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.

Bono On The Fourth Of July

Today's selection is a U2 mixtape, recorded 24th August 1997. Thanks to those of you who didn't click and close as soon as you saw the post title and opening sentence. 

Judging by the date, this compilation tape was most likely recorded in a slightly different form for my friend Stuart as a) his birthday was a few days prior to this and b) he is a lifelong fan of U2. It's a testament to how good a friend Stuart is, that he let me borrow his collection of U2 7" singles to take into school for a class presentation. We weren't even at the same school, let alone in the same class, yet he trusted me enough not to let him down. The look on his face when I told him I'd sold the lot to "Frankie" Stein for five quid and a mega bag of Wotsits was priceless...I'm joking, of course. Or am I?

Given that I wasn't particularly a U2 fan and knew much more about other music artists that I did like, made my choice of class presentation a little odd, to say the least. Maybe class 5M wasn't ready to be enlightened about Julian Cope, had little interest in The Sisters Of Mercy and would have raised an eyebrow at Prefab Sprout. This wasn't the oddest thing I did at school, but the reaction of the class to my 10 minute talk on Bono and chums is thankfully lost in the mists of time.

Whilst I was largely indifferent to the appeals of a U2 album, I'll admit that I did enjoy a U2 remix and as the late 1980s turned into the early 1990s, there were plenty to choose from. If nothing else, the band (or their team) got some decent DJs and producers in to increase the BPM and reduce the BS: Paul Oakenfold, Steve Osborne, Terry Farley, Pete Heller, Tim Simenon, David Morales, Trevor Jackson, Dave Dorrell, Stereo MC's, Apollo 440, DJ Muggs, Rollo, Rob Dougan, even Massive Attack.

In 1995, U2's fanzine Propaganda provided members with a special CD release called Melon, compiling nine of the band's best remixes. Melon was heavily bootlegged and I came across a copy in Revolver Records off Clifton Triangle in Bristol. Revolver was a brilliant record shop but an intimidating experience. I fully expected a disdainful stare when I took my clutch of purchases to owner Roger at the counter, the Melon bootleg tucked away between some more worthy purchases. I didn't; perhaps on this occasion he was just relieved to finally be shot of the thing.

This particular CD was a great quality bootleg, but soon a veritable feast of similarly-themed bootlegs began to appear: Kiwi, Orange, Mango, Banana, Grapes, Papaya, More Melon; with diminishing returns in terms of artwork and sound quality. I picked up the first three secondhand from Replay Records to round up some of the rare, promo-only mixes that I was interested in, but skipped the rest. Naming the mixtape Fruit Salad was a nod to the source material of the original compilation.

 

In 2002, U2 released The Best Of 1990-2000, a (not very) limited edition with a bonus disc of B-Sides that included some of the remixes from the bootlegs, albeit in truncated, early fade edits that are best avoided. The remix of Desire is the version from the UK 12" single, but there is a promo 12" out there featuring the full length Hollywood Remix, stretching to over nine minutes. You have been warned.

The original Fruit Salad mixtape closed out Side 2 with a snippet of the Momo's Reprise remix of Lemon by David Morales for no other reason than the tape was running a bit short. I've left it off of today's recreation. Little consolation if you hate Bono and friends' music with a passion (or Paul Oakenfold and Steve Osborne, for that matter, as there's a fair bit of them too). However, if you specifically dislike Larry Mullen Jr's drumming, you're in for a real treat. 

 

Normal service will resume tomorrow.

 

Side One

1) Zooropa (911 Mix By John M. Pillin Jr.) (1993)

2) Lemon (The Perfecto Mix By Paul Oakenfold & Steve Osborne) (1993)

3) Until The End Of The World (Short Life Mix By Ultra Hot Razor Crew) (1996)

4) Night And Day (Steel String Remix By Youth) (Cover of Fred Astaire) (1990)

5) Stay (Faraway So Close!) (Underdog Mix By Trevor Jackson) (1995)

6) Mysterious Ways (The Perfecto Mix By Paul Oakenfold & Steve Osborne) (1991)

7) God Part II (The Hard Metal Dance Club Mix By Louis Silas Jr. & David Bianco) (UK 12” Edit) (1988)

Side Two

1) Even Better Than The Real Thing (The Perfecto Mix By Paul Oakenfold & Steve Osborne) (1992)

2) In The Name Of The Father (Unidare Mix By Tim Simenon): Bono & Gavin Friday (1994)

3) Lady With The Spinning Head (Extended Dance Mix By Alan Moulder) (1992)

4) Desire (Hollywood Remix By Louis Silas Jr. & Taavi Mote) (UK 12" Edit) (1988)

5) Salomé (Zooromancer Remix By Terry Farley & Pete Heller) (Full Length) (1992)

6) Can't Help Falling In Love (Mystery Train Dub Edit By Dave Dorrell) (Cover of Elvis Presley) (1992)

7) Numb (Gimme Some More Dignity Mix By Rollo & Rob Dougan) (Full Length) (1995)

Kiwi: A4, A7, B3, B4

Mango: B2

Melon: A2, A5, A6, B1, B5, B7

Orange: A1, A3, B6

Side One (46:03)

Side Two (45:35)