"...from an early performance at Café Bizarre in NYC’s Greenwich Village. Told they would be fired if they played the room-clearing “The Black Angel’s Death Song” again, the decided to open their next set with it. They were fired immediately, but not before making an impression on artist provocateur Andy Warhol, who was in the audience."
With their first album, the Velvet Underground ease you into what will eventually become one of the most challenging albums ever. The first songs are gentle, poppy and could just as easily be on a Carpenters album. The last songs, however are gritty, violent, trippy and bloody. For this reason, most of the people who listen to 'The Velvet Underground and Nico', for the most part don't get past Heroin. It is for this reason that I'm opening the proceding with this one; I'm letting you know that I am not going to underestimate you as a listener. Lou Reed, John Cale, Mo Tucker and Sterling Morrison had little choice but to accept that you have to ease the listener in to keep their attention, but I don't really need to sell this playlist so I'm going to open with this one.
2. Transmission- Joy Division
It's more listenable than the last one, but its still not very nice, all urgent and shouty. Songs with the lyrics 'Dance to the radio' should really sound like nice pop songs but this is not a nice pop song, the Bass sounds slightly out of tune and the epileptic growl of Ian Curtis make this sound more like the orders of a Nazi prison guard than an 80's Madonna record, which is where I would expect to see a lyric like that. There is something incredibly 'cold war' about this song, there is a paranoia to it. It's up a notch in energy but it's still not very nice at all.
3. I'm On Fire- Bruce Springsteen
I was tempted to replace this one with the Electrelaine Peel session cover of the same song but the vocals don't quite match up, and if you've got through the first two tracks then you deserve a bit of sweetness, and there is nothing sweeter than the boss sneaking through an underage girls window with nothing but jeans, a T shirt and his penis. (if you are that way inclined.) If statutory rape offends you then just ignore the lyrics and admire those lovely late 80s production values that made Steve Winwood and Don Henley records so fuckin' lush.
4. Sprawl 2 (mountains beyond mountains) - Arcade Fire
The Arcade Fire have become a bit of a point of ridicule, they are humourless, there seem to be thousands of them, they never smile and it isn't clear whther they are brothers and sisters or they all just have sex with each other. This is a lovely track though and goes to show that you shouldn't get too wrapped up in non musical reasons for not liking a band. It sounds like they have swallowed a copy of parallel
5. All The Critics Love U in New York- Prince
A juicy piece of 80's Punk Funk from a multi-instrumentalist superstar injects a bit of fun into the proceedings. It is bonkers, it talks about masturbating and is probably an inspiration to all the DFA and Gomma records of the naughties. Shit Robot, the Glimmer Twins, LCD Soundsystem and the Rapture all owe a debt to prince, whether they feel like acknowledging it or not.
6. Curiosity Kills- Janes Addiction
A younger Janes Addiction with Multiple Tennis Grandslam Winner Novak Djokovic in drag (top right)
Janes addiction are one of those bands that release one album every 5 years, then dispand to deal with their side projects or to melt off into a heroin addiction and subsequent stints in rehab or joining and leaving the Red Hot Chili Peppers, then eventually, back they come with an album even more cracking than the last. I've never been able to place Janes Addiction as to where they fit in, they were around about the time of Pearl Jam and Nirvana but they don't really fit in with the grunge thing, similarly they don't fit in with bands like Guns & Roses either, which is probably what makes them so appealing to me.
7. Fuk- Plastikman
Monster. Plastikman is the moniker of Richie Hawtin, for those that don't know, he is to techno what Hendrix is to the guitar, as his musical style has changed over the years others have tended to change to keep up with him. Fuk is just another of those tracks with a title with a misspelt K, 122 bpm, growling and thumping. It could have just as easily been spastik or helikopter, but I thought it would be nicer to pop a track under seven minutes long to keep it interesting.
8. French Disko- Stereolab
The reason I am doing this mixtape and harping on about it is that I watched 'High Fidelity' recently, and while I find John Cussack a horrible self obsessed wanker in this film, I quite like his taste in music, Lab are one of those bands that record shop people jerk off to incessantly, and this track is the reason why.
9. Lucky Number 9- Moldy Peaches
The back of the Moldy Peaches album with a DIY album critique.
It was a total accident that this was the ninth track, maybe I did it subliminally but either way it's spooky. Whenever I did a mix tape for potential girlfriends as a young whippersnapper, I would always pop the moldy peaches on, it would usually be 'Anyone Else But You' 'Nothing came Out' or 'Jorge Regula'. Since those days I have grown up and no longer send mixtapes to girls in hope of getting in their pants, because I made a mixtape so awesome that I ended up getting married. Also since then, the Moldy Peaches had a bit of a renaiscance thanks to the Juno soundtrack, which is brilliant, because all the way back eleven years ago, I decided it was the best album of 2000, even though everyone else was either listening to speed garage or 'is this it' by the Strokes so the Juno soundtrack vindicates me. it proves I was right, all that time ago.
10. Losing My Edge- LCD Soundsystem
This song is the hipster bible in MP3 format, although it's probably available on cassette and vinyl for the sake of irony. It's hard to gage whether James Murphy is taking the piss with this one, but namechecking Suicide, Captain Beefheart, Can, the Electric Prunes, Soulsonic Force and Gil Scott Heron to the backing of a heavily distorted bass a cowbell an 808 and a live drumkit proved to be something of a revelation to me. I look at James Murphy and Tim Goldsworthy in the same way some might look at Bob Dylan, or John Lennon. fucking genius.
11. Silver Trembling Hands- Flaming Lips
They are as mad as they look.
The Flaming Lips are mental, their albums 'The Soft Bullitin' and 'Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots' took them to the brink of world superstardom, some critics accused them of self sabbotaging by following up with the bizarre 'Embryonic'. It wasn't as fluffy, it was weird and all the levels were turned up too loud in the production and full of Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs making animal noises. It was Brilliant and exactly the sort of thing we should have expected from a band that once recorded an album on 4 seperate CD's which were supposed to be played simultaneously on 4 seperate CD players. Silver Trembling Hands was a highlight from Embryonic and is probably a highlight of these tracks as well.
12. Naiive Song- Mirwais
Round about the time of the emergence of France as a Musical superpower (Think Daft Punk, Air, Cassius and Phoenix as well as producers like Ettiene DeCrecy, DJ Falcon and Laurent Garnier in 1998, the year France won the World Cup.) Madonna desperately worked her way around the hippest acts trying to get one of them to produce her album 'Music' (the scare quotes aren't ironic, but the script inside the brackets indicate that they paradoxically are.) Eventually she got round to Mirwais after everyone else told her to fuck off because they were busy. Mirwais also found fame with his track 'Disco Science', the opening track from 'Production', it is followed by Naiive song as track two on the same album. Some years earlier, he had been in a new wave French 80s band called Taxi Girl, who La Roux lifted their sound from, hoping that nobody would notice.
13. Hollywood- Cluster
I've mostly steered clear from the Italo Disco, Belgian New Beat, Jap Psyche or Drone, so I don't feel guilty about popping this on, it is not the most innaccesable Krautrock, but it is never clear where the track is going in terms of its melody, there are no real set motifs, it seems to rely on a brush for percussion which stays nicely out of synch with the synth, the bass guitar, the flute and the strings. in fact all the instruments seem to be two bars out from each other. Cluster were cited by Brian Eno as the future of music and listening to artists like Four Tet, Caribou, Nathan Fake or the Fuck Buttons, it is clear that making a track like this in 1973 put Cluster far ahead of their time.
14. Codex- Radiohead
Sample Radiohead Artwork.
Since leaving Parlaphone, it seems that Radiohead lost their appeal, in a similar vein to the Flaming Lips but probably more so, Radiohead turned their back on superstardom after OK computer, opting to make an experimental electronica album. Another example of not towing the line, Codex is a track from the bizarre King of Limbs, released last year to little fanfare, Codex easily stands alongside tracks like 'No Suprises' or 'Fake Plastic Trees' it's lush warm piano is a lovely place to end it. the mixtape that is, not your life, so don't go jumping off any bridges, it's not that good.
