John Peel Day mixtape

Apparently it was John Peel Day this week? Or it will be next week. The Beeb don't seem to have devoted many shows to the day or indeed even mentioned it, but i'll press on regardless.
While working for The Man over the past few weeks i decided to fill the time between waiting for data to process by making a special mixtape-compilation-type thing for the occassion. It's the same length as the Peel shows i grew up listening to (two hours) and features bits that i remember fondly at the time, most of them being peel sessions or performances from Maida Vale or Peel Acres. It's by no means an 'ideal' show i've cobbled together - no Pig's Big 78 for a start - but it does feature some of my favourite artists and some older stuff as well.

Anyway. The link is here.

If you don't want to know the tracklisting (you might like the element of surprise, i know i do) then look away now:

- Cowcube - Itchy Cut
- The Damned - New Rose (Peel session)
- Delia Derbyshire - The Voice Of John Peel
- X Booty (Dan The Drummer) - O Superman
- The Black Keys- Hard Row (Peel session)
- Listen With Sarah - Cuntry Music
- The Magic Band - Diddy Wah Diddy (Live at Maida Vale)
- Party Of One - Shotgun Funeral
- dj /rupture - High Resolution (live at Maida Vale)
- Culture - Two Sevens Clash (Peel session)
- Son House - Death Letter (Peel session)
- Pavement - The Classical (Peel session)
- The Fall - Groovin' With Mr Blo / Green Eyed Loco Man (Peel session)
- Galactic Symposium - YMCA
- Half Man Half Biscuit - The Light At The End Of The Tunnel (Is The Light Of An Oncoming Train) (Peel session)
- The Would Bes - My Radio Sounds Different In The Dark (Peel session)
- Napalm Death - The Kill (Peel session)
- Jeff Mills live at Maida Vale
- People Like Us - Abridged Too Far (Peel session)
- Pico - Speed (Peel session)
- Belle And Sebastian - Roy Walker (live at Peel Acres)
- Orbital - Doctor ?/Chime (live at Maida Vale)
- Grandmaster Gareth - Dr Dre Buys A Pint Of Milk
- Hyper Kinako - Tokyo Registration Office
- Lightning Bolt - Dracula Mountain (live at Maida Vale)
- The Cuban Boys - The Nation Needs You
- CLSM - John Peel Is Not Enough (Fergus Mayhem remix)

Turn it up and keep it peel xxxxx

dodecahedmix #1 : good grief

Here is an mp3 mixtape i made for you. It's got twelve songs in it. They are:


People Like Us - Sing With Melodious Inarticulate sound...
The Pointer Sisters - Pinball Number Count
Jason Forrest - My 36 Favourite Punk Rock Songs
Santogold - L.E.S. Artistes (XXXchange remix)
Bolt Action Five - Tree Friend Tree Foe (The Cleft Palettes remix)
Robyn - Handle Me (Chewy Chocolate Cookies remix)
CSS - Rat Is Dead (Rage)
Napoleon IIIrd - Hit Schmooze For Me
Napoleon XIV - They're Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!
Sebadoh - Yellow Submarine
Yung Nate & Charles Hamilton - Stutter
Elastica - Stutter

i'm wondering whether to do this more often.

Enjoy, anyway.

ttfbxxxxx

Coping with Los

i was born bald with no teeth

On this day - hello, happy Wednesday - Hey Charlie! founder, loving chum, Go-Betweens fan, teacup specialist, devoted soul gardener and official Greatest Person Ever, Bianca Ferguson, celebrates her birthday. i hear it's ungentlemanly to reveal a lady's age (and if there's one lady i'd want to be gentlemanly to, it's her) but rest assured she's yet to reach even halfway to Loudon Wainwright III levels when he wrote this:

Loudon Wainwright III - The Birthday Present

i realise that in terms of birthday-related tracks Teenage Kicks is already a step ahead of us this week, and i appreciate that my lover isn't really a big fan of The Sugarcubes anyway, but it's blogging tradition and i'm willing to accept that not all traditions are bad. Plus i reckon this is a pretty neat demo, probably surpassing the single itself, if shoehorning an indier-than-thou statement of approval into proceedings is acceptable at this juncture of course.

The Sugarcubes - Birthday (demo version)

But anyway. All it leaves me to say, hoping that any other readers we have don't find their breakfast revisiting them, and yet in the sincerest most affectionate way:

Happy birthday Bee. You are fabulous and i love you.

View Monday: only a quick reminder to buy all the recently re-released Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band albums this week.

Gorilla

The Doughnut In Granny's Greenhouse

Tadpoles

Keynsham

View Monday, in a post-Fopp malaise: Glastonbury special with added Mistys.

People are still going on about last weekend’s Glastonbury festival, and there’s nothing like jumping on a bandwagon a week late. So here we are. i can assure you that this first entry is the only time i will mention the word mud.



The only performance that i’ve seen from the abundant internet Glastonbury audio-visual material that looked particularly exciting is CSS, which is particularly good because of…balloons! Look! Balloons all over the stage! Oh and that they’re a great band. But still. Balloons! Check out also how it obviously takes three burly men to wade in and manhandle a petite and be-leotarded Lovefoxx from the adoring grasps of, ooh, half a dozen people? Obviously for her own safety. Three big blokes. With big hands. One small lady. Yes. Also, note the close up of her bum as well. But only because it’s got mud on it. No other reason. Nope.



