That's The Bag I'm In

 I'm listening to an old compilation CD I made. I've drawn a picture of Peter Lorre on the cover and called it "Oh Lorre!", a reference to the first track: "Oh Lori", by the Alessi Brothers, the one hit Australian purveyors of sweet summer sounds. It's a song to go roller-skating in the park to. And followed by yet more Australians - The Birthday Party - with "Release The Bats". A classic one-two opener to a CD. This comp places me somewhere in the mid 2000s. Could I have made it for someone else? Could I have made it for Kelly? It's got a proper cover, so I might have been trying to impress with my ace drawing skills, as well as my super suave taste in tunes. I never made a compilation in those days that wasn't at least partly a record of my sophistication and erudition - within certain parameters known only to myself. This CD does contain "Storm in a Teacup" by The Fortunes, very much mine and Kelly's song, and the first dance at our wedding. And I certainly sent it to Kelly, and she loved that song, it spoke to her in a rare way. I struggle to listen to it now. It's still imbued with a sadness I find impossible to get past. Because it wasn't a storm in a teacup. The hopefulness and positivity in the song were misplaced. What was coming was worse than we could have imagined. The song is followed on here by "The Day Before You Came" by Abba, which is possibly the most evocative and damaging pairing of songs I could have contrived to place together. 

Well done, John from the past. 

Comp Elation

But I don't think this is the compilation I made for Kelly. It's too all over the place. The next few tunes are "Rhetoric" by Momus, "Happy Pig" by Sparklehorse, "Ce Gens La" by Jacques Brel, "7 Heures de Matin" by Jacqueline Taieb and "Boys" by B.O.N. These are not the tools in a seducer's kit-bag. "Boys", in particular, is a hard sell. It's a sort of teen German hip hop - though they rap in English with American accents - about how women should communicate more effectively because men are stupid and can't intuit anything that isn't carefully explained to them. The video sees the lead singer running around a girl's school in the nip being chased by nuns. Not the sort of song you'd put on a compilation as a gift to a woman, unless you actually were the lead singer of B.O.N. or you wanted to manage and lower her expectations. 

"She Brings The Rain" by Can and "Pinball" by Brian Protheroe are next, and there's nothing to scare the horses there, but then, bloody hell, it's "Graveyard" by Forest, a finger-in-the-ear-flutes-and-finger-picking slice of Prog folk, about a bloke wandering through a graveyard and discovering his own body there. Again, an unusual choice. 

It starts to get a bit wayward after this point. It's all over the shop. There was a bit of flow at the start, but I can't see any through-line as we creep toward the ending, as "Graveyard" slides into "White Belts" by Make Up, which sounds like Prince writing a 70's cop show theme tune with a band he found in a Minneapolis scout hut. I mean, its obviously very brilliant, but that segues into Fred Neil's avuncular hobo folk goof, "That's The Bag I'm In", in turn followed by "N.E.R.D."s "Stay Together" and "Good Time, So Fine" by Aphrodite's Child. If you can see any sort of link...

And this is why I think this was made solely for my own gratification. This was not designed to impress anyone. Unless the person I'm trying to impress is me. "Look, John. Look at the exciting and varied music you listen to. Lovingly curated, from murky cultural depths, and strewn across the trawler deck from my brimming keepnet, strange fish, blinking and gasping in the sun: punk, kitsch, post punk, A.O.R., folk, prog, hip hop, ye ye, pop and whatever the hell Momus is at this point. Electronica? Sort of." 

The last four songs are "God Song" by Robert Wyatt, "Purple Haze" by Dion, "Whisper, Whisper" by The Bee Gees and "O England, My Lionheart". They'd be on a playlist I'd make this week. My musical taste has utterly atrophied. As it should do.