33.31 - Wild At Heart(s)

Ginger Rogers in Professional Sweetheart, released 1933.
The effort I still put in to these things...

I've never much cared for calling a band or artist under rated. It quite often comes attached to a rather snobby tone, along the lines of "oh, this band are wonderful, people just don't get it, but I do" with an implied bit of  "look how underground and brilliant I am". Some bands just aren't widely known, for whatever reason, the fact they aren't famous doesn't reflect on how well they are rated. None of which has any real bearing on today's post, I'm mainly waffling. I do however think that today's featured artist is and are (it'll get complicated in a minute) arguably under appreciated.

Ginger is pretty much one of my favourite songwriters ever. He's also one of the most prolific I can think of, whether with The Wildhearts, one of his many side projects, or as a solo artist, the number of songs in his back catalogue is frankly ridiculous. Even more so when there's nothing amongst hundreds of songs he's written that I can think of as a bad one.

Breathe easy, I'm not going to do a full album by album run down this time. I'd have to have started writing that last June to have any hope of getting it finished in time. Consider this instead an edited highlights package instead.

We'll start with The Wildhearts. Seven studio albums of all new material, one more of cover version. Two b-sides compilations containing almost all new songs too, with a couple of cover versions on there. You can see why I'm staying the Hell away from trying to cover every album here, and we've not even gotten to the solo and side projects yet.

The odd thing is that I didn't even care for The Wildhearts much for quite some time. I picked up a couple of singles and enjoyed them fine, bought P.H.U.Q. when it came out and enjoyed it, but still wasn't really a big fan. A couple of friends were much bigger fans than I was, and got me to go to see them a couple of times, gigs I mainly went to because I liked the support band. Eventually, something clicked in my head, along the lines of "you like the songs, you enjoy going to see them, why on Earth do you still consider them a band you don't like?". For once my brain presented me with a not unreasonable question, and I changed my ways. Since then I've eagerly awaited new releases, went back and caught old ones I'd passed over and if there was a Glasgow gig to go to, I've been at it. I do find the later albums a bit more interesting than the earlier ones though...

Let's have a couple of Wildhearts songs then, shall we?
The Wildhearts - 29x The Pain (Suckerpunch B-Side)
The Wildhearts - Sky Chaser High (Sick of Drugs B-Side)
The Wildhearts - Slaughtered Authors (from The Wildhearts)
The Wildhearts - You Took the Sunshine from New York (from ¡Chutzpah!)

Over the years The Wildhearts have gone on hiatus a fair few times, and are on another indefinite one again at the moment. This gives Ginger plenty of time to play around with other things, and his solo stuff, or stuff with other band members, is usually very interesting, and varies a lot in style.
Including Silver Ginger 5, because leaving them out would just be daft, over the years Ginger has clocked up four solo albums, one of those a double one. Add in a couple of live albums, a singles compilation, and the country and western alter-ego album, plus contributions to Clam Abuse and Super$hit 666, and we're into a very large number of songs penned by Ginger.
Most recently, with The Wildhearts being on hiatus Ginger has taken on the Ginger Wildheart name, playing gigs with friends that mix Wildhearts songs with ones from other projects.
Also, he used Pledge Music to fund a new Ginger Wildheart album, with pledgers getting a 30 song triple album, which has been trimmed down to a single for general release. The triple album is named 555%, the number that his pledge campaign was halted at, raising a quarter of a million dollars. Of the 30 songs on 555% not one sounds like filler.
100% is out soon, and I'm going to steer clear of posting any songs from that or 555%.

Silver Ginger 5 - Walk Like a Mother Fucker (from Black Leather Mojo)
Ginger - Not Bitter, Just a Little Disappointed (from A Break In The Weather)
Ginger - The Drunken Lord of Everything (from Valor Del Corazon)
Ginger - Jake (from Yoni)
Ginger - You and Me (That's What I Want) (from Market Harbour)
Howling Willie Cunt - Caffeine Bomb (from World of Filth)

Keep up on all things Wildhearts at the website, and Ginger at his website.

33.30 - She Wears Denim Wherever She Goes

I told/warned you I'd get back round to Teenage Fanclub before this was all done.

Formed at the tail end of the 80s and hailing from Bellshill, Teenage Fanclub are one of my favourite bands. The core of Norman Blake, Raymond McGinley and Gerard Love have been backed on drums over the years by Francis MacDonald, Brendan O’Hare, Paul Quinn and currently Francis MacDonald again on drums. I'm mostly going to be talking about one particular album here, but with a little bit about the rest.

