New Year’s Eve is probably the most overrated night of the year, all expectation and little delivery, and it’s now been well over a decade since I had to go out, pay over-the-odds to get in somewhere and have a ‘big’ night out. It’s round to friends, chuck the kids in a room with sweets and a games console while the adults get slowly drunk in the kitchen. With the same adults then complaining when I take control of the stereo.
Whatever you’re doing tonight- going out, staying in, going out to stay in- you could do worse than start your night off with Andrew Weatherall’s 6 Mix show from New Year’s Eve 2010, an hour of tunes from the Primal Scream Screamadelica tour bus.
Tracklist… Patti Paladin and Johnny Thunders Let Me Entertain You Tav Falco Oh How She Dances Bo Diddley Dancing Girl Webb Pierce Teenage Boogie T Rex Teenage Boogie Simon Scott Move It Baby Corporate Image Not Fade Away Anandar Shankar Jumpin’ Jack Flash The Sensational Alex Harvey Band Faith Healer The Standells Medication New York Dolls Trash Terry Edwards Never Understand La Dusseldorf Rheinita Silver Apples I Have Known Love A.R. Kane A Love From Outer Space The Glitter Band Let’s Get Together Again
Bon Voyage my friends, thanks for coming. Quite a few people I know will be glad to see the back of 2012. Here’s to a better year in 2013.
More from Two Lone Swordsmen as we head towards the new year. Locked Swords was a double pack of vinyl, limited quantities, released in 2001 following the Turntables and Machines tour (I saw them at The Music Box in Manchester; two men in semi-darkness with a laptops and turntables sending juddering beats and machine noises bouncing around a basement). The package is a load of short tracks, dj weapons, most around a minute long; some are just distorted, repeating voices (choose your sword, choose your sword, choose your sword…) some are just beats, some are drones and tones for mixing between or during techno tracks. The vinyl grooves are locked and there were two identical discs so you could play the same track at the same time and all that kind of clever dj stuff. Whether you’ll want to sit down and listen to this very often is a moot point but it’s got to be worth having. I saw it on vinyl once, fairly cheap. Didn’t buy it, have regretted it ever since.
Andrew Weatherall and Keith Tenniswood’s first full length album as Two Lone Swordsmen was a six sides of vinyl journey called The Fifth Mission (Return To The Flightpath Estate), released in 1996. If TLS was about Weatherall and Tenniswood refining and perfecting a techno sound, it isn’t immediately obvious here (that would be 2000’s six sides of vinyl Tiny Reminders). The Fifth Mission is rich, cinematic and complex, a drive through a city with a surprisingly full sound taking in all kinds of dance styles, from Big Man Original’s uber-bass riff, the Kraftwerkian Beacon Block, the chattering funkiness of Gang Sweep Shuffling. Enemy Haze, all phased guitars, a track that can make me feel stoned just by listening to it. Side six is led by the jazzy double bass of Rico’s Helly with drums borrowed from two-step. Throughout the album there is a certain Weatherallian moodiness but also hooks, loads of hooks. Machine music made by people, real life stuff. If you haven’t got it, you should get it. Might cost you a bit but worth every penny.
While eating breakfast (full English, average if truth be told) in the pub next to the Premier Inn where we stayed last night, coping with a hangover and checking my memory to see if I drunkenly offended anyone last night (possibly I think), I heard this song. It took me right back to being 17 or 18. Not one of Talking Heads experimental, world music inflected, double bassist, funk injected, Brian Eno numbers- just a superior piece of 80s pop from the inside edge of the leftfield.
Two days recovery and we’re off to another party- my side of the family all getting together for a Christmas bash. I’m the oldest of eight. Seven of us have partners and we have eight children, aged from 16 to 6 months, between us. Plus both my parents and a ninety-two year old Grandmother. Then factor in afternoon/all day drinking and the habit some of us have of espousing differing opinions on various matters (politics, religion, music, the price of fish…) and you have the recipe for a perfect family Christmas do.
Two hours of quality slow-mo chilled Mid Winter tunes from Hardway Bros here, worth losing a post-Christmas afternoon to, now you’ve got all the festive family commitments stuff out of the way.
Stuff bought for the kids, for example a cheapish NATPC tablet for the daughter, is now at the ‘why doesn’t this work anymore?’ stage, leading to me pouring over poorly worded instruction manuals and looking for receipts.
Carole Lombard and friends are here to help you with that door on that calendar when they’ve finished decorating their tree. Got any last minute shopping to do? Not me, all done. Oh yes. But there’s always something else you’ve got to nip out for isn’t there?
My copy of this Jackie Edwards 7″ gets played every Christmas- it’s more than a bit worn, full of crackles and scratchy. Love those reggae string stabs.
That advent calendar’s looking a bit battered now isn’t it? It hasn’t helped that someone sat on it, bending it in two. Since then two of the chocolates have slipped down the back.
Some people think that Cocteau Twins’ version of Frosty The Snowman is on the twee side of things. They might be right.
Sometime in the 1920s Loretta Young hangs up a big wreath. Two more sleeps everyone.
Bagging Area 