I’m counting down my 100 favourite songs of all time. To keep this from becoming a Bob Dylan / Tom Waits love-in, only one track per artist is allowed.
Go to 78: Body's In Trouble by Mary Margaret O'Hara
Go to 80: California Soul by Marlena Shaw
When I was at university in Dublin, I worked the weekend night shift at a 24-hour petrol station in one of the Northside's less salubrious neighbourhoods. Though the job involved unsocial hours and more than occasional abuse, it also provided a unique window on inner-city nightlife in Ireland's capital during the tail end of the 20th century.
Literally a window, as all my interactions with the bowsies prowling the Phibsborough night occurred via a thick pane of glass. We communicated through a two-way speaker and transacted using a pair of metal drawers. It was better that way, as I could laugh off the threats to "do me" because we had run out of Mars bars or back away from the faux-outrage of chancers who swore they gave me a twenty.
It also allowed me to behold the city's rampant drug culture, over-exposed under the harsh sodium lights of the station forecourt. This was pre-Celtic Tiger Dublin, where the buoyant effects of more-than-enthusiastic economic liberalism hadn't yet transformed the population into house-price-fueled, cocaine and champagne guzzlers braying their way to precipitous decay.
Northside Dublin in the late 90s was full of skangers, students and salt-of-the-earth old wans who'd scowl and shake their heads at the antics of the other two. It was rainy, rough, grimy, gruff and gentrification couldn't come soon enough. But when it did, people being robbed at syringe-point suddenly felt like more innocent times.
Heroin addicts were a common sight on the streets from about midday and you always had to be on your guard, particularly if you lived opposite Mountjoy Prison and its attendant needle exchange. Far better to meet them after midnight when the agitation and misappropriation of the scoring stage was usually done with.
Not that the petrol station welcomed junkies. In a bid to discourage their patronage, the shop did not stock tin foil - a key element in their chase for the dragon. But junkies are habitually resourceful and so the foil wrapped Kit-Kat became their confectionary of choice. Four bars quickly unwrapped and contents discarded or on occasion offered to me.
As many operatives of the night-time economy might agree, I'd rather deal with dead-eye junkies than drunks. A large group edging your way across the forecourt at 3am was a dreaded sight. If they were pissed up, you could be in for an age of annoyance or abuse. But if they were pilled up, that was a different story.
The post-club ecstasy-heads were typically a pleasure. On their way back to someone's gaff for a come-down session, these gangs of guys and girls stopped in to stock up on skins, smokes and two litres of Coke. In no particular hurry, they loved to talk -"You alright there bud?"- and regale me with the escapades and ecstasies of their night out, while trying to pass joints through the hatch.
The most memorable of these groups came roaring onto the forecourt and at first I feared the dreaded drunks. But the source of their elation soon became evident as one person held up a large letter E. This triumphant act of petty vandalism was further enhanced for me as I walked home later that morning and passed the D NTAL CLINIC with a prominent gap in its sign.
But what has any of this got to do with Primal Scream?
Errrrrrrr…they were another group who enjoyed taking E? More than that, Primal Scream's music career was transformed by ecstasy. Prior to Creation Records boss Alan McGee stuffing the drug down their throats at a London club in the early 90s, the Scream were a middling indie band with an unremarkable jangly rock sound and sales that suggested make-or-break point was fast approaching.
But getting loved up was not the main catalyst for their successful reinvention. That was the much more down-in-the-dumps scramblings of a PR man desperate to keep his job. Jeff Barrett had become McGee's first full-time employee at Creation after successfully promoting Primal Scream live shows in his home town of Plymouth. But now he couldn't even get the band featured in guitar magazines.
Barrett also managed Andrew Weatherall, one of the hottest DJs in the burgeoning London club scene. He had given the DJ a copy of Primal Scream's sluggishly selling second album. Surprisingly, Weatherall loved it. When Barrett mentioned this to Helen Mead, the live reviews editor of NME, she, in a moment of crossover marketing magic, suggested sending the DJ to review one of the band's live shows.
Weatherall described a gig in a "broom cupboard" on a wet Wednesday night in Exeter as the "most rock'n'roll performance I've ever seen". Though the positive review did little for Primal Scream's record sales, it did lead to the band suggesting that Weatherall remix his favourite song from the album, I'm Losing More Than I'll Ever Have.
Andrew Weatherall played other people's records, he didn't make his own. He had never set foot in a recording studio but was undaunted by the prospect of remixing the song because "I was so inexperienced, I didn't realise what I didn't know."