The finest moment on Teenage Fanclub's debut album, A Catholic Education, is magnificent Everything Flows, but there's a version of that song that appeared a few years later that I prefer, so we'll get back to that. A Catholic Education is a more abrasive affair than you'd expect if you're only familiar with later Teenage Fanclub songs. The harmonies and melodies that I instantly associate with The Fannies are in there, but generally surrounded by a harsher, grungier sound than we'd get on later releases.
Teenage Fanclub - Critical Mass

Follow up album The King was recorded after their first album, but released before it. Shambolic, messy and rough sounding, the band put this down to the influence of producer Don Fleming, who would encourage improvisation. The King is pretty much miles away from every other Teenage Fanclub album, but a lot of fun, especially the pair of cover versions it contains.
Teenage Fanclub - Mudhoney

Bandwagonesque tends to be the most critically aclaimed of the Teenage Fanclub albums, and is where the trademark melodies and harmonies really come to the front. Dialing back, but not losing entirely - Satan is far from a chirpy pop song, the grunge sound for something more akin to The Byrds and, particularly, Big Star, Bandwagonesque is pretty excellent, but it's not my favourite.
Teenage Fanclub - The Concept

Thirteen shares it's name with a Big Star song, and the Alex Chilton influence shows throughout. A fine album, but still not my favourite.
Teenage Fanclub - 120 Minutes

Remember that time Teenage Fanclub collaborated with De La Soul for a song on a film soundtrack? This question is usually answered in one of two ways, either with "of course, it's brilliant" or with a wary look and "are you quite sure you didn't just dream that up?". I did not dream it up, and it is brilliant. Fallin' comes from the soundtrack to Judgment Night.
Teenage Fanclub & De La Soul - Fallin'

Grand Prix was released in 1995, which was a good time for me. As I've mentioned before, it was around that time that I was really developing my own tastes in music (which admittedly wasn't always great), albeit still holding onto the best of the influences passed on to me by my older siblings.
Being the youngest of six children has definite advantages if they have good taste - my oldest two brothers were at the right age to be into punk back in the late 70's, the next eldest brother was a student for Madchester and so on. Of course along the way you subconsciously learn to ignore one of the brother's liking Genesis, or your oldest sister just having no taste, that kind of thing. Generally it was a good base to work from though. Those same influences meant that when Grand Prix was released I was no stranger to Teenage Fanclub, but was too young up till then to have paid a lot of attention. The first time hearing Mellow Doubt was enough to revive pleasant memories of past albums, then along came Sparky's Dream which sealed the deal, cementing a life long love of the Boys From Bellshill. Grand Prix then was the first Teenage Fanclub album I bought for myself, but far from the last. There is a multitude of fantastic pop songs on Grand Prix. It was also a breath of fresh air at the time, miles away from the rest of Creation's output, where every other band were Oasis, wanted to be Oasis or were, well, The Jesus & Mary Chain...
If you hadn't twigged yet, Grand Prix is my favourite Teenage Fanclub album, to the point where I'm struggling to pick just one song from the album to post. Instead, singles. It was common practice through the late 90s and 2000s to release two CD singles, with different b-sides. Often these would end up padded out with lousy remixes, but not with Teenage Fanclub, where you'd always get unreleased material, new songs or covers. For the singles from Grand Prix there was even a different version of the A-side on the second single, so it's these alternate versions I'm going with.
Teenage Fanclub - Mellow Doubt (Alternative Version)
Teenage Fanclub - Sparky's Dream (Alternative Version)
Teenage Fanclub - Neil Jung (Alternative Version)

Not long after Grand Prix and the singles from the album came a little curiosity, a four track EP called Teenage Fanclub Have Lost It. Containing a new acoustic version of a song from A Catholic Education, Bandwagonesque, Thirteen and Grand Prix, recorded in a living room. It's a crying shame that this EP is long out of print, if I had my way copies of it would be issued in schools. Anyway, that version of Everything Flows that I prefer to the album version I mentioned earlier? It comes from Teenage Fanclub Have Lost It.
Teenage Fanclub - Everything Flows

Since I've mentioned Alex Chilton a couple of times as an influence on the band this seems as good a place as any to drop this in. In 1996 The Fannies played as Chilton's backing band for a couple of gigs in Glasgow. Cue taped-off-the-radio bootleg!
Alex Chilton with Teenage Fanclub - Dark End of the Street

The opening four songs of Songs from Northern Britain are excellent. The rest isn't half bad either. By now you know what to expect, you get it, and you are happy.
Teenage Fanclub - Your Love is the Place Where I Come From

I really don't have a lot to say about 2000's Howdy!, 2005's Man Made or the most recent album, 2010's Shadows other than that they are still consistently really good. Rather than me awkwardly trying to find new ways to say "yup, still good" we'll leave it there then, shall we?

If, after all that, you still can't work out a good place to start with Teenage Fanclub, you can't really go wrong with the collection Four Thousand Seven Hundred And Sixty-Six Seconds - A Short Cut To Teenage Fanclub, but if you skip over to Amazon you can get Grand Prix & Songs from Northern Britain in a nice wee cheap bundle here.

