’s almanac.

At the beginning of March, myself and a couple of friends flew to Milan to watch Inter play Lecce at football, walk around the place, and to marvel over Italian abstract art at the Museo del Novecento (highly recommended). The next month I was in Nice with my partner, to walk around the place, eat and drink, and to contemplate International Klein Blue at the Musée d'art Moderne et d'art Contemporain (don’t bother). There was plenty of sunshine in both instances.

Meanwhile in England, it rained a lot. February had been largely dry but March was the third wettest on record and April wasn’t much better. The end of the month was all right, but the rain returned in May, in time for the coronation of Prince Charles and his transmutation into a king.

Unless you believe in divine right, which hasn't been a thing since the Glorious Revolution of 1688, then there's no excuse for not recognising monarchy for what it really is: showbusiness. The pageantry, the pomposity, the costumes, the capes... it’s nothing more than light entertainment. The problem with all this mummery is that there are a lot of people who take it quite seriously and are intolerant of those who don't. And yet king, queen, emperor, et al. are just words, just job descriptions. Charles Mountbatten-Windsor is just a human being, as was his mother. If such people represent us they do so out of expediency, not because there's anything inherently special about them, let alone sacred.

On the day, I met my brother and a common friend in Croydon to embark on a pub crawl. They’d been following London’s Tramlink, starting in Mitcham, working their way to Beckenham, before turning back towards Croydon, so they were well ahead of me when I joined them at 'Art & Craft CR0' on Surrey Street. From there we moved on to the Dog & Bull, Riff Raffs, The William Morris Pub in Merton Abbey, The Sultan in South Wimbledon, and finished up at The Alexandra in Wimbledon proper. It rained almost continuously, but we were at least successful in our bid to evade the royal sideshow.

Amongst the gloom, Spotify presented me with Ghost Woman and Color Green. I then found Holiday Ghosts on one of Contraflow’s Mixcloud playlists. Ghost Woman had a new album out – Anne, If – but I listened to their self-titled debut as well, which is where ‘Along’ comes from. Holiday Ghosts also had a new album out, had also made others, but I got stuck into their latest offering, Absolute Reality. Originally from Falmouth, their record was the best I heard all year. In fact, I came close to including two tracks on this compilation: ‘Lose the Game’ and ‘B. Truck’.

‘Bell of Silence’ is from Color Green’s debut LP, released in 2022. When I heard Gracie Horse in June, I choose to put it before Color Green, given that they both make what could be described as ‘alternative country’ music. Together they round off the compilation’s second non-submersible unit, consisting of four relatively new songs.

It’s not often you discover an old track by one of your favourite bands, but this year it happened to me twice. ‘Child of the Moon’ by the Rolling Stones was the B-side to ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ and came with its own video, directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg and featuring Eileen Atkins done up to like Lyn Redgrave in Gregory’s Girl. They made one for the A-side too but it’s not as interesting, lacking any sort of obvious narrative. Digitally enhanced restorations were issued in August 2022, but I didn’t get wind of this until April 2023.

The Stones were at the time (1968) a band in transition, moving between the psychedelic experimentation of Their Satanic Majesties Request towards the rootsier blues and folk of Beggars Banquet. In between stood 'Jumpin' Jack Flash', which was neither of these things. 'Child of the Moon', though, wouldn't have felt out of place on Satanic Majesties. It might not be their finest moment, but that the Stones could afford to use it as a mere B-side speaks volumes.

