favourites iv

parte the fourth

although this is rapidly descending into a self-indulgent kevin costner-style vanity project, i`m quite enjoying trailing through my life and thinking about those albums that really stand out as having shaped my memories, or even my character in some way. there is a point to all this by the way. you`ll find out in the next post. anyway, this is probably the last of the `inbetween days` kind of stuff, and then i`ll get onto the more contemporary stuff which will hopefully stop you shuffling your feet in nervous embarrassment when you hear me talk so passionately about the next album, which just so happens to be, ah, eh, uh, um...

u2 - zooropa
i remember waiting in the car one saturday afternoon while my dad nipped into woolworth`s to buy the new u2 album achtung baby. sometimes when my brother would be playing at home, me and my dad would head out on saturdays taking the dog for a walk in remote country places, usually just hanging out and talking while he set up his equipment and waiting to photograph rare birds or whatever. but part of the fun was always listening to the music he played in the car. half of it i ended up despising (small faces, deep purple, stevie winwood, bob dylan) half of it undoubtedly had influence on me wether i like to admit it or not (kinks, big audio dynamite, mike oldfield). u2 riddle my early childhood, but had the next few minutes never happened, i`m always worried my cd collection may have slipped into the desolate wasteground that is the latest `now` compilation, mercury music prize winners and the soundtrack to `pulp fiction`. luckily my dad came rushing back, in the sunshine, hopped into the car, said "i heard this on the radio last night, son... listen to this!" pumped the volume up louder than any dad is technically allowed to, and as the car took off, the city faded away, the opening drum beats of zoo station kicked in, and THAT guitar intro followed, i had the shock of my life and was undoubtedly changed forever! fast forward two years, we`re on holiday in london, my mum and brother are off hunting for hi-tops at some market somewhere, my dad and me are flicking through a stall selling cheap bootleg cassette tapes from germany and there it is... "hey dad, isn`t that...?" "oh my god son! the new u2 album! and it isn`t even out yet! here`s your 50p mate. tell yer mum we`ll wait for her in the car". i don`t know if it was the fact even at that age i understood the concept of illegal material, or the fact it was such a cheap ass copy that sounded like it was recorded underwater, but sitting in that car with my dad a second time, on another sunny (london) morning, waiting for my mum and bro to catch up, and just listening to zooropa float in and out of nowhere remains one of the happiest memories of my life. and it changed my life in a completely different way than the last album had. i thought the lyrics were the most profound thing i`d ever heard, the title track being made up of slogans from advertising, babyface a song about a guy who falls in love with an actress he can freeze-frame on video tape, and numb well, almost like a manifesto, you can image the effect that had on an impressionable thirteen year old. ha ha ha. lots of people i know didn`t get the zoo tv thing at all, or think u2 are nothing but dumb corporate rock, but at that age i thought it was all just so damn clever. i`ll save my love for the zootv/zooropa concerts for another post. back to the album, the rest of that trip was soundtracked by it. we all came away with our favorite songs that in a way probably give you the simplest and easiest biography of my family out there... my mum liked somedays are better than others, my dad of course likes the wanderer, my brother still feels carsick when he hears babyface and thinks lemon is one of the most beautiful songs ever written. and me, it was always faraway so close despite the fact our bootleg tape ran it at half the real speed and i find the official cd version uncomfortably fast! another perfectly crafted ten song album, that just floats in and out like a dream and leaves you wanting more. this album should really be credited as zooropa by u2, brian eno and flood. devouring every last inch of the packaging and credits for hidden messages (of which there are many apparantly), zooropa is also the first time i noticed the importance of producers on albums, and personally i think it`s about time they started to get more recognition and credit among people other than music otaku, because even a shite band can sound amazing with the right people at the controls. if you don`t believe me, check out the aforementioned mercury music prize awards.*

* i know portishead won once, but that was in the early days. and the album pj harvey won for was just gash and an insult to her earlier work.

