33.10 - What Do You Do When the Music Stops?

I was going to save this song till the end, since that's usually where it goes when I'm DJing, but I think I'll throw it out there now instead, I've already got enough enough stuff I'm saving for later.

Yes. Yes I can.

The Pipettes - Pull Shapes

I don't fully trust anyone who doesn't dance to Pull Shapes. It even has handclaps and everything! I love songs with handclaps.

The image there comes from Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie's comic Phonogram by the way. More accurately, Phonogram - Singles Club issue #1. Both series of Phonogram published so far are pretty much brilliant, if you like comics & music you should own them.
Buy volume one from Amazon here, and go here for volume 2. Also, you can download Singles Club #1 for free from ComiXology at the moment here. I may well mention it again when I give in to the urge to shove up loads of Britpop.

Clap your hands if you want some more.

33.9 - Late On Purpose

You can't get 33:9 on a clock, so you'll have to settle for this.

For a change this installment of 33 isn't slipping in just before midnight because I was lazy, distracted, or couldn't be arsed. It's actually being written in advance, on Thursday, since I'll I'll be out galavanting somewhere on Friday night.

Pete Wylie is a pain in the arse for anyone who likes to keep their music collection carefully aphabetised. Wah!, Wah! Heat, Shambeko! Say Wah!, JF Wah!, The Mighty Wah! and Wah! the Mongrel, all different names for the same band band. In fact, finding this song on my hard drive was a nightmare, I ended up giving up looking and resorted to one from a compilation album.

Anyway, yes, this post is scheduled to publish at 11:53PM why? Guess.

Wah! Heat - Seven Minutes to Midnight

33.8 - I Wanted To Lick Your Knees

Right then, back to favourite songs today.
Good tune, nonsensical lyrics, more fun than a sackful of clowns.

Camper Van Beethoven - Take The Skinheads Bowling
Bonus! Other people doing it too.
Teenage Fanclub - Take The Skinheads Bowling
Manic Street Preachers - Take The Skinheads Bowling

33.7 - Five A Day

Hello Cleveland! Are you guys ready to rock?

Giving these a theme is quite fun, so here's another themed post for today.
See if you can guess what it is.

Orange Juice - Rip It Up
Fun fact: this is the first Orange Juice song that I can remember hearing. Thanks, older brothers with good records!

Peaches - Fuck the Pain Away
May as well make the blog gloriously NSFW today.

Prefab Sprout - The King of Rock 'n' Roll
"Aaaalllmoooooond cookies!"

Smashing Pumpkins - ...Said Sadly
It was this or Thirty-Three. I suspect we may come back to the latter.

United Fruit - Wrecking Ball
United Fruit ruin play Stereo in Glasgow on May 28th. Tickets are available here.

33.6 - A Chance To be Lazy

Can you see where this is going?

The last couple of posts in the 33 series have been more labour intensive than they might look, meaning I briefly had to use my brain. Now, I don't want to have to do that too often. It's a small small brain, it gets used up quite quickly, and I might need it at some point later.

With that in mind while trying to think of what I wanted to do today I looked out the window, typed "sun" into search on my music folder, and this is a selection of what came up.

BMX Bandits - Sunshine Day
Dinosaur Jr - Take a Run at the Sun
Evil Hand - A Drop of Sunshine
Lambchop - Your Fucking Sunny Day
Len - Steal My Sunshine
McGazz - Sun on My Back
Skibunny - Sun Sun Sun
Spiritualized - Lay Back In the Sun
Symposium - Drink the Sunshine (Hiya Peenko)
The Great I Am - Sunny Glasgow
Tiny Birds - Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Your Anger

33.5 - Alien Vs Predator (Not Really)

I reject your claim that I am "cheating" with this image by saying nyah nyah.

Let's stick with the only mildly homoerotic "Aye Tunes Hearts Peenko" theme a bit more today.
Much like yesterday I blamed Urusei Yatsura for this blog existing, today I blame Chemikal Underground for giving me the stupid idea to promote gigs. Chemikal Underground and beer.
"How on Earth can you blame Chemikal Underground for you being a fool?" you ask? Well, I'll tell you. It was back in January of 2010, wandering down the road for a bus after the Chemikal anniversary gig at Celtic Connections that drunken conversation with Lloyd took a turn to us both saying that we quite fancied putting on a gig at some point, with me taking the next logical leap that since neither of us knew the first thing about putting on gigs, why not team up? It seemed like a good idea at the time.

How well did it work out? Well, results were mixed. The first gig was a roaring success, with us having to turn people away at the door, and is still just about the happiest experience I've ever had. Relief, booze, and pure joy is a heady mix.

The second one was booked almost entirely while drunk, a result of me bumping into Ross, then of Little Yellow Ukuleles, now in So Many Animal Calls, in Bloc and asking if he fancied doing a gig the following month, which we then had to hurriedly arrange. Lloyd saw Randolph's Leap at GoNorth while drunk, and we got them too, and We're Only Afraid of NYC missed out on doing the first through an imminent baby arrival, so were obvious people to invite to play the second. It wasn't as successful, but was still a hoot.

In hindsight moving to a bigger venue for the third gig was a mistake. The bands were great, but not as many people turned up as we'd hoped, at least according to the person on the door, and by the end of the night the wind was out of our sails a fair bit. We'd already thought about making that our last joint gig for a while, and it was a pretty easy choice to leave it alone after that.