The situation with The Fall was slightly different. 'Solicitor in Studio' is taken from the group's fifth (or sixth if you count Slates) studio album, Room to Live, which is not highly regarded. Knowing this, I'd steered clear, although I did already have a few of the tracks that comprise it, most notably 'Hard Life in Country'. Reading Steve Pringle's excellent book You Must Get Them All – literally a track-by-track breakdown of The Fall's entire canon – I was compelled to fill in the gaps. Room to Live isn't actually a bad record. More than anything, its reputation suffers because of that which preceded it: Hex Enduction Hour, released earlier in the same year and considered to be one of The Fall's best works, if not their best. 'Solicitor in Studio' is the standout track on Room to Live, both musically and vocally. Karl Burns adds a second layer of bass to what’s already a pretty thick bassline, and Marc Riley provides some pleasing flourishes on keys. Mark E Smith's villainous cackle near the end suggests he’s having ball. (I am now fairly certain that I've listened to everything The Fall have ever recorded up to and including 1995, but I could be wrong.)

‘Dead Pool’ by Mission of Burma is the third and final tune on this anthology to be released in 1982 (the others being ‘Solicitor in Studio’ and ‘Templeroy’). Mission of Burma was a Spotify suggestion: it proposed ‘Trem Two’ off of Vs., their first album, but I preferred ‘Dead Pool’. ‘When You Say’ by a group called FACS appeared on another one of Contraflow’s playlists (Sticks & Stones – Tomorrow’s Hits Today). That was in February, so when the Mission of Burma tune turned up I determined it would sit well between the jovial tone of ‘Solicitor in Studio’ and the bass-heavy groove of ‘When You Say’.

I heard ‘2 Lines’ by The Big Moon on the radio while driving through Teddington. I heard it again around at The Wilkinsons, in their souped-up garden shed over a game of pool. ‘2 Lines’ is the first song off their album Here is Everything, which came out in 2022. It’s quite a ‘big’ song and I did wonder whether it would be better placed further down the list, but I think it works here, bringing to a close the compilation’s third non-submersible unit.

It pains me to give Spotify any credit because I would rather not use it. The issue is I’ve been working from home a lot, on a different laptop to the one my music’s on, in a separate room to where my record player is kept, and it’s a convenient thing to use Spotify. I might go for one of my existing playlists or I might try something new – an artist I’ve heard of but not heard. What I won’t do is listen to one of the playlists that Spotify has thrown together for me, such as ‘Shoegaze Classics’ or ‘Alternative 70s’.

My last two compilations have included a number of jazz and instrumental tracks, and I was hoping for more of the same this year; a change of genre can give a playlist shape and direction. I had a couple of other tunes waiting that I felt needed to come later, and jazz or funk would be a good device by which to get to them. After giving McCoy Tyner a go I put on some Grant Green. Spotify then figured I might like Lonnie Liston Smith. I accepted its advice, selecting specifically Expansions, recorded in 1974. I was familiar with the opening track because the guy who used to own a pager would use it whenever he DJ’d at parties or bars. But why did he never play ‘Desert Nights’?

My next discovery was ‘The Fool’ by Nighttime, a band put together by an American singer-songwriter called Eva Louise Goodman. According to her Bandcamp page, Nighttime is a project that ‘locates itself on a musical tree planted on the British Isles, perched atop the branch of folk leaning into sixties rock,’ although there’s a flavour to it that’s very much American. The album, Keeper Is The Heart, is worth the money, and the video for ‘Curtain is Closing’ is also worth a look.

‘The Fool’ begins too abruptly to follow on from ‘Desert Nights’, and so I needed something else to place in between. PJ Harvey offered a solution, although it’s not the most satisfying passage in this collection. ‘Lwonesome Tonight’ [sic] is as slow as it needs to be but exhibits tension, whereas ‘Deserts Nights’ does not. I didn’t even know Polly had a new record out, her first in seven years. I did know Sweeping Promises had an album on the way, and a European tour too. As explained in my liner notes for Here Comes that Beat Again, Sweeping Promises were supposed to play at 2022’s Wide Awake festival in Brockwell Park but had to cancel due to insurance issues pertaining to Covid. Confident that they wouldn’t be pulling the same stunt twice, I purchased tickets to see them.

