"what have i, what have i, what have i done to deserve this?"

jesus fuck! we're all doomed if you believe any of the news recently. gloom, gloom and more gloom. job losses, debt, the taliban getting stronger and you know who has the big c. ffs don't watch the telly, it'll ruin your weekend. to top it all phonica believe we want to spunk £30 on a range of t-shirts it's just got in. phew, don't they know we're all skint? alright calm down, sit on the ground with your head between your legs and breathe deeply. is it working? no didn't think so. one of my old p.e. teachers used to say this to us when we got a stitch after a cross country run. mr french was his name and he used to wear the tightest trackie bottoms and drive a mk1 ford xr2. wonder what he's doing now? probably not reading the hottest blog around...and neither are you! ha, ha. just realised how stupid laughter looks in print. doh! so where was i...? ah yes, did you watch the brits last night? i watched the start and dipped in and out through the night. u2 were ordinary, i'm not "feeling" the new single. it could be any rock song by any rock band. duffy's voice makes my shit itch. take that were miming, and as for those two fellas off gavin and stacey...fuck right off the pair of you! i love their show, but presenters they are not. lifetime achievement award went to pet shop boys. i love psb. always have, always will. end of.

i post irregularly but somehow i end up getting nice people to send me music. probably a combination of my boyish charm and good looks. ha, ha. doh, done it again. honestly though, i will only review stuff i like and it just happens that electric minds are releasing the afrobutt album "wonderbutt" next week. i listened to it with mrs s in the room and some of her comments were priceless. "this is going out music", "...it's a bit formulaic" and "ooh, i like this one". well, what does she know? i'll tell you what i know. this is chock full of tunes that are funky and will get girls dancing. as we all know that is the first rule of dj'ing. highlights for me are "kali dreams", "torro de butt", "the taste", "disco mudma" and "wunderbutt". all in all a great package and did i mention steve kotey is behind it? well you know what to do. available from most of the rekiad stores on the right hand side of my page or the electric minds site (and no, i'm not on commission). check out sound files in the afrobutt link above.

after all that i still have to give you a track? what an audience, you're killing me. i've been listening to both mixed in the hague cd's this week. volume 1 contains mr flagio - "take a chance" (btw chris lowe loves this track) and volume 2 has b.w.h. - "stop". my two fave italo tracks, but which is better? there's only one way to find out...FIGHT! just kidding (apologies to harry hill). anyway, i thought i'd share an edit of "stop" which appeared on (ahem) ivan smagghe's death disco cd from 2004 (says 2003 on my cd!?). try his other compilations "suck my deck" and "how to kill the dj", highly recommended. like all the best italo tracks the music is ACE and the lyrics make no fucking sense at all. i wouldn't actually say it gives me a hard-on but i just love this track. the original has been posted many times on other sites, so here's an edit without the lyrics (which makes me contradict myself, but what the hell). enjoy.

b.w.h. - stop (nathan wilkins and midnight mike edit)

http://www.zshare.net/audio/558857746f5d523d/

"i like that...turn it up."

whoa! control yourselves! it's true! loud e has an edits compilation coming out on cd on the 23rd january. those lovely people over at electric minds have given me a sneak preview and i love it! for those not familiar with loud e i'd better explain. a few years back i was looking for i-f's "mixed in the hague" cd. also available on the cbs site were some mix cds by loud e. a quick google of his name informed me about some dutch fella who took the best parts from dodgy disco records and edited them together to make "new" disco records. i was quite naughty and managed to find his mix cds on another blog site. needless to say i've been hooked ever since. he's had some vinyl releases recently and i've enjoyed most of them (especially the objects of desire records, "palaza break" on bigbear and "robolove" on ambassadors reception). this cd is in the same vein. after a few listens my favourites are "time machine", "oceans of loud", "blacksoul" and "granada nights". the whole album is some sort of crazy disco shit that could have been played 30 years ago but still sounds ace today. if you click on the ambassadors reception link (above) you'll be able to sample what goes on in the head of loud e. you can also head over here to check out sound files of all the tracks. most of the usual suspects are all over this (idjuts, faze action), so don't say i didn't tell you so. it'll be available from most of the better record stores (check the "buy records here" section on the right of this page).

anyway, let me tell you about my week. it was bloody freezing and i was working outside! i had a little cold beforehand but it got worse as the week went on. i think it's gone now but next time i'll wear the long johns that mrs s bought me from primark (honestly). it was hard getting back into "work" mode after being off for xmas. i used to work in retail and only got xmas day off so to have ten days off is a bonus (hurrah!). i still haven't sorted my end of year chart yet but i'm sure it'll turn up sooner or later.

