Tekel Towers » Tek Towers Desert Island Discs #9

Tek · 30/8/2015 9:31 pm

The 9th 'castaway' we are joined by is Trap_6.

Mr Trap you have been destined to spend the rest of your days on an isolated island somewhere in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean.

In an extremely lucky quirk of fate however there is big package washed up on shore.......when you open the said package you find a cd walkman,headphones and what would appear to be a 50 year supply of AA batteries.

If you could pick any 8 albums to take with you on the Island...what albums would those be Sir? And can you give a small insight into why you've chosen each one please?

Tek · 30/8/2015 9:31 pm

You can take 2 books with you.

1 that you've previously read and 1 that that you always meant to get round too.

Which books and why?

Tek · 30/8/2015 9:31 pm

Which person would you miss the most?

Tek · 30/8/2015 9:31 pm

If you could take one Dundee Utd match on video to watch over and over again...what match would you choose?

Tek · 30/8/2015 9:32 pm

What one other inanimate object would you take with you on the island if you could?

Tek · 30/8/2015 9:32 pm

What one alcoholic drink would you take with you if you could?

Tek · 30/8/2015 9:32 pm

What ONE album would you save if the tide started washing them away and you only had time to retrieve just one?

Tek · 30/8/2015 9:33 pm

And finally as the sun set on the Island for the final time in your life what song would you like to play out?

Mr Trap, I thank you Sir.

Tek · 30/8/2015 9:33 pm

And one last thing.

Could you pick next weeks 'castaway' please Sir?

Grantomac
Rocky Raccoon
The Macho Man (Can't do it till mid-Sept)
Eurobob

Trap_6 · 02/9/2015 8:50 pm

Sorry for taking a while to get round to this - who knew picking albums for an imaginary life experience would cause such hair-pulling and consternation?

Anyway, here goes...

Album 1 - 'The Second Coming' by The Stone Roses

The Roses were my musical awakening. I'd been into bands before but this was the first one I elt belonged to me. I got into them around 1992 so I only had to wait for two years for the follow up album but it still felt like an eternity. When it finally arrived it's fair to say it wasn't quite what we were all expecting. To put it mildly. Looking back, the stage was perfectly set for the triumphant return. Britpop had arrived, just waiting for the godfathers of the genre to take it to the masses. And they returned with a dark, brooding, sprawling 78 minutes of Led Zeppelin inspired noise, which was about the least fashionable noise you could make in 1994. The critics hated it and I loved it.

Led Zep meant nothing to me at that time. They didn't feature in th albums that I found in cupboards around my house so the blues riffs and intricate time structures were all new to me. There's times on that record where it feels like they're just showing off. Listen to the bass and drums on 'Daybreak' for example. For as good as Britpop was, it didn't produce a single musician who has gone down as one of the greats. The Roses produced at least two, arguably three. This album really showcases that talent. It seems more people are 'getting' it as the years pass. Defintely not as iconic as its predecessor but defintely a more interesting listen. I'd argue it's aged better as well. The first album now sounds a bit thin to me. This would still sound fantastic released today.

Trap_6 · 02/9/2015 8:57 pm

Album 2 - 'Rings Around The World' by Super Furry Animals

For various reasons I could have picked virtually any SFA album. I've only picked this because it's their 'all killer, no filler' album. Every track a belter. You can find all of the Furries on this album - beautiful Beach Boys-esque harmonies, driving punk riffs, psych-rock trip outs and electronica. There's even a death metal segment at the end of 'Respectable for the Respectable'. I love them because they've always aimed to write amazing pop records whilst at the same time not giving a fuck about fitting in to any scene. They're the undrappreciated geniuses of British pop music in the last 20 years.

Trap_6 · 02/9/2015 9:06 pm

Album 3 - 'The Songs of Leonard Cohen by Leonard Cohen

'The Bard of the Bedsit' writes 'depressing' 'music to slit your wrists to'. These are accusations that have followed Cohen around since the release of this debut album in 1967. To me, he's never been any of those things. I suppose if you 'get' something, you just hear it differently to other people. His lyrics are the most honest, profound and cut-straight-to-your-soul I've ever heard.