Café de Levante, Cadiz

It was about now – the beginning of August – that my partner and I flew to Cadiz. After a sultry June, July had been a complete washout and I was looking forward to a spell of uninterrupted sunshine and warmth. I was simultaneously apprehensive about the journey itself: an aeroplane to Seville and then a pre-booked train to Cadiz. We had a three hour window to get from the airport to the train station, which would more than likely be enough, unless there were severe delays.

There were delays, although not severe. Our (Easyjet) flight left an hour later than scheduled. However, the bus from the airport to Seville-Santa Justa took no more than 20 minutes, leaving plenty of time for something to eat and a quick beer. Outside it was baking hot. The train itself was running late, so we had another beer. Our locomotive was then overtaken by the one behind it, which had my partner speculating as to whether or not we could get on that one. We couldn't. Tickets are non-transferable and the Spanish rail services don't sell more than their trains can cater for, as they do in the UK. This would ordinarily be a positive thing, given how clean, comfortable and reasonably priced they are. Unfortunately, as our train got within 20 minutes reach, they wacked on another 15, and did so repeatedly. Over an hour and a half and several beers later, our train finally arrived. We booked into our hotel at quarter to midnight.

Never mind, Cadiz is a lovely place, and owing to its coastal proximity not nearly as hot as Seville. The food is of the highest quality and anything you drink tends to cost exactly €2: beer, coffee, wine, lemon soda, whatever. There aren't hordes of tourists and those who are there are themselves from Spain, so it makes little difference. On the way home we stopped for a day and a night in Seville, where I saw a roadside thermometer reading 46 degrees Celsius. It was all right as long you didn’t move.

Our Spanish vacation cut through summer like a knife. It was only August but when we got back it felt more like September, the record-breaking temperatures of June a distant memory. It wasn’t cold but it certainly wasn’t hot, and sunshine was in short supply.

'Mine Forever' by Lord Huron and 'Strange Overtones' by David Byrne & Brian Eno were those couple of tracks I had hanging around, waiting for an appropriate juncture. I chanced on both in The London Apprentice during Sunday Service (a few afternoon drinks in Isleworth with my Cornish friend, a custom that predates Jarvis Cocker's radio show of the same name by a good few years). Lord Huron – a group, rather than an entitled individual – are from Los Angeles. 'Mine Forever' reminds me of The Handsome Family. ‘Alternative country’ in other words.

The version of 'Strange Overtones' we heard was actually a cover by an American band called Whitney. It's a good effort but I read an interview with the group's two core members that rubbed me up the wrong way, so I went with the original. The London Apprentice isn’t cheap, the service is slow, and on a Friday night there’s usually some goon with an acoustic guitar banging out renditions of everybody's favourites, other than mine. But on a Saturday night or Sunday afternoon it’s not a bad place to drink, especially when they get the music right, as they had in this instance.

By the end of the month the weather was showing signs of recovery. Just as well, as I had a bank holiday date over in Wapping with my Cornish friend and the former cohabitant from Brighton. We were to repeat the previous year's pub crawl, but with minor alterations: The Prospect of Whitby and the Captain Kidd in Wapping, The Mayflower and The Angel in Rotherhithe, the Old Justice and Anchor Tap in Bermondsey, and one for the road in The Shipwright Arms, London Bridge.

The following evening I was in the St. Margarets Tavern’s, enjoying what I feared might be the last of the warm weather, when something caught my ear: ‘Forgiven/Forgotten’ by Angel Olsen. I had no way of telling who it was – the staff there wouldn’t have had a clue – and so I had to remember what words of it I could and then search online when I got home. It turned out to be the lead single off of Angel’s second album, 2014’s Burn Your Fire for No Witness, which sounds like a collaboration between Roy Orbison, Patti Smith and Leonard Cohen, in the best possible way. At first I was going to put ‘High & Wild’ on here but went with ‘Stars’ because I thought it would work better with what I was placing either side of it.

