This playlist is 63% vinyl friendly. Very poor.

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The Vertere DG-1 Dynamic Groove.

One commentator queried whether ‘the design wandered in the direction of form over function‘, but this, the company’s entry level version, was voted in What Hi-Fi‘s updated 2025 ‘20 very best turntables of (the magazine’s) lifetime‘… but it had detractors elsewhere.

My first thought was ‘sandwich’ and lo and behold the review mentions the plinth’s ‘three layers of acrylic reinforced with a steel chassis to give a rigid yet well-damped structure‘ with that middle layer, from a distance, reminding me of some marbled cheese. Near £2k for one standard version spotted on eBay and £3550 for a DG-1S updated model, with a bullet pointed spec to match. When you get up to these prices (and way, way beyond) manufacturers are duty bound to work overtime to justify their prices.

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NB: Apologies. A bit of a glitch in recording my parts for this show but they just about do the job.

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Any track marked * has been given either a tiny or a slightly larger 41 Rooms tweak/edit/chop and the occasional tune might sound a bit dodgy, quality-wise. On top of that, the switch between different decades and production values never helps in the mix here. 🙂

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Lyric of Playlist 149

On another day and in another frame of mind it could have gone to Baby Rose but much aided by a gorgeous key change backdrop, the gold star sticker goes to Banderas! It’s hard to tell though if their ‘There is no rehearsal. No second chance. No false start. No better circumstances… ‘ words of wisdom would change much with the type of peeps in their video.

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00.00

(Intro) THE FLAMINGOS – Stars (Edit) – Unreleased demo – 1983. Episode #1 for info.

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00.41

NEW ORDER – Doubts Even Here (Instrumental) (Cargo Demo) (2019 Remaster) – Movement, Definitive Edition Boxset – Warner Music – 2023

Doubts Even Hear? I should coco, and if you want ‘tentative’ in your music then this has it in shed loads. My guess is this maybe wasn’t Hooky’s first stab at the track in the band’s rehearsal room but you can nearly hear him finding his way into and over the ARP Quadra’s strings.

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05.15

COCTEAU TWINS – Road River and Rail (Live) – Stream only – 2026

Live in 1991 but only very recently uploaded to the net, a mixing desk recording from The Warfield, in San Francisco and a rare treat to hear Liz this clear in a gig setting. At your leisure, search out the rest of the gig. 🙂

There’s no visual from the above show, so here’s a barely rescued – but previously unseen/unpublished – photo of mine. Liz and Simon soundchecking at Newcastle’s Tiffany’s, 19.4.84. 🙂

Photo credit / copyright: Dec Hickey

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08.37

JOHN CALE – Thoughtless Kind (M:FANS) – M:FANS, 2LP – Double Six – 2016

A pedestrian, sledgehammer beat and a more forceful take on the lyrics than found in the ex-Velvet Underground man’s original. To my ears, they’re better suited here.

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13.59

EMERSON, LAKE & PALMER – Take A Pebble * – Emerson, Lake & Palmer, LP – Island – 1970

I bought this album maybe four or five years after release and without doubt after having heard maybe just one of the three tracks on it I had taken to. I wouldn’t have been listening to any radio that might have played this album, so I’m guessing I borrowed it from a mate – very likely Phil Harris or Tom Locke (RIP). Greg Lake’s vocals were the thing for me back then and on my National Panasonic SG-1070L I’d have skipped Keith Emerson’s often lengthy rock-orchestral leaning keyboard workouts from all three… and likewise it’s a massive edit on the show for Take A Pebble. 🙂

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17.33

BABY ROSE – Stop The Bleeding – Through And Through, LP – Secretly Canadian – 2023

If I thought the vibrato in Baby Rose’s vocal on the last 41 Rooms’ show entry (‘Go’) reminded me of Anonhi/Antony and the Johnsons then this does so with knobs on… as it maybe sounds even more of a song and arrangement the latter could have penned.

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21.17

A RACE OF ANGELS – Golden – Broadcast No. 1, CD only – Luv Classics – 2005

It’s not often a CD gets a visual look in on 41 Rooms but the majority of Broadcast No. 1’s tracks have been or are on course for inclusion… and there was no vinyl. A 21st century left field folk soul beaut. Saluting Yeofi Andoh once again.

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23.56

KRAFTWERK – Boing Boom Tschak * – Electric Cafe, LP – Kling Klang / EMI – 1986

The German maestros with some playful mid ’80s electro. Who else could it be?

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27.01

BESIDE (with BERNARD FOWLER) – Odeon (Dance Mix) – 12″ – Celluloid – 1984

In 1984 the only place I’d have heard this was on John Peel’s radio shows – and he was partial to some electro. With the other side playlisted on 41 Rooms years ago, that would make this Afrika Bambaataa-produced 12″ a bargain to me these days, at less than the price of a pint on Discogs. Back in 1984, ordering it on import from Bedford’s HMV (as I did) its £5.29 price tag would seemingly have between five and ten pints plus worth!