'Yes you who must leave everything that you cannot control,
It begins with your family but soon it comes round to your soul.'

This is his first album, by which time he was in his 30s and already an award-winning poet and novelist. The story goes that he hated the female backing vocalists but lacked the confidence to say so. By the time he plucked up the courage the album had already been recorded with his vocals on the same track as the backing singers, meaning they couldn't be removed. Thank goodness for his inability to speak up for himself. His lyrics, delivered in his almost speaking voice, the haunting backing singers, and his simple, looping picking patterns on the Spanish guitar work beautifully together.

Trap_6 · 02/9/2015 9:17 pm

Album 4 - 'The Woollen Mill Story' by St Andrew and the Woollen Mill

Andy Pelc has made me laugh more than anyone else ever has. Some people just walk onstage and they're funny. The later album that the Woollen Mill produced (Word on the Pavey) is a fantastic collection of well written and funny songs about Dundee. They'd be great and listenable songs even if you didn't understand a word of the Dundee dialect. The Woollen Mill Story however, is just a group of 20-something Dundee laddies being daft and messing about. And the result is a masterpiece. Half parody documentary, half music, it takes you on the mythical and entirely made-up history of the band. I've listened to it hundreds of times and it still makes me crease myself. I can also quote it word for word. I'd listen to it daily on the island.

It's a travesty that he, and the band, never got wider recognitio. Unfortunately, in Scotland, it seems you can only be funny if you're from Glasgow. You can count on one hand the number of non-West Coast comedians who get regular airtime. It's almost like the rest of us never have anything funny to say! If Andy had been Glaswegian he'd have been a household name.

Unfortunately, there's nothing on Youtube from that first album and copies of it today are rare as hen's teeth (spot the musical connection there kids) so here's a link to something off Word on the Pavey...

Trap_6 · 02/9/2015 9:23 pm

Album 5 - 'D' by White Denim

Every day I wake up and wonder why these guys aren't the biggest band on the planet. The talent that bursts forth from these four guys is unlike anything I've ever heard in my life. They mess around with rhythms and through genres (pop, soul, jazz, psych, prog, Latin - I could go on!) so effortlessly and spontaneously like some kind of telepathic jam session. I've seen them play live twice and can honestly say I've never heard anything approaching how incredible they are.

If you haven't heard them, trust me, get on it. You won't be disappointed. I would dance around the island to this like a bastard.

Trap_6 · 02/9/2015 9:37 pm

Album 6 - 'Hats off to the Buskers' by The View

Maybe, if you're lucky, you go to a gig or get to experience a band that's on the cusp of making it. You catch them at just the right moment. The energy is buzzing through the room. It almost doesn't matter if you like the band because it's such an incredible thing to be a part of. Living in Dundee in 2006/7 I got to experience it for around a year. I was slightly too old for it when it came around but I definitely got swept up in it. I first saw the in the Doghouse. I was there to see my mate's band who were doing quite well on the Glasgow scene and had come through to Dundee to play a bit of a homecoming gig as most of them were from here or the surrounding area. Without playing up the mythology too much, their support act was the unlikeliest group of young scalliwags you could imagine. There was a solid wee crowd int osee them but no more than thirty or so. I can still remember them churning out pop song after pop song and thinking, 'That could be a hit, that could be a hit....'

Next time I saw them was on the T Break Stage at T in the Park 2007. By a quirk of fate my mate's band were on stage directly before them (I'm not making this up!). I was there to watch them. There was the usual T Break sized crowd, a couple of hundred max. Then towards the end of their gig the place just started filling up with Dundonians. I knew 80% of the people in there. It was just prior to the album coming out. No-one outwith Dundee had heard of them. But EVERYONE in Dundee already had a pirate copy of it! The place was heaving, folk climbing up the poles. The gig had to be stopped a couple of times to get folk down. Just a great time to be Dundonian.

Trap_6 · 02/9/2015 9:49 pm

Album 7 - 'Harvest' by Neil Young

I was such a little know-it-all bastard in my teens and early 20s when it came to music! Truth was, I knew fuck all. The Roses and the Super Furries were my absolute benchmarks for everything. If it was old, it was crap (unless it was The Beatles). If it wasn't British, it was crap. Then I heard this album. It changed everything for me. For years after I went on a journey of devouring everything he did, along with James Taylor, Tom Waits, Carole King, Little Feat, Allman Brothers Band. It's a journey I'm still one. Actually, I'm probably still a know-it-all little bastard. If it's not 70s Americana, it's no good.