The next two tracks were added in July. Cinema Red and Blue is a musical collaboration centered around David Christian from Comet Gain, and it’s a lot of fun. ‘Ballad of a Vision Pure’ is a hard and fast number and kind of operates as the compilation’s climax – or in conjunction with ‘Stars’ it does. I was lucky enough to find a near-mint copy on eBay for £10.99, with free delivery, which considering how few were pressed is an absolute steal.

I’d found out about The Clean a month or so earlier but couldn't decide what song of theirs to include: ‘Billy Two’, ‘Anything Could Happen’ or ‘Point That Thing Somewhere Else’, all taken from the Boodle Boodle Boodle EP, released in 1981. In the end I went with ‘Point That Thing Somewhere Else’, despite it being less representative of the group’s output; a bit Velvet Underground, whereas their other stuff is more Modern Lovers. In any case, The Clean were pioneers of what’s been termed the ‘Dunedin Sound’ – Dunedin being the second-largest city on New Zealand’s South Island, the sound being a rough conglomeration of post-punk and psychedelic pop. [Incidentally, The Clean’s co-founder and drummer, Hamish Kilgour, contributes spoken-word vocals to the Cinema Red and Blue album track 'Jesse Lee Kincaid'. Sadly, Hamish passed away in 2022.]

Wapping

In mid-September, after a spell of unusually hot weather that just about made up for the tripe we were served up in July and August, I got myself to Banquet Records to purchase the last remaining copy of Keeper Is The Heart. The new record by Slowdive was playing – Everything Is Alive. I presumed my playlist to be complete at this point but decided I may as well stick ‘Chained to a Cloud’ on the end of it. Unfortunately, it has been brought to my attention that Slowdive have not been performing this song on their recent tour, which may influence whether or not I go and see them.

Before making a decision about that, I had a few of gigs lined for October. First up, Make Up at The Dome in Tufnell Park (where, slightly drunk, I accused Rachel Evans of being the 'Comet Gain girl', which of course she is). Then Sweeping Promises at Studio 9294 in Hackney Wick, overlooking the River Lee Navigation, surrounded by dilapidated warehouses, newbuild flats, artisan workshops and bars selling ‘craft’ beer. Whether by design or by accident, Studio 9294 has great acoustics. Either way, the gig was one of the best I’ve ever been to and more than made up for their absence at the Wide Awake festival.

A couple of days later and I was in Plymouth, with my partner, my Cornish friend and a few local associates, to watch Holiday Ghosts at the Underground on Mutley Plain. I can only think Holiday Ghosts were playing there due to their Falmouth connections, because bands like theirs don’t normally play in Plymouth, a city lacking in decent small-to-medium sized music venues. Another brilliant show, although I wouldn’t have got to hear ‘Lose the Game’ if I hadn’t uncharacteristically called out for it towards the end of their set.

When we left the venue it was raining heavily, as it had done throughout much of the time we were there and would continue to do on our return to London.

[Listen to here.]

LINER NOTES: THE UNLOCKDOWN TAPES [2021]

 
 

      1.   I Can’t Sleep – The La’s
      2.   What You Isn’t – The Brian Jonestown Massacre
      3.   Flat of Angles – The Fall
      4.   Sovereignty Flight – The Gories
      5.   Snowball – Devo
      6.   Cross Me Out – Sweeping Promises
      7.   The Crack – Goat Girl
      8.   Scratchcard Lanyard – Dry Cleaning
      9.   She Buys Herself Flowers – The Umbrellas
    10.   Heartlow – Jane Weaver
    11.   Je Suis Venu Te Dire Que Je M'en Vais – Serge Gainsbourg
    12.   No Cigarettes – Withered Hand
    13.   I Don’t Rate You – Sleaford Mods
    14.   Copyshop – Applescal
    15.   Abidjan – Ray Barretto
    16.   Music De Carnaval – Magdy El Hossainy
    17.   Change of Direction – Brian Bennett
    18.   Ellis Island – Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger & The Trinity
    19.   Hallogallo – Neu!
    20.   Yoga Town – Superstate (feat. Graham Coxon & Valentina Pappalardo)
    21.   Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah – The Wedding Present
    22.   Emotional Devotion Creator – Peel Dream Magazine
    23.   New Dawn – The Lovely Eggs
 
