How I Spent My Summer Vacation – Part Two

Here’s part two of my gig-crazy summer trip this year. I left you off where we staggered away from Pulp’s gig at Wireless only two days into our trip.

The next day, after an afternoon at the Tate Britain, we headed off to see Lou Reed at the Hammersmith Apollo. I’m sure there are people out there who will tell us “I told you so.” Yes, Lou Reed is a notorious curmudgeon. Yes, he’s made some very unfavourable career moves. While it was special to see a legend I never thought I’d see in my life, he seemed as though he was just going through the motions, except they were primarily the geriatric motions of needing help out of his jacket. He didn’t play “Walk on the Wild Side,” but he did play “Smalltown.” I don’t think we were the only ones feeling a little deflated; most seemed to leave the theatre in a glassy-eyed daze.

I woke up the next morning to get ready for our day trip to Cardiff, and I knew my immune system had finally caught up with me. There had been a nagging feeling of near illness right before I left for my trip because I had just finished a two-month health-rundown marathon of work before leaving. I managed to stave infection off for three days. I spent the rest of my time in London sucking on Strepsils and taking painkillers.

We didn’t just listen and dance to music whilst in the UK – we purchased it in copious amounts as well. Between Spillers in Cardiff, Music Video Exchange (at both Notting Hill and Camden Town locations), and FOPP at Earl’s Court, we amassed enough vinyl and CDs to fund a return flight to the UK.

Our last evening in London before heading off to Amsterdam was spent in Vauxhall at a delightful curry restaurant to which you can bring your own beer. We met up with Miles, who is in the brilliant band Vanilla Swingers, Anne who is also in Vanilla Swingers and Morton Valence, her partner Mike, and Hacker, who is in Morton Valence. It was a truly fun night and a welcome bit of company, and I have shimmering memories of questions about prairie dogs, why Amsterdam is actually one of the most conservative cities in Europe, a story about Johny Brown from The Band of Holy Joy perhaps losing a shoe, Miles doing a pretty reputable imitation of Jarvis Cocker’s dance moves, and an aside about how Hacker was once in a band that had Pulp opening for them. At least I think this all happened – between the bronchial infection setting in and the massive bloody marys from earlier, it was getting hard to tell. We also owed Miles a particularly big thank you for sending some tips before we arrived in London, including places to eat, places to find music, and other points of interest, including Battersea Power Station, which he ended up taking us to see before drinks and supper.

Throughout Amsterdam, Berlin, and Vienna, my sore throat and fever had blossomed into full-blown consumption. I was pretty much certain that I had bronchitis, and by Amsterdam, Laura was pretty sure she had the same. We coughed, wheezed, and fever-dreamed our way through galleries, parks, museums, baroque palaces, walking tours, and cathedrals. An Irish boy threw up on our bathroom floor in the middle of the night in Amsterdam, and a fellow hosteller in Vienna asked me if I was coughing up blood because if I were, I should see a doctor. I’m not sure if I’ve ever had such terrible sleeps in which I felt like I was drowning in my own fetid air every night. Daytimes were marginally better, and I did discover the joy of Cafe Aroma Ices.

As we took off from Vienna airport, we braced ourselves for what we figured was going to be a more difficult leg of the trip…

Just like lungs sucking on air…

I feel as though there have been several points in my life that were surreal. I’ve done odd whirlwind day trips to other cities, sometimes back-to-back. I’ve had travel mishaps and miscalculations. I just usually don’t have all of these things happen to me at once. I take full responsibility for the ludicrous events that ensued because I was the one with severe Manics tunnel vision – a condition similar to mania in that it makes me believe I can do anything as long as the Manics are involved. The “if they jumped off a bridge…” scenario is probably in bad taste.

At any rate, I knew that the whole “quick” stopover in Finland was always a bit of a stretch for us. In order to accommodate the Manics, we flew all day from Vienna to Berlin to Helsinki, arriving in late afternoon the day before the Wanaja Festival. The thing about the Wanaja Festival, which I knew very little about, is that it’s held in a small vacation town, Hameenlinna, which is one hour north of Helsinki via train. The other thing about the Wanaja Festival is that details regarding set times were only revealed shortly before we left for Europe. The evening that we arrived in Helsinki I discovered that the train from Hameenlinna to Helsinki only runs until 11:30PM…and it doesn’t start running again until 5:00AM. The Manics, as headliners, were due onstage at 10:45PM. We had a flight back to London the morning after the festival at 7:50AM. Our flight home to Canada was the day after that. All of these facts gave us a bit of a panic attack. My heart races a bit thinking about the situation now.

After consultation with the info desk at the Helsinki train station, it became apparent that our only option was to take the only bus back at 3:00AM, pick up our backpacks at the hostel, and catch another bus to the airport, which meant yet another hour of travel. Feeling more than a little queasy about how we were going to accomplish this grand feat while still fiendishly ill, we decided against bringing our bags to the festival, and hoped to Äkräs it would all work out — not because Äkräs is the Finnish god of fertility, but because he is the protector of turnips. And my brain may as well have been a turnip.

The train ride to Hameenlinna went smoothly, but the very vague map I had in my head of the festival site, gleaned from Google maps and the festival website (which was entirely in Finnish) had become beyond hopeless as we stepped off the train platform. Our brains had already been fairly addled with that cognitive disorientation you experience when immersed in a language so alien to you that you start to think you might be hallucinating, and now we were faced with utter loss of direction in the scorching, sunny heat. Luckily, we found one person who spoke English at the train station info desk, and she kindly marked out our route on the town map she gave us. Of course, she told us our easiest route was to follow the edge of the lake until we hit a bridge, and then to cross the bridge and keep following the lakeshore until we came to the castle park (only Finnish I learned: “linna” means “castle” and “puisto” means “park”). The straightest route would have been to swim the entire width of the lake. But since it was already feeling like the worst joke of an Amazing Race, that wasn’t an option.

We tentatively made our way along the lake, marveling at how much Finland’s landscape reminded us of home, and at how much this specific town reminded us of a place like Kenora, a small vacation town in Ontario. As we crossed the bridge, Laura started muttering about how the pavement was soft and moving. I told her she was probably in the middle of a feverish episode. Then I felt the pavement actually buckle underfoot like a giant air pocket being squished out of a rug. Apparently, Laura wasn’t incapacitated by fever, and Finland must have been unseasonably hot that day. Needless to say, we crossed the bridge as quickly as possible.

Checking our map every thirty seconds, we managed to find our way up the other side of the lake, and came upon a few people. I’ve never been so happy to see a girl in leopard print and Nicky-Wire-white-framed-sunglasses. It became apparent that there were two other intrepid (insane) fans from Britain waiting for the park to open the gates. And if that wasn’t enough to allay our concerns, we suddenly heard the strains of “Some Kind of Nothingness” coming from beyond the gates. I never thought I’d be so happy to hear that song, especially since it gives me Strictly Come Dancing nightmares. We had a half-hour to sit in the shade and bask in the brief moment of accomplishment of finishing one more leg of the trip. Not long after, the Finnish Manics contingent showed up as if they had just wandered off the set of Times Square, mauve hair, Useless Generation tattoos, Motley Crue t-shirts, ripped jeans, shredded tights, and all. They were wonderful.

It then became a silent film farce as all twelve of us hardcore loonies felt the need to race each other on foot to the front of the stage being headlined by the Manics. The people manning the festival shopping stalls just stood their mouths agape as one by one we whipped by them, leaping over rocks and cables. I likely lost another thirty percent of my lung capacity at that point. We then all settled in on the ground right at the barrier and baked our faces off. Though there were food stalls nearby, they seemed dodgy – spring rolls in 40 degree heat or handfuls of sticky gummy worms. We opted to subsist on the free water even though we hadn’t eaten since noon.

We had periods of leg stretching as a parade of progressively surreal bands performed on this stage, including a mediocre hair metal band with a bare-chested singer in white jeans and waist-length tresses, a band composed only of members with Down Syndrome (they appeared hugely popular, which made Laura and I hope like hell that the enthusiasm was genuine), a relatively folky twee band with a lead singer who bore a significant resemblance to Snufkin from the Moomin books, and a band that almost blew our heads off with screaming Finnish. During one of the breaks, I tried to put my mind into some sort of ease by searching out someone who could tell me how to get to the bus station, now the crucial location on which our entire next three days hinged. I stumbled a little frantically through the crowds, not comprehending anyone around me, yet somehow still had the presence of mind to ask if the merch tent had any Manics t-shirts (they didn’t). Armed with a newly marked map of where the bus station was, I headed back to my post to wait for 10:45.

I then made an agreement with myself to stop panicking and dwelling on the upcoming trip from hell with logistics that defied all logic; it worked, and I put it all out of my mind from the time the Manics hit the stage. I unfurled the Canadian flag we had brought with us like some badge of survival, and hung on for dear life as we took off with “You Love Us.” It felt so satisfying to be crushed by such a loving crowd. The audience gave me the same feeling of starved fans that I had seeing the Manics in Toronto in 2009. “Motorcycle Emptiness” seemed all the more poignant after the last day spent in language isolation; I hung onto their every word like a life line back to my own brain. As expected, they performed the three singles released from Postcards From a Young Man, and Nicky Wire tried to recall whether the band had ever visited Finland when Richey was still with them (a mental exercise he seemed to be running with since the Send Away the Tigers tour). I was especially happy to hear “Slash ‘n Burn” and “Suicide is Painless” since I hadn’t witnessed them live before. It felt a bit odd to have the show end on “If You Tolerate This…” rather than “A Design for Life,” but at least we got the benefit of a false ending and the excitement over further songs. Somewhere along the way, Laura had been squeezed off the barrier and was smushed behind me. Being a festival performance, and thus at least five songs less than a regular gig, it felt like a compressed dose of adrenaline shot through my consumptive, weakened body. As the crowd peeled away and slowly dispersed into the perpetual summer twilight, it was lovely to see a couple of friends falling about each other, one wearing an exact replica of the sailor suit Richey used to wear. On our way out of the festival grounds and into the streets, the bedazzlement lingered in my brain and kept my anxiety over the necessary bus at bay for quite some time after.

I started to come down from the high as we sat on a bench at the deserted bus station, but for festival fans queuing up for horrific fast food from a takeaway stand. The weight of the three weeks of travel, the intense day which wouldn’t end until we had been up for over twenty-four hours, and the fourteen hours without food settled on us at this point, and we tried to stay awake and conscious for the next three hours of waiting in the half-light of a sun that never really set. In the meantime, the Finnish Manics fans had also shown up with a box of pizza and seemed to be waiting for the only bus back to Helsinki as well. At that moment, I really envied those girls who didn’t have to care if they got back to Helsinki by 5:00AM. And the fact they could eat a box of pizza at 2:30 in the morning after a whole day in blistering heat.