I'll sign off with a trio of b-sides. The first is a Teenage Fanclub original from the B-side of Mellow Doubt, the second a cover from the Ain't That Enough of, who else? Big Star, then finally, a cover of the Pixies from the I Need Direction single.
Teenage Fanclub - Some People Try To Fuck With You
Teenage Fanclub - Jesus Christ
Teenage Fanclub - Here Comes Your Man

Keep up with Teenage Fanclub over on their website.

33.29 - Search With Care

You are getting a very generic header image because earlier today, clearly not having thought things through very well, I typed the name of today's band into Google image search. I need new eyes now. With that in mind, and since it is getting late in the day with no blog post published, I'm going to rattle through this quickly.

Prolapse came from Leicester, but had a member named "Scottish" Mick, along with "Geordie" Mick on bass. Unlike Tiny Tim, or anyone who as ever called themselves "mad", this wasn't an ironic nickname. The second "Scottish" Mick Derrick opens his mouth it is obvious the name isn't a joke.

I'd rather forgotten about Prolapse for a while, mainly due to having lost all the albums of theirs that I had years ago. Round about the end of last year a song on a compilation popped up on shuffle and jogged my memory.

Prolapse - Move To Limit Slabs (Demo Version)

Handily at the time I had some eMusic credits that had to be used up led to me buying debut album Pointless Walks To Dismal Places again to see if I still liked it. I did, a shopping spree followed, and a bit of a period of obsession has continued since.

The contrast between Mick's gruff tones and Prolapse's other vocalist Linda Steelyard's icy delivery is different and infectious. Sometimes it sounds like a mismatched couple arguing up the back of the bus, but much less uncomfortable. On Tina This is Matthew Stone that's pretty much exactly how the song turns out, to a point where it reaches quite an uncomfortable ending.

Prolapse - Tina This is Matthew Stone

I haven't replaced my copy of second album backsaturday. Note to self, buy a copy of backsaturday.

Did you know I dislike bagpipes? There's only a handful of songs I can think of that have bagpipes on that don't mostly make me want to stab the piper. Shoutalong single Deanshanger from third album The Italian Flag if one of the ones that doesn't make me want to hurt a piper.

Prolapse - Deanshanger

Oddly enough Deanshanger's lyrics rip into the 1980s, mentioning a Royal Wedding and a papal visit. Everything comes around again soon enough, eh?

A mixture of shoegaze, punk and Krautrock, there's a fair chance you'll find Prolapse either brilliant or as unpleasant as, well, your anus falling out. I'm in the former camp, obviously.

33.28 - Going Solo

Near the start of this self indulgent ramblefest that has been 33 I wrote about the Aye Tunes Vs Pennko gigs. Returning to that self indulgent theme, today I'm going to write a wee bit about the gigs I've put on by myself, which have imaginatively been titled Aye Tunes Presents. I'd have shortened that to ATP, but I'm pretty sure there'd be objections to that.

#1 - 21st January 2011, Stereo
Goodness, that feels so long again. I suppose it is quite a while ago, nearly a year and a half in fact. I'm good at sums, me. For my first solo attempt I decided to pick some of my favourite animal named bands to play. Packets of Animal biscuits were given away on the door to anyone who wanted them, along with some home made compilation CDs I put together. Take up on the biscuits was surprisingly low, and I ended up eating many bags of them over the following weeks. We even raised a few quid for charity with an impromptu door collection.
Boygirlanimalcolour - Batman Forever
Trapped Mice - Waving and Pointing
Kochka - Boooones
Trapped Mice have some gigs coming up, and a really good debut album in the can, awaiting release. Kochka made one of my favourite albums of last year, and continue to scare me a bit with their new video.

#2 - The Aye Tunes Birthday Bash, 17th June 2011, The Flying Duck
A great idea in my head, a terrible idea in practice, particularly as the gig ended up being put together at quite short notice. Don't put on a gig for your birthday kids, it's stressful and expensive, at least it is if you are me. The bands were loads of fun though, and some people bought me beer, so it wasn't all bad.
The Big Nowhere - I'm In Love With a Girl
Verse Metrics - Modern Sleep
Black International - Destruct_o_
The hangover I had from this was hilarious, but I learned not to do any more birthday gigs. I didn't learn not to do short notice gigs though, as we'll see soon.

#3 - The Springwell EP Launch, 1st July 2011, Stereo
I'd sounded out The Last Battle a bit before this about doing a gig, but couldn't quite get anything worked out. When it came time to launch their latest EP I jumped at the chance to have them on, and managed to lure Loch Awe with them, giving them their first gig in Glasgow and me my first chance to see them. The always entertaining Second Hand Marching Band rounded out the line up, making sure that at least there were plenty of people there by virtue of their vast number of band members alone.
Loch Awe - I Will Drift Into 10,000 Streams (Demo)
Second Hand Marching Band - Love Is a Fragile Thing (Sleazy Version)
The Last Battle - Viv Nicholson (Acoustic)
Loch Awe have a few gigs coming up. They play Stereo in Glasgow this Saturday as part of the Chem19 showcase night, then next Saturday they play with The Bad Books, The Spook School and The New Fabian Society at Edinburgh's Wee Red Bar for some blogger's gig. Can't recall who, I'm a bit Indifferent.
The Second Hand Marching Band claim they'll be releasing three new albums towards the end of the year, a sad one, a pop one, and an Icelandic one.
The Last Battle released a new single just this week. Hope Is Gold is available from Bandcamp, and there's a launch gig on June 22nd at Pilrig St Pauls Church in Leith.

#4 - 28th September 2011, The Captains Rest
Arrange and promote a gig in roughly two weeks? Only a fool would agree to such a thing. This fool. So it was that the following line-up was rather hastily assembled, with no real concession for genre and styles. Given how quickly I put it together and with the bare minimum of promotion I was able to give it in that time, I'm happier with the way this turned out now than I was when I looked in my wallet at the end of the night. First Glasgow gig for The Spook School too. I've got a habit of putting on Edinburgh bands I want to see in Glasgow rather than, probably more sensibly, just going to Edinburgh to see them.
Kevin P. Gilday - Dear Green Place
Shambles Miller - Rapture
The Spook School - History
The Sea Kings - The Nitrate In My Blood
Shambles Miller has a new single, Confessions, out soon. I'll try and get back to that in time, but in case I forget to mention it later, there's a launch gig for the single at Vespbar in Glasgow on July 6th.
The Spook School play this Sunday at The Captains as part of the first Scottish Fiction gig, and in Edinburgh next at the Tidal Wave of Indifference gig mentioned above.
The Sea Kings play King Tuts in July as part of Summer Nights.

#5 - 3rd May 2011, Stairway
I had no real intention of putting on another gig any time soon until Exit_International got in touch with me. The chance to put on a band I really like, and to do something a bit different by putting on a band from outside the central Scotland bubble was too tempting to resist. What followed were many headaches, a catalogue of errors, from venue problems to a collosal screw up with posters, which all added up to making this a bit of a stressful affair, and the end product wasn't as good as it should have been. I'm still a bit disappointed about the way this one came out and wish it could have been better, but it's a bit late to dwell on that now. The bands were ace though.
Supermarionation - Choosing My Religion
Wrongnote - Heart of a Rat
Exit_International - Glory Horn
The Supermarionation song above is hot off the press, having just been released for free download at lunchtime today. Refreshingly Supermarionation released it without seven announcements of announcements of announcements in the run up, just slapped it on Bandcamp and told us it was there. Download the single & b-side for free here.
Exit_International will be spending my birthday in Japan, on a mini tour with Ginger Wildheart. No, no, of course I'm not jealous.

I had rather hoped to close this post with details of the next Aye Tunes gig, because I never learn my lesson and manage to stop putting them on, but the details aren't quite sorted yet, so I'll need to tell you later. It's a wee bit of a fight getting it organised at the moment, but it's a fight I'll win soon.

A Quick Interruption.

Gather round everyone, I've just been told something brilliant.

Remember that time in 1999 that Sebadoh were on Top of the Pops? Unless you happened to see it at the time you almost certainly don't. You might even think I've made it up and it never happened. Up until just now there has been no proof, other than eye witness accounts. But now, now someone has uploaded the show to YouTube.

I have literally waited years for this moment. I never thought it would actually happen, but it has.
It was loud, if was chaotic, it was glorious, and now it's online for everyone to see.
Skip to 7 minutes 36 seconds if you want to avoid Terrorvision and The All Seeing I.






Thanks go to Sweeping the Nation for the tip off that this is online, they've been as eager to see it all these years as I have.

33.27 - Then I Disappear

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33.26 - We Dance For Thrills

No, not Skrillex. Never Skrillex.

We're into the last week of this drivel. Praise the Lord. That does mean that I'm not allowed to put of stuff that'll require a bit of effort from me now though, since I'm running out of later to save things for. Hence, this week might have a lot more words than you expect from me, or might end up just being rubbish. Not that the two things are mutually exclusive, of course.

Kenickie were three girls and a boy. While they weren't always the strongest performers they had bags of charm and charisma, along with some killer tunes. They come from the mid 90s, obviously.

Lead vocalist, guitarist and lyricist Lauren Laverne has long since stopped the singing, but can now be found on the telly regularly, and pushing new music as a 6 Music DJ. She's lovely, and I like to pretend 10 O'Clock Live doesn't exist.

With just two albums to their name this won't take too long to get through, so on with the music.

