A year in music: seven random things

A longstanding tradition to rival Christmas (and possibly even Christianity itself), here's my famous random things blog for 2023. Throw away your horrible Christmas presents and read on ... 

Best things found in the street

This year it has to be the excellent arm-breakingly-heavy Gemini XL-500 II, scavenged from a big pile of junk outside a discontinued record shop-cum-venue in the street where I live. Naturally it was in perfect working order and there was no good reason to throw it away. Alongside it was a decent amp as a side dish. Believe it or not, a workmate tells me he also found a Gemini XL-500 II in his street, a couple of miles away from me in Dalston. What's going on in Hackney? Is there an over-supply of this model of turntable? Is it a very obscure art experiment of some kind? Bizarre. But fine with me.

Best donations made / stuff disposed of

Sort of the opposite of the previous category, this is where I've displayed my famous benevolence and generously given things to a worthy cause. Or to put it another way, it's where I've got rid of stuff I no longer wanted but have at least done slightly better than lazily throwing things out with the rubbish. This year's giveaways have included a sofa given to a friend's venue in Coventry and countless records, tapes and CDs that have been plonked down on the counter of my local Crisis shop. I reckon the Crisis staff have long since ID'd me as "that weird bloke who brings in all that stuff we'll never be able to get rid of", but, never mind, my philanthropic spirit is ... strong. Best single item of the year? That will be the Dave Haslam clubs book I chucked their way. It's a decent enough read (if a little cluttered in the telling) but my sagging bookshelves needed a cull so away it went. I originally picked it up for £1 at an Amnesty booksale. A few days after I'd left it with them, Crisis had it on sale for £7. Inflation, eh?  

Best destruction art

This is where I wreck something in an effort to turn it into a supposed work of art. (But what is art, I hear you ask). It's all part of my (very) submerged artistic impulse: refashioning stuff. The opposite of make and mend - destroy and make. So this year I finally did something with an ancient Buzzcocks t-shirt which has now gone from unworn clothing item - yellowing and moth-eaten - to the centrepiece of my amateur collage thing (Malcolm Garrett would be proud). Fun fact: my partner hates it so much that she demands I turn it to the wall whenever she's in the flat. Grounds for separation? 

A habit that sticks: destruction art

Stuff I've enjoyed listening to (in no particular order)

The Smashing Times, This Sporting Life

Hygiene, 15 Minute City

Légumes Sex, LPette, especially the Buzzcocks-tastic Poc’mec

Dignan Porch, Nothing Bad Will Ever Happen

Tube Alloys, Magnetic Point

Euros Childs, Thrips

Dinner Night, Bernhard

The Calendars, Noah Don't Like Rock

Brorlab, Working Out In Heaven

Jenerator Jenkins, Let's Jenerate! No.1 EP / Evil Rising In the Collapsing Age

All Girls Arson Club, Demos, Rareties & B​-​sides, with deliberate misspelling? 

Hound, Some Days Were Good

Rrose, A Row Of Cylinders

Cassandra Miller, Traveller Song / Thanksong

Roxy Music, Street Life

Crumbs, Mind Yr Manners

Poledo, Start Again

David Tattersall, On The Sunny Side Of The Ocean

Crawlies, Old News

DJ Cuddles, Selector After Dark mix

Andrew Weatherall, York hiphop mix

Joe Mckechnie, Champagne For My Real Friends/Real Pain For My Sham Friends mix 27

 ... plus the wonderful Whirlpool Vision Of Shame, which I must have listened to about 100 times this year because YouTube's evil algorithm keeps defaulting me to this tune every time I use their clunky platform. On this occasion I'm not complaining. 

Notable under-attended musical event that was good anyway

This has been most of them, really, but a special mention goes to the Elle Et Moi DJ set at the LTB Showrooms in Coventry alongside Danielle McHugh's very nice photography/projection project. EEM played an enjoyable selection of not-heard-very-often stuff (krauty pop, trip hop, the Associates) to a massively unpacked room of about four people. And yet it was still very good.  

Dancing by myself: fighting for space on the dancefloor at the LTB 

Best free badges

Having recently got back into badges, these days I usually scan the merch stall at gigs (sites I'd disdainfully shunned for years) on the look-out for an attractive badge. This year the best two were the freebie ones that (1) Wormboys gave me at their rainy-night Leeds show, and (2) that a very nice (Ukrainian?) woman gave me at Powerplant's Nottingham gig after I bought their Stump Soup tape. Merch!

Gig that I most struggled to find even though it was only ten minutes from where I live

This was a show at the recently-opened Two Palms venue in Hackney, part of the ever-growing Jaguar Shoes empire. Where's this place, I thought. Hackney? Really? Never heard of it. So off I went, thinking it's my local patch and it'll be super-easy to find. Half an hour later - having gone into a basement restaurant with "Palms" in its name (thanks Google Maps), up a side-alley into a middle-aged party-crowd pub, up and down a busy road several times dodging drunks - I was about to give up. I would just go home and add it to the long list of gigs I didn't attend because I was so disorganised/hapless. When ... there it was: right in front of me. A new bar-venue beneath the Hackney Empire theatre, currently well into panto season. Niluccio! Behind you!

Best finds in a charity shop

Yes, not only do I generously donate to charity shops I also buy stuff from them. More and more, it seems. Anyway, this year I bought one half of the Velvet Underground Gold 2/CD comp on Polydor (it was 50 pence, I think) from a charity shop in Fulham in deepest darkest west London. Someone had apparently stolen disc one, but disc two is better (Ocean live etc) and, anyway, 50p for 16 VU songs: I ain't complaining. This shop in question was across the road from another charity shop where last year I got the Sex Pistols' Something Else 7" for ... zero pounds. A loose, totally-unsleeved record stranded among the Dean Martin LPs, I took it up to the counter where the bloke - with barely a glance - said, "You can have it". Punk, eh? Not what it used to be.

It's the beginning of a new age: the VU make it big in Fulham

And that, dear friends, is that. Only seven random things this year. It's sometimes eight, but then it's also sometimes six. Like everything else in life, this annual blog is itself very random. Yeah man, I'm beginning to see the light ...