Spring sprung and I still hadn’t got round to uploading my best of 2010. So here it is, longer than any previous year round-ups but that’s just testament to how much great stuff there was last year. There are a couple of covers, some steel drums in there, a whole mess of witch house/chillwave with the attendant smattering of form names. But it’s all very very agreeable. Get it in you.

It kicks off with a track I fell in love with so much I had to get the clear vinyl 7″ shipped in from LA, no matter how much of a hipster doofus move that sounds like.

Download here

1. Friend of the Night: Teen Inc.
2. Why Won’t You Make Up Your Mind?: Tame Impala
3. Problems: Murder Mystery
4. Alright: Girls
5. Remain in Jah (Chrissy Murderbot Juke Remix): Lemonade
6. FM Tan Sexy: El Guincho
7. Last Love: Toni Toni Lee
8. Yellow Jacket: The Samps
9. Saviour: Teen Daze
10. Planet Party: Games
11. Kisses: Kisses
12. Chase Scene: Broken Social Scene
13. Banafleur Overalt: Jaga Jazzist
14. Beat32: Pigeondust
15. Full Collision: Violens
16. Keep The Faith: D’eon
17. Hard Drivin’ (Main): Jacques L. Dorsey
18. Honey Mine (Lissvik Remix): Korallreven
19. Smothered Mate: Chilly Gonzales
20. Neon Beams: Take
21. Haunted: Bryce Isbell
22. Nightcall (Breakbot Remix): Kavinsky
23. Baby I’m Yours: Breakbot
24. Thieves Like Us: Sunbears!
25. Soft Denial: Millionyoung
26. Coconut Coast: Oriol
27. Generation Rx (Alt. Instrumental): Danny Brown
28. Woodland Hills: Rangers
29. Never Fade: Chesca
30. Dry Blood: Parallels
31. Ariel (Dark Sky Remix): Stateless
32. I Think I Like U 2 (Breakbot Remix): Jamaica
33. And We Gonna (Samiyam Chopsticks Remix): Shigeto
34. Round And Round: Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti
35. Lovesick: Lindstrom & Christabelle
36. Take ‘Em Up: Shit Robot
37. Island Best: Stellar Om Source
38. Angela (Calmer): Bob James

The title comes from a Greg Proops quote, of all people, when he lamented how movie titles aren’t as exciting as they once were, claiming last year that hard-boiled noirs used to have thrilling titles like “Knives All Night!”.

A repost in honour of yet more unfathomable strangeness from the man Torn, that’s right, a bungled bank robbery. Way to keep those obit writers on their toes, Elmore.

Ah, Rip Torn. I love a journeyman actor who’s something different to every generation, with a sack full of sensational stories to boot, including one disputed tale involving Rip, and superprick Dennis Hopper, involving the line “Why don’t we go outside, and you bring all the knives and then we’ll see who the punk is?” When Hopper recounted the tale on the Tonight Show in 1994, Torn sued and won $475,000. Hopper appealed and lost another $475,000. There’s something about that I like.

I imagine to the nippers he’s just Z from the Men in Black movies, while to me he’ll always be scenery-chomping Artie from The Larry Sanders Show. The fact is ol’ Rip’s been knocking around Tinseltown for far far longer than that and, if you’ll excuse my French, is one hard-ass crazy motherfucker. How hard, I hear you ask? Was the Hopper story not enough? How does attacking Norman Mailer with a hammer grab you? Don’t believe me? Have a wee skwizz at this then, made slightly more arty by the inclusion of French subtitles. I’d love to see Dennis Norden introduce this clip. “Don’t you just hate it when the director bites the leading man’s ear off?” Cock-up indeed.

And he’s got one of the more eclectic CVs out there, including Judas, Nixon and Louis XV. And he was in The Man Who Fell to Earth*. That’s range. Damn, that’s Bruce Hornsby and the Range. He’s currently well-cast playing Alec Baldwin’s enigmatic boss Don Geiss in 30 Rock. Two crazy dudes getting the network to pay them for having fun, nice one.