 
Not much separates patriotism from nationalism. As with the nationalist, the patriot will blindly extoll the virtues of being from a specific place, regardless of where that place is or what it’s actually like. Both will take pride in past glories, despite having made no contribution towards them. Each have the potential for atrocity, perpetrated in the name of the state they slavishly defer to, turning against those they hitherto considered benign. They may also celebrate the indigenous landscape while at the same time complaining about the weather and electing to holiday abroad. Both are articles of faith. The practical difference between them is that patriots don't make such a song and dance about it.

I’m not either of these things, yet where football is concerned I am unable to shake off the fealty that I am supposed to hold for the territory in which I happened to have been born. I cannot bring myself to join in with the songs that often go along with it – demanding that a mystical deity save a marginally less mystical head of state; insisting that we, as a people, will never be enslaved; not surrendering to the IRA – but will rejoice when England score. I just can't help it.

I have rarely been compensated for my unwavering support but there have been moments, mostly in World Cups. The European Championships have reaped fewer rewards. Only Euro ’96 offered anything like the exhilaration of reaching the quarter finals of Mexico ’86 and the semi-finals of Italia ‘90, or even the second round of the 1998 tournament where England were unlucky to lose against Argentina on penalties.

Then 'Euro 2020' happened.
 
Lockdown again but without the agreeable weather, the novelty of it or the social distancing. Only in the heart of the West End is the situation manifestly apparent. Unlike in November – the lockdown that wasn’t much of a lockdown – I was put back on furlough. When conditions allowed, I would go for long walks and longer bicycle rides, sit on Richmond Green drinking coffee, and visit my Cornish friend in Isleworth to listen to BBC Radio 6. This was how I came across 'I Can’t Sleep' by The La’s, played on the 28th of February by Amy Lamé. If she hadn’t told us otherwise, we might have mistaken it for a genuine slice of 1960s Merseybeat.

I also continued to trade records on eBay and Discogs. A mint copy of Revelation by The Brian Jonestown Massacre showed up, so I bought it. Two of its tracks have already appeared on two of my compilations: 'Vad Hände Med Dem?' in 2015 and 'Nightbird' in 2016-17. We can now add 'What You Isn’t' in 2021.

This was in March. Before that, in January, I purchased Dragnet by The Fall. The reason I did not already have this album is because I assumed it to be in the same vein as the group's first – Live at the Witch Trials – which I’m not keen on. I was wrong. Dragnet is up there with The Fall’s best, and it could be said that the lo-fi production, courtesy Grant Showbiz, was ahead of its time.

The equally lo-fi The Gories came later in May after ‘sceneinbetween’ (Sam Knee) posted something about them on Instagram. Again, if you didn’t know better you could be forgiven for assuming that what you were hearing was authentic 1960s garage-rock. 'Sovereignty Flight' was in fact released in 1989 on the album House Rockin. Back to January, and I took a punt on Hunger for a Way Out by Sweeping Promises after Monorail advertised its third pressing on Twitter. With a similarly raw feel, you can imagine these two bands playing on the same bill. I guess this is reason enough for having a presence on social media.

In December 2020, I sold my copy of Duty Now For The Future by Devo for £12. In April I paid £12.99 for the group’s third album, Freedom of Choice, which is the better record (albeit not as good as Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! or New Traditionalists). In 2021 Devo was nominated for inclusion in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame but didn’t make the cut. I’m not sure these things really matter.

Pubs shut, my partner and I resurrected our Friday night sessions listening to music and having a little drink. These simulacrums of an evening down the local boozer took place on our landing, sat at a table, using her iPad set to shuffle. That became our routine, but in February she played a couple of tunes she’d come across on YouTube. First up was something off of We're Gonna Miss You: An Aussie Tribute to Roky Erickson & The 13th Floor Elevators. I don’t even know what song it was, so you won’t find it here.