Eventually the bus showed up, after at least a couple of buses that were heading north instead, and then we had the pleasant discovery that many people had already pre-booked tickets for it. The previous day we had been told that we had to buy tickets on the bus. I was getting prepared either to cry or start kicking people if we didn’t get on when they managed to squeeze us on. We had to sit on the aisle floor of the fully-booked bus with the Finnish contingent of Manics fans and a few stray British fans who seemed to hate us (maybe because we didn’t end up with eyeliner smeared across our faces). The next two hours were a mix of sheer panic and drug-like drowsiness. It nearly killed me when we actually stopped at the airport before returning to Helsinki — though bringing our bags with us would have been horrendous, it would have allowed us to get off at this point rather than sit in further cramped tension. Finally, the bus dropped us at an unfamiliar location, not the expected train station, which had become our only major landmark; however, I think adrenaline may actually sharpen your orientation senses because I still managed to lead us in the right direction to the train station. Of course the usual tram to our hostel wasn’t running that early in the morning, so we ran on foot back to the hostel, where they didn’t let us in right away. Once the front desk realized that we weren’t actually mad homeless people ringing the outside bell, they let us up. We got our bags, ran back to the train station, hopped the next bus, and ended up at the airport with roughly half an hour to spare. As I sunk into my plane seat and choked down the tasteless sandwich provided, I had never felt so relieved in my life.

If there were such a thing as The Amazing Race for Manics fans, I think Laura and I would have won.

Timeslide place to hide nudge reality…

When we got back to Heathrow in some sick deja vu, we discovered that the two tube lines that took us to our hostel were closed that day for maintenance. This led to over an hour of bus riding and figuring out where exactly we were supposed to get off. With some sort of last superhuman wave of energy, we managed to make it to FOPP for some shopping, to the Tate Modern for some supper, and then on to the Royal Festival Hall at the South Bank Centre to see Big Audio Dynamite, aptly the last big bang of the trip. We hadn’t even been entirely sure we had tickets for this show since they mailed them late to my home in Canada, and through the intermittent Internet access via hostels, I had to arrange for replacement tickets to be held at the venue. Thankfully, our sporadic luck was holding up and the tickets were there. We ended up having a brilliant last night with a dance party cascading into the aisles. We even got to sing happy birthday to Don Letts’s wife.

Laura, whose immune system is always in much ruder shape than mine due to several chronic health concerns, ultimately had to stay in hospital for a few days after we returned home. I ended up with a massive course of antibiotics and a chest x-ray. I wasn’t sure what was more disorienting: my Finnish-addled brain on jetlag or coming back to work only about seven hours after my flight landed to attend a symposium discussing Deleuzian concepts.

I could ramble on about the non-musical highlights of the trip, including Tate Britain, Tate Modern, the British Museum, a lecture at a curiosity shop in Hackney, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Sanssouci Palace in Potsdam, the Dali gallery at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, the Belvedere Gallery and the Secession in Vienna, but they could all use posts of their own. And perhaps one day they will find themselves in a blog.

Speaking of blogs, as I said in the previous post, I’ve started a new one with Laura, who has a passion for music and the ability to write about it in an erudite manner. It’s called From a High Horse. Please follow me there because hanging about here will likely only lead to feelings of abandonment.

Suicide is Painless (Theme from MASH) – Manic Street Preachers

E=MC2 – Big Audio Dynamite

How I Spent My Summer Vacation – Part One

Hello…how are you? Well, it’s been quite a long time. Perhaps there are two or three of you out there who still may read this. It’s been a landmark year for me in terms of the gigs I managed to see. Mainly because I kept leaving Winnipeg. In February, I got to see Gang of Four in Toronto, and they were one of the most exciting bands I’ve ever seen. Unlike The Buzzcocks, who I saw last year, GoF are still clearly passionate and earnest about what they do. Andy Gill was a badass, and Jon King was a maniac. And they continue to make excellent, thought-provoking music.

This past summer will be difficult to top, mind. My friend, Laura, and I went on a three-week backpacking trip to Europe built around the Wireless Festival. This was decided in a fevered panic after the Pulp reunion was announced in November of last year. It quickly became apparent that we had no self-control or sense of limits as we continued to plan the trip logistics. Not to mention this is the first time that I’ve had a travel buddy who actually enjoys the same things I do. When we found out that Lou Reed was playing in London the night after Wireless, we bought tickets. When we found out that Big Audio Dynamite was playing in London the night before we flew home, we bought tickets. When we found out that the Manic Street Preachers were playing the Wanaja Festival in Finland two nights before we flew home, we decided we could squeeze it in. Then we threw in the Feeling Gloomy club night on the same day we flew into London, which also happened to be the night before Wireless, just for good, psychotic measure. I don’t regret any of this, but as you will eventually see, it took its toll.

Under the poster of Morrissey with a bunch of flowers…

We attempted to stave off some jetlag by having a late afternoon nap at our hostel, which was perhaps one of the worst hostels I’ve ever stayed in (and I’ve been in ones with bedbugs before). However, exhaustion allowed us to sleep rather soundly for a couple of hours in the mouldering bedroom at the top of a stuffy, crowded building in Bayswater. Slightly refreshed, we then ventured off to Islington for dinner and to the O2 Academy for Feeling Gloomy.

Feeling Gloomy has been one of those mythical club nights I read about, like Stay Beautiful and Against Nature, that I’ve always wanted to go to, but have never had the timing right for, nor have I had a friend that wanted to go. It also seemed related to the mythical indie disco, which we don’t have over here, and for two indie-disco-deprived Canadians, Feeling Gloomy lived up to all expectations. We entered the club to Ultravox’s “Vienna” and were the last to leave as they played The Smiths’ “There is a Light That Never Goes Out.” While it didn’t necessarily stick to doleful melancholia as its title implies, it did fulfill all of my listening wishes, including indiepop, new wave synthpop, 60s girl groups, and post-punk. It was essentially a chance to dance around in a semi-dark room full of strangers and a giant painting of Morrissey to the very same songs already on my iPod. Subtract the strangers, and it’s much like a regular evening in my bedroom. In fact, I’m fairly certain I oscillated wildly between hopping about like Molly Ringwald in The Breakfast Club, twitching my limbs like Jarvis Cocker, and doing that “Barbarism Begins at Home” twist as performed by Morrissey and Marr. It had been such an amazing experience that it almost didn’t matter that we were stood at 4:00AM in the middle of Islington without a clue of how to get back to Bayswater. We luckily found a cab not driven by a rapist, and stumbled into our pitch-dark, crowded bedroom as the sun came up.

A few hours later, we stumbled back out of bed to wander over to Hyde Park for Wireless. Unlike nearly every other time I’ve visited and/or lived in the UK, there were absolutely no clouds and no rain. After eating small cups of pineapple and Sainsbury pasta salad and watching tourists next to the Marble Arch, we took our place in line with the most eager punters at the Wireless entrance. As much as we would have liked to see Fight Like Apes and Cut Copy at one of the other stages, we enjoyed the pre-Pulp line-up of Vintage Trouble, Devotchka, Metronymy, The Horrors, The Hives, TV on the Radio, and the utterly brilliant Grace Jones, who rode a very surprised security guard over to the crowd barrier. Frankly, we endured leg cramp, exhaustion, sunburn, and dehydration for only one band.

Sing along with the common people…

You could hear Jarvis’s laconic voice in your head as you read through each scrolling line of retro typeface projected on the massive black curtain.

Hello…how are you?
I can’t hear you.
I said!
Make some noise!!
Exciting stuff.
You’re looking good.
Especially you.
Is it nice out there?
Do you want to have a drink?
O.k. I will meet you at the bar.
Is this crazy talk?
Is this legal?
Do you remember the first time?
Is this a hoax?

Of course, the crowd was getting pretty antsy by the time the screen asked if we wanted to see a dolphin. To be fair, despite all of the teasing, they did show us a dolphin. Once the textual banter finally exited stage right, we heard the simulated sizzle and hum of the lurid magenta letters flickering into full glow behind the scrim. P…U…L…P. As expected, once the curtains came down, amidst the blast of confetti cannon, Candida, Russell, Steve, Nick, and Jarvis began with “Do You Remember the First Time?”

I don’t remember the first time, so to speak. The rush of nostalgia for Pulp’s first time round, and its attendant mid-nineties bliss, is a strange emotion for me since it belongs to a different, but no less powerful nostalgia. Mine came out of an imagined past rather than a lived past. I didn’t know of Pulp until three years after their triumphant, myth-making slot at Glastonbury. And I didn’t get heavily into them until they no longer existed. I don’t actually remember the first time, so like watching long-dead galaxies in the night sky, I had lived through the Britpop scene after it had gone supernova.

It’s hard not to get emotional at the impossibility of it. The fact that I had consigned Pulp to the bin labelled “missed opportunity” meant that I always thought they would remain a mediated experience, a forensic encounter patched together with hours of live footage, music videos, music press clippings, book accounts, and bootlegs. They had famously never really broken up, so somehow it paradoxically seemed even less likely they could reform. If there is a benefit to all of this late-noughties-reunion-nostalgia-jingoism hangover, this particular reunion was it. After all of those years, many of them pre-YouTube and pre-torrent, I had built up my memory bank of Pulp. Through their vintage pop melodies and Jarvis’s on-point (anti)social observations, I felt a part of something years after it actually happened. All those imagined moments of jubilantly jumping up and down in a crowd singing “Misshapes” or “Common People,” all of those dreamed and simulated moments of inclusion had collected in the grooves of my brain as a soundtrack to my own awkward bildungsroman.

After their first song, Pulp slipped into the first times of “Pink Glove,” which has one of the most deliciously malicious choruses in the Pulp canon, then “Mile End,” and on into the depths of A Different Class with slight diversions into This is Hardcore and We Love Life, and a double-back into “Babies.” In an effort to take it all in, my eyes flicked back and forth between all of the band members, the inscrutable shades of Russell Senior, the flash of white jacket from Steve Mackey, the sphinxy smile of Candida Doyle, the pumping arms of Nick Banks. But at the centre of it all was Jarvis. I think we all know how I feel about Jarvis by now. The corduroy dynamo was in full flight, specs strapped on, stomach in, chest out. At one point he stood atop a monitor and leaned back so far that his upper body was parallel to the stage floor, a breathtaking act of limbo. At other points, he raced to and fro across the front of the stage, hair streaming, joints articulating and gesticulating wildly. His dance moves are a feat of improv: immediate, ever-shifting interpretations of his lyrics. Some embarassingly literal, some as oblique as a Brian Eno strategy, all of them without a whiff of self-consciousness. And his banter was better and more self-assured than it had ever been, often evoking elements of his more recent incarnation as 6Music DJ.

After lying on his back and cycling his mantis legs in the air, taunting, “I’m coming to get you,” Jarvis grabbed a torch and walked down the stairs and runway to the front of the gaping crowd. As he spoke-sang the opening lines to “I Spy” several feet to the right of me, he shone his torch into the upturned faces of his fans, his voice juddering with intensity. By the time he had moved to directly in front of me, everything seemed to have shifted into a hyperreality of specific details, mundane and yet alien. I can distinctly remember the contracted pupils in the grey-green of Jarvis’s eyes as the torchlight reflected from my glasses into his glasses, and I can recall the shape his right hand made as it gripped the torch handle, each joint of his lengthy index finger and thumb tensed, his wrist cocked just campily so. I didn’t touch him. I didn’t say the lyrics along with him. I didn’t snap a photo in his face. I just stared back at him and smiled with my entire being. I was desperately trying to isolate and preserve the moment in my mind; it was perfect timing because it seems everything else had flown out of my mind during that minute.

