Welcome to April – A month of Nearly Nearly Perfect Albums (#1 and #2)

The sharp eyed of you out there will have noticed that Nearly Perfect Album Series reached its 100^th post a few weeks ago (It was the Beta Band’s Three EP’s in case you missed it).  A nearly perfect album, either selected by me or someone else (in the snappily titled spin off series Someone Else’s Nearly Perfect Albums) has featured here on Saturday mornings since this blog started  – and for those of you who missed the very first one, here is a track from that,

New Way, New Life – Asian Dub Foundation (2000, London Records, Taken from ‘Community Music’)

It is a series that means a lot to me, and it’s a series that will continue for as long as this blog continues – or until we run out of Nearly Perfect Albums (and for the record the short list has 112 more albums on it but that will be upped to 113 later on when I add the new Nadine Shah record to it).

If you dig out your Big Boys/Girls Dictionary of Indie you will see that the Definition of a Nearly Perfect Album described in tabular form on pages 2783, but if you can’t find your copy, I’ll repeat what it says.

“A Nearly Perfect Album, is an album that is very good indeed.  Worth getting a burn in a house fire for but not one worth sacrificing the cat for.  It is an album that if you marked it out of ten would receive at least a nine but no more than 9 point 99 recurring for its troubles.  It will be stopped from being actually perfect by at least one song (something referred to in the industry as the ‘The New Dawn Fades Interjection’) or by being too short, too long, or by featuring a guest performance by any former member of The Smiths or Kate Bush or anyone who has ever been in Eastenders (but mainly Phil Daniels).  It may also contain xylophones or clarinets but definitely not both and definitely not on the same song.”

All of which brings us to this month, which takes its inspiration from the Nearly Perfect Series by exploring a bunch of albums that are not quite good enough for that series but are still excellent records that deserve your attention.  This will be a month of albums that score 8 out of ten, eight and a half at a push but are stopped from being Nearly Perfect by a variety of things, usually a couple of ropey songs, or a Glockenspiel solo or because they feature Kanye West ‘singing’.  It will be a month of Nearly Nearly Perfect Albums.

So each day, one or two (or if I’m feeling particularly nice, three) albums will feature, they will as ever be selected at random from a big list that I have created – most of which were cut from the Nearly Perfect list because on reflection – they aren’t quite that. 

So with that, let’s press the shuffle button and see what get vomited out by the algorithm

1. Demon Days – Gorillaz (2005, EMI Records)

I hated the first Gorillaz album, largely because it was a bunch of underwhelming songs wrapped around one decent song (that being ‘Clint Eastwood’) and I really expected to hate the second one or to find it almost exactly the same, in that it contained a bunch of songs that sounded unfinished wrapped around another one about Clint Eastwood (that being ‘Dirty Harry’ – even though it does contain a children’s choir, which automatically means disqualification from being anywhere near Nearly Perfect).

Dirty Harry – Gorillaz (2005, EMI Records)

For a while I thought I was right, because on the first listen, ‘Demon Days’ is a rambling mess of a load of ideas, none of which push themselves to the front and grab your attention.  You get some dub, some bass heavy new wave, Damon Albarn pretending to be Bob Dylan, piano interludes, tracks that sound like Blur and bloody Shaun William Ryder being bloody Shaun William Ryder, it is an album that made me roll my eyes in despair to be honest.   

But. 

Give it a second listen and then a third and it starts to make sense because those rambling messes that I mentioned above are actually subtly brilliant tracks that combine wonderfully.  ‘Kids with Guns’ for instance isn’t just a song on which Albarn mumbles on, it is in fact a song that contrasts in styles from laid back to desperate and pleading.  ‘Feel Good Inc’ switches effortlessly from being a folky indie singalong into something very close to a grime track.

Kids With Guns – Gorillaz (2005, EMI Records)

Feel Good Inc – Gorillaz (2005, EMI Records)

And then of course, there is ‘Dare’ where Albarn takes a back seat whilst Ryder somehow provides us with his finest musical hour since ‘In the Name of the Father’.  ‘Dare’ should be like every other time when indie and lofi dubby hip hop combine, rubbish.  But, it isn’t, it’s marvellous even from the first listen, the one idea on the whole album, that works from the get go.

