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The other night I was having a bit of a tidy up and I found some old cassettes of various bands from about 1991-1992. One compilation tape I called "Weird and Wonderful" featured songs by bands like Kitchens of Distinction, The Chameleons, Cranes, Power of Dreams, and Crime and The City Solution. The sound quality of the tape has diminished over the years, but the memories that the songs bring back are so clear. It was around that time that I got my first place of my own, a dingy basement flat with mould growing in the bathroom, and a pretty intense relationship with a bloke from Nottingham called Andrew (in fact I think he made the tape for me). It's been good to find some of these songs on last.fm and hear them properly again.

I saw this on someone's journal and decided to try it out. It's cool, but demands patience.

It works like this:
Put your music player on shuffle.
Post the first 40 songs that come up. You can repeat artists if you want. If you have any repeats, skip to the next track. Then answer the upcoming questions!

===============================================

01. Die Krupps - Lärm Macht Spaß
02. David Sylvian - The Good Son
03. Yoko Ono - Turned the Corner
04. Kings of Leon - Happy Alone
05. Sinéad O'Connor - Isaiah (If You Had A Vineyard)
06. Koji Kondo - Ending Credits
07. Emilie Simon - Chanson de Toile
08. Groundswell - Chronic
09. Patrick Wolf - Accident & Emergency
10. Crime & the City Solution - The Last Dictator I
11. David Sylvian - Thalhiem
12. Yoko Ono - Will I
13. The Pogues - Haunted
14. Einstürzende Neubauten - GS 2
15. Sinéad O'Connor - Óró Sé Do Bheatha 'Bhaile
16. The Mars Volta - The Bible and the Breathalyzer
17. Grinderman - (I Don't Need You To) Set Me Free
18. Andreas Ammer, FM Einheit - Canto XXVI
19. Einstürzende Neubauten - Morning Dew
20. Lunascape - Limousine Affair
21. David Sylvian - Where the Railroad Meets the Sea
22. Czech Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra - L. Moutsuaruto Omocha no Koukyuokyoku Daini Gakushou Menuetto
23. Einstürzende Neubauten - Alles
24. Siddal - Italiano
25. David Sylvian - Brilliant Trees (version 2000)
26. Emilie Simon - Never Fall In Love
27. Kate Bush - Strange Phenomena
28. Prem Joshua - Funky Guru
29. The Cranberries - War Child
30. Ippu-Do - Do You Know?
31. Dolores O'Riordan - When You're Gone
32. Dalis Car - Create And Melt
33. PJ Harvey - Who the Fuck
34. David Sylvian & Robert Fripp - God's Monkey
35. Peter Gabriel - Signal To Noise
36. Nobuo Uematsu - Into The Darkness
37. Sheila Chandra - Speaking In Tongues (I)
38. Goldfrapp- Satin Chic
39. Aesop Rock - Keep Off the Lawn
40. Grant Kirkhope - Main Titles

===============================================

QUESTIONS:
1. Which song do you prefer, #1 or #40?
40.

2. Have you ever listened to #12 continuously on repeat?
No.

3. What album is #26 from?
Végétal.

4. What do you think about the artist who did #15?
Crazy.

5. Is #19 one of your favorite songs?
I wouldn't say that, as I just downloaded it last month, but I have been overplaying it since then.

