Right. If you've been paying attention you'll know that as we've reached 25 that means we're halfway through the 50.
50-25=25.
Always a good idea to show your workings.
Looking at what's coming up it strikes me that these really are pretty much all killers now. The vast majority of what's coming up are regularly bandied about as the top albums and artists of the 90s, and that really brings it home to me just how mainstream 90s indie I really am. But I'm sure you all knew that already, and love me for it.
Because I seem to have really slacked off with the fascinating purchase details of late I'm going to add some Post Scripts to posts where there's nothing that fits nicely into the main body of the post. Just two for tonight.
I never gave up on Teenage Fanclub. There were enough moments on the, granted, not quite up to their usual standard, Thirteen to give me hope. Imagine if Thirteen had been as chock-full of great tunes as your usual TFC album. Grand Prix would have been the third in one of the greatest runs of albums of all time.
As it stands Grand Prix is to be looked at more as a return to form of sorts. Rarely, if ever, has a band contained such a blend of 3 ridiculously gifted songwriters (a Blake - 5, Love - 4, McGinley - 4 mix here) and they have the music to back up the songs. I usually find myself saying that I'm a Blake man, but then who can ignore Love's Discolite and Don't Look Back or such McGinley gems as About You and the wonderful Verisimilitude?
My memory of buying the album has gone the way of many others, although I'm willing to take a punt on Rhyl Our Price again. I absolutely remember buying all the CD singles from there, and they all had different versions of the lead track on the second disc, which in an era of multi-format exploitation by the record labels, made a refreshing change. TFC were always good value with their singles & b-sides.
Of course there's a whole separate post to be written just about the genius that is Sparky's Dream. Gerard Love created one of the touchstones of 90s indie with a tune that seems so simple but that seems to have struck a chord with a generation of indie kids. Maybe I'm a Love man after all.
Another return to form I suppose. Although I've already told you how I feel about Debut, and Post is a damn fine album, I think Homogenic is the best Björk album. After this there's some stunning work, but as an album - I think this is the best collection of songs she's ever produced. It's a beautiful thing. As the picture on the front of the sleeve might suggest, it's a colder, crisper sound in general than Debut, with far less emphasis on the dancier, poppier stuff that infused the first two albums. The beats are less mainstream, the songs slightly more challenging to the listener (penultimate track Pluto being a case in point - some serious BPM pushing the song along to somewhere it might not otherwise have gone), but as ever, it is definitively Björk. I would even say definitive Björk. By the time you get to final track All Is Full Of Love you're ready for it to ease you gently back down to normality, but even then it does it in a haunting way. No beats, just layers of the voice and synths/strings bringing the album to a shimmering conclusion. Of course All Is Full Of Love is complemented by one of the greatest videos ever made. Or maybe I'm just a sucker for robot lesbian Björks.
P.S.
Homogenic comes in a very nice multiple fold-out digipak CD case, but I can't for the life of me remember where I got it from. I do know that I got a 3CD box set thing of the single of Jóga from Rhyl Our Price which is still sealed in cellophane because I probably thought it would be worth something one day. I used to do this a lot. There was a time when my limited double album of Deacon Blue's Raintown / Riches was worth £40 in Record Collector. I doubt it is now.
Have I still got anyone's attention? Sorry it's taken ages for the next part of this. I'm going to at least try to get us to the halfway point tonight. MrsJ has flaked out on the sofa so I'm going to put on one of my mear misses, Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works 85-92 and have a go at at least the next 3 on the list.
There are certain albums that are bedtime albums, and there are certain types of bedtime albums (if you know what I mean). For me at least, this is definitely a going-to-sleep bedtime album.
MrsJ has worked nights for quite a few years now, on and off, and she is most definitely a night owl even when she isn't working, so I have a tendency to put some music on when I got to bed and I have a few core albums that I turn. Usually Spiritualized's Lazer Guided Melodies, Bonnie "Prince" Billy's Master & Everyone or this one.
