Songs from Connnor's Ford Capri
Hail Connor
Then I went down into the basement Where my friend the maniac Busies himself with his electronic graffiti Finally his language touches me Because he talks to that part of us Which insists on drawing profiles on prison walls In that moment Poetry will be made by everyone And there will be emus in the zone
My friend Connor, is a bastard. We have been friends since approx. late secondary school/early sixth form, and my favourite thing about our friendship is that neither of us can remember how we became friends.
I vaguely remember him suddenly appearing in my life around 2008, at the end the end of year 11 (age 15/16), repeatedly asking me at the end of each day “what bus you getting later” (I got the same number 89 bus - which Connor always referred to as “the 9” - every day to school for five years. I don’t know why he always asked me this) and regaling me with large tales of the events of his daily bus journey (on the 584, which I think he called “the 84”); which mainly consisted of harassing younger students and overweight drivers. Next thing I know, it’s halfway through the first term of sixth form, and I’m sitting with him in a Starbucks attached to a Sainsburys talking about setting up a six-a-side football team (name withheld due to offensiveness reasons). What we definitely both agree is that we DID NOT become friends when we ended up in the same Duke of Edinburgh group together about 12 months before; which was an unmitigated disaster and we still refuse to speak about it to this day.
What was helpful about Connor is that his birthday is relatively early in the school year (it's either late October or November, I still can’t remember which), which gave him an early friendship advantage by the fact he learned to drive fairly quickly. Connor is a massive car nonce, and - as he was studying mechanics (?) at the technical college up the road - he wanted a car that he could practise on. According to Connor, all modern cars have “too much electricity” (this may not be exactly what he said, but is more or less the effect), so he got himself a 1986 Ford Capri, in grey (a year later he wrote it off when he crashed this car into a deer - which shat down the side of his car upon impact - and replaced it with an identical 1984 model). Needless to say, this is an extremely cool first car. Being a massive car nonce, Connor had the other advantage of bloody loving to drive everywhere, which means he was always up for giving me a lift.
I am semi-proud to say that Connor and I remain friends to this day. He’s one of the few people I know who shares my secret enjoyment of Family Guy, and has actually gone and become what we both semi-planned to be when we were teenagers: a football writer. Connor is currently living a life which I’m going to describe as “Brexit vagrancy”; where he is trying to live in Europe with his German partner Anneke, but doesn’t have a visa to live anywhere, so has to return to the UK every three months to avoid getting deported (his current solution to this is to just spam various northern European countries with visa applications, and then move to whichever one will let him in).
When I wasn’t playing FIFA at Connor’s house with him forcing me to listen to old Ricky Gervais podcasts, I was sitting in the passenger seat of Connor’s car. This is about the CDs we listened to whilst in that car. I don’t necessarily like all these songs, but I definitely remember them, and provide an unfortunately quite misty-eyed nostalgic insight into this time of our stupid lives. Thanks to Connor.
Play the jingle!
Violet Hill - Pendulum (Coldplay cover)
Off to an absolutely great start here with what is 100% the most embarrassing song on this series.
Before we go anywhere, I am going to raise some questions that you may be thinking:
I was born after 1994 - who the hell are Pendulum? I’m not willing to expand on this. Get on Spotify and be ready to have your mind blown.
Why were Pendulum doing a Coldplay cover? This is a great question. From a quick Google, I think that this would have been a recording of their Radio 1 Live Lounge set, c.2008. Would have appeared on the Radio 1 Live Lounge Volume 3 album.
Why did Connor have this song in his car? This is another great question and the main point of interrogation. There are a number of possibilities.
Option 1. He had the Live Lounge CD in his car. This is possible. However, going through the track listing, I don’t recall us listening to any of the other songs. We could have just constantly had this song on repeat, but that seems unlikely.
Option 2: He burnt a CD that included this song. Possible - we were all burning the shit out of CDs back in the day, we were out of control! - but why would he choose to burn this song of all songs? As I will reveal, Connor has quite good music taste, as a general rule.