His first effort involved adding some club beats to beef up the original song's melancholy mood. Weatherall would later describe it as "polite" - no one was impressed. Primal Scream's guitarist Andrew Innes told the DJ to have another go at remixing the record, advising him to "just fucking destroy it". So he did.
Back in the studio, Weatherall built a new hook around horns from the song's outro, cut most of singer Bobby Gillespie's vocals and added an inspired sample of Peter Fonda talking about "getting loaded" from the 1966 movie, The Wild Angels. After playing what he now called Loaded during a DJ set at West London club, Subterrania, Weatherall phoned Gillespie at 4am saying "everyone's going mental for the record".
Loaded was a hit and another followed when Weatherall and engineer Hugo Nicholson repeated the remix trick on Come Together, again ditching Gillespie's vocals. Primal Scream were reborn as an acid house indie band and both remixes formed the centerpiece of their third album, Screamadelica, which was soon being hailed as a modern masterpiece.
After taking rock'n'roll hedonism to new levels on the subsequent live tour, Primal Scream recorded a much-anticipated follow-up record. However, Give Out But Don't Give Up's collection of (mostly great) Deep South rock'n'roll homages baffled the band's acid house audience, while many rock fans just found it derivative.
Burned out by the poor reaction and a gruelling US tour, most of the band's members had racked up serious drug habits, so much that a now-clean Alan McGee avoided all contact with them. Gillespie admits that the band had lost its creative spark at this point and he didn't know if Primal Scream would survive.
But what has any of this got to do with Trainspotting?
Errrrrrrr…well this brings us back to that 24-hour petrol station. After the drunks, clubbers and junkies had drifted off and only taxi drivers topping up before heading home broke the eerie quiet, getting through the night shift's long final hours required a routine.
Mine was putting together the morning papers. Your bulky Sunday read doesn't arrive at the shop as a complete package, you know. The various supplements are delivered in batches throughout the night and assembled by people like me (who really resent The Sunday Times). I invariably carried out this task while listening to Primal Scream's Vanishing Point.
53 minutes of downtempo, claustrophobic dub rock that perfectly suited the blinking emergence from feral night into bright dawn. And none more so than album's penultimate track, Trainspotting, whose 10 minutes of instrumental ambiance became my personal soundtrack of end and renewal. It also represented Primal Scream's next great rebirth.
While promoting Give Out But Don't Give Up, the band had been interviewed for i-D magazine by writer Irvine Welsh. They got on as well as you might expect a bunch of artistic hedonists from Scotland would. When Primal Scream heard that bands like Blur and Pulp were being asked to contribute to the soundtrack of a new film based on Welsh's book about heroin addicts, they wanted in. They went straight to the source, telling Welsh, "We're the junkie fucking band".
The Trainspotting soundtrack saw Primal Scream back working with Andrew Weatherall. He had turned down the chance to be involved in Give Out But Don't Give Up, feeling that the classic rock direction was not to his taste. But now they were once again exploring fresh sounds together and the producer helped the band deliver their first new music in two years.
The recording of Trainspotting and the track's inclusion on one of the decade's most iconic movie soundtracks reignited Primal Scream's spark. It laid the foundation for the band's most focused period of creativity on the albums, Vanishing Point, XTRMTR and Evil Heat. And it's a sublime piece of music.
Another Primal Scream song with no vocals from Gillespie (the lack of ego on that man), Trainspotting opens with a booming dub beat, tip-tap cymbals and click-clack percussion like the rattle of a train. Next comes a robust bass line and wibby fx before a gargantuan breakbeat kicks in.
Though essentially a dub track, that beat drives Trainspotting beyond the genre's typically distant and dreamy riddim. It's more intense, keeping you focused and ready for the introduction of the track's addictive surf rock riff.
After a while the drums stop and an alarm rings just to make sure you're still paying attention. Then the beat kicks back in and round we go again, this time with that same compulsive riff playing out on a heavily distorted harmonica. The exhilarating beat keeps dropping out and pounding back in a loop that could go on forever. But a quick crashing noise indicates that time is running out. Muffled chants - part tribal gathering, part football terrace - echo around. And then it's gone.
I look up to find that it's bright outside and the world is coming back to life. The clubs are shut, the after-parties faded and that hedonistic world I had observed through my service window has stopped spinning. It's time to shake off the dub dreams and re-enter reality. My night shift has ended. But the sweet sound of Trainspotting will reverberate for hours after my head has hit the pillow.
