BEATS OF LOVE 

179. Goodnight Jack by Saint Etienne

MUST CONFESS to thinking I owned Weatherall's sublime Mix of Two Halves remix of Only Love Can Break Your Heart for donkey's years. My US copy told me I did, despite it sounding nothing like the reviews I'd read. 

I even sighted a UK copy at a party and felt sorry for the host as he hadn't got a lovely shrink wrap sleeve with his. Fast forward to the internet and the penny drops, the US version misprinted the track listing entirely; the Weatherall mix was never on it. Cue me shelling out over twenty pounds for the UK copy. Obviously, I love both, but this song helped me find a bit of perspective on my traumatic life.

The only person I hated more than my father was myself, but sitting with this in my headphones on a bench in Didsbury Park, I actually smiled as I reminisced about him. The lines 'Behind the wheel of my Capri It seems it like no-ones noticed me. And now you're coming out from work, And deep inside I feel so hurt' really resonated as I recalled his company car, a gold Capri. He was definitely not a gold Capri man. When my mother stayed at the hospital to receive blood, we were both totally useless and at the mercy of my younger sisters, who fed us. Shortly after her return, he walked the dog, only to come back looking ashen faced with just the lead in his hand. 

My mother, despite being poorly, left the house, frantically calling out its name. Of course it heard her voice and came bounding home. I still smile, recalling the sheer relief on my father's round face. The song marked the start of me being kinder to us both, infusing a much needed warm memory. 

Songs do that. Pure and simple. 

BEATS OF LOVE 

178. Halucifuge (Freaky Chicken Peck) by Freaky Chakra

MEMORY CAN be cruel. I still wince, reflecting on my first failed attempt at DJing in February 1994.

It mattered to me coz I still recall the tunes I played to my imagined audience that sounded groundbreaking and brilliant. Then the same tunes played in reality a week later, with Jeff and Tim, which were met with the kind of polite blankness that is worse than hostility. Real DJs sound like their home cities. I sounded like nowhere at all, and the faces in that Oldham boozer knew it.

Freaky Chakra's tremendous Halucifuge (Freaky Chicken Peck) should not have followed the mighty Augustus Pablo. It didn't, because I was too dumbstruck with nerves to cue it up myself, and had to tap Jeff on the head to do it for me. I had spun Keith Richards, reasoning that a boozer deserved at least one rock moment, snobbery be damned. I also had a mad desire to share Plank's futuristic acid track Cosmic Reflections, optimistic, given the PA sounded like it had been rescued from a school disco. Real DJs aren't incoherent. They tell stories and check the sound.

I ended on a sort of high with U-N-I (You And I) awe-inspiring Don't Hold Back The Feeling (Key Trip Dub) and got some feet tapping. Even so,  Jeff and Tim did not ask me again. They rightly left me behind and played the Wigan Pier. Jeff arrived with a crate of record-company freebies, first dibs earned simply by being the one who drove. Despite Tim having next to no records of his own, he staked his superiority on keeping more heads on the dancefloor than Jeff. Real DJs don't compete with each other; they build a relationship with the room. 

I'd like to say I learned all these lessons in 1994 but it was nearer to 2024, sadly. 

BEATS OF LOVE 

177. Human Love LP by E.R. Thorpe

I HAD the good sense to ask Emma to support Huw Costin with Torn Sail way back in 2013 after Paul suggested it. She didn't disappoint.

Only a lowly framework; a bare stool-and-guitar setup constrained her. Now, amidst a Nottinghamshire renaissance, the fuller band setting finally gives her songs room to breathe, revealing their layered and beguiling depth. My favourite songs keep changing, which is always a good sign. 

Hard not to get emotional hearing Red Dust and Dinner For One in this new light as songs that cradled me during tough times now sound even richer and more memorable. Brilliant players do that. They help Emma realise her fullest potential, creating a hell of a cohesive whole. We downplay the importance of life affirming music passed down through generations in our world of sound-snippets. But records that hold together as a complete journey, that ask for your full attention and return it with interest, are rarer than they should be. This is one.

Joseph Eid

Reminded of Joseph Eid's powerful image of Abu Omar who smoked a pipe, listening to music in his ruined Aleppo bedroom, refusing to leave the city despite the destruction.

I like to think it was something like this LP on Abu's gramophone player, music that makes the world around you feel, briefly, less ruined.

https://erthorpe.bandcamp.com/album/human-love-2

BEATS OF LOVE 

176. Reverend Black Grape by Black Grape

THE MISSUS was in Nigeria for Ma's funeral when Lent began. To compound matters, I had her physical ID with me and couldn't establish, despite asking two solicitors, whether she still needed it to travel back now that everything had gone digital.

It was just under twenty years ago, on Good Friday 2006, that I went back to church. Attended as many masses as I could this Lent. What I'd braced myself to endure became, quietly, the most sustaining thing I've done all year. 

Some parishioners wear their politics and their faith as one garment. I wear this tune as mine, the last great TOTP moment, lampooning the hypocrisy of organised religion whilst sounding funky as hell.

The Jesus I know hates the commodification of religion, encouraging instead heart-led relationships over rule-led ones of obedience. Two self-confessed smack heads who had been all but written off, drawing on their catholic and gospel heritages to subvert both the religious messaging and season; create the finest comeback single bar none. That is a testament to what faith, in its broadest sense, can still produce. Danny Saber, take a bow. Heart led and unruly. The results are miraculous.

Course the missus got back with just digital ID. My Lenten prayers quietly answered. 

BEATS OF LOVE 

175. Bolton Wanderers v Ipswich Town - April 21, 1979

SURE, I'VE witnessed some seminal moments; The Chemical Brothers and Daft Punk at Bugged Out, Oasis in a big-top tent in Preston, and Nirvana supporting at the Poly. But none of them were as memorable or enjoyable as seeing this goal at Burnden Park in 1979 sat with my father. Celebrating it was our last shared moment of unadulterated joy. 

My abiding memory of the Oasis gig is the spoken-word poet Joolz, standing at the side of the stage looking utterly baffled, watching her own event get hijacked in real time. None of us present knew yet what we were standing inside.

In 1979, I liked flamboyant footballers who had lank hair and untucked shirts, and my father liked workaday ones who tucked their shirts in like Big Sam. However, in the April sunshine, Frankie Worthington fever finally gripped my father. Despite losing, he hung back, allowing me to wait in the car park with my candy-pink Disney autograph book. 

After a forty-minute wait, the great man finally surfaced, only to strut nonchalantly past us, which I thought was dead cool. Fast forward to the next day and I was shouting at my father to watch his goal again during On The Ball, but he refused to lift his head out of the Sunday paper. 

I saw one of the most graceful and skillful goals ever scored on British soil and all I have to show for it is a Paul Mariner autograph.