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.]

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

1.     No Pussy Blues – Grinderman

2.     Big in Japan – Tom Waits

3.     The Decision – The Young Knives

4.     Evergreen – The Brian Jonestown Massacre

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

6.     Wings – The Fall

7.     House of Cards – Radiohead

8.     The Rip – Portishead

9.     Sugar Mountain – Neil Young

10.   Brides of Jesus – Little Feat

11.   The Pink Room – Angelo Badalamenti / David Lynch

12.   Pânico – Mercenarios

13.   Give It Lose It Take It – Field Music

14.   Bennie and the Jets – Elton John

15.   Contact – Bridget Bardot

16.   Lucky Number – Lene Lovich

17.   Harmony in my Head – Buzzcocks

18.   On My Radio – The Selector

19.   Gangsters – The Specials

20.   Pull Up to the Bumper – Grace Jones

21.   Let’s Dance – David Bowie

Bonus Tracks:

22.   L.E.S. Artistes – Santigold

23.   Black Magic – Jarvis Cocker

24.   Prodigal Son – The Rolling Stones

25.   Bird of Beauty – Stevie Wonder

26.   Cracked Actor – David Bowie

27.   Wordy Rappinghood – Tom Tom Club

28.   The Hungry Saw – Tindersticks

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cologne

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New Forest

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

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

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

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

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

NYC

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Listen to here.]

LINER NOTES: THE HEROES OF HANWORTH [1995-96]

1.     Main Title (Blow-Up) – Herbie Hancock

2.     Just When You’re Thinkin' Things Over – The Charlatans

3.     Anesthesia – Luna

4.     Breather – Chapterhouse

5.     Something and Nothing – The Wedding Present

6.     Stroll On – The Yardbirds

7.     Lamento – Antonio Carlos Jobim

8.     The Nile – A Guy Called Gerald

9.     Percolator – Stereolab

10.   The Game of Eyes – Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci

11.   Only Love Can Break Your Heart – Saint Etienne

12.   Sick and Tired – The Cardigans

13.   Do the Strand – Roxy Music

14.   The Joy Circuit – Gary Numan

15.   Moonlit Lungs – Sandy Dirt

16.   Underwear – Pulp

17.   Across the Universe (Wildlife Version) – The Beatles

18.   Tere Siva Duniya Mein – Nahid Akhtar

19.   Token Collecting – The Pastels

20.   So it Goes – The Verve

21.   Planet Telex – Radiohead

22.   Sugar Kane – Sonic Youth

23.   Twisterella – Ride
24.   Peaches – The Orchids

25.   F=GmM(moon)/R2 – Man or Astro-man?

26.   Rozmaryn – Hana A Petr Ulrychovi
27.   Be My Girl – James Taylor Quartet

28.   The Ipcress File – Roland Shaw and his Orchestra

29.   Alright Hear This – Beastie Boys

30.   Pinto’s New Car – Money Mark

There are many ways to while away the hours in Hounslow in the year 1995. Charity shops abound and are well stocked: Fred Perry tracksuit tops, brown leather jackets with collars courtesy of the 1970s, Gabicci polo shirts in man-made fabrics, all liable to attract the wrong sort of attention when out and about.

Let the lad who lent you The Sound of the Suburbs pay for a few games of snooker at Rileys off Bell Road, which you will invariably lose, and then head down to Inwood Park for a kick about with whoever else is around.

Wander around Hounslow with the guy with the tapes, who has bought himself a secondhand camera, posing for photographs with the chap who introduced you to Sarah Records, standing in front of mirrors.

Hang out in the Treaty Centre café drinking cheap tea with the chap who introduced you to Sarah Records and the lad who lent you The Sound of the Suburbs, or maybe even the pretty girl who lives across the road.

Stroll across to The Rifleman for a few pints and games of pool. Banter with the landlord, who suspects we might be local band The Bluetones, will often ensue.

The cohabitant from Brighton had bolted back to Brighton and the guy with the indie tapes offered to fill the vacuum. We employed the same tactic as the year before but batted a little straighter: we asked around for three bedroom houses or flats, and failing that for somewhere with four evenly sized rooms. We would then give tapes guy the option of moving in with us, should the property be to his satisfaction, which it more than likely would be.

