Antiheroic or Frantically Stoic?

howff /haʊf/. A favourite meeting place or haunt, especially a pub.

Welcome to the Howff, Bella’s boozer for the cultural void and your lounge for the lockdown. We are featuring and promoting artists and musicians who are now gigless cos of da virus. As everyone tries to move live events online and survive the domestic incarceration.

Tonight we have a Miles Better remix of Stanley Odd’s Antiheroics and episode 27 of Groove on Bella’s radio show for the lockdown brought to you by Stewart Bremner …

Miles Better · Stanley Odd – Antiheroics (Miles Better Remix)
Episode 27 spends much of its running time in either the eighties or the twenty-teens. It kicks off with ’The Boy With The Perpetual Nervousness’ by New Jersey post-punkers The Feelies, an early influence of REM, then moves to London for the full twelve-inch version of ‘Reasons to Be Cheerful, Pt. 3’ by Ian Dury & The Blockheads.
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We stay in London for the next track, ‘Offence’ by rapper Little Simz from her 2018 album Grey Area, before tripping over to Switzerland for synth-pop duo Yello’s ‘Bostich’. Next stop is Germany to hear avant garde industrialists Einstürzende Neubauten getting particularly repetitively beaty on ‘Installation No 1’ from their remarkably conventional (for them) 1996 album Ende Neu.
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There’s more eighties’ pop next with ’Mexican Radio’, the biggest hit by Los Angeles band Wall of Voodoo. That’s followed by three songs in a row, beginning with ‘Mt. Splashmore’ by Adelaide’s rock ’n’ roll girl gang The Villenettes, from their 2015 album Lady Luck, then L7’s superloud 2018 comeback single ‘I Came Back To Bitch’ and then ‘Suck You Dry’ by Mudhoney, from their 1992 major label debut, Piece of Cake.
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‘Dang’ by The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion is from shiny 1992 album Orange, while ‘Viper Fish’ by Goat Girl is from their self-titled debut album released in 2018 on Rough Trade.
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There are two final pieces of eighties’ pop next. Firstly Adam & The Ants’ more-or-less theme song ’Antmusic’ and then ‘’Turn Me On Turn Me Off’ by Honey Bane, whose career consisted for seven singles. Someone with a considerably longer career was Ann Peebles. ‘I Take What I Want’ is from her peak period and can be found on 1972’s Straight From The Heart.
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Next are three songs in a row, bookending sixty years of pop music, beginning with ’Turn The Light’ by Karen O & Danger Mouse, from their 2019 collaboration Lux Prima. It’s followed by ‘Jet Black’ by The Shadows, a 1959 track first issued on their Apache EP. Last of the three is ‘Alabaster’ by Emma Pollock, from her wonderful In Search of Harperfield album, released in 2016 on Glasgow’s Chemikal Underground Records.
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Things stay in a slower vibe with ’Yesterday, Where’s My Mind’ by soft rock  acidic folk funkster Susan Christie, from Paint A Lady released in 1969 and then ‘Once I’d Jumped I Was Fine’ by Laura Lewis and the Teadance Orchestra from the fabulous Scottish production Whatever Gets You Through The Night. Finally we have ‘Indian Ocean’ by Frazey Ford, from her delightful 2014 album of the same name.

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Bella Caledonia · Groove On – Episode 27

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