i was contacted by email last week for a track request by a guy called john (this is not something i will do regularly), so i thought why not let you all have it. from back in the day, get your whistles and air horns at the ready, coooooooommmmmme on!

techno age - movin' on

http://www.zshare.net/audio/539116431e5a6fee/

"life moves pretty fast. if you don't stop and take a look around once in a while...you might miss it."

i thought i'd make one of my ma's cats the star of this post. his name is chaplin and he's as quiet as a mouse (which helps, as he likes them). i went home for xmas to see my ma, her ma, her dad and stepmum, and also found time to spend new year with some pals i hadn't seen in ages. being a silly sausage for many years has meant i've lost contact with loads of people. well, in 2009 that's all gonna change. i'm gonna clock up some miles this year and knock on a few doors. life is too short etc, etc.

i suppose i should be giving you lot my end of year chart. it isn't compiled yet, so give me a few days. i definitely have a number one, but the rest of the top 5 or top 10 is undecided. lots of hot tunes were released, but i didn't buy many new tracks. in case you're worried i'm ill i did buy a shed load of second hand vinyl and cds (but your concern is appreciated). what will 2009 bring us? not sure yet, but hopefully many more tunes from people who are talented and don't feel the need to follow trends. keep on keepin' on i say.

i don't know if i can keep up the rigid style of my postings, so i'll just wing it as i go along. is that okay? nice one, thanks for looking in. now for a track...hmmm...oh i suppose anything will do...ah yes...this is perfect. seven years old and still sounding ace, from detroit, it's mad mike banks of underground resistance fame.

electric soul - X2 (vocal mix)

http://www.zshare.net/audio/5361314893412531/

"can't take the smell, can't take the noise..."

has that been two weeks already? i was going to do something last week but the mum of mrs s came to stay. pipe down at the back, it wasn't all that bad. she's alright actually and i think she appreciates that i'm myself when she's around. i burp, fart and swear in her company and she doesn't seem to mind. mrs s, however, is mortified by my behaviour. ah well, that's life. i cooked a few meals during her stay (i do ALL the cooking at smackhead towers, and i ain't bad either. yes i can do roast potatoes and make my own bread). on saturday night we went out for dinner to a little place mrs s had been to a few weeks earlier with her pals.

http://www.barley-mow.com/

the place was criminally empty, a result of the recent economic downturn according to the manager. what a shame. great food (i had duck) and some great real ales on draught (london pride and black sheep...mmmmmmm). anyway, if you're ever in the area drop in. i might make my eating out recommendations a regular part of cdwd, and then you too can have a gut as big as mine! talking of economic slowdowns, i hope all your jobs are safe. these are worrying times. i work in the construction industry and a few weeks ago we were scratching our arses. luckily this week a load of stuff has come through from our contract work. so fingers crossed, happy days.

the u.s. elections are finally over, thank god! i could never see why the british media thought it so important to give me eleven months of election coverage. i'm interested in the result but not the bullshit that precedes it. i'd love to say the best man won but only history will tell. the poor bastard inherits two wars and a fucking huge economy in trouble.

going back to the early eighties ronald reagan was in charge and a (sort of protest) song came out that told the story of how people on the street were feeling. a year later an italo disco monster was released. fast forward twenty four years and a mashup of the two comes out. so grandmaster flash + b.w.h. ("the message" + "stop") gets put through some sort of studio trickery and the result is a winner. however, the track that got a vinyl release this year wasn't the one that was originally available for free on the artists site. so i'll do you a favour and stick it up. "you've just broken your five year rule", they shout. listen kids, mashups and edits don't count. someone has been cheeky enough to do them, so i'm cheeky enough to put them up on cdwd. so there.

datashat - stop the message

http://www.zshare.net/audio/50941334fc2f54e9/

"3, 2, 1...and you're back in the room."

jeez, where the hell have i been? here, there and everywhere (probably). well i'm back whether you like it or not. finally got myself a digital camera and a soundcard (all i need now are some leads). so on with the show...

i had a family bereavement earlier in the year and then i moved house and then my broadband connection was all fucked up, so that's where i've been. since then i'm enjoying life in a bigger house with a garden (hurrah). the tunes are still coming into smackhead towers at a decent rate so don't fret. most of the stuff i've been buying has been 2nd hand. any new stuff is mostly re-issues/bootlegs or edits. i've kept all the new stuff in a separate box to make the end of year chart easier to compile. it'll be dead easy because i've bought fuck all new stuff!

