‘Three Sides’ – Sidi Bou Said (1993)

"You don’t see me,

The way I do."

Dear Michael.

Enough with the Disney picture discs and Michael Jackson storybook albums!! I really don’t expect to see this sort of twaddle when I irregularly visit your site as a distraction from doing my timesheets.

I demand you get back to holding aloft obscure indie records that I have no wish to hear. Ideally, anything limited to under 1,000 copies, with a hand-made sleeve. And if it has a delightfully shoddy, shot-in-a-back-garden-with-zero-budget video, that would be a bonus.

And I then expect you to accompany that with a tale of acute embarrassment or woeful misadventure from 25 years ago. Ideally, with some goth stuff thrown in. Why don’t you tell us about that girl you knew who collected obituaries from the local papers. The one you took on a date to see ‘Teen Wolf’. How’d that work out?

  

I only say these things for your own good.

La la love you,

Cherished reader, no 34.

‘Oh, The Guilt’ – Nirvana (1993)

"She seems to think,

She seems to breath.

She takes a week to get over it."

"That singer you like has been found dead."

My mum is in the kitchen. (I know, what a cliché.) Ironing. (Cliché overload!) I’m walking through to the living-room. It’s a Friday evening. (Little bit of scene setting for you there.)

"What singer?" Me. Curious.

"I can’t remember his name." Continues ironing.

Ok. Slightly concerned now. "Is it Robert Smith? From The Cure?"

"No, I don‘t think so." Ironing continues.

"Morrissey? Is it Morrissey? He's the one with the flowers." I’m holding the counter now for support.

"I really can’t remember his name. I just remember thinking that you like him."

Sighs. This is 1994. Pre-Internet (in my home, anyway – we’d only just got a videoplayer). There’s no hopping online for an instant answer. It must be someone big if they’re putting it on the news. That most likely rules out Mark E Smith and Andrew Eldritch. But I’m going to have to wait the best part of another hour until the 10 o’clock bulletin to find out. Or so I thought.

I actually heard the news of Kurt Cobain’s death just minutes after, when I raced up to my room and dialled through the radio stations. (Yes, dialled – did I mention it was 1994? And we’d only just got a videoplayer?) It seemed every station was running tributes. And wildly speculating about Kurt’s final hours. And then speculating some more. Which still continues to this very day.

It was hard to turn the radio off that night. And when I did, it was only so I could dig in to my record collection and let Kurt’s voice sing out. The weekend continued like this as the first pictures of Kurt’s garage were released and fans held candlelight vigils in Seattle parks.

On the Monday, I had my first day in my very first job. It felt like stepping in to a whole new world. In more ways than one.   

RIP Kurt Cobain (20 February 1967 – 5 April 1994)  

      

Spotify linky :

Nirvana – Oh The Guilt

‘Push Th’ Litte Daisies’ – Ween (1993)

"It's all you,

And it's me too."

Writing about ‘Yon Yonson’ yesterday got me thinking about this oddity that also leapt into my life one Saturday morning through The Chart Show.

It ticks all the indie band boxes of the day. Home-made, black and white video, with some stop-motion animation and idiot dancing? Yep. Ludicrously affected vocals? Double, yep. Painfully infectious chorus? Triple, yep.

But at its heart, it’s just a wonderfully unabashed love song. That happens to be hatstand bonkers. And includes The-Worst-Ever-Use-Of-A-Prince-Sample™ on the video version below. Fact.

Spotify linky:

Ween – Push th' Little Daisies

‘Jewel’ – Cranes (1993)

“Sweet dreams,
I remember it all.
I remembered it all.”

