On revisiting songs from your youth

1. The Boo Radleys: Upon 9th & Fairchild
What is it? The standout track from Giant Steps, an album which I've always found a bit of a disappointment - this is pretty much the only track from it that I've ever enjoyed listening to. So it dates from around 1993 and the brief indie interlude between shoegazing and Britpop, both of which the Boo Radleys tried their hand at (not particularly well in my view).
Why do you remember it? It was a fairly unusual thing in that context. First there's the title. Also, dub does not feature prominently in UK indie of the time - Primal Scream had some a couple years earlier, Slowdive a little bit later, but that's about it I think. I saw a band cover it once. I had just acquired a bass and the bassist did a good job. It looked like quite an exciting song to play.
How does it go? Thirty seconds of general guitar noise then feedback, which continues into an introduction of dub bass and clipped drums along to a clicktrack. Then a verse with same rhythm, distorted vocals on a depression theme, punctuated by some swelling feedback and a chopped, offbeat glittering guitar line. A couple of dropped notes take us into a rollicking chorus, but with the same distorted vocals, but now almost passionless and sounding frighteningly tiny ('this is my life too, this is my. life. too'). Verse-chorus again. False ending on a snare thwack, then thirty seconds revisiting the introduction, but with a more complex hi-hat pattern and - I'd never noticed til now on my new headphones - a sawing riff (not counterpoint, but the same rhythm as the bassline - I don't know what this is called) on a distorted double bass.
How does it sound now? It sounds fantastic, actually. I was going to criticise the vocals as weak (no worse than most indie stuff) but this absolutely fits the subject here - with the distortion, they're suitably uncomfortable. The bass sound is great, deep and rounded on the verse, nice and rangy in the chorus. The offbeat guitar on the chorus is very nice and clean, but the guitar in the chorus is a bit muddy - it's the kind that's fun to play, because you get a great distorted sound that hides your technical deficiencies, but it's a bit featureless on record. The mix is not great, I think - all the instruments sound at the front to me, except maybe the feedback - I'd like it to sound like it was recorded in an enormous cave. The coda is very nice.
Will you listen to it again? Yes.

2. Luniz: I Got 5 On It

What is it? The only thing I've ever heard from this lot, this was quite a bit hit in the UK in (I'm guessing) around 1995. I know nothing about them other than that they were from Oakland. I imagine the name was pronounced 'Loo-niz' with equal stress on each syllable. I remember Mark Goodier introducing them as 'The Loonies', which I'm pretty sure is all wrong.

Why do you remember it? I loved it at the time. Though I liked stuff like Regulate and Doggystyle, I was a bit po-faced to enjoy much hiphop. But I loved a few records, and they've always stayed with me, whereas I can't stomach much indie stuff now. This tune was an entirely personal thing, I'm not aware of anyone I know liking it or even being aware of it. I've certainly never discussed it with anyone.

How does it go? Kind of gothic gangsta rap. I suppose it's probably G-funk, but it's kind of cold and mechanical, rather than the looser Snoop kind of sound. It's extremely sparse, just a repeated three-note bass sample with an equally sparse high keyboard piece (almost like a chime sound) above it, plus a slow clattery drum machine line and a few other noises. Over this quite beautiful background the crew take turns to rap in praise of marijuana (though they call it by about forty different names during the four minutes it lasts). The title, I understand, is a reference to a $5 bag of the stuff. There's a sung chorus, which I presume is original rather than sampled.

How does it sound now? It sounds magnificent, really beautiful. Not dated at all. Actually, nothing I've heard recently from that era sounds dated to me (that's not much, admittedly). The rapping seems agreeably loose to me, I like the accents and the wordplay, and there are a lot of nice harmonic parts and odd noises to enjoy.

Will you listen to it again? I listen to it all the time.

It's interesting to me to look at a track from Giant Steps outside the context of the whole. This is one album that i listened to, and always evaluated, as a coherent whole. It was pecious to me then and it's still precious now. That track, as well as being one of the wonkier and more demanding tracks on the album, just feels like the calm after the storm that is "I hang suspended" almost like getting your breath back after a serious sprint for the bus and sitting back and getting things back into focus. Well, it's woozy all right, and not what was expected upon first listening. After the first track, you felt you were gonna get a poppy, upbeat album. After this track you didn't know what the hell you were gonna get, but you knew it was gonna be ambitious.