From there we each put on a few things of our own, and would occasionally talk about doing something else at some point. Then, opportunity! We'd both been lucky enough to hear Adam Stafford's then upcoming album Build a Harbour Immediately quite a while before release, and annoyed pretty much all of our friends by telling them that we thought it was brilliant. An idea appeared, why not ask Adam if he'll let us host the launch gig for the album? Adam agreed, we lined up a couple of our other favourites to play too, and all went well. Right up until a few days before the gig that was, when we very sadly had to lose PAWS from the line-up due to pretty awful personal circumstances. I'd still love to rope them into playing a future AVP, but now that they are all signed up with Fat Cat I suspect they might rather deal with professionals. Hiya PAWS.
Gig number four was nonetheless ace. People came! People enjoyed it! Afterwards I did one of the drunkest DJ sets of my life, which is really quite something considering some of the ones I've done.

At some point along the way we developed a curse. Little Yellow Ukuleles split up. Come On Gang! split up. Mitchell Museum went on hiatus. For a while I really feared we might break Mondegreen, but Mitchell Museum are back now, so I think we'll be OK...

Everyone was happy. Maybe sometime we'll do another, but until then keep your eyes peeled as we both have a solo attempt at gig putting on or two coming up in the next few months.

Anyway, here's all the bands that played. Click their name for more on them, click the song name for, um, a song. All these bands are ace, apart from the ones who no longer exist, who were ace.

Aye Tunes Vs Peenko - Captain's Rest, 30th April 2010
Campfires In Winter - Mortigi Tempo
Mitchell Museum - Tiger Heartbeat
Kid Canaveral - Couldn't Dance

Aye Tunes Vs Peenko II - 13th Note, 17th July 2010
Little Yellow Ukuleles - Discopants
Randolph's Leap - Squeamish
We're Only Afraid of NYC - With Bullets

Aye Tunes Vs Peenko III - Classic Grand, 5th November 2010
I Build Collapsible Mountains - Rails
Come On Gang! - Fortune Favours the Brave
The Seventeenth Century - Roses in the Park

Aye Tunes Vs Peenko IV - Stereo, 20th August 2011
Mondergreen - Slouching Digger Paper Wagon
Miaoux Miaoux - Snow
Adam Stafford - Step Up, Raise Hands

33.4 - Welcome to the Lo-Fi Ghetto

Go team.

Today I'm somewhat more organised. Only somewhat though, full organisation is like a myth to me, along with unicorns, Brigadoon, and good Kassidy records.

Zing.

Since it's Sunday I'm going to focus more on a band than a song today. I don't know what ot being Sunday has to do with that, but I am quite clearly making this shit up as I go along, so whatever.

Urasei Yatsura formed in Glasgow in 1993 and consisted of Graham Kemp, Fergus Lawrie, Elaine Graham and Elaine 's brother Ian Graham.
In 1994 they contributed a live recording of the song Guitars are Boring to a compilation released by the Kazoo Club (which was based in the 13th Note). This recording, along with their fanzine Kitten Frenzy brought the band to the attention of John Peel and a session followed. The band then recorded a six track maxi single All Hail Urusei Yatsura. With the proceeds of the Peel session the band released a split single on their own Modern Independent Records label, Pampered Adolescent.
They were later lured to London's Che Records where they released more records, but the band split after releasing their fourth album.
Fergus, Elaine and Ian moved on to form Projekt A-Ko, whose first and probably only album wasn't a huge departure from Yatsura, and was so pretty enjoyable.

Urusei Yatsura were one of the first "wee" Glasgow bands I remember getting into back in the olden days. I'd trot into Glasgow when I could, often telling concerned parents that I was just going to a pal's house, and hope I looked old enough on that particular day to get into wherever Yatsura were playing. Whenever they had a new record out that's what my Safeway earnings would go on that week.

In fact, I've talked about this before, waaay back in 2010 when I posted a couple of Peel Sessions for Keeping It Peel. Copy/Paste alert!

If you hate Aye Tunes (and if you do why are you bothering to read it?) then you can put partial blame for it existing at the feet of Urusei Yatsura. You see, Yatsura were one of the earliest bands to make me interested in the Scottish music scene. Several nights were spent trying to get into venues around Glasgow while still underage to get to see them. Along with the more obvious names like Arab Strap, The Delgados and Mogwai, Urusei Yatsura instilled a passion for local bands that indirectly led me to being here now, writing this.

In addition to blaming them for Aye Tunes being a thing they should probably take at least a share of the blame for shouty vocals, screeching guitars and layers of fuzz and distortion being like catnip for Jim too.

The good Mr. Peenko likes them too, we bonded talking about them over pints the first few times we met,  so this post goes out to him, since had I not gotten to know him the last few years would have been different, and probably a lot duller. Bromance bitches.

Shall I shut up and get to the songs then?

Urusei Yatsura - Guitars Are Boring
Urusei Yatsura - Teenage Dream (from All Hail Urusei Yatsura)
Urusei Yatsura - Siamese (7" Version)
Urusei Yatsura - Kewpies Like Watermelon (Mark & Lard Session)
Urusei Yatsura - Strategic Hamlets (from We Are Urusei Yatsura)