Sadly this means that the vast majority of times that I've listened to these albums I have only heard them to about half way through. Trailer Park though is an album that gets its regular daytime airings too.
Beth Orton's voice is one that has a sadness to it, and there are songs on here that show that off to its full potential. The epic closer Galaxy Of Emptiness has a bit of a shuffling beat to it to take the edge of the desolation, but the track before it, the stunning, haunting cover of The Ronettes' I Wish I Never Saw The Sunshine takes you a whole different level of heartbreak. Believe me, there are times in your life when it's not altogether healthy to listen to that song, but you still have to hear it to make things better in a weird kind of way. I put that track in my all-time top 100 tracks last year here and you should go and listen to it right now.
I find it hard to recognise that the album ends after Galaxy Of Emptiness as for so long I only ever had a copy of the album on a mini disc with b-sides etc tagged on the end, so I have to stop myself from including the heartbreaking It's Not The Spotlight as part of the album.
We all love the Pet Shop Boys don't we? They've provided us with some of the greatest pop songs of the last 25+ years but albums haven't necessarily been their strong point with early albums Please & Actually having great singles, but a few weaker moments to fill the gaps. Behaviour though is a different proposition.
Although I had been a fan for some time I didn't properly start avidly buying PSB stuff until Introspective and its related singles (I know I have about 4 formats each of Left To My Own Devices & It's alright).
I'm pretty sure I rushed out and bought So Hard when it was released, and the album itself on release day too from what I remember (both Rhyl Our Price). This is Neil & Chris at the top of their game and yes, Very has its moments, but I've got Behaviour so I'm happy thanks.
Now, as I'm sure I've mentioned already Throwing Muses are one of my favourite bands so when main Muse Kristin Hersh released the acoustic solo single Your Ghost with its Michael Stipe backing vocals I was pretty much as excited as it was possible to be. Hips And Makers is a departure from Throwing Muses usual fare in as much as it's an acoustic album but there's no dip in the quality of Hersh's songwriting or musicianship. In fact some of her finest work is included on here.
The CD of this album has some gorgeous 4AD packaging & when I asked Dave in Kavern Records to keep a copy for me while I went to the bank to get the cash out to pay for it he told me that he wouldn't, the swine. I pretty much sprinted to that cashpoint.
I was lucky enough to see Kristin & Vic Chesnutt on the tour when this album was released and to meet her after the show at Warrington Parr Hall. As many of you who follow her on Twitter will know, she officially one of the nicest people in indie and she obliged with autographs & small talk. That autographed KH t-shirt I got that day got me a discount on a Throwing Muses Dizzy 10" from the record shop on Colwyn Bay pier a few years later. So thanks Kristin for the tunes, and for the autographed-with-added-fish-picture t-shirt.
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Right MrsJ has woken up. See you next time for more pointless ramblings.
There's a whole generation of indie fans who can still remember when they first heard Björk's voice. That mysterious grainy video on The Chart Show with the weird Icelandic vocals.
Some time later Eifion walked into the 6th form common room with a bright orange day-glo sleeve and (maybe misguidedly given the state of the stereo's needle) played Birthday to the assembled couple of dozen 16-18 years-olds.
And Dave Slave from the school's hard rockin' band The Slaves commented on his good taste.
Anyway, you all know what happened next - really fun first album, dodgy second album, reasonable third album, greatest hits/remix stuff, DEBUT!
The first time you heard Human Behaviour you knew that Björk's solo work was going to be like nothing you'd heard before. The genius of the beats, the pop sensibility, the voice. Of course we knew the voice, but in conjunction with these new tunes there was so much more than we ever thought might be possible, given the Sugarcubes gradual decline. From the quiet beauty of tracks such and Like Someone In Love and Venus As A Boy to the full on joyous dance tracks like Big Time Sensuality, Violently Happy, and the sheer unadulterated fun of There's More To Life Than This (Recorded Live at the Milk Bar Toilets) this was obviously the shape of things to come.