Option 3: Pendulum sent Connor a CD of this song before it was released, containing only this song. Probably unlikely. Connor could only dream of having a link to a cool band like Pendulum. But, as previously mentioned, when listening to this song I feel like we just had this song on repeat, so we can’t rule it out.
In sum, much like many things in Connor’s life: we just don’t know. Life is full of uncertainty and you have to learn to embrace it.
The second piece of foundational knowledge I need to impart on you before going any further forward is to acquaint you with a concept called “What A Laugh Wednesdays” (WALW) (2008-2010). This was a concept dreamt up by myself, Connor and our two friends Crutchley and Waz.
The premise was simple: on Wednesdays (hence the Wednesdays), everyone at college got the afternoon off so the sport nerds could go play sport together against other sports nerds at other colleges (pathetic). If you were cool and interesting like us, you realised a far more productive use of your time was to arse about driving around the Mid Sussex area with your goon mates (hence the What a Laugh). This would invariably follow the same pattern:
Connor (whose college also got the afternoon off, I assume) would pick up us outside our college.
We would drive 2-3 minutes towards Haywards Heath’s high street, “South Road”, where we planned to go to KFC.
Connor would drive past 6-10 appropriate and accessible parking spaces over the course of 10-15 minutes, going up and down South Road and its grid of tributary roads so he can have another go (fun story: we once got pulled over by the police doing this, who were suspicious about why we were driving up and down the same few roads over and over again, or as “doing triangles”, as they called it)
Successfully execute a parallel park
Eat KFC
TBC - maybe going to sit in Sainsbury’s car park
Anyway, I associate this particular song with a very particular ritual we would all perform when this song came on during WALW. With its fast-paced drum-and-bass beat, this taps into the semi-developed brain of a sixteen year-old boy, and is proven to cause them to whack whatever was in front of you, roughly in time with the music. Unfortunately for Connor, what was in front of us was different parts of his car. Whoever was in the back would whack the headrests in front of them. Whoever was in the front would whack the dashboard / Connor. A cloud of dust would emerge from the Capri’s ageing seats, Connor squealing as he tries to negotiate Haywards Heath’s tricky one-way system. Joyous.
Anyway, the song itself is utter dross when you listen to it now: a band very much of their time covering a song of a band who were on the decline from being “actually being quite good even though everyone hates them” towards the generic omni-music that we see and listen to today. But regardless, I hold a soft spot for both bands in my heart; particularly Pendulum, who gave a lot of horny noughties teenagers their first experience of vaguely electronic music before rightly fading away.
Note: This song is so crap it isn’t even on Spotify. Take to YouTube to see more.
Thou Shalt Always Kill - Dans Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip
One thing I will concede to Connor is that he has always had a penchant for listening to music that, if not exactly good, is certainly “thought-provoking” for my tiny mind. He managed to cultivate a musical taste that was - at the time, at least - genuinely quite cool and interesting. Whereas “coolness” of the time was defined as to whether or not you had heard the latest generic act of the Indie Landfill era, or how many Muse songs you had on your iPod, Connor’s relentless single-mindedness and disinterest in what anyone else thought meant that he did at least offer a different experience to everyone else - which is probably why I liked him.
Now, that is not to say that I previously thought / currently think that this song is actually “good”, but it was genuinely like nothing I had heard before. I didn’t know who Dans Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip were. I didn’t know what Dans Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip were on about. I didn’t understand why Dans Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip didn’t have any guitars and weren’t singing about house parties. But it had my attention.
Listening to them now, they were kind of a precursor to Sleaford Mods, with their minimalist musical stylings and complete absence of melody, but with lyrics that are a lot less socially conscious, and do very little other than make lots of popular culture references and digs at the NME with a Middle England accent - maybe like a less angry Enter Shikari.
