poison to the mind

I’ve been holding off on posting these because I was trying to find links to the PDFs I recently downloaded of Neil McMillan’s epic History Of Cut’n'Paste records. Unfortunately, all Google seems to turn up is references to an abridged version printed in Big Daddy magazine, and an extended reprinting in another zine by the same people, and OCRed versions of the original shortarse version, so fuckit. Maybe the email address on that last link can sort you out? It’s really great and worth reading, but let’s just assume you did so weeks ago already and are now keen to hear some classic copyright-dodging 1980s collage records by white blokes:Double Dee & Steinski - Lesson 3 (The History Of Hip-Hop Mix) - the broadest of the original Lessons.

Coldcut - Say Kids, What Time Is It? - the baton gets picked up across the Atlantic.

And twenty-odd years later, Douglas and Steve reunite and team up with Cut Chemist for a promotional tour through the catalogue of Sugarhill Records:

Double Dee & Steinski - Sugarhill Suite

Buy: Despite the impression given by rampant bootlegging, none of the Lessons have ever been released legally. Shockah. If you buy anything on Sugarhill ever, then the Suite has done its job (it came out on some Melle Mel 12″ b-side or something. Maybe it’s on a label comp too?). AND! Coldcut, at some point, rescued their own white-label-only debut for a low-key release with a bunch of other stuff they probably don’t own (shonky 90s dance labels innit), and will flog you their Cold-Cut-Outs direct.
(edited by Peteypie because Kit doesn’t know the location of his own mp3s. You can download them now!)

With the closure of group-blog New York London Paris Munich and a withdrawal from ILM, Freaky Trigger founder Tom Ewing is these days doing all his public thinking about music on LiveGerbil (of all places etc etc). In the course of revisiting his list of personal Top 100 Songs Of The 90s, the latest entry is on the chart-bothering version of The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu’s “It’s Grim Up North.” Which is all fine and all (though he mispells “JAMs” and “McLaren,” tsk), but I always find the hit version with Bill Drummond’s own vocals hard to get into because there are just too many ideas in it (which is to say: there are two, with “Jerusalem” coming in at the end).

No fault of the record itself, it’s just that I heard the original version first (fancy that, a KLF record that got completely re-recorded and re-released), which may have simply been an excuse for Drummond to tick off the remaining box on his Crucial Three scorecard, BUT! Pete Wylie’s vocals aside, the strength of this version is that it stays relentlessly grim: rain, towns, bass and a disturbing hooting noise, like some depressed goth rave siren. Even the record was pressed on grey vinyl (one-sided 12″, 500 copies only, blah blah).

The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu Featuring That Pete Wylie Innit - It’s Grim Up North

Buy:
No records obviously, but the brilliant The Manual - How To Have A Number One The Easy Way is in print and available from the publisher.