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Tour Tunes: The inside outsiders' view
by Paul Rowlands | 10/09/09
As a veteran of three Tours of Britain, none of them in the saddle but with plenty of hours at the wheel, I’ve had more opportunity than most to consider what makes good road music for the preservation of sanity, displacement of anger or just the plain need to take the mind somewhere else for a moment.
Different years have had their own theme, some through choice, others not. I remember in 2006 it was M-People (not my choice, it just seemed to be playing everyday when I arrived at the finish) whereas in 2007 it was Peter, Bjorn & John (that one I looked forward to hearing). So this year, having moved either to or from the dark side depending who you ask, with a new role working for the guys at Rapha Condor as their press monkey, I’ve decided it’s my turn to get in on the blogging act and pitch in with my nominations for the team car playlist.
As I’m from a generation that has witnessed the demise of the C90, the passage of the CD Walkman and the brief luminescent idea that was the mini disc, I appreciate more than some of the younger personnel around pro cycling the idea of music as a finite resource. As such the idea of putting together a mix-tape still lingers and
with it the possibility that I might conjure up some kind of mysteriously cool aura about myself that will eventually result in my own late night TV arts show.
Anyway, here’s what you can expect to see being chucked out of the window of a moving Vauxhall anytime soon.
1 Stereolab: Low-Fi
This one sees a pretty primitive analogue Moog/Farfisa keyboard riff chugging along at the kind of cadence that says you’re in no hurry to get anywhere fast. Then just when you think nothing’s really happening a beautiful french voice kicks in with a la la la vocal that suggests someone thinks there probably should be some words, but no-one could be bothered to write them as they were having such a lovely time already.
2 Primal Scream: Star
I’ve always been unsure about Primal Scream. Mostly I can take it or leave it, but Vanishing Point is a triumph and this is a great song. I’ll even let them off the fact that Rosa Parks, who’s ‘spirit still lives on’ alongside Martin Luther King according to the song, wasn’t dead when the song was released.
3 Velvet Underground: Here she comes now
I had this on a CD from the music library (imagine that kids, a library!) when I was about 15. I got into the velvet underground because I read in a book that REM were into them, and from there I found love. I listened to everything I could find and I even listened to Sister Ray all the way through. VU were capable of looking into the darker corners of the human psyche, but they also wrote some examples of the purest moments of musical perfection you’ll ever hear. This is one of those.
4 Donald Byrd: Dominoes
This was apparently sampled by Jazzy Jeff. I can’t verify that and I don’t care to, because if Mr Jeff had taken the trouble to listen to this all the way through he’d have realised that this is about as good an example of the Jazz Funk genre as you’re going to get and needs no tampering with.
5 Adam Green: Jessica
A tribute to the performing genius that is Jessica Simpson, this is a surreal bit of crooning that contains the line ‘Jessica Simpson, where has your love gone? It’s not in your music, no’. If I need cheering up, this is where I’ll be.
6 Elliott Smith: Coast to Coast
To the casual observer this might seem like the kind of tune I’d lobbed in because the title seems in some way to refer vaguely to the trajectory of a stage of the Tour of Britain. Anyone who has listened to Elliott Smith knows that was never really his subject matter. As such if you need some distorted guitar at the end of a
day of frustration and injustice, come on in…
7 Hot Chip: Over and Over
Welcome to life on a stage race, over and over and over and over, like a monkey with a miniature cymbal. Well, perhaps not the cymbal but you get what I mean, and there’s always a guy blowing a whistle at the Tour of Britain, which is similar.
8 John Cale: 1919
A solo effort from the welshman in the Velvet Undergound. There isn’t space for a discussion here about why or how someone from the land that gave us Max Boyce and Tom Jones could end up in the most influential and important band of their generation. So we’ll just sit back and enjoy the beautiful strings, the voice and the lyrics.
9 Love: Alone Again Or
I had the privilege of seeing Arthur Lee play live in Manchester. For some reason there were a lot of Man City supporters at the gig and they chanted Arthur Lee to the tune of ‘here we go, here we go, here we go’. A weird but strangely beautiful way to show your appreciation of a musical genius.
10 Chemical Brothers: Where do I begin
Begins with Beth Orton singing ‘Sunday morning, I’m waking up, can’t even focus on a coffee cup’.
See this playlist on Last.fm »
It might take the whole race to get a full play out of this little lot, so if that’s the case it will be the sunday after the race finishes before I get to listen to this. An appropriate finale to what I hope is a good week on the road.
