www.tism.wanker.com double CD

I am becoming obsessed with TISM - I have to own every limited release, despite already owning the regular version.

This is noteworthy - a free disc entitled "Att: Shock Records Faulty Pressing Do Not Manufacture". Many people and shops apparently fell for this and returned copies upon its release.

Perhaps not TISM's best effort, but it includes "Thunderbirds Are Coming Out" (great video), "Whatareya?" and the self-explanatory "I Might Be A C***, But I'm Not A F***ing C***".

Great Truckin' Songs Of The Renaissance by TISM

TISM's first album and one which I don't have in a lossless format. I downloaded it a long time ago, but it no longer seems to be available to buy new.

I like "40 Years - Then Death" most of all, the poetry interludes "Kill Americans" and "The Penis Is Mightier Than The Sword" are amusing and it's a good album overall.

I wish I'd heard it sooner though - I feel like I've been wasting my life.

The Hurting By Tears For Fears

A great 80s album, from the opening chords which were sampled for Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas", through the singles which sounded so different to other pop bands around at the time. Annie Nightingale would often play Suffer The Children on her request show back in the 80s which cemented it as the standout track in my mind.

There's a remastered version of this out, although I don't have it, but I know I can get it if I want.

#1 by Fischerspooner

"Rather a lot of hype" was the media's impression of Fischerspooner. I wasn't susceptible, I just liked the track Emerge.

I didn't like the rest of the album quite as much.

Demerge, if you please.

Songs From The Big Chair by Tears For Fears

I saw this cheap in Trumps, Barkingside. I quite liked Tears For Fears and this had Everyone Wants to Rule The World on it. It also had a fair bit of filler and thus wasn't played often.

We can't work it out and it must be vanquished.

Aliens Ate My Buick by Thomas Dolby

I bought this for the opening track Key To Her Ferrari which Annie Nightingale used to play on her show in 80s. It wasn't bad. And neither was the second track Airhead.

The rest wasn't quite as not bad.

I didn't get where I am today being not quite as not bad.

Or maybe I did.

Hits and B-Sides by Prince

Pop, soul or funk? Classification is overrated anyway.

And I do like Prince (I went to see him at Earls Court in 1992). But not enough to want to wade through a collection of hits and b-sides; I much prefer to grab one of his albums at random and listen to the whole thing.

If I'm honest with myself, I only bought this because it was so stupendously cheap.

Stop! by Sam Brown

Another disc from the second-hand racks of Vinyl Village in Barkingside...


I suppose I was curious why the single Stop! wasn't followed up in any big way. After all, they pulled out all the stops (hmmm...) in promoting that single - memorable video, red lips, platinum blonde hair, red outfit.


Maybe there wasn't another hit on there of the same quality, but
the rest of it was pretty decent: a varied album which sounds like a group of talented musicians had fun making. It just doesn't find its way onto the CD player often enough.


Sam's wikipedia entry says she's an artist in control of her music, not prepared to bend to the will of interfering record companies and preferring to avoid the limelight. She also co-wrote a song with Maria McKee.


Have I been too hasty here..?

I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got by Sinead O'Connor

I was walking through Westbourne Park on my way to work once when I saw a shaven headed woman in fluffy pink slippers and a Public Enemy t-shirt walking back from the post box at the end of the road.

"Hah! Sinead O'Connor," I laughed to myself, not having many bald female reference points beyond Lt. Ilia in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

As walked past me, I realised it was Sinead O'Connor.

I bought this album some time earlier, from the secondhand racks of Vinyl Village in Barkingside. It was one of those albums I thought I should hear. After I'd heard it, I rarely returned to it. Not because it's bad - it isn't: I Am Stretched On Your Grave particularly sticks in my mind. Perhaps the more mass market appeal of this album over its predecessor put me off.

I saw Sinead a few more times. Once cycling along Talbot Road with her son on the back of her bike. Another time she beckoned me past as I waited for her to reverse her car out of her driveway.

And now I am beckoning this CD off the shelf and onwards to a new life.

Now Ain't the Time for Your Tears by Wendy James

Unlike some of my friends, I was never a big fan of Tranvision Vamp, but I was intrigued when I heard Elvis Costello had written an album for Wendy James. Moreso when I read articles implying the songs were a tongue-in-cheek jab at the supposedly unaware singer and Costello was refusing to comment.

Listening to the album, the issue is ambiguous. London's Brilliant copies the opening riff of Clash City Rockers and mentions "...digging up the bones of Strummer and Jones..." but it sounds more affectionate than a spoof.

A colleague once asked Wendy James when she was going to release a jazz album. "When I'm forty," she sneered sarcastically. We're still waiting.

I am not waiting to hear this again. Off you trot.

Ni Un Passo Atras, Folkways: A Vision Shared, Common Ground: Voices of Modern Irish Music, Greenpeace Rainbow Warriors - all by Various

My collection of U2 appearances on compilations is impressive, but not exhaustive.

Common Ground was released the weekend I went to Dublin with a couple of friends on a U2 pilgrimage, visiting lots of sites associated with the band, missing them at their studio at Hanover Quay as they worked on Pop (Bono's Bristol was parked outside). I first heard the version of Tomorrow on this album in an HMV store in the centre of Dublin on a Sunday morning (after a night at The Kitchen). I never bought it at the time.

Jesus Christ from Folkways: A Vision Shared was recorded in the Sun Studios session featured in Rattle And Hum, although the track doesn't appear in the film. One of the great compilation songs, I never owned a CD copy before.

Greenpeace: Rainbow Warriors is an archetypal 80s compilation - almost everyone you can think of is on it. It opens with a different edit of the live version of Pride (In The Name Of Love) which appears on Rattle And Hum.

Ni Un Paso Atras! is a compilation I wasn't aware of which features some solo Bono tracks. I wouldn't usually bother.

More for the pile. Forgive me.

Now That's What I Call Music 13 by Various

Another misguided gift, more songs you hear on the radio, more shelf-space taken up and dust collected.

It can just as easily do that for someone else.

Bye!