Saturday 6 January 2024

Thousand

No prizes for guessing what post number this is. 

Here's an eclectic 90 minutes of songs, remixes or acts featuring either '1000' or 'thousand' in the name. What was a little surprising was just how many examples are bouncing around in my collection. Even my shortlist contained roughly twice as many songs as made the final selection. 

Something for everyone, although not necessarily all together or in the right order. Ride, Hoodoo Gurus, Dengue Fever, The Sugarcubes, Gram Parsons, Gonzales, Stereolab, the selection also hops around the world a fair bit. Speaking of which...
 
Those of you who follow the excellent 27 Leggies and in particular Ernie's African Odyssey will have been hugely disappointed by the difficult decision to exclude the mighty King Ayisoba from this week's stop off in Ghana, such was the embarrassment of musical riches emanating from the country. Rest assured, his majesty makes an appearance here, with one of the songs that Ernie originally posted and part of my introduction to the Ghanaian great.

The selection closes with a two-hander from XTC and The Coral and I don't think I could have picked two better songs to wrap up. 

Viel spaß mit meiner tausendsten beitragsauswahl, meine Freunde!

1) 1000 Miles: Ride (1994)
2) Rilly Groovy (S1000 Mix By Spencer Williams & Mike Koglin): Beautiful People ft. Jimi Hendrix (1992)
3) Furious Angels (Rollo's Thousand Volts Mix): Rob Dougan (1998)
4) 1000 Miles Away: Hoodoo Gurus ft. Vicki Peterson (1991)
5) One Thousand Miles An Hour: Stereolab (1995)
6) 1000 Faces: Gonzales (2002)
7) Through It Poured The Next Day, I Never Noticed The Rain (Single Version): One Thousand Violins (1986)
8) One Thousand Tears Of A Tarantula (Album Version): Dengue Fever (2005)
9) One Thousand Years: TUU (1993)
10) Swords Of A Thousand Men: Tenpole Tudor (1981)
11) 1000 Dollar Car: The Bottle Rockets (1994)
12) Son Of A Thousand Fathers: Prince Fatty & Mutant Hi-Fi (2011)
13) 1000 Miles: Dirty Three (1996)
14) Blue-Eyed Pop (S1000 Mix By Spencer Williams & Mike Koglin): The Sugarcubes (1992)
15) 1000 Can Die: King Ayisoba ft. M3nsa & Lee 'Scratch' Perry (2017)
16) $1000 Wedding: Gram Parsons ft. Emmylou Harris (1974)
17) A Girl Like You (1000 Times) (Remix By Howard Gray): The Wolfgang Press ft. Claudia Fontaine (1992)
18) 1000 Umbrellas: XTC (1986)
19) 1000 Years: The Coral (2010)
 
1974: $1000 Wedding: 16
1981: Eddie, Old Bob, Dick And Gary: 10
1986: Please Don't Sandblast My House EP: 7 
1986: Skylarking (2016 Steven Wilson Mix): 18
1991: Kinky: 4 
1992: A Girl Like You EP: 17
1992: It's-It: 14
1992: Rilly Groovy EP: 2 
1993: One Thousand Years: 9
1994: Carnival Of Light: 1 
1994: The Brooklyn Side: 11
1995: The In Sound EP: 5 
1996: Horse Stories: 13
1998: Furious Angels EP: 3
2002: Presidential Suite: 6
2005: Escape From Dragon House: 8
2010: Butterfly House: 19
2011: Return Of Gringo!: 12
2017: 1000 Can Die: 15

Thousand (1:29:08) (KF) (Mega)

And if that's not enough for you, there are thousands of others that could have made the cut. 

Contributing today's cover photo, I bought the 12" of I Feel It/Thousand by Moby in the 1990s. I remember reading in Mixmag or DJ magazine at the time that the song achieved a Guinness World Record for having the fastest BPM tempo of any released single, peaking at approximately 1,015 beats per minute. 
 
None of which means the song is any good, of course. Rather than subject you to the full version, here's two minutes of Moby "performing" Thousand at the Electric Daisy Carneval in (I think) 2015. Health warning: strobe lights, plus a bald, pasty-skinned man topless and puffing his chest out to the largely indifferent masses. The fireworks are lovely, though.
 
Someone else who's still rocking the hairspray and lippy like it's 1985 is Robert Smith of The Cure. Here's A Thousand Hours (and bonus At Night) performed last October in Los Angeles. The venue is the Smoothie King Center, presumably named after a US company/sponsor but was there ever a more appropriately named venue for ol' Bob?