When I was in Germany you would occasionally get a specially recorded John Peel show on BFBS radio, and if you were lucky, really late at night you could pick up Mark Radcliffe's Hit The North in the ether on Medium Wave on the old Radio 5. One of these sources was doubtless where I first heard Dress and Sheela-Na-Gig because I bought the album the first time I saw it in a shop. Sadly I had no way to get hold of the limited Demonstration edition but I was happy just to have found what, at that time, I thought was a pretty obscure little album by an unknown band (am I the only one who still files PJ Harvey stuff under P as it was the name of the band?).
I'm pretty sure I went without food for a while there so I could buy this.
Radiohead were the first band that I could genuinely profess to liking before they were famous. I can still see the box full of 99p CD copies of the original issue of Creep on the counter downstairs in one of the two Coventry HMVs.
There will be more talk about Radiohead in a future post, but for now let's think about OK Computer. It's a stunning album obviously, that much is a given. There's so few, if any, weak moments. Maybe Fitter Happier but in the grand scheme of things it's forgivable. The singles Paranoid Android, Karma Police and No Surprises along with Lucky (originally released as a single to support the War Child Help charity compilation album) is just about the greatest run of singles ever to come off an album that isn't by Prince or Teenage Fanclub.
"Why the relatively low placing then Matt?" I hear you cry. Well, it's probably just a matter of how little I actually listen to it these days. They remain one of my all-time favourite bands, and if you haven't seen them live then you've missed out, but I find myself reaching for Hail To The Thief or In Rainbows these days over this.
I do wish that I'd picked up a handful of those Creep singles though. Could have seen me through some sticky financial moments over the years.
Will Oldham. Palace. Palace Music. Palace Brothers. Bonny Billy. Anyone who tries to be a completist of this fella has their work cut out for them.
Many many years ago I needed another CD single to make up the 3-for-a-pound from the bargain rack in Prestatyn Record Shop and ended up with a copy of Palace's An Arrow Through The Bitch. I must have listened to it at least once I guess, but it never worked for me so it got filed away and forgotten about.
Then some years later I got copies of I See A Darkness, Ease Down The Road and Master And Everyone on one of the first CDs of these newfangled mp3s anyone ever did for me. I realised that on these albums the Prince had found his voice and I was hooked.
Of these three albums Master And Everyone is my favourite but it doesn't fall into this list's criteria so I See A Darkness is the one that makes the cut. More polished than the earlier Palace material it still has that grim menace but it's also great fun (or is that just me).
Oldham's sense of fun has always been the side of his music I've enjoyed the most, and his Greatest Palace Music reworking of his early lo-fi Palace material with a full Nashville country band is my all-time favourite BPB release, and the fact that he can turn this...
...into this...
...is a mark of the greatness of the man. 29. Belly - Star
One of the good things about being friends with Eifion is the fact that he has a penchant for collecting stuff on the coolest record labels. His Factory obsession introduced me to New Order, James, Happy Mondays, The Durutti Column etc; he always had all the limited edition ZTT stuff for all the FGTH, Art Of Noise, Propaganda & Act stuff; and his 4AD collection brought me Throwing Muses, Pixies, Wolfgang Press and the Mountain Goats.
Of course this brought along with it all the splinter groups and solo stuff such as The Breeders and Belly.
Prior to Red Heaven there were usually a couple of poppier tunes on Throwing Muses albums. Slighty more mainstream indie pop than your usual Muses fare. And these were usually the Tanya Donnelly ones.
Belly are really a one album wonder for me. I know some of you will argue that King is a superior album, but for me, apart from the fancier artwork of the limited edition it van't hold a candle to Star. This is probably because I love Star *so* much that I didn't feel the need for another Belly album.
Only 3 to give you today, and to be honest, there isn't much to say about the third of them so only 2 proper write-ups. Sorry, but it's late & I've got a hell of a day tomorrow. The 3 albums that follow today's post are real big-hitters and deserve more than an over-tired half-recalled ramble from your humble host, whose writing isn't up to much even at the best of times.