Listening to it back for the purposes of this piece, they are confusingly both very much of their time, and really really not. The pop culture references reminds me of a time of Never Mind the Buzzcocks and the peak tabloid celebrity culture in the UK, but they also achieved a sort of hipster semi-popularity at a time when most teenagers couldn’t imagine listening to a band who weren’t trying to imitate The Libertines.
But again, on some level this is why it reminds me of Connor. It makes me think of those times we would sit there in one of the Capris, discussing how we basically hated anyone who started smoking or had ever had a toke at a party, feeling awfully smug about having this relatively niche extreme opinion. It reminds me that people who think for themselves are always much more interesting.
God Lives Through - A Tribe Called Quest
I don’t care what you say: you can talk about Connor [middle name / surname redacted] without talking about A Tribe Called Quest. In order to appreciate this in full, it’s important to understand what Connor [middle name / surname redacted] looks like. Let me paint you a picture.
Imagine this: you are a young, cool guy who lives in a middle-class village without a shop in Mid Sussex, and you’re going to see your friend Connor, who lives in the next middle-class village along (also without a shop). Your mum is giving you a lift, because Connor has agreed to drive you to do some sort of non-descript teenage activity (e.g. going to play football in the park, someone has accidentally invited us to a party). Either way, you’re keen to get there quickly.
You get out the car, ignore your kind mother who kindly gave you a lift, and knock on the door. Connor’s mum answers, and you make some polite conversation with her, whilst she shouts upstairs to see what Connor is doing. Because Connor isn’t ready. Connor is never ready. Eventually he emerges from his room and comes down the stairs.
You see a fair haired, lanky bastard of a man, who - no matter what time of day it is - has just woken up. Everything he’s wearing is Fred Perry, and everything he’s wearing hangs off his skinny-ass body. His glazed expression and pale face means that, if you told someone that Connor he used to be a stoner, they would probably believe you. But Connor is not a stoner, he just refuses to eat anything but ham sandwiches for dinner, and is genetically incapable of putting on weight. He sits at the bottom of the stairs, grabs a pair of Fred Perry trainers, picks up a shoe horn and leverages his shoes on like an elderly man in the 1950s putting on some cobbled brogues (admittedly I am a man who carries a handkerchief around each day, but a shoe horn - c’mon mate).
In sum, Connor is a skinny white guy. But, incongruous to his appearance, Connor bastard loves hip-hop. As a result, I am lucky enough to have the delights of A Tribe Called Quest enter my ears for the first time.
As previously noted, being another skinny white guy growing up in a middle-class Mid Sussex village without a shop, I was not exactly surrounded by a diversity of musical influences. Other than openly mocking 50 Cent and thinking Dizzee Rascal was a load of nonsense, anything rap or hip-hop based was not on my radar; until Connor came to pick me up one day with People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm gurgling from the Capri’s knackered speakers. From that point, when it came to two skinny middle-class white guys driving around Mid Sussex bobbing their heads, there was no stopping us.
No but seriously, much like everyone else, I bloody love Tribe. They were the most wonderful entry into hip-hop; a world I generally find quite hit and miss in terms of my own personal taste. They went beyond my narrow-minded interpretation of rap being all about gangsters and pimps and showed me it could be actually fun and meaningful. Connor also had a copy of Midnight Marauders knocking about, which has since become one of my favourite all-time albums. I’ve chosen God Lives Through not because I think it's the best song, but I vaguely remember this being Connor’s favourite song, so it seemed only fair.
Upon the Heath - Mr Hudson & The Library
Now, you might remember Mr Hudson as the guy who did a couple of flighty one hit wonders in 2009. He featured on Jay-Z’s “Young Forever” (a rework of Forever Young from the 80s), and joined forces with Kanye to make the song “Supernova” (off the extremely naffly titled album “Straight No Chaser”). Also in 2009, he featured on the song “Playing with Fire”, by N-Dubz - if you remember that musical atrocity. If you’ve seen the 2006 epic The Da Vinci Code, Mr Hudson kind of looks like the blonde extremist monk who goes around killing people for some reason.