Up next was 'The Crack' by Goat Girl, who we’d seen play at the High Tide music festival in Twickenham, 2019. They were good live but I hadn’t liked them enough to buy any of their records. The Crack asked that I reconsider.

Finally, 'Scratchcard Lanyard' by Dry Cleaning. I’d heard their first single, 'Magic of Meghan', during the first lockdown and had been in two minds about it. No such hesitation the second time around. 'Scratchcard Lanyard' is one of those tunes I’ve tried not to play excessively, lest I grow tired of it. As it is, I can recite most of Florence Shaw’s fragmented lyrics, which is unusual as I don’t have a great memory for verse: 'It's a Tokyo bouncy ball, it's an Oslo bouncy ball, it's a Rio de Janeiro bouncy ball. Filter. I love these mighty oaks, don't you?' And listening back to it now, I should have persisted with 'Magic of Meghan'.
 

Covent Garden

The theme for Euro 2020, as it was resolutely called despite being put back to 2021, was bridges. That is what's supposed to be going on in the logo: the trophy, surrounded by fans, on a bridge. Each host city had its own version featuring a specific local bridge – Tower Bridge in London's case. Appropriately, but not deliberately, I too have used an image of a bridge on the ‘front cover’ of this year’s compendium: Westbourne Bridge, which traverses the railway lines that run out of Paddington, connecting Westbourne Terrace Road with Westbourne Terrace. I cycled there while on lockdown and liked the look of it.

Not to be confused with either the Australian jazz combo of the same name or American indie-rock group Umbrellas, The Umbrellas are from San Francisco and sound not unlike the British groups that fell under the umbrella – pun intended – of C86 and the associated scene. They look the part too. I’m not entirely happy with the transition between this song and the last, but I couldn't find a better combination, so we live with it.

'Heartlow' by Jane Weaver received much airplay during lockdown. I also heard it on the radio while driving from Plymouth to Dorchester in August, part of a six-day tour of the West Country to see friends and family, primates and tanks. The segue into 'Je Suis Venu Te Dire Que Je M'en Vais' is sudden and effective. I chanced upon this song in May, playing in Oliver Bonas in Kingston upon Thames. I didn’t realise then it was Serge Gainsbourg, although it figured. 'I came to tell you that I'm going away,' sings Serge softly (in French) and about half way through the girl he’s telling this to starts weeping. It might be the best track on this compilation, and if that’s true then we must also give credit to the (mostly British) musicians that helped make it so: guitarist Alan Parker, bass player and founding member of Manfred Mann Dave Richmond, Australian percussionist Chris Karan, composer and keyboard player Alan Hawkshaw.

The previous December, the chap who introduced me to Sarah Records recommended 'No Cigarettes' by Withered Hand. I almost tacked it on to the end of that year’s playlist but thought better of it – too much time had passed. As you might expect from someone calling themselves Withered Hand, No Cigarettes is a sad sounding song, but not without humour.

Sleaford Mods for a third year in a row: 'I Don't Rate You' from the album Spare Ribs. Released in January, I had to wait until February before I could listen to it. My de facto brother-in-law, who bought it for me, had it sent to his own address instead of mine. It was worth the wait. On a related note, I finally got around to seeing Bunch of Kunst after it was made available on some viewing platform, which was also worth the wait.

A gloomy Friday evening spent listening to BBC Radio 6 with my Cornish friend. Tom Ravenscroft played something catchy but we weren’t sure what because the live feed on the screen wasn’t in sync. Retrospective analysis determined it was a track called 'Copyshop' by a Dutch artiste named Applescal. Pitchfork describes his work as springy tech house, but ambient techno might also do. I downloaded it from Bandcamp the following day.