Tangentially, and especially for Ray, I came across this. Freaky deaky.

I’ve been devouring Thomson’s Have You Seen, and packed with gems as it is, the highlight so far, for me has been his page on North by Northwest. North by Northwest deserves a writer such as David Thomson, and David Thomson deserves films such as North by Northwest to write about.

You can buy this superb book here.

“What I realised was that North by Northwest is only pretending to be a suspense thriller, an action-adventure picture or a road movie. It’s actually a screwball comedy – and one of our greatest. And I have reached that time in life where I’d rather have a great screwball comedy than a profound tragedy. After all, tragedy is all around us and screwball is something only the movies can do.”

“Here’s one demonstration. Don’t you love the stupidity – the fond, yearning craziness – of a nation that will take an innocent lovely mountainside and carve in it, larger than houses, the solemn faces of presidents? The mixture of authority over nature and childlike impulse! And then along comes a strange genius of another American form – movie – and he sees that this daft monstrosity can be employed for a desperate chase sequence where someone hides in Jefferson’s nostril or a high heel trips on Washington’s proud lip. Had I been a Soviet leader in ’59 – cold going on frigid – I’d have looked at North by Northwest and told my commissars, “Sorry, guys, the jig is up. They’ve take the acme of patriotic realism and turned it inside out!” And isn’t that a pretty good definition of screwball?”

“Ernest Lehman wrote it, and for a talented writer who got himself into some awkward pictures, this must have been grace and reassurance: Just write Cary Grant against a rising disorder, and you have a film. Bernard Herrmann is laughing to himself and saying, I knew I always wanted to do music for a comedy!”

Promise Less: Music from 2009

It’s all here, a musical look back at the year where nu-boogie and chill wave rode high. I’m sure that’s how we’ll tell it to our grandchildren, right? Honourable mentions go out to: Prefab Sprout, Neon Indian, Memory Cassette, Shits & Giggles and Bottin who didn’t quite make it onto this: a mix that will fill a C90 to the brim in a year where the home-produced limited edition cassette made a baffling reappearance. So click on the link above, download the sucker and scoff about how I “just didn’t get this year musically”, and how you’re done with me professionally. If nothing else, it’s pretty much Autotune free, and comes with two suggestions for starting places for cover art. Happy New Year.

1. Music To My Ears: Mocky (from Saskamodie)
2. GG & The Boys: Chin Chin (from The Flashing, The Fancing)
3. I Cannot Let You Go: Sondre Lerche (from Heartbeat Radio)
4. Brazil: Tahiti 80 (from Activity Center)
5. Hot Street (U-Tern Edit): Michael Jackson (from One Day Later)
6. Everyday: Ladyology (from MOTU2 V.6)
7. Red Sonja: Loose Shus (from Valerie & Friends)
8. Belong: Washed Out (from High Times)
9. What Did He Say: Nite Jewel (from Good Evening)
10. 10 West: Dam-Funk (from Toeachizown Vol 2: Fly)
11. Maybe You Know: 5G Productions (from Virtual Beat Tape)
12. A Teenager In Love: The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart (from The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart)
13. Cressida: Malcolm Ross & The Low Miffs (from Malcolm Ross & The Low Miffs)
14. Short Order Cooks: Emil & Friends (from Downed Economy EP)
15. Jealous of Roses: Bibio (from Ambivalence Avenue)
16. Promise Less or Do More: The Whitest Boy Alive (from Rules)
17. Knotty Pine: The Dirty Projectors w/David Byrne (from Dark Was The Night)
18. Lisztomania (Alex Metric Remix): Phoenix (from Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix: The Remixes)
19. Let Me Get Next To You: First Touch (from First Touch)
20. Sometimes: Miami Horror (from Bravado)
21. Fragments: The Bridal Shop (from In Fragments EP)
22. Fortune: Little Dragon (from Machine Dreams)
23. I Need Love (Morgan Geist’s Love Dub): Hot Toddy w/Ron Basejam (from I Need Love)
24. Someone Told Me: Good Guy Mikesh & Filburt (from Selected Label Works Vol 1)
25. Missile Command: Factoryfactory (from MOTU2 v.7)

“I can’t wait for the new artwork to be delivered. Now, you’re sure you told him to not make a feature of our enormous heads and tiny hands? He has a solution? Great. Well, I can’t see what could possibly go wrong.”

