[This is one post in a series about my music mixes. The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use. You may wish to read the introduction for more background. You may also want to check out the first volume in this multi-volume mix for more info on its theme.
Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguou
You know, I’ve often said that volume II of most of my mixes typically consist of the tracks that wouldn’t fit on volume I. It continues to be true here. Two of the tracks were mentioned by name in our last installment, 3 are from artists that we mentioned last time but didn’t feature tracks from, and there are a whopping 6 further returning artists. I have to say “further” in this case, because the seventh returning artist is also one of the tracks that we talked about last time by name: “Driving,” by Everything But the Girl. While “Missing”1 is generally considered EBTG’s biggest hi
And, of course, the second track mentioned by name last time was “Your Latest Trick” by Dire Straits, which is yet another amazing performance by Brecker, not to mention a trumpet intro from his brother Randy. While a lot of Dire Straits’ output is fairly straight-ahead rock such as “Sultans of Swing” or “Money for Nothing,” they’re no stranger to a softer track, and “Your Latest Trick” is an ode to loneliness that starts out by painting a poignant picture of a big city after the bustle of the day has wound down:
All the late night bargains have been struck
Between the satin beaus and their belles.
Prehistoric garbage trucks
Have the city to themselves.
Echoes and roars of dinosaurs—
They’re all doing the monster mash—
And most of the taxis and most of the whores
Are only taking calls for cash ...
It also provides our volume title. Definitely a classic.
Of the other returning artists, there’s nothing too surprising: Sting is back with the title track from The Dream of the Blue Turtles, a bouncy little instrumental bridge that takes us into our centerpiece, Boy Meets Girl’s “I Wish You Were Here,” which is slightly more upbeat than last installment’s “Oh Girl” but still very typical of their sound: West Exit brings us another bass heavy, late night tune in “Take a Ride”; Norah Jones swings back around with another breathy torch song, “The Nearness of You”; and Johnny Hates Jazz brings us a much smaller hit than “Shattered Dreams,” but one which is every bit as good: “Turn Back the Clock.”2 And finally we have the inimitable Aztec Camera. While “Stray” is possibly the best song off of the album of the same name,3 I still maintain that the crowning achievement of Roddy Frame (Aztec Camera is almost entirely Frame, in the same way that Nine Inch Nails is almost entirely Trent Reznor) is his first album, High Land, Hard Rain. Some of its songs are slightly more upbeat, such as its very minor hit “Oblivious,” but it’s definitely an introspective album, and “We Could Send Letters” epitomizes that, with lyrics such as “you’re free to push me and I’m free to fall” and “I’ve been smothered in the sympathy you bleed.” This album is one of my favorites, and this was the song I chose to represent it here.
I also mentioned 3 bands last time out without using any of their songs. In the case of Swing Out Sister, it was primarily because “Breakout” is such an amazing tune that I knew it had to be a volume opener, and that spot was already filled for volume I.4 I love this song, partially because, unlike a lot of the other tunes on this mix, it is unabashedly upbeat, powered primarily by some great trumpet work from Johnny Thirkell, whose prolificness is summed up by this statement from Wikipedia: “Through the 1980s and early 1990s he was on at least one album in the UK Charts continuously, without a break, for over 13 years.”5 Wow. He’s a big part of why “Breakout” is awesome, but a lot of props go to the Manchester band themselves: Andy Connell synths with the best of them, and Corinne Drewery’s vocals are just gorgeous.
Speaking of upbeat, I also mentioned Hipsway, whose track “The Honeythief” is almost slinky enough to make it to Slithy Toves. It’s a bit goofy, and the rest of Hipsway’s œuvre is nothing to write home about, but I always secretly dug this one, and this mix is certainly the right place (the only place, really) to showcase it. The other band mentioned previously was the Blow Monkeys, who are definitely back on the downbeat side of things. But “Digging Your Scene” is pretty upbeat for them, so it still fits the theme. Front man Dr. Robert has that smooth vocal quality that so many of the bands here have, and they even have their own sax player for a change: Neville Henry is not exactly a sax superstar, but his fills are quite lovely, and they work well in the context of the Monkeys’ jazz-adjacent sound.
Of course, every track discussed above save three live in that golden period I talked about last time, from 1985 to 1990, and, if we’re willing to back it up to 1983 to account for a few outliers, we can throw in the Aztec Camera as well.6 There are a few more tracks from that period too. The most obivous (if obscure) is “One Simple Thing” by the Stabilizers. This is a song I discovered by going through my dad’s record collection rejects,7 and I fell in love with it and later picked up the album, Tyranny.8 The Stabilizers were, sadly, a one-hit wonder who didn’t even get their one hit ... “One Simple Thing” peaked at #93 in the US and #100 in Australia, and that was about it. Unfairly, in my view: this track epitomizes the poppier side of this subgenre. Like “Barely Breathing,” it’s both smooth and edgy, both mellow and impassioned, but the Stabilizers were doing it 9 years before Duncan Sheik came along.9
I also briefly mentioned ABC as “dabblers” in this style, so let’s hear them dabble. The tremendous How to be a Zillionaire! is a cornerstone of 80s synthpop, with big hits “Be Near Me” and “How to be a Millionaire.” But it has its more reflective moments too, and “Between You and Me” is the best of them. Plus you gotta give mad respect to Martin Fry for not only rhyming “brutal” with “mutual,” but also “hyposcrisy” with “democracy” ... in a love song. I also also briefly mentioned the Blue Nile, but mainly to say that we’d see them on Moonside by Riverlight before we saw them here.10 Which is not to say that we can’t ever see them here: the title track from their stunning A Walk Across the Rooftops has a lot going on, giving credence to the (possibly apocryphal) story that this album was used to demonstrate how the fancy new “compact disc” technology could make clear the most subtle of background sounds. From its nearly inaudible fade-in which swells to its opening notes, from the lonely trumpet to the insistent strings to the poweful staccato bass riff, to Paul Buchanan’s soulful vocals, it’s just a gorgeous tune, with less of the Scottish band’s normal lounge vibe and more of a jazzy feel. Plus it makes the perfect closer.