And so it came to pass. We found a terraced house on Hanworth Road with a little more character than the last, in middle of Hounslow town centre, around the back of Argos, opposite The Rifleman, around the corner from the Noble Half, and only a few minutes’ walk from the bus station and thus The Chariot. The guy with the tapes took what was ostensibly the living room at the front of house, whereas I took the territory at the back beside the kitchen. The lad who lent me The Sound of the Suburbs was upstairs-front and the Cornish friend who swooned in Debenhams upstairs-back next to the bathroom. There was a pipe that travelled up through my room into that of my Cornish friend which we tapped to alert each other to our awakened states, a signal to open our windows and discuss exit strategies. The guy with the indie tapes was best avoided early in the day. Rarely hungover and with boundless energy, he could be very demanding of one's attention.

Marks & Spencer, Hounslow

The former cohabitant from Brighton arrived bearing records: Chop Suey Rock - Songs about the Orient Vol. 1, Decade of Instrumentals: 1959~1967, Rare Tunes Chapter One “From Latin… to Jazz Dance, Mission Impossible and The Money Spyder by the James Taylor Quartet, Stereolab's Refried Ectoplasm [Switched On Volume 2], and Intravenous Television Continuum by Man or Astro-man?. He also had a tape to give to me: the soundtrack to the film Blow-Up. 'Main Title' lasts a little more than a minute and a half. Short songs introduce playlists better than long ones do.

'Just When You’re Thinkin' Things Over' by The Charlatans rips off 'Torn and Frayed' by The Rolling Stones. I didn’t know this at the time but when I purchased Exile on Main Street some years later it was immediately apparent. 'Just When You’re Thinkin' Things Over' was released on the 7th August 1995, exactly one week prior to 'Country House' by Blur and 'Roll with It' by Oasis. The kids down at JFKs on Union Street, Plymouth, went mad for all of this, but 'Just When You’re Thinkin' Things Over' is a much better tune than either 'Country House' or 'Roll with It', in spite of its plagiarism.

Luna was the group Dean Wareham put together after dissolving Galaxie 500. Lunapark was played a lot during that first term at Hanworth Road. I say term but I was actually on a sabbatical. I’d semi-flunked my sophomore year, swapped American Studies for English but wasn’t due to recommence university until February. So I signed on and spent a lot of time in the room of the guy with tapes – the only room with a sofa and a television – drinking tea and sifting through his back-catalogue – hence 'Breather' by Chapterhouse and 'Something and Nothing' by The Wedding Present. I’d already been beguiled by Bizarro earlier in the year so it was no surprise when I fell for George Best, or that I then bought the Mini EP on its release in January.

The soundtrack to Blow-Up is mainly the work of Herbie Hancock but also includes a contribution by The Yardbirds: the hard, psychedelic rock of 'Stroll On'. Perhaps this dichotomy explains Britpop’s bizarre fascination with easy-listening jazz and orchestral pop, exemplified by acts like The Divine Comedy and My Life Story, and the canonisation of Burt Bacharach as some sort of musical saint. I didn’t have much time for The Divine Comedy or My Life Story but I didn’t mind a bit of easy listening. While the guy with the tapes bought second-hand Herb Alpert records and Bruton Music from charity shops, I reverted to my parents’ record collection to see what I could find, and found Wave by Antonio Carlos Jobim. It might seem odd to follow on from this with A Guy Called Gerald but it makes the transition from the ‘60s loungecore of Jobim to the avant-garde pop of Stereolab a smoother one.