Halfway through the set, Laura mimed that her feet were over there. “Over there” turned out to mean several feet to the left of the rest of her body. Shortly thereafter, my feet also ended up being over there. It seemed fitting that we were contorted in a gravity-defying, Cocker-like pose. We were being quite literally carried away by the buoyancy of the crowd. There was none of the grasping tackiness and hollow gesture of so many other recent reunions by other bands. In spite of myself, my vision actually went blurry with tears during the last half of finale “Common People.” Just like the emotion of impossibility realized, a lot of my emotional state was dependent on the transcendence of the crowd; I couldn’t help but get emotional when thousands were singing along with me like every word mattered as much as every gasped breath, especially when just five years ago, I was regarded with boredom and mild confusion as I sang a lonely version of “Common People” at a karaoke night in Winnipeg. With that many people willing the night to be special, it came to pass.

Two men in their forties were behind us in the crowd, and as the audience dissipated, they chatted to us for awhile. One of them felt ecstatically vindicated that he had finally gotten to see Pulp live after missing their 1995 Glastonbury performance due to illness. His eyes were wild with disbelief over what had just happened, and his voice was hoarse with shouting “Was that not the best fucking show ever?” into the night air. He had also told us about how his grandfather always told him to “take snapshots” for his memories; these “snapshots” weren’t stored on film or hard drives, nor were they obtained at the expense of placing a lens between you and reality. His grandfather meant taking photographs with your memory. This man we had met only two minutes ago then asked me if I had taken a snapshot. At that moment, I realized that that was what I had been doing when Jarvis stood within inches of me, pointing a torch in my face. A shred of paper streamer in my damp palm; the nausea that comes with having subsisted all afternoon and night on two jammy dodgers proffered by friendly strangers in the crowd; the shaky limb weariness of catharsis; the dizzy light-headedness and body fever of heatstroke; the dazing aftermath of the enormity of the event causing me to meander aimlessly through the park as I processed it. I finally had my truly first time with Pulp, and I’m so grateful that it came at a time when they were so experienced.

To be continued…

I’ve decided to split this gig-going European vacation into at least two parts, so I will be back at least once more in the near future to write about the rest of the trip.

After that, however, this blog will likely remain relatively dormant, but for good reason: Laura and I have decided to start a new blog called From a High Horse. It will mainly be an MP3 blog, but we may also write about non-musical things as well. I figure having one extra writer may make the endeavour more sustainable. So, if you’re so inclined, pop on over…exciting stuff.

At the Indie Disco – The Divine Comedy

Do You Remember the First Time? (Live at the 2011 Wireless Festival) – Pulp

I Spy (Live at the 2011 Wireless Festival) – Pulp

Everyday is Like Sunday, Except for Blue Monday and Ruby Tuesday, and…Well, Friday I’m in Love: Year-End Round-Up Part 2

See here for Part 1 of this series. This second part includes mixes with themes of: senses, 80s film soundtracks, Australia/New Zealand, cover versions, robots, acoustic, London, New Wave, 2009, summer, dance/electro, Canada, France, and wit. Next weekend, the last of weekly mixes will make their appearance, and hopefully, at the end of the week, you’ll find out what my top eight albums of the year are.

Come Monday Night – God Help the Girl

St. Monday – Billy Bragg

Weekly Mix #62 – Why Can’t You Touch, Taste and Smell Evil? (Download)

It’s Your Touch – The Black Ghosts
Taste the Rust – The Vince Noir Project
Touch Too Much – Hot Chip
Sound and Vision (Live at Sony Studios) – David Bowie
The Smell of Bob – Kaji Hideki
See No Evil – Television
Stop and Smell the Roses – Television Personalities
See Emily Play – Pink Floyd
We See the World As Our Stunt Doubles – Fosca
Heard You Whisper – The June Brides
Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before – The Smiths
Taste – Animal Collective
Sigh’s Smell of Farewell – Cocteau Twins
Taste the Floor – The Jesus and Mary Chain
Touch Up – Mother Mother
A Sucker For Your Sound – I Monster
The Smell of Outdoor Cooking – Arab Strap
Love at First Sight – Gist
The Bugle Sounds Again – Aztec Camera
Touch My Bum – Tom Rosenthal

Weekly Mix #63 – Hipster Kryptonite (Download)

Then He Kissed Me – The Crystals
Skid Row (Downtown) – Little Shop of Horrors Cast
I Am the Future – Alice Cooper
Light of Day – Joan Jett and the Black Hearts
Back in Time – Huey Lewis & the News
You’re the One That I Want – Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta
Oh Yeah (Indian Summer Version) – Yello
Weird Science – Oingo Boingo
Pretty in Pink – The Psychedelic Furs
(Don’t You) Forget About Me – Simple Minds
St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion) – John Parr
The Secret of My Success – Night Ranger
I Am the One and Only – Chesney Hawkes
I’m Free (Heaven Helps the Man) – Kenny Loggins
Beetlejuice Theme – Danny Elfman
Underground – David Bowie
Never Ending Story – Limahl
I Will Never Love Again – Mark Knopfler and Guy Fletcher
In Your Eyes – Peter Gabriel

Weekly Mix #64 – The Band Down Under (Download)

Eucalyptus – The Presets
House Music – Kikumoto Allstars
Murder in the Daylight (Van She Tech Mix) – Mandy Kane
We Have Tomorrow – PNAU
Bright Neon Payphone – Cut Copy
No Accident – Car Crash Set
Twenty Thousand Leagues – Midnight Juggernauts
Come Back Lover – Charlie ASH
Another Runaway – Ladyhawke
Survive – Van She
We Are the People – Empire of the Sun
Kids in Space – So I’m Joe
Into the Chaos – Howling Bells
Happy As Can Be – Cut Off Your Hands
Fire Fire Fire – Dappled Cities
Streets of Your Town – The Go-Betweens
Devil Was In My Yard – The Sleepy Jackson
A Trick of the Light – The Triffids
You Don’t Have to Be a Prostitute – Flight of the Conchords
Brunettes Against Bubblegum Youth – The Brunettes
Little Possessions – Andrew Keese and the Associates
Footsteps – Mercy Arms
Mr. Somewhere – The Apartments
From Her to Eternity – Nick Cave