It’s a fun story, because before he churned out this indistinguishable guff, Mr Hudson was actually in a quite good band - Mr Hudson & The Library. After making one album, the story goes that Kanye got in touch with Mr Hudson and said, “I want to make you a pop star!” and Mr Hudson said, “okay!”, binned off a genuinely quite good and interesting creative project by firing his band (i.e. “The Library”) and fucked off to America. Obviously I can’t judge - Kanye has never tried to make me a popstar so I can’t say that I wouldn’t have done the same thing - but it doesn’t read well in hindsight.
His pop career didn’t really go anywhere (turns out that hitching yourself to the Kanye Wagon isn’t the most reliable of strategies) and now apparently he works as a songwriter and producer, so good for him. However, in my mind, nothing will emulate the 2006 cult classic he left behind.
The album A Tale of Two Cities was made in 2006 and is great. I couldn’t really tell you what genre it is, because I don’t know - some sort of fusion? - but I seriously dig it. I wouldn’t say it’s one I turn to on a regular basis (possibly because it doesn’t really sound like anything else), but occasionally it pops back into my brain and I get to have a nice 45 minutes and 53 seconds listening to it. This song is the last song of the album and is just lovely (make sure you listen to it the whole way through, as it’s got about 30 seconds of silence halfway through that makes it sound like it's finished. “Ask the DJ” and “Picture of You” are two of my other faves, if you’re interested.
Anyway, I first heard this album in Connor’s car and once again I have to commend him for his music taste. Bully for him.
Loser - Beck
Connor pissing loves Beck, and I think he’s the only person I know who has any sort of strong opinion on him. I’m sure we’ve listened to Beck hundreds of times in his car and I’ve just never noticed, because it just doesn’t register.
What’s the deal with Beck? “Beck”? He seems to be one of those guys I’m sort of vaguely aware of as someone that people like and think of as important, but never really being sure of why or ever really being able to identify any of their songs (see also: “Flaming Lips”, “Manic Street Preachers” or “The Shins”, who occupy the same liminal space in my mind). He also seems to be endlessly making music - so presumably someone is listening? I was always thought maybe he was of a cool nationality - possibly something Scandinavian? - but apparently he’s just from California, so who cares.
Anyway, Connor really likes Beck and I can’t be fucked to “get into Beck” - there’s just too much and it would take too much time. As such, I’m just going to give you the only Beck song I know: “Loser” - because it’s the song that everyone knows.
Vlad the Impaler - Kasabian
Kasabian are a strange band who hold an unusual place in British music culture. Strange not because of their musical output - which is almost completely dedicated to making fun, accessible stadium bangers - but because of the cultural position they hold, and the recent crimes of band members.
First, the cultural position. Basically, for some reason, they have ended up with a reputation for fans who I’m going to describe - fairly or unfairly - as “football lads”. Whether it be guitarist Serge Pizzorno going viral by scoring an absolute cracker on Sky’s now deceased and ethically questionable saturday morning football banter show, Soccer AM (which I admit to being a big fan of in my younger years), their 2004 song “Club Foot” being on one of the FIFA soundtracks at some point, or former singer Tom Meighan being chosen to unveil England’s 2010 World Cup kit on stage at a gig in Paris; Kasabian and football lads are deeply bonded together. It also probably helps that their music is very well placed to jump around at a festival in a bucket hat and throw cider everywhere. Can’t explain why, just is.
Not that I have a problem with football lads by the way, they have every right to enjoy music as the rest of us. It just means that when you go to a Kasabian gig, they are probably going to be quite rowdy and chant-y, which might not be everyone’s cup of tea. In many ways, they are kind of like a less culturally-significant Oasis.