At some point over the summer, an acquaintance of mine called me up to ask if I wanted to go and see Pulp at the Brixton Academy in December. I tried to be evasive but I suppose politeness got the better of me, because the next thing I knew she’d bought us both tickets. It wouldn't have cost more than ten pounds, but a pint back then was easily less than two and I was short on funds. With the vague hope that the acquaintance might offer my place to someone else with a little more disposable income, I agreed to accompany her on the condition that I could pay for it nearer the time. (In all probability, she would have invited the chap who introduced me to Sarah Records before approaching me, so I had no cause to feel guilty about any of this.) Different Class had yet to be released, although I'd seen Pulp perform 'Monday Morning' and 'Underwear' on The White Room in April, a live music programme on Channel 4 hosted by Mark Radcliffe, and was impressed – less so by the single that followed ('Common People'). When Different Class came out in October it failed to live up to my expectations. I didn't think it was bad, just not of the same high standard as His 'n' Hers. But I'm a man of my word so come December I paid up and off we went. This being 1995, I had no idea who was supporting; 'Plus Special Guests' according to the ticket. It turned out to be Stereolab, whom I rated by now more highly than Pulp. Their short set was worth the price of admission alone, especially ‘Percolator’ from their forthcoming album Emperor Tomato Ketchup.

Gorky's Zygotic Mynci’s 'Game of Eyes' off of the charming Bwyd Time, which the guy with the taps had purchased in the summer. This is not the sort of music that the chap who introduced me to Sarah Records much appreciated but was right up the street of the friend who lent me The Sound of the Suburbs. Saint Etienne was another product of Mr Tapes’ archives, but it was Mr. Sound of the Suburbs who provided The Cardigans.

What the hell was Romo? Whatever it was the guy with the indie tapes was into it and insisted that the former cohabitant from Brighton and I accompany him to Club Skinny in Camden to find out. Apart from that one night, I don’t recall hearing anything directly associated with this Melody Maker championed scene, but we did suddenly find ourselves listening to Telekon by Gary Numan, For Your Pleasure by Roxy Music and Hunky Dory by David Bowie, all delivered by the guy with the tapes.

27 Hanworth Road

In the autumn of 1995, Blur, Oasis and Pulp each released albums, their fourth, second and fifth respectively. Of these three records the only one that was played with any degree of regularity at 27 Hanworth Road, with wood-chip literally on every wall, was (despite my reservations) Pulp’s Different Class. Oasis’s (What's the Story) Morning Glory? – possibly the most overrated album of its time – was ubiquitous: heard on the radio, television, in bars, out of cars, in shops. Blur’s The Great Escape was the oddest of the three. Almost impenetrable, I didn’t know what to make of it. What's more, I didn’t like that Blur had suddenly embraced sportswear, nor the loutish persona the band seemed intent on cultivating (against Graham Coxon's better judgement, as it turned out).

It is often assumed that The Verve, Radiohead and Suede were actively part of the Britpop scene. They have in fact been affiliated in retrospect. All three groups were doing their own thing before the term was invented. When it was, they did not affect an about face, a change of musical direction or artistic reinvention of any kind. The accusation that any of them adapted their sound to exploit the fashion cannot be made. Only Radiohead somehow managed to shrug off the association, but whenever a magazine runs a retrospective piece on the Britpop movement, the mugs of Messrs Ashcroft, Yorke and Anderson will more often than not present themselves among the accompanying montage of images.

The opposite might be said of Stereolab and Saint Etienne, despite them understanding better the essence of Britpop – 1960s hairdos, the films of Michael Caine, vintage synthesizers, La Nouvelle Vague – than many of the more visible protagonists. As we have seen, Stereolab supported Pulp on their UK Christmas tour, while Saint Etienne were profiled alongside Suede, The Auteurs, Denim and Pulp in that April edition of Select magazine that prophesied Britpop’s coming. Stereolab covered the theme tune to Get Carter; Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs had the right hair. Nonetheless, time appears to have freed both groups from Britpop’s shackles, probably to their advantage. As with Radiohead, they have amassed bodies of work that have been allowed to stand on their own merit.

Then there are groups that were willingly subsumed into the movement having previously been associated with entirely different genres: bands like The Charlatans, Lush, The Boo Radleys, maybe Ride. I’m guessing the reason why, at least in part, is because they integrated socially and were party to the empty decadence that came to typify the Britpop scene.

When I’d visited Mr. Tapes at his old house in May he’d impressed me with The Verve’s new single, 'This is Music'. Now he had their latest album, A Northern Soul, an expansive work anathema to the poppy urbanism that typified Britpop. Nick McCabe’s guitar work is more expressive, more measured and the overall sound more textured than was fashionable at the time, and the drum work is of a higher order entirely. The Verve had more in common with Radiohead, who also eschewed the cheap thrills of Britpop for something more ambitious. I’d contest that A Northern Soul has the edge over Radiohead’s The Bends, but both albums have dated far better than much of what fell under the umbrella of Britpop. I also liked the way the band presented themselves – shabbier and darker than their contemporaries – and Richard Ashcroft came across as genuinely eccentric; he claimed he could fly. In fact, so impressed was I that one of the first things I did after cashing my first giro was buy A Northern Soul on vinyl from HMV on Hounslow High Street. (The first thing I actually did was go for a pint in The Chariot with the chap who introduced me to Sarah Records.)

Ashcroft would ultimately succumb to the fascistic elements of Britpop just like the rest, for what was Britpop if not a syncretistic, quasi-fascist movement? Consider the evidence. Just as Italian fascism eschewed peace, Britpop repudiated both the ethos of independent music and the concept of ‘selling out’, rejecting the perceived nihilism of the contemporary indie scene and creative liberalism that had hitherto typified the genre. As with National Socialism, Britpop simultaneously looked backward to an idealised past – a cult of tradition, doffing its cap to the 1960s* – yet regarded itself as relevant and current. Self-appointed Britpop commander-in-chief Damon Albarn admitted as much when he professed that, 'The whole thing about pop music is that… you’re ripping off as many people as you possibly can, and the trick is just to listen to the right people.'

Fundamentally a populist movement, Britpop embraced youth, flirted with violence and promoted masculinity (the Gallagher brothers presenting themselves as a physical force to be reckoned with, Damon Albarn getting into football). It exploited a fear of difference by encouraging its followers to dress a certain way, shedding more obscure sartorial references – desert boots and blazers – and replacing them with items of clothing that appealed to the man on the street – trainers and anoraks. A looser fit was also appropriated. (Jarvis Cocker somehow managed to circumvent this issue, qualifying him as Britpop’s very own Hermann Göring.)

Just as Hitler and many of his cronies were wacked out on barbiturates and amphetamines, the taking of heroin, ecstasy and cocaine became de rigueur, supplanting what had previously been a minor association with drugs such as speed, acid and marijuana. The film Trainspotting – essentially an extended trailer for the Britpop movement – featured a drug addict as its protagonist. Those involved don’t like to admit it, but the use of heroin soared off the back of that film. Members of Elastica, Blur, Suede and Marion all confessed to taking the stuff, others to ingesting prodigious quantities of cocaine. This mindset perpetuates the idea that everybody can become a hero, just like Ewan McGregor/Renton.

Treaty Centre

The Beatles Anthology documentary series was first broadcast in November 1995. The television at 27 Hanworth Road wasn’t up to much, so tapes guy and I would walk around to the house where the Scottish bloke who resembled the control freak from the Volvo ad lived and watch it on their much bigger set. A period of heavy Beatles rotation followed: 'The White Album', 1967-1970 (aka 'The Blue Album'), and Rarities, wherefrom I obtained the World Wildlife version of 'Across the Universe'. Take 7, as it’s also known, begins with the sound of tweeting birds and incorporates the backing vocals of two teenage girls who were found loitering outside the Beatles’ studio on the day it was recorded. Apart from that it’s just a slightly speeded up rendition of the original, but without the strings.

As well as lending me his copy of Rarities (which on vinyl is itself quite rare), the Scottish bloke introduced me to the culinary delights of curry. He didn’t mean to – he just wanted something else to drink – but we ended up sharing a chicken madras and a few pints at the Khyber Pass after hours. My Cornish friend was taken aback when I suggested we make our own curry, but very willing, and it became a semi-regular thing, normally on a Saturday when the guy with the tapes was out of town and we felt relaxed enough to commandeer the kitchen. The chap who introduced me to Sarah Records soon got wind of our new ritual and would begin to call around late in the afternoon looking for a free feed – he even bought us a large curry pot from a charity shop to facilitate his extra portion. To get us in the mood we’d put on the Nahid Akhtar tape that the house had gifted the guy who collapsed in Debenhams for his 21st birthday. Nahid Akhtar was a Pakistani playback singer and the music on the tape derives from various Urdu and Punjabi film scores, 'Tere Siva Duniya Mein' being my favourite.