it comes down to economics and common sense. gone are the days when i would journey into town to check all the new releases and spend a chunk of change on records. over the following months i would listen to a few and forget about the rest. after a few years those forgotten records build up and before you know it your mates have a house and a nice car and you don't! so now i buy quality not quantity, and it's not as though i play out any more (i used to dj at a local nightspot in my home town, but that's another post for the future). so looking in my box for this year there can't be more than 30 records. in the past i'd have that in a fortnight. by the year end i don't expect to have more than 50. the box was a bargain though, it's one of those pro box copies and i got it for a fiver. only trouble is it has curved edges and bends your records. can't believe they were so popular some years back.

if i take a step back and look at the wider world a couple of bent records is nothing compared to the problems some are having. credit crunch this, credit crunch that. war. genocide. zimbabwe. then last night a family of six, including four children, killed in an accident on the M6. sad times all round...

not to sure how i'm going to approach this second half of cdwd's life. i normally use a picture that may or may not have anything to do with the track , and go all around the houses before finally getting to the music (with a little background to the track on the way). this may or may not continue (apologies to jez over at innersounds if this messes up his "brothers on the side" slot). let's play it by ear shall we? okay i've eased myself gently back into blogging tonight and you need a track. i'm sticking to my five year rule but other than that there are no rules.

so let's go back to 2000. yeah, Y2k and all that. what a load of fucking rubbish all that midnight 1999 stuff was. planes falling out of the sky due to computers breaking down, PAH! not so rubbish was an album by simon mills and nail tolliday. it was one of those that just seemed to creep up on you and word of it spread. as usual i dismissed it as hype until one day bored in hmv (or was it virgin?) in milton keynes i picked it up.

highly engaging stuff - NME

undoubtedly one of the albums of the year - GQ

first great chill-out album of the 21st century - MIXMAG

most essential album of the year - DJ

no i didn't remember that, it's on the sticker on the cover. well, with plaudits like that who was i to argue. got the bus home (i still wasn't driving then) and put it on. like a breath of fresh air and the last track was astounding. i'd like to hear another mix of that (i thought). well blow me if they didn't get ashley beedle to remix it a year later. it never fails to bring a smile to my face. hope you'll smile too because there's too much bad news in the world right now.

bent - always (ashley beedle's mahavishnu remix)

http://www.zshare.net/audio/501499042dfe2458/

"no way to control it..."

so all the old prog tracks have been sorted. now i'm going through the rest of my stuff. there's all manner of shit to be slung out. madonna 12"s (not the good ones), "best of..." compilations and shite house records i should never have bought. it's all starting to pile up now and is sitting in the garage ready to be shifted. it was all going to the 2nd hand shop but some of the stuff is worth a little bit of money so i may have a dabble on discogs/e-bay. i wasn't arsed at first but what the hell? if it doesn't shift after a few weeks it'll be back to the original idea. but enough of my hair brained get rich quick schemes (as if) and on with the show.

over at lazy twat things are going from strength to strength (whatever that means). it's dead easy (have a go yourself). random picture, random youtube video and music i downloaded from somewhere. result! don't despair, i still enjoy doing this but remember if i'm not here then i'm over there (they'll always be something for you somewhere). over here i'm trying not to put anything up less than 5 years old, but over there i may break that rule now and again. there will never be anything brand new or about to be released at either site. as much as some people will see me as a cunt for putting up free music i won't tread on the toes of musicians who are about to put something out. shit man, i can only marvel at musicians as i haven't got a musical bone in my body. the 5 year rule is self imposed as i think dance music is such a fast moving medium that people aren't bothered about certain tracks once their shelf life is over. sure, some punters will still hanker after a track years later but won't pay through the nose from an e-bay seller for it. in the same instance a lot of the tracks will never be available for legal download. so there's the conundrum. do i not post and people never get to hear great music or do i post and people look for other work by the artist and pay for it (hopefully in a way that benefits the artist) through legal downloads/compilation cd from a shop.

blah, blah, fucking blah. christ i've just read that back. i do go on, don't i? maybe this should be a "live" blog where you can cut me off when you're bored (like the gong show). anyway, i was in reading today. she got a sat nav the other week and i told her it was bluetooth compatible. it wasn't, cue a bollocking for me. funniest thing was that she didn't realise her cigarette lighter didn't work and the thing ran out of power on her first journey (to somewhere she'd never been before. so confident was she of it's skills that she left her road atlas at home). heh, heh. so today we went back and swapped it for a hands free bluetooth version. sorted. say what you like about john lewis (a chain of huge department stores in the u.k., for the benefit of my foreign fans) but they are the shit. they've got everything and customer service is second to none. recently voted the nation's favourite retailer. FACT. but... reading has got fuck all else to shout about. it's the same old shopping experience as most other large towns (or is it a city?). if anyone knows of a decent 2nd hand record shop (or new for that matter) in reading please tell me.