The way that Sice sings the line "jesus this room's so cold" is incredible!

I adore this album and this track is one of the highlights.

Will I listen to it again. Yes. Right now actually.

The Boo Radleys are enormously underrated.

3. Mansun: Comes As No Surprise

What is it? Track from reviled 1999 album Little Kix. This was Mansun's attempt to turn themselves back into a straight pop act after the all-over-the-placeness of the previous album, Six. Like most such attempts, it was pretty unsuccessful. Some of those tunes are ghastly.

Why do you remember it? I saw them a few times around this time, in a variety of contexts. I have a memory of being rendered breathless on hearing this one, but I can't be sure that I'm not embellishing that just a bit.

How does it go? A piano ballad, but with lots of different textures throughout. Opens in a whine of feedback before quickly becoming an acoustic guitar torch song, then in comes a piano with some beautiful dropped notes. There's some quite erratic fretless bass, then into the chorus. This is vocally quite a stretch, but the singer does a good job. The chorus is really huge-sounding. The second verse is piano-led, but with cool electronic beeps and squelches, and a pretty odd really fast synthetic percussion line laid over the top. There's another verse, this time with the really huge backing sound, then equally huge chorus and a sudden halt.

How does it sound now? Again, it sounds magnificent. Really lavish production, done well. There is a good range of sounds, especially a nice echoey synth in the verses and counter-melody in the chorus. Some of it is a bit odd, like the bass at the start, but it keeps the track interesting. I don't like some of the lyrics so much, there are a few jarring lines that don't scan so well, but the vocals are mostly buried so it's not too intrusive. The refrain I could imagine bellowing along to, were it a couple of octaves lower. The piano is simple, but quite beautiful.

Will you listen to it again? It's the kind of tune I can imagine digging out in winter, playing to death on a cold afternoon, looking out of the window as the frost forms, and then putting away again for another year.

To expand a little on Giant Steps, I did like the singles (I Hang Suspended is superb), but the weirder stuff sounded more like playing with the studio in lieu of having proper ideas. There are a few things on there that are barely even songs, to my ears. Upon 9th & Fairchild really got me, though, it was like they'd found a tune that most indie bands spent a career fumbling for, only to then decide to squeeze it into the chorus and add a pile of other interesting stuff in there instead.

(someone else can have a go now, that took me ages)

4. Daft Punk - Around the world

What is it? A pop hit from 1996. The song to blame for all the french touch revival shit still in vogue.

Why do you remember it? All through my puberty I was sort of immersed in a oscilating lesbian affair with a friend. She made the best striptease to this song, which in retrospective just seems awfully out of place, not what I'd call a sexy tune.

How does it go? Around the world, around the world. Around the world, around the world. Around the world, around the world. Around the world, around the world. Around the world, around the world. Around the world, around the world. Around the world, around the world. Around the world, around the world. Around the world, around the world. Around the world, around the world.
Around the world, around the world. Around the world, around the world. Around the world, around the world. Around the world, around the world.Around the world, around the world. Around the world, around the world.

How does it sound now? Has aged fairly well, though this is probably due to the world being stuck on its sphere of influence for 12 years now.

Will you listen to it again? Will probably hear it 368 times more before I die, even if I didn't asked for it.

that Luniz - I Got 5 On It always reminds me of Anthony Red Rose - Tempo

No long review here for now, but generally, after having had an FM Softsynth for a while, hearing the bass sound from DX7 on about 50 per cent of all late 80s songs is a bit corny. I now notice similarities in the bass sound that I did never notice back then, but that particular DX7 preset must have been the biggest cliche preset ever. Even more so than the Rhodes sound from the same synth.

Around the World is so a sexy tune.

not sure how anyone who was already a boos fan could have been disappointed by 'giant steps'.

^tru

The absolute best thing about Around the World is the funky bass from 1:51 to 2:38. I don't see how it could have been done, with the little slides, on a keyboard. It amuses me to think of a top session guy being roped in to play along to that for forty seconds

So it dates from around 1993 and the brief indie interlude between shoegazing and Britpop, both of which the Boo Radleys tried their hand at (not particularly well in my view). - so, so rong.

