This playlist is 72% vinyl friendly. Not bad.

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The SL-1300G in 2025. Technics keeping it simple with the design, if not with the spec trying to convince punters they need one.

‘Coreless Direct Drive Motor Achieving Stable Rotation

The use of a coreless direct-drive motor with no iron core eliminates uneven rotation of the turntable known as cogging. Also, the twin-rotor construction reduces the bearing load while maintaining high torque and reduces minute vibrations during rotation. Furthermore, the SL-1300G’s motor was redesigned to eliminate subtle vibrations that could affect sound quality. To improve rigidity, the same reinforcement pattern as the Reference Class SL-1000R/SP-10R was used for the coil mounting base‘.

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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. 🙂

NB: THIS PLAYLIST INCLUDES EXPLETIVES.

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Lyric of Playlist 148

For the reality…

Courtesy of Crooked Man, Jarvis’ by a country mile, but…

For the idyll…John Sebastian.

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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 – Turn – Waiting For The Sirens’ Call, 2LP – London – 2005

With Barney’s lilting, slightly forlorn vocal, a little gem nearly lost on one of the band’s least successful albums.

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05.02

LITTLE NEMO – A Day Out Of Time – Past And Future, LP – Domestica – 2013

Though the track originally surfaced in 1987 on the 500 run, cassette-only format of the (debut) album. Even back then it could have been seen as yet another ‘sound’ out of Europe that seemed to echo the UK alternative/new wave scene of a few years earlier.

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08.48

KIM GORDON – Not Today – Play Me, LP – Matador – 2026

Get past the intro – where it very momentarily sounds (to my ears anyway) like the batteries ran out – and Kim Gordon drifts nicely across the wash of sound.

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12.03

THE COMSAT ANGELS – The Eye Dance – Sleep No More, LP – Polydor – 1981

Judging by a known set list for late Nov ’81 and the fact the band were then promoting the recently released, above album, this track was likely in the set list for my Bedford Corn Exchange gig promotion earlier that month. Big smiles when I hear them… though I’ve sadly never heard a tape of the Bedford night.

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15.40

BUNNYDRUMS – Holy Moly – Holy Moly, LP – Fundamental – 1984

The short-lived, mid ’80s Philadelphian band with a quirky mix of ‘new wave’ vocal and a belting soul vocal bv in the backdrop of a low slung, punk country’ish workout. Maybe it’s the ‘yippee-ki-yay’ and pseudo peddle steel guitar? The band have been here before – and will be again.

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21.30

COSTUME – Once I Loved (Original Mix) – Download only – 2021

Claudia Placanica’s slightly disconcerting delivery is always the thing for me! 😁😁😁

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23.54

THE IRONSIDES – The Web – Changing Light, LP – Colemine – 2023

Cinematically soundtracking the ’70s like a good’un! The Streets of San Francisco and its like… which is apt… as that’s where The Ironsides are from.

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28.57

BABY ROSE – Go – Through and Through, LP – Secretly Canadian – 2023

My fave 21st century track of the show, Jasmine Rose Wilson (to her mum and dad) with a quivering indie soul vocal – on this tune anyway – that Anonhi/Antony and the Johnsons could have penned and rolled out, albeit with a slightly different sound, no doubt. And that really is the sleeve, honest. I could be wrong but I reckon it’s a photographer’s dud that someone subsequently had a weird liking for. I struggle to actually look at it!

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31.56

THE DRIFTERS – Like Sister and Brother – 7″ – Bell – 1973

I had this single in the mid ’70s but with the years since maybe ‘softening’ the senses, this made-to-measure ballad (with lead vocalist, Bill Fredericks sounding more like Johnny Mathis than I’d have remembered) sounds better now than it did back then but in the world we now live in there will be few if any songs written like this again.

I had to run the idea past one of my teenage years mates but I reckon that, along with Jimmy Ruffin’s What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted (and others, no doubt), this was a last-dance-of-the-night/grab-a-girl-type tune at Bedford Rugby Club’s Saturday night ‘discos’. I’m making this actually sound like the ’40s but it was the era and I was in my late teens… and until I find my membership card, this’ll have to do. 🙂

‘Swing to Boomerang’ indeed. I don’t think they came back.

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34.52

EYELESS IN GAZA – Flight Of Swallows – Back From The Rains, LP – Cherry Red – 1986

The intro to my 1984 Rorschach Testing article below sums up my thinking on Flight back then – and though the track was being played live at the time it was a couple of years before it surfaced on the above album.

EIG article, Rorschach Testing, 1984

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39.22

JONI MITCHELL – Eastern Rain – Archives – Volume 1: The Early Years 1963-1967, 5CD – Rhino – 2020

Truly a legend, such is the quality of the lady’s songwriting this beaut – from a Folklore Radio broadcast, of March 19, 1967 – never even made it to an official album and though it was covered by others and turned up in Joni live appearances of the time it took until the above retrospective to be released officially. And she’ll be back here quicker than you might be expecting.

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43.13

SÓLEY – I Will Find You (Live, at the KEX Hostel in Reykjavik: 30.10.13) – Stream only – 2013

With a whole different tone to Liam Neeson’s ‘I Will Find You’ :), a production from the classy KEXP and a song only found on Sóley’s 5 track, 10″ EP, Don’t Ever Listen. This take however is a far more endearing version. 🙂

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45.54

NORMA TANEGA – Walkin’ My Cat Named Dog – 7″ – Stateside – 1966

Was Norma ‘indie’ before there was such a thing? Sadly, she died in 2019 but search out a short Youtube interview and snippets piece (and the comments that followed) from a decade or so earlier. It was meant to be included in a proposed documentary that never then got going.