There are two versions of the LP Hard Hands by Ray Barretto: an album released in 1968 and a compilation issued twenty years later. I purchased the latter in 2019 from Collector’s Record Centre in Kingston (now called Shak’s Stax of Wax) and ended up playing it a fair bit during lockdown. 'Abidjan' appears on both records, and it’s certainly the outstanding track on the edition I own. Ray Barreto was an exponent of boogaloo, a genre I’d flirted with around the turn of the century when I picked up a compilation entitled Broasted Or Fried: Latin Breakbeats, Basslines & Boogaloo, and I’d been meaning to check him out ever since I’d identified his track 'Ritmo Sabroso' which features in the film Mean Streets.
 

I cannot recall a wetter, colder month of May, a month that can usually be relied upon. By the time Euro 2020 had commenced the weather had picked up. I watched England’s opening game against Croatia on a large screen in a sweltering beer garden in New Malden, and came away feeling cautiously optimistic.

I was right to exercise caution. England were poor against Scotland and middling against the Czech Republic. Then, as the weather again deteriorated, England’s form improved. They deserved their 2-0 victory over Germany, playing a more fluid game that was easier on the eye. In the quarter-finals, Ukraine were torn apart. Denmark proved to be formidable opponents and it wasn’t a game I much enjoyed. For once, it was the result that mattered, and England reached their first major tournament final in 45 years.

The best team won. England's performance was good but Italy's was comfortably better. Where Italy took one or two touches and kept the ball moving, England dithered, passing sideways and back. They had the chance to rectify this at half-time but didn’t, casting aspersions upon Gareth’s Southgate’s, apparently limited, tactical acumen. Why after scoring in the second minute did England seem incapable of hitting the Italians on the break? Why did Southgate wait until the 70th minute to make a substitution, and until the 99th to bring on Jack Grealish? Why did he not have his penalty takers in order? England had one shot on target – Luke Shaw’s goal – in the whole game, and only six in total. Italy managed 20, six of which were bang on.

If England had won on penalties, as opposed to nicking it in extra time, I’m not sure how I would have felt. Just as I’m not too bothered when England lose and deserve to, neither am I when they win and they don’t. So I didn’t feel too bad about it, but I might have had we fallen at the penultimate hurdle, against Denmark.
 
In September I travelled down to Brighton to meet up with the former cohabitant, who had moved back there after a two-year stint in Somerset. We arranged to meet in The Heart and Hand, one of my favourite Brighton pubs. It hadn’t changed much – same posters, same plump cat, same jukebox featuring ‘Version 1’ of 'It's all Over Now Baby Blue' by The Byrds (see The World'll be OK).

My train was delayed. Engineering works compounded by signal failures; par for the course. I had intended to do a sweep of the record shops in North Laine but only had time to visit Resident Music on Kensington Gardens. Fortuitous, because they were playing something interesting: 'Music De Carnaval' by an Egyptian chap by the name of Magdy El Hossainy, from a double-album compilation entitled Habibi Funk 015: An Eclectic Selection of Music from the Arab World, Part 2. I knew this because there was a sign that said ‘now playing’ with the record displayed beside it. Had there not been I would have been none the wiser and 'Music De Carnaval' wouldn’t have ended up on this playlist.

Gilles Peterson has an annoying habit of talking intermittently over the music he’s playing. He’s not the only DJ who does this, but his manner is particularly irritating. Just when you think he’s done, off he goes again, providing too much information. Still, he plays some decent stuff, and did so on the 23rd of October. A tribute to Alan Hawkshaw, no less, who had recently passed away. Aside from his work with Serge Gainsbourg, Hawkshaw was a prolific session player, as well as a composer in his own right. You may have heard him without having heard of him, and what you may have heard will depend on what you’re into. For instance, if you like hip hop (or went clubbing at Blow Up in the mid-to-late ‘90s) then you will probably be familiar with 'Champ' by his band The Mohawks – or at least the bit of it that’s been sampled so extensively. If television is more your thing, you might recognise 'Chicken Man', which was used as the theme tune for Grange Hill. Likewise the music for Channel 4 News and Countdown. Alan Hawkshaw also worked with The Shadows for a while, starting with their 1967 LP From Hank, Bruce, Brian and John, and he even toured with them. This is how he came to be involved with Brian Bennett’s 1969 solo album, Change of Direction, the title track of which Peterson played in homage to Hawkshaw’s talent.

