Hot Chocolate Boy – Beat Happening
Love Beat Happening and love chocolate (although not so much hot chocolate). Name drop: I got into Beat Happening when I borrowed a copy of Black Candy from Graham Linehan (of It Crowd and Twitter fame).

Red Vines – Aimee Mann
I actually didn't know Red Vines were food until quite recently – Hazel suggested this (and a few others in this list) as I was struggling to come up with ideas for a mix I thought would be a piece of cake.

Cheese & Onions – The Rutles
In a valiant effort to steer clear of the obvious I opted for The Rutles version of Cheese and Onions over the Galaxie 500 version. Neil Innes Rutles songs were so utterly convincing that it wasn't a surprise that the Galaxie 500 box set credited the song to Innes/Lennon/McCartney.

Strawberry Fields Forever – The Beatles
Although nobody could have done The Beatles as perfectly as this. This is the peak of The Beatles genius – it was ALL downhill from the Strawberry Fields/Penny Lane single (and don't let anyone tell you different with their Sgt Pepper and Abbey Road nonsense!).

Sprout and the Bean – Joanna Newsom
Joanna Newsom is unique and makes stunning music – this is both unique and stunning and provides some much needed greens to the mix.

Apples in the Trees – Mirah
For a short while I was tempted to do a fruit only mix but this and the above strawberries where the only survivors.

Ginger Snaps – Dean & Britta
OK, so my valiant effort to steer clear of the obvious finally caved because I love ginger snaps and Ginger Snaps so it really couldn't not be in there. It's a song filled with wordplay.

The Man Who Loved Beer – Lambchop
And nice to finish with a beer. Love this song more than anything else that Kurt Wagner has done.

Posted via email from Supplemental

Your selections should all be songs which are not the original versions, but are rather another artist’s interpretation of the original. I want the cover of the song to be meaningful, or important, or special to you in some way that distinguishes it from the original, and I’m going to want you to explain the significance when you discuss your selections after the mix has been published.

Obviously I could have had six Galaxie 500 songs…or Luna ones, but resisted the temptation to be quite that unimaginitive.

Ceremony – Galaxie 500 (originally by Joy Division) – Ceremony is, unquestionably, the greatest cover version anyone’s done of anything ever. In 1990 I saw Galaxie 500 at the Subterania and they finished the set with Ceremony, joined on stage by Kramer. If I had to throw away all but eight minutes of my gig going memories – those would be the eight minutes I’d hang on to.

Blue Christmas – Low (originally by Elvis) – I first heard this on the car radio in a supermarket car park (I think it must have been Peel sitting in on an earlier show as he did occasionally – or I was out shopping late!). Mimi’s voice just left me breathless – I had to sit in silence for a minute or two before heading off to do the shopping.

Flaming Telepaths – Espers (originally by Blue Oyster Cult) – I’d never heard the original before hearing this. Greg and Meg’s voices work so well together and this one really opened up a prog seam that I wasn’t sure I had or at least had long covered up. The original is only fair – the cover is immense.

Leaving Here – Motorhead (origially by The Birds) – In 1979 Motorhead was my escape into musical individuality – one of the key moments in that escape was on 1st May 1980 when Motorhead mimed to “Leaving Here” on Top of the Pops. Music changed pretty profoundly at that point. The live version of the Golden Years EP (which the TOTP performance was promoting) was head and shoulders above the weak studio version on On Parole.

Cast a Shadow – Yo La Tengo (originally by Beat Happening) – Two of my favourite bands. Stuart had this on a 7″ – was it on the back of Speeding Motorcycle? – I was jealous and have been careful to buy pretty much anything Yo La Tengo have released since.

Indian Summer – Luna (originally by Beat Happening) – I was really sad when Galaxie 500 broke up but in Feb 1992 Dean came through London with the first Luna incarnation (Stan, Justin and Grasshopper) and played a show at the Underworld that reassured me that maybe a positive spin could be put on the split. They played Indian Summer that night. It was also the last song the played at their last London show in 2005.

One of my all time faves (and one that I’ve blogged about before is this awesome steel pan version of tugboat…

Hers’s MsPennyCandy’s take on Decomposing Trees (she’s also covered Oblivious and Leave The Planet.

Earlier in the week I came across this cover of Damon & Naomi’s Laika (and there aren’t too many D&N covers on YouTube so that was a treat.

And of course there’s this great video of Ira and Georgia doing the YouTube thing 15 years before YouTube existed!

I love living in the future!

• the constant use of Lee Wall (II) which clearly shows that IMDB has been raided for film names.
• the mis-use of “passion” in the last one that suggests that a thesaurus has been used for variety.
• the spelling throughout that proves that the spammers didn’t bother using a dictionary.

Luna – Tell Me Do You Miss Me also has some exceedingly splendacious photography! The plot line is just positively terrific. The terrifically glorious cast includes Lee Wall (II), Dean Wareham, Britta Phillips, Sean Eden.

If you love watching Lee Wall (II) or Dean Wareham, you are deffinetly going to want to watch Luna – Tell Me Do You Miss Me

I think Lee Wall (II) and Dean Wareham worked wonderful in Luna – Tell Me Do You Miss Me.

The stupendous cast in this movie is eye-opening: Lee Wall (II), Dean Wareham, Britta Phillips, Sean Eden. For certain an award winning work with characters.

A fantastic performance by Lee Wall (II) & Dean Wareham make Luna – Tell Me Do You Miss Me a “ought to mark” movie!

The dazzling cast in this movie is wonderful: Lee Wall (II), Dean Wareham, Britta Phillips, Sean Eden. Honestly an award winning adventure with characters that you can by.

A enigmatic performance by Lee Wall (II) & Dean Wareham make Luna – Tell Me Do You Miss Me a “want to savvy” movie!

The great cast includes Lee Wall (II), Dean Wareham, Britta Phillips, Sean Eden. The movie moves on like a dream and end leaving you wanting for more.

If you love watching Lee Wall (II) or Dean Wareham, you are deffinetly going to passion to watch Luna – Tell Me Do You Miss Me.

The funny thing of course is that it really is a “ought to mark” movie and you certainly will passion it…

More of my idlings.

Whatever the reason it seems the days of the fan site is over and all that’s left are the few excellent sites run by the few dedicated individuals that will remind the world what things were like in the days before MySpace and Wikipedia and blogs…

David Jennings, the author of the excellent book Net, Blogs & Rock ‘n’ Roll, responded arguing that things maybe aren’t so gloomy…and he’s probably right.

Anyway…I was talking fan sites to a couple of people over a lemonade yesterday (more of which maybe at a later date) and I was asked about what my favourite fan sites were. It was a question I found a bit overwhelming in a noisy pub but a lot easier when I was sitting in front of my computer later on. It seemed an ideal opportunity for the long since neglected My Top Six… category to be prodded back to life.

My fondness is for a lot of information so these are mostly concentrated on content occasionally at the expense of aesthetics. Looking over the list they all seem very “traditional” – very web 1.0 which possibly only reinforces David’s counter that…

the next phase of fan site development will see the development of more collaborative projects, whereby fluid groups of fans work together complementing each others’ skills and filling in when someone drops out.

So here is “My Top 6…music fan sites”…

• Stereolab
  In the early days of A Head Full of Wishes the best fan site on the web (IMO) and one it aspired to be like was Robin’s Stereolab site. It was packed with every sort of anything and encouraged users to vote and contribute. Sadly Robin closed down (and passed on his site) so it can only be seen in most of it’s glory on the Internet Archive…
• Go-Betweens.net
  Jonathan’s site is an awesome resource and one that has managed to get an online community going successfully which I never managed to do with A Head Full of Wishes…maybe it’s time to try again…or maybe the time has passed.
• Low
  Another site that you have to head over to the Internet Archive to see it as it should be. I adored the Low website before it became official (and actually for quite a while after) but sadly a lot of the content has gone astray and it looks less like a fan site and more like what I guess it is now – a promotional resource.
• Electricity Comes From Other Planets
  Olivier Landemaine’s Velvet Underground site is utterly breathtaking in it’s detail – it makes me feel like such an amateur.
• Milky Moon
  The Joanna Newsom fan site Milky Moon is a site I like a lot, for a relatively new artist the site has a gorgeously old-fashioned way about it.
• Sparklehorse: What Kind of Name is This?
  Another site overflowing with content and another one that sadly seems to have been neglected of late.

But anyway – here I am – making those 140 character yawns that no one will care about and wondering if I’ll have a Damascus moment…and it’ll all make sense…

(It aditionally doesn’t help that I almost always forget to have my phone with me)

The social networks (with “points”) where you can still find me are…

• Last.fm (music)
• Flickr (photos)
• Library Thing (books) (although I’ve only just tinkered with it and I’m not entirely convinced that I read enough to make it worth while…but I like the idea of having a record of what (little) I do read!

Is there a decent film “network” around? Well…obviously Flixster – as it was one of the few things I discovered on Facebook as being interesting enough to follow up…you can (now) find me on Flixster…

But despite that I bought myself a xmas pressie of a 12 month sub to last.fm not because I missed being a subscriber after all the benefits of subscription are pretty minor…

• No ads – I haven’t seen an ad on last.fm in the six months I’ve been unsubscribed thanks to Adblock
• Personalised radio – While I’m more inclined to listen to last.fm radio than almost any other radio station I’ve been happy enough with the limited access I’ve had for free.
• Who’s visiting? is a nice little bonus but hardly a clincher especially given that almost no one vistis my profile…
• Red carpet treatment (priority server access) – I can’t say I’ve ever really noticed any server access problems enough to make me dig in my pocket to improve things
• Top secret beta access – I think I can manage without bleeding edge perks.

No…the reason I subscribed is because last.fm is good and, like Flickr, ultimately I’m happy to put a few quid in the coffers of something that I really like.

And despite what Russ from last.fm said in a comment to my post six months ago…

We want people to subscribe because of the features, not because they feel like they’re doing us a favour anyway

…I’m afraid that, while it may not be a “favour”, its closer to that than to anything else.

Along with Flickr and Google (mail, reader, search etc.) last.fm is one of the very few sites that I visit every day – and that’s why I got the urge to come back into the last.fm fold…

So Everything’s Swirling gets a long overdue overhaul – and a new URL (feel free to update your bookmarks, blogrolls and RSS feeds – although the old ones will probably keep working)

Hazel’s blog Let’s Fold Scarves has also had a refit and is whipping my sorry arse in the who’s-blog-is-more-popular competition…if, of course, we cared about anything as trite as popularity. Just like with music – the more obscure the better!