The Skillex EP was the first thing I heard from Kenickie, with Come Out Tonight grabbing me by the collar and slapping me around the face. We'll get back to that particular song in a minute though, first of all here's another track from the EP, showing off the band's sensitive side.
Kenickie - Acetone

Debut album At the Club wasn't perfect. There's a few misfires on there, but when it hits, it hits.
Obvious song choices are obvious here, but Punka remains a hoot, and Come Out 2Nite is a two minutes ball of fun and energy, which also contains some mighty fine handclap action.
Kenickie - Punka
Kenickie - Come Out 2Nite

Second album Get In pretty much dumped the guitars and shouting, adopting a mixture of Sixties girl band sounding pop and more electronic elements. Get In isn't without it's charms, but it's nearly as fun as At The Club was.
Kenickie - Stay in the Sun

And that was pretty much that. Kenickie chucked it in late 1998.
Lauren would pop up in 2000 singing on a Mint Royale song. This doesn't really fit our narrative, but it's a sweet wee song, so I'll throw it in anyway. Allegedly there's a bit of backstory to the lyrics too
Mint Royale - Don't Falter

Rounding things off, here's one from one of the John Peel sessions the band did.
Kenickie - Can I Take You To the Cinema?

33.25 - Agnes, Agatha, Germaine and Jacq

I can't remember if I've used this one already.

Another day, another hastily assembled post, with a heartbreaking tale of love and loss. Kind of.

Back to the hip-hop well today. Sing along if you know the words. If you don't know the words, learn them.

Biz Markie - Just A Friend

33.24 - Hip

Next couple of these posts are quite hastily put together. Celebrate the lack of rambling while it lasts, because next week things are going to get very long winded.

My first impression of Hipster Death Squad "was that's an excellent name, will the songs be any good?", a few clicks later and I discovered yes, the songs were good. I'm not in love with everything they've done, and if you take a quick look at their Bandcamp page you'll see they are pretty prolific, but I've yet to hear anything bad from them, and there's a lot that I really, really like.

This one is a particular favourite.

Hipster Death Squad - Something Good Happening

Find LOADS more songs from Hipster Death Squad on Bandcamp, and like them on Facebook.

33.23 - Down, Down Down

This post is inspired by watching Pointless on Thursday evening while getting ready to go out. American stae capitals was the round, with Lincoln being one of the possible answers. I'd barely finished shouting "Nebraska!" at the telly before this song was playing in my head. Yet another reason why Pointless is just about the only thing I watch on telly.

I'm not complaining, I love this song.

Number One Cup - Divebomb

I also knew Sacramento was California because, y'know, bands come from there.

33.22 - 666

Not only is there something quite nice about 33.22, and it falling on 07/06 (unless you are American), but this is also the 666th published post on Aye Tunes. That doesn't count quite a lot of crap ones that have been published in the past that I've pulled for one reason or another - main reason being they were crap - but as of now there's 666 bits of nonsense by me* on here. That's probably quite a poor return for four years work, but whatever.

So, yes, songs. I resisted temptation to make it all metal all the time today, mainly because I'd have posted at least one Metallica song and would have ended up with Lars on my doorstep trying to sue me. There's still some metal though.

For best results turn up the volume, hit play on the player and don't look at what's coming next.

Slipknot - The Heretic Anthem
Beck - Devil Got My Woman
Orbital - Satan
Robert Johnson - Me and the Devil Blues
Steve Earle - The Devil's Right Hand
Pixies - Monkey Gone To Heaven
Curtis Mayfield - (Don't Worry) If There's a Hell Below, We're All Going To Go
Midfield General - Devil In Sports Casual
The King - Sympathy For the Devil
The Misfits - Devil's Whorehouse
Doctors & Dealers - Deal With the Devil
Gill Scott-Heron - Me and the Devil
Mötley Crüe - Shout At the Devil

*I say by me, but there's a couple of guest posts in the archives.

33.21 - Plugs

GS-33 Plug Adapters. Don't you dare say I don't put any effort into these.

Having a wee change of pace today, and killing two birds with one stone.
There's quite a lot of good things going on over the next few weeks, and good music out. Rather than revive news & bits, I'll shove a load of it in to this 33 post instead. Stop glaring at me like that.

First of all there's GoNorth, taking place in Inverness over the next few days. I'm not going to that though, so rather than make myself miserable by listing all the cool things happening and bands playing I'll just direct you to the website.

Olympic Swimmers released their debut album at the start of this week, and it is very good. A bit dreamy, a bit shoegazey, with the occasional loud bit, and pretty much ticking lots of "things I like" boxes. Buy it here.
Olympic Swimmers - Father Said (One EP Version)

Miaoux Miaoux releases his brilliant new album Light of the North next week, but you can get hold of a copy early at the launch gig in Mono in Glasgow on Thursday night. Support comes from Conquering Animal Sound and - playing their first Glasgow gig in blooming ages - the new look Mitchell Museum. It's almost certain to be an excellent gig.
Miaoux Miaoux - Autopilot (Vic Galloway Session)

Touch Sensitive launch their compilation album 2x6 with a gig at The Old Hairdressers on Friday. You can hear the compilation here, it features six Scottish bands, along with six from Spain. The gig features sets from If You Lived Here You'd Be Home By Now, Plastic Animals, and Randolph's Leap's Adam Ross, playing all of the recent The Curse of the Haunted Headphones album. Entry to the gig is £6, and that gets you a copy of the CD too.
Randolph's Leap - Cassie O'Tone

Speaking of Plastic Animals, they've got a rather fab new EP out now too. I do intend to get back to talking about this EP properly, but we all know how often my plans fail. You can get Automatom for whatever price you fancy here
Plastic Animals - Ghosts.