Let’s skip back to this very day 17 years ago. I’m sitting in a small portacabin behind the local library for the beginning of a week-long Jobplan Workshop. Sitting down next to me is a man who will read the Sun newspaper and then disappear at the mid-morning break, never to be seen again. The dozen of us that remain will be taught the wonders of writing a business letter and talking to a potential employer on the phone. Through it all, I will be sitting here thinking only of lunchtime, when I can go down the Rock Box to hunt down the three new limited edition 7-inch singles from the Cranes (including a sparkling Robert Smith remix). Perhaps that’s why I’d been on the dole for two years at this point.

I’ve often wondered how different my life would be if I’d pursued other things as obsessively and devotionally as records. Would I have found a job sooner? Possibly. Would I have had a string of relationships instead of shelves of alphabeticised vinyl? I doubt it. Would I be happier? Who knows.

What I do know is that so many of my memories are linked to music that I can’t imagine my life without it. Even now, looking back at Monday 13 September 1993, I clearly remember the feeling of arriving back to the portacabin after lunch with my bag of Cranes singles. And new CDs by The Cure (Show) and Nirvana (In Utero) also out that day. And the debut Curve album. (I love days like this when you get a flurry of new releases - more than you can sensibly listen to in a day.) I then spent the afternoon longing to go home when I should have been learning about overcoming hurdles in the crowded job market. But it all worked out in the end: it only took me another year to find my first job.

Spotify linky:

Cranes – Jewel

On this day … 1993 (aged 22)

Scribblings from my diary …

“Star Trek 2 on TV early evening. Lara’s friend Geoff walks through the living-room and seems to think it’s Star Trek 3! The younger generation, eh?.”

‘Girl From The North Country’ – Bob Dylan (1963)

“If you’re travelin’ in the North Country fair,
Where the winds hit heavy on the borderline.
Remember me to one who lives there,
For she once was a true love of mine.”

In 1993, I went to court for a crime I didn’t commit. That’s because I was on the jury. (See what I did there? I made you think one thing and then I … oh, never mind.)

I wasn’t surprised to find myself called up for jury service. It was my second year on the dole, so it made sense to make me useful – and I was the cheap option too, as they only had to pay my train fare. I was surprised I got picked for actual service though. Who’d want the shoegazing raggedy indie kid wearing the trench coat in the middle of a Spring heatwave? Well, it turned out the accused did as he looked exactly the same as me. Grrr …

I don’t think I’m allowed to write much about those two days I spent at Guildford Crown Court. Other than that at one point it looked like we were going to be re-enacting ‘Twelve Angry Men’, but I’m no Henry Fonda so we all got home in time for ‘Neighbours’. I can tell you what I did in my lunch hours though, and that was buy Bob Dylan albums from the HMV up the high street. I’d only just started listening to Dylan and ‘Girl From The North Country’ was the first song of his to make me a fan. It’s still my very favourite, for its beautifully poignant lyrics. You can’t hear this song and not yearn for someone who’s left your life. Seventeen years on, I still think of the same person. I’ll let you know if that changes.

Spotify linky:

Bob Dylan;Johnny Cash – Girl From The North Country

(Turns out there's very litte Dylan on Spotify and I could only track down this version for you - as much as I love both Dylan and Cash, this really pales in comparison to the original.)

'Katy Song' - Red House Painters (1993)

“Can’t go with my heart,
when I can’t feel what’s in it.”

My first boss nearly didn’t hire me. It probably didn’t help that I refused to get my hair cut for the interview (even though it was for my dream job as a scriptwriter), so I went in resembling Edward Scissorhands. Fortunately, it was just before Christmas, so I told him it was for panto and I’d have it cut in the New Year.

The real reason though was that apparently I reminded him of the scriptwriter he’d just fired. Who’d walked out of London Zoo with a penguin under his arm. Yup, that’s right: a real, live penguin.

So the odds were against me. And, in fact, I was turned down at first. But the person they hired instead didn’t work out. So I got a phone call saying they were willing to accept my assurance that I had no plans to abduct any exotic birds and the job was mine. And there begins enough tales to stuff a spin-off blog …

Spotify linky:

Red House Painters – Katy Song