Hello all! Been absent from the blog for much longer than intended, I'm sorry to say. But I hate to miss another Halloween, especially since my blog is named for a Halloween urban legend. So I've managed to squeak in a mix just in time!

'A Curse On You' is in a similar vein to my last couple of mixes: more of a haunting atmosphere than strictly horror-themed selections, though there are a few of those as well. I like to make my mixes a bit of an emotional journey through different moods and sonic textures, especially when fairly long like this one, which comes in at two hours and eight minutes.

This mix is packed with vintage European soundtracks, moody experimental pop, electronic forays, an abundance of 60s psych rock, and more. There's some of the sensual, affecting vibe of my previous mixes, but with more of a gritty, dirty punch - at least that was the aim!

Please enjoy this trippy spookfest! Here are the artists and songs featured in this mix (click 'Hide details' to see a simplified tracklist):

Sooo... this is a slightly insanely long playlist, especially coming off the back of five hours of listening in my other 2017 posts. It's around twelve hours of music – 183 songs – that didn't make it onto my best of 2017 playlists. It came about because, when I was trying to catch up on some releases I might have missed during the year, I found so very, very much music that appealed to me, and it was overwhelming to even figure out where to begin listening. I started this playlist to keep stuff I wanted to get back to, and as somewhere to put songs I reluctantly cut from my main playlists when they were getting too long. So this is essentially a playlist of honourable mentions, as well as songs I've really enjoyed from albums I haven't had time to fully listen to. 

Okay, so it's nearly March, which probably makes this the world's most untimely 'Best of 2017' list! First I'll get to the music, but there's a personal note at the bottom of this post explaining why I'm sometimes much later with posts than I'd like, and why I think they're still worth doing anyway.

Wow, I was really blown away by the musical offerings from last year! There's some truly spectacular music being made by incredibly creative artists who are dedicated to their craft. and to making brilliant music for the sake of it. Though it's easier than ever to find music from all over the world to suit your particular tastes, I'm pretty convinced there's also just more and more amazing music being produced. This playlist features a song from each of my favourite 2017 albums. It's pretty long, with fifty-five tracks, coming in at around three hours and forty minutes of listening. I heard so much great stuff, this was as much as I could narrow it down! And you'll notice this is only Part One.... 

Image via Discogs

I love a good depressing seasonal tune, and it doesn't much bleaker than one set in a desolate, post-apocalyptic world!

'Juste quelques flocons qui tombent' ("Just a few flakes falling") isn't really a Christmas song, but is apparently associated enough with this time of year to be included on Christmas compilations. This is curious, because the lyrics don't reference anything related to Noël, and from what I can find, the track seems to have been released not around Christmas time but in February, 1967. Perhaps the association comes from its snowy imagery, or the chiming bells that unusually punctuate its psych-folk-pop sound, or perhaps it's because of the story of how Antoine came to write the song.

The idea for the song came to Antoine on Christmas Eve, 1965, according to Anthologie des tubes rock: Soixante ans de musique pour les kids (François Grimpet & Daniel Lesueur, Camion Blanc, 2016), This was shortly before he would score a huge hit with 'Les Élucubrations d'Antoine' early the following year, becoming not only an overnight pop superstar, but a major force in reshaping the French pop scene in the post-yé-yé years. At this point however, he had a debut EP under his belt that hadn't made much of a splash, and was still a struggling musician. Having performed that evening for a modest fee, Antoine had just enough to dine out with his girlfriend but nothing left over for transport, so they footed it home. Walking toward the Marais district, the couple looked back to see a snow-covered Paris, nothing visible except their footprints in the snow, leaving them with the feeling of being the only two people in the world. With his songwriter's imagination and having keenly absorbed the pacifist themes of the likes of Bob Dylan, Antoine soon turned this image into a song about a world decimated by nuclear war, where he and his lover are the only survivors.  

If I'm understanding the lyrics correctly, the final verse sees Antoine comparing himself and his girlfriend to Adam and Eve, but cautioning they must avoid repopulating the world – since the last world was such a flop! What a sentiment to hear in a track that gets billed as one of "Les plus belles chansons de Noël"!