Dare – Gorillaz (2005, EMI Records)

Ok, what’s next Alexa..?

2. Floodland – Sisters of Mercy (1987, Warner Records)

Now.  I’d like to think that right now, this is the only music blog on the planet that gives you songs by Gorillaz and the Sisters of Mercy on the same day, but I might be wrong.  Anyway suck up the eclecticism because it will (probably) be the last time that happens.

I’ve mentioned this before, but my brother was a temporary Goth.  In 1992, after an ill-judged whirlwind holiday romance with a Goth girl from Saffron Waldon called Richelle (definitely not Michelle) who dumped him outside the Camden Underworld, of all places, my brother abandoned his Goth phase and went back to being a metaller.   There can be no worse sight in the world than a pair of largely unused pointy winkle pickers shoved into a dustbin with the potato peelings next to an abandoned metal chain with a raven on it.  Most true Goths would probably see that as symbolic of societies norms but for him, it was cathartic.

Still on the plus side, I inherited several (well all) of his Goth rock records, most of which found their way to the second hand shop in Chatham’s Pentagon centre and I would suspect, most of them are still there.  I keep three of them, a Cult Twelve Inch, something by The Glove and ‘Floodland’ by the Sisters of Mercy.  ‘Floodland’ by the Sisters of Mercy, remains to this day the only one of those records that I would ever choose to actually listen to, because its ace, before you ask.

Yes, it’s overblown, pompous and the songs by and large too long and full of lyrics about blood and ashes and general darkness that are laced with gloomy synths and spooky whispered vocals, but it also contains these two absolute belters and that makes it very good indeed.

Lucretia My Reflection – Sisters of Mercy (1987, Warner Records)

This Corrosion – Sisters of Mercy (1987, Warner Records)

Do we want a lyrical clue for one of the albums for tomorrow….?  Ok, here it comes whether you are Ready Or Not,

“here I come, you can’t hide. Gonna find you and take it slowly”.

Oh, I’ve rather given that away. Bugger.

A month of Lost Indie 45’s- #6 The Rock – Delakota

The Rock – Delakota (1998, Universal Records, Taken from ‘One Love’)

Funny old band, Delakota.  They released one great album and kind of disappeared off the face of the planet.  They were formed in 1997 and featured two former members of transit pop pioneers The Senseless Things and an ex member of the post punk band Genius Freak.  Based on that heritage you would perhaps think that their sound would be guitar heavy indie that took its influences from bands like The Minutemen and Fugazi. 

You would however be very wrong because Delakota were a sort of indie dance band that took their sound from 60s rock and the indie dance explosion.  They sound more like Primal Scream than they do Minor Threat. 

They had minor success with ‘The Rock’ and its predecessor ‘C’Mon Cincinnati’, which was decent enough for Fatboy Slim to take an interest in.

C’mon Cincinnati – Delakota (1998, Universal Records)

C’mon Cincinnati (Fatboy Slim Mix) – Delakota (1998, Universal Records, B Side)

They were formed by Cass Browne, who decided that once the engine of the old Senseless Things transit had backfired for the final time that it was perhaps time to try something different, musically at least.  By the way, for those who are interested, the transit backfired for the final time sometime around the release of this single

Christine Keeler – Senseless Things (1995, Epic Records, Taken from ‘Taking Care of Business’)

Cass decided to recruit his former bandmate Morgan Nicholls (who had on leaving the Senseless Things joined a spiky indie guitar band called Vent 414, who contained former members of The Wonderstuff, The Clash and The Cult).  Nicholls knew a good thing when he heard one and jumped ship almost straight away.  He did find the time to appear on this jaunty indie number though – which is basically The Wonderstuff (A shaven headed Miles Hunt took on vocal duties) without the fiddles and a slightly more muscular sound.