Nelson Can seem to have turned a few Scottish heads, mine included, when they told us they'd be playing their first gigs over here ever this week. You can catch the Danish three piece at GoNorth on Thursday, and at the 13th Note on Friday.
Nelson Can - People's Republic of China

Next week Song, by Toad Records gear up for the release of a split 12" from PAWS, Dolfinz, Sex Hands and Waiters by hitting the road. Here's the dates and places:
Wednesday 13th June: London, Power Lunches.
Thursday 14th June: Manchester, The Bay Horse.
Friday 15th June: Edinburgh, The Wee Red Bar.
Saturday 16th June: Aberdeen: Snafu.
Dolfinz - Teenage Bloom

A week on Sunday, June 17th, the day before my birthday, sees Scottish Fiction take the plunge into putting on gigs. The fools.
Taking place at The Captains, the Scottish Fiction gig has Saint Death. Queen Jane, Michael Cassidy, and long time Aye Tunes favourites The Spook School. I'll be along, feel free to buy me a birthday pint.
The Spook School - Hallam

33.20 - Fire!

I don't see how six erect firemen help in case of emergency.

Less than two weeks of this rambling nonsense to go, you'll be pleased to here.

One of the plans was to use these posts to stick stuff on the blog that would normally be ludicrously out of place, hand waving it away by going "it's my birthday soon, sod off" and I think that I've achieved that goal pretty well. Very few of the songs have been new, and only a couple of the days have covered Scottish bands, but no one has complained yet.

Today's post carries on that trend of being completely irrelevant to anything to do with being a new music blog, a Scottish music blog, or anywhere in between the two.

Three of this band went on to form The Walkmen. I like The Walkmen, but I'll always prefer Jonathan Fire*Eater. The first album, Wolf Songs For Lambs and the Tremble Under Boom Lights mini album are both still cracking slices of music. The self titled second album wasn't quite as good, then they punted out the singer and turned into The Walkmen. It's those first two releases today's songs come from.

Jonathan Fire*Eater - The Search For Cherry Red
Jonathan Fire*Eater - Give Me Daughters
Jonathan Fire*Eater - When the Curtain Calls For You

Hey, The Walkmen released a new album recently. Can we call that a tenuous link between this post and new music?
Oh, and guess what year these songs come from? Yeah, again.

33.19 - What's My Name?

My name is Jim. Well, James, but I only ever get called that in something official, or when I'm in trouble. Never call me Jimmy.

There, now that we've answered that burning question, let's get to the songs. They all have my name in the title. And I warned you there'd be Menswe@r at some point.

Beastie Boys - Jimmy James
Mackenzies - Big Jim (There's No Pubs In Heaven)
Cuddly Shark - Cuddly Jim
Gay Dad - Oh Jim
Jungle Brothers - Jimbrowski
Menswear - Gentleman Jim
Jim's Super Stereoworld - Dear Jim
Rilo Kiley - A Man/Me/Then Jim
L. Pierre - Jim Dodges Dines at the Penguin Café
Symposium - Jim

33.18 - Fighty & Feministy

I'm short on time and brain power today, and I've ran out of pre-written blog posts.

As a result, here's something completely thrown together in ten minutes. Apologies if the blog title made you think it would be more interesting than it is.

I quite like cover versions, and I cannot think of a more unusual musical pairing than Ani DiFranco and Jackie Chan. But here they are, together at last.

Ani DiFranco and Jackie Chan - Unforgettable

33.17 - Lots of Swearing

Rabbit is disappointed with your bad language.

For the love of God, don't listen to today's songs anywhere that swearing is frowned upon.

Unlike in real life and elsewhere on the internet, I hardly ever swear on the blog. This post will probably be notable for containing more uses of the word "fuck" than pretty much all the other blog posts added together. There's no real reason for me minding my language here. I'm not on some kind of deluded quest to keep the blog family friendly, few enough people read it without me worrying about offending sensitive eyes. I can't swear in text as well as Matthew from Song, by Toad can, it just looks a bit weird when I try it.

Enough about me and my word use though, we're here to say fuck a lot today, and blaming Super Furry Animals for it. I've rather drifted away from SFA over the years, but their first few albums are really, really good. The Man Don't Give a Fuck never made it on to any of their albums though (we're not counting compilations here, before anyone starts). Legal wrangles delayed the song's release, until eventually Steely Dan signed off on a sample, and The Man Don't Give a Fuck was released as a single, and deleted after a week. There's somewhere in the region of 50 uses of fuck in the song. It was released at a time when the Radio 1 Top 40 show would play every record i that week's chart, I remember hearing The Man Don't Give a Fuck at around half four that Sunday afternoon. The poor bleep machine certainly got a workout that day.