5. Sleeper: Vegas

What is it? 1995 single from Britpop also-rans. Wikipedia tells me they had eight hit singles and three top ten albums. The singer has since become an author. I hope she has found more to say than she did when she wrote this.

Why do you remember it? A bit of a false memory here, I fear. I remembered reading about this featuring a string quartet, and thinking that sounded quite an interesting idea (which is pretty damning of whatever else I was listening to at the time). So I bought it unheard. I don't recall listening to it much. I may never actually have listened to it all - there is no evidence of any strings thus far on the version I've tracked down.

How does it go? Opens in a little burst of backwards guitar, the kind of noise you'd hear in a black & white film where the character wakes from a dream to find he's missed an appointment. That's gone after six seconds and we're into the most middle-of-the-road britpop fare. It's mid-paced, strummy, the story of an average guy with an average life who dreams of some kind of escape from it.

How does it sound now? Horrible. Very, very flat. The vocals are buried in the mix, but there's nothing but strummed guitars to put in the foreground. A cymbal makes to the foreground towards the end too, and sounds like Gabriel blowing his horn by the time you make it that far. You can barely hear the bass. Only the occasional reappearance of the backwards guitar picks it up at all (the guitar playing generally is the best thing here and wikipedia also tells me that the guitarist has become a session player - that sounds about right, good for him).

The singing is very weak, and is in a kind of out-of-breath style but not amplified at all - so the effect is more of someone who's embarrassed to sing, talking their way through a tune. You can see why it's not amplified when we get to the chorus - the vocals are double-tracked and she's almost yelping on the other track, which is heavily treated presumably to make it palatable. The lyrics are Tracy Jacks-style, about an old guy who goes to Las Vegas to impersonate Elvis. I'm not sure why she's chosen this to sing about, other than to sneer at the guy. The climax of the song is any time he does something "and no-one stopped him", but there's no-one else in the song, so that doesn't make any kind of sense to me.

Aha! There's the string quartet now, they've been allowed four buried seconds at the end of the middle eight. I suspect they were supposed to soar out of the mix, but it's so muddy that it just doesn't work at all.

Will you listen to it again? No. It's a useful period piece for anyone who gets rosy ideas about britpop though.

6. Morrissey: The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get

What is it? Single from 1994's Vauxhall & I, an early example of Morrissey supposedly returning to form. Confusingly, it came out very soon after Your Arsenal, also a 'return to form' and one which no-one seemed to dislike. The title is far too long.

Why do you remember it? I don't, really. I do remember liking some of the glam stompers from Your Arsenal, but I've barely heard anything of his since then. I do remember it being a reasonably big hit, in the days before everything became a hit.

How does it go? It's a mid-paced semi-glam thing. Morrissey's some kind of figure from the target's past, giving warning that he's going to seep into his consciousness and haunt his dreams. This is seemingly as some form of revenge, but there's a pleading note to it as well ('let me in') that makes him sound a bit helpless.

How does it sound now? It sounds like it should be the theme tune to a Sunday evening ITV series. This isn't altogether a bad thing, but nor is it an exciting one. The production is quite pleasant - there's a loud Les Paul lead throughout and a nice descending line in the chorus, supplemented by what sounds like triangles or the high notes from a harpsichord or something in the left channel. The bass and drums are defined properly, which is a nice change after listening to Sleeper.

However, Morrissey's whole persona here is ridiculous. On paper he should be trying to do threatening or at least menacing ('beware, I bear grudges', 'you're asking for it'), but his sighs and swoons and the overall gentleness of the thing makes that impossible. You'd maybe cast Nicholas Lyndhurst in this kind of role, say as a beloved grandad come back to warn his hapless grandson from getting involved in a plot to hoodwink the local sweet shop. I doubt this is the effect Morrissey was going for.

To be fair, the singing is solid and restrained - although the unfortunate effect of sticking him right at the front is that the band sound above all like they're trying not to get in the way. This makes the playing seem boring rather than well-crafted, which is a shame. I imagine it would sound much better live.

Will you listen to it again? I don't see any particular reason to do so. But the trouble with revisiting these things in such detail is that you become quite fond of them, so I'll probably keep hold of it. I even found myself retrieving Sleeper earlier to check that I hadn't missed anything. I hadn't.