Fixer – Vent 414 (1996, Polydor Records, Taken from ‘Vent 414’)

Delakota made one album, called ‘One Love’ which is nowadays seen as something as a cult classic (this is journalist speak for music that is pretty good, that no one bought because it was either ahead of its time or a bit too leftfield for the radio), toured a little bit and then disappeared.  People assumed that they split up because they never returned.  No reasons were given for their absence – but it is clear that Cass and Morgan remained friends.

In 2005, both Cass and Morgan appeared together on the Gorillaz album ‘Demon Days’.

Feel Good Inc – Gorillaz (2005, EMI Records, Taken from ‘Demon Days’)

The link here was through Jamie Hewlett, the co creator of Gorillaz, who in an early life was a big fan of the Senseless Things and designed many of the sleeves of their singles, he then struck up a friendship with band and then formed Gorillaz.

There was a few years back I think a very brief Senseless Things reunion, buoyed largely by the popularity of some American indie bands who cited them as an influence.  The Philadelphia based indie band Beach Slang even released their near exact version of ‘Too Much Kissing’ in homage to them. 

Too Much Kissing – Beach Slang (2016, Big Scary Monsters Records, Taken from ‘Here I Made This For You Vol 1 ep’)

If you love the Senseless Things and all that then the Stupid and Contagious Podcast should be posting an interview with the wonderful Ben Harding from the band today.

Here is Monday’s Musical Clue Shoplifters of the World…Unite…

A Month of Beasts, Bugs, and Birds – #11 – The Gorilla (and other apes)

Cracker Island – Gorillaz (featuring Thundercat) (2023, Parlophone Records, taken from ‘Cracker Island’)

When I was about nine or ten I remember sitting in my nan’s lounge and we were watching a news programme (it might have been Jon Craven’s Newsround, but I suspect it was more likely to be something more highbrow) and it was talking about the former Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe and how he came to power as a result of his guerrilla campaign.

Call it naivety, call it something else, but I genuinely sat on the sofa in stunned silence and eventually looked at my nan and asked her how Mr Mugabe had managed to train the gorillas to fight and use weapons.  I was petrified of gorillas for a long time after that and I refused point blank to watch Planet of the Apes when it was on the telly.

Guerrilla Radio – Rage Against the Machine (1999, Epic Records, Taken from ‘The Battle for Los Angeles’)

One of the most famous gorillas around at the moment, is of course Jurgen.  The biggest of all the apes who live in the gorilla field at Paignton Zoo.  Jurgen is the alpha male at the zoo and spends most of his time swinging around on tyres and clambering around on purposely built assault courses within his massive air conditioned and climate controlled enclosure at the zoo. He is quite a character.  If laughing at captive animals who are bored and lacking stimulation is your thing.

Jurgen shot to fame a few years ago when the BBC decided to film a series at Paignton Zoo which looked at life from the animals perspective.  Each episode had a sort of theme and the thoughts of the animals featured were voiced by the ubiquitous Hugh Dennis.  Each week Jurgen would try and fail to stamp his authority on the rest of the primates and end up telling his fellow apes to “Shut Up” whilst they all laughed at him from various positions inside the enclosure.  Jurgen being your typical West African Jungle Gorilla (the sort of ones that Sigourney Weaver went to the mountains to find) speaks with a sort of comedy German accent, presumably because Hugh Dennis refused to do a comedy West African accent, for rather obvious reasons (it reality Jurgen was named after Mr Klopp, the Liverpool football manager, because Jurgen had very white teeth – true story).

If you ever go to Paignton Zoo, you can have your photograph taken with a life size model of Jurgen – you’ll find him just outside the gift shop.  Jurgen is for the record a silverback ape, which is kind of convenient because it means that we can all listen to this thrilling piece of indie grunge pop from Dublin band Silverbacks.

Dunkirk – Silverbacks (2020, Central Tones Records, Taken from ‘Fad’)

Next door to Jurgen and his colony are two further sets of apes.  On his left is the chimpanzee enclosure, which is full of chimps and their smaller cousin the bonobo – who are man’s closest relatives in case you were interested. 

