h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Much like Egon in his journal of today, "Songs I heard for the first time this week that make me feel I *must* own the albums they're on" (F77509?thread=434385 ), I have had a similar moment.

The problem in my case is that I've discovered that the track is by Shed Seven

That's the Shed Seven of the immortal NME headline, "You can't get shitter than a thick Rick Witter".

That's the Shed Seven whose first album I bought back in 1994 on its original release: which I listened to a second time to check that I was right in thinking that I had made a dire mistake after listening to it the first time around. I wasn't wrong.

What to do...

"Acquire" the song in question, and then a random album track. I tend to do that. A sort of 'try before you buy'.

The exception being Oasis records, which I will buy regardless. Even 'Be Here Now' and 'Standing on the Shoulder of Giants'

Oh no no no no no

Almost without fail, all of the biigest overstocks we had at Cheapo - the ones we'd pay $0.01 for even if in mint condition - were CDs people had bought for one song and hated the rest of the album. The Cranberries, The Cardigans, Joan Osborne, Blues Traveler, Crash Test Dummies, OMC, Black Box, La Bouche, I could go on and on and on.

Don't do it! Look up the song on Amazon or allmusic.com and find out if it's on a compilation. Buy an iPod and get it from iTunes. Download it even, but don't buy an album for just one song

Don't worry Gosho, I won't make that kind of a mistake again - Senser, Salad, Dido, Leatherface - just 4 errors of mine that spring to mind.

No, I've found that this track is on a 41 song mid-90s Indie compliation. Looking at the track listing I've got about a dozen of them in one form or another already; and there are about 8 tracks that I wouldn't refuse if offered. I've spotted a copy on eBay for 50p, so that seems pretty reasonable

Compilations were also one of our biggest overstocks at Cheapo - something I don't fully understand. So many of them had damn good selection of songs, some of which are no longer available, some of which were never available, some of which are alternative or extended mixes. And we sold them for next to nothing - $0.95 in many cases. Anything from 10 to 20 songs for a dollar... that sounds like a deal to me

I've got quite a few of those indie compilations from the nineties because there were an awful lot of fantastic songs around by bands that only had the one good song per album. Was way too skint to buy all of them in order to make up a compilation tape of my own so bought the Shine compilations instead.

I am aware that this is somewhat frowned upon by people who are serious about their music, but stuff 'em. I got to spend my spare money on instead

BTW, what was the song?

There is nothing wrong with compliations. There are some absolute crackers out there.

Over the years particular favourites of mine were the Beechwood Music, "Indie Top 20" series. Also NME stuff was always good for a listen. Even to the extent that a couple of years ago I searched out on eBay, and paid top dollar for a copy of their highly influential C86 compilation.

Oh, and the track is, "Chasing Rainbows".

I've got a burned copy of Shed Seven's greatest hits somewhere. Chasing Rainbows is the best thing they've done in my view. and a lot of it really is crap.

I can't remember what possessed me to buy their first album. I think it might have been that I'd seen them doing a decent support slot at some point and decided that they would be worth a punt at a later date.

Oh how wrong you can be...

You've got C86?

I've got a few of the old Indie Top 20 compilations, featuring such luminaries as The Man From Del Monte - great!

Fifty-two Deutschmarks plus postage through eBay from some geezer in Germany - every pfennig a pfennig well spent

I'm intrigued bu this C86, tell me more

I have bought many albums for just one song and been pleasantly surprised by the results, so to Gosho.

My 'surprisingly' good list includes:

Neo Wave by Silver Sun (which I originally only bought for 'Too Much, Too Little, Too Late')

Gran Turismo - Cardigans ('My Favourite Game')
No Exit - Blondie ('Maria')
Ain't Life Grand - Slash's Snakepit ('Been There Lately')
Hello Rockview - Less Than Jake ('All My Best Friends are Metalheads')
100% Colombian - Fun Lovin' Criminals ('Big Night Out')

and indeed, several classics such as Parklife, Breakfast in America, Ghost In The Machine, and soforth.

B

C86 was a compilation put out by the NME in the summer of, well, 1986. It was only available by mail-order (as opposed to their later policy of cellotaping the cassette to the front of the paper) which rather raises the rarity value of the item.

The music was picked as the best sounds, in the eyes of the NME at that time. And features the likes of The Wedding Present, Shop Assistants, Mighty Lemon Drops and Primal Scream. It's release set a trend for future of annual 'best of' compilations with varying success.

In my opinion, despite its sheer brilliantness, it still isn't a patch on Cherry Red's 'Pillows and Prayers' of three years earlier. Now that one *is* pure class

Ah, Cherry Red I think I've been a conversation about them before.

"been a conversation"

That's a long miss. Three keys over to the left and up a bit.

Been *in* a conversation, dammit

Ah right, that makes sense now.

And I think I need to be seen to be in bed right now, what with it starting to get decidedly light out there, and with a long day at the office in front of me...

I'd have thought at this time of the year it would be broad daylight in Brighton at 4.30am!

As far as Shed 7 go, I really love "Where have you been tonight" I think I've got it on a Best Of CD.

Big mistakes include Lenny Kravitz "Are You Gonna Go My Way" for the title track, which is great. Skin from Skunk Anansie's solo album, made the old assumption that it would be as kicking as SA - how wrong can you be....

Good finds - All Summer Long by the Beach Boys, not normally my kind of thing, but a weekend trip to Newquay prompted me to wrestle a fiver from my wallet. Loads of great tracks, if ever you want a lesson in how to do tight multi-part harmonies, this is it.

I got the first Hoobastank CD on the strength of "Crawling in the Dark" great song, great CD, also one of the Incubus CDs, on the strength of the track "Drive".

I heard something really quite special on "Whispering" Bob Harris's show on the way back from my gig in Nuneaton last weekend and as soon as I can remember the name of the band, will get that as well. (Shame my memory is soooooooo bad!!)



Bassman