You'll note I'm a chirpy mood today because - you've guessed it - Valentine's Day is upon us once again! Woo hoo!! What a great time to tell that special someone just how much you care about them, preferably with a humorous greetings card, some overpriced flowers you ordered online and maybe even a bit of James Blunt thrown in for good measure. Alternatively if you're seeing this one in all on your lonesome then why not slap on a fake grin whilst every other smug fucker out there walks hand in hand with their lover before going home on your own to drink vodka, listen to The Smiths and drunkenly phone up all your exes to fling incoherent abuse at them at half three in the morning. Think I covered all possible bases there? Good - in anticipation of the standard gag-reflex radio specials playing the same old trite bullshit that makes you want to rush out and kick old ladies off their mobility scooters I've taken it upon myself to craft and alternative playlist of odes to love in all its different varieties. Drink deep and enjoy dear friends!
Scooter - Let me be your Valentine
Nothing says romance like a bit of Scooter. Perhaps unsurprisingly my favourite memory of Valentine's Day isn't date-related but instead harks back to my adolescence and the annual Valentine's Fair in Leeds City Centre which saw an assortment of bright fairground rides erected in the rain for thrillseekers to enjoy to a soundtrack of the kind of vibrant Europop typically played in Mr Craig's nightclub or at excessive volume over headphones on the top deck of your local bus. Aaaaah them were the days. Scooter would have been at their mid 90s peak by then, flinging out stonking hardcore anthems at a feverish rate and 'Let me be your Valentine' is a fine example of what they do best, combining robust synth riffs with thudding clubland beats and lyrics that sound like a German motivational speech put through Google Translate. The video is also typically Scooteresque, featuring the band quite literally conquering the heart of their beloved - those Germans eh? So why not whack this one on at top volume before dressing up in garish sportswear, dying your hair platinum blond and barking incoherent nonsense at your lover to show them how much you care?
Heart - All I wanna do is make love to you
Love's not always for a lifetime, sometimes it can be merely a ship passing in the night, a brief moment of passion that burns brightly before disappearing forever. Heart tackled the subject matter of a one night love affair on this rather unique gem, throwing in an extra twist to the formula with a rare bit of inverse exploitation. That's right folks, the protagonist isn't just looking to get her rocks off for a bit of whirlwind romance, she's looking to get knocked up because her boyfriend is firing blanks! I'm doing the band a bit of an injustice by including this as the Wilson sisters quickly disowned it after they released it back in 1990 at the absolute nadir of the hair metal era (see Poison's 'Unskinny Bop', Warrant's 'Cherry Pie' and anything by Tigertailz for other examples) and it's a considerable blot on an otherwise pretty decent copybook - the lyrics are toecurlingly awful ('I am the flower, you are the seed/We walked in the garden, we planted a tree') and the whole idea is handled with such cackhanded clumsiness that you almost have to hide behind the sofa in terror. Future releases sadly failed to continue the saga so we never got to hear follow-ups like 'Paternity Suit Blues' or 'My son refuses to speak to me' but 'All I wanna do' lives on as a touching ode to ill-advised casual sex with a mercenary bunny boiler.
Kennedy - Your Mama
Lovers will come and go but nobody's ever gonna love you like your momma are they? But what if momma needs some lovin' all for herself? Enter Kennedy who provided us with a spot of flash in the pan lasciviousness a few years back with this rather catchy ode to milf-slaying - his chosen technique seems to be hovering round primary schools in search of single mothers, not one I've tried personally but based on the results in this video it might be worth a go after all. I actually saw this dude live back when he was served up as an appetiser prior to a storming Happy Mondays/Bonde do Role/New Young Pony Club triple-header at La Cigale - he came onstage in an ironic skintight Slayer T-shirt which made me want to get up onstage and kick his teeth in but I have to admit he won me over through sheer charm and 'Your Mama' is about as brazen as it gets. Boffing single mothers might seem like the work of a shameless skirt-chaser but Kennedy tackles the theme with such panache that you have to take your hat off to him and by the looks of things his conquests in the video are willing to part company with pretty much everything else to boot. Result!
Bjork and Tony Ferrino - Short Term Affair
Crass tales of sexual predators aside, some us can think of more romantic things to do than banging single mums for fun - why not go even closer to home and pork the babysitter! Tony Ferrino was one of Steve Coogan's less celebrated characters but I thought he was pretty funny, a fictitious cabaret singer from Portugal who specialised in the kind of cocktail-bar schmaltz typically employed to woo British housewives on holiday in the Algarve. Kinda like a younger, shittier Julio Iglesias if you like (no, wait, that's Enrique Iglesias....). I was gonna include his adulterous anthem 'Other Men's Wives' on here but I couldn't find a video for it so instead I've gone for this touching duet with Bjork back when she was cool/hot/relevant (delete as appropriate) which chronicles a wealthy gentleman's tryst with his kids' au-pair. It's actually a pretty infectious tune and Coogan acquits himself admirably whilst Bjork is her usual shrieking self - he put out a whole album of this stuff in the late 1990s which was pretty good, my personal favourites from it being a Broadway-style revisit of The Silence of the Lambs and windswept ballad 'Valley of our Souls' (think about it.....). Coogan's put in better turns since as Tony Wilson, Alan Partridge or even himself in 'The Trip' but Tony Ferrino deserves a bit of revivalist loving for this track alone.
The Wildhearts - Loveshit
Feeling lonely and unloved whilst everyone else is getting their snuggle on? Well you could sit at home listening to 'I know it's over' for the umpteenth time and wallowing in your own wretchedness but since when was that a fun way to spend the evening? My advice if you're seeing this one through on your lonesome is to stack the fridge with Newcastle Brown Ale and crank up the Wildhearts to soundtrack you through a swift trip to inebriation station deep in the heart of could-not-give-a-tossland where you can cast aside the shackles of solitude and shake a leg to this glam rock celebration of the joys of being single. 'Loveshit' is about as subtle as its title suggests, basically surmising that relationships are a waste of time and generally doomed to begin with so you might as well go out on the lash and enjoy your freedom instead of making yourself miserable over what might have been - not an entirely bad philosophy if you think about it, although bear in mind this was from a band of Georgie bikers whose idea of fun was to stub cigarettes out on each other's limbs and smash up the Kerrang offices after a bad review. The Wildhearts were a volatile mix of hedonism and nihilism that would either make your life a better place or cast you deep into the murky waters of cynicism, much like affairs of the heart in fact. They are truly the perfect Valentine's band.
Ice T - Let's get butt naked and f*ck
The art of seduction is a complex one and can allow for many different approaches to talking your way into your lover's underwear. LL Cool J kept it smooth and sensual with his 1987 breakthrough hit 'I Need Love', laying bare his feelings and emotions to show that even the toughest rappers yearn for some tender loving behind all that machismo. Ice T, ever the contrarian, responded with the rather more succinct 'Let's get butt naked and fuck' on his album 'Power' the following year on which he perfected the art of getting straight to the point - after all, if loving's on the menu then why not just order it up straight from the start? Ice has never been one to mince his words mind, laying down some of rap's most controversial verses in the late 80s before founding Body Count and taking on pretty much every sacred cow he could get within poking distance of over the early 1990s. I was watching one of the latter day Body Count shows online the other day - did you know that three guys from their original line-up are dead? That's over half the fucking band! You'd normally need a plane crash or some sort of suicide pact to wipe out musicians so quickly. My advice is that if BC roll through town then you should get down there quickly before one of them gets hit by an asteroid or something- as regards Ice T, his romantic delivery may be somewhat cavalier for your tastes but you can't fault the guy for making his intentions clear from the very beginning.
Divinyls - I touch myself
Of course nudity and fornication aren't always on the menu - some of us have to be self sufficient in that regard so where else to turn next than to this international hymn to onanism from Australia's Divinyls. Writing a song about cracking one off could have easily turned into something crass and unseemly if left in the wrong hands but this lot managed to craft a massive radio hit out of a subject hardly tailor made for the singles charts and did so without resorting to cheap humour or shock tactics. By the time 'I touch myself' went top ten back in 1991 pretty much everyone was trying their hand at crossover records about shagging ranging from Color Me Badd's 'I wanna sex you up' to Salt 'n' Pepa's 'Let's talk about sex' along with pretty much everything Madonna or Prince turned their hand to resulting in radio playlists positively brimming with lurid material and sleazy innuendo. The track fit right into all that but plays it slightly more coy and evasive over what they're actually singing about - it took my innocent mind years to realise quite what was at the heart of the song's lyrics, by which time the aforementioned subject matter had coincidentally become one of my favourite pastimes! Don't let the absence of someone special prevent you from enjoying yourself this Valentine's Day, there's often a lot to be said for having a quiet night in on your own....
Guns 'n' Roses - I used to love her
Love is a wonderful thing and all that, spurring many of us on to shack up with that special someone and settle down for life as a couple. But what if the practical reality of the situation doesn't live up to your expectations? GNR were fortunately on hand to tackle such a problem on this track from their stop-gap album 'Lies' that padded out the four years between 'Appetite for Destruction' and the double-album 'Illusions' cycle, the sum conclusion of their reflections being that murdering your estranged lover and burying them in the back garden is probably the best course of action. It's all quite a light-hearted affair of course but you never knew how seriously to take Axl with all this stuff, his attitude towards the fairer sex varying drastically from the tender heartfelt content of 'Don't Cry' and 'Sweet Child O'Mine' to the somewhat less chivalrous likes of 'Pretty Tied Up' and 'Back Off Bitch'. I suppose he just likes to keep people guessing, that being the only explanation to hand for his fifteen year lapse between albums and perennial stage entrances several hours later than scheduled. This was filmed back in '88 when Guns were still young, sexy and slightly dangerous, a look they've never quite captured since and only they could carry off something quite so venomous yet endearingly cheeky as this jaunty little ode to murdering your significant other.
Ride - Vapour Trail
Alright let's get soppy for a minute. Everyone has their end of the night song that sends shivers down their spine and makes them go all gooey and sentimental and this is one of mine, the closing number from the original version of Ride's shit-your-pants-fantastic debut LP 'Nowhere'. Much of the rest of that album is devoted to cascading noise pop and downered catharsis which is probably what makes 'Vapour Trail' stands out all the more vividly - the album's centrepiece 'Dreams Burn Down' is another favourite of mine but is essentially an anthem to frustration and disappointment which is why the inclusion of a lush string-laden set closer is all the more redemptive. I always felt that Oasis hi-jacked the intro of this track for 'Whatever', itself an epic romantic flourish recorded to conquer the Xmas charts having turned British indie upside down in 1994 - The Verve based some of their later material around a similar model but for my money neither of them got close to this tune in all its majesty. I pretty much deem it a prerequisite that any girl I date has to like this band or at least to have heard their music and that's acted as a pretty decent filter over the years - if you're not into your Ride then we just weren't meant to be together.
Frankie Knuckles - Your Love
And to finish let's have ourselves a bit of classic Chicago House from back in the day courtesy of the Godfather himself Frankie Knuckles. Nothing says love better than a spot of euphoric dance music and this tune was one of the very first crossover hits to emerge from the underground American club scene in the mid 1980s where the crowds would dissolve into a loved-up euphoric trance every time it was aired (I'm reliably informed that some of them may even have been imparting in chemical refreshment!). 'Your Love' ushered in the first wave of crossover house tunes in '87 and opened the door for the acid house revolution that provided us all with numerous hands in the air classics and saw a whole new generation find love on the dance floor. If you're having trouble finding love out there in harsh reality then remember there's always tunes like this to give you a blissful rush that'll make it all OK again. Thanks Frankie :)
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