the tube

[4] Primal Scream, ‘Don’t Fight It, Feel It’

Don't Fight It, Feel It

We’d already had single-of-the-90s ‘Loaded’, the astonishing eight- and ten-minute versions of ‘Come Together’ and the dubby psychedelia of ‘Higher Than The Sun’. Now there was the acid techno of ‘Don’t Fight It, Feel It’. Should be quite an album, we thought.

A chorus of tuned-up cicadas kept this loopy floorfiller crashing along. Must be a first for popular music, that. Hooked up to the more conventional, soulful testifying from Denise Johnson and the bluesy piano, it made for a sweaty classic. I might just be thinking of the uniquely moist walls of Bristol’s Tube club, mind you.

Still a bangin’ choon (hey!), it had Junior wriggling over the edges of the inflatable, rocking to the pumping beat.

It wasn’t to everyone’s taste at the time, though, I admit. Steve Wright played it on his afternoon show while I was painting my parents’ window frames, and said that everyone was raving about it but he couldn’t understand why. A man sporting that moustache and those sub-Lennon specs was never going to be down with us hepcats.

[All my vinyl rips seem to have corrupted; Top 11 mp3s to follow… later]

[10] Bassheads, ‘Is There Anybody Out There?’

Bassheads

Sued to within an inch of their livelihoods by an intriguing combination of Afrika Bambaataa, Talking Heads and the Osmonds, Bassheads didn’t do anything remotely diverting after this track. In fact, the last three minutes are a steep drop from the wild euphoria of the previous six; the music grinds to a plinky-plonky crawl, sounding oddly like Sting dreaming of blue turtles.

The first six minutes are just right. Bassline building to guitars to sci-fi lasers to Italo house piano to that Bambaataa rap to distorted guitars to piano laser meltdown. We had our hands in the air at The Tube. Junior’s hands were just in front of her, doing the clapping that looks like she’s making her hands spit-spot, Mary Poppins style.

She tired of the coda even more quickly than I do, demanding breakfast at the first sniff of ambient noodling.

[All my vinyl rips seem to have corrupted; Top 11 mp3s to follow… later]