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32.37

MIDNIGHT STAR – Midas Touch (Vocal Extended Remix) – 12″ – Solar – 1986

With Electro roots, some breezy mid ’80s glitzy dance which has aged far better than – ‘Look away now’ (or don’t look at all) – the clothes and hair in the video.

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38.42

ROZALLA – Born To Luv Ya – 12″ – Pulse-8 – 1990

At some point, when I do get to wade through the Record Mirror‘s I have from the the late ’80s/early ’90s I’d put a quiet fiver on the late James Hamilton having used ‘bubbling’ in a review of this particular mix of the tune. Par for the course lyrics but given some decent beats Rozalla has a voice that more than matches.

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43.00

THOMAS LEER – Forgive and Forget – 1982, CD only – Klanggalerie – 2015

When I first happened on the 1982 CD recordings I thought Leer had re-found his youthful energy in the ‘now’. It’s in the title, Dec… so, a ‘series of tracks for unreleased album circa 1982‘ states the man himself. That would put them around the time of his Letter From America and Contradictions EPs but way before the ‘pop’ album, The Scale Of Ten. Forgive and Forget is though definitely a dry run for that album’s belter, Control Yourself.

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47.23

MINT ROYALE – I Don’t Care – See You In The Morning, CD only – Faith & Hope Records Limited – 2005

Aagghh, it’s another CD… but needs must, as no vinyl surfaced and by this point Neil Claxton was flying solo as Mint Royale.

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51.48

OSCAR FARRELL (feat SAMPHA) – Dream Therapy (George FitzGerald remix) – Download only – ? – 2026

The So Far South EP original rightly has many admirers but I’m more with this moodier take.

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55.22

NOSTALGIX – Mess With Me – Download only – Confession – 2019

Out of Vancouver, British Columbia, she seems through the years to have occasionally just digitally floated singular tracks out there.

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58.32

SUICIDE – Ghost Rider – Self-titled, LP – Red Star Records – 1977

There’d be a bunch of my early ’80s mates who’d have gone for the album but it’s only this track that grabbed me.

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01.01.01

CABARET VOLTAIRE – Nag Nag Nag (Live 2025 Single Edit) – Download only (for now) – Mute – 2026

‘Updating’ and then capturing – just ‘right’ – this classic track’s first live outing in forty five or so years could have gone wrong but all involved nailed it, and seeing as I caught four of the Cabs’ six gigs last year there’s a good chance I was in on this actual recording. In fact, given the advances in sound technology Nag is likely sounding better in the room than it would have done live back in 1979-82… something I never witnessed.

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01.05.10

THE SOUND – Heartland (Mike Read session, 1980) – The BBC Recordings – 2CD only – Renascent – 2004

If Adrian Borland and crew were pushing for a radio session in their early throws (who wasn’t) I’d have thought John Peel would have got in there first. The band did subsequently do a Peel session but here Mike Read edged it and the band were firing.

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01.08.19

JOY DIVISION – Warsaw – An Ideal For Living, 7″ EP – Enigma – 1978

I never owned this original 7″ but somewhere around 1980-81 and through the back pages of the inkie press I bought the subsequent 12″ from an ‘MJ’ in Crewe who reckoned in an enclosed note he’d leant Steve Morris £60 to pay for the sleeves. When I sold the single years later I thought I’d kept the note… but if I did, it then went AWOL.

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01.10.40

TURNSTILE – Dreaming – Never Enough, LP – Roadrunner – 2025

They’ve eased up here on their early hardcore leanings which might go some way to why this tune gets a thumbs up from me and those who take occasionally take a punt on an album because of the sleeve could still be in for a shock.

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01.13.00

TV21 – Ideal Way Of Life – A Thin Red Line, LP – Deram – 1981

Other tracks on the album have already graced 41 Rooms as indeed they did back in Winkles in 1981-82. 🙂

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01.15.27

THE TEARDROP EXPLODES – Went Crazy – Kilimanjaro, LP – Mercury – 1980

Julian in 1980. Sounding ‘quirky pop’ in 2026?

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01.18.03

NATURAL SCIENTIST – See Through You – 7″ – Dental Records – 1982

Even though I bought their Terminal Velocity debut 12″ at the time, this their follow up somehow by-passed me for four decades

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01.22.07

IRMA THOMAS – My Heart’s In Memphis – My Heart’s In Memphis – The Songs Of Dan Penn, CD only – Rounder Records – 2000

Criminally, only seven thousand plus peeps have ever viewed the fan video online of Irma on an outside stage, live in New Orleans from 2003 and I nearly went with its muffled sound here, as the more she gets in to the song the more she really lives it. 🙂

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01.25.53

STEVIE WONDER – (I) Don’t Know Why (I Love You) – 7″ – Tamla Motown – 1968-9

For the UK release Motown couldn’t quite make up there mind on the title – but this stark outpouring and arrangement is still a killer, even though it was maybe trumped for radio play by the lusher, romantic appeal of the b-side, My Cherie Amour.