lush - spooky / slowdive - souvlaki
confession time: i was a teenage shoegazer! in between my love for vangelis and mo`wax headz being released, 4ad and the whole shoegazing scene came in and offered me a bridge. i`d made friends with the girl working at the local library who used to recommend me stuff that, looking back on it, was really a bit too sophisticated for my age and i`m not really sure i understand all the implications of it yet. anyway, i had spooky and souvlaki on either side of 90 minute cassette tape that i`d made my own artwork for, combining a piss-poor attempt at the anemone from the cover of former, and even worse line drawing of rachel the singer of the latter, and i thought it was the coolest thing ever! that`s one more thing i hate about mp3s… no chance slaving away cutting and folding card to make your own covers. anyway, anyone reading these posts must think my teenage years are torn between trying to justify bog-standard indie dirge as `deep`; and moping alone in my bedroom with the stereo up full when i failed. but i was an insomniac even as a kid and have lots of memories sitting up late, watching the rain and just listening to moody music drawing or teasing my cat or just writing letters or whatever. i liked this tape because both albums take you to a completely different world. it doesn`t really sound like music that real people could make. especially not british people. it sounds like the sort of weird filmic retro-future world you see in moebius comics and 2000ad. well, if those comics were primarily love stories... i don`t have either of these albums anymore, and as much as i want to hear them again, i`m worried they will never quite live up to my own memory of them.* lush`s for love and slowdive`s machine gun are still songs i sing to myself when i`m waiting for the bus at night or walking home in the dark when i find out i didn`t have enough money for the ticket.

*i remember listening to the morr music comp `blue skied n clear` for the first time before i realised what it actually was. and I was thinking, wait a minute, isn`t that... what the hell is this? i still find it difficult to listen to that comp these days for the nostalgia it brings…

here`s a picture of miki lush in a miniskirt... just because i`m the admin for this blog and can do what i want... complaints will be duly ignored...

curve - doppelganger
words can`t describe how much i love this album. i got a copy of it from one of my friends older sisters, with broken by nine inch nails on the other side. i was totally in love with her cuz she was cool and working and grown up, and everything that the girls around me were not. she introduced me to jesus and marychain and sonic youth and siouxie and the banshees and all that stuff...

anyway, i took it with me when i travelled through to dundee one time to hang out with this family friend who i was quickly beginning to despise now we were growing up. i must have been fourteen or fifteen at this point at dundee was a pretty far enough away place to be traveling to by myself. whereas my days were spent thinking about manga, chinese food and video nasties, my `friend` had a growing fascination with army surplus and `chicks` as he called them, but `hounds` is a word i would prefer to use. he took me into dundee saturday afternoon, to hang out in the shopping centre. i loved it because they had a newly opened virgin megastore with a place to listen to any cd/12” you wanted, and the complete series of twin peaks on video. but he kept coming in every five minutes, saying "come on we have to go" and i`d be like, "go where?" and it always turned out to be hanging OUTSIDE the virgin megastore with his bunch of obnoxious mates nervously trying to score with the usual crowd of nasty girls. i was having none of it, and kept disappearing back into virgin (ironic, huh?), and he would keep coming after me cuz i guess i gathered him extra attention being a new face or whatever. until it reached the point where we got so pissed off with each other i told him to fuck off, he punched me in the face and i ditched him to wander round the city by myself. i had no idea about dundee and got totally lost, but two great things happened that day. one was finding this old torn down church near a small park where all the goths and skaters and people i could actually be friends with hung out, and meeting a girl who was so much my type she eventually became my first girlfriend of sorts (as short lived as it was being two fourteen or fifteen year old kids living miles apart). the second great thing was not going to stay at his house for the night as arranged, but spending the last of my pocket money buying my own train ticket home and walking back in the middle of the night to anxious, and furious parents. and the only thing i had to keep me company that day was this tape of doppleganger, which i played for the first time as i walked away from my friend in disgust, crying and bleeding. i fell in love with the sound of it so much i played it over and over and never even made it to nine inch nails on the other side. i think toni halliday might still be my favorite singer actually, despite not really liking the last couple of curve albums. but every song on this is just gold, and once again the flood production is just mind-blowing. originally i was going to write about how garbage are just a complete rip-off of curve, but i guess i`m in a nostalgic mood today… anyway, the epilogue to this whole story is that having this tape on me, in my walkman, at that exact moment and taking the headphones out my ears to tell her what I was listening too was what initially sparked my girlfriends first interest in me. so doppelganger is an album given to me by a girl i was in `love` with, and passed onto a girl who fell in love with me… all in the space of one weekend. rather poetic considering the whole thing sounds like slow painful black death. but for me i listen to it and am just filled with hope and possibility.