Follow me on Twitter
If you like this, try (The Bobby-free mix):
Loaded
Come Together
Get Duffy
MBV Arkestra (If They Move Kill Them)
Go to 78: Body's In Trouble by Mary Margaret O'Hara
Go to 80: California Soul by Marlena Shaw
Go to 78: Body's In Trouble by Mary Margaret O'Hara
Go to 80: California Soul by Marlena Shaw
When I was at university in Dublin, I worked the weekend night shift at a 24-hour petrol station in one of the Northside's less salubrious neighbourhoods. Though the job involved unsocial hours and more than occasional abuse, it also provided a unique window on inner-city nightlife in Ireland's capital during the tail end of the 20th century.
Literally a window, as all my interactions with the bowsies prowling the Phibsborough night occurred via a thick pane of glass. We communicated through a two-way speaker and transacted using a pair of metal drawers. It was better that way, as I could laugh off the threats to "do me" because we had run out of Mars bars or back away from the faux-outrage of chancers who swore they gave me a twenty.
It also allowed me to behold the city's rampant drug culture, over-exposed under the harsh sodium lights of the station forecourt. This was pre-Celtic Tiger Dublin, where the buoyant effects of more-than-enthusiastic economic liberalism hadn't yet transformed the population into house-price-fueled, cocaine and champagne guzzlers braying their way to precipitous decay.
Northside Dublin in the late 90s was full of skangers, students and salt-of-the-earth old wans who'd scowl and shake their heads at the antics of the other two. It was rainy, rough, grimy, gruff and gentrification couldn't come soon enough. But when it did, people being robbed at syringe-point suddenly felt like more innocent times.
Heroin addicts were a common sight on the streets from about midday and you always had to be on your guard, particularly if you lived opposite Mountjoy Prison and its attendant needle exchange. Far better to meet them after midnight when the agitation and misappropriation of the scoring stage was usually done with.
Not that the petrol station welcomed junkies. In a bid to discourage their patronage, the shop did not stock tin foil - a key element in their chase for the dragon. But junkies are habitually resourceful and so the foil wrapped Kit-Kat became their confectionary of choice. Four bars quickly unwrapped and contents discarded or on occasion offered to me.
As many operatives of the night-time economy might agree, I'd rather deal with dead-eye junkies than drunks. A large group edging your way across the forecourt at 3am was a dreaded sight. If they were pissed up, you could be in for an age of annoyance or abuse. But if they were pilled up, that was a different story.
The post-club ecstasy-heads were typically a pleasure. On their way back to someone's gaff for a come-down session, these gangs of guys and girls stopped in to stock up on skins, smokes and two litres of Coke. In no particular hurry, they loved to talk -"You alright there bud?"- and regale me with the escapades and ecstasies of their night out, while trying to pass joints through the hatch.
The most memorable of these groups came roaring onto the forecourt and at first I feared the dreaded drunks. But the source of their elation soon became evident as one person held up a large letter E. This triumphant act of petty vandalism was further enhanced for me as I walked home later that morning and passed the D NTAL CLINIC with a prominent gap in its sign.
But what has any of this got to do with Primal Scream?
Errrrrrrr…they were another group who enjoyed taking E? More than that, Primal Scream's music career was transformed by ecstasy. Prior to Creation Records boss Alan McGee stuffing the drug down their throats at a London club in the early 90s, the Scream were a middling indie band with an unremarkable jangly rock sound and sales that suggested make-or-break point was fast approaching.
But getting loved up was not the main catalyst for their successful reinvention. That was the much more down-in-the-dumps scramblings of a PR man desperate to keep his job. Jeff Barrett had become McGee's first full-time employee at Creation after successfully promoting Primal Scream live shows in his home town of Plymouth. But now he couldn't even get the band featured in guitar magazines.
Barrett also managed Andrew Weatherall, one of the hottest DJs in the burgeoning London club scene. He had given the DJ a copy of Primal Scream's sluggishly selling second album. Surprisingly, Weatherall loved it. When Barrett mentioned this to Helen Mead, the live reviews editor of NME, she, in a moment of crossover marketing magic, suggested sending the DJ to review one of the band's live shows.
Weatherall described a gig in a "broom cupboard" on a wet Wednesday night in Exeter as the "most rock'n'roll performance I've ever seen". Though the positive review did little for Primal Scream's record sales, it did lead to the band suggesting that Weatherall remix his favourite song from the album, I'm Losing More Than I'll Ever Have.
Andrew Weatherall played other people's records, he didn't make his own. He had never set foot in a recording studio but was undaunted by the prospect of remixing the song because "I was so inexperienced, I didn't realise what I didn't know."
His first effort involved adding some club beats to beef up the original song's melancholy mood. Weatherall would later describe it as "polite" - no one was impressed. Primal Scream's guitarist Andrew Innes told the DJ to have another go at remixing the record, advising him to "just fucking destroy it". So he did.
