Oh my goodness, giddy mix is right! Well done! Currently fueling my late night work sesh as I ponder my trip to the UK this summer in the background. Hope we can connect there! What immediately came to mid for me is a favorite song by an Aussie band, The Waifs, London Still. Love them!
I did not know The Waifs. I checked it out, and that is a good tune. Thanks for recommending it! And yes, please keep me posted about all your travel plans as they assemble - I'd love if we could work something out. :)
I would season this playlist with the joyful, loose-limbed calypso of Lord Kitchener. 'London is the Place For Me' opens with the precursor to the chimes of Big Ben being picked out in a minor key on a piano, before gallivanting all over town in high style.
From the London-centric Fox Base Alpha by St Etienne I would choose 'Girl VII' which lists a number of locations around the city, mixed in with destinations from farther afield. Alternatively you could go for 'Judy, Don't You Worry' by St Etienne vocalist, Sarah Cracknell, which opens with the lines:
"September evening's gone
I've done another year
Found a new career
Had to move to London"
'London Town' by Shack appears to be about renting cheap digs in the Capital where the electricity is paid for by coins in a meter.
The Soho Hobo (Tim Arnold – who grew up in the area) conjures up some sprightly West London soul in 'Manners on the Manor'. Arnold's aunt, June Brown, who played Dot Cotton in the long-running London soap opera, EastEnders, paid for his drug rehabilitation among the monks of the Thamkrabok Monastery in Thailand.
Nick Cave – another artist who has waded through drug addiction – claims to have often gone to church before scoring heroin. He documents this period of his life in the song 'Brompton Oratory'.
'Down in the Effra,' by The Effras recalls an apocryphal Victorian story of a coffin falling through the bottom of its grave and into the River Effra that flows underneath West Norwood Cemetery, and thereafter being carried into the River Thames.
The video for Blur's 'For Tomorrow' opens with Damon Albarn floating on his back in the Thames (I am sure this is a homage to a film but I can't recall what it could be). Graham Coxon takes a running kick at a litter bin in Trafalgar Square, scattering pigeons, while Albarn muses “London's so nice back in your seamless rhymes, but we're lost on the Westway.”
'England' by The National ponders, from across the Atlantic, on the whereabouts of a love lost “somewhere in London”.
'London Can You Wait,' trades in the overwrought, back of hand to the brow angst Gene did so well on their first two albums
For those who are feeling estranged from the city, there is the jaded 'London' by Smoke City or the vitriolic motorik groove of The Fall's 'Leave the Capitol'.
Finally there is 'Love Letter to London' by Luke Haines, who casts a disdainful eye upon those who used the city as a playground when they were young before moving out to the provinces.
Oh my goodness, giddy mix is right! Well done! Currently fueling my late night work sesh as I ponder my trip to the UK this summer in the background. Hope we can connect there! What immediately came to mid for me is a favorite song by an Aussie band, The Waifs, London Still. Love them!
Back at it (fueled by British punk!)
I did not know The Waifs. I checked it out, and that is a good tune. Thanks for recommending it! And yes, please keep me posted about all your travel plans as they assemble - I'd love if we could work something out. :)
I would season this playlist with the joyful, loose-limbed calypso of Lord Kitchener. 'London is the Place For Me' opens with the precursor to the chimes of Big Ben being picked out in a minor key on a piano, before gallivanting all over town in high style.
From the London-centric Fox Base Alpha by St Etienne I would choose 'Girl VII' which lists a number of locations around the city, mixed in with destinations from farther afield. Alternatively you could go for 'Judy, Don't You Worry' by St Etienne vocalist, Sarah Cracknell, which opens with the lines:
"September evening's gone
I've done another year
Found a new career
Had to move to London"
'London Town' by Shack appears to be about renting cheap digs in the Capital where the electricity is paid for by coins in a meter.
The Soho Hobo (Tim Arnold – who grew up in the area) conjures up some sprightly West London soul in 'Manners on the Manor'. Arnold's aunt, June Brown, who played Dot Cotton in the long-running London soap opera, EastEnders, paid for his drug rehabilitation among the monks of the Thamkrabok Monastery in Thailand.
Nick Cave – another artist who has waded through drug addiction – claims to have often gone to church before scoring heroin. He documents this period of his life in the song 'Brompton Oratory'.
'Down in the Effra,' by The Effras recalls an apocryphal Victorian story of a coffin falling through the bottom of its grave and into the River Effra that flows underneath West Norwood Cemetery, and thereafter being carried into the River Thames.
The video for Blur's 'For Tomorrow' opens with Damon Albarn floating on his back in the Thames (I am sure this is a homage to a film but I can't recall what it could be). Graham Coxon takes a running kick at a litter bin in Trafalgar Square, scattering pigeons, while Albarn muses “London's so nice back in your seamless rhymes, but we're lost on the Westway.”
'England' by The National ponders, from across the Atlantic, on the whereabouts of a love lost “somewhere in London”.
'London Can You Wait,' trades in the overwrought, back of hand to the brow angst Gene did so well on their first two albums
For those who are feeling estranged from the city, there is the jaded 'London' by Smoke City or the vitriolic motorik groove of The Fall's 'Leave the Capitol'.
Finally there is 'Love Letter to London' by Luke Haines, who casts a disdainful eye upon those who used the city as a playground when they were young before moving out to the provinces.
Woah. This is a very thorough list. I hope you've assembled it on some platform or disc and are enjoying it.