Weekly Mix #65 – Don’t Steal Cookies From the Library (Download)

New Life – The Wannadies (Original: Depeche Mode)
Psycho Killer – Huw (Risque) with Pravda (Original: Talking Heads)
Jump Into the Fire – LCD Soundsystem (Original: Harry Nilsson)
Trash – Apoptygma Berzerk (Original: Suede)
Sound and Vision – Franz Ferdinand (Original: David Bowie)
A Forest – British Sea Power (Original: The Cure)
Mack the Knife – The Psychedelic Furs (Original: Kurt Weill)
Lions After Slumber – The Veils (Original: Scritti Politti)
The Jean Genie – The Dandy Warhols (Original: David Bowie)
Friday I’m in Love – Glo-Worm (Original: The Cure)
Suspended in Gaffa – Ra Ra Riot (Original: Kate Bush)
Girlfriend in a Coma – Noah & the Whale (Original: The Smiths)
Walk Away Renee – Elliott Smith (Original: Left Banke)
“Heroes” – TV on the Radio (Original: David Bowie)
Kangaroo – Bat For Lashes (Original: Big Star)
At Your Best (You Are Love) – El Perro Del Mar (Original: The Isley Brothers)
Oh! You Pretty Things – Au Revoir Simone (Original: David Bowie)
Love Will Tear Us Apart – Honeyroot (Original: Joy Division)
Mad World – Gary Jules (Original: Tears For Fears)
Borderline – The Flaming Lips (Original: Madonna)

Weekly Mix #66 – Lick My Battery (Download)

Tupac Robot Club Rock – Filthy Dukes
Laser Laser – Neo Tokyo
Dude, You Feel Electrical – Shout Out Out Out Out
Rotwang’s Party (Robot Dance) – Giorgio Moroder
Robot Rock – Daft Punk
Guitars Are Overrated (Neo Tokyo Remix) – The Robot Disaster
Naked – Alice in Videoland
Neon Generation – A-ux
The Girl and the Robot (Chateau Marmont Remix) – Royksopp
Electric People – Ruede Hagelstein
The Robots in My Bedroom Were Playing Arena Rock – Softlightes
Electric Barberella – Duran Duran
You Killed My Robot Friend – Nyhlin
Rodney’s English Disco – Helen Love
I Wish I Was a Robot – Das Wanderlust
Garden of Love – Clor
Electronic Germany – DJ Hell
I Love You (Miss Robot) – The Buggles
Robot Man (Hot Chip Remix) – The Aliens
Computer Love – Glass Candy

Weekly Mix #67 – Unplugged (Download)

Chains – Sons & Daughters
Meds – Placebo
Those Things I Do – Protocol
Flowers – Emilie Simon
Cherub Rock – Smashing Pumpkins
The Magic Position – Patrick Wolf
Mr. Brightside – The Killers
Bluebeard – Cocteau Twins
Grace – Jeff Buckley
You Love Us – Manic Street Preachers
Walk Away – Franz Ferdinand
Beware Our Nubile Miscreants – Of Montreal
Home – The Cinematics
Weightlifting – The Trashcan Sinatras
Spit It Out – IAMX
Don’t Know Any Better – Puressence
Skeletons – Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Heroes – Twiggy Frostbite
Sun Gangs – The Veils
Monster Love – Goldfrapp
Help I’m Alive – Metric

Weekly Mix #68 – The London Underground (Download)

London’s Mine – White Rose Movement
Disappearing Act – Jonny Cola and the A-Grades
The Rest For the Wicked – Soho Dolls
Too Good For Hollywood – Simon Indelicate
Visitors (Stephen Hague Remix) – frYars
Anyone Fancy a Chocolate Digestive? – The New Royal Family
Round the Rim and Back to Him – The Firm
It’s a Kick – Monocle Rose
Pump Up the Volume – Art Brut
Fun is For the Feeble Minded – The Indelicates
I Love You – The Boyfriends
Supine on the Astro Turf – Fosca
City – Truck
Rambling – Small Crew
A Week Away – Spearmint
Chandelier – Morton Valence
Mise en Scene – The Melting Ice Caps
Ballerina – Kingfishers Catch Fire
Two of the Beatles Are Dead – Keith TOTP
Tesco is Evil – Tom Rosenthal
The Town – Vanilla Swingers

Weekly Mix #69 – Nouvelle Vague (Download)

See You Shine – Alcian Blue
Love Your Shoes – Furniture
Statue of Liberty – XTC
Reward – The Teardrop Explodes
Veronica – Wreckless Eric
Less Than Zero – Elvis Costello
Let Her Go (12″ Mix) – Strawberry Switchblade
One More Colour – Jane Siberry
Marcia Baila – Les Rita Mitsouko
Hanging on the Telephone – Blondie
Away – The Bolshoi
City of Fun – The Only Ones
Into You Like a Train – The Psychedelic Furs
Waiting For a Miracle – Comsat Angels
Birds Fly (Whisper to a Scream) – The Icicle Works
No Tears – Tuxedomoon
Coitus Interruptus – Fad Gadget
The Wrong Road – The Go-Betweens
The Thief and the Bride – Mary Goes Round
Bringing Home the Ashes – The Wild Swans

Weekly Mix #70 – 2009 0.5 (Download)