More importantly, in 2020, then-singer Tom Meighan pleaded guilty to beating up his fiancé (his punishment for which was to be given 200 hours of “community service”, well done everyone), who interestingly he has since gone on to marry. Either way, Kasabian kicked Tom out of the band, and now Serge is the singer. I don’t really know where this sits on the “separating the art from the artist” ether, but it should be mentioned, as I’m about to massively praise an album that Mr Meighan was involved with.
That album is West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum, and it’s bastard good. I haven’t really engaged with much of Kasabian’s musical output since it was released in 2009, but as far as I can tell, it's the most recent one to gain any sort of popular traction. I’m not sure what it is about it, but it does feel slightly more sensitive that what you might associate with them; bit more retro, bit more weird, bit less route one. Yet at the same time, it’s got a couple of absolutely massive bangers; the kind of bangers that make you wish you were a sunburnt 16-year-old at Reading Festival again; proper “take off your retro England football shirt, wave it around above your head and pour Strongbow Dark Fruits directly into your mate’s eyes” kinds of bangers. “Vlad the Impaler” very much falls into this category.
For some reason, this song reminds me of negotiating country lanes with Connor between our two shitty little Tory villages. You would be driving around a corner on a road about 1.5 cars wide when some cunt in a Range Rover would come at you from the other way at about 60 mph and you thought you were going to die.
Salad Days - Mac DeMarco
I’ve rambled on for quite long enough, so I’m going to make this the last one.
Technically, this is a cheat, as I think I actually first got introduced to this song in a different one of Connor’s cars; his BMW 3 Series in 2015, when he decided that he best get a car that is actually capable of starting (though, to be fair, I think the Capri is still technically alive, somewhere in the Mid Sussex area).
For some reason, Connor and Waz convinced me to go on a holiday that centred around going to watch some F1. For those of you not accustomed, F1 is a scheme where where wealthy dads pay for a company (or, “a racing team”) millions of pounds so their son can drive fast around different racetracks around the world; like a Tory male adult day care. It’s extremely elitist and extremely boring.
I’ve had to endure a lot of F1 chat over the years, to such an extent I managed to get a decent idea of what was going on purely through osmosis, and I briefly mistook this understanding for an actual interest when I agreed to go on this trip. It centred around going to watch a race in Austria, and I can confirm that watching F1 in person is even more boring than watching it on the TV. Even Connor and Waz were bored.
Nevertheless, we built a road trip around it, travelling to Bruges, Cologne, Munich, Innsbruck, Lake Como, Genoa, Nice, Lyon and Lille in what was quite an intense two weeks. Connor hadn’t long had the BMW, which was around 15 years old at the time. He picked it up for cheap, and was the sort of car that middle-aged men who work in sales used to drive aggressively up and down the M1, undertaking and tailgating people as they go to and from their miserable sales conferences in Kettering.
The car broadly worked, apart from the fan/air conditioning system, which did not. This was unfortunate; particularly when we got to Italy and it was about 35 degrees. I vividly remember sitting in the passenger seat, whacking different parts of the dashboard to try and coax it into functioning again, to no success. We stopped to have a look at Monaco for a couple of hours when it was about 40 degrees and it was absolutely horrific. Then, as we drove out of Nice the next morning, settling in for another day of sweat and stank, it randomly burst into life as we went around a roundabout. There we were, air conditioning functioning, Mac DeMarco coming through the speakers, and suddenly everything was fine. We erupted with joy.
I think Mac DeMarco is quite a divisive figure, and I think I can understand why. There’s a lot about him which makes him come across as a bit of a goon, but I think he’s great and I’ve enjoyed his music a lot over the years, including going to see him with Caroline at Hackney Empire one sweaty summer’s day last July (offering respite to a period what can diplomatically be described as “a mental health blip”). He is great fun live and I very much recommend it.
We listened a lot to the album Salad Days on this 2015 trip, named after song I’ve recommended here, which is the first track. After you listen to that song, you might as well listen to the whole album, and then go back and listen to the rest of his music whilst you’re at it (but probably steer clear of Mac’s 200-song album One Wayne G, released last year).