Nice thread. How do you pick these songs? On shuffle?

I started by doing it on shuffle, then realised that was going to produce a huge bias to the upside as I'm normally pretty ruthless about deleting junk. So the last couple were just unprompted memories while I was going about my daily business, then I came home and dug them out. No idea why these particular ones should have come to mind.

(anyone else should feel free to have a go, by the way, and there's no need to stick to my five questions. Moka's story is far more interesting than anything I'm likely to come up with)

7. Crowded House: Four Seasons In One Day

What is it? Track from their 1991 album Woodface. I'm pretty sure it must have been a single, because I didn't buy the album until years later and I already knew this one well.

Why do you remember it? Like I say, I didn't buy this for years, but the song had always stuck in my head for a number of reasons. Firstly, I liked it - I've always been a sucker for minor-key, understated music. Much as I admire 'Weather With You', it doesn't move me quite as much precisely because bits of it are so jolly. Secondly, I enjoyed reading a piece about the recording of it, the band having isolated themselves on a remote beach in New Zealand and done various interesting things in the process (wikipedia now tells me that this was actually the follow-up album, so that's a false memory. I'd like to read it again, anyway.)

Thirdly and most importantly, it dates from exactly when I first started getting properly interested in music. This initially meant looking for more obscure things, rejecting boring mainstream adult stuff, and seeking out sources that did same (believe me, I am not happy about this now). Screamadelica, Blue Lines and Loveless were getting all the attention around this period but, weirdly, I kept noticing Woodface appearing in unexpected places and scoring highly to boot. Nowadays that would be a screaming buy signal for me; then it was just enough for it to stick in my mind, which is a great shame. But bearing in mind that music was expensive and rare then, and I was poor, it was never likely to be any different.

How does it go? A layered introduction takes us into a gentle minor-key ballad. The lyrics are a reflection on mood and a promise of stoicism in the face of changing luck, using another weather metaphor that makes me think New Zealand must be a lot like Britain. The verses sound very dark, there's a bridge which takes you on a nice journey from resigned into uplifting, and the chorus is a promise of things getting better. There's a short organ/harpsichord solo in fugue, then back to bridge and chorus. The music matches the lyrics exactly, so you get three mood cycles from down to up and back. It's magnificent songwriting. And it's less than three minutes wrong.

How does it sound now? It sounds like one of the best things ever.

I said above that it was understated, and it's only now that I'm noticing how lush the arrangement is. There are tons of things in there - I can count at least six different instruments (shaker, brushed drums, double bass, piano, some kind of organ, acoustic guitar) being intoduced separately the ten seconds before the vocals come in, and that's not even the end of the layered introduction. There are other things too - mandolin, harpsichord, backing vocals, another organ, double-tracking - that are dropped in and out as the song demands. It's possibly the most beautiful song I know. The backing vocals have me almost in tears as I type this (which is even better than it sounds, as I'd been annoyed by blocked sinuses this morning and now they've cleared).

I'm also thinking that it makes Neil Finn sound like a pretty cool guy. On the one hand he won't compromise by removing the radio-unfriendly language from his hit single (how hard would it have been to write 'smiling as the ship goes down' instead?). On the other, he's secure enough that he doesn't feel any need to pander to fashion by roughening up his lovely song.

Will you listen to it again? Undoubtedly. There's plenty of good stuff on the rest of the album too.

less than three minutes long. Bloody hell.

I've always had a soft spot for Vegas... it's a nice choon eh, he said limply - but also she's not sneering, she's cheering for this guy who finally made it out of his drab life and into Vegas, not to become an Elvis impersonator but to win big in the casions.

