Four LP Limit

I'm starting to buy into the concept put forth by one of The Word guys either Dave Hepworth or Mark Allen a few years ago that all you really need or indeed actually want is only four albums from your favourite bands and singers. I mean am I ever really going to listen to every single one of my James Ferraro, Ariel Pink, Lou Reed, Swans or Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds albums ever again? I would say that's a hard no. 

Do I ever listen to any Rolling Stones LPs outside of Beggars Bangquet, Sticky Fingers, Let It Bleed & Exile On Main Street no...

...or Cocteau Twins outside of Head Over Heels, Treasure, Blue Bell Knoll & Heaven Or Las Vegas nope...

...or Sonic Youth outside of Bad Moon Rising, Evol, Sister & Daydream Nation not really...

Royal Trux: Cats & Dogs, Sweet Sixteen, Thank You and yes I do sometimes listen to Twin Infinitives. Recently though I've finally succumbed to the insane charms of Accelerator which I thought was crap when I first heard it in the 90s.

...or Scott Walker with Scott 3, Scott 4, Tilt & Bisch Bosch. I mean maybe some Walker Brothers tunes and very occasionally The Drift.

Kraftwerk outside of Autobahn, Trans Europe Express, The Man-Machine & Computer World is unnecessary now or hang on maybe I'd swap out Computer World and put Radio-Activity in instead. I guess it's really just the first three listed then innit.

Mark Kozelek with Down Colourful Hill, Rollercoaster, Ocean Beach and Benji.

Steely Dan Can't Buy A Thrill, Countdown To Ecstasy, Pretzel Logic & Aja but then again I've been listening to Nightfly recently so now I'm wondering if I need to get a copy of Gaucho or The Royal Scam which I hated upon initial listen.

It's gonna be a bit tricky reducing Miles Davis's classics down to just four though. I'll give it a crack: Bitches Brew, Big Fun, Agharta, Dark Magus, Get Up With It, Live/Evil. In Concert, Black Beauty, Pangea... oh well that's ten and only from his electric period which is only one of his eras.

Autechre seems easier Tri Repetae, Chiastic Slide, LP5 & Cornfield. No worries.

...and Boards Of Canada only have three great albums so...

...and Radiohead have none.

I mean I've got a stack of Can cds but I rarely listen outside of Tago Mago, Ege Bamyasi, Future Days & Soon Over Babaluma.

Bowie seems like it might be tricky but lets see - Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust, Station To Station and Low at the moment but I am fond of at least five of his other albums.

With The Flaming Lips I never listen to anything but Hit To Death In The Future Head, Transmissions From The Satellite Heart, Clouds Taste Metallic & The Soft Bulletin and really in the last 20 years it's just those last two 90s classics.

Siouxsie & The Banshees' top four The Scream, Kaleidoscope, Juju & A Kiss Inside The Dream House are the only ones I ever really liked so... 

Bardo Pond is also easy because I only ever rated four of their cds Bufo Alvarius, Amanita, Lapsed and Dilate.

Depeche Mode is a bit trickier but the four would be Some Great Reward, Black Celebration, Music For The Masses & Violator. Haven't listened to Ultra since the 90s and really when it comes down to it I only ever watch the live One Night In Paris dvd. I mean I've been obsessed with that video since the 00s, probably watched it over 50 times. That's kinda funny to me because Dave and Martin are often cringe-y dorks during the concert but I can't help but love it, In fact I think I love it more because they are cringe-y dorks. 

Cutting down Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds to just four albums seems absolutely sacrilegious. In the last ten years it has really only been Ghosteen that I've listened to but my favourites from high school in the 80s remain Your Funeral My Trial and Tender Prey and for the 90s you can't beat the now surprisingly underrated Henry's Dream and the brilliant Let Love Love In. I gotta say though of the 18 records they've done 14 are absolute classics in my book. 

I did solo Lou at the top so I should be able to give Swans a crack. Lets see: Children Of God, The Great Annihilator, White Light From The Mouth Of Infinity and The Seer. But that's a problem innit as it's missing the debut Filth and their original swansong (er, sorry) Soundtracks For The Blind. Maybe because I played Children Of God to death during my youth I'd put Soundtracks in instead. I'm much more likely to listen to Soundtracks, The Glowing Man or To Be Kind than Children these days.

AC/DC rule: Dirty Deeds, Powerage, Let There Be Rock and Highway To Hell. Sorry I'm Bon Scott era all the way baby.

*Most rock and or roll is pretty cringeworthy and down right embarrassing when you get down to it. I mean it's silly innit but we love it. 

**My favourite thing at the moment is watching this daily karaoke live stream on youtube from a tiny pub in Liverpool. It is just the greatest, most fascinating entertainment I've found in the last coupla years. I just love how fearless, confident, unselfconscious and joyous these Scousers are.

Lynsey De Paul ~ Sugar Me

[1972]

Get mesmerized by the sultry soundz of Lynsey De Paul. 

Jaunty piano led hazy erotic grooves with spank me drum machine intrusions, steamy organ and some gypsy violin.

There's just something about this... 

...a mood... 

...a vibe... 

...an atmosphere...

What is she even saying and who really cares...

...stirring...

The Rain The Park And Other Things · The Cowsills

[1967]

One of those vaguely familiar tunes you know you've heard before but can't quite place who or what it is, maybe its on a cd compilation of sunny psychedelic 60s stuff you've got in a dusty old box somewhere that you haven't played since the 90s. Who knows. Then suddenly you're deliberately listening to it and you realise it's an absolute sunshine pop banger: A baroque bubblegum classic. Right up there with I dunno The Free Design and way better than anything The Left Banke ever did. A toppermost poppermost tune from a family band back in the 60s. 

A magical mirage of a track that's alwayys coming and going, ebbing and flowing, conjuring up then dissipating just like the girl in the song. Did it even happen or was it all just a beautiful dream?

Jon Byron - Simple

[1976]

An AM treasure indeed.

The soft rock lounge soundz of Jon Byron's Simple is just what you need right now. Warm middle of the road countrypolitan vocals with a sprinkling of Fender Rhodes and some smooth sax-a-muh-phone. 

Nice. 

*Shout out to Lolvalstein the only guy on the internet who reviewed Byron's New Horizons LP. 

Alan Parsons Project - Sirius + Eye In The Sky

SEGUE SONGS PART 7 or 8 or something....

[1982]

Ok we're back to segue songs and here's one, well two, that I wasn't aware of as being integral to each other. I mean I know Eye In The Sky from the radio when I was 10. I didn't have the album though so I only realised it had an interlinked tune attached to it recently. Of course you have to get the album to experience the Sirius/Eye Of The Sky conjoined twins experience and once you've heard it like that it's wrong to hear one without the other ever again. 

This now goes into the Space Debris Segue Songs Hall of Fame along with other great tunes joined at the hip as previously mentioned like I'm Your Boogie Man/Keep It Comin' Love from KC & The Sunshine Band, Donna Summer's I Need You/Working The Midnight Shift, INXS' Face The Change/Burn For You, Palace Of Brine/Letter From Memphis by The Pixies and The Pale Saints' Sight Of You/Time Thief. I'm sure there's a million more. 

I was thinking you never hear this anywhere anymore in Australia but apparently in America the future synthwave sound of Sirius is well known because it is used a lot at professional and college sporting events and has subsequently been used in many ads and movies.

The Eye In The Sky single did not chart in Britain but guess what despite only making it to number 22 here down under it was unsurprisingly a number 1 smash in Canadia. Those Canucks had very specific taste and knew where it was at.

Boards of Canada - You Retreat in Time and Space

[2026]

Wait for the 2:46 moment when the cosmic new age ambience gives way to pure Boards Of Canadia nostalgic loveliness... those unmistakeable off kilter synth melodies that we will forever treasure these legends for. I mean this could be a lost BOC tune from the year 2000. 

I listened to the whole new album tonight. I'm not having the cargo cult/quasi religious experience some of these others are having. In fact some of the tracks downright sucked. I'm happy to stick with my BOC era as 1995 to 2005. I was only 26 in 1998 when Music Has The Right To Children came out and that was such a fresh and cool cd. And as previously mentioned Geogaddi, released a few years later, is in my cranky old deranged mind the greatest cd of this millennium. You can't really replicate that era and feeling, however You Retreat In Time and Space is a pretty good lil' tune so there's that.

*This music opinion is subject to change in the future time immediately after this post is posted! I damn well reserve the right right to change my opinion as it's probably wrong at this juncture innit.

Manchester City FC - Funky City

[1972]

Now for some smoov laid back funk from Manchester City FC. No actual strikers or midfielders or goalies playing on the instruments here, its actually the fellas from 10CC doing one v funky Meters-esque jam. 

Quite prescient as Manchester did indeed become a very funky city.

*Funky City was the b-side to Boys In Blue (see below)

[1972]

I'm Australian and haven't followed English soccer since the 90s and don't know a hell of a lot about it. Is this Manchester City's club song like in AFL where Collingwood have Good Old Collingwood Forever and they sing it after a victorious game and have done for eternity or is this just a one off novelty that probably got sung on the terraces in the 70s. Who knows?...

You'll Always Find Me In The Kitchen At Parties - Jona Lewie

Terry Dactyl & The Dinosaurs - Sea Side Shuffle [1972]

A novelty accordion led zydeco-y tune cashing in on Mungo Jerry's In The Summertime vibe written and performed by eccentric Jona Lewie.

You'll Always Find Me In The Kitchen At Parties - Jona Lewie [1980]

Here is Jona Lewie eight years later performing under his own name with his perennially overlooked synth-pop pub-rock classic. 

A record that sounds like nothing else. A one off.

I haven't heard this since the 80s but I guess somewhere in the back of my mind I thought this was a UK Squeeze tune. Did Squeeze have a song about a kitchen? Anyway my 8 year old brain wasn't that far off the mark as this is aesthetically somewhere between Ian Dury and Human League. 

Dejection to delighted all in the space of three minutes. The downbeat brown talk singing and dark synthwaves are evocative of drear times times in Britain but there are also bright shiny synths, hilarious lyrics, lovely female backing vocals and an upbeat change up in the song's story that counteracts the sonic despondency making this peculiar paradoxical tune totally irresistible. I mean its all a bit of a laugh innit. Look out for jaunty synth break in the song after he scores a bird in the kitchen at a party thus becoming chirpy, its mental.

"She was into French cuisine but I ain't no Cordon Bleu"

Rewind! 

Ron Robert - The Price

[1983]

This unknown synth country jam is pretty surprising as I don't think I've  heard anything quite like it. Outlandish synth and wide screen twangery in a new wave country folk style with a classic rock lead break. The Price sounds like its influenced by Wall Of Voodoo. Makes me wonder why nobody in the Hypnagogic scene ended up going down this path. This could have been the national anthem for synthwave country. Maybe there's a micro-genre that I just don't know about. 

*Virtually no info about this guy on the interwebs. This is the only video of Ron Robert's on youtube. He's not listed on Discogs or Rate Your Music however NTS has one sentence on him which tells me he self released this in 1983. I'm guessing he had an album called Elaine or single of which this was the b-side. Who knows? Then there's the unknown lady singing, who is she? The whole thing could even be fake. It's kinda cool to be this mysterious in the oversaturated digital information age.

Petula Clark - Don't Sleep In The Subway

[1967]

Our Lady of light entertainment with her pretty insane yet lovely slice of baroque pop. It's symphonic, it's pop, it's disjointed, It's cinemascope epic, It's post-Pet Sounds pop perfection. 

The disorientating Don't Sleep On The Subway, penned by songwriting legends and married companions Tony Hatch & Jackie Trent, is a high point in a career of many highlights for Petula. 

Gotta be one of the weirder tunes to make it to number one here in Australia. 

Brian Bennett - Chain Reaction

Brian Bennett - Chain Reaction [1978]

A strange yet beautiful journey into disco. Some funky shit right here folks. I wonder if this ever got played out. Before mutant disco, disco was already mutant making that future genre obsolete before it was invented.

Brian Bennett - The Investigator [1975]

Here's some of the coolest crime funk ever from the guy who played the drums in The Shadows. This library music jam turned up a few years later in the British cop show The Sweeney. 

Apache - The Shadows

[1960]

To get to Telstar you had to have this first. Still sounds sleek and modern, fucking great stuff. I'm wondering if there is a world of Shadows that I've missed out on. I know there's a wide wonderful world of drummer/composer Brian Bennett out there in theme tunes for sports shows, sit-coms, porno and crime dramas. He even played drums on some Walker Brothers and Olivia Newton John records as well as recording the space-age synth-disco-funk cult classic Voyage: A Journey Into Discoid Funk (1978). The other guys in the band though I know nothing about, I mean my old man had some Shadows records but I never paid them much attention. Was this their one great golden moment or...

Apache - Hot Butter [1972]

A year before Incredible Bongo Band made it their own Hot Butter did my favourite version of Apache. It's an outrageously futuristic proto-techno space age electro jam. Add N To X were never this awesome!

Telstar - Tornadoes

[1962]

Before the British Invasion Telstar rocketed up the charts everywhere. This was an even more modern invasion from the British Isles

I feel like Joe Meek must have gone "I really like the futuristic synth-y organ bit in Del Shannon's Runaway. So why don't we do an entire tune in this deliriously upbeat fairground anthem style but even more so." And Meek and The Tornadoes did and it was historic and we're still talking about it today.

A gift to seaside fairs, carnivals, sideshows and amusement parks across the world to this day.

Open Mind- Magic Potion (1969)

[1969]

THE scuzzy drug fuelled sound, the sonic revelation and ace riff-o-rama that preempted Black Sabbath, Hawkwind, Spaceman 3 and all your favourite things that have proto, neo & stoner at start.

A relentless rock'n'roll rocket!

Magic Potion: Yes Please.

Please sir, can I have some more.

Love Sculpture _ Sabre Dance

[1968]

Didn't know this tune til the other day when I began reading Will Hodgkinson's book In Perfect Harmony (2022). My dad had Dave Edmunds records, which I didn't hate, but he didn't have this one. 

This is a blast. The past, present and future all rolled into an energetic metallic rock'n'roll rocket of a space rock surf jam. 

Have I the Right · The Honeycombs

[1964]

Another rockin' pop tune with an unhinged quality. It threatens to go full mayhem but somehow its reigned in. Joe Meek does all sorts of studio trickery to make this insane and electrifying.

Stomping!

Number One in Australia and Canaidia baby!

Maximillian - The Snake

[1961]

The dude Max Crook who played the Musitron, an early synthesiser, on Del Shannon's Runaway did this instrumental that became a classic at mod discotheques and northern soul shindigs. Crazy funky sounds and hand clap-mania! 

Pretty cool. 

Del Shannon - So Long Baby

[1961]

We all love Del Shannon's debut 1961 seven inch single, the international smash hit Runaway but what about his nasty unhinged third single So Long Baby!  It is insane, relentlessly bitter, noisy, bizarre, gleefully spiteful and just brilliant. 

[1961]

Okay okay despite how many times you've heard it you really can't go past this instant slice of pop perfection where rock'n'roll met synthetic electronics for the first time. 

It's the toppermost fairground anthem and the ultimate jukebox selection. That mental space age musitron (a synth prototype) break is unmissable and exciting as is Del Shannon's vocal performance where he goes from rough'n'raspy to falsetto. The mysterious existential lyrics are set to an uncommonly euphoric tone making it the rave anthem of 1961.

Surprisingly still incredible. 

Turn it up baby!

Tape 05 - Boards Of Canada

[2026]

Boards Of Canada - Tape 05

Gotta say, sounds better than anything on the last record which was pretty disappointing. Tape 05 isn't so much the idyllic or even the deliciously eerie Boards Of Canada sound, it's more on the ominous tip and then there's a harp! There's even a hint of anthemic post-rock here. I kinda don't even wanna contribute anything to the discourse because just shut up everyone, I hate all your dumb and boring opinions and speculations and theories and breakdowns and lame youtube channels. Sometimes I think half these twits are just marketing nerds in it for the obscure advertising campaigns... 

In 1998 they were my private electronic duo. Maybe I want it to be just like it was in 1998 when my mate, an electronic music fan, a so called aficionado, didn't even care or buy the cd after I told him Music Has The Right To Children was the best thing in its field since Quique or Selected Ambient Works Volume II and the best album of the year. Astonishingly it didn't make Wire Magazine or Melody Maker's best 50 albums of 1998 lists! Simon Reynolds didn't even review it. I wasn't ever on the bloody internet so I was oblivious as to whether dorks were on there talking about it or not on their message boards and what not... so Music Has The Right To Children was my private little joy. It was just me, my discman and the glinting memory-delic Boards Of Canada with their oscillating off-pitch analogue synths and hypnotic beats. Glorious.

Smokes Quantity [1998]

The sound of my malfunctioning brain trying to conjure meaningful long lost memories but only getting nostalgic glimpses of a sci-fi wildlife documentary from the 70s that I probably didn't star in as a child but then again...

Dion - He's Got The Whole World In His Hands

[1975]

A lo-fi decelerated tape woosh of drug fucked suffocating wall of sound gospel so off colour, desperate and deranged it'll make you forget that you hated this song before this version. 

Delirious wonky pop genius.

Play it again Sam!