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VCD 2005: THE BARGAIN BASEMENT
Links are iTunes (USA), Amazon.com or, failing all that, the band's website. [square parentheses] denote songs fitting the VCD rules.
No theme. 7 out of 21 are songs by local bands who I first heard live.
Liner notes:
1. Home Taping's Killing Music: Misty's Big Adventure. Local favourites. They sound like the B-52s raping Billy Bragg with a Speak N' Spell, and their live act features a man in a burgundy boiler suit adorned with stuffed blue gloves dancing up and down like a maniac. Plus, their lead singer is called Gareth.
2. Welcome: Clinic. The next big thing of yesterday on the UK indie scene. Hitchcockian carnival music with a good dash of the Velvet Underground. They perform in surgical scrubs and masks, and their very first single was called "IPC Subeditors Dictate Our Youth", for which they deserve eternal love and riches. Try: "Equaliser" and "The Second Line".
3. July, July: The Decemberists. [great intro] "And we'll remember this when we're old and ancient, though the specifics might be vague / I'll say your camisole was a sprightly light magenta, when in fact it was a nasty bluish-grey". Joyful West Coast indie rock with keyboards. All of the Castaways & Cutouts album is worth downloading. Her Majesty... is a little more uneven. I've been told their new album is aces. Try: "California One/Youth And Beauty Brigade", "Here I Dreamt I Was An Architect", "Angel Won't You Call Me", "Lesley Anne Levine"...
4. Song Against Sex: Neutral Milk Hotel. A little low-fidelity delight. Funky West Coast circusy indie rock who very rightly believe "more is more" when it comes to instruments. Try: "Holland 1945", "My Dream Girl Don't Exist", "Three Peaches", and "Love You More Than Life". I think NMH are my favourite band who aren't The Beta Band.
5. Ghostwriter: RJD2. [something instrumental]. Scratching that instrumental hip-hop itch. Got turned on to RJD2 thanks to the playlist in the back of Corey Lewis' Sharknife. Try: "Since '76", "Smoke & Mirrors" and "The Horror".
6. History Repeating Itself: Shirley Bassey (Propellerheads Remix). [song by a woman / biggest gay disco ever]. If you don't start dancing to this, you have no soul.
7. Meanest Woman: Deborah Coleman & Pinetop Perkins. "She was the meanest girl he ever seen / He asked for water, she brought gasoline". Pinetop is a 90-year-old blues/boogie woogie pianist who used to be Muddy Waters' sideman. I saw him live about a month ago at the Jazz Cafe. He's still rocking it. You go, Pinetop.
8. Bring It Back Again: The Earlies. Manchester electronica meets Texas twang. Another "more is more" group, plus they're local lads so we get to see them live about once a month. Their debut CD, These Were The Earlies, comes out in the US soon. Try: "Morning Wonder" and "One of Us Is Dead".
9. On Lavender Hill: The Real Tuesday Weld. A remarkably even-handed song about ex-girlfriends (it'll never catch on.) Despite the evocative name, Lavender Hill is actually an ugly main drag through one of the most smugly bourgeois neighbourhoods in London. It's where you end up when you've let go of all your dreams of changing the world, and just want two kids, a chintz sofa set and a Range Rover. No self-respecting member of the demimonde would ever find themselves on Lavender Hill, except as a result of the most catastrophic chain of circumstances. But of course, "there are no circumstances..." Try: "Terminally Ambivalent About You", "Anything But Love", and "Something Beautiful".
10. Circles: Soul Coughing. I was off being the Playgirl of the Eastern World in Hong Kong when these guys hit it big, so I never found out about them until Kev Hill put "Idiot Kings" on last year's VCD. I'm now making up for lost time. Also try: "True Dreams of Wichita" (a very good song to be very badly drunk to) and "Screenwriter's Blues".
11. Every Day I Love You Less and Less: The Kaiser Chiefs. A very mean song about ex-girlfriends (it's a big hit). The bit where he howls "And my parents love me!" never fails to make me laugh. Anectodally, this is just about the most popular song on the VCD swap.
12. Frontier Psychiatrist: The Avalanches. [something deranged]. "It's the opinion of the entire staff that Dexter is criminally insane!". Hundreds of dialogue samples cleverly woven into one of the funniest little bangers ever.
13. Seven Nation Army: The Flaming Lips (Live at the BDO). [from outer space] Free download from Poison To The Mind. I heart the reverb. The song being shouted over the top through the loudspeaker is "Going to Florida" by the Butthole Surfers.
14. Raindrops Keep Falling On The Dead: Flipron. The best description of Flipron I've ever come up with is that they sound like Aladdin Sane dancing down Margate Pier with Flanders & Swann. Local lads, and completely wondrous live. Download all of Fancy Blues & Rustique Novelties. Genius, especially "Vicious Car" and "Big Baboon".
15. Tale From Black: Tunng. Free download from their website. Folktronica: many guitars, strange array of dried herbs, and man with mixing deck. No, I'm serious. First time I heard them live I didn't know what to make of them, second time I decided they were ace.
16. Wedding Day: Cracker. [guilty pleasure] Another nasty song about ex-girlfriends (it didn't catch on; so much for the formula.) Ade Brown sent this to me a few days after I found out my ex-husband was getting remarried. "The Devil will send demons to fly around your wedding day..." I know I am A Bad Person for enjoying this song as much as I do. (By the way, Cracker are the alt-country side band of the folks formerly known as Camper Van Beethoven).
17. Brighton Song: Martha Tilston. I think Martha Tilston is progeny of some very famous folk-music family in the UK. It doesn't matter. "Brighton Song" is a little bit of lovely, as is the rest of the Bimbling CD.
18. Farther On: Vetiver. Extraordinarily lovely West Coast alt-folk. The whole CD is worth downloading, but especially "Oh Papa" and "Arboretum". Also check out Vetiver guitarist Devendra Banhart's solo work .
19. American Defense: Son House [something from before I was born]. Delta blues legend and ex-preacher Son House recorded this in the early 1940s as a wry commentary on America's involvement in the Second World War. ("We've got to win this war because General MacArthur's not a friend / There won't be enough Japs, to shoot a little game of craps...") Very rare, and wonderful. Try: "My Black Mama Parts 1 & 2", "Walkin' Blues".
20. East St Louis Blues (Fare Thee Well): Blind Willie McTell. Probably my favourite blues song at the moment. If you buy one Delta Blues disc, it should be a Complete Blind Willie McTell. He really had the most variety of all the original bluesmen. (Note: Robert Johnston is only famous because he died young, and so all his work came into the Public Domain first.) Also try: "Southern Can" (a song about beating up cheating girlfriends that I really shouldn't enjoy as much as I do), "Stole Rider Blues", "Bell St Blues", and "Kind Mama".
21. The Armadillo Song: Flanders & Swann. Hahaha, you'll all hate this. I don't care. Suffer, peons. I love Flanders & Swann and you should too. How can you resist "Vive l'amour, vive l'armadillo"? Or the most salient advice about love ever given, "Never tell a man the truth, about the one that he adores"?