Super Furry Animals - The Man Don't Give a Fuck

*looks around* Right, I don't think anyone is watching, so here's the live version. The Man Don't Give a Fuck became a traditional set closer for the Furries when they played live, with the song growing from five minutes to anything from ten to twenty five minutes long, sometimes turning into extended improvised jams, other times breaking down into an onslaught of white noise. Clear 20 or so minutes in your schedule to listen.
Super Furry Animals - The Man Don't Give a Fuck (Live)

The live version makes hefty use of a Bill Hicks sample. I once read somewhere that God! Show Me Magic is about Bill Hicks, sort of. It's also an ace song, so you can have that too.

Super Furry Animals - God! Show Me Magic

33 Extra - Audience Participation

We're roughly at the halfway point of 33 now. Annoyingly it is a number that doesn't half easily, hence roughly. To celebrate the beer picture is back. Have a drink. I'm not supplying the beer though, you have to bring your own.

Anyway, since you've put up with me this far - assuming there are any of you left - I thought I'd turn things over to you a bit. So, what do you think of the songs so far, anything in particular float you boat, or have you looked in and ran off screaming straight away? What would you have picked if you, like me, were spending over a month being a self indulgent arsehole? There's still a lot of days to go till this finally ends, anything you want to see, or any predictions for what else I'll pick?

Leave a comment below, tweet @ayetunesblog, leave a comment on Facebook, drop me an email, send a carrier pigeon, express yourself with watercolours, or ignore me completely, whatever suits you. Actually, if you draw me a picture I'll forever think you are quite awesome, so there's some incentive for you.

I'll post some readers' comments next weekend (so if you don't want included in that tell me) for fun. If we get a few folk kicking in with predictions then I'll maybe have a prize for whoever gets the most right. We'll see.

33.16 - "Is That the New Green Day?"

I like John Cusack.

Older siblings can be very handy. Considering I have five of them that's just as well.
Amongst their uses is they buy records and stuff when you are wee, so you get exposed to a lot more stuff than some poor, sad only child, who is stuck with the radio and their parents record collection. (Though if you have cool parents then you might also get lucky with hearing good records)

So it was with many things in my house, but the band that came out the hat to receive the dubious honour of a 33 post is Stuff Little Fingers. Note: the hat is a metaphor.

As well as growing up hearing SLF in later years it would be one of the few times I'd properly go on the piss with my brothers. All four of us making an annual trip to the Barrowlands on St. Patrick's Day for the regularly scheduled Stiff Little Fingers gig. We don't do that any more for various reasons, and it has been a few years now since I've gone to the March 17th gig, but they always hold happy memories.

With that in mind, rather than go for regular versions of the songs, I'm opting for a few taken from a recording of 2006's Barras gig, the 15th one in a row.

Hey, it's only another 2 years till Inflammable Material turns 35, maybe I'll go back then.

Stiff Little Fingers - Tin Soldiers
Stiff Little Fingers - Barbed Wire Love
Stiff Little Fingers - Suspect Device
Stiff Little Fingers - Johnny Was
Stiff Little Fingers - Alternative Ulster

Also, just for fun, and because I used to listen to it lots on my brother's copy of All the Best...
Stiff Little Fingers - Running Bear (Live)

33.15 - To Resurrect Ourselves, We Smash Up Both Our Knees

"If you type 33 in Wingdings it looks like the Twin Towers, OMG CONSPIRACY!"

1997 again, seriously?

Yes, seriously. Piss off.

I actually completely missed Far first time round, it wasn't until You Already Know covered Bury White on am EP for Record Store Day a few years ago that I heard the song. Heard it, liked it, went and bought some Far records, liked them too. Then Far released At Night We Live, their first album in 12 years, I looked forward to it quite a bit, then it wasn't really all that great. Aww.

Oh, the post title! You'll notice that those aren't the actual lyrics to the song. However, every single time I listen to either version of Bury White, and I mean every single time, my body does an involuntary jerk type of thing, that looks a bit like I'm either trying to headbang, or I need urgent medical attention. Most of times that this happens I'm sitting on a bus or at a desk, and it results in me smashing my knees off the thing in front of me, really hard.

It happened twice while writing this post. I'm in a fair bit of pain now. Enjoy the songs while I limp and whimper a bit.

Far - Bury White
You Already Know - Bury White

33.14 - I Don't Wanna Go

I really loved music in the mid-late 90s eh? Today's song comes from 1997, and it's the lead single from Veruca Salt's second album Eight Arms To Hold You.

I've got very little chatter to go with this, I just really, really like Volcano Girls. Shouty girls, yay!

Veruca Salt - Volcano Girls

33.13 - I'm The Epitome Of Public Enemy

This post is absolutely not brought to you in conjunction with The Illuminati. Honest. Promise. It just gets difficult to find new images for these posts. The only New World Order I know anything about is the wrestling one.