I suspected I'd missed something in the lyrics, that's why I went back to it this morning, but the vocals are mixed so low that I couldn't hear them properly. I'd taken it as both a pop at the guy and at american culture, which with this being britpop was sadly too easy to believe. Glad to hear I got that wrong. Still a terrible record though!

only because I rediscovered an old mixtape the other day, mostly unremarkable 90s pop/rock/alt (Electronic, NIN, Ned's), but a couple of obscure gems (or not) buried in there:

What is it? Jesse by Paw, a 90s alt rock/grunge/country band

why do you remember it? One of those songs that you hear off the radio and dig at the time but never really follow up on, you gradually forget them but they linger in your subconscious.

how does it go? Verse is grungey fast-ish chugging guitars, vocals are shouted and repetitive, from the POV of a runaway boy and/or the dog that's following him - "please stay with me, stay with me and play with me". Chorus is totally different, the guitars stop chugging and provide rising power chord washes, a fingerpicked melody appears over the top and the singer croons in a low register, "it's cold outside, and i'm not going home/i don't know where i'll be, when the morning comes/and jesse you're a good dog, please don't follow me/just go on home' - sniff. fair brings a tear to my eye (no rly. yeah i'm a sucker.) Then at the end of the second chorus goddamn if a pedal steel guitar doesn't come in - it almost becomes pure country but then the power chords stab in again, and the two play off each other until they come together in a glorious country 'n' grunge harmony.

how does it sound now? Verses are unimpressive bog-standard grunge but the choruses are really lovely. the ending kinda sounds cheesey and over the top on a first listen but it's really growing on me.

will you listen to it again? I thought at first nah, file it back into the half-forgotten nostalgia drawer. But after another couple of listens I'm thinking of seeing if I can find the whole album...

You've got me wanting to listen to upon ninth and fairchild now! it's a relatively less-known track on that album, but I've always loved it. Like Lazarus's darker little brother.

Fucking around in the studio and not making proper songs was what made the Boos great. Their crowning moment, Blues For george Michael is 8 minutes of this!

9. Supergrass: Caught By The Fuzz

What is it? Their debut single from 1994.

Why do you remember it? Everyone knows this, I'd have thought. I'd been used to being into bands that plugged away for a while and eventually, if they got big, scratched the top 40. Supergrass were about the first who were obviously going to be massive from the moment you heard of them. They also seemed like the kind of decent guys who don't take themselves too seriously, and so will always be held in a lot of affection. Even though they very quickly went on to have big hits, I never felt that they got as big as they deserved. I suspect they got a bit bored quite quickly, and settled for being top of the second division rather than trying to move into stadium league - but that would have required bigger songs, and they were too much fun for that anyway.

How does it go? It steals its beginning from 'Pretty Vacant'. Then into two minutes of the fastest, tightest power pop. It's the story of the singer being busted with some gear. First verse he's shoved in the back of the van (with his head in his hands). Second verse he's taken to the station and locked in a cell (feeling unwell, and with a man who says it's better to tell). Third verse and, agony of agonies, here comes his mum (she knows what he's done). The choruses progress from him wishing his brother could come down and sort things out, then he wishes his mum could do the same - but the climax is his mum laying the guilt trip on him and how much he's let the family down: 'if only your father could see you now'. Wikipedia reckons it's a true story.

How does it sound now? It sounds a bit weird now, actually. We're used now to this sort of power pop being packed into a ball so it punches you constantly in the gut - I presume this is the dreaded compression - but this sounds like they got their volume from just turning the amps up. It's the naturalness that seems odd. The verses seem fairly quiet simply because the guitar is just damping out a rhythm, but I don't think there's any trickery involved in this, it's just how it was when they played it. The drums seem loud in the verse and quiet in the chorus, but this is only because in the verse there isn't a loud guitar in the way. When my band rehearsed we'd record ourselves on a hand-held tape recorder under a pile of coats, and it's not radically different from that - the vocals are clearer, the drums sharper and there are amusing backing vocals, but otherwise it just sounds like a garage band playing live. That's great, but also curious in that it sounds both old-fashioned and yet not dated at all.

I always enjoy hearing Supergrass's rhythm section, and this shows that they had it down from the start. Not fussy - even if the drums are typically Moonesque in places - just a good band enjoying a groove. I was distressed to see the drummer cited somewhere (possibly on here) as all-over-the-place. I think he's great.

The lyrics are great, of course. A good story with funny touches, and a wee bit of poignancy that makes it all the more real.

Will you listen to it again? I don't know. It's a fine single, impossible not to like, and impossible to tire of - but I hadn't heard it for at least ten years and don't feel like I've been missing out. I'll always be pleased to hear it, but I doubt it's got much more to reveal so I can't see myself seeking it out.

10. Clinic - Porno

What is it? A stark indie rock song with nonsensical lyrics. Dates back to 1999 I think, perhaps 1998.

Why do you remember it? It brings back good memories of highschool. I started dating a guy 5 years older than me (I was 16) and I used to hang out in his house a lot listening to his records.

How does it go? I think it sounds a tad kraut-rockish in structure, beating drums and seminal rock bass repeating the same kind of pattern all through the song. The androgynous vocals are sometimes moaned (in what I presume is the chorus) and the rest of the time are made up of incoherent babble. Has some endearing static effect at the beginning of the second verse which is very effective.

Will you listen to it again? I listened to it twice today after I found it by accident in one backup cd. It's a great song, been happy to rediscover it.

I checked out your song, ledge. The verses sound very similar to a song I was going to revisit next - now shoved back down the list. You're right about the chorus being quite beautiful in its way, but when the pedal steel comes in and the tempo drops, woah ... it was totally unexpected (even though you'd already told me all about it) which is almost all I ask from music now. It's the kind of glorious accident that can justify an entire nondescript career. I'm fairly sure that's what it is, the verses and especially the drawn-out ending suggest a band who aren't really aware of what they've pulled off

PS I'm amazed at how many grunge tracks are about unpleasant childhood experiences

a band who aren't really aware of what they've pulled off

yeah there is absolutely nothing else like it on the album (listened, deleted).

11. Suede: The Big Time

What is it? 1993 b-side to 'Animal Nitrate'.

Why do you remember it? I've heard girls say that you can only love one band, the others you just enjoy. Suede were mine. I consider myself pretty lucky - had I been a year older it might have been the Wonder Stuff, a year younger and I might have held on for Oasis. The mix of influences and themes were sometimes silly (all the electric nuclear stuff, and I could've done without the druggy glamour), but better than almost any alternative - even Brett's much-mocked position on sexuality was useful, insofar as it's a useful leap to be able to identify with another outside world that one isn't part of.

Having said that, I'm not sure if it's quite true. I think it might actually be the Smiths who are my band. But I got into the Smiths from borrowing their records from the library when they were a distant past that was hard to learn about. They're part of me, but I don't usually feel I'm part of them. Suede are different.

As for this song, if Suede aren't recognised as the greatest b-side band of them all, they should be. By the time I lost interest in them (sometime after Coming Up) still hadn't put out a b-side that couldn't have been a single in its own right. Though in this case that would have been commercial suicide - 'Animal Nitrate' was definitely the right choice for the breakthrough single and the Brits.

How does it go? A deathly-slow ballad, with the curiosity that the almost total absence of percussion - there's one damped ride cymbal and that's it - means that much of the time there's no discernable tempo at all. The arrangement is rich and largely synthetic. There is the cymbal, very sparing bass, a beautiful echoey jazzy guitar line, and a muted trumpet - otherwise synths give various impressions of miscellany that sounds to me like strings, spacey noises, human voice, slowed-down bells, low chimes, sustained gongs, milk bottles and white noise.

Sung by a failed star who's been jilted by her more successful lover (I'm pretty sure the narrator's a she, but I can't say why) and is waiting in the hope that he'll collect her and share the limelight. It's brief despite its four-and-a-half minutes - one verse, two choruses, and then the second half is the trumpet soloing over ever-mounting washes from the synths. These become ultimately very intense, drowning out everything but the trumpets until it dies away too, and we're left in a long fade that dissolves into what I think is distorted gongs but sounds like the echoes of aircraft taking off, or footsteps in distant tunnels.

How does it sound now? It's an extraordinary record. It's so lush, I imagine myself overlooking the city from a penthouse lined with velvet curtains. The song it most reminds me of is 'Jesus to a Child' by George Michael, but where that's repetitive, the ambition and yet economy of this are quite startling.

This section is meant to be about whether it has withstood the test of time, but I keep coming back to the context in which it was released. For an indie band in 1993 to record this as their seventh or eighth song is just amazing. Brett has commented before about how 'Pantomime Horse' (which is the one I was going to revisit before I remembered this) showed a band absolutely confident that they'd worked everything out, and it's justified and true. This is light years beyond anything I can recall from any contemporary. You can hear it everywhere - the vocal right at the front of the mix, the unusual structure, the lack of a second verse, the arrangement. If I had a criticism, it'd be that they used a stick instead of a brush on the cymbal, but I can live with that. I'm blown away by it all, really, but it's always worth mentioning the singing on Suede ballads - to sing and enunciate properly in the era of buried, mumbled vocals is just great.