Heads Will Roll – Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Light Skips Cross Heart – Filthy Dukes
The Great Shipwreck of Life – IAMX
Fist of God – MSTRKRFT
Jump the Gun – Midnight Juggernauts
No You Girls – Franz Ferdinand
1901 – Phoenix
Beautiful Losers – Stuck in the Sound
Young Adult Friction – The Pains of Being Pure of Heart
Wake Up – Sliimy
French Navy – Camera Obscura
You Can’t Get It Back – Gentleman Reg
Anything Other Than Kind – Butcher Boy
The Smack of Pavement in Your Face – Shirley Lee
Journal For Plague Lovers – Manic Street Preachers
Battle For the Sun – Placebo
Parallel Lines – Junior Boys
David – The Radio Dept.
Daniel – Bat For Lashes
When I Grow Up – Fever Ray

Weekly Mix #71 – Summer of ‘09 (Download)

English Summer Rain – Placebo
Summer – Shy Child
Rollercoaster – The Jesus and Mary Chain
Beach Party – Air France
Half Mast – Empire of the Sun
Summerdreamer – The Daysleepers
Barbecue – Orange Juice
Sound of Summer – Art Brut
Lorca and the Orange Tree – The Mummers
Summertime Clothes – Animal Collective
Honey in the Sun – Camera Obscura
You Wear the Sun – The Delays
Summerside – Adorable
Like a Summer Rain – Ladybug Transistor
Summer Shakedown – Slow Club
Last Summertime’s Obsession – Trembling Blue Stars
Summer Days – Euros Childs
Serenade – The Soda Stream
Sunshine Makes Me High – The Guggenheim Grotto
Summer Wind – James Dean Bradfield

Weekly Mix #72 – Let’s Dance the Blues (Download)

Zero (MSTRKRFT Remx) – Yeah Yeah Yeahs
I’m So L.A. – Mynx
Dance to Our Disco – Punks Jump Up
Kiss ‘n Fly – Surkin
Vulture – Patrick Wolf
Where Have the Club Kids Gone – The Mystic Underground
The Things That Dreams Are Made Of (Kissy Sellout Mix) – The Human League
Bulletproof – La Roux
Taken Away (Frederick Carlsson Remix) – Digitalism
Audacity of Huge – Simian Mobile Disco
1901 (Fabian Remix) – Phoenix
Body Packer – Love-Fine
See the Light (Calvin Harris Remix) – The Hours
Neo-Violence (Shazam Remix) – The Tough Alliance
Smack My Bitch Up – The Prodigy
Chinball Wizard (Cadence Weapon Remix) – The Wet Secrets
Listen to the Hiss (Tiefschwarz Remix) – DJ Hell
Beep Beep Beep – Tiga
Hazel – Junior Boys
Fixin’ to Thrill (Don Diablo Remix) – Dragonette
Tiptoe – Goldfrapp

Weekly Mix #73 – Souvenir of Canada (Download)

1000 Cigarettes – MSTRKRFT
Magic Fantasy – Dragonette
Bits & Pieces – Junior Boys
Untrust Us – Crystal Castles
A Century Old – Duchess Says
Young Hearts Spark Fire – Japandroids
Body of Years – Mother Mother
Mutiny, I Promise You – The New Pornographers
Benediction – The Weakerthans
Jagwagger – Archivist
Hate Then Love – The Dears
Solipsism Millionaires – The Most Serene Republic
Ocean of Noise – The Arcade Fire
Alive Until Saturday Night – Hexes & Ohs
Mimi on the Beach – Jane Siberry
Say It’s All Over – Paper Moon
Falling Back – Gentleman Reg
Counting Stars on the Ceiling – Stars
Corbeau – Coeur de Pirate
Nice to Know – Andrew Spice
Fish Water Desert Trapeze – Allegories

Weekly Mix #74 – Tous les garcons et les filles (Download)

One Minute to Midnight – Justice
Crescendolls – Daft Punk
Tie Me Up Tie Me Down – Huw (Risqué)
Polly (Chateau Marmont Remix) – Koko Von Napoo
Gwendoline – Housse de Racket
Maison Klaus – Chateau Marmont
Love Your Enemy (Kill Your Friends) – Birdy Nam Nam
Miss You – Thieves Like Us
Cool frénésie – Les Rita Mitsouko
Night – M83
Remember – Air
Zapruder – Stuck in the Sound
If It’s Not With You – Phoenix
Comme tu les aimes – Dani
Les sucettes – France Gall
Kiss and Kill – Mary Goes Round
Je n’attends pas plus personne – Francoise Hardy
L’antiquitié – Stone
Poupée mécanique – Die Form
Sandcastle – Little Nemo
Ces petits riens – Serge Gainsbourg and Catherine Deneuve

Weekly Mix #75 – Hearing Double (Download)

Help! – The Damned (Original: The Beatles)
Punk Boy – Ash (Original: Helen Love)
You’re the One That I Want – Hyperbubble (Original: John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John)
My Way – Polysics (Original: Frank Sinatra)
How Soon is Now? – The Psychedelic Furs (Original: The Smiths)
Are Friends Electric? – The Dead Weather (Original: Gary Numan)
Feels Like Heaven – Happydeadmen (Original: Fiction Factory)
Shoplifters Of the World Unite – The Black Tulips (Original: The Smiths)
Together in Electric Dreams – Nixon (Original: Philip Oakey and Giorgio Moroder)
Open Your Heart – Beki & the Bullets (Original: Madonna)
Train in Vain – Kirsty MacColl (Original: The Clash)
Sleepyhead – The Mummers (Original: Passion Pit)
Why Don’t You Find Out For Yourself – The Killers (Original: Morrissey)
Young Parisians – The New Royal Family (Original: Adam and the Ants)
Open Your Eyes – Soho Dolls (Original: Lords of the New Church)
The Con – Popular Damage (Original: Tegan & Sara)
Straight to Hell – Emm Gryner (Original: The Clash)
Femme Fatale – Big Star (Original: The Velvet Underground)
Use Somebody – Bat For Lashes (Original: Kings of Leon)
Cosmic Dancer – Morrissey (Original: T.Rex)