Back to 1994 and The Fatima Mansions live on stage 1000%, again cutting away to some fairly blank faces. Phillistines! I saw Cathal Coughlan and crew at The Fleece in Bristol around the same time and it was one of the most blistering, incendiary gigs I've been to. A greatly missed creative genius. 

You get some strange stuff on You Tube, don't you? I love The Beloved and I really like the song 1000 Years From Today. One fan has taken this one step further and created their own video. Not the mental image I had when listening to the song previously.
 
I have one song by Lia Ices aka Leah Kessel, courtesy of a Mojo magazine cover mount CD. A bit of an insult really, given that she's released four albums since 2008. Luckily for Lia, the one song is called Thousand Eyes so it gets a mention here. Not a fan-made video, although it's cut-and-paste job shamelessly stealing from Bollywood.

And for those of you who on seeing the post title and theme have been shouting "Where's Slough's finest, Thousand Yard Stare, for feck's sake?!" at the screen ever since, I think it's about time you got your comeuppance. 
 
No, I mean the song's called Comeuppance... 
 
Wait, come back....
 
...oh, now I've gone and done it.

18 comments:

  1. Good to see 10,11 and 16 on there.
    Congratulations on this significant milestone.

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  2. Well done on reaching four figures. Mildly disappointed not to see something from the 'Thousand Volts Of Holt' album, many folks introduction to 'proper' reggae back in the day, but no complaints about is in the mix. Good to see someone else remembers 1000 Violins.

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    1. Sorry, Ernie! I think my fatal error was that I misremembered it as A Million Volts Of Holt, which is the 1995 compilation and the first John Holt album I got. If this here blog's been a bit short on reggae and dub recently, then stick around, this will be remedied shortly!

      Oh, and I can't take any credit for remembering 1000 Violins. I remember them from John Peel - and some brilliant song titles - but all thanks to JC/The Vinyl Villain for bringing them (back) to my attention.

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  3. Congrats on reaching the 1000 mark - a lot of work gone into that big number.

    That's a great clip of Moby performing to the music with the fireworks as a backdrop.

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    1. Many thanks, Alyson, great to hear from you! Yes, I think I would have been a little bit more excited, had I been in that crowd with all of that going on!

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  4. Wow, 1000. That is some achievement, Khayem, and you clearly put an awful lot of time and work in to every post, I'm as ever in awe of you daily bloggers. Hats off to you and here's to the next thousand!
    Such an eclectic selection of music too. I shall pay special attention to the Coral song too as they're playing my local festival this year so hope to see them then.

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    1. I can recommend the latest Coral album, Sea of Mirrors, C. Spaghetti Western crossed with 60s Lee Hazlewood and some cosmic Wirral magic.

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    2. C - Many thanks! I only have to glance around to those bloggers who have posted (at least) 5 or 6 times that over many more years...and still have that energy and passion. Now that's amazing!

      Adam - Thanks foe The Coral nod. Another one that I haven't got around to but which has been described only in glowing terms whenever I've seen mention. I must check it out.

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  5. Happy 1000th, K. Here's to the 1,000,000th!

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    1. Thanks, Rol! If I keep going for that many posts, I think I will be a Cyberman by then, in which case I will care little for music...or any other emotion-triggering activity, for that matter!

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  6. Great concept, and nice shout out to Thousand from Moby, that was one of the tracks I saw him perform in 92 and it really hooked me.

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    1. Thanks, Mooz. I realise I was a little dismissive about Thousand, it's far from my favourite Moby track but I can appreciate what he was doing back then. My first (of two) Moby gigs was the Animal Rights tour when he went all metal (I loved it personally) but I saw him again in 2000 and Thousand was the climax to a completely bonkers set of bangers.

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  7. Congrats Khayem on getting to 4 figures.

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  8. As everyone else has said......congratulations. The level of attention and detail that goes into your postings puts most of us to shame....and the quality never seems to dip. Oh, to still have your energy and enthusiasm......sometimes it all feels like a grind.

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    1. Thanks, JC. Given that you've got a decade or so and thousands more posts on TVV, I can only sit back and admire what you have - and continue - to achieve. I'll never forget that it was your energy, enthusiasm and encouragement that got me back into blogging and I'm very grateful for that. If it sometimes feels like a grind, it never comes across in your posts, I love my regular visits to TVV.

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