Boy's Own Recordings - BOIX 7

After a couple of weeks off the chronicling of the influential dance label returns with a tune that will be familiar as the seventh release on the label is really just the remixes of the BOIX 6. Under the listing in Discogs there are four mixes two by Farley and Heller and one each by Steven 'Silk' Hurley and Slam, however the one I have is actually a white label catalogued BOXDJ 7 which only has the Farley and Heller mixes with an insert that states :-

" They (sic) are some injustices in life and one of 'em was this recor's failure to dent the '40'. Its (sic) too good a record to ignore however and fresh mixes from the Slam boys and Terry Farley + Pete Heller will ensure that this time it will happen! Heller and Farley's Boys Own Dubbier mixes will add power to your floor!"

That statement was less than prophetic, as although the mixes are double plus good they still failed to "dent the 40" and those outwith the housier clubs and not Boy's Own completists remained ignorant of the track and mixes.

DSK - What Would We Do (8 Minutes of Madness mix)

DSK - What Would We Do (Extra Heavy Club Dub)

DSK - What Would We Do (Slam mix)

It is Max's birthday today and unfortunately my son has just discovered gangster, I refuse to call it gangsta, rap. The house was shuddering to the sounds of NWA last weekend! There he is pictured to my car if I didn't have to shell out for him. Here's one of his favourites at the moment.

N.W.A. - Express Yourself

It's Friday . . . Let's Dance

We're about two thirds of the way through the track listing to Channel 4's film about Ibiza 90 and of the seven left two have been featured here once before, one I don't have and the one I'm going to feature today I don't particularly like that much in it's original form,  the remixes I can listen to even though they are very much of their time. SA over at the Bagging Area just last week in a post on the Farm remarked that Spartacus was one of the most disappointing albums that he had ever heard. I on the other hand wasn't disappointed due to fact that I didn't have much of an expectation in the first place. I really liked the cover of Stepping Stone but Groovy Train left me cold. That's not exactly right, something about the track irritated me, still does and to this day I can't put my finger on what but it's probably the lyrics or Peter Hooton's delivery on it or both. I can narrow it down that far as I don't mind the Rocky & Diesel mix which virtually eliminates the vocal track. This is the mix I'm going to post which isn't the onethat features in the film but still you all probably have the original anyway.

In the film there is scene where the members of the Farm are leaving the airport in Ibiza carrying there luggage with one guy carrying a black bin liner full of his gear. When I was serving my time there was a forklift driver whio went abroad two or three times a year and Geordie always maintained that that is how he travelled  with the minimum of clothing in a bin liner. His reasoning being that it would be harder to lose a bin liner but if his luggage was lost he wouldn't lose much sleep over it.

Tomorrow is number 1 son's birthday. The BMX has been assembled and we will be celebrating by hopefully seeing the Diamonds victorious over local rivals Albion Rovers as it is derby day at the Excelsior Stadium where fourth place. A victory for Airdrie would see us back up to third in the league. although that would be joint third with the Rovers.

Have a good weekend people.

The Farm - Groovy Train (Rocky & Diesel mix)

Memories

I found a pen drive the other night that was full of photos that I had forgotten all about, pictures of high days and holidays. There was also a folder titled Latitude, documenting our ill fated trip to the festival in 2011.

One of the highlights of the two days we lasted was seeing Cat's Eyes late on the first evening on a stage in the middle of the woods. It was a rather cool setting for a gig which fitted the vibe of the band perfectly. One of the highlights of the set was a cover of the Pink Floyd classic Lucifer Sam.

Cat's Eyes - Lucifer Sam

Am I Missing Out On Something?

I'm not sure whether I should be embarrassed about the confession I'm about to make or not but here we go. I have never seen The Big Lebowski. I bring this up as over the years I have heard people raving about it in articles and on the radio and each time it comes up I think ' I really should get round to watching that dvd'  but then never do anything more about it. I think that this is due to the fact that nobody has personally recommended it, I have never heard anyone in my circle of friends and barely tolerated other raving about it.