Pick Up – Bonobo (2003, Ninja Tunes Records, Taken from ‘Dial M for Monkey’)

The other side of Jurgen is the orangutan house, who are commonly thought to be the cheekiest and most intelligent of all the primates.  The actor Clint Eastwood once made a film where he was out acted by a big old orangutan called Clyde, who used to ride shotgun in the front of Eastwood’s jeep and punch baddies.

Which sort of brings us full circle

Clint Eastwood – Gorillaz (2001, Parlophone Records, Taken from ‘Gorillaz’)

Here is tomorrow’s creature clue – The largest of all the artiodactyls.

Brilliant Radio Stations From Around The World – #1

Fanatica INDIE – Based in Santiago, Chile (link opens a web radio player)

I said on here a while ago about an App called ‘Radio Garden’ which allows you to listen to any radio station in the world (nearly).   One of the joys of Radio Garden is that you can lose hours just wandering down radio rabbit holes listening to offbeat stations playing weird and wonderful music that you may never hear anywhere else if it wasn’t for the power of the Internet. We will explore some of those stations in this series – mainly because there appears to be a radio station in Hungary that appears to only play incredible gypsy punk (or at least it does when ever I tune in).  Anyway, these rabbit hole radio stations planted a seed of an idea in the back of my mind.

That seed has now sprouted into this series.  A series in which I will choose a radio station from somewhere in the world and listen to it for one hour so that you don’t have to.  I will then post the best tracks that it plays.  I may tell you something about the place where it is based as well. 

First up Fanatica INDIE, an English language (apart from the adverts, which are in Spanish) station based in Santiago Chile. 

Santiago for those who didn’t listen in geography is the capital city of Chile and is one of the biggest cities in South America, some six and a half million people call it home, which is more than half of the entire population of Chile.  The fact that it has a radio station that plays mainly indie pop fills me with joy for some reason.  The fact it appears to have no actual DJs either is in this case a blessing.

It has just gone noon (in Santiago that is) on a Wednesday when I tune in for the purposes of this piece and the first track I hear Fanatica playing is this

Aries – Gorillaz (featuring Peter Hook and Georgia) (2020, Parlophone Records, Taken from ‘Song Machine, Season One, Strange Timez’)

Which is not a bad start of an hour at all, ‘Aries’ is an incredible track, full of that trademark Hooky bass, which sounds like he has just simply given Damon Albarn an entire bassline from something from ‘Low Life’ to sing over.  Which he does very well indeed.

Twenty minutes or so later after some crazy adverts which feature people speaking very fast about I think, ‘toilet paper’ and ‘donkeys’ – (my Spanish isn’t great), this brass blessed blast of brilliance fills the room.

Nobody – Mac Demarco (2019, Macs Record Label, Taken from ‘Here Comes the Cowboy’) but that segues marvellously and almost seamlessly into this

Oh Baby – LCD Soundsystem (2017, DFA Records, Taken from ‘American Dream’)

Which may just be the greatest thing I have listened to all bloody month.

I think that this is the point of this series.  I know that I can listen to each of these tracks at home just by asking Alexa but I would never listen to them in the same hour, and that is the joy of the radio and the added thrill of simply not knowing what is coming next. 

I haven’t listened to ‘Oh Baby’ is such a long time and it such a wonderful song.  I also know that it is likely that I have peaked early in this series because right now Fanatica INDIE is the best radio station in the world and it will probably take a radio station broadcasting out of the back of bombed out milk float in Srebrenica that plays a Galaxie 500 7” back to back with a Bob Tilton flexidisc to top it. 

If you need more evidence of the absolute brilliance of Fanatica INDIE in Santiago, the last song played in my allocated hour was this

Can’t Do Much – Waxahatchee (2020, Merge Records, Taken from ‘Saint Cloud’)

Three hours later, I’m still tuned in

100 Songs with One Word Titles (90 – 86)

Some of the members of the musical jury put notes next to some of the songs, to try and explain why they had chosen certain songs and not others as shown in two of the five songs on display today, which are all songs that when I ordered them originally were all roughly in the places that jury voted them in.  Apart from the first one, which was a bit higher.