Weekly Mix #76 – Magnetic Poetry (Download)

The Last of the Famous International Playboys – Morrissey
The Last Significant Statement to Be Made in Rock ‘n Roll – The Indelicates
What the Housewives Don’t Tell You – Luxembourg
Perfect Skin – Lloyd Cole & the Commotions
Fat Children – Jarvis Cocker
A Complete History of Sexual Jealousy (Parts 17 to 24) – Momus
The Past is a Grotesque Animal – Of Montreal
Secret Crush on Third Trombone – Fosca
Drum Machines Will Save Mankind – Mikrofisch
Interview – Simon Bookish
You Should All Be Murdered – Another Sunny Day
lit. – Archivist
Disneyfied – Eugene McGuinness
The Upper Classes – The Auteurs
Falling In Love With Myself Again – Sparks
Please Sir – Wild Beasts
Giant Bicycle – Tom Rosenthal
Midfielding – Midfield General and Noel Fielding
Rambling Through the Avenues of Time – Flight of the Conchords
A Third of My Life – Spearmint
My Chemical Romance Saved My Life – Esiotrot
Barricade – Stars

Everyday is Like Sunday, Except for Blue Monday and Ruby Tuesday, and…Well, Friday I’m in Love: Weekly Mixes #70 and #71

I apologize for being AWOL for a considerable time – work and real life has gotten in the way. Not to mention the daunting task of writing that Manics review; in a way, I felt just as intimidated writing it as the band probably felt recording it. Hopefully, it was worth the wait (I’ve had the album since a week after its release, but couldn’t find time to sit down, have proper listens and put my thoughts down). I will try to make up for the lack of posts by doing a post omnibus of reviews this week and maybe even next. And to start the catch-up process, I’m posting two weekly mixes this week. The first is called 2009 0.5, and it takes in a selection of some of the best songs of 2009 so far, especially those from albums that I didn’t have time to post about. Bear in mind, I still have a few reviews coming up this week that would definitely be included in my top albums thus far, but which I decided not to include in this mix.

Heads Will Roll – Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Light Skips Cross Heart – Filthy Dukes

The Great Shipwreck of Life – IAMX

Fist of God – MSTRKRFT

Jump the Gun – Midnight Juggernauts

No You Girls – Franz Ferdinand

1901 – Phoenix

Beautiful Losers – Stuck in the Sound

Young Adult Friction – The Pains of Being Pure of Heart

Wake Up – Sliimy

French Navy – Camera Obscura

You Can’t Get It Back – Gentleman Reg

Anything Other Than Kind – Butcher Boy

The Smack of Pavement in Your Face – Shirley Lee

Journal For Plague Lovers – Manic Street Preachers

Battle For the Sun – Placebo

Parallel Lines – Junior Boys

David – The Radio Dept.

Daniel – Bat For Lashes

When I Grow Up – Fever Ray

The second mix is called Summer of ’09, and it is quite simply a summer mix. Despite the fact I don’t like it too hot, and I may have a vampire-like aversion to the sun. Listening to summer in an air-conditioned room is a great option.

English Summer Rain – Placebo

Summer – Shy Child

Rollercoaster – The Jesus and Mary Chain

Beach Party – Air France

Half Mast – Empire of the Sun

Summerdreamer – The Daysleepers

Barbecue – Orange Juice

Sound of Summer – Art Brut

Lorca and the Orange Tree – The Mummers

Summertime Clothes – Animal Collective

Honey in the Sun – Camera Obscura

You Wear the Sun – The Delays

Summerside – Adorable

Like a Summer Rain – Ladybug Transistor

Summer Shakedown – Slow Club

Last Summertime’s Obsession – Trembling Blue Stars

Summer Days – Euros Childs

Serenade – The Soda Stream

Sunshine Makes Me High – The Guggenheim Grotto

Summer Wind – James Dean Bradfield

Everyday is Like Sunday, Except for Blue Monday and Ruby Tuesday, and…Well, Friday I’m in Love: Weekly Mix #19

It’s been feeling like it will never be summer where I am, but I decided to make a mix for it anyhow. Summer isn’t my favourite season, mainly because it’s too hot and sunny – I often become an indoor dweller through the three months that we actually have a semblance of summer. Not to mention I don’t enjoy the prospect of donating my blood to mosquitoes (after a few hours out in a friend’s backyard this weekend, I already have six bites on my legs, which had been covered with thigh-high socks). I prefer travelling if I can, but this year, my summer is devoted to finishing my MA thesis, and so I must toil, otherwise unemployed, trying not to scratch my mosquito bites.

So, I’ve made a mix to raise my spirits. It seems many artists like to include “summer” in their song titles – I suppose, for most people, summer is a time of rest and celebration. In many respects, summer has gone the way of Christmas for me, meaning it used to be hugely exciting and wonderful as a child, but as I grew up it just lost all its magic. I’m going to include several songs that are rather twee in nature and finish it off with some more danceable electro tracks. I’m going to call it Summer of ’08.

Another Sunny Day – Belle & Sebastian

Summershine – Strawberry Whiplash

Summer Swirl – Bouquet

Summer Days – Phoenix

British Summer Time – The Boyfriends

Sunny Afternoon – The Kinks

Mr. Blue Sky – ELO

A Summer Chill – This Is Ivy League

Le soleil est pres de moi – Air

Swim – Ambulance Ltd.

Summer Babe (Winter Version) – Pavement

Holiday Hymn – Orange Juice

Beach Bum – Flowers Forever

Pool Side Music – Bridge

Pacific Palisades – Ash

White Palms – Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

Noisy Summer – The Raveonettes

Hot in the City – Billy Idol

Summer Party – Breakbot

Heatwave – IAMX