Back in the studio, Weatherall built a new hook around horns from the song's outro, cut most of singer Bobby Gillespie's vocals and added an inspired sample of Peter Fonda talking about "getting loaded" from the 1966 movie, The Wild Angels. After playing what he now called Loaded during a DJ set at West London club, Subterrania, Weatherall phoned Gillespie at 4am saying "everyone's going mental for the record".
Loaded was a hit and another followed when Weatherall and engineer Hugo Nicholson repeated the remix trick on Come Together, again ditching Gillespie's vocals. Primal Scream were reborn as an acid house indie band and both remixes formed the centerpiece of their third album, Screamadelica, which was soon being hailed as a modern masterpiece.
After taking rock'n'roll hedonism to new levels on the subsequent live tour, Primal Scream recorded a much-anticipated follow-up record. However, Give Out But Don't Give Up's collection of (mostly great) Deep South rock'n'roll homages baffled the band's acid house audience, while many rock fans just found it derivative.
Burned out by the poor reaction and a gruelling US tour, most of the band's members had racked up serious drug habits, so much that a now-clean Alan McGee avoided all contact with them. Gillespie admits that the band had lost its creative spark at this point and he didn't know if Primal Scream would survive.
But what has any of this got to do with Trainspotting?
Errrrrrrr…well this brings us back to that 24-hour petrol station. After the drunks, clubbers and junkies had drifted off and only taxi drivers topping up before heading home broke the eerie quiet, getting through the night shift's long final hours required a routine.
Mine was putting together the morning papers. Your bulky Sunday read doesn't arrive at the shop as a complete package, you know. The various supplements are delivered in batches throughout the night and assembled by people like me (who really resent The Sunday Times). I invariably carried out this task while listening to Primal Scream's Vanishing Point.
53 minutes of downtempo, claustrophobic dub rock that perfectly suited the blinking emergence from feral night into bright dawn. And none more so than album's penultimate track, Trainspotting, whose 10 minutes of instrumental ambiance became my personal soundtrack of end and renewal. It also represented Primal Scream's next great rebirth.
While promoting Give Out But Don't Give Up, the band had been interviewed for i-D magazine by writer Irvine Welsh. They got on as well as you might expect a bunch of artistic hedonists from Scotland would. When Primal Scream heard that bands like Blur and Pulp were being asked to contribute to the soundtrack of a new film based on Welsh's book about heroin addicts, they wanted in. They went straight to the source, telling Welsh, "We're the junkie fucking band".
The Trainspotting soundtrack saw Primal Scream back working with Andrew Weatherall. He had turned down the chance to be involved in Give Out But Don't Give Up, feeling that the classic rock direction was not to his taste. But now they were once again exploring fresh sounds together and the producer helped the band deliver their first new music in two years.
The recording of Trainspotting and the track's inclusion on one of the decade's most iconic movie soundtracks reignited Primal Scream's spark. It laid the foundation for the band's most focused period of creativity on the albums, Vanishing Point, XTRMTR and Evil Heat. And it's a sublime piece of music.
Another Primal Scream song with no vocals from Gillespie (the lack of ego on that man), Trainspotting opens with a booming dub beat, tip-tap cymbals and click-clack percussion like the rattle of a train. Next comes a robust bass line and wibby fx before a gargantuan breakbeat kicks in.
Though essentially a dub track, that beat drives Trainspotting beyond the genre's typically distant and dreamy riddim. It's more intense, keeping you focused and ready for the introduction of the track's addictive surf rock riff.
After a while the drums stop and an alarm rings just to make sure you're still paying attention. Then the beat kicks back in and round we go again, this time with that same compulsive riff playing out on a heavily distorted harmonica. The exhilarating beat keeps dropping out and pounding back in a loop that could go on forever. But a quick crashing noise indicates that time is running out. Muffled chants - part tribal gathering, part football terrace - echo around. And then it's gone.
I look up to find that it's bright outside and the world is coming back to life. The clubs are shut, the after-parties faded and that hedonistic world I had observed through my service window has stopped spinning. It's time to shake off the dub dreams and re-enter reality. My night shift has ended. But the sweet sound of Trainspotting will reverberate for hours after my head has hit the pillow.
Follow me on Twitter
If you like this, try (The Bobby-free mix):
Loaded
Come Together
Get Duffy
MBV Arkestra (If They Move Kill Them)
Go to 78: Body's In Trouble by Mary Margaret O'Hara
Go to 80: California Soul by Marlena Shaw
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