Photo: Mademoiselle Age Tendre, November 1969.

Johnny Hallyday
15 June 1943 – 5 December 2017

French pop has lost its long-reigning king. It feels inconceivable – both because the young, beautiful Johnny of fifty years ago lives perpetually in iconic images and sounds, seeming forever 'L'idole des jeunes', and because today's Johnny seemed indefatiguable, still full of a zest for music and life. I really have no words for now that would do an even adequate job of capturing who Johnny was or the immensity of this loss. So I thought I'd just share a collection of few favourite things: photos from those gorgeous, seemingly endless pictorials in the pages of Salut les copains and Mademoiselle Age Tendre (I sometimes wonder how much of their lives the idoles spent in front of the camera!), some of his best songs, and a few videos that showcase what a charismatic performer he was.

Click on any of the photos for a larger version.

Salut les copains, December 1963.

In part one, I shared a video of Uta Taeger performing 'Hier, aujourd'hui, demain', the A-side of her 1969 single, on sixties French television. The B-side is the superb 'Baudelaire':

Here, Uta recites the title poet's 'Recueillement' from Les Fleurs du mal over a potent psych rock jam, brimming with fuzzy, heavy guitars, phaser effects and rhythmic electric organ. The song's credits read 'musique de Groscolas', referring to Pierre Groscolas, at the time a songwriter, session musician and backing vocalist, most notably for Eddy Mitchell. Groscolas, who was also a founding member of the sixties band Le Cœur, would go on to find success as a solo singer-songwriter in the early seventies, releasing more standard fare than the striking 'Baudelaire' shows he was capable of conjuring up.

The Shangri-Las

'Baudelaire' is an interesting pairing with the A-side, a cover of The Shangri-Las' haunting 1966 single 'Past, Present and Future'. An unusual girl group release, the original is sombre and stripped back, its arrangement mostly a simple piano accompaniment borrowed from Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. Over this, lead vocalist Mary Weiss forlornly speak-sings a soliloquoy that captures the devastation and shock of first heartbreak. Uta's version has a slightly sped up tempo and there's a lighter touch to her vocal delivery, but the cover otherwise sticks close to its source in tone and theme, the lyrics a mostly faithful translation.

Flip the record over and the change in style is stark. It would seem 'Baudelaire' has nothing in common with the A-side, save for the spoken word vocals. Here you have a psyched-up reading of a weighty, once-banned poem backing an angsty teen ballad about failed first romance. 'Baudelaire' is just the sort of wild experiment that sometimes gets smuggled onto a B-side, where an artist can let loose and express something that the main cut, intended for radio play and chart success, doesn't allow. But looking more closely at the two songs, they may be more of a deliberate pairing than it would seem. It turns out there's actually an intriguing thematic continuity between them. And though the A-side is the more radio-friendly, it's a curious choice for a debut single. A teen pop song from three years prior – an eternity in pop years back then – that didn't quite crack the American top fifty, covered by a nearly thirty-year-old actress, wasn't a likely formula for a hit record. These two things taken together make me wonder if this wasn't more of an artistic endeavour than an attempt to launch a new female pop star. Perhaps it was even, in a sense, a concept single.

While flipping through my collection of vintage French magazines the other day, I came across an interesting little segment in the October 1966 issue of Salut les copains, France's enormously popular and influential youth music magazine that launched in 1962 to complement the radio show of the same name. It features Françoise Hardy sharing her ten current favourite songs, as part of a running segment where popular music stars were asked to create their own 'hit parade'.

Hardy's tastes encompassed a variety of popular genres of the time, from the easy listening of Frank Sinatra and Petula Clark to the garage rock of Syndicate of Sound and The Troggs, whose 'Wild Thing' she calls "breathtaking". Most of the picks here are from the USA and UK, as was more fashionable by that time than homegrown music. Hardy, though, was no bandwagon jumper and had long been a fan of Anglo-American sounds. She often had the chance to hear new British music when she ducked across the channel to record an album or play some venues, and she mentions buying Syndicate of Sound's 'Little Girl' in London and seeing Dusty Springfield perform 'Goin' Back' on Ready Steady Go! A couple of her fellow Gallic singer-songwriters are represented here in Michel Polnareff ("She could have cited any other of Michel's songs, she loves them all equally"), and Antoine, who had debuted nearly a year earlier and transformed the local scene.

