John Peel Festive 50 1988 - Spotify Playlist

Are you using Spotify? If not you really need to beg an invite. I think I have two left if anyone really needs one.The playlist function is cool as mud and I have been playing about with it. Thought I should create something we could all could share. So I created one for the John Peel 1988 Festive 50.

I picked 1988 as it was one of the years that I remember listing to loads of Peel as I left work and went back to college to do my "A" Levels. Lots of The House of Love, The Fall and The Pixies. Its not completely as they where missing The Wedding Present tracks from that period and a few of the more obscure tracks (No Spit - Road Pizza or Shalawambe - Samora Machel)which is a real shame. For a full list of the John Peel Festive 50 from 1988 visit Rock Music List.

For my playlist – John Peel Festive 50 1988 Spotify

American Music Club - The Golden Age Number 4 - 2008

American Music Club - The Golden Age

Mark Eitzel reformed American Music Club with a new rhythm section and the inscrutable Vudi along for the ride. The band fashioned a lighter than sound than their churning bruised glory. Laurel Cannon sunshine anchored by Eitzel sonorous crumpled vocals and his weary romantic Bukowski world view. The Golden Age soared upwards on harmonies of All The Lost Souls of San Francisco and the astounding bleak beauty of Windows of The World. Vudi bleeds his guitar grime into the mix and Eitzel opens his heart and our eyes as only he can.

Tony Heywood (C)

Goldmund – The Malady of Elegance Number 5

This was a late entry into my musical universe. It may had been higher up if I had time to immerse myself in its dark reverberations. Its fractured obtuse sense of melody, filigree and shadow, sparse piano notes drifting on the wind. Keith Kenniff plays like Satie freed from ad breaks and muzak hell and sent tumbling through inner space. Stilted, angelic and frozen.

Goldmund – The Malady of Elegance

Goldmund - Myspace Page

Tony Heywood (C)

Yellow Swans – Deterioration - Number 6 2008

The sudden, gracefully and friendly demise of Yellow Swans was my personal musical low point. Pete Swanson and Gabriel Mindel Saloman and have parted ways to pursue separate music journeys’. I will miss their warm noise blast, their unmatched flare for combining cantankerous white noise tension with burnt melancholy reflection. Cavernous and claustrophobic as ever. Electronic split ends flickering and sparking in an endless feedback loop. I wait with bated breath to see what comes next.

Yellow Swans - Myspace Page

Tony Heywood (C)

Number 7 - Glasvegas - Self Titled

Glasvegas - Glasvegas



I very nearly didn’t get beyond the name conjuring as it does the image of some terrible wedding band. Then there was the hype – Best New Band in Britain headlines that make you yawn and laugh long and hearty about Suede. Thankfully they sound like the love child of a drunken tryst between The Jesus and Mary Chain and Lily Allen. All corrosive feedback squall, submerged melodic gold and whip smart modern lyrics. The looked like they needed sunlight, orange juice and a good nights sleep. Imagine the Velvet Underground sharing a half time tangerine with Philip Larkin and Alex Turner. The choruses are huge, the soul deep and clobber blacker than black. Odes to social workers as angels in a world of post baby P witch hunts. Scotland The Brave.

Glasvegas - Website

Tony Heywood (C)