Everyday is Like Sunday, Except for Blue Monday and Ruby Tuesday, and...Well, Friday I'm in Love: Weekly Mix #33

I've been realizing that within the past few years my music collection is not only growing in the anglophilic way but in a Scandinavian (scandinavilic?) way as well. I've been amassing music from all four corners of Scandinavia, especially in the genres of electro and jangle pop. Oddly enough, as much travelling as I've done in Europe, I've never been to any of the Scandinavian countries, but I always have this image in my mind of clean, progressive places where post-secondary education is free and society is more open. And everything would be . Up until about four years ago, I hadn't really thought of Scandinavian music at all. Sure, I liked the Danish Raveonettes and Norwegian Sondre Lerche, and I didn't like the Swedish Hives, and I was well aware of the disco behemoth ABBA, the music video prowess of a-ha, and the fact a lot of pop tarts and boy bands had their songs written by Swedes, but I didn't really think about how many truly exceptional bands and artists come from the Nordic countries.

Sweden, especially Gothenburg, seems to dominate the music scene in what would seem a rather disproportionate way. In fact, it's such a prolific scene that there's an MP3 blog dedicated just to Swedish music: Swedesplease. The sheer amount of material coming out of that country deserves its own IKEA storage system, and I will not attempt to give any comprehensive look at Swedish music, let alone all Norwegian, Danish and Finnish music as well. For a start, you can visit specific record labels that focus specifically on Scandinavian artists (at the moment Labrador, Despotz and Cosy Den come to mind). Scandinavian artists pillage older genres like Motown, surf rock, synthpop, and jangle pop to come up with some of the tweest and memorable pop tunes. At the other end of the spectrum, Scandinavian countries also seem to produce a lot of death metal. I don't like death metal.

(Relatively Random Tangent: I also think Scandinavians have created the patent for visually striking blonde-brunette duos, starting with ABBA, but continuing through The Raveonettes and The Deer Tracks.)

Because I had so many Scandinavian artists, I decided to make this mix a bit of a megamix with 28 tracks. Of course Sweden has the lion's share of artists featured (The Knife, Alice in Videoland, Zeigeist, The Tough Alliance, Air France, The Radio Dept., The Deer Tracks, The Cardigans, Twig, Peter, Bjorn and John, Elenette, Blind Terry, Irene, Pelle Carlberg, The Mary Onettes, The Sound of Arrows, El Perro Del Mar, Club 8), but there are also bands from Norway (Don Juan Dracula, Lorraine, a-ha, Bedroom Eyes, Sondre Lerche), Finland (Viola, Cats on Fire) and Denmark (The Raveonettes, Mew, Windermere). You get your electropop from the likes of The Knife, Alice in Videoland and The Tough Alliance while you get some truly airy and pretty tunes from The Deer Tracks, The Radio Dept. and Mew and some wonderful C86 from Blind Terry, Bedroom Eyes, El Perro Del Mar and Irene. And check out the Edwyn Collinsesque vocals of Twig. So put on your cultural stereotype hat, grab some meatballs, quickly assemble a chair to sit on and take a listen. I'll call this mix No Death Metal.

You Take My Breath Away - The Knife

Candy - Alice in Videoland

Sad Eyed Disco Dancers - Viola

No Control - Don Juan Dracula

Pressurized Chamber - Zeigeist

Touch Me - Lorraine

Living a Boy's Adventure Tale - a-ha

1981 - The Tough Alliance

Collapsing at Your Doorstep - Air France

Pulling Our Weight - The Radio Dept.

Slow Collision - The Deer Tracks

Am I Wry? No - Mew

Here Comes Mary - The Raveonettes

Lovefool - The Cardigans

Indigo - Twig

There's a Sun - Windermere

(Here's One For You) Underdog - Bedroom Eyes

The Chills - Peter, Bjorn and John

Jag hatar män - Elenette

The White Mantled King - Cats on Fire

When Prefab Sprout Wrecked My Mind - Blind Terry

Baby I Love Your Way - Irene

1983 (Pelle and Sebastian) - Pelle Carlberg

Void - The Mary Onettes

A Very Sad Song - The Sound of Arrows

People - El Perro Del Mar

Track You Down - Sondre Lerche

The Girl With the Northern Soul Collection - Club 8



Weekly Mix #33 (Megaupload)

Everyday is Like Sunday, Except for Blue Monday and Ruby Tuesday, and...Well, Friday I'm in Love: Weekly Mix #13

So, lucky weekly mix number thirteen...and it's the inevitable C86 mix. Many others have written about the legendary C86 cassette from NME (after all, there's even an excellent blog called Indie MP3 - Keeping C86 Alive), and I doubt I have anything particularly new to add to the discussion. However, it continues to amaze me how one mail-order cassette spawned a genre, a scene, and an attitude toward music. Though NME had released a cassette five years earlier in conjunction with Rough Trade, appropriately titled C81, it never gained the same mythical status despite the fact that the artists featured on it, including Scritti Politti, Orange Juice, The Specials and Buzzcocks, were far more successful. In contrast, C86 included the likes of The Shrubs, Close Lobsters, and The Servants - not exactly well-known or long-lived. In fact, the only bands on C86 that really seem to have achieved longevity were Primal Scream, The Wedding Present and Half Man Half Biscuit.

Whether you call it jangle pop or twee or just plain shambolic, these artists came to represent the ultimate DIY aesthetic. Although the term C86 has come to mean almost exclusively twee, the actual original compilation featured many bands with an edgier sound. What is perhaps more important than whether these bands all fit into the same genre of sound is the way they came to define what it meant to be truly indie when indie still felt like a pure concept. Indie has become a completely irrelevant and bastardized term with the majority of those classified as indie actually on major labels and mainstream radio. However, with the advent of music blogs, there has been an increase in exposure for truly independent bands and even unsigned bands. In my perfect world, every band would be able to produce, distribute and promote their own music without overblown intervention from businesspeople. So while bands like Belle and Sebastian may owe their sound to C86, countless other bands owe their philosophy to it. Philosophically, C86 was like punk for the '80's.

The original tracklisting for C86 was:

Side One

Primal Scream - "Velocity Girl"
The Mighty Lemon Drops - "Happy Head"
The Soup Dragons - "Pleasantly Surprised"
The Wolfhounds - "Feeling So Strange Again"
The Bodines - "Therese"
Mighty Mighty - "Law"
Stump - "Buffalo"
Bogshed - "Run to the Temple"
A Witness - "Sharpened Sticks"
The Pastels - "Breaking Lines"
Age of Chance - "From Now On, This Will Be Your God"

Side Two

The Shop Assistants - "It's Up to You"
Close Lobsters - "Firestation Towers"
Miaow - "Sport Most Royal"
Half Man Half Biscuit - "I Hate Nerys Hughes (From The Heart)"
The Servants - "Transparent"
The Mackenzies - "Big Jim (There's no pubs in Heaven)"
Big Flame - "New Way (Quick Wash And Brush Up With Liberation Theology)"
Fuzzbox - "Console Me"
McCarthy - "Celestial City"
The Shrubs - "Bullfighter's Bones"
The Wedding Present - "This Boy Can Wait"

Twenty years after the original C86, a double-disc CD, compiled by Saint Etienne's Bob Stanley, was released as CD86. Rather than a re-release of the original compilation, it celebrated many of the artists that weren't originally on the C86 tape, but that nevertheless were considered part of the C86 scene. While it still included the odd track from the original (Primal Scream's Velocity Girl, The Wedding Present's This Boy Can Wait) and alternative tracks from most of the original bands, it also included the likes of The Jesus and Mary Chain, The Pooh Sticks, Talulah Gosh, The June Brides, and The Darling Buds. Keeping with this idea, but expanding yet further to include other British indie bands of the '80's, I made my mix with some original C86 tracks, some tracks by original C86 artists (both the cassette ones and the CD ones), and then some other bands like Felt, Bubblegum Splash, and the superbly named Dalek Beach Party. Many of them are a little rough around the edges and quirky, but that's their charm. I'm going to call this mix I Don't Need Anyone, No Not Anyone At All. Perhaps C86 has become myth because it represents an ideal and and an innocence that seems pretty much impossible in the realm of the music industry.

Velocity Girl - Primal Scream

Plastic Smile - Bubblegum Splash

Close My Eyes - Strawberry Story

Penelope Tree - Felt

Wee Timorous Cowering Beastie - Dalek Beach Party

Charlton Heston - Stump

This Boy Can Wait - The Wedding Present

Disdain - Kind

He's Frank (Slight Return) - The Monochrome Set

This Town - The June Brides

I'm On the Side of Mankind As Much As the Next Man - McCarthy

Nothing to Be Done - The Pastels

Hit the Ground - The Darling Buds

Stop Killing Me - The Primitives

Happy Head - The Mighty Lemon Drops

Whole Wide World - The Soup Dragons

Safety Net - Shop Assistants

Transparent - The Servants

The Revolutionary Spirit - The Wild Swans

You're Kidding Aren't You - The Field Mice

Apple Orchard - Bouquet

It's a Fine Day - Jane

Black Umbrella: Shelter Against the Uninspired

I'm always attracted to bands who have a strong vision and a passion to make music that actually means something. In many cases, I love a band with a manifesto. So when the Los Angeles-based band, Black Umbrella, requested to be added as a friend via MySpace last year, I accepted. Headed by songwriter, Derek James, Black Umbrella asserts that they are "deconstructing 60's mod/psychedelia, 70's glam/post punk, 80's new wave/synth pop & 90's britpop/shoegaze to bring the grey world a kaleidoscopic future pop pastiche that revels in the love of lost eras/outsider movements and is great for bedroom dancing." I love grand declarations, especially ones that encompass so much with so many and/or slashes. I was also attracted to James's eloquent rants about the lack of perfect albums anymore - albums that are fantastic from beginning to end (James cited The Smiths' The Queen is Dead, Manic Street Preachers' The Holy Bible, and The Associates' Sulk) and have the potential to change your life. And he very clearly lays out a manifesto in the MySpace blog entry "Entry 1." He also once said he promised to be added to my "Men in Skirts" gallery one day, a fabulous promise if I ever heard one, and one that will immediately endear a band to me.

Black Umbrella are: Derek James (vocals, guitar), Daniel Soltyka (guitar), Shamus Dudley (drums), Franz Amaya (bass), and Amanda G (tambourine). If you like psychedelic pop like early Pink Floyd with Syd Barrett at the helm or the latest from Of Montreal, or glam rock a la David Bowie and Jobriath, or synthpop akin to The Cure at their sunniest, or a hybrid of C86 bands and early American alternative college rock, or a mixture of all of these, then you'll love Black Umbrella. James's vocals remind me of a cross between Billy Corgan and Kevin Barnes with a melancholy pout and flourishes of glam panache. The lyrics are a wonderful blend of deep sadness and fanciful imagery often with an underlying current of frustration with traditional religion. Examples: in Fool You Can't Escape, "you are just waiting on tidal waves and earthquakes/the love you feel you can't understand/it's just a tear in God's afghan/the way you sneer at temptations of the flesh/you know you can't be so wet behind the ears about love" and in Donna's Major, "we came from grass skirts/we came from catholic flirts/rosary beads and melancholy t-shirts/we came from demon seeds/we came from killer bees/daddylonglegs, beetlebugs and centipedes."

Late last year, Black Umbrella created the six-song Slumber Party EP, and they are currently in Buffalo, New York, recording their debut album, All God's Creatures Deserve Better Than This, which will feature all of the songs that were on the Slumber Party EP (with the full band and further production this time) and four additional songs (Amanda Lynn, Honeysuckle, Believers Never Lie, and 21st Century). I eagerly await the album proper. And Black Umbrella is also playing some dates in Buffalo in the near future, so if you can, I recommend seeing them. Hopefully, I will get a chance to catch them live sometime soon.

Black Umbrella's MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/kindredact


Love Dare Not Veil - Black Umbrella

Donna's Major - Black Umbrella

Amanda Lynn - Black Umbrella