Back a year (we think), this is the bard of Barking singing the greatest Billy Bragg song he never wrote. With the person who wrote it. We ought to do a post about Mr Bailey at some point. Remind me.



If you didn’t think we could get more self-indulgent, here’s that band my lover likes a lot. Just because she likes them and i love it when she’s happy.



More balloons! And two perpetual suns! And a dolphin! And a tiger! And several thousand other things! Those good ol’ boys from Oklahoma really do put some effort into it, and this was before Wayne decided to travel to gigs in a bloody massive inflatable ball. There’s a large chunk of the rest of this set online if you’re interested, which you probably ought to be.



And back in the real world – oh okay, away from the countryside then – this week saw the sudden yet unsurprising end to Fopp, making another big weapon in the music industry’s arsenal when arguing value for money doesn’t pay. (This of course being the same week that the music industry were furious that Prince would do anything as innovative and relatively selfless to his fans as give away his new album for nowt, although they seem to have ignored that the real reason to get mad is that in order to get your mitts on a copy you’d have to actually purchase the worst newspaper in Britain.) One thing that Fopp were good at – obviously not making much profit, or treating their employees with dignity and respect by actually paying them for their final month’s work – was in-store performances, and although they varied in quality they at least re-ignited in some way the notion that going out and buying records could be an experience and actually, whisper it, fun, rather than something you did in Tesco between choosing the shortest till to queue at and picking up some Tic Tacs. Here’s one of the in-store performances from Jim Noir, which as you’ll be able to tell is really rather badly out of synch. Bye Fopp, i’m sorry i didn’t buy that cheap reissue of After The Gold Rush as a way of saying farewell.



And finally, some added Misty’s Big Adventure, who this week at last saw the fruits of a video shoot for ‘Night Time Better Than The Day Time’…which came out as a single on Awkward Records in, uhm, 2004. You’ve got to hand it to director Marke Locke, he’s pretty nifty with the camera, and at least this use of his (generous) talent didn’t languish in a vault for evermore. Funny Times due soon too, thankfully.

The Compact

Now. I’m in a bit of a shit mood. I haven’t left the house today, I am wearing yesterday’s clothes and I’m sick of watching the news because it reminds me that people like to pour hydrochloric acid on other people’s faces. There is a muscle having an epileptic in my left forearm, and I can feel the fat cells gorging themselves on my lunch. I’ve got my ring stuck on the wrong finger. I have the mean reds (and if you think that means my period, you can just stop reading now).

I know most people come here expecting music. Well, today I woke up expecting to be 5’10 with thick wavy hair and a waist roughly two thirds my own. I have a feeling that today you and me both will experience some disappointment.

I do have something serious to discuss. The Compact. It’s old news I know, I know, but I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and have decided my position on it.

The Compact started some time ago, at least 18months, but probably a bit longer in San Francisco. Quite basically; they do not consume. They buy nothing new , and only buy second-hand what is necessary. They do buy food, although, you see, people need food to live. Organisations like Freecycle are supplying this demand for non-consumerable living, by providing a forum for people to trade their goods. There are free markets in San Fran, like normal markets, but free.

I like The Compact. I love The Compact. The Compact is maybe what the world needs to stop its disgusting self combustion and might just stop us from vomiting dust and smoke and rubbish enough to choke ourselves. Might.

Although you see, here’s the tricky thing. Shopping makes me happy. Buying silk blouses at extraordinary prices makes me happy. Checking the time on my Longines watch? Yep, happy. Even imagining myself making tea in Limoges tea cups makes me happy. And I know other people, people I admire and love and like, I know people who can be made happy with material things. In the very purest sense, beautiful objects hold joy.

So you see, my gripe with consumption, is not consumption per se, but rather, the mindless trash that is produced for the mindless public. Cheap, ticky-tack, poor quality and in poor taste annoys me more than Comsumers. For example: killing innocent children in the street is wrong, but, if I had the choice, alone in a room with a man (or woman) who abused an animal, or child (but especially an animal), I would, had I the strength, beat him to the end of his life. Killing is wrong. Some people are worth the effort. Mechanical consumption is dangerous, and more than certainly immoral. A chair by Charles Eames is a work of art. A shoe by Marc Jacobs. A dinnerset by Kate Spade. Even an Elle McPherson bra for His sake. You can get veritable beauty in bought objects. Yes - not all my clothes are works of art, I’m sure if I sat my (generous) bum down right now on a city corner and put up a sign ‘HUNGRY’ not a passing person would think about doubting I was homeless. I usually buy second hand books, for monetary reasons, and the rest of my books come from libraries. I prefer to eat what I’ve grown, which means I spend a lot of the winter months eating broad beans, but that’s ok. I don’t eat meat, I do buy leather, I drive a car but I never take plastic bags from shops. I recycle everything.

So. Here we are, I’ve run out of steam, and all I want to say is this. I can’t give up everything. I can give up a lot, but not everything. If you can Compact, do it. Try not to buy. Try not to buy new. Try to grow your own food. Try to buy local produce. These are some good people and I respect them. Ideally, we don’t need to stop buying, we just need to stop buying so much. But really, in reality, some people are too thick to understand that. So these Compacters are giving up things on their behalf. On your behalf. They’ve given up everything that I still can’t manage to. They’re stronger than me. If you’re strong, then please, do what you can. Or think about it at least. I know, if you’re here, you’re probably music people. Music is good. Buying music is fine. But just think. Sometimes. Please.