I've playlisted her choices so you can immerse yourself in what the wonderful Ms Hardy was grooving to 50 years ago:

It's my first post of the new year and, though late to the game, I wanted to share my favourite music from last year. 2016 was a notoriously terrible year (not that this year is exactly peachy so far!), but thankfully the same can't be said of the music that came out last year. It was, to quote Lisa Simpson's insensitive future fiancé, like a flower that grew out of a pot of dirt. I feel spoiled by the amount and variety of quality music I've been enjoying from last year's offerings. There are the gorgeous vintage European pop sounds of The Yearning and Lia Pamina, the visionary retrofuturism of Adrian Younge, the moving, classic songwriting of Big Smoke, the raw garage rock of The Mystery Lights, some fresh takes on dream pop, and many outings in psychedelic-influenced, experimental pop. Some of these albums have quickly become all-time favourites, not just favourites of the year. Below is a playlist of songs from my most-loved releases of 2016, including albums, singles and EPs, in no particular order. A list of my top eleven albums (I could not narrow it down to ten!) of the year – again, in no specific order – follows it.

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If you prefer Spotify, listen here. Update: By request, now also on Deezer (but missing the Samara Lubelski song).

Tracklist:

Like so many, I am angry, confounded, saddened by the state of the world. 2016 just keeps kicking us in the arse. I won't spill any trite words about the power of music in troubled times. I don't even think making ourselves feel better is entirely the point. I'm wary of self-tranquilising to the point of becoming numbed or complacent; we need that sense of horror and anger to foster meaningful action. Anger, I think, is not something to be afraid of if it is not hateful or violent or self-destructive. That said, I'm aware good people need to draw strength from where they can – to be inspired, to experience catharsis, to feel soothed, to preserve their mental health – in order to be effective, to go on, to heal. And that's where music can come in. What I like to turn to runs the gamut from angry and cynical, to inspiring and thought-provoking, to calming and reassuring. Here are a few songs I thought I'd share.

Jarvis Cocker - Running The World

Starting at the angry, cynical end of things, Jarvis Cocker's blunt song 'Running The World' from 2006 pulled no punches in describing exactly who has the power in the world, and is unfortunately truer than ever. The song is an incisive, darkly funny critique of capitalism and politics.

Barry McGuire's classic scathing protest song, 'Eve Of Destruction', perfectly captured the countercultural mood of its day. Written by nineteen-year-old P.F. Sloan, it was a number one hit for McGuire in 1965, and it's hard to imagine anyone spitting out these lyrics of disgust and frustration better than he does in his blistering growl. Many of the lyrics are, obviously, specific to political circumstances of the time, but much of it still resonates and could apply as readily today. Particularly potent is McGuire's delivery of the line about religious hypocrisy: "Hate your next-door neighbour / but don't forget to say grace." Also, message aside, I am a fan of the fact the word 'coagulating' is incorporated into a rhyme.

It's interesting when a work of art's message feels relevant again and you find its meaning becomes clearer than before. I guess I always saw this as a somewhat fatalistic song about impending doom in an age of atomic fear, but now it's hitting me as a rebuke against complacency, against refusing to see potential catastrophe, and against the normalisation of things that should rightly invoke alarm. Sloan saw it as "a love song to and for humanity" and "a prayer" and hoped it would help "open a dialogue", but instead he and McGuire were ousted from the music industry.

"This is a cold war, you better know what you're fighting for" sings Janelle Monáe so powerfully on 'Cold War', from her 2010 Afrofuturist pop masterpiece, The ArchAndroid. The line 'I was made to believe there was something wrong with me' always chokes me up, and now more than ever, too many are afraid of their children growing up to feel like this. Monáe has said of this and other songs of hers: "I try to create songs that are uplifting because this world can drive you insane". 'Cold War', though it faces a sense of pain and injustice head-on, is not a bitter resignation; it ultimately uplifts: