Spooky Weatherall Mix

It’s Halloween. Here’s a special spooky, horror themed mix Mr Andrew Weatherall did for Mulletover. Be careful out there tonight.

http://www.mixcloud.com/mulletover/andrew-weatherall-exclusive-mulletover-halloween-2011-mix/

Bleep

Another record from Sheffield’s Warp Records, this time in the shape of Tricky Disco by Tricky Disco from 1990. Serious bleepiness.

Tricky Disco

Pepper Trance

Getting on for twenty years ago I shared a flat with N, a man I met in my last year at Liverpool University who was later best man at my wedding. We’ve drifted apart over the last decade- he went to London in the late 90s, and I was always the poor relation finances wise when we flat shared, and we kind of mix in different circles now. Things were a bit strained for a while for various reasons though it’s fine on the rare occasions we see each other now. He loved Speedy J’s Ginger album, released in 1993 on Warp’s Artificial Intelligence label. Speedy J is Dutchman Jocham George Paap and the album Ginger was full of techno-going-trance music. This track takes me right back to that flat in Altrincham in the middle of winter, three bar fire, crap black and white TV, cooked breakfasts, The Bleeding Wolf, the pub quiz, Regal King Size, trips to Cream, The Hacienda and Home.

Pepper

Ralph’s Cupboard

Let’s have some dance music today. While rummaging through stuff recently I found Orbsessions Volume 2, a compilation of odds and sods by The Orb which came out in 2006, although I have no idea when this particular track dates from. It’s a magnificent, squelchy eight minutes of up dance music and no mistake. One reviewer at youtube left this comment- ‘sounds like crossing a vast swamp on a bridge made of sticks while a million happy bugs dance beneath’ and I really couldn’t put it any better.

Ralph’s Cupboard

Friday Night Is… Music Hall Night

No rockabilly tonight. For one week only (probably) we are grooving to some music hall. Tomorrow Mrs Swiss is holding a party to celebrate her 40th birthday. She decided she didn’t want to hire a room above a pub or the local rugby club and have me play records. Everyone else has done that. She’s having an Edwardian tea party in the afternoon, with tea, cake and sandwiches, and period costume. Note, that’s period costume not fancy dress. Mrs Swiss has hired a beautiful dress and hat. I am using the splendid chap in the photo as my model and am getting quite attached to the plus fours (hired), though not the golf club. Tedious game golf.

We’ve bought three cds of music hall which could get quite annoying over the course of the afternoon. In the evening we’re going out for a few drinks in Sale. I’m still contemplating whether to keep the plus fours on.

Having cast my eye over the track listing to The Glory Of Music Hall cd, including songs such as She Was Poor But She Was Honest, It’s the First Time I’ve Done That, The Biggest Aspidistra In The World, The Yodelling Goldfish, the Wives Of Commercial Travellers and Nobody Loves A Fairy When She’s Forty I’ve gone for this George Jackley tune.

Ain’t It Grand To Be Blooming Well Dead

Friday Street

Streets, roads and places feature prominently in Paul Weller’s songs, from the punk temptations of In The City, the bomb in Wardour Street and Tales From The Riverbanks’ childhood idyll during The Jam through to the fascination with Paris in The Style Council. Once solo Weller continued the psychogeography. His first solo album featured the single Uh Huh Oh Yeah and a ‘trip down Boundary Lane, trying to find myself again’. His third solo album was named after the road he grew up on (Stanley Road). By this point he was busy earning the Dadrock tag, and in truth although I liked the first solo album and loved Wild Wood, Stanley Road did little for me other than The Changing Man, Broken Stones and that nice Peter Blake sleeve.

1997’s Heavy Soul album led with this single, and it turns out it’s an actual place (a hamlet in Surrey). ‘A pulse goes on, on Friday Street’ he sings but truth be told at this point that Dadrock label isn’t budging.

Friday Street

53rd & 3rd

If songs about streets and roads are about a sense of place, home, belonging and how far you can go from home, then Dee Dee Ramone’s 53rd & 3rd is surely a measure of how far a person can fall. Dee Dee’s narrator stands on the corner of 53rd and 3rd ‘trying to turn a trick’ and is dismayed he’s also ‘the one they never pick’. This two minute buzzsaw tale of male prostitution ends in murder. It wasn’t all fun round The Ramones way y’know.

53rd & 3rd