tonight's spotlight falls on a geezer from scotland who caused all sorts of commotion last year with a certain edit. i'm not going into the ins and outs of it because i'm bored of it and i know he is too. anyway, he's got some original material out soon (are you listening todd?) and it is ace! i'm not putting up any of that (see paragraph above) but he says it's okay to use an edit of his. here's his myspace link

http://www.myspace.com/maelstromdoesdisco

his stuff is out soon and there is a track called "enter the cosmos" which is fucking ace! they'll be a pete herbert mix too, oh and it's going to be on maelstrom's own label solar disco. the edit is from some u.s. ladies who have definitely had you dancing at a wedding or three. way back when they were on the carwash soundtrack, did the singing on the pinball number count on sesame street ("1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12" - as the pinball went all over the place. ace!) and had major success in the early 80's with jump, neutron dance (featured on beverly hills cop), i'm so excited (featured in the crunchie advert!) and this next bomb. maelstrom has taken the original, stretched out all the best bits and left just a bit of the vocal in. there's a slight glitch at 2:55 mins but who cares? shut the curtains, roll back the carpet, get your dancing shoes on and enjoy. i love it.

pointer sisters - automatic (maelstrom edit)

http://www.zshare.net/audio/7397177c0e5f37/

"dee, dah, dah, dah, dee, dah, dah, dah, dar...etc"

3 weeks! so where have i been? in the spare room sorting through loads of boring 90's prog records (well someone had to do it). they weren't going to sort themselves, and my dad wasn't going to do it. if i had the money again i could have had a nice car by now. 500 x £5-7 could have got me something better than the n-reg golf i'm currently driving. mind you i nearly didn't have it or my life this afternoon. if you were driving towards hindhead on the A30 about 3.45 this afternoon and saw a red car coming in the opposite direction (going too fast) going around THAT bend and losing it...it was me. luckily there was no-one behind or to the side of me so i was lucky not to injure anyone else. it sure beats any fairground ride i've been on! the side of the car is fucked (thank god for the central reservation barrier) and only my pride is hurt. surely the signs saying "SLOW DOWN" and "35 MPH" and the big black & white arrows should have given it away. stupid thing is, i drove up the road in the morning and said to myself "ivan, you need to remember that on the way back". prick.

so where were we? ah, yes. clearing stuff out has been quite therapeutic for my soul. getting rid of the shite music demons that once clouded my judgement. i went through all my old vhs cassettes too (remember them kids ?), loads of absolute bollocks in there too (breakdance, predator 2, mall rats, to name but three...). so i've got loads of space now to buy them again on dvd! (probably)
i was in a charity shop t'other day and i swear someone had broken into my house and ran up the street and dumped the records i was getting rid of in the shop. there were 3 boxes on the floor and assorted plebs going through the tunes. one guy was after "prog breaks" and some woman (who stank of ale) was after "funky house". i told both of them that i had a shit load of the stuff to collect at my house and they weren't interested! probably thought i was some sort of weirdo who hung around charity shops winding people up.

trying to think what else has happened since i last spoke to my legions of fans... not much i suppose but it'll come to me in the next few days. i will be appearing on the innersounds blog site soon (jez assures me) with my q&a. you'll all get to read how much of a geek i am. it was after reading through my answers that i came up with a brain wave. why don't i have a site where i don't get all introspective and tell you about me ? so i have. it's called lazy twat and you can find it here

lazytwat.blogspot.com

basically, it's for when i just want to get something up without the hassle of thinking. they'll be a picture which bears no relation to the music and something off youtube which has tickled me recently. don't worry, i'll still be doing the hard slog on here. the music i put up will tend to be stuff i've downloaded elsewhere off other sites (hence the lazytwat title). where possible, i'll mention the site if i can remember. i won't give any thoughts or mentions about anything else. it's just a trial at the moment, so we'll see how it goes. i'm not a big fan of sites that just put up pictures and tracks without saying anything so it may last or it may not...

soooooooo, tonight's track was first heard on the pete tong show moons ago. i waited until the twin 12" (sold separately) came out and buzzed for ages about possibly the finest chill-out track i'd heard. fast forward to sunday night just gone and channel 5 showed vin diesel in "xxx". there's a club scene and i'm sure these guys are playing in it. when that double 12" came out there was a post card inside each record and it said "fill in the other side". i did and sent it off. a few months later i get a free cd and t-shirt (and personal note of thanks) from the band. when i look in the inner sleeve of the cd i see my "artwork" and some by others. total fucking result! the 12" was the radiccio e.p. and the album was the 2nd by the band (commonly referred to as the "brown album"). if you've got this look at the clint eastwood piece...that's me! after three weeks i give you a sublime chunk of musical heaven (you know it was worth waiting for).

orbital - halcyon + on +on

http://www.zshare.net/audio/720126962d031f/