LINER NOTES: THE LOCKDOWN TAPES [2020]

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Das Boot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Listen to here.]

LINER NOTES: 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.]