This album has some of the best songs I've ever heard on it. 'Out on the Weekend', 'Heart of Gold', 'Old Man'. This record came out when he was 26. It was his fourth solo album and he'd already been in, and left, two of the most important bands of the 60s. And he's still doing it. A force of nature. Read his biography 'Shaky'. Fantastic stuff.

Trap_6 · 02/9/2015 9:58 pm

Album 8 - 'Posted Sober' by Michael Marra

This one will definitely remind me of home. The Taybridge Bar in the 1990s was a great place. I spent a lot of time there in my adolescent years among cousins, pals, aunties and uncles. Mick was a constant presence along with several others. This album is the sound of that time for me. The songwriting on this album is sublime. Musically it's superb. It's funny but never trite. Genuinely one of Scotland's greatest in my own extremely biased opinion.

There will be statues of him in the future.

I'm afraid the mic stand plays a starring role in this video but the sound is good. And there's a good bit of him speaking at the start sounding like a Laphraoig being thrown on a smouldering bonfire.

Trap_6 · 02/9/2015 10:06 pm

First book, one I've read would be 'The Ball Is Round' by David Goldblatt. As the blurb on the back says, this could replace an entire bookshelf on its own. It's a mighty tome of a book and not a word is wasted. I love reading about social history and I love football. This book combines the two so, so well. Why did football grow where it did, when it did? It goes right across the globe studying the growth and contined dominance of the game right up until the present day. So packed with information that you could happily turn back to page 1 and start again as soonas you'd finished.

Trap_6 · 02/9/2015 10:11 pm

Second book, one I haven't read, would be the I Ching.

All that time to yourself on the island, there would be plenty time for some spiritual introspection. This is one that I've always meant to read. I'm not religious but I do believe in something 'more' whatever that means. This has been recommended to me many times by people I respect. I've simply never had the time. Which, for a book like this, is kind of ironic I suppose. Well, get me on that island and I promise to make time for it...

Trap_6 · 02/9/2015 10:16 pm

Tek wrote:
Which person would you miss the most?

Safe in the knowledge that my missus will never read this, I'd have to say my two kids.

I'm not picking between them, like it or lump it!

Spending your days with two wee spirits is good for you. I'm sure every parent feels the same but I'm the luckiest person alive to have two of the funniest, daftest, most intelligent and amazing kids as my own. I'd miss them like fuck!

Proper wee bastards at times mind. The long lies I could get used to....

huntedbyafreak · 02/9/2015 10:18 pm

Good choices mate. Like the Dundee tilt as well.

Trap_6 · 02/9/2015 10:22 pm

Tek wrote:
If you could take one Dundee Utd match on video to watch over and over again...what match would you choose?

This is a tough one!

Despite all those incredible games I've seen United play, and many I haven't, I think it would have to be a Derby. I think on the island I'd want to be reminded of that rivalry. I love it, it makes me so proud of being Dundonian. I'd also want to remember just how much I love it when we pump them!

It has to be 14/05/83.

Trap_6 · 02/9/2015 10:24 pm

Tek wrote:
What one other inanimate object would you take with you on the island if you could?

A football. A guitar would run it close but I don't think I'd ever get bored of doing keepy ups, re-creating goals or just blootering it into makeshift palm tree goals.

Trap_6 · 02/9/2015 10:28 pm

Tek wrote:
What one alcoholic drink would you take with you if you could?

Beer, obviously.

If I keep it vague, does it mean I just get a random one every time I go for one?

If I have to name a certain type, I think I'd go for my standard go-to beer these days - Punk IPA. A hugely refreshing quaff. At 5.6%, you could comfortably knock them back without getting too pished.

Trap_6 · 02/9/2015 10:30 pm

Tek wrote:
What ONE album would you save if the tide started washing them away and you only had time to retrieve just one?

White Denim. Such a layered record you could listen to it for 50 years and still be hearing new things.