Tried to avoid any Christmas frivolity this year but the pull towards festive nonsense was too great.
Plus, the repeated-lyric-reworking of Slade’s “Merry Xmas Everybody” put us in mind of an equivalent deconstruction someone performed on The Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me” a few years ago.
The Joint has always maintained that if you’re going to cover a song, do it properly. Give the original a good aural kicking down a back alley and ignore any accusations of a lack of respect towards the original material.
We said it in the letters pages of Smash Hits* when Paul Young covered “Love Will Tear Us Apart” in 1983 and we’re saying it again today as we playlist Brian Case’s radical re-working of Elvis Costello / Robert Wyatt’s “Shipbuilding”
Todd Terje – Maskindans (featuring Det Gylne Triangel)
Skyjelly – Catherine’s Rabbi
Beak> – Sex Music (Win Butler’s ‘Knight Rider’ Remix)
Ras G And The Afrikan Space Program – Can’t Hide
Amelia Airhorn – NY Is Red Hot (Single Mix)
MHD – Afro Trap Part 8 (Never)
Gorillaz – Sleeping Powder
Tommy Cash – Surf
Nuvarna – Pain Of The Circus
Rugby Wild – Scuffs
Michele Mininni – Rave Oscillations
Explosion Horse – Tupac’s Herpes
Frankie Rose – Trouble
Push Push – Blood In
Butcher Bear – Ineedyouneedme (featuring Sir Froderick)
Frank Ocean – Biking (featuring Jay Z & Tyler, The Creator)
TGUT – Swang (TGUT Remix)
Objekt – Theme From Q
Washed Out – Hard To Say Goodbye
Wolf Alice – Yuk Foo
Brian Case – Shipbuilding
Gabriel Garzón-Montano – Sour Mango (Seven Davis Jr Sticky Rice Remix)
Mike Will Made-It – Perfect Pint (featuring Kendrick Lamar, Gucci Mane, Rae Sremmurd)
King Ayisoba – Africa Needs Africa
Reaganometry – Lego Igloo
Summer Moon – Walk Out Music
Unknown – Drank Til I Can’t Drank No Mo
Chip Skylark – Washed Up
S4U – Too Much
Powell – The Bust
Fresh & Onlys – Wolf Lie Down
*Embarrassing but true. The letter not the song. Well, maybe the song as well. Have a search through Brian McCloskey’s Smash Hits Archive on Flickr for proof.
Today is our last show before we head off on an indefinite sabbatical. Other commitments mean we need to take a break for a while.
The Joint first broadcast on RDU way back in July 2001 when the frequency was still 98.3FM. We started out on Sunday afternoons but after a while switched to Saturday afternoons. The reasons are lost in the mists of time.
By our really rough and unscientific calculations we reckon we’ve done 665 shows so far. That makes this final show today episode number 666. Not a shabby effort really. To put that in some completely unrelated context Ryan Giggs made 672 league appearances for Manchester United and David O’Leary made 558 league appearance for Arsenal.
Thank you for all your kind messages via Facebook, Twitter and the RDU text machine. It was a blast.
To paraphrase and plagiarise James Murphy…
Yeah, we lost our edge
The kids came up from behind
We lost our edge to the kids
From France and from London
And from Christchurch
But we were there
We lost our edge to better-looking people
With better ideas and more talent
And they’re actually really, really nice
ABOUT THE JOINT
Hosts THE HERB WHISPERER and FRASERHEAD go all over the shop with an eclectic, left-field, and off-kilter selection of cosmic disco, electro, indie, hip-hop, house, dub, and anything with a motorik vibe, plus the occasional guilty pleasure. If the radio sounds broken chances are it’s the THE JOINT.
