These six tracks were indeed all featured in John Peel’s Festive Fifty in the early eighties, but I’m not doing this as a John Peel post per se, just fancied sharing some great music wih you, as it makes it from the vinyl to the iPod.

Is there such a thing as the best best-of ever? The Jam’s Snap! must surely be a contender…

The Jam – ‘Going Underground.’ mp3

One of my many, many planned posts for the future is one Pete Wylie and the 7,000 faces of Wah!

Wah! Heat -‘Better Scream.’ mp3

It’s odd to think that goth was once tagged ‘positive punk’ in NME, and that the tag was only applied to music (there were certainly gothic sounding music long before that, as far back as Mozart’s Requiem, IMHO). So often it seems ot be used as a tag of insult or abuse, erroneously as far as I’m concerned. Certainly, many bands who came out of punk seemed to have a foot in the goth camp, to say nothing of a following.

The Damned’s Machine Gun Etiquette is where they started to get gothic, and where this track comes from, though The Black Album was surprise, surprise, even more so…

The Damned -Love Song.’ mp3

The curious-sounding ‘Hong Kong Garden’ with its’ wonderful eastern overtones was a great debut single, even if the lyrics seem a little close to novelty at times.* But it was on their albums that the dark heart of this particularly gorgeous and mesmerising creature lurked, as shown on these tracks from The Scream and Join Hands. Then two years later there was Juju…

Siouxsie and the Banshees -‘Switch.’ mp3 (from The Scream)

Siouxsie and the Banshees -‘Jigsaw feeling.’ mp3

Siouxsie and the Banshees -‘Icon.’ mp3

Enjoy, folks…

xx

* Oh come on: ‘Chicken Chou-mein and chop suey…Hong Kong Garden Takeaway.’