Fades in Slowly

Long time no blog. I know, I know. I’m out of the habit, having been very busy with the old day job. I’m hoping to be able to set asides some quality time for the blog over the course of the next few weeks, so thank you for bearing with me.

Here are a few tunes to keep you going in the meantime.

July Podcast

The Who – Can’t explain
Roxy Music – Mother of pearl
The Fall – Bury (parts 1 and 3)
James – Not so strong
Nate Wize – Rock the Casbah (feat Ammoye)
Bob and Marcia – Young gifted and black
Scars on Broadway – They say
Elisa Luu – DG
Abner Jay – Cocaine
Stereo MCs – Deep down and dirty
PJ Harvey – Water
The Melodians – Rivers of Babylon
Siouxsie and the Banshees – Metal postcard
Data Select Party – The white bear
Dave and Ansel Collins – Double barrel
Attic – Peel session (10th December, 1980)

Back soon.

Wonderful stuff, thank you to bloggers delite for sharing this one. Me? I’m still snowed under with work (not volcanic ash) but hopefully will be able to resume normal, sporadic posting soon.

The Quadrophenia Demo

1. Unused Piano Theme (Demo)
2. The Real Me (Alternative Who Version)
3. The Real Me (Demo)
4. Four Faces (Who based on demo)
5. Love Reign O’er Me (Demo)
6. The Dirty Jobs (Demo)
7. The Punk And The Godfather (Demo)
8. I’m One (Demo)
9. I’ve Had Enough (Demo)
10. Bell Boy (Demo)
11. Cut My Hair (Demo)
12. Brr (Demo)
13. Drowned (Demo)

My dear friends, here is the final part of the festive countdown… I hope you’ve enjoyed listening to this chart as much as I have cobbling it together. My laptop is resisting all attempts to Peelify the chart, so at the moment there’s only the zip file download available. I hope to remedy this in the next few days. Enjoy the top ten and have a great year.

10 Bob Marley – Punky Reggae Party (Adam – Fades in Slowly)
09 The Boys – First Time (Stewy – Mr. obscure)
08 Head Hands and Feet - Warming Up The Band (Dave – Planet Mondo)
07 Gustav Holst - Saturn, The Bringer Of Old Age (Steve – Teenage Kicks)
06 Smoke Fairies – Frozen heart (Davy – Ghost of Electricity)
05 Morrissey – I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris (Adam – Fades in Slowly)
04 The Fall – Slippy Floor (Mark Mix) (Kris – Burning World)
03 Butcher Boy – A Better Ghost (Jim – Vinyl villain)
02 Bloc Party – This Modern Love (Adam – Pretending life is like a song)
01 Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Zero (Ed – 17 seconds)

I’m sure you’ve all had much better things to do, so you might have missed 50 to 41, 40 to 31, 30 to 21and even 20 to 11.

Now then, anyone remember The Price is Right?

Here is my pre festive season podcast…

Part 1 (download)

01 Too Soft – Sexy Plastic Girl
02 The Steps – Dagger
03 Phoenix – 1901
04 Julian Casablancas – Out of the Blue
05 Julian Casablancas – Left & Right in the Dark
06 DD-MM-YYYY- I’m Still in the Walls
07 Caught In Motion – On the Edge of a Dream
08 The Yellow Moon Band – Window
09 The Fall – Futures and Pasts
10 The Fall – Industrial Estate
11 The Fall – Mother sister!
12 The Fall – Rebellious jukebox
13 Kish Mauve – In my Kitchen
14 Fight Like Apes – Something Global
15 Great Lake Swimmers – Stealing Tomorrow

Part 2 (download)

16 Beck – Suzanne
17 Beck – Master Song
18 Beck – Winter lady
19 James Taylor – Country Road
20 James Taylor – Knockin’ Round the Zoo
21 James Taylor – Blossom
22 James Taylor – Sweet Baby James
23 James Taylor – Carolina in my Mind
24 James Taylor – Fire and Rain
25 The Raveonettes – The chosen one
26 Echo & the bunnymen – Think I Need it Too
27 Echo & the bunnymen – Forgotten fields

Never one to shirk away from a request to stick something on the blog, especially from a Peely compatriot, here is a Christmas card from Mr. Obscure.

Even more importantly, here are his new goodies, which you can get by clicking here.