90. Toxygene (7” Mix) – The Orb (1997, Island Records, Taken from ‘Orblivion’)

‘Toxygene’ was never supposed to have been released as a single.  It started out life as a remix of a Jean Michael Jarre track.  The Orb not sticking to the script, ‘Orbliterated’ it, and removed almost all trace of the original from it, causing Jarre to have a hissy fit and subsequently refusing to release it.  So The Orb took it back, changed it again and it went into the Top Five in the UK. 

89. Dare – Gorillaz featuring Shaun Ryder (2005, Parlophone Records, Taken from ‘Demon Days’)

The legend of course goes that Ryder was too drunk to say the word ‘There’ whilst recording this and “Dare” was as close as he could get and even then it was to do with a noise he kept hearing in his headphones rather than the actual lyrics that he should have been singing.  Regardless of whether this is true or not (Ryder says it is), ‘Dare’ is tremendous and Ryder’s half-drunk Mancunian drawl is addictively perfect.

88. Today – Smashing Pumpkins (1993, Virgin Records, Taken from ‘Siamese Dreams’)

I’ll hand you over to musical jury member number 7 here, who told me “Oh, god I feel so dirty giving ‘Today’ so many points.  Billy Corgan is a dick and the majority of his songs are over bearing smugathons but ‘Today’ is just so damn good, that riff, the chorus, everything.  Damn you Billy Corgan”.

I can’t really argue with astute reasoning like that.  Damn you indeed Billy Corgan.

87.Krupa – Apollo 440 (1996, Virgin Records, Taken from ‘Electro Glide in Blue’)

An absolute monster of a record.  One that essentially contains a sample from the film ‘Taxi Driver’ and another one from ‘The Ballroom Blitz’ by Sweet.  Apollo 440 then added some beats and some other drumming noise and mashed the lot together to give it a club feel and sat back and waited for the money to roll in.  A few years it was used to advertise two awful things, Sunburst – a disgusting fruity drink and Budwesier Beer, another disgusting fruity drink.

86. Intervention – Arcade Fire (2007, Rough Trade Records, Taken from ‘Neon Bible’)

I once compiled a list of my favourite songs of all time and this featured very highly indeed.  In the Top 20 I think.  So I really like it….but musical jury member number 4 did not agree….”Thank God there is more than 30 songs to vote for, I couldn’t bring myself to give ‘Intervention’ one point.  It would be very begrudgingly.  It’s awful, atrocious.” 

You can really go off people you know.

The Sunday Shuffle #10

In A State (DFA Mix)- UNKLE (2003, Mo’ Wax Records, Taken from ‘The DFA Remixes, Chapter 2’)

I find the supermarket quite a challenge. Not the shopping bit, but the people bit. You see whenever I turn up at the supermarket, it seems to be full of really stupid people. People who can’t walk and clap at the same time, or people who struggle, really struggle with the concept of a how a trolley works and think that just randomly stopping in the middle of the tinned vegetable area is sensible.

So these days when I go to the supermarket, I try and listen to something to drown out the inane chatter between Sandra and Alan about the price of ‘canned hotdogs’ or whether Bernice from the fish counter has fixed her microwave.

Today’s Sunday Shuffle was decided by whatever track was playing when the first item from my trolley was scanned through the checkout, as it happens it was four minutes into the rather glorious DFA Mix of UNKLE’s ‘In A State’.

The mix is kind of wonderful, where the DFA take a section of 10cc’s ‘I’m Not In Love’ and building it ever so gently into a breathlessly dramatic masterpiece.

Of course the DFA have form for this kind of thing (remixes of epic proportions).

Slide In (DFA Mix) – Goldfrapp (2005, Mute Records)

Dare (DFA Mix) – Gorillaz (2005, Parlophone Records)