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The songs of the cider-stained, sticky floors, temperamental PA systems and heaving, sweaty venues that comprised my formative ventures into clubbing in Oldham (and to a limited extent Manchester) during the early-mid 1990s. Alternative club nights called things like Subculture, Ambition? and Bulletproof, the last-named of which just works best for me as the title of this feature (PWEI fan, moi?). Stripy Tight Nights was another working title.
Selections from Indie Top 20, a Beechwood Music compilation series of the late-1980s to mid-1990s and for a while my regular gateway to a lot of new discoveries. Created and compiled by siblings Chet and Bee Selwood, before that task passed on to Tim Millington, this was indie in the original sense of the word - many genres, independently distributed - until volume 18, when Tim started to let the major label guitar darlings of the NWONW, Britpop and beyond sneak on and the series lost all sense of identity and purpose. Sigh. Suffice it to say that most choices will originate from the first 17 pristine instalments.
Some personal favourites from among the progressive house, hardcore techno, drum & bass, happy hardcore and lord knows what else that Mr John Robert Parker Ravenscroft enjoyed lobbing into his playlist. Title is a riff on Dance Hall at Louse Point, the 1996 album by John Parish and PJ Harvey. Not a dance music album at all, of course, but not wholly irrelevant as Parish and Harvey did perform a session lifted from it at Peel Acres that year.
German language favourites of many eras - Neue Deutsche Welle and Hamburger Schule movements, pop, synthy stuff, darkwave, indiepop. Und so weiter, as we say auf Deutsch.
The name I would have given to a club night of European music treats, had I ever worked out how to put one on in either a bricks and mortar club or else on Mixlr. Maybe one day. Expect some familiar Europop tracks, yes, but also plenty of Italo disco, Sabadell Sound, arch French pop, rock, hip-hop, and the odd surprise from as far afield as Estonia or Belarus.
The French language equivalent of Doch der Countdown läuft (q.v.). I suppose either has the potential to overlap with Eurotastic, but some tracks just feel more right here than there. Trust me, I probably know what I'm doing...
Selections taken from what's an incomplete list, as they are those choices that I made at the time for the given year which I still stand by years later. Strict criterion, that.
This may not be everybody's view, but I far preferred Mark Goodier's stewardship of Radio 1's Evening Session to that of Jo Wiley and Steve Lamacq which followed. Several reasons, but the biggest being Goodier's comparative guilelessness (in the very nicest sense of the word) freed him to play certain tracks that his cooler, more cynical successors would likely not have. The selections in this feature were all definitely played during the Goodier years, 1990-1993.
We all have our personal Day The Music Died, and the announcement of the Indietracks festival's permanent retirement in 2021 after fourteen outstanding years runs John Peel's death mightily close as being mine. What I owe that festival, musically and personally. This feature is dedicated to Indietracks' memory, each selection taken from an act who performed at least once there during its storied history. The title is a line borrowed from Dream of Firsby Station, by Indietracks ever-present Pete Green.
One of two regular features retained from the pre-hiatus TML. The musical obituary, in essence, with one or more tracks from a performer who sadly slipped away recently.
A multipurpose feature, but one to which you can say "Isn't that...?" regardless of the choice. Sometimes it'll be a ridiculously famous person in a promo video (and not always pre-fame); sometimes a subsequently famous performer in an earlier act; and sometimes a piece of music you'll do your brains trying to remember what it was the theme tune of. As I say, "Isn't that...?" candidates all.
Because sitting at home well over 30 years ago and enjoying 160 to 200bpms, stabby Orchestra Hit samples, hissing Roland Juno Alphas and the rest of it with a cup of tea and a biscuit was perfectly possible, thank you very much.
This feature, very simply, sees a given List play out with a longer than average length song. Double figure minutes where possible, though I'll tolerate nine at a push.
Three or four tracks lifted from one of my favourite albums. Not knowing every last beat of every last song thereon isn't an absolute prerequisite for qualification, though in many cases it just so happens that I do.
A riposte to those social media lists or commercially released compilations of "songs from the 1980s that you've forgotten about". Mate, I'm Aspergers, so I don't forget niche stuff as easily as your average; and whilst we're at it, stop trying to pass off the likes of A-ha (18 UK top 40 hits) as a one-hit wonder just because you only remember one A-ha song. Nnnkkk. What we have here, then, are '80s tracks which genuinely just don't get heard very much at all now, and in some cases barely have for decades; yet in most cases I could hear them played sufficiently often for a while on either Radio 1 or Piccadilly Radio to suppose their imminent chart success was a formality (it never came). Note forgotten rather than lost, in deference to Gary Crowley's excellent Lost '80s compilations, a notable exception to the aforementioned exercises in historical revisionism.
Instrumental tracks by acts not primarily associated with instrumentals. Ideally I'd have named this feature after an actual instrumental rather than an XTC song with words in it, but it's just too perfect a name.
1980s and 1990s hip-hop selections from both sides of the pond. I nearly named this feature The Rap Singers after the Stewart Lee routine, but instead went for the Look Around You reference which approaches the subject matter a bit more affectionately.
Post-rock, space rock, unrock, Radiophonic Workshop and adjacent material, maybe even some Bristolian rural psychedelia. Named after an ace Hawkwind-on-zero-budget space chug by Leicester lovelies John Sims.
Four tracks by the same act. Not necessarily the hits, in fact likelier not, but just anything from any parts of their recorded careers that I thought sufficiently interesting to share and hadn't previously. Resisted the temptation to call this feature We've Got Lumps Of It Round The Back, in case the Monty Python estate took umbrage.
A feature salvaged from a feed I used to run on Twitter, a place which I hardly go anywhere near now if I can help it. A selection of three or four songs which entered the official UK singles chart (for the very first time, in the case of songs that were reissued or re-entered later) on the date of the List in question. Not the highest charting ones, nor necessarily the most famous ones either, as there's more fun in unearthing the gems.
Because it's not just Craig Charles who can do this whole a-something-of-[name-of-genre-which-rhymes-with-the-something] shtick. A trio of tracks mostly featuring jangly guitars, chiming melodies and thoughts of love. Yes, expect lovely indiepop.
The other regular feature carried over from TML's earlier years - simply, one new and one old song from a specific act.
Darkwave, EBM and industrial, primarily lifted from the soundtrack of the club nights of my year working in Germany, 1995-6. A time of many visits to alternative nightclubs called things like Scarabee, hidden away under motorway bridges or behind railway sidings. All good clean fun, officer.
Another track by an act primarily (disproportionately?) associated with one well-known or ubiquitous track, just to prove that wasn't all they had about them. Note the lack of use of the term one-hit wonder, as not all choices were hitmakers.