- Rance Allen, 1977.

Don’t forget to visit It Might Also Go A Little Something Like That for your daily music fix. This week: the movie music of Stephen Bishop. See you there.

…to paraphrase Prince. A little baby brother to this blog, It Might Also Go A Little Something Like That, has been born over at tumblr, where I will be posting a track-a-day until something explodes. Already we’re two days in and you can enjoy Isaac Hayes covering The Blue Nile and Donald Byrd gloriously at the logical end of his jazz-funk tether. The hook? Each day’s track will be tangentially connected to the day before until I paint myself into a musicological corner. It’s also an indulgent way of sorting my online stuff for the short term future. Music will live there, longer and sadly more infrequent posts here, and short bursts of tosh will thrive on twitter.

In the meantime, you can enjoy a slew of mixes on this blog, and flick through the mine of downloadable mp3s already hosted here. I plan to be back with a needlessly comprehensive series of posts about Guess Who and a best of 2009 music retrospective before the decade’s out. So see you then. Right? Right.

“The camera timer better be working this time, ’cause this is the last one in the roll.”

I’m delighted to welcome back the Soul Tableaux series with this gem from soul nearly men Omni. I’m betting there’s a garage full of Omni trademarked knitwear and knitting patterns that didn’t get shifted after tracks like “Roctron” didn’t do the business.

As I’m sure you already know John Hughes has passed away at the ridiculously young age of 59 whilst out strolling with his family in Manhattan. As a younger man I unashamedly loved his films, but as I grew older I found certain formulae kick in. The younger you are when you see a John Hughes film the more likely you are to always love it, try watching one for the first time when you’re 21 or over and something doesn’t quite click. The other thing is that the older his protagonists, the better the film. Planes, Trains & Automobiles and National Lampoon’s Vacation stand proud at one end of the spectrum thumbing their noses at the abominations of Curly Sue, Baby’s Day Out and Foetus Bueller’s Day Off (okay I made the last one up). At his peak, he was prolific to Judd Apatow like proportions, writing, directing and producing up to three films a year.

Another one of Hughes’ enduring legacies for me was his love of the second wave of British Invasion bands, which is why I now have a love of New Order I’m proud of and a similar love of Simple Minds I only admit to when I’m drunk. In that spirit, here’s a handful of tracks from Hughes films which I think are right little crackers.

Holiday Road – Lindsey Buckingham from National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983)

Happy Birthday – Altered Images from Sixteen Candles (1984)

Some Like It Hot (extended mix) – The Power Station from National Lampoon’s European Vacation (1985)

March Of The Swivelheads – The Beat from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)

Elegia (extended) – New Order from Pretty in Pink (1986)

Power To Believe – The Dream Academy from Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987)

Last thought: Mark Hughes aka ‘Sparky’ – John Hughes wrote Vacation where Clark Griswold’s nickname with Sparky. Coincidence? Probably.

Stevie Wonder Russian Dolls

A fresh photo of one of my most treasured items, especially for Jimmy Nutmeg. And some tunes to smooth the way into the weekend, courtesy of Trevor Nelson’s favourite Motown artist, as tastefully revealed at the MJ memorial this week. He is right, though.

Uptight / Satisfaction (live) – Stevie Wonder & The Rolling Stones

All I Do Is Think About You – Brenda Holloway

What’s That You’re Doing? – Paul McCartney & Stevie Wonder

Cripes. LA Times and CBS News, and now the BBC have called it. Tear yourself away from the bad stuff and remember the sweet sweet music.

Michael Jackson – Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough

Robin Danar – Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough

James Chance – Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough

Derrick Laro & Trinity – Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough