2. 2Pac - Hit 'Em Up
3. Chromeo - You're So Gangsta
4. Lady Sovereign - Ch-Ching (Cheque 1, 2)
5. Bobby Brown - My Prerogative
6. Devo -Whip It
7. Foxy Brown - Candy ft. Kelis
8. Fierce Girl - Double Drop
9. N*E*R*D - Thrasher
10. Ginuwine - Pony
11. Foxy Brown - Oh Yeah
12. Chromeo - Needy Girl
13. Har Mar Superstar - DUI
14. Jay-Z - Big Pimpin' ft. UGK
15. LCD Soundsystem - Yeah (Crass Version)
16. Mr. Vegas - Heads High
17. Rosco P. Coldchain - Delinquent (Club Mix) ft. Pharrell Williams
18. N*E*R*D - Chariots Of Fire/Find A Way
A hangover as punishing as it was deserved. Earned even. The Pica's Christmas party always inspired an unhealthy appetite for debauchery in us for some reason. Much of that party for me was spent sat on the toilet hunched over the sink in the downstairs bathroom vomiting or trying not to vomit while Katie rubbed my back and tried to make me feel better. Nick helpfully offered me a sausage and when words failed me he just left it on my lap. I wasn't the only casualty but I was among the numbers. There were always casualties at the Pica Christmas party. Every year. When you go that hard you're always gonna lose people. I threw up in my hat in the taxi home and we launched the soiled article at some poor passerby. I'll be honest, the 'vomiting in the sink/sausage' thing and the 'cap out the taxi window' thing may have been from different parties in different years but definitely at the same location. The party I have in mind though happened on the 23rd December 2004. Exact events of the night are hazy but what is without question is that when I awoke the next morning the inside of my skull was a dystopia.
Shaking so violently that dialing a number on my Nokia 3330 was outwith my capabilities I made my way to the couch in the living room at Gilmore Heights once the hellsound of my alarm raised me from the brink of an unconscious abyss. And once I was cognizant I was too damaged to sleep and unfit for work. This is how it was to end, and I didn't really give a shit. Luke was about to go to bed, I think, pretty sure this was during his nocturnal period managing The Venue club on Calton Road. I needed to get him to call my work to tell them I wasn't coming in on my last day. A bit of a dick move not going in for your last shift but to be fair the company had decided to terminate a number of people's temporary contracts early effective as of the 24th of December which is a much dick-isher (not a word) move.
Shaking so violently that dialing a number on my Nokia 3330 was outwith my capabilities I made my way to the couch in the living room at Gilmore Heights once the hellsound of my alarm raised me from the brink of an unconscious abyss. And once I was cognizant I was too damaged to sleep and unfit for work. This is how it was to end, and I didn't really give a shit. Luke was about to go to bed, I think, pretty sure this was during his nocturnal period managing The Venue club on Calton Road. I needed to get him to call my work to tell them I wasn't coming in on my last day. A bit of a dick move not going in for your last shift but to be fair the company had decided to terminate a number of people's temporary contracts early effective as of the 24th of December which is a much dick-isher (not a word) move.
Removing and replacing stickers and inputting new stock into the system was the general day to day as a temp Christmas stockroom employee at HMV on Prince's Street, Edinburgh. Blair had got me the job. One of four different jobs he got me between 2004 and 2006, which includes the 2 day van odyssey. I was like a disappointing child to him, constantly under-achieving and with little drive or inclination to change. He could see potential in me and constantly tried to get me to fulfill it. I never have. He helped me a lot at a time when I was drowning in apathy. I was young and bored and couldn't get the energy or will together to do anything creative or self-improving and Blair was always there to encourage me, to get me out the house, into gainful employment, he got me back writing and he was always up for going out to the pub. For someone on the dole as much as I was in those few years I was out partying a ton. I must still owe a lot of people a lot of drinks.
November, this particular job started and when we were hired, there was about ten of us, we were told it'd be a temporary position that would be until mid February. Fine. But then they sacked us all on Christmas eve. I believe this had probably been the plan all along but it's difficult to get people excited for a contract that is less than 2 full months with no possible prospects right before Christmas. Big corporations don't seem to care much about people on a personal level, really only as worker drones and consumers, so I treated the job with a similar level of contempt that it showed me. I made the most of it and to be fair it was actually an alright gig. We took turns in the stockroom to go out onto the shop floor to pick a record to play while we worked. This was a really great way to hear records that you were interested in hearing but couldn't find online yet and weren't quite interested enough to buy. It was also a fun way to wind each other up. Three discs worth of the Bonkers 3 happy hardcore compilation is like a particularly colourful and infuriating journey into madness that I decided to bang on one evening. I treated it quite scientifically, as a kind of endurance test, it was not appreciated by my colleagues.
Perverse pleasure was also taken by inflicting the newest Girls Aloud album, What Will The Neigbours Say? on my new pal, Todd, a lad who only really listened to extreme breakcore and black metal. A Venitian Snares or Darkthrone kinda dude. However, I think he only hated the Popstars: The Rivals winners about a quarter of the amount he pretended to. And that second album is undeniably great. It helped ease the really weird pain that came from picking off about a million stickers from cd cases in a day that made it feel like your finger nails might be about to fall off. It was a really gross feeling sensation.
Council Pop was a mix of tunes I was enjoying around this time, that I threw together on a disc to play in the stockroom. It was named after the genre of music created (and performed solely) by Fierce Girl, a duo who, coincidentally worked together at an HMV in London. They were a couple of gay dudes whose music celebrated working class lifestyles, drugs and clubbing. They released only two songs, the first of which was included here, Double Drop is a rowdy dance-pop number which was infamously and bizarrely performed on Saturday morning music show CD:UK where it seemingly got by the producers that the song is about double dropping ecstasy. Not ideal subject matter to be souting about to kids having their breakfast. The second was released in February the following year, called What Makes A Girl Fierce and was a tribute to the likes of Eastenders character Kat Slater and the Sugababes member Mutya Buena. Neither single charted very high despite much excited media buzz. They disappeared shortly after leaving only a couple of other unreleased songs from an unreleased album sampler and an abandoned Myspace page.
Obviously there are a handful of Neptunes tracks on there; three standout N*E*R*D tracks taken from the second album Fly Or Die, Hella Good, the song they wrote but didn't produce for No Doubt, the Kelis assissted Foxy Brown banger, Candy, and the excellent Rosco P. Coldchain single Delinquent. And there are a couple of classic Timbaland productions on there too with the exquisite Pony by Ginuwine and the thrilling Jay-Z staple, Big Pimpin' with it's insane UGK feature. Foxy Brown pops up again as well with the dancehall infused floor-filler Oh Yeah.
There are two Chromeo tracks in mix; debut single Needy Girl in all it's slap bass, vocoder and electro-pop goodness and the tremendously fun You're So Gangsta which is about the best Les Rhythmes Digitales song that Jaques Le Cont/Stuart Price didn't come up with. Also this is the second disc that the Crass Version of LCD Soundsystem's Yeah has shown up on along with Lady Sovereign's Ch-Ching. They were both included on Mole's Mega Mix '04. I really, really liked these songs in 2004. In 2016 I like them both fine, though Lady Sov has lost her shine significantly more.
A recent and perfectly servicable cover version by none other than Ms. Britney Spears must have brought the excellent My Perogative by Bobby Brown back to my attention and Devo's Whip It is never out of fashion. I can't be sure why the astoundingly angry and profane Hit 'Em Up by 2Pac got an outing aside from it being utterly fantastic. And the last two to speak on are both party belters; the dancehall classic Head's High by Mr. Vegas which was a weekly grind-fest at the Establishment club and the under-appreciated, Michael Jackson indebted Har Mar Superstar single DUI which featured a pitched up Holly Valance in an excellent call and response bridge.
To my new colleagues in the HMV stockroom, I think that my eclecticism may have been a little puzzling. I guess I don't seem like the kind of guy who'd appreciate 2Pac, Devo and Girls Aloud. Time ran out though and they never really got a chance to know me. And I never got a chance to really get to know them. Ah well. Cold realities and being surplus to requirements can happen any time. Even at Christmas. And so we party on anyway.
Once the contract was terminated I wouldn't have another proper job until July '05, so this post-Pica party hangover was the start of the longest period of unemployment in my life. What that says about those parties is up to you to decide.
November, this particular job started and when we were hired, there was about ten of us, we were told it'd be a temporary position that would be until mid February. Fine. But then they sacked us all on Christmas eve. I believe this had probably been the plan all along but it's difficult to get people excited for a contract that is less than 2 full months with no possible prospects right before Christmas. Big corporations don't seem to care much about people on a personal level, really only as worker drones and consumers, so I treated the job with a similar level of contempt that it showed me. I made the most of it and to be fair it was actually an alright gig. We took turns in the stockroom to go out onto the shop floor to pick a record to play while we worked. This was a really great way to hear records that you were interested in hearing but couldn't find online yet and weren't quite interested enough to buy. It was also a fun way to wind each other up. Three discs worth of the Bonkers 3 happy hardcore compilation is like a particularly colourful and infuriating journey into madness that I decided to bang on one evening. I treated it quite scientifically, as a kind of endurance test, it was not appreciated by my colleagues.
Perverse pleasure was also taken by inflicting the newest Girls Aloud album, What Will The Neigbours Say? on my new pal, Todd, a lad who only really listened to extreme breakcore and black metal. A Venitian Snares or Darkthrone kinda dude. However, I think he only hated the Popstars: The Rivals winners about a quarter of the amount he pretended to. And that second album is undeniably great. It helped ease the really weird pain that came from picking off about a million stickers from cd cases in a day that made it feel like your finger nails might be about to fall off. It was a really gross feeling sensation.
Council Pop was a mix of tunes I was enjoying around this time, that I threw together on a disc to play in the stockroom. It was named after the genre of music created (and performed solely) by Fierce Girl, a duo who, coincidentally worked together at an HMV in London. They were a couple of gay dudes whose music celebrated working class lifestyles, drugs and clubbing. They released only two songs, the first of which was included here, Double Drop is a rowdy dance-pop number which was infamously and bizarrely performed on Saturday morning music show CD:UK where it seemingly got by the producers that the song is about double dropping ecstasy. Not ideal subject matter to be souting about to kids having their breakfast. The second was released in February the following year, called What Makes A Girl Fierce and was a tribute to the likes of Eastenders character Kat Slater and the Sugababes member Mutya Buena. Neither single charted very high despite much excited media buzz. They disappeared shortly after leaving only a couple of other unreleased songs from an unreleased album sampler and an abandoned Myspace page.
Obviously there are a handful of Neptunes tracks on there; three standout N*E*R*D tracks taken from the second album Fly Or Die, Hella Good, the song they wrote but didn't produce for No Doubt, the Kelis assissted Foxy Brown banger, Candy, and the excellent Rosco P. Coldchain single Delinquent. And there are a couple of classic Timbaland productions on there too with the exquisite Pony by Ginuwine and the thrilling Jay-Z staple, Big Pimpin' with it's insane UGK feature. Foxy Brown pops up again as well with the dancehall infused floor-filler Oh Yeah.
There are two Chromeo tracks in mix; debut single Needy Girl in all it's slap bass, vocoder and electro-pop goodness and the tremendously fun You're So Gangsta which is about the best Les Rhythmes Digitales song that Jaques Le Cont/Stuart Price didn't come up with. Also this is the second disc that the Crass Version of LCD Soundsystem's Yeah has shown up on along with Lady Sovereign's Ch-Ching. They were both included on Mole's Mega Mix '04. I really, really liked these songs in 2004. In 2016 I like them both fine, though Lady Sov has lost her shine significantly more.
A recent and perfectly servicable cover version by none other than Ms. Britney Spears must have brought the excellent My Perogative by Bobby Brown back to my attention and Devo's Whip It is never out of fashion. I can't be sure why the astoundingly angry and profane Hit 'Em Up by 2Pac got an outing aside from it being utterly fantastic. And the last two to speak on are both party belters; the dancehall classic Head's High by Mr. Vegas which was a weekly grind-fest at the Establishment club and the under-appreciated, Michael Jackson indebted Har Mar Superstar single DUI which featured a pitched up Holly Valance in an excellent call and response bridge.
To my new colleagues in the HMV stockroom, I think that my eclecticism may have been a little puzzling. I guess I don't seem like the kind of guy who'd appreciate 2Pac, Devo and Girls Aloud. Time ran out though and they never really got a chance to know me. And I never got a chance to really get to know them. Ah well. Cold realities and being surplus to requirements can happen any time. Even at Christmas. And so we party on anyway.
Once the contract was terminated I wouldn't have another proper job until July '05, so this post-Pica party hangover was the start of the longest period of unemployment in my life. What that says about those parties is up to you to decide.
No comments:
Post a Comment