Friday 30 July 2010

Pleasure City Hip Parade, July 2010

The NME has done it every week since 1952; Paul Heaton has done it every week since 1980; this chap does it most weeks on his blog...now it's my turn!

What's a blog for if you can't publish your own charts from time to time?

And why Hip Parade? Because I spent my entire childhood mis-hearing the word "hit" in "hit parade" on the radio!

So, here is Pleasure City Avenue's first monthly hip parade - a list of my most played and most hummed tunes of the month for July 2010, some old, some new, but all swirling around inside of me at some point:

1. Helen & the Horns - Freight Train (a 99p Ebay win a few weeks ago - cowgirl indiepop)
2. The Maladies of Bellafontaine - Longsocks (creepy and fascinating, like sugar mice coming to life at sunset - reminded me of the first time I heard Birthday by the Sugarcubes - and they called me a lovely fellow on their Myspace blog! Physical release on September 8th - I can't wait!)
3. Best Coast - Far Away (fabulous singalong 7" bought at their Joiners gig in May)
4. The Farmer's Boys - All of a Sudden (better than anything The Smiths ever did - not taken seriously at the time of release because they were marketed as bumpkins)
5. Withered Hand - New Dawn (new to me - I'll be checking out more of this lo-fi loveliness)
6. Best Coast - Happy
7. A Place To Bury Strangers - Exploding Head
8. Dum Dum Girls - Oh Mein M
9. Rote Kapelle - These Animals Are Dangeroos
10. The Pastels - Stay With Me Till Morning
11. The Magnetic Fields - The Nun's Litany
12. The Chiffons - Oh My Lover
13. Jesse Garon & the Desperadoes - I'm Up Here
14. Best Coast - Crazy For You
15. Johnny Burnette & the Rock n Roll Trio - Train Kept a Rollin'
16. The Sandwitches - Back To the Sea
17. Tender Trap - Do You Want a Boyfriend?
18. Liechtenstein - Passion for Water
19. Blanketarms - I Love Your Guts
20. Dum Dum Girls - Yours Alone

There, that was random! But I like it!

2 comments:

  1. Marvellous, marvellous. Takes me back. I used to make my own top thirty charts every week when i was a nipper. I am sorely tempted to do something like this myself now. Steal your idea and all that... Spot on about The Farmers Boys too. Magic.

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  2. Feel free to make your own charts! This is meant to be a snapshot of what I have been listening to at a particular moment in time. Last fm charts are all well and dandy, but they only record what I've been playing via the PC. The whirliness inside my brain is a different beast altogether.

    My first chart was in 1978 (I think). It was a Top 75, which I wrote out over a weekend in different coloured felt tips. I made it into a poster and stuck it to my bedroom wall. Number one for the first three weeks were Darts with The Boy From New York City. Still a great song, but now I've heard the Ad-Libs version, and I prefer that!

    I carried on making weekly charts (usually a top 30) until I left school in 1981. I'm hoping they're stored away safely in the attic, but I rather suspect they were disposed of some time ago.

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