As for how it sounds now, it hasn't so much withstood time as it stands outside it. It's more like a film score or something you'd find in a smoky basement club (if you still get these) than part of the pop narrative.

Will you listen to it again? I will. I'm delighted that I've rediscovered this.

12. Bang Bang Machine: Geek Love

What is it? 1992 debut single from a band so obscure that apparently this doesn't exist in mp3 format. I've heard one other thing they did - a cover of 'Life's a Gas' - but there were apparently other singles and a couple of albums too. I remember them openly self-identifying as freaks, at a time when this meant circuses and Jim Rose, which is something that I've never found intriguing.

Why do you remember it? This marks an outer limit of my initial attempts to find always more obscure music. I developed a habit in 1992 of listening to as much of John Peel as I could, which was usually the first half plus sometimes one side of a c90 left running as I fell asleep. It was never the epiphany for me that some people get - you'd get one or two gems per show, but I remember acres being taken up with crap joke songs, ten-minute techno tracks that never varied, and (worst of all) songs that he'd forget to announce and that you'd never hear again.

Which explains the appeal of the festive fifty that year, because you'd get just the gems gathered into four hours of great radio. It was pretty good stuff, and I was quite excited as we got to the upper reaches as some godforsaken hour of the early morning. Which of my favourite records would be at the top: 'Leave Them All Behind', 'Gravity Grave', maybe the KLF?

None of those - it was 'Geek Love'. I'd never heard of it. I got the same feeling I get now when I've been enjoying a film and felt for its characters, only to find everything resolved by a deus ex machina (I also recognised this from Liverpool's European cup win in Istanbul - Peel would surely have approved). Not only that, but Peel introduced it by saying something like "obvious, really" - well, no. My research reveals that apparently there had been some kind of meme on the show about this being the perfect debut single, which utterly passed me by. 'Hm, maybe this isn't for me' I thought.

How does it go? I can't actually be 100% sure of this. The only copy I've ever known of this is my own tape of that festive fifty, which I can't find and couldn't play now even if I did. I'm working from the handful of versions that are on the YouTube, but they're similar enough for me. I'm sure that the original is nine minutes, but the long version on youtube has a note indicating that it's a different mix.

Anyway, the track starts with a loop of typical baggy indie drumming. You then get an ethereal guitar figure, reverb-laden and played on the high notes. It's soon joined by a second guitar for the least macho duelling you will ever hear. There are high female vocals with indecipherable lyrics - something about rose gardens and, later, being in love - and minimal bass, just the base note per bar plus one other to take you to the next chord. About three minutes in the guitar and bass cut loose, with added feedback and some vocal samples (from a film also called Freaks), following the same chord progression to the end. The singing doesn't change radically, but is noticeably more disturbed as things push on. It would be nice to know what she's singing about, but given the freak theme elsewhere perhaps it's best that I don't.

How does it sound now? I was secretly wanting to slag this off, but I can't - it's lovely. The first half has beautiful, restrained guitar - really well-crafted in the duelling section - and atmospheric, yearning singing. There are a few echoey washes which add to the otherworldliness. The rhythm section is pretty uninspiring, but at least it doesn't get in the way. The second half is just straight shoegazing, really, with the samples adding a bit more texture.

I can't say much more about it, sadly - youtube's sound isn't good enough to let me pick anything out of the mix other than the main instruments. I will say, though, that the lack of progression is making it quite hard to listen to repeatedly - there isn't even a middle eight to break things up. Which is another reason I ultimately found peelmusic such a dead end - you initially think you're accessing some kind of secret node which is too good for the general public, but it eventually dawns that it's just about the least sophisticated music there is.

Will you listen to it again? Couldn't, even if I wanted to.

are these just blog reposts?

No. I'm just revisiting a few old tunes, trying out my new headphones and having a bit of a reminiscence. I suppose I could put it on a blog, but I don't expect to keep doing it for very long and a blog seems like a bit of a commitment. At least here I can just stop and in a couple of days it'll be gone, unless I choose to dredge it up again.