Meanwhile back in 2004, I put together the following “mix” from songs that could have been downloaded from the Internet around that time if one had been that way inclined.
1. Santa Esmeralda, “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood”: all ten and a half minutes. Possibly from the soundtrack to “Kill Bill Vol 1” but our local Tarantino buff failed to recognise it in a blind tasting, so who knows?
2. Shannon, “Let The Music Play”: I didn’t expect this to sound as good as it does.
3. Telefon Tel Aviv, “My Week Beats Your Year”: I like the “attitude” (and the Vocoder usage). From an album called “Map of What Is Effortless”, which I think is a lovely title.
4. Klonhertz, “Three Girl Rhumba”: in which the most recognisable two-note guitar figure of the punk era gets sampled, looped, and fitted out for the dancefloor. Not for Wire purists, perhaps, but if you put that guitar line on an endless loop and piped it into my grave I’d be shakin’ all over until the worms help nature take its course.
5. The Fall, “Telephone Thing”: I rely on others to navigate through the tangled byways of The Fall post-“This Nation’s Saving Grace”. For the most part I’m content in the knowledge that Mark E Smith is still out there drinking, falling down and generally fighting the good fight. This one’s from “Extricate” and it’s everything you could want from a Fall song: a rant, a beat, a mess.
6. Dolly Mixture, “Shonay Shonay”: a sliver of punk that passed me by back then. You only have to hear the first few bars to be transported back. If you were ever “there”. Dig, too, the decidedly un-punk “Stairway to Heaven”/”Bohemian Rhapsody” bit at the end.
7. The song known only as “Popnose 7”. Thanks, Tom Ewing. If I described it to you as sounding a bit like a German “Ca Plane Pour Moi” you would be a few small steps on the road to understanding.
8. Big Youth, “S90 Skank”: best taken on a summer afternoon as the cooling breeze starts to make its way into the house. And loud.
9. Cottonbelly, “Night Nurse”: a malevalent take on the Gregory Isaacs song. Ah, don’t you just love that big dub sound.
10. Teriyaki Boys, “Kamikaze 108”: hip hop taken to extreme levels and then taken a bit further, in the way that only the Japanese cats can do. DJ Shadow seems to be buried in here somewhere, but even he could hardly be expected to keep up this pace. Exhausting but fun.
11. Neneh Cherry, “Manchild”: some songs you don’t know why you hit the right-click button (like, did I really think I ever needed to hear UB40 and Chrissie Hinde singing “I got you, babe” again?) but, to my surprise, this holds up exceedingly well. Sometimes the experts get it right.
12-16: here we go into a bracket of New Zealand music, all from or relating to 1980s Dunedin: “Beautiful Things” by the 3Ds, “100 Times” by the sublime Look Blue Go Purple (at least one of whom became a 3D), the Bats covering LBGP’s “I Don’t Want You Anyway”, our main man David Kilgour doing Chris Knox’s (or is it the Tall Dwarfs’?) “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die” and Knox himself with “Half Man Half Mole”.
17. Yung Wu, “Shore Leave”: essentially the Feelies, but with the drummer singing. This is positioned after the NZ stuff because of the uncanny similarity between the vocals here and those of Martin Phillips of the Chills.
18. M Ward, “Flaming Heart”: during our recent trip to Victoria we drove through Meredith, a one-horse town that also hosts the Meredith music festival every year. M Ward played there last time around. No trace of him could be discerned. Mr Ward remains our standout discovery for 2004 so he should feature on at least one of these mixes.
19. The Walkabouts, “Train to Mercy”: nine and a half minutes of emotionally draining epic drama. Ever since they appeared on “Sub Pop 100” (or was it 200? The one with the Charles Burns cover) I have had the feeling that I should have paid attention to the Walkabouts, and the majesty of this song confirms that I have been wrong yet again to ignore my inner John Peel. Not to be confused with the Walkmen.