Anyhoo, it cropped up again on Saturday when I was listening to the Huey Show on 6Music, Huey was doing a vinyl only show playing songs from the listener curated crate of the perfect record collection and he said that the best soundtrack album according to those who listen on a Saturday a.m. was The Big Lebowski and he played a Bob Dylan track. This sent me off to the computer to check out the track listing for the album and I have to say that I wasn't that impressed, some good tunes but I could think of loads better. But when I thought about it I could only come up with one where I loved every track on the album and that was The Big Chill, the first one that popped into my head was Pretty In Pink but that was ruled out due to the inclusion of inxs and Belouis Some and the omission of possible the best song from the soundtrack and without doubt the finest scene in the film, Try A Little Tenderness. That's the problem with most soundtracks there's always some pish that you have to skip, probably Some Kind Of Wonderful comes close but again, it's fucked up by a horrible remix of The Hardest Walk.

I've kind of gone off topic here, I suppose I'm wondering is The Big Lebowski worth shelling out a few quid on ebay for the DVD or not?

Here is a track, the original of which is on The Big Lebowski soundtrack and I like it but I do prefer Sharon Jones version.

Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings -  I Just Dropped In To See What Condition My Condition Was In

Please Stay

Please Stay by the Ivories was a monster northern track originally released on the local Chicago label Despenza and was then picked up by the Wand label in 1966 was pressed. released and then for some reason withdrawn making copies as impossible to find as Gideon Osbourne's conscience.  A price tag north of  $3000 dollars paid for one copy. Mine, sadly is the re-release from 2010 on the Soul 7 label.  You can understand why it could command such a price tag it is a storming tune, relentless beat aching strings, pleading vocals all the ingredients for a top dancer.

The Ivories - Please Stay

Keeping It Peel

I spent the last week or so wracking my brain about what to post for Keeping It Peel day and it appears that I need not have bothered as it doesn't look like anybody else is marking it this year in my little bit of the internet.. I will go ahead anyway, as on Friday it suddenly dawned on me when I opened the rather heavy package from Piccadilly records containing Central Belters the box set tracing twenty years of Mogwai. Twenty years, it doesn't feel like that amount of time has passed since I scoured Glasgow for a copy of New Paths To Helicon Pt1,  well it isn't really it's only eighteen years as that came out in 1997 but it is a long time. Anyway Mogwai recorded four sessions for the most important DJ this country has ever produced and some of the tracks can be found on the excellent Government Commissions compilation. I thought that I would post the amazing version of the tune mentioned above from the band's final session which came live from studio 4 at Maida Vale on 21-05-03.r.

I really miss Peel, that laconic wit, the records at the wrong speed and the mental "what the fuck is that?" tracks you would never hear anywhere else. No one else comes even close.

Mogwai - New Paths to Helicon Pt1

oh and I nearly forgot

John Peel - The Fall

It's Friday . . . Let's Dance

Shall we get back to the soundtrack of A Short Film About Chilling then. Classic is a term that gets bandied about much too often by me anyway but today's tune is a classic and instantly takes me back to 1990 when I didn't have a care in the world and this record spent a lot of time on my turntable. It has also been posted to death so I don't expect that it will be a revelation to many of you but give it a listen it's still as fresh as a daisy to these ears. I must admit that when I do put this on I invariable put the flip side but last night I put on the a-side which is just as good. Another early example of the genius that is Andrew Weatherall.

No home game this week and no more painting, not sure what I'm going to do with myself tomorrow.

Have a good weekend people.

The Grid - Flotation (Subsonic Grid mix)

Wait

The Kills haven't released anything for a while, the last thing being an eight track 12" on Jack White's label. The album released prior to this, Blood Pressures contained one of my favourite songs of the past five years in Baby Says and the album is very good but for me like the two albums before it isn't a patch on on the duo's debut, Keep On Your Meanside.  Today's track was included on that album but was also included on their first ever release, the Black Rooster ep released in 2002.

The Kills - Wait

Top Tip: Never Leave Your Bedroom Window Open

A week or so ago over at JC's bit SWC was regaling us with the further adventures of Our Price Girl which got me to thinking of the rather turbulent relationship I had on and off from the age of 16 to twenty three and one incident in particular, one of many I should add.

As I may have mentioned once or twice,  I was part of a Scooter Club and when we all congregated in the same place of a weekend it could get quite messy. This didn't happen as often as you would think in a small town as we all frequented different pubs,  the reason for that I'm not quite sure of now but Stiff and I drank in the Woodpecker and the others elsewhere. I also had a girlfriend, "I" who thought very little of scooters and even less of the crowd that rode them, so the fact that they drank in different watering holes from us was quite fortunate really. She did get on with Stiff but couldn't stand his girlfriend so there was always friction there. On a few occasions the worlds of "I" and the scooter club collided usually not resulting in a positive experience.

Just outside of Lanark at the bottom of the Brae was the Clyde Valley Hotel I am told in it's day quite a plush place but by 1986/87 had seen better days. It did however have a great big function suite.  Every so often there would be a disco held there and the owners were rather lax when it came to the licensing laws and the purchasing  of alcohol by those under the age of eighteen making the nights very popular and also ensuring that chaos ensued. Another reason why it was so popular with the scootering fraternity was the sympathetic dj who would play whatever songs we requested and also any records we took with us without questioning. Most of the time "I" didn't go to these nights as it wasn't really her seen but sometimes she would attend if her sister or her friends were going. On one such occasion we met up there and for the first hour or so everything was great, until I had had a few drinks, started socialising with Jake, Mic and the rest of the crew and kind of forgot about "I" until I saw her on the dancefloor with a guy that had gone to school with us and never hid the fact that he fancied her. I will admit now that this did slightly irk me but at the time I ignored it knowing that that would annoy "I" a great deal. oh, the games people play. So for the next wee while she danced and talked to this poor deluded guy who thought that he was "in there". After a bit I got bored and decided to call it a night, so ambled over to "I" and asked her if she was coming up the road to which she replied that she was having a good night and was staying to the end, "Fair enough" I replied and bid her good night and embarked upon the couple of miles home,on foot,  all up hill I hasten to add. I got in the house and went to bed.

I was woken out of my comatose state with a searing pain coming from the right side of my face and when I opened my eyes all I could see was "I's" raging face, she then called my a bastard in the most aggressive whisper I have ever heard before lamping me once more and explaining that that was for leaving her in Kirkfieldbank. I tried to reason with her which was quite difficult when whispering so as to not wake up my parents. Then the question dawned on me and I asked her, "how did you get in here?" she motioned to the wide open window which I had opened slightly before retiring. Now I was more impressed than annoyed as you see we didn't live in a bungalow and my bedroom was on the first floor.

When I forgot my keys I used to hop up onto the gate attached to our garage and climb up with one foot on the garage wall and the other on next door's gable end and once on top of the garage I would creep along the 18" ledge that ran from the front of the garage to the end of the front of the house and then climb in my bedroom window. I was now totally in love with the girl as she had obviously taken note and felt so strongly that she did it herself. She on the other hand was still absolutely raging.  It took me about another half hour to calm her down and I still couldn't get my head round how this was all my fault. I said at the time that I would walk her home but she had decided to stay and I knew that she would get up the road with her sister, however I thought better of pointing this out to her. Eventually she said.

"You'll need to walk me up the road then"

"No way" I replied" "I was happily tucked up in bed before you barged in . And by the way you will need to go back out the way you came in"

I managed to duck the punch that came my way at that point and decided that there was no need to be petty and relented. We crept down the stairs and out of the house without waking up the mater and pater,  a major result as I was not sure how I would have explained this as my dad was still up when I arrived home on my own.. I am pretty sure that there was no goodnight kiss when I got her home but we were reconciled if not the next day then soon after. One thing that can be said for the relationship is that it was never dull.

Here is a track from a guy that always brings back memories of those days as "I" really liked Billy Bragg but she probably gave Brewing Up and the other Bragg records I bought her to Oxfam along with the other records she had of mine. A fact that she relayed to me with great relish  after we eventually split up for good.  A story for another day maybe.

