Higher Than The Sun (Dub Symphony in Two Parts) – Primal Scream (1990, Creation Records, Taken from ‘Screamadelica’)
I mean of course there is going to be Primal Scream, my daughter grew up listening to Primal Scream. I’m pretty sure that I played her the Farley version of ‘Come Together’ when she was about two months old and I definitely played her ‘Loaded’ one Christmas before we went to a party, I remember us dancing round the lounge to it. She was probably four then and even then all she wanted to do was be free to do what she wanted to do.
Actually, that party was kind of fun, it was an old school dayglo rave designed to cater for young children. You turned up were handed some glow sticks, some healthy drinks and a ticket to Santa and then lead into a massive room where child friendly dance music played and children ran around waving their glow sticks at each other, whilst dads tried to out dad rave dance each other and shout about how good Utah Saints were back in the day. Which they obviously were.
Something Good – Utah Saints (1992, London Records, Taken from ‘Utah Saints’)
Later we posed for photos in our two sizes too big Christmas jumpers with stupid Christmas hats perched lopsidedly on top of our heads. Raves for children shouldn’t work and should be terrible idea but for some inexplicable reason they work brilliantly.
I’d like to think that whatever version of ‘Higher Than The Sun’ I posted on here wouldn’t need much of an introduction. But just in case let me stretch out a bit – I think ‘Higher Than The Sun’ sums up Primal Scream and the whole ‘Screamdelica’ thing better than any other Primal Scream song – sure ‘Come Together’ and ‘Loaded’ are better songs, but as musical experiences go, ‘Higher Than The Sun’ takes you places that music shouldn’t ever be able to take you. Its bloody fantastic, all those squelchy synths, a beat that it is impossible to actually dance to, but nigh on perfect to gently sway in a field at midnight to and even though this song is more than thirty years old, it still feels like a visitor from the future has handed you something that the kids from the year 3000 listen to.
Let’s press that shuffle button again and see what we get.
Le Responsable – Jacques Dutronc (1969, Disque Vogue, Taken from ‘Jacques Dutronc 1970’)
I’m probably, erm, responsible for this being on nearly very playlist that my daughter has made (it is not on the one solely made up with songs that have the word ‘cat’ in the title – a series that perhaps might feature later in the year – perhaps not). ‘Le Responsible’ is a great blast of late sixties sophisti-pop, a swirl of garage-y guitars, some wonky sounding organ and un voix incroyable. It’s a song that I have played to death since it featured on a documentary about the Welsh football team and their performances at Euro 2016.
When ‘Le Responsable’ was originally released back in 1969 it came backed with this Gallic slab of debonair greatness.
L’Aventurier – Jacques Dutronc (1969, Disque Vogue, B Side)
Join us next week for the final two instalments of this series, we kick Monday off with Sabres of Paradise and if you can find a better way to start a Monday morning, I’d like to hear it.
No Badger Required 