The chap who introduced me to Sarah Records had aborted college by this stage and his lifestyle had become peripatetic. I don’t know where he kept his records but he was able to lend me a couple of The Pastels’ albums after I took a shine to their latest, Mobile Safari, which was loaned to me by someone else entirely. This in turn led me to the Sandy Dirt EP, a collaboration between The Pastels and Al Larsen of Some Velvet Sidewalk, which I purchased from Rival Records in Plymouth over Christmas. Comprised of five tracks, the last is the most interesting, incorporating the line, 'and the mechanisms for transporting oxygen to the cells which require it, is the same for you and me.'

The guy with the indie tapes’ contribution to this playlist probably stands at something like 40%, which is comparable to the impact he had upon The Sounds of Baden Pearce. Sonic Youth was him, as was Ride, The Orchids and Man or Astro-man?. He didn’t own a record player, but the Hana A Petr Ulrychovi LP was his and so too was The Return Of James Bond In Diamonds Are Forever And Other Secret Agent Themes by Roland Shaw and his Orchestra, from which The Ipcress File theme was taken. But 'Pinto’s New Car' by Money Mark wasn’t from him. That was from the pretty girl who lived across the road, as was Radiohead, while my brother fixed me up with copies of Check Your Head and Ill Communication by the Beastie Boys, and swapped his spare copy of Paul's Boutique for my spare copy of One For All by Brand Nubian.

But this period cannot be adequately conveyed via one compilation alone. Rather than just being something heard at parties, or maybe through headphones, I began playing dance music at home. For this reason I felt the need to complete a sister compilation entitled The Hanworth of Heroes, which never existed at the time but does fairly encapsulate what we listened to:

1.    Saint Angel – Goldie

2.    The Reno – A Guy Called Gerald

3.    Energy Flash – Joey Beltram

4.    Shuffle – Dave Angel

5.    Turbulence – Sonic Solution

6.    X-Trak 1 – Percy X

7.    Purple Road – DJ Misjah & DJ Tim

8.    Mathematics – Barada

9.    Ecsta Deal – Emmanuel Top
10.  Dodeccaheedron – Aphex Twin

11.  Storm 3000 – Leftfield

12.  Break and Enter – The Prodigy

13.  Chemical Beats – Chemical Brothers

14.  Pearl’s Girl – Underworld

15. The Girl with the Sun in her Head – Orbital

The first seven tracks were provided by my brother. He copied the whole of Timeless by Goldie and Black Secret Technology by A Guy Called Gerald for me, and the others appeared on a mixtape he compiled under my direction – he played a number of tunes he thought I might like and I told him which ones I did. Tracks 8 and 9 came from a cassette entitled Journeys by DJ: 60 Minute non-stop dance mix by Justin Robertson that came free with Select Magazine, which I would often put on after a night down the pub. Aphex Twin was also from my brother, as was Leftfield, but I purchased Music for the Jilted Generation by The Prodigy myself. The Chemical Brothers and Underworld records were recorded off of the girl across the road, and my brother gave me the Orbital album In Sides for my birthday.

The bigger picture was this: the dance and indie scenes were converging. The Prodigy was perceived to be punk rock, at least in spirit. The Chemical Brothers invited Tim Burgess from The Charlatans to add vocals to the single 'Life is Sweet' and would ask Noel Gallagher to contribute to their next album. Everybody was into the Wu-Tang Clan all of a sudden. Big Beat, year of the trainer, Loaded magazine, football's coming home. And away with it went all notions of political correctness and integrity. Sarah Records folded in the summer of 1995 in an act that now seems symbolic.

____________
*In an essay entitled ‘Eternal Fascism’ the author Umberto Eco proposed 14 ‘qualities’ that could be said to typify it, including the cult of tradition, the rejection of Modernism, fear of difference and that everyone is educated to be a hero. While we’re at it, we might also like to consider an appeal to a frustrated middle class and selective populism.

[Listen to here.]