Billy Bragg - A Lover Sings (alternate version)

Thank Fuck That's Finished!

At last the mammoth task of the painting of the living room is finished. I always hate lifting the dust sheets as I usually find a patch on the carpet/floor where paint has seeped through without me knowing. It's not the fact that there is a mess that gets to me, as I take that as a given, I am not the tidiest of painters, after all it's something I only do every bloody holiday not ever day to earn a living after serving a three year apprenticeship,  it's the withering looks which every now and then turn into disappointment  that I receive from the other half that really piss me off. However this time no noticeable spillages,  a few spots here and there but nothing even half major. The only thing is that after inspecting the floor and especially the bit that the three seater sits on I've realised that the floor seriously needs varnishing as the part that sees the traffic has virtually no sheen left on it at all. But that will have to wait as I don't intend to start that this side of Christmas.

The big downside of this home improvement shit is that I have had little, wait,  make that absolutely no time to spend thinking about blog post. I know it's hard to believe but some effort does go into the posts here. So here is a track from Stephin Merritt's Magnetic Fields that came on the ipod while I was involved in covering myself in emulsion and white gloss. That's another thing,  who the fuck thinks up the name for the "shades" of paint these days. The one that I was liberally spreading over the walls was called Mizzle, a mixture of mist and drizzle, what that looks like,  your guess as good as mine, not the same colour that our living room walls now are that's for sure. Fucking Mizzle! Anyway, the song  comes from 69 Love Songs which has been rather neglected in my household over the past couple of years a situation that will be rectified this weekend when my music room, the room L refers to as the dining room is empty of all the shit from the room across the hall.

The Magnetic Fields - Let's Pretend We're Bunny Rabbits

Brush Strokes

This song has been going through my head since Wednesday. You probably won't get the connotations if you are under thirty five and/or outside the UK. Suffice to say I have spent another fucking holiday painting!

Dexy's Midnight Runners -  Because of You

Carey Lander

I was deeply saddened to read of the death of Carey Lander on Monday, not that I knew her personally but I have been fortunate to see Camera Obscura on quite a few occasions and they always struck me as "good people", the sort of people that you could talk to and have a laugh. I first heard of Carey's illness a month ago from a tweet from Lauren Lavern where she put up a link to the JustGiving page  that Carey had set up to fund research into Osteosarcoma, a very aggressive form of bone cancer which she had been diagnosed with in 2011.

My deepest condolences go out to her family and friends.

Camera Obscura - Country Mile

Camera Obscura - French Navy (Vic Galloway session)

It's Friday . . . Let's Dance

Not had time to do anything been too busy this week, so the tracks from A Short Film About Chilling will continue next Friday. Instead here is my favourite mix of a New Order song, surprisingly it's not by a certain A Weatherall but his Boy's Own  muckersTerry Farley and Pete Heller.

I'm off down south to visit my brother on Mersea island until Tuesday so nothing to see here until Wednesday at the earliest.

Have a good weekend people.

New Order - Regret (The Fire Island mix)

Another Cover

I bought this 12" single a few weeks after RSD last year around the time that people realised that they weren't going to make a killing on the records that they greedily bought that day, and started replacing their exorbitant starting prices with best offer on ebay. I didn't buy the live Cults 12" on the day as it was way down my list and was something that would have been a nice to have, as I really do like the duo 's sound ( I know,  another female fronted duo), but not an essential purchase.I checked ebay, as you do in the days after rip-off Saturday and there were chancers looking for north of forty quid for the four track 12" single which made it all the more sweeter when I eventually got it for less than it was selling for on the day. When it arrived I was pleasantly surprised that it had a cover version of the brilliant Motels song, Total Control on it which is pretty good.

Cults - Total Control

Conductor Dub

I'm over the water in Belfast for a couple of days but I have had some time to do a couple of posts. No, no need to thank me.

Over the past couple of weeks I have been flogging the Sexwitch album to death and I know that I am not alone, SA, Walter and the Swede have also been mesmerised by this collaboration between Natasha Khan, Toy and Dan Carey. I'm not going to post anything from the album just go out and buy it you won't be disappointed. I thought that I would post a previous collaboration between Dan Carey and Toy when he got his hands on some tracks from the band's second album and dubbed them up.

Toy - Conductor (dub)

More Garage Rock

After the relative success of last week's piece of US 60s garage. I thought that I would post another and see how this one goes down. Again it is a cover  by a forgotten bunch of kids, this time from Winsted, Connecticut. This interpretation of the Chris Kenner/Wilson Pickett classic at the time didn't even make it to a release. A handful of acetates were pressed and sent to local radio stations who responded with complete apathy,  a bit like you lot with Red Crayola a couple of weeks ago. So the acetates lay gathering dust until Crypt Records from Hamburg decided to press up the single along with Cry For The Trees recorded during the same session.

Btw - there is nothing wrong with the recording, there was no fluff on the needle when I was ripping the vinyl. It's supposed to sound like that. Brilliant isn't it.

Tyme  - Land Of One Thousand Dances

You Don't Love Me

I was out on the scooter yesterday for which I think may be the final time this year, it being a bit baltic an' all. When I was out it got me thinking back to when I was eighteen until about twenty one when this was the only form of transport I had and I would be out riding it in all weathers going to work. There was one extremely scary day when I was caught in a blizzard on the A8 going to Stepps one morning. The last ten miles or so being completed at about 10 miles per hour with my feet down most of the way. The scooter was left in one of the containers that night and a lift home arranged with my father, Bit I digress,

Today's bit of soul was a big favourite on the scooter scene when I was a lad ad just missed out in being included in my northern top fifty feature a wee while ago. It also features at number 7 in Kev Roberts original Northern Soul All Time Top 500. I didn't know that much about this record and after consulting the above tome Kev didn't appear to know much more, he suspected that it was a "blue eyed" soul song, So I dug a little deeper, well typed the group's name and title into the search engine as you do and voila the true story of the record can be found here. This song was huge in Wigan and was first played covered up as being by Moses Smith in early 1974.

The Epitome of Sound - You Don't Love Me

Mellow Sunday

This is a lovely piece of pop music from BMX Bandits. Just the thing for a Sunday Morning.

BMX Bandits - Doorways

Boy's Own Recordings - The Twelves #6

The sixth release from Boy's Own Recording is a kind of departure from the previous releases as it is a much more Housey affair very much a New York Garage vibe. DSK were the production team of Lawrence Davis. Joseph Lewis Stone and Paul Klein. This single was originally released in the US on Jack-Pot Records in the UK there was also the obligatory remix 12" single with mixes from Steve 'Silk' Hurley.

DSK - What Would You Do (Original mix)

DSK - What Would You Do (Hurley's Extended Remix)

DSK - What Would You Do (Hurley's House mix)

It's Friday . . . Let's Dance

Most of the music included in A Short Film About Chilling as you would expect was rather laid back the bpm count pretty low, in fact during the film one group of party goers interviewed were quite peeved off as they expected it to be more uptempo as one  girl said "you can't really blow your whistle to it all the time can you". Hold Me Back by German producer Westbam doesn't really fall into this category the BPMs are high for the time on this proto trance production which had been released the previous year. It always makes me want to play French Kiss by Lil Louis when I hear it for some reason.

I'm off to see Kid Wave tonight and then the football tomorrow, who would have thought that we would be going to the football in the sunshine in October. It's about as likely as Airdrie sitting fourth in the league.

Have a good weekend people.

Westbam - Hold Me Back

That's A Bit Indie Dance

During my extended weekend last week I got a chance to really listen to stuff that I have had for ages but have had only given the most perfunctory of listens along with the Sexwitch album which I can thoroughly recommend. One such record is The Time and Space Dub Machine mixes of the Australian psychedelic duo Jagwar Ma from spring last year. This is a sprawling 5 track ep of music that transports you back to the time when "Indie Dance" was the music genre of choice and I could be found either in a field or a warehouse on a good weekend. The pick of the bunch is the Levitational mix of The Throw.

Jagwar Ma - The Throw (Levitational mix)