6. Who does #38 remind you of?
Alison Goldfrapp?

7. Does #20 have better lyrics or music?
Music.

8. Do any of your friends like #3?
No.

9. Is #33 from a movie soundtrack?
Not that I know of, but maybe.

10. Is #18 overplayed on the radio?
No, but it's from a radio show!

11. What does #21 remind you of?
Ireland and fantasy land.

12. Which song do you prefer, #5 or #22?
:| Weird two songs. Uh, 22?

13. What album is #17 from?i
Grinderman.

14. When did you first hear #16?
July '07.

15. When did you first hear #7?
January '07.

16. What album is #8 from?
Wave of Popular Feeling.

17. Do any of your friends like #14?
Nope.

18. What color does #4 remind you of?
Orange.

19. Have you ever blasted #11 on your stereo?
Nope.

20. What genre is #37?
new age?

21. Can you play #13 on any instrument?
I can sing it.

22. What is your favorite lyric from #30?
"Oh ha ho ho, do you know?!"

23. What is your favorite lyric from #16?
"...it pissed all over them..."

24. Would you recommend #24 to your friends?
I guess, doubt they'd like it.

25. Is #2 a good song to dance to?
No.

26. Do you ever hear #16 on the radio?
No, and why so much about 16?

27. Is #32 more of a nighttime or daytime song?
Daytime.

28. Does #36 have any special meaning to you?
Not at all.

29. Do any of your friends like #31?
No.

30. Is #25 a fast or slow song?
Slow.

31. Is #35 a happy or sad song?
Sad?

32. What is one of your favorite lyrics from #9?
"EMERGENCYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY."

33. Is #34 better to listen to alone or with friends?
Everything is better without annoying people.

34. When did you first hear #27?
December '07.

35. Name 3 other songs by the artist who did #29?
Disappointment, Away, I Don't Need.

36. Do you know all the words to #6?
There are no words.

37. Does #28 have better lyrics or music?
I don't know what the lyrics are saying, so music.

38. What album is #10 from?
Paradise Discoteque.

13000. The House of Usher – Stars fall down when Gods awake [23.10.2009]
...
12000. Neil Young – Heart of Gold [2.07.2009]
...
11000. Blondie – The Hardest Part [21.04.2009]
...
10000. Butthole Surfers - Kuntz [17.03.2009]
...
9000. Zombie Ghost Train – In The Shadows [16.02.2009]
...
8000. John Frusciante – One More Of Me [29.01.2009]
...
7000. Dead Can Dance - Song of the Dispossessed [22.11.2008]
...
6000. Akira Fuse - Tsumikino Heya [27.09.2008]
...
5000. Einstürzende Neubauten - Ruckwartsparken (Rudi Moser remix) [29.08.2008]
...
4500. Deine Lakaien - Life Is A Sexually Transmitted Disease [11.08.2008]
...
4000. A Flock of Seagulls – I Ran (So Far Away) [13.07.2008]
...
3000. Ed Kuepper - (You) Don't Know What To Steal [10.06.2008]
...
2500. Grinderman – Don't Set Me Free [18.05.2008]
...
2000. Einstürzende Neubauten - Let's do it a Dada [26.04.2008]
...
1500. XIII.STOLETI - Candymen [15.02.2008]
...
1000. Anita Lane - Lost in Music [26.01.2008]
...
500. kurna, przegapiłam xP [23.12.2007]
...
400. Interpol - Who do you think?? [21.12.2007]
...
300. Einstürzende Neubauten - Kalte Sterne [19.12.2007]
...
200. These Immortal Souls - 'Blood and Sand' she said [18.12.2007]
...
100.Crime & the City Solution - The Bride Ship III: New World [17.12.2007]
...
1. Einstürzende Neubauten - Yü-Gung (Adrien Scherwood Mix) [16.12.2007]

Nothing to do at work, so I thought I'd try to make a proper journal entry for once. Here are some of the best records I've bought this year, in chronological order (by purchase date):

Various Artists - Labrador 100 - A Complete History Of Popular Music (2007)
February 9, mail-ordered from Labrador, four-CD box set, €22.
Five hours of brilliance.

Ronderlin - Wave Another Day Goodbye (2002)
February 16, mail-ordered from Labrador, CD, €15.
After listening to the above compilation a few times, I noticed that Reflected was the best track on it. The entire album is a perfect, makes me happy and sad all at once.

Raymond & Maria - Hur mycket jag än tar finns alltid lite kvar
March 15, Second Hand Swamp Music (Tampere, Finland), CD, €8.
Great, cute pop songs from a cute Swedish band. Hmm, I just realised that all the records I've listed so far are Swedish. This is purely coincidental...

Shack - Zilch (1988)
March 15, Second Hand Swamp Music, LP, €5.
Not the best Shack album, but boy was I happy to find it after passively searching for it ever since I got into the band in 2000. The local shop never ceases to surprise me.

Simon Bonney - Forever (1992)
March 27, Fennica Records (Helsinki, Finland), CD, €2.
I had no idea what to expect of this album, but since Prkl had been praising it endlessly, I thought I might as well give it a try. And yes, the album turned out to be what some might call "a lost classic". I still don't know anything about Mr Bonney except that he is/was the singer of Crime & the City Solution, a band whose songs I've never heard.

Dingo - Kerjäläisten valtakunta (1985)
March 30, Bonuskirppis (local flea market), LP, €4.
Like so many other Finnish teenagers/children, I used to adore Dingo in the 80's. I then lost touch with them for twenty years, but last year I suddenly realised how much I miss them. Hearing this album for the first time after all these years was a truly memorable experience: not only did the most of the songs sound immediately familiar, but they sounded even better than I expected. Obviously, I didn't quite spot all the post-punk influences and such as a ten-year-old.

The dB's - Repercussion (1981)
April 21, record fair (Hyvinkää, Finland), LP, €1.
This was my first time at the largest record fair in Finland. It is an almost two-hour train ride from where I live, but sitting on the train sure paid off. Some Swedish vendors had boxes and boxes full of LP's for one euro each, and this was one of the treats I came across. I hadn't heard the album before, so I was quite blown away by how good it actually was.

Well, the "nothing to do at work" period seems to have come to a natural close, so I'll continue this at a later time. Thanks for listening.

Great wiki by foetusized

In his past lives, PIG war lord Raymond Watts was known variously as Raymond Scaballero in Foetus, an icy addition to Psychic TV, a savage PA destroyer in Einstürzende Neubauten, and a founding catalyst of KMFDM. Watts began his arrest record in London where he was most likely pissed off about something and doing sound manipulations, loops and live sound for Psychic TV. He soon crashed into Einstürzende Neubauten (probably in a strip bar) and escaped the smug complacency of the English music scene by moving to Hamburg, Germany and setting up his Building Site studio in a bunker of munitions factory, where he invited in artists including Sprung aus den Wolken, Die Haut, and christiane f. In his pursuit of a cutting edge music scene he sought out like-minded souls to create terrorism instead of tonality. Playing on European/American Neubauten tours, he quickly earned a reputation for destroying PA systems -- the security guards sent by the PA companies to protect the gear were not amused. Between their security thugs and ones hired by Watts to protect him from them, most nights ended up bloody, tense and occasionally on fire.

While collaborating with Neubauten's "gritter" twins: Blixa Bargeld and FM Einheit, Watts lived in the red light district next to a brothel, in amongst the sleaze of the Hamburg docks. Watts heard about Sascha Konietzko who was doing bizarre work with vacuum cleaners, and after drinking him into submission, dragged him and his tall, pale cohort En Esch down the stairs into the freezing Building Site studio, where they locked themselves into Watts' "frozen cesspit" with 20' steel sheets and other garbage, emerging with the debut What Do You Know Deutschland?

As one of the architects of the KMFDM sound, Watts went east to plow through the entrails of the German avant garde, planting the seed of his new experiment while KMFDM moved to America. The mutant was born out of the blood and piss in a basement studio opposite the Berlin Wall and became the 1988 debut album A Poke in the Eye. In addition, Watts was recruited by Foetus (Jim Thirwell) to be in his first live band, and after a European tour which involved disappearances, catholic school girls, and worms, Thirwell stayed on the produce the 12" Shit for Brains. Watts said he'd buy the next round and went to the US to record Steroid Maximus with Thirwell, and also did sound for Crime & the City Solution.

When the wall came down, Watts split his time between London and Tokyo, looking for a new alien habitat after Berlin's pleasure dome exploded. PIG morphed with various collaborators and Watts started working with Japanese musicians, turning his attention to Schaft, which became a huge hit there. The Watts system emerged as an elastic style of working with refuse and collaborating with pariahs: one man's trash is another man's treasure, darling.

Long-time PIG fan Trent Reznor came to see him around '91/'92 at a tiny club in Camden, England and introduced himself to the unimpressed Watts who was surprised that this fellow knew most of PIG's scattered discography. PIG was invited to open Nine Inch Nails' European tour in '94 -- complete with real pig heads on stage that were a load of fun after a few days' decomposition. Later, in 1995, Reznor's Nothing label released his fourth album, Sinsation.

In the mid 1990s, Konietzko ran into Watts again and they worked on the Sin, Sex & Salvation EP, which led to Watts returning to the fold for Nihil, the most successful KMFDM album to date, which included the Watts-penned hit Juke Joint Jezebel. Watts also appeared on the band's Symbols album, doing vocals on the delightfully-titled Spit Sperm and Unfit, while KMFDM's gunter schulz and Sascha Konietzko appear on the 1997 release Wrecked, furthering their incestuous relationship.

Still bigger in Japan than the rest of the world, PIG released his sixth album, Genuine American Monster, there in 1999. Finally, in 2002, PIG found a new American home with the Metropolis Records label, who had that year recently released the album Attak.Pig

Don't despair, I'm back! I'd like to say my absence was due to a holiday break, but that is not the unfortunate truth. Anyway, here is day 10.

Crime & the City Solution - Just South of Heaven. Pretty good. For some reason I've been ignoring these guys, but I really like Bonney's voice and the late Birthday Party-ish bassy melancholic sound.

Current 93 - How He Loved the Moon (Moonsongs for Johnn Balance). My judgement of this album is biased by the conditions in which I listened to it, as my attention was mostly focused on work. I'll have to come back to it later, but I can say in advance that it sounded pretty good.

I am finished with high school forever. Let us celebrate by listening to some awesomely awesome music.

01. Depeche Mode
Usually remixes leave a bad taste in my mouth, but... DM's are all rather good. The 'Underworld' mix of Barrel Of A Gun is beautiful and floaty and makes it sound like Dave is singing to you from the astral plane or something. And the 'Dirty South' mix of Just Can't Get Enough is just so. fucking. upbeat! I love that song anyway for being adorably and hilariously juvenile and sweet (I have a 'guilty pleasure' playlist of Shameless Love Songs and this is the first track on it) and when it's set to EPIC DANCE BEATS it's just unstoppable.

02. Recoil
Oh, Alan Wilder. Please stop being so brilliant and creepy, I can't afford another musical obsession. Especially not another DM-related one.
Stalker
Luscious Apparatus

03. Massive Attack
I listen to Blue Lines when I'm going to sleep. Very smooth and sensual.
Hymn of the Big Wheel

04. Crime & the City Solution
Well, hey. I'm a top listener for the week. Glee.
I got a copy of Shine, expecting something along the lines of Six Bells Chime, which is a dark and swirling piece of post-punk excellence, but... uh, definitely not. But in a good way. The lack of Rowland S. Howard's guitarwork is a bit saddening, but on this album they sound a bit like The Church, so I suppose there's equilibrium.
On Every Train (Grain Will Bear Grain)

05. Einstürzende Neubauten
Why the hell isn't Yu-Gung (Fütter mein Ego) in their top fifty?

06. Tom Waits
Won't you say you'll meet me down on Heartattack and Vine?

07. Tricky
Ditto the sentiments to Massive Attack. Except less mellow sensuality and more raw sex. And he covers the Cure's The Lovecats surprisingly well.

08. Kronos Quartet
The fabulous musicians who scored Requiem For a Dream. Also collaborated with The Tiger Lillies to make an album of songs based on Edward Gorey's books. YES.

09. Peter Gabriel
Uh. I played Security through once and decided that I hated it. I don't know why I thought this would be a good idea. He sounds like Phil Collins, who I also deeply dislike.

10. Kitchens of Distinction
Remember the Shameless Love Songs playlist I was talking about up there? Both In a Cave and 4 Men are on it. This band made unbearably beautiful music.

Case in point, 1990 was flanked by superior years.

But then, we didn't have to dig too deep to get to these nuggets...

100 GREAT ALBUMS OF 1990!
Compiled at MAC.



100 Flowers - 100 Years of Pulchritude
49ers - 49ers
808 State - Utd. State 90
Adamski - Doctor Adamski's Musical Pharmacy
African Head Charge - Songs of Praise
Alice in Chains - Facelift
Alien Sex Fiend - Curse
A Tribe Called Quest - People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm
babes in toyand - Spanking Machine
Betty Boo - Boomania
Black Box - Dreamland
The Boo Radleys - Kaleidoscope EP
Boogie Down Productions - Edutainment
Brand Nubian - One for All
The Breeders - Pod
Buffalo Tom- Birdbrain
Carter USM - 101 Damnations
The Charlatans - Some Friendly
Cocteau Twins - Heaven Or Las Vegas
Concrete Blonde - Bloodletting
Crime & the City Solution - Paradise Discotheque
CUD - Leggy Mambo
The Cure - Mixed Up
Danzig - II: Lucifuge
Dead Can Dance - Aion
Deee-Lite - World Clique
Depeche Mode - Violator
Devo - Hardcore Devo, Vol. 1: 74-77
Digital Underground - Sex Packets
Dwarves - Blood Guts & Pussy
Entombed - Left Hand Path
The Flaming Lips - In a Priest-Driven Ambulance
Fugazi - Repeater
Galaxie 500 - This Is Our Music
Gang Starr - Step in the Arena
Happy Mondays - Pills 'N' Thrills And Bellyaches
The High - Somewhere Soon
Ice Cube - AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted
Imagining Yellow Suns - Imagining Yellow Suns
Inspiral Carpets - Life
The Invincible Spirit - Rollercoaster Revolution
James - Come Home
Jane's Addiction - Ritual de lo Habitual
The Jesus Lizard - Head
John Zorn - Naked City
Judas Priest - Painkiller
Julee Cruise - Floating Into the Night
Kitchens of Distinction - Strange Free World
The KLF - Chill Out
KMFDM - Naïve
The La's - The La's
Lard - The Last Temptation of Reid
The Lightning Seeds - Cloudcuckooland
Lush - Gala
Mazzy Star - She Hangs Brightly
Mega City Four - Who Cares Wins
Megadeth - Rust in Peace
Midnight Oil - Blue Sky Mining
The Mission - Carved In Sand
Mock Turtles - Turtle Soup
Mr. Fiddler - With Respect
Mr. Fingers - Ammnesia
My Bloody Valentine - Glider [EP]
New Model Army - Impurity
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - The Good Son
Pale Saints - The Comforts of Madness
Pantera - Cowboys From Hell
Pet Shop Boys - Behaviour
Peter Murphy - Deep
Pixies - Bossanova
The Pogues - Hell's Ditch
Poison Clan - 2 Low Life Muthas
Pop Will Eat Itself - Cure For Sanity
The Posies - Dear 23
Prefab Sprout - Jordan: The Comeback
Primus - Frizzle Fry
Public Enemy - Fear Of A Black Planet
Renegade Soundwave - In Dub
Revolting Cocks - Beers, Steers 7 Queers
Ride - Nowhere
Royal Trux - Twin Infinitives
Ruins - Stonehenge
The Servants - Disinterest
Shonen Knife - Shonen Knife
Sinead O'Connor - I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got
The Sisters of Mercy - Vision Thing
Slayer - Seasons in the Abyss
Skinny Puppy - Too Dark Park
Slowdive - Slowdive
Special Ed - Legal
Sonic Youth - Goo
Spacemen 3 - Recurring
Stereo MCs - Supernatural
Steve Vai - Passion And Warfare
The Sundays - Reading, Writing & Arithmetic
Superchunk - Superchunk
Swervedriver - Rave Down
They Might Be Giants - Flood
Toad the Wet Sprocket - Pale
Uncle Tupelo - No Depression
Ween - GodWeenSatan: The Oneness

Thanks to everyone at the 1990's Hotdesk.