Dear Philip, Dear Kingsley
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=4LZ7TCZ2

Dramatisation of the correspondence between Philip Larkin and Kingsley Amis.

These two men wrote to one another over decades and they speak for their own literary generation; boozy, reactionary, anarchic. It's also very fucking funny. Alan Bennett's dead-on, eeyore delivery in particular does justice to the wit and sadness in Larkin's writing.

Elastica - The Radio One Sessions

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=RHH2CMTP

Elastica seemed to last for just a couple of summers, so here's something to take home afterwards.

Both of their albums are represented on this sessions disc, as well as some Christmas songs which can come in handy for festive mix CD's.

1. Annie
2. Spastica
3. Line Up
4. Vaseline
5. Brighton Rock
6. In The City
7. Waking Up
8. Four Wheeling
9. Hold Me Now
10. Ba Ba Ba
11. All For Gloria
12. I Wanna Be King Of Orient Aah
13. Rock 'n' Roll
14. 2 To 1
15. I Want You
16. Only Human
17. Love Like Ours
18. KB
19. Da Da Da
20. Generator
21. Your Arse My Place

Times Square Soundtrack - VA

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=CIHD7E5S

1980 movie about a politicians daughter and a New York punk girl who meet in the psychiatric wing of a hospital, break out, fall in love on the run, and form a rock band. This soundtrack is OOP so the album is ripped from vinyl and it's a big file, so leave a comment if you have any problems downloading.

The movie itself is now on DVD, so you've no excuse not to see it, people. You'll fall in love.

1. Rock Hard - Suzi Quatro

2. Talk of the Town - The Pretenders

3. Same Old Scene - Roxy Music

4. Down In the Park -Gary Numan

5. Help Me! - Marcy Levy & Robin Gibb

6. Life During Wartime - Talking Heads

7. Pretty Boys - Joe Jackson

8. Take This Town - XTC

9. I Wanna Be Sedated - The Ramones

10. Damn Dog - Robin Johnson

11. Your Daughter Is One - Robin Johnson & Trini Alvarado

12. Babylon's Burning - The Ruts

13. You Can't Hurry Love - D.L. Byron

14. Walk On the Wild Side - Lou Reed

15. The Night Was Not - Desmond Child & Rouge

16. Innocent, Not Guilty - Garland Jeffreys

17. Grinding Halt - The Cure

18. Pissing In the River - Patti Smith Group

19. Flowers In the City - David Johansen & Robin Johnson

20. Damn Dog (Reprise - The Cleo Club) - Robin Johnson

Harlot - Cold War EP

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=QM93G0R5

Pronounced Har-low, unsigned girl-fronted band from Baltimore.
Riffy, lit-glam rock and roll.

http://myspace.com/harlot

1. Drown Me
2. Do We Like the Avant Garde?
3. The Last Interview
4. Client
5. Long Way Down
6. Utter
7. Lost at Sea

Manic Street Preachers - Faster EP
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=4VUX3R8N

Opens with high-pitched feedback and a John Hurt sample from 1984, before exploding into something that sounds like a very pissed off Steve Jones covering Wire. Ends with a live version of New Art Riot. Somewhere between these two things are the lines -

“Wills and Harry, dressed in drag/
Standing over the sodomised body of their mother/
Would make a beautiful poster in Athena”

So you need to own this.

1. Faster

2. PCP

3. Sculpture of Man

4. New Art Riot (live)

Nirvana - The Complete Radio Sessions

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=19I27YFT

Fantastic bootleg of Nirvana's BBC radio sessions. Poppier and more anarchic than In Utero, but without the airless gloss of Nevermind, these are some of the best takes they ever recorded.

Some of these tracks ended up on Incesticide, but as well as this material, there's a doom-laden downer electric version of 'Something in the Way, two Bleach-era songs (this time without the sludgy production), and a live version of Lithium where Krist taunts Axl Rose over a wailing feedback outro. And there's something about the idea of Nirvana holed up in a studio in my home country, blasting these songs out ten-to-a-penny, that just makes me smile.

1		Love Buzz (3:16)
2		About A Girl (2:39)
3		Polly (2:36)
4		Spank Thru (3:15)
5		Son Of A Gun (2:46)
6		Molly's Lips (1:49)
7		D7 (3:44)
8		Turnaround (2:16)
9		Dumb (2:34)
10		Drain You (4:01)
11		Endless Nameless (8:43)
12		Been A Son (1:53)
13		Polly (1:45)
14		Aneurysm (4:34)
15		Something In The Way (3:19)
16		Here She Comes Now (4:38)
17		Where Did You Sleep Last Night (4:54)
18		Drain You (3:35)
19		Polly (2:29)
20		Territorial Pissings (2:08)
21		Lithium (5:04)

Leadbelly - Easy Rider

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=KQB7QK06

I've got the 'Private Party' recording from 1948 on back-order, and when I have it, so will you, but in the meantime, here's a nice little Leadbelly primer.

'Bourgeois Blues' is on here, a perfect mix of melody and politics, intelligence and bile. Presumably this song has been covered to death, although I'm all the happier for never having heard a version by anyone else.

Another interesting song is 'In the Pines'. A lot of people interpret this as a song about infidelity. But in it's abbreviated form, as sung by Leadbelly and later Kurt Cobain, it seems to be a wife's story, sat up through dawn waiting for her husband, unaware that he lays dead on the rail tracks. Interesting to see how ommission is part of growth in the oral tradition.

1. Fannin Street
2. I've A Pretty Flowers
3. Easy Rider
4. Bull Cow
5. DeKalb Blues
6. New York City
7. Mother's Blues
8. Tell Me Baby
9. Sweet Mary Blues
10. Bourgeois Blues
11. My Friend Blind Lemon
12. Good Morning Blues
13. Gallis Pole
14. Outskirts Of Town
15. Grasshoppers In My Pillow
16. Scottsboro Blues
17. Sail On Little Girl, Sail On
18. Don't You Love Your Daddy No More
19. Where Did You Sleep Last Night
20. How Long
21. Looky Looky Yonder

White Noise - An Electric Storm

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=7BKSWCE6

Among the musicians playing on this 1968 LP is BBC Radiophonic Workshop heart-throb Delia Derbyshire. What's odd is how modern much of this sounds. Suddenly you don't feel so weird about owning those CDs full of Doctor Who incidental music.

Groop Dogdrill - Half Nelson

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=QCXSI8W4
From Doncaster in the North of England - Groop Dogdrill were one of the best live bands of their time. During one gig, the drummer wrapped his legs around some piping on the ceiling, played upside down, whilst the singer was running around with an old BBC microphone duct-taped over his mouth. Unfortunately, Dogdrill didn't ever manage to break the orbit of the toilet circuit, and the dodgy cover to their first album didn't help either (see also Scheer's 'Infliction'). Lead singer Pete now fronts a band called 'The Black Spiders'.

http://myspace.com/theblackspiders

The Paradise Motel - Left Over Life to Kill

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=822I9WRK

Ethereal, clever sounding, chilling. Formed in Tasmania and disbanded in 2000. Reminiscent of the Beach House.