I can’t remember how I discovered 'Ellis Island' by Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger & The Trinity but it might have been after listening to their cover of 'Light My Fire', which kicks off a compendium entitled Version Excursion, another record I revisited during lockdown. It could equally have been the video to 'Black Cat', which routinely does the rounds on social media. At any rate, I gave the album Streetnoise a listen, where the aforementioned cover of 'Light My Fire' derives from, and found 'Ellis Island'. Julie Driscoll takes a back seat on this one – it’s all about Auger’s keys.
 

The Heart and Hand

Football attracts trouble in the way other sports typically don't. There's something about it that goes beyond the mere act of spectating. Consider that the Serb Volunteer Guard (a paramilitary organisation active throughout the Yugoslav Wars) was put together by members of Delije, the name adopted by hardcore supporters of Red Star Belgrade. Or that the National Front and the British Movement gained traction among English football hooligans in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, and that Scottish hooliganism is, or was, driven by sectarianism.

Yet beneath the surface there’s probably as much racial antipathy to be found at a rugby or cricket match or even a round of golf. It's just that the people who gather to watch sports like these tend to be better off, and they’re not in the business of finding scapegoats or venting spleen; they’ve too much to lose. Maybe that's what separates patriotism from nationalism. Might the patriot merely be a well off nationalist, and therefore less vociferous, has no need to be vociferous?
 
In July I went to see The Lovely Eggs at The Garage, a gig that was meant to have taken place in April 2020 but had been pushed back several times because of Covid. Live music isn’t just about the actual performance but the event as a whole: the physical location – Highbury in this instance – the pubs visited beforehand – The Lamb, The Hen & Chickens Theatre Bar – and the venue itself. As is customary, prior to The Lovely Eggs taking the stage, and after the support act, records were played – The Modern Lovers, Sleaford Mods, Neu!. The track by Neu! was 'Hallogallo', a tune I'd previously thought about including on one of my compilations. The reason I hadn’t is because it goes on a bit, but it sounded so good within this context that I resolved to make room for it now.

There’s a section of the A303 – a sort of proxy motorway for anyone travelling from the South East to the West Country –  that doubles up as the Amesbury Bypass. As you approach the turn-off into Amesbury proper, the road downgrades gradually to reveal Salisbury Plain. It was along this segment of road that I heard 'Yoga Town' by Superstate. Superstate is actually the name of a graphic novel and the ‘soundtrack’ Graham Coxon’s put together to accompany it. 'Superstate is a story of escape in a society where war rages between the forces of negativity and positivity, encouragement and discouragement. Where only the struggle from oppressions, chaos and brutality leads to the fragile road to freedom… to a planet called heaven.' I just liked the song.

The Wedding Present should think about re-releasing Watusi on vinyl. I wasn’t into them when it came out in 1994 so missed out. 'Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah' was the album’s lead single and utilises the A-B-A-B rhyming scheme with an enjambment at the end of the fourth line preceding the chorus: planned/and... coconut/but... get/yet... my heart says YEAH! There’s also a natty interchange in the chorus between D and Bm.

Eel Pie Records don’t have a ‘now playing’ sign in their shop, or if they do they rarely use it. Fortunately, when I went there in July I wasn’t in a rush to meet anybody and so asked them what was on. 'Agitprop Alterna' by Peel Dream Magazine. They reckoned it sounded like Stereolab, I thought more Yo La Tengo. You decide.

When I went to see The Lovely Eggs I’d already determined that this anthology would finish with 'New Dawn', just as it rounds off I Am Moron. The song terminates abruptly, as if the needle of the record player has become stuck, which doesn’t lend itself to placing it anywhere else.

[Listen to here.]