I managed to miss The Flaming Lips until this point. I mean I knew the name, and I remember seeing a (shaped?) picture disc of This Here Giraffe in Prestatyn record shop, but that was it. And then this came along.
I know my feats of record-purchasing-recollection have been pretty impressive so far, but I can even remember where in Rhyl Our Price this was. I guess if I went into what is now the O2 shop I could still pinpoint the exact spot.
I've never really been into the more psychedelic side of music I guess but this is so obviously great from start to finish that that isn't even an issue. Really my appreciation for them waned (see what I did there?) after Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots but I think this is more down to me not having the time and energy to properly investigate subsequent releases.
As I mentioned previously, the first time I heard Beck was when Jo Whiley played Loser on Radio 1. And of course it was a work of genius (Loser that is, not the Jo Whiley show). It had great b-sides, it had a classic TOTP performance with a band of old-timers and breakdancing, but it didn't really have the killer album to back it up. I remember a guy I worked with called Charlie Bass (and yes, he played the bass) coming around with Mellow Gold on CD and me being, well, disappointed.
So I was not expecting great things from the follow-up, although lead-off single Where It's At was nicely funky and got my attention. I'm convinced I actually bought this on release (Rhyl Our Price) so maybe it was just funky enough. And then of course the hits kept coming. Devil's Haircut, The New Pollution, Sissyneck and the fabulous Jack-Ass. I bought the "maxi-single" of that one in a record "store" in a "mall" somewhere in North Carolina, and also got Stereopathic Soul Manure and One Foot In The Grave at the same time so as to avoid paying the cost of buying them as imports from the ads at of the back of the NME. Of course the cost of a holiday to North Carolina never occurred to me at this point. These were the only music purchases I made on that trip. I know The Drugs Don't Work was released the day we set off, and that The Fat Of The Land was all over the shops over there, but I never looked for anything beyond those 3 Beck releases.
I haven't listened to Odelay for quite some time (I tend towards Mutations these days) but I know it's always there and I know it's great.
In fact typing this has made me want to listen to it right now.
34. Various Artists - Chess 50th Anniversary Collection
Just look at this tracklisting. Have you ever seen a more influential set of tracks on one compilation?
CD1
1. Smokestack Lightning' - Howlin' Wolf 2. Hoochie Koochie Man - Muddy Waters 3. Let me love you baby - Buddy Guy 4. Boom Boom (Out go the lights) - Little Walter 5. Tell Mamma - Etta James 6. I had a talk with my man last night - Mitty Collier 7. Summertime - Billy Stewart 8. I'm a Man - Bo Diddley 9. If walls could talk - Little Milton 10. The Entertainer - Tony Clark 11. Flat Foot Sam - T.V. Slim 12. Mama talk to your daughter - J.B. Lenoir 13. T.W.A. - Jimmy Witherspoon 14. Dirty Old Man - Laura Lee 15. Wang Dang Doodle - Koko Taylor 16. So many roads - Otis Rush 17. Seventh Son - Wille Mabon 18. Jock-A-Mo - Sugar Boy Crawford 19. The Walk - Jimmy McCracklin 20. Reconsider Baby - Lowell Fulson
CD2
1. One Bourbon, one scotch, one beer - John Lee Hooker 2. Roadrunner - Bo Diddley 3. Reelin. & Rockin. - Chuck Berry 4. That's all right - Jimmy Rogers 5. My Time after awhile - Buddy Guy 6. But I do - Clarence "Frogman" Henry 7. Rescue Me - Fontella Bass 8. The "In" Crowd - Ramsay Lewis Trio 9. Soulful dress - Sugar Pie Desanto 10. Stay in my corner - The Dells 11. Voice your choice - The Radiants 12. Talk to me baby - Elmore James 13. Good to me - Irma Thomas 14. Rocket 88 - Jackie Brenston & his delta cats 15. Selfish One - Jackie Ross 16. Juke - Little Walter 17. Grits ain't Groceries - Little Milton 18. 29 Ways - Willie Dixon 19. Help me - Sonny Boy Williamson 20. Rollin' Stone - Muddy Waters