[ Girl Can Get Lonely Out Here on the Road ]
“Driving” by Everything but the Girl, off The Language of Life
“A-kasseblues” by Movits!, off Äppelknyckarjazz
“Take a ride” by the West Exit, off Nocturne
“Your Latest Trick” by Dire Straits, off Brothers in Arms
“Love and you and I” by Lizzi, off Love and you and I
“Here's Looking at You” by Blondie, off Autoamerican
“No Ordinary Love” by Sade, off Love Deluxe
“The Nearness of You” by Norah Jones, off Come Away with Me
“The Dream of the Blue Turtles” by Sting, off The Dream of the Blue Turtles
“I Wish You Were Here” by Boy Meets Girl, off Boy Meets Girl
“One Simple Thing” by Stabilizers, off Tyranny 11
“The Honeythief” by Hipsway, off Hipsway
“We Could Send Letters” by Aztec Camera, off High Land, Hard Rain
“Between You & Me” by ABC, off How to Be a Zillionaire!
“Turn Back the Clock” by Johnny Hates Jazz, off Turn Back the Clock
“Digging Your Scene” by Blow Monkeys, off Animal Magic
“A Walk Across the Rooftops” by the Blue Nile, off A Walk Across the Rooftops
In newer fare, the West Exit is joined by fellow Magnatune artist Lizzi, whose style slots pretty perfectly in here. “Love and you and I” is fairly layered and electronic compared to the late 80s fare, but it’s no less smooth-jazz-inspired. For a tune just past the golden period, there can be no better exemplar than Sade. “No Ordinary Love,” while it didn’t reach the peak of her megahits “Smooth Operator” or “The Sweetest Taboo,” was a pretty solid hit, and I will always maintain that Love Deluxe is a better album than Diamond Life.12 It’s another slinky one, with a bit of a loungy overtone, but it’s a solid smooth-jazz-like performance that leads beautifully into Norah Jones.
Which just leaves us with the two very unlikely candidates. The earliest track on this volume is 1980’s “Here’s Looking at You” by the normally punky Blondie. Of course, Blondie was famous for a style that ranged solidly across the musical map, from the disco-inflected “Call Me” to the reggae-infused “The Tide Is High” to the rap-adjacent “Rapture.” Here they do a callback to the torchy jazz standards of the big band era which instantly make you imagine Deborah Harry lounging across a grand piano in front a full horn section, perhaps wrapped in a feather boa. It’s not a remake, though: Harry and bandmate Chris Stein wrote it, and Jimmy Haskell, noted for the horn arrangement on Chicago’s “If You Leave Me Now,” arranged the orchestral components, including the background strings and the foreground trumpets and clarinets. It’s a gorgeous song that really sounds like it belongs in the 30s or 40s, but also has a surprisingly modern feel. Plus I’ve always liked the lyric “if I ever had a million dollars (and if I didn’t give it all to you) ...”
Bookending us chronology-wise, the latest track on the volume is the surprisingly low-key “A-kasseblues” by Swedish swing-rappers Movits!. I’m not entirely sure what the song means, although a Swedish-to-English translation site suggests the following chorus:
A-kasseblues
Who would have thought it would be something for me
Say where to live
Or put my shoe
Can I sleep with you?
Sure. Why not. But the point is that it’s a very pretty song, even if you have no clue what Johan (Jivin’) Rensfeldt is babbling about. And it flows very smoothly into this mix, unlike the majority of their output (which you will find on various volumes of Salsatic Vibrato13).
Next time, I think we’ll cast our minds back to a more primitive radiophonic era.
1 Which we already heard back on volume I.
2 “Shattered Dreams” was #2 in the US and #5 in the UK, while “Turn Back the Clock” hit #12 the UK and failed to chart in the US at all.
3 Although “The Crying Scene” is damned fine as well.
4 By “Captain of Her Heart,” you may recall.
5 Amongst my mixes, you can also hear Thirkell on “Walking on Sunshine” from my Mother’s Day mix, “From Under the Covers” by the Beautiful South on Bleeding Salvador II, and the Swing soundtrack, which is featured heavily in Salsatic Vibrato (volumes II, V, VI, and VII) and occasionally in Smokelit Flashback (volumes III and IV). He also played for Level 42, but not on the track of theirs we heard on volume I of this mix.
6 The other two tracks outside the golden period are the Norah Jones tune (2002) and the West Exit track (2004).
7 A story which really deserves its own blog post someday.
8 The title track is even better, and we’ll see it eventually on 80s My Way and possibly another mix, although that latter one is still in a very neotonous state.
9 In fact, Sheik would have been a junior or senior in high school at the time of the Stabilizers’ flash in the pan ... I wonder if young Duncan heard them and was inspired?
10 Which we did, on Moonside by Riverlight II.
11 This album is damnably hard to find, but apparently the whole thing is available on YouTube. Hard to pull individual tracks from that, but I have faith in you.
12 In fact, I’ve already used 2 tracks from it: “Mermaid” on Numeric Driftwood II and “Pearls” on Tenderhearted Nightshade I.
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