One of these is ‘Hey Matthew’ by Karel Fialka. A spontaneous clean-up exercise in our home office revealed my boxes of 7” singles, including this 1987 track, purloined from my dad’s collection before I left home. What seemed to me at the time to be a wacky synthpop gem actually reveals itself with maturity to contain a surprisingly serious message on the hopes and fears of the parent (Fialka) and his son (the track’s Matthew). Dad ponders on what his son might do and be when he’s older, while son ruminates on being a part of the A-Team, a train driver, a soldier and the usual litany of childish hopes.
Also in my earphones this week was the 1990 album Bona Drag by arch mopester Morrissey. This is classic Moz, containing a number of what I consider to be his best songs – ‘Piccadilly Palare’, ‘November Spawned A Monster’ and ‘Everyday Is Like Sunday’, easily the most perfect example of the former Smiths vocalist’s oeuvre and a track that has a towering, soaring quality that belies its bleak subject matter. Lyrics don’t come more descriptive than ‘This is the seaside town they forgot to burn down.’ Having spent a day recently at Newquay I can relate.
Occasionally I find myself not knowing what to listen to and so I play a game that I like to call iPod Roulette. I simply spin the click wheel, look away, then stop. Whatever I’ve alighted on is what I’ll have to listen to. It’s a bit like the random function but more fun.
Playing this yesterday, I found myself listening to Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s Experimental Remixes, which is, as its name helpfully suggests, a collection of slightly obscure remixes of some of the New York trio’s early songs, most of which come out having a hip-hop flavour (or is that ‘flava‘?). Given the involvement of Beck, Beastie Boy Mike D and Prince Paul, I suppose one shouldn’t be terribly surprised. The Blues Explosion are fantastic exponents of a unique blend of punk, funk and purist rock ‘n roll – read my fawning review of a live performance here.
Finally, I must mention the white vinyl, signed, 7” of Moby’s latest single ‘Pale Horses’. I paid £9 for this but discovered, after a call from the credit card company, that buying this from a site without the secure padlock symbol had actually resulted in around £1000 worth of fraudulent transactions as someone snatched my card details. I’m happy to pay a bit more for a signed item, but not that much. As it happens, the credit card company of course graciously removed the fraudulent transactions, after I which I found that the site I bought this from had only charged me a fiver. Result.
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