I have a question for you all. I often eat dried fruits and hazel nuts in my office as this prevents me gorging on chocolate and is also quite good for you. Recently someone came into my office and helped themselves to a whole unopened bag of hazel nuts. Their intention wasn’t to hide this fact from me, they admitted that they hadn’t had time for lunch and knew I had such goodies lying around and that I don’t mind people helping themselves to the occasional nut or dried apricot. Nevertheless, they’ve made no effort to replace the bag of nuts nor do they appear likely to do so. I put it to you that frequently helping yourself to someone’s freely offered nuts is one thing, but taking a whole bag without replacing it is quite something else. A code of conduct, I feel, has been broken. Merely saying, ‘it was me‘ isn’t enough, I think you have to replace the bag. Am I, er, nuts?

Anyway, down to business. You haven’t had a reggae collection for quite a while and for that I apologize. The clocks have gone forward, I haven’t got any hazel nuts and winter is well and truly on its way, yes, even here in Istanbul winter is well and truly upon us. One thing that makes me chipper this time of year are a few tunes like this…

Ganja Reggae Vol. 1

1 Andy Capp – Herbsman
2 Glen Brown – Collie and Wine
3 Dice and Cummie – Free the Weed
4 Bob Marley and the Wailers – Kaya
5 Carl Murphy – Lick I Pipe
6 Aston ‘family man’ Barrett – Herb Tree
7 Max Romeo – My Jamaican Collie
8 Big Youth – Half Ounce
9 Leroy ‘horsemouth’ Wallace – Herb Vendor

Listen now…

Over the summer I got to read the excellent Iggy Pop biography ‘Iggy Pop: Open Up and Bleed’. As you can see from the picture above of my little one Ozan, it really was a cracking read. Anyone not familiar with the man’s music is in for a real treat, although he did come across as not being the most pleasant of men in the biography. Fair play to him, though: anyone who not only gives their permission to have their whole life laid bare in such a way, even putting the author in contact with many of the people who would help to paint such an unsavoury picture, deserves some credit. Whatever his faults may be, he certainly doesn’t have his head up his own arse.

I actually cobbled together the following mix of Iggay and Stooges stuff during the summer, only to forget about it comepletely. There is no track listing: if you’ve heard the songs before they will only be all too familiar to you and you should sit back, crack open a beer and enjoy; if you are new to James Newell Osterberg, prepare for your life to change over the course of the half hour you spend listening to this.

Half an hour with Iggy Pop

Listen now…

Invest in Iggy Pop: Open Up and Bleed

With a musical style notable for its contrast between the melancholic and the uplifting, Greenock’s My Latest Novel are a joy. Although I’ve only recently become aware of their magnificence, they have actually been around quite a while: Chris Deveney, Gary Deveney, Laura McFarlane, Paul McGeachy and Ryan King released their debut album, Wolves, in 2006. Their second long player was released earlier this year, the majestically titled Deaths and Entrances. Some songs require the listener to have been out in the world and have lived a bit before they actually fully make sense. The wondrous ‘I Declare a Ceasefire’ fits into that category… I implore you to listen.

I Declare a Ceasefire by My Latest Novel

Listen now…

The official site

MySpace

A bad case of the old swine flu has kept me a bit quiet recently, and although I’ve squeezed out a couple of short posts in the last couple of days, I’ve not been up to the job of blogging, truth be known. Well, as those of you who come here from time to time may well know, we have just seen the fifth anniversary of JP’s passing. Five years ago, someone who I took for granted would always be there, because he had always been there, suddenly was not. As ever, my good friend Steve, who geography dictates I may probably never meet, has put how I feel into words much better than I could (here).

Steve even does me the service of crediting me with starting the Peel wiki, which I did, but have subsequently contributed much less than many. Indeed, I often feel that there are thousands who are more justified in having a Peel blog than me, given the relatively small amount I do in preserving his legacy by converting crappy shoebox C90s into digital formats. My two boys keep me way too busy to dedicate as much time to the JP cause as I’d like: please accept this heartfelt excuse.

So, this is my little contribution: I hope you enjoy it and I will keep sharing the fine work of my fellow Peel enthusiasts in an effort to celebrate JP’s life and work.

70 songs (Vol. 7) (50mb)

Listen now…