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01.28.25

MT JONES – I Don’t Understand – Joy, LP – ? – 2026

New(ish) blue-eyed retro soul with as much effort on the visual. A fab single but I’ve got a feeling an album of his accentuated vocal might be too much for me. We’ll see.

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01.31.49

WILLIE HUTCH – Hurt So Bad – Season For Love, LP – RCA – 1970

Before his switch to maybe his more spiritual Brother’s Gonna Work It Out home of Motown.

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01.34.39

BANDERAS – This Is Your Life (PanoΣigma Edit) – Stream only – ? – 2019

Just the one album, squarely aimed at the mainstream, and some cerebral tunes from these two shaven-headed girls. I’m not sure how much the decent lyrics and sumptuous key change helped but this was their biggest UK hit. Even in the sometimes throwaway nature of ‘pop’ charts, quality will out.

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01.39.36

DIANA BROWN & BARRIE K SHARPE – Eating Me Alive * – 12″ – FFRR – 1992

‘Weaving together many different dance music sounds of the late sixties/early seventies, including such as vintage Jackson 5 and Norman Whitfield era Temptations, Timmy Thomas beats and Chicago Transit Authority guitar chords (“I’m a man, yes I am, and I love you so”), this brilliant intensely driving jiggly chugger has been promoed as a twinpack with 0-104.7-0bpm Undisputed Mix Part 1 & Part II, 0-104.7bpm Original Groundbeat, 0-105.25-0bpm Funky Funky Sugar Heavy Groundbeat Mix, 0-105.4bpm One Trip Too Many Mix, more recently influenced grooving 115.8-0bpm Groundbeat House Ensemble/Instrumental, hi-hat hustled 118.7bpm Undercover Dub Mix 1 and 118.6bpm Undercover Dub Mix 2, Dianamite!‘ – James Hamilton, Record Mirror (Music Week), 20.6.92

Any time I re-edit etc I really should remember the source of the original… and there’s a heavy 41 Rooms re-edit going on here. Whatever. James Hamilton’s ‘vintage Jackson 5’ reference is spot on and the bridges and chorus are so strong they make the verses sound absolutely tepid. Weird.

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01.45.08

RHYTHIM IS RHYTHIM – Strings Of Life (‘Original Piano Mix’) – 12″ – Transmat – 1987

‘So enduringly popular and still steadily selling that it could follow A Guy Called Gerald up the chart, Derrick ‘Mayday’ May’s synthetic strings stabbed and sawed techno pioneeringly jerky instrumental leaper is now out here in its frantic acidic 130/129 1/5-130-0bpm Exclusive Remix, more scrubbingly hustling organ accented 128 1/5-127 4/5-128-128 1/5bpm Flam-boy-ant Mix, and piano emphasising jerkier 122 1/5-122-121 2/5-121 1/5bpm Piano Mix, flipped by the washing machine ‘sizzled’ 129-129 1/3bpm ‘Kaos’ plus the ‘Magic Juan’ Atkins created jiggly wriggling Model 500 ‘Off To Battle’ in its 125 2/3-126 1/5bpm 2emix and 126 1/5-126 2/3bpm Original Version‘. – James Hamilton, Jocks, 3.89 

‘Based on a piano sequence by May’s friend Michael James. He dropped in for a visit at May’s house and sat down to play a piano ballad he had been working on called, “Lightning Strikes Twice”. This piece went into May’s sequencer and was kept there until May decided to listen to it all the way through. He found some portions which interested him, and he started to work with it. The song was originally at 80 BPM before May increased the tempo, chopped it up into loops, and added percussion and string samples’. Wikipedia

The history of this stark track is interesting. I called this ‘near punk like, house / techno’ on the show, what with its crude/rough arrangement feeling like it nearly takes four minutes to settle… just in time for it to sound like it’s breaking down on the outro! And it’s become a classic! Enough to warrant a bunch of remixes and the mighty ‘live with orchestra’ version that follows.

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01.52.18

RHYTHIM IS RHYTHIM – Strings Of Life (Live, Weather Festival, Paris, France) – Stream only – 2015

Derrick May, with Francesco Tristano (ex-Aufgang) loving it big time on extra keyboards, with the weight of the full Philharmonic Orchestra Lamoureux, under the direction of Dzijan Emin… and all beautifully captured by ‘producer, Amos Rozenberg and Paramax Films in 4K with 9 Cinema cameras by Samuel Petit for Arte TV‘… it says somewhere. Strings Of Life, indeed. Catch the video in the usual places.

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Show 150 will upload April 5.

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