Note to self: Summery mini albums FTW

Just remembered I wrote this for the latest edition of the very ace – A Short Fanzine About Rockin’… Way back when the air was warm and the skys were a dramatic blue. I think it’s still relevant though A little bit anyway..

I’m not one to whinge generally, but sitting alone at home suffering with the dreaded swine flu haplessly trying to direct my haplessly drunk girlfriend, via mobile phone, to a tent she can’t find at a festival I would desperately love to be at makes my rarely seen pessimistic side think that – at times summer-life can be a big bag of shit….

On the other hand I muse, with the Wire series 5 stuffed into my DVD player, and life otherwise resembling something like that awesome late 90s indie episode of TOTP which featured Gay Dad, The Sebadoh and The Offspring (come on, it was ace at the time and Lou Barlow is always cool) – it’s not all bad. And that’s mainly down to the way we soundtrack it…

What I think we’re missing though is enough massive raw powerpop 5-8 track EP/mini-albums that oh so often blasted out through youthful summers with the kind of rattling enthusiasm that could provide accompaniment for a whole summer of drunken fun. I’m talking Alcopop by Midget, Captain by Idlewild, All Hail Urusei Yatsura and, to get a little more contemporary about things, hell, A Modern Education by goFASTER>>.

So my rallying cry for this summer and every summer beyond is that, as a nation’s youth (ish in some cases) we should seize upon some classic nugget of a mini-album, and play the fuck out of it – and make sure everyone in remote proximity is, willingly or not, exposed to late night parties, sun-drenched sessions and general whatever else with that particular soundtrack firmly at hand, so in years future everyone can recall the summer of ‘insert ace mini-album here’.

I had a mate once who spent the entire summer of 98 blasting One Day at a Time by Symposium out of his window whilst smoking weed and playing ISS Pro… British summers may be short, but he owned that one!