Music is my Radar: Blur - 2000 12" Single

 

EU Pressing, 2000.

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For those of us who were into pop-rock in the 1990’s Blur really did seem like our generation’s Beatles. They wrote smart well arranged melodic music that was both artistically on the money and also popular. They had a distinct artistic arc during which they became both more experimental and more mature. Music is my Radar was the pinnacle of that process, a stand-alone single that ended up on their best of album released in the same year.

Music is my Radar is a metronomic funked out road-trip through rhythmic excess, ending in an unfurling guitar fuzz freakout. As great as this track is it is the B-side, Black Book, that really does it for me, it’s one of those songs that is both uplifting and melancholic. When I bought this single from Dada Records in the year it was released I was going through one of those dark night of the soul periods. My father died in the same month as its release (October) after years of illness and during the period I had to deal both with his death and its aftermath this single was the first thing I played when I got home and then again once at least half the bottle of wine had gone. It helped get me through and I now realise that for me never has a song been so aptly named.

White Love: One Dove - 1993 12" Single

 

English Pressing, 1993. 

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One Dove’s White Love is one of those blissfully exultant songs that evokes that weird feeling of nostalgia for nothing in particular, even from the first time you hear it. I first heard this song in a North Perth share house in 1993. One of my house-mates had bought the CD single that featured four versions of the song. He played it to death as he lounged on his bed at the back of the house. He was a louche character and in a short period of time I started to refer to him as ‘The Lizard Man’, mainly due to his cold-blooded attitude toward women, whom he regarded primarily as a means to an end. His face was hawk-like, his skin slack and ruddy from beer, yet he managed to bed a number of women whilst variations of this song barely covered up the noise of their exertions.

Fast forward to 2004 and I stumbled across this copy at Dada Records for a measly $5. It features the ‘radio mix’, the ‘meet the professionals mix’ and a ‘guitar paradise mix’, all executed by that autodidact genius of sound, Andrew Weatherall. Unfortunately it doesn’t feature the ‘lonesome demo’ version from the Lizard Man’s CD version. None-the-less this is a brilliant 12” single and a perfect example of some of what was going on in music in Britain in the early 1990’s.