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48.06

THE ELECTRIC FLAG – Look Into My Eyes – A Long Time Comin’, CD only – Columbia – 2003

From a handful of tracks that possibly didn’t make the cut for the initial 1968 release of the Chicago soul rock band’s second album, this is one of two that were first added to the above reissue.

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50.52

LOVIN’ SPOONFUL – Summer In The City – 7″ – Kama Sutra – 1966

Maybe the best known tune on the show, with a forceful sounding John Sebastian and his/their ‘city’ being New York and its Greenwich Village hub back then.

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53.13

THE FORTUNES – Here It Comes Again – 7″ – Decca – 1965

Innocent ’60s ‘pop’ with a classy arrangement, and another the likes of which will never be made again… and certainly not by anybody aiming for the charts.

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56.09

THE MINDBENDERS – Groovy Kind Of Love – 7″ – Fontana – 1965

Wayne Fontana at the helm (and co-written by a pre-Sager Carol Bayer, I’ve just noted) I think this might have subconsciously stuck with me enough in its chart days (I was 8), to then make it to my record collection in the early ’70s. It felt then like a great many happily got rid of their records (certainly singles) after just a few years coz every second hand record shop had loads of chart stuff from just the 5-10 years prior. I was too young to have been buying the height of ’60s ‘pop’ during its time but picking it up a decade later was dead easy. Bet this cost me 10p or thereabouts.

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58.05

SPUDDHA – Ton – Unreleased demo – 2014

‘Recorded in a single take with a pair of £100 analog groove boxes (Korg Volcas) and there’s no multi tracking, effects or post processing. One of the boxes is a three voice paraphonic synth and the other is an analogue drum machine. 

‘At the time I was interested in making big, immersive music with an organic quality with sparse loops and a minimal setup. There’s a lot of live tweaking and you will notice that the limitations of the synth mean that 1) only 3 notes can sound simultaneously and 2) the voices interrupt each other. Also presets couldn’t be saved… if I didn’t record what I was doing I couldn’t move onto making something else without losing it all‘. – Spuddha.

‘Spud’ to me.

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01.04.46

LONELADY – Hinterland – Hinterland, LP – Warp – 2015

Julie Lonelady groovin’ a tune and lyric that should have been here before now.

c/w Julie ‘helping out’… 🙂

01.09.32

JONI MITCHELL – River (acapella)

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01.13.30

ATRIC & FRIDA DARKO – Hide & Seek – Download only – 2023

‘Always trying to combine genre fluid compositions, qualitative mixing and to take the whole process with a good sense of humor‘. – Them, via Bandcamp

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01.17.26

A CERTAIN RATIO – Knife Slits Water (Peel session, June ’81) – Sextet, 2LP reissue – Factory Benelux – 2013

Yep, with Martha ‘Tilly’ Tilson’s oh-so-right vocal, the slightly epic Knife Slits Water. Very coincidentally, the day ACR recorded the above Peel session (according to the Keeping It Peel site) I saw them live supporting Cabaret Voltaire at Leicester Uni and the day the session was broadcast my diary says I had a long phone chat with Rob Gretton – no idea about what, other than re what New Order were up to at that point.

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01.25.11

EARL16 – Changing World (Remix) – , LP – Merge Records – 2001

I caught this on a late night KISS FM radio show. His conscious sounds here taken up a few BPM.

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01.30.05

COURTNEY BUCHANAN – R U Conscious (Album version) – 12″ – Conscious – 1993

And speaking of ‘conscious’…

‘Courtney has one of the most soulful, spiritual voices to come out of the UK. His music here combines jazzy acoustic sounds with delicate use of technology on a rhythmic, down-paced head nodder. I various mixes, the track’s ‘conscious’ lyrics and impressive vocals are a fine showcase for this British talent.‘ – Ralph Tee, Record Mirror (Music Week), 3.7.93

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01.34.42

DELTA HOUSE OF FUNK – Lovers & Losers – 12″ EP – Go! Discs – 1996

Decided to playlist this before I remembered it was another of Ashley Beedle’s works. So, this is with a big nod to a top lad who’s been going through the health ringer in the last few years.

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01.39.38

DRAX – Middle Earth – Drax Two, 12″EP – Trope – 1993

Clear vinyl gentle German techno.

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01.44.51

CROOKED MAN – Cunts – Crooked Stile, 2LP – Viscous Charm – 2026

The reimagining here courtesy of Richard ‘Parrot’ Barratt.

‘Jarvis Cocker released Running The World in 2006
The line ‘cunts are still running the world’ is more relevant than ever…

20 years on and Crooked Man thought it needed to be said again
His razor-sharp reimagining is a call to arms with added electronic bite
He’s skipped the niceties and titled it CUNTS.
Out today on Vicious Charm today.

The track is accompanied by an Agit-Prop video directed by British contemporary artist Dominic McGill, who, armed with a photocopier and a scalpel, has cut & pasted a perfect accompaniment to the song – breathless and furious.

They are still running the world.

It’s a work of “northern genius”, Jarvis’ words, not ours‘. – Bandcamp.

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01.47.21

DESPERATE JOURNALIST – 7 – No Hero, LP – Fierce Panda – 2024

Driving indie rockers ever present on Simon Williams’ Fierce Panda label, with a nod to Jo Bevan’s confident vocals.

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01.50.22

GANZHEIT – Motions – ‘Summer Of ’84’ demos cassette, unreleased – 1984

With a couple of this cassette’s tracks now playlisted on 41 Rooms, there are more to come from this lost Bedford-based band.

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Show 149 will be here March 1.

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