Hey, wrestling, that's as good a segue into today's song as any. The song references ECW's Grunge and New Jack, giving me a slightly less jarring transition that the plain old "look, a song!" preamble I'd originally planned to go here.

Weezer eh? Naming albums after Lost characters, having THREE self titled albums and screwing with my digital music library by doing so, playing cruises, generally going a bit weird and off the rails. Cast your mind back to before that though, to 1996 and the release of Pinkerton, their second album. Critically and commercially a failure initially, Pinkerton ended up being a rare beast, something that a fair few critics ended up slating, then changing their minds about. They were right to change their minds, it's a great album, and today's song is a cracker.

Weezer - El Scorcho
Weezer - El Scorcho (Live & Acoustic)

33.12 - Tripping

Back to the hip-hop today. Fans of white Scottish men talking about hip hop rejoice!

Stumbling across DJ Z-Trip was a happy accident. I was living in Watford back in 2001/2002, and took the opportunity to hop into London with my pal to see DJ Shadow & Cut Chemist. Neither of us expected to leave much more impressed by one of their warm up DJs, but Z-Trip was pretty much awesome, and leave raving about him we did.

I've never really been into mash ups all that much, but there's something about the way Z-Trip pulls them off that means when he's at it, it works for me. Check out some of his mix tapes for evidence, Live in LA and Uneasy Listening in particular. Those, and tons more stuff, are available to download free at Z-Trip's website.

His own original work is none too sloppy either, although so far he just has the one album to his name, Shifting Gears. It's that album that we'll take a couple of songs from for this post.
One song that is just ridiculously fun, and another more straight, with a bit of added gravitas from it's guest rapper.

Z-Trip featuring MURS and Supernatural - Breakfast Club
Z-Trip featuring Chuck D - Shock & Awe

Then, back to the fun, with a more mash-up style track from an EP.
Z-Trip & MURS - Kiss (Remix)

33.11 - Obvious Post Theme Is Obvious

Alternate title: Where's the Beef?

Jeepers, one third of the way through already, so if playing this post on your turntable remember to set it to 33⅓ instead of 45rpm.

Anyway, yes, day eleven means I couldn't resist the obvious option of turning the volume up a bit.
Here are a selection of some mighty fine bands making lovely loud noises. Also, see, I do like music made post 1998.

A Fight You Can't Win - Shout First/Loud Words
Black International - Destruct_o_
Bronto Skylift - Gameboy
Carnivores - Five Go Mad On Mescaline
Crusades - Pseudo Andro
Fat Goth - Willie Wonka and the Charlie Factory
Fat Janitor - Two Nights in Hell
Holy Mountain - Gunner (EP version, so Chemikal don't shout at me)
Hunt / Gather - Cementalist
No Island - Fallow Years
PAWS - Winners Don't Bleed (Song, by Toad Session)
What the Blood Revealed - To Travel Deadly Ground

A quick diversion south for my Welsh buddies:
Exit_International - Glory Horn

And finally, gone but not forgotten:
You Already Know - Let's Fuck

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)

33.3 - Broken Kneecap, Velvet Spine

Oh hello almost missed deadline! I never expected to see you so soon. You're going to be visiting a lot in the next month, aren't you? Yes you are, you little scamp.

So yeah, football, a bust hard drive, and other things have all contrived to distract me today, meaning that very little thought has been put into this post, I've fired up blogger just after 11, and picked the very first song that came into my head.

I'm tempted to hide the name so that you don't know what it is until you hit play, but that's too much work, I'd need to go and change the file name and stuff, and I'm already scrambling around here.

Babble ends. Song begins.

Whale - Hobo Humpin' Slobo Babe

It was this or Cherry Pie, decide for yourself which would have been better. Tomorrow I'll try and be earlier.

33.2 - Yeah, and You Thought You Knew Me?

I don't know either.

Woo, Friday night, party time! What'll it be tonight then, an indie disco floorfiller? Some fat, throbbing beats for us to get down to? A bit of The Boss to sing along to while getting pickled?

No?

Something which features domestic violence?

Yes.

Whipping Boy. We Don't Need Nobody Else is another song I turn to when alcohol influenced and in control of music, but usually not till the point where everyone is a bit too drunk, pals have passed out, pissed me off, or both, and I'm starting to hate everything a wee bit. This usually helps, although if anyone is ever still awake to hear me singing along they do look very surprised at one particular part of the song.
It's tough, but beautiful.

Also contains a nice Bono diss.

Two versions, have fun, don't hit anyone.
Whipping Boy - We Don't Need Nobody Else
Whipping Boy - We Don't Need Nobody Else (Acoustic)

Whipping Boy are Irish, released a couple of cracking albums in the 90s - pick of the bunch being Heartworm, where this song comes from - then vanished. They tried to resurface a few times, but never seemed to quite manage until a year or two ago. At the tail end of last year the band, with a mostly new line up built around singer Fearghal McKee released a new single, No One Takes Prisoners Anymore. It was ok.