LIST 83 - 23/12/11 (Christmas special)

Hello there,

Time, alas, for the final That Music List of 2011, and as in the previous two years we finish off with an assortment of lesser-known and unheralded (or even unharktheheralded) festive songs.

Actually, I should qualify these as being for the greater part lesser-known, as the Frank Kelly track was actually a top 30 hit upon original release. This comedy track pre-dates his metamorphosing into Father Jack Hackett by all of 11 years - which reminds me, I hope they're going to show the priests-trapped-in-the-lingerie-department episode of Father Ted again this Yuletide. Quality.

All that remains for me to do, then, is to thank you all again for your continued interest in That Music List, and to assure you that it will return in the new year after its usual winter hiatus - I've still a backlog of so much stuff to play through during that time, never mind start to compile it into lists! Very best wishes of the season to you all, and let's make a date sometime in 2012.

Cheers,

J x



MJ HIBBETT & THE VALIDATORS – I Got You What You Want For Christmas (macho megamix) (2009)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjRzIFtjC78

JESSY & THE JINGLE BELLES – Dear Santa (live in Boston) (2008)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbfQKX5-zcQ

SCREAMING MALDINI – Restless Hearts and Silent Pioneers (2010)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z04FSeP27oY

SONIC YOUTH – Santa Doesn’t Cop Out on Dope (1996)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7sa1eFGUuI

THE PIPETTES – Santa’s On His Way (2010)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5fxdcKu_8k

FRANK KELLY – Christmas Countdown (1983)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJoXCwkPVi8

MOMUS – Little Lord Obedience (1999)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iej3qBEKILE

GRUFF RHYS – Slashed Wrists This Christmas (2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPlZ0d-huTc

HENRY ROLLINS – ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas (1991)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFUgRRYmLvk

YO LA TENGO – It’s Christmas Time (2002)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9b8dT_OpHuQ

ELASTICA – Father Christmas (1994)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbLQYXkOfjI

SPEARMINT – Oklahoma (2001)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPLx5bokNb8

THE VANDALS – Oi! To the World (1996)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKk-2Pu2N8g

FANTASTIC EVERLASTING GOBSTOPPER – Schoolgirl Psychedelia (1999)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah9U5BHoiF4

DANIEL JOHNSTON – Rock Around The Christmas Tree (1988)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xntRjBdwYAg

BERT JANSCH – In The Bleak Midwinter (1974)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8ZYxTPhXA8

ATOM & HIS PACKAGE – What WE Do on Christmas (1998)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGC0ga4ifUE

QUASI – Merry X-Mass (2006)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SnOwOMKzf0

WILD BILLY CHILDISH & THE MUSICIANS OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE - Poundland Christmas (2007)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVvVzmyDFfA

EMMY THE GREAT & TIM WHEELER – Home for the Holidays (2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URCNMEbgd_w

LIST 82 - 16/12/11 (a second Then And Now special)

Hello again,

Just this and the festive special to go in terms of Lists this year - hasn't it flown by again.

As the title indicates, this is the second ever List (after #66 back in September) given over exclusively to Then And Now, i.e. one song by the featured artist from the present, followed by one from as far back into their history as it amuses me to delve. Where at all possible, I'm still trying to avoid including artists (both in this special and in That Music List in general) whose recording history only dates back as far as this century, though in the fulness of time that's going to be harder to maintain. There's only so many old gimmers with mikes and gee-tars still out there creating stuff, when all is said and done...

The Sigur Ros track is purported to be new - it's certainly previously unreleased, at least, and features now on a new best-of. Equally the Stephin Merritt track is appearing at last on a compilation of rarities, out-takes and unreleased works, so may be a bit older than the 2011 date I'm compelled to give it as a previously unavailable entity.

A quick word about the new Fall album - it's patchy as anything, and the diversion into metal for one track is particularly catastrophic. Conversely "Mask Search", included here, is one of the best things they've done for ages, as well as at long last perfectly encapsulating the moment at which Mark E Smith finally turns into Captain Beefheart doing an impression of Eight Ace from Viz comic.

See if I'm wrong about that. And see also if you can't help crack a smile at the year's best non-seqitur committed to plastic ANYWHERE this year!

J x



SIGUR ROS – Lúppulagið (2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR_uuIFszJU

SIGUR ROS - Viðrar Vel Til Loftárása (1999)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akYuy2FMQk4

THE FALL – Mask Search (2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNtQ-jzKFgQ

THE FALL – Big New Prinz (live on The Other Side of Midnight) (1988)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wygQmJ59E4Q

ULTRAMARINE – Find A Way (2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBe-uC08hp8

ULTRAMARINE – Saratoga (remix) (1992)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSZtEVzbBiA

MAGAZINE – Burden of a Song (2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNoDsHksjbI

MAGAZINE – Definitive Gaze (1978)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPPWWkhRT8I

STEPHIN MERRITT – Forever and a Day (2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ixF2Z-i5sA

THE MAGNETIC FIELDS – Swinging London (1993)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgDIStmjCd0

BRIAN ENO – Bless This Space (2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7gvUMn6_YM

BRIAN ENO – King’s Lead Hat (1977)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yp0k_o8gfQI

DARREN HAYMAN – I Taught You How to Dance (2011)
http://vimeo.com/31658589

HEFNER – The Hymn for the Cigarettes (1999)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Wcslx9RL-c

SPECTRUM – Mary (long version) (2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VM7OYRKFaRg

SPECTRUM – How You Satisfy Me (1992)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9yApVj3z84

BILLY BRAGG – Never Buy the Sun (2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uWw7kuiCss

BILLY BRAGG – Milkman of Human Kindness (1983)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Goxm0x4dTw

GRUFF RHYS – Post Apocalypse Christmas (2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U3JqmNuRN8

SUPER FURRY ANIMALS – Do or Die (1999)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_mwctoW7t8

LIST 81 - 09/12/11 (1981 special)

Hello again,

Yes, you've read the title right - it's a 1981 special. Having managed to do 20th-anniversary Lists for each of the last three years planted the seed in my mind to try to go back an extra decade, and in the end I wasn't too hard pushed to find a nice sample.

Quite a few of these emanate from childhood, 1981 being both the first year (as a ghastly, precocious, trivia sponge of a six-and-a-half-year-old) that I used to watch Top Of The Pops religiously and the first I was gifted a radio, and from then on the appetite for music developed quickly and voraciously. Mind, watching the disembodied head of John Lydon floating menacingly around the TV screen c/o the BBC vision mixer's trickery could easily have put me off TOTP for life. That was frightening!

The version of "We Could Send Letters" included is that from the original 7" release, and thus from Aztec Camera's debut; whilst "Tally Ho!" is the debut single from The Clean and could as a result conceivably lay claim to being one of the cornerstones on which Southern Hemisphere indiepop developed. Discuss!

A List of songs all from the same year clearly doesn't lend itself to a Then And Now feature, but I hope the conclusion of a song by the Teardrop Explodes leading into a song about the Teardrop Explodes passes muster as an alternative. [sings] I hope it does. It really doooooooooes... Thankyou.

J x



XTC – Smokeless Zone
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt9f4Lh4OD8

PUBLIC IMAGE LIMITED – Flowers of Romances
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E_0bBGjL70

AZTEC CAMERA – We Could Send Letters (original)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO_6Y4oT7UQ

FSK – Teilnehmende Beobachtungen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5bqD040YjM

WIRE – Our Swimmer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUwb5De18PQ

NEW ORDER – Everything’s Gone Green
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRgHSxWnhqk

THE HIGSONS – I Don’t Want to Live with Monkeys
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbnX_oLnJQA

SUGARHILL GANG – Apache (Jump On It)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQObWW06VAM

THE BIRTHDAY PARTY – Release the Bats
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5R8pECW3UHs

IAN DURY & THE BLOCKHEADS – Spasticus Autisticus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKnBgJG9A8E

ANTI-PASTI – Let Them Free
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5x1amsbnG0

THE DURUTTI COLUMN – Enigma
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9v0-GHSZuCA

JOHN COOPER CLARKE – Tw*t
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS5QMT-JUt4

THE CLEAN – Tally Ho!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVkC8W_-a-8

SCRITTI POLITTI – Lions After Slumber
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1ieWRclcfs

DEAD KENNEDYS – Too Drunk to F*ck
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJ7pgElCPXE

YOUNG MARBLE GIANTS - Clicktalk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-bdMST0ljI

YOKO ONO – Walking on Thin Ice
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ft7-xEiwvJw

KIRSTY MACCOLL – There’s a Guy Down the Chip Shop Swears He’s Elvis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DL2GmaI3Xus

THE TEARDROP EXPLODES – Passionate Friend
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGkrkcoTILc

THE FRESHIES – I Can’t Get “Bouncing Babies” by the Teardrop Explodes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvU8MddmEkw

LIST 80 - 02/12/2011 (1991 special, part two)

Hello there,

It's the second and final part of the 1991 retrospective this time, with many bases covered once again - any List that includes Po! and Public Enemy can't be accused of being samey, I reckon.

As the festive period fast hoves into view, it's probably worth me pointing out that the appearance of Kirsty MacColl as a guest on Billy Bragg's track here, plus in a solo capacity next week, is as close as you're going to get to seeing F******** O* N** Y*** on That Music List. 

It'll be the eleventh anniversary of her passing on December 18th, and I'd implore folk to mark the occasion by championing any of her many more deserving tracks, from the painfully autobiographical Soho Square to the commentary of Free World. Go discover.

In that spirit of discovery, finding out just how heavily drenched in shoegaze Moonshake's debut single had been was a complete revelation to me - I missed it completely first time around. The Boo Radleys' fuzzy beginnings were better known to me, but less so Tortoiseshell even so. It's a pleasure to include this earlyish b-side as well. 

J xx

Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 08/04/2026).

POPPY FACTORY - Stars

FOREHEADS IN A FISHTANK – Happy Shopper

BLUEBOY - Clearer

CUBIC 22 – Night in Motion

BILLY BRAGG - Sexuality

MOONSHAKE - Gravity

PUBLIC ENEMY – Can’t Truss It

THE FATIMA MANSIONS – Bertie’s Brochures

THE BOO RADLEYS - Tortoiseshell

808 STATE – In Yer Face (edit)

PIXIES – Alec Eiffel

THEY GO BOOM! – Body

SLINT – Good Morning, Captain

LFO – We Are Back 

TEENAGE FANCLUB – Like a Virgin

PO! – Fay

THE JUSTIFIED ANCIENTS OF MU MU – It’s Grim Up North (Drummond vocal; single version)

LIST 79 - 25/11/2011 (1991 special, part one)

Good evening,

Well, you didn't think you were going to escape the whole of 2011 without one or two "songs from 20 years ago this year" Lists, did you? (see also Lists #10, #11, #22 and #23 in 2009, plus #44 and #45 in 2010). They've just had to wait whilst the welter of other material has been worked through.

There are some songs on this first instalment whose inclusion is a particular source of personal pleasure. Countdown endures to this day as both my favourite Pulp song of all time, plus - along with Wir and The Frank And Walters tracks included - a constituent of the playlist on the first evening that I switched over to Mark Goodier's Evening Session permanently, having merely dabbled with it a bit previously.

(NB that's not to say I wasn't already listening to Peel as well; but supplementing that with some of the other better shows at the time on Radio 1, rather than persisting with the Fab FM direction Key 103 in Manchester had taken after its post-Piccadilly Radio, post-Mark Radcliffe reimagining, took a little longer).

Missing The Moon, meanwhile, was and remains the aural equivalent of a stare out into the heavens in music form - vast, celestial, and perfect.

No apologies, by the way, for including a bit of that 'ardcore techno that started to fill the charts around this time - I did, for the greater part, love it to bits. No apologies either for a nice bit of judderjudderbleuurrrgghh from Extreme Noise Error.  Merely a year later, they'd find themselves involved with a chart-topping duo and an awards ceremony - with hilarious consequences, as the sitcoms always say...

J xx

Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 08/04/2026).

CARDIACS - Day is Gone

PULP - Countdown

DJPC – Inssomniak

TH’ FAITH HEALERS – Reptile Smile

THE FIELD MICE - Missing The Moon

GARY CLAIL ON-U SOUND SYSTEM – Human Nature

MORRISSEY – Pregnant for the Last Time

CURVE – Clipped

BLUMFELD – Ghettowelt

THE FALL – Edinburgh Man

PIXIES – Motorway to Roswell

THE FRANK AND WALTERS – Fashion Crisis Hits New York (original version)

WIR – So And Slow it Grows

EXTREME NOISE TERROR – Knee Deep in Shit

THE POPGUNS – Crazy

HOLE – Teenage Whore

ELECTRONIC – Get The Message

LIST 78 - 18/11/11

Hello again,

More because of the shortage of weeks rather than of new material, this is the last "standard", non-themed List of 2011, with anniversary specials, a second Then And Now special and the usual festive denouement all on their way in the coming weeks. There is, rest assured, a lot of 2011 stuff still to upload in the new year.

It's great to be able to welcome back one-time Festive 50 number ones Los Campesinos! this week with a splendid return single from an equally splendid parent album, even if the "Hello Sadness" video does owe quite a bit to the one for LCD Soundsystem's "Drunk Girls" (not included here to compare and contrast, as we've already had it up once and you know how things work here...)

Standard Fare's new album is another source of huge excitement for me, ditto Hibbett's; whereas the discovery of the fabulous Colour Me Wednesday is just embarassingly overdue. Then And Now features Mazzy Star, unexpectedly reactivated and still as majestic as ever they were; whilst there is no song that's been played on my laptop more in the last fortnight than Telex's malevolently sarcastic, slow-motion version of "Rock Around The Clock". I do have to wonder on this evidence whether the likes of Felix Kubin own a few Telex LPs. I'd not be at all surprised.

J x



DUM DUM GIRLS – Bedroom Eyes (2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBSs3-RfLKk

KIDO YOJI – Call A Romance (2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHDo5Ms51Es&NR=1

HOLY F*CK – Latin America (2010)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd5gVwbRlvk&ob=av2e

MJ HIBBETT & THE VALIDATORS – Theme from Dinosaur Planet (2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whAtQONZA8o

DESTROYER – Poor in Love (2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=j3bEjqyBA40

COLOUR ME WEDNESDAY – Purge Your Inner Tory (2010)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4xY4zImmP8

IRON AND WINE – Me and Lazarus (2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa6WS6hp8XM

THE HIT PARADE – The Queen of Mousehole (2006)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6ZS1-67o9I

SCROOBIUS PIP – The Struggle (2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3HCXh9WQSo

THE GARLANDS – You Never Notice Me (2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgRjnarcMSk

MAZZY STAR – Lay Myself Down (2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB4tjppaVXE

MAZZY STAR – So Tonight That I Might See (1993)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UXnBjSVBOg

HYDE & BEAST – Never Come Back (2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpFDZOlVP_U

BART AND FRIENDS – A Summer’s Dream (2010)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKx_EN9_cWc

EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY – Trembling Hands (2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F0QsjIflZw

STANDARD FARE – Darth Vader (2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cxmz3vcnxFc

TELEX – Rock Around the Clock (1979)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XGXHDMIJw4

LOS CAMPESINOS! – Hello Sadness (2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-V5SiMKkZrs

SUN ARAW – Crete (2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBWe3pxGFw8

LIST 77 - 13/11/11 (a second cover versions special)

Hello again,

The third and final List of this weekend's bumper crop is the second cover versions special, to follow-up the one that was List #62 back in August. 

As stated the other day, it wasn't necessarily the intention to do another one so soon, but the sheer volume of interesting enough material I unearthed in the interim made it a possibility.

...And so much of that material is new or nearly new - ten of the tracks hail from this year, as opposed to just one in the first covers List. 

Including two readings of The Smiths' There Is a Light That Never Goes Out is cheating, I suppose, except one is an indiepop version from 2011 and the other a classic piece of laptronica from over a decade earlier, so I'm good with that if you all are.

Elsewhere covers feature of everyone from Nirvana to Olivia Newton-John, from Big Black to Prefab Sprout, and from The Auteurs to Lonnie Donegan. 

Oh, and two bands have stabs at The Field Mice.  Not literally stabs, of course.  The bands would get in trouble for that.  And we don't endorse stabbing any indiepop bands, past or present.  Even if The Field Mice did break all our hearts when splitting up.

J xx



THE MAXINES – Sweet Nothings (live at the Northern) (2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Leydtn7yp0

LITTLE ROY – Come As You Are (2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1aEo4SkOWg

THE FALL – Mr Pharmacist (1986)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56dxJjXbnjg

F*CK-OFF MACHETE – Physical (2006)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58RCo-xwGwQ

ELSDON SMITHERS – Starstruck (Auteurs cover) (2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNkdfMharU4

THE WEDDING PRESENT – Cumberland Gap (1992)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBDkPUDuj2s

SINEAD O’CONNOR – Song to the Siren (2010)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmhG4bDr7yw

SEAPONY – Emma’s House (2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6bQElp290U

BABY FORD – Children of the Revolution (Inca Mix) (1989)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_DYSbRWOtE

LIANNE HALL – Love Is A Stranger (2010)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhKJWn13Kpg

DUM DUM GIRLS – There is a Light That Never Goes Out (2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrgKtFVKTmI

SCHNEIDER TM – The Light 3000 (2000)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEC35485DM

TREMBLING BLUE STARS – Kidney Bingos (2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coOco90LU4E

DARREN HANLON – Together in Electric Dreams (2010)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=-PHJnmz2Cz0

THE MIDDLE ONES & ACE BUSHY STRIPTEASE – Heterosexuality Is A Construct (2011)
http://www.vimeo.com/23204195

COACH STATION REUNION – Lions In My Own Garden : Exit Someone (2010)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I32qy-vceh4

IMPOSSIBLE TYMES - Coach Station Reunion (2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eSToaHKHI8

MAN... OR ASTROMAN? – Destination Venus (1993)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svABrRXAa04

THE PRIMITIVES – Need All The Help I Can Get (2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xibkh0FknTg

MAGAZINE – Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Again) (1980)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfTqrQ-FZOM

ST VINCENT – Kerosene (live